The US still dominates freight rail.

Yeah, if I want to go anywhere interesting, it would be an overnight trip, with kids. A sleeping room is way too expensive, so it's a nonstarter. If it was 3x the speed, it would probably be fine, especially if they left in the morning instead of the evening.

So yeah, the only train I take is the commuter, and only to go to the airport because there's no connection from the train to my work (there's a way to get there, but the trip would take 2 hours each way). The commuter can't go very fast because it has to stop every 5-10 miles, but it's fine since it goes about as fast as a car.

So yeah, here's hoping Amtrak can make enough on the east coast to be able to upgrade the west coast.

Laughs in supercruise

Concorde is a tailless aircraft design with a narrow fuselage permitting four-abreast seating for 92 to 128 passengers, an ogival delta wing, and a droop nose for landing visibility. It is powered by four Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 turbojets with variable engine intake ramps, and reheat for take-off and acceleration to supersonic speed. Constructed from aluminium, it was the first airliner to have analogue fly-by-wire flight controls. The airliner had transatlantic range while supercruising at twice the speed of sound for 75% of the distance.[5]

The fastest transatlantic airliner flight was from New York JFK to London Heathrow on 7 February 1996, aided by a 175 mph (282 km/h) tailwind, by the British Airways G-BOAD, in 2 hours, 52 minutes, 59 seconds from take-off to touchdown.[227] On 13 February 1985, a Concorde charter flight flew from London Heathrow to Sydney in a time of 17 hours, 3 minutes and 45 seconds, including refuelling stops.[228][229]

Supercruise is sustained supersonic flight of a supersonic aircraft without using afterburner. Many supersonic military aircraft are not capable of supercruise and can maintain Mach 1+ flight only in short bursts with afterburners. Aircraft such as the SR-71 Blackbird are designed to cruise at supersonic speed with afterburners enabled.

Some fighter jets are capable of supercruise but only at high altitudes and in a clean configuration, so the term may imply "a significant increase in effective combat speed with a full weapons load over existing types".[1] One of the pre-eminent military examples of supercruise is the F-22 Raptor, for which supercruise was defined as "the ability to cruise at speeds of one and a half times the speed of sound or greater without the use of afterburner for extended periods in combat configuration."[2]

One of the best-known examples of an aircraft capable of supercruise, and the only notable non-military example, was the Concorde. Due to its long service as a commercial airliner, the Concorde holds the record for the most time spent supersonic; more than all other western aircraft combined.[3]

Compared to the other provinces, it’s just flat farm fields. When the rapeseed (canola) is blooming it can look pretty, but it’s just yellow flowers for HOURS, no variety.

Edit, oh and for six months it’s white with snow, and the highway is dead straight, it’s hard to stay awake for the six hours.

Northern Nevada sucks, but southern Nevada near Vegas is fine since it has cool rock structures and whatnot, provided you avoid rush hour.

I hate most of California because traffic is so awful, but north of SF is pretty.

I guess, but arguably you would only hit one in the day, and the chances of it being during rush hour is slim, can always plan better around that stuff too. Or take secondary highways. There’s not only a single highway going places.

Even during off-hours?

That's not true in many parts of the country. It's very much a mixed bag. Look at San Antonio, 410 goes around the city and connects the various highways so you don't need to go through the city center to drive past the city. In Seattle, 405 was intended to do that for Seattle to avoid 15, but then Bellevue got huge. In SLC, we have 215.

Beltroutes are common across the country and are designed to solve exactly this problem.

Stroads are a different problem unconnected to highways going through cities. In fact, they're often the old highways that went through town and became a stroad when the highway was built. We then built more of them because people liked driving cars to their destination instead of walking or taking transit.

The best possible bypass won't solve the stroad problem or congestion in the city center. What we need is a complete redesign of what a city center means, which I think should be:

• exits for a city only at the edges, and no reasonable way to cut through the city
• tons of free parking at the edge of cities and cheap or free transit from the edge to the city center
• fantastic mass transit inside of cities
• car free zone in downtown, so the only way to get there is transit or walking/cycling

If we can do that, we can rip out stroads to make room for more density in attractions. Keep some roads for trucks to make deliveries and whatnot, and convert the rest to walkable streets.