NYC to Chicago is over 1000km in linear distance (I-80, a decent approximation of the shortest distance you can route it, puts it at 1200km). Making it in 5 hours requires an average speed, including stop penalties, of over 200km/h. And that's bypassing any other major city. A more reasonable route, that goes via Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, and Philadelphia, runs you closer to 1500-1600km, requiring a 300km/h average speed. With the top speed of conventional trains being about 350km/h, that is impossible.
If you bypass every other city between NYC and Chicago, and basically go through a state-long tunnel in Pennsylvania, you might be able to do it with a conventional railroad, but it definitely won't be cost-effective. To hit the other cities, you have to switch to maglev, which makes it cost-ineffective as well.
A final note: the city pair you're trying to link up is Chicago-NYC. Given the relatively diminutive size of the other cities en route (Pittsburgh is #27 and Cleveland #33, compared to #1 NYC and #3 Chicago), Chicago-NYC is going to make up the bulk of your traffic, so partial portions of the route aren't particularly effective. This is one of the issues CA has as well: the full SF/LA connection is where the market is, and the HSR can't justify its costs until it connects those two cities.
>A final note: the city pair you're trying to link up is Chicago-NYC. Given the relatively diminutive size of the other cities en route
One of the reasons that the Northeast Corridor works so well for Amtrak is that people by and large are not taking the train from Boston to DC. (It's doable and I've done it but it really doesn't make sense versus flying in most cases.) In fact, it's usually a longer stop in NY Penn because most people are either getting on or getting off in Manhattan.
Rather, people are going Boston-NY, NY-DC, or otherwise between cities that make up about half or less of the total route.
But that's because the route of Boston-DC contains the following major cities en route:
DC (#6)
Baltimore (#21)
Philadelphia (#8)
NYC (#1)
Boston (#10)
You're connecting 4 major cities, and 1 in-between city, along the Boston to DC route, and the largest city is smack dab in the middle. In fact, as route pairings, it's less a Boston-DC line and more a DC-NYC and a NYC-Boston line that is through-run. Chicago-NYC only has the in-between cities of Cleveland and Pittsburgh en route (excluding the already-connected Philly).
The NEC is, quite frankly, extremely unusual in being a very dense, very linear corridor. The only other corridor in the world with similar circumstances is the Tokaido Shinkansen.
>The NEC is, quite frankly, extremely unusual in being a very dense, very linear corridor. The only other corridor in the world with similar circumstances is the Tokaido Shinkansen.
It's too bad the Amtrak NE Regional (and the very slightly-faster Acela "Express") are so horribly inferior to the Tokaido Shinkansen. Riding on an Amtrak feels like a bad joke after riding on any Shinkansen line, in many ways, including both speed and price.
Exactly. Frankly, if the northern and southern legs of the route split to different rail stations as is the case in Boston, I'd guess that would inconvenience relatively few people.
(Of course, Amtrak has limited service going north out of Boston anyway so the fact that the Downeaster doesn't directly connect to the NEC is less of a problem there than it would be in other cities.)
Shinkansen in Japan regurarly does 320 km/h and 360 km/h is being tested, with the main issue being running noise and tunnel boom.
These speeds are really not theoretical and we regurarly made use of them during travels in Japan. For example back in 2017 we traveled 1100 km from Beppu to Tokyo in about 8 hours. This contained a normal speed express train segment from Beppu to Fukuoka (1:30 h, max speed 130 km/h) and two train changes.
Also a maglev based line between Tokyo & Nagoya is under construction, which will be 80% underground with a running speed of ~500 km/h.
Most of the traffic is expected to be between those small cities, which is why you go through them. The full trip only competes with flying if there are enough trips that you don't have to plan ahead.
There is no technical problem getting a train to average 300km/h across the entire stretch. There are lots of political problems though. If we committed to building such a track in 10 years we could get the price of maglev track down a lot - and 10 years is what it would take the get the right of way and dig the tunnels.
If you bypass every other city between NYC and Chicago, and basically go through a state-long tunnel in Pennsylvania, you might be able to do it with a conventional railroad, but it definitely won't be cost-effective. To hit the other cities, you have to switch to maglev, which makes it cost-ineffective as well.
A final note: the city pair you're trying to link up is Chicago-NYC. Given the relatively diminutive size of the other cities en route (Pittsburgh is #27 and Cleveland #33, compared to #1 NYC and #3 Chicago), Chicago-NYC is going to make up the bulk of your traffic, so partial portions of the route aren't particularly effective. This is one of the issues CA has as well: the full SF/LA connection is where the market is, and the HSR can't justify its costs until it connects those two cities.