People keep comparing airtravel to rail travel and they miss the stops in-between.
Yes you can fly from Toronto to Kingston or London, but does it fly hourly?
Is it as cost effective? How do you get from Airport to your final destination? The benefit of the train is that it's from downtown to downtown (not so much with Kingston, but the airport isn't exactly downtown either).
What if you want to go from Belleville to Brockville? Are you going to drive to Kingston and the fly to Ottawa and then rent a car?
Stop thinking that all trips start and end in Toronto, Ottawa or Montreal.
Wait, I was referring to Biden's 2010/2011 HSR funding announcements for Amtrak, what does this have to do with air travel?
All I said with regards to this $2.3 trillion transportation plan - was that I wouldn't put too much stock into it until we see actual shovels in the ground. This isn't the first time Biden talked about HSR or rail expansions, and just because Joe used to take the Acela between Delaware and DC doesn't mean he will actually walk the talk, unless we see something much more concrete and substantial from this administration. For example, how much of the $2.3 trillion is specifically dedicated towards passenger rail (vs. airports, highways, and other money-sucking transportation spends), how much are one-time capital announcements vs. ongoing boost to Amtrak's operating budget. None of that is clear at the moment, and all of this still needs pass the GOP-controlled Senate which may water down a lot of things in the final version.
In his 2010 announcement, Biden as VP specifically said he wanted to invest in 13 HSR projects around the country, including the California and Florida Miami-Tampa corridor. 11 years have gone by, and none of the 13 projects sponsored back then is even close to completion (most never took off in the first place...), with the exception of Florida Brightline which had nothing to do with the Amtrak projects and only came to fruition thanks to private investment. This was the Biden/Obama funding plan back in 2010 for HSR:
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.go...nnounce-8-billion-high-speed-rail-projects-ac
Later in 2011, Biden made another $55 billion HSR funding announcement.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/02/08/biden.rail.network/index.html
Once again, like Ontario/Canada, U.S. feds have a track record of announcing ambitious HSR proposals in the past, and like Ontario/Canada, there's also a time-honored track record of things becoming "much ado about nothing".