This week, Ray Delahanty of City Nerd laid out the case for a high-speed Maglev train line between Washington D.C. and Boston, which could shrink the end-to-end travel time to two hours. This densely populated urban corridor compares favorably with major high speed rail corridors around the world, generating plenty of demand for intercity transit. Plus, a high-speed line would pull tons of trips out of planes, decreasing climate pollution and airport congestion.
Delahanty selected Maglev, the magnetic levitation technology used in Japan’s Shinkansen trains, because it would be the fastest transit option due to its 200 miles per hour top speed and ability to accelerate and deaccelerate rapidly.
Doug Trumm is publisher of The Urbanist. An Urbanist writer since 2015, he dreams of pedestrian streets, bus lanes, and a mass-timber building spree to end our housing crisis. He graduated from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington in 2019. He lives in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood and loves to explore the city by foot and by bike.