As you might have seen from my JFK-DCA DCA-LGA trip today to the lovely Washington D.C. metro area, I did a bunch of flying today which should have been on the SUPERTRAIN.

The problem was that I needed to go to both Annapolis and Washington DC very last minute. Not having the SUPERTRAIN meant that a trip which could (and should) have been undertaken with a combination of subway, metro and SUPERTRAIN became a game theory test between different transportation modes. Surprisingly, taking the Delta Shuttle was actually cheaper and half the time than taking Amtrak. Instead of 3 hours on the train it was 1.5 hours on the plane/waiting in the terminal. Carbon-spewing flight won the day. While I had to use taxis in New York City, I was able to use Washington’s Metro on the way to and from National Airport and from Annapolis to Washington DC.

The Northeast Corridor is the one area where the SUPERTRAIN can take advantage of existing density, mass transit and travel demand. Now if we just had half a trillion dollars laying around we could all take the SUPERTRAIN.