That’s only true with short distances or crappy trains. I’ll drive DC to NYC rather than take the train, as it’s cheaper and not much slower. If Acela were a proper high-speed line I might switch. DC to Boston is close to a toss up, ~7 vs ~9 hours, but a proper high-speed train that did it in 2.5 hours would be really attractive.
With modern high-speed rail and a fairly modest average speed of 200 km/h (taking stops into account, because modern HSR can go >350 km/h), it would only take 3.5 hours to get from DC to Boston (passing through NYC).
I have to drive about an hour in the wrong direction to get to Amtrak from west of Boston. But I hate driving into NYC so I generally do it anyway rather than driving solo even though it takes longer and costs more.
