HSR could increase home values in smaller cities

[CHamilton]

Harvard Business Review:

High Speed Rail Versus Austerity

Philadelphia is 101 miles from Manhattan, and the current travel time between the two cities is about 75 minutes on the Acela, a bit longer by regional rail.* Suppose that Amtrak could achieve the speed of China's bullet trains and move at 175 miles per hour. The one way commute time would decline to 35 minutes. Common sense suggests that home prices in Philadelphia would soar from their current median of $140,000 as businesses and households would come to view the city as a new Manhattan suburb, and the demand to live and work there would sharply increase. Philadelphia would benefit from the population increase and all the amenities that private enterprise would build to support it.

...
Effect 1: a capital gain windfall for land owners in second and third tier cities
Effect 2: dispersed population
Effect 3: private investment in amenities to support the growing populations of the lower tier cities
Effect 4: lower carbons emissions
Effect 5: more efficient use of space for private enterprise

 

[George Harris]

Appears to include the normal news media math that end to end time is not much more than distance divided by speed limit or in this case distance divided by speed limit plus 10 minutes. Sorry, Charlie. Not so. That is approximately right for the non-stop trains between Taichung and the end points on the Taiwan High Speed Railway, but for them, except for about 5 miles on one end only at lower speeds, the entire run is at the speed limit. There is no way that can be so between New York and Philadelphia. Unless there is quite a bit of work to improve curves and other locations requiring lower speeds, the main thing that having a 175 mph speed limit will give you is maybe 5 minutes and bragging rights for the higher maximum speed.

 

[Anderson]

Well, I think it's assumed that there would be a lot of track rebuilding and what-have-you in such a project. Also, it does seem that they're assuming an average speed of 175 MPH.