I want to agree with you, but as a practical matter, Amtrak currently offers service from NYC to Montreal that takes about 11 hours. Instead of offering it overnight, when it would add value by allowing passengers to sleep during most of their journey (and thus reduce their perceived travel time to less than that of a plane), they offer the service only during the day, in both directions! So you spent literally the entire day on the train. I would take a 14-hour train across the country, but not if it runs from 9 AM to 11 PM. And it would, because all those people in the middle don't want to have to join the train at their regional station in the middle of the night.
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I want to agree with you, but as a practical matter, Amtrak currently offers service from NYC to Montreal that takes about 11 hours. Instead of offering it overnight, when it would add value by allowing passengers to sleep during most of their journey (and thus reduce their perceived travel time to less than that of a plane), they offer the service only during the day, in both directions! So you spent literally the entire day on the train. I would take a 14-hour train across the country, but not if it runs from 9 AM to 11 PM. And it would, because all those people in the middle don't want to have to join the train at their regional station in the middle of the night.