Basic Disclaimer: Again, this high-speed rail network does not currently exist beyond my imagination. If you would like to see it, talk to your representatives and business leaders. You may see real events and locations who I don’t have any affiliation with and who don’t have affiliation with me unless stated otherwise.
At the time of writing this post, the Final Four of March Madness has been decided but UConn vs Alabama nor NC State vs Purdue have been played. NC State is in the Research Triangle, covered in this network by Durham. Meanwhile, Purdue University is in West Lafayette IN, in between Chicago and Indy and is a likely in between stop on a high-speed rail network. Thus, we will focus on this match-up possibility even though the real matchup is happening in Arizona.
Using Indy as a proxy, this route would take around 8.7 hours by car and 4 hours by bullet train. Presuming Chicago as the proxy location, this would extend to 11.3 hours, and 4.7 hours respectively. In addition, using Chicago as proxy would result in either 5.5 hour flight or a 1.9 hour flight with $180 markup for the faster flight. So in this case there is an argument for air travel over train but that depends on a variety of factors, primarily cost and time.
Since we are looking at this particular match-up in the March Madness bracket, we are looking at a Saturday night game. Let’s presume Durham as the end location. Using a similar timeline as our previous exploration, we could leave at 8 am local time. With Indy as the start point, leaving at 8am local time, driving there, with a half hour for lunch, gets us an arrival time of 5:15 pm which would be fairly close before the 6pm start time of the game. This would leave very little time for checking in to a hotel or even to get gas during the drive. Meanwhile, the bullet train, would get us to around 1:15pm. This would allow for checking in, walking around a bit, and getting dinner if desired.
With these timelines, it becomes pretty clear that driving to Durham from Indy in one day becomes quite a bit unrealistic or incredibly inconvenient. Thus time would need to be spent on the Friday and Monday surrounding the game. While that is possible for some, it isn’t realistic for everyone. For those who are big fans but may not have the vacation time, being able to use the bullet train could be a viable option for them. This time we didn’t look much at what you could do outside of the game, but with the 1:15 pm, there is definitely time to explore the area. What did you think so far? Would such this trip be appealing to you? Please let me know down in the comments below.
unknownclimate 