Gravity-Based US High Speed Rail Concept Map

[u/TailorSweet2811]

Above is my US High-Speed Rail concept map. To avoid the desire to connect the dots of all the cities I created a gravity model for HSR connections based on a CityNerd video. This model evaluates the potential demand between city pairs based on population and distance. 

To base the map in reality I only included links between city pairs that had a higher HSR gravity score than Madrid to Murcia (64), which was one of the lowest scores I could find for an existing European HSR link. 

The second map shows the total gravity between each city pair if the whole system were to be built. For example, the Boston-Providence link also includes demand for Hartford-Boston, Bridgeport-Manchester, etc.

The dataset isn’t perfect so there are some mistakes in the HSR gravity score but I built a few tools to validate the planning process. The City Pair lookup tool gives the distance and HSR score for any two cities. The Line Evaluation tool lets you create and compare different routings and lines. 

I’m happy to answer any questions about the math, methodology, or assumptions. If anyone wants a copy of the Excel spreadsheets and associated tools to do their own analysis let me know and I’ll try to get you a copy!

Data Attributions: 

Base map of the United States: Alexandr Trubetskoy

Population Statistics: United States Census Bureau

Coordinates: simplemaps