I would love for there to be a high-speed electrified line from the east coast to Chicago or NYC to Chicago and I think in an ideal world it would be built but it is worth noting that the distance from Boston to Chicago is just under 1000 miles, definitely exceeding the distance threshold for most people to simply fly even with modern, electrified high speed rail. The equivalent distance in this case in Europe would be something like Berlin to Marseille, a journey that still takes 12 hours by high speed rail. I don’t disagree that it’s possible to improve on that time (it certainly is), just that for the Amtrak long-distance trains flying is often the “better” option even if the routes were upgraded to modern technology.

The place where rail is most competitive, and where high speed rail can make the most impact, is on routes where the driving time is under 9 hours- San Francisco to LA, Dallas to Houston, Boston to DC (slightly over but there’s so many huge cities along the way), etc.