Futurology

I haven't read this article yet, but I did recently read about electric planes. There are a shockingly large percentage of flights in the US (and probably the world) that are that short. Not a percentage of passengers, but percentage of flights. Lots of islands that don't have a routine ferry service, or small rural communities in places like Alaska that may be separated from the road system by a mountain range.

Those small communities couldn't support constant rail (or ferry) service, so small planes are actually the most economical way to serve them. Even places like Hawaii could use electric planes to good effect.

The first I read about them was for flights to Nantucket Island, which absolutely gets ferry service, but it's also where a lot of rich people have homes, and they are going to fly. https://nantucketcurrent.com/news/cape-air-to-buy-electric-planes

You ever tried to travel by train here? Long or short distance. The rail infrastructure isn't there

There's plenty of places where an electric shorter range plane makes sense. Alaska and Australia come to mind immediately.

Well it did say it was a milestone flight, as well as 68 miles not necessarily meaning on a straight road you could drive 70mph on.

There are a lot of good arguments for rail or other means of transportation, but the travel volume vs the infrastructure required are vastly different in the US than in many parts of Europe/Asia. Think 'lots of medium distance low volume routes' that aren't economically feasible since there are existing routes. If you went through the effort of building a train route, you would have to charge so much per person to make it pay for itself that no one could afford it and they would take other methods.

I'm Europe, there seem to be enough 'short, high volume routes' that are economically feasible that considering adding other legs to them make sense, or they just already work.

have you seen the state of their rail system? Americans might be dumb but they're not fucking stupid.