Yup, that’s even easier to implement and could be done in any city within a few years. I just can’t fathom why almost every single street in almost every single city MUST support through traffic. Even in cities with great public transport and great infra for walking/cycling, with only a fraction of the citizens driving cars, somehow cars are still allowed to drive through basically everywhere. Looking at you Helsinki…
Also, the size of the city is irrelevant. Even in the video, NJB describes how this concept could be implemented in any city. You don’t encircle the whole city with a ring road, but you create these rings with a diameter of ~2 km around train/metro stations. Even Houten consists of two such rings nowadays. Larger cities would be dozens, if not hundreds, of rings.
Also, there are some plans to connect this bridge to the land barely visible on the right edge of the picture. Not sure if that also plays into the curvature, or when this bridge connection will actually be built.
I don’t think they literally meant journeys from one end of the country to the other, but rather travelling distances of 100-500 km. Maybe even up to 1000 km would be preferable by rail, especially with night trains.
I do agree that if you for some reason specifically want to travel from Orlando to Detroit, plane is by far the superior option. But Orlando to Miami? Or Orlando to Atlanta? High speed rail would be perfect.