😂 Toronto and Montreal both make the top 20, but not with each other. Another point of hilarity for me is how much better Toronto->Detroit ranks than TO->NY. Sometimes a model doesn't account for which cities we actually want to visit, but it definitely delivers useful insight. I'm glad you put LA->San Diego in, because it seems crazy that California didn't build that high speed rail first. China didn't build Beijing to Shanghai first. They build Beijing to Tianjin. California just goes for the Hail Mary right off the bat... I'm all about suggesting part 2's for videos now, so my suggestion is a part 2 which looks at how well the stations integrate with public transit, and how good that public transit is. Texas may look good for building high speed rail because of terrain, distance, and population, but arriving carless in those cities is another thing.

Suggestion - the top 10 proposed transit projects in north america that deserve to be built (that aren't currently funded)

I love seeing Mexico compared with the other countries in the continent, we are usually left aside. I think you were absolutely correct with Buenavista station, with it being centric and well conected with 2 metrobus lines, one suburban line (I hope they expand it to Querétaro soon), and one planned light rail line. Another option could be Observatorio station in the west of the city, although it's not that centric, it will be the terminus for the Toluca line

I’m so frustrated with Indy’s shortsighted decision to build our BRT hub away from Union Station. Union is a beautiful building, supports through running trains, and is in the heart of downtown. Should’ve revitalized that historic train station and offered better future connectivity to future intercity rail improvements.

This is a great illustration of why HSR is so challenging in the interior of the American West. I'm in Salt Lake, and by these metrics I can see why connecting us to Denver, Vegas, and San Fransisco would be pretty much the last step in a national network.

I NEED your suggested Mexican line to be built. I live in León which is in the middle of an important industrial corridor spanning from Guadalajara to Querétaro and many other industrial cities in between (Irapuato, Celaya, etc.) and this would be a gamechanger for transportation

As a former expat in CDMX and Queretaro, aspiring urban planner, and huge soccer fan (Santos Laguna though,) this channel ticks so delightful boxes for me that I didn't even know I needed. Love that you take the time to explain all the scoring systems in depth. Love the work!!

I loved that you included México, we are always forgotten 🚄🚅

I think that one issue with just going by metro pop. is that Canadian census tracts tend to be significantly smaller, so if you take the Greater Golden Horseshoe (which is almost exactly the same size as Chicagoland) you end up with a population of like 9.9M

Actually really surprised with how low the MSP to Chicago corridor scored since there’s been talk of some form of high speed rail on the corridor since the 90s. Quickly realizing after remembering the study I was reading from 2000 on the corridor that a lot of the trip generators were the multiple smaller metro areas between MSP and Chicago in Milwaukee, Madison, LaCrosse, and Rochester. If I remember correctly from the study, they predicted ridership of over 5 million a year within 20 years of the study completion date had they built it.

Can attest the train between Grand Rapids and Chicago is BEAUTIFUL; if only GR could convince MTA to electrify a track up through Kalamazoo. If there were high speed to Chicago/Detroit I'd move back home in a heartbeat.

studies have shown the benefit of HSR is highly dependent on local transit connections as well, If you ever re-re visit your connection scoring model It would be cool to try and integrate some kind of station connectivity rating or overall transit modal share coefficient! which would definitely additionally favor NY (31%) to Montreal (22%), DC (16%), Boston (14%) and Philly (10%) plus VAN (20%) to SEA (10%) and PDX (7%) over Houston/SA/Dallas (3%, 2%, 2%!). SF is also pretty high up there for the US at 20% but Socal is all

Whoo hoo! You pronounced “Oshawa” correctly this time! We’ll have you dropping Toronto’s second T before too long! 😁

For Boston, the north/south station question is a hard one. They’re a mile apart, but you have to make a subway connection to get from one to the other. If money were no object, I’d build an actual central station in the middle of the State/Govt. Center/Park St./Downtown Xing stations. It’s a shame they didn’t add a direct rail connection between N. and S. Stations during the Big Dig; the 93 tunnel runs right by both! Maybe we can reclaim some of those vehicle lanes…

This type of analysis is extremely important. Thank you. Another set of North American city pairs that would be interesting and valuable to know: Night-train pairs. The European Union is promoting the restoration and expansion of overnight train service across country borders in the EU, e.g. Vienna to Brussels. A night train has sleeping compartments and food service; the journey starts in the evening and ends in the early morning. The duration is approximately 12 hours, giving you time for dinner, 8 hours of sleep and breakfast during the journey. The European initiative is part of a larger carbon reduction program.

I would love high speed rail to Grand Rapids from Chicago. My family already takes the train out there at least twice a year. High speed rail would only encourage us. Also, you being surprised of Grand Rapids having suburbs was pretty funny. My mom always gets mad when people think of Grand Rapids as a small town. It's actually a pretty nice city with a booming healthcare industry.

Damn, congratulations on making videos with 1k views within 3 hours now! You will definitely reach to 100k subs EASILY! Congratulations and keep it up with the content

Another great video! I wish Cascadia had a higher score too. In theory it seems like a slam dunk, it’s a shame the numbers don’t work out for this region.

CityNerd I think you missed a pairing when you neglected the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal corridor as a possible HSR route. You didn't do an inside-Canada pairing between Montreal and Toronto. Union Station in Toronto is already the third busiest train station north of Mexico, after Grand Central and Penn. The Toronto-Montreal service carries about four million passengers annually as it is, taking five hours on a route shared with freight trains. Make that route competitive with the roughly 100 daily scheduled flights between Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa, and you'd have a damn viable service.

Awesome to see Mexicali getting some love! Also, CDMX tried building the rail to Querétaro, but the project was halted in 2014

Oh man, I dream of the México-Querétaro line being built. I have family in León and I have come to really like Querétaro and some of the surrounding towns like Tequisquiapan or Bernal. Most importantly, the México-Querétaro highway is an absolute nightmare, you can lose hours in traffic there when there is an accident or repair works. That train line was supposed to be built back in 2014, but it was cancelled due to a corruption scandal.

Just discovered this channel and it’s really great. As a Washingtonian, I love that we keep getting ranked at or near the top of your lists!! Really curious to see what you think of our Metro’s upcoming Silver Line extension. It’s kind of unique in that it is by far the longest line in the network because it extends out to IAD. That’s good, but all the other stations seem more like they belong in a suburban commuter rail line than an urban metro line. Interested to hear your thoughts. Perhaps in a video on top 10 metro networks, or top 10 commuter rail systems in North America?

I love this channel. I'm a huge aviation enthusiast and usually downplay HSR, but after seeing some of your videos I genuinely do hope to see greater rail adoption in the US. I also have to remind myself that Europe (a benchmark for how to best implement rail?) has a good mix between world-class rail lines and a thriving aviation industry. In all, have learned that airplanes simply need to be reserved for situations where they're most needed, like transcontinental, overseas, etc. and leave the rest to rail, if possible. So, thank you!

Baltimore just broke ground on an expansion of Penn Station, the one thing we need now is a replacement of the B&P tunnel. One of the worst Amtrak/Commuter rail bottlenecks in the country. Also, have you considered looking at commuter rail systems? Especially in the northeast, they supplement the Amtrak system so well

Ngl, I bingewatched ALL your videos in a DAY!! Awesome content

As someone who lived in Boston for 13 years, I'm glad Acela is at South Station instead of North for a couple of reasons: * Much as they've made the neighborhood around North Station really nice, the station itself is still just one big long hallway. It's not a terribly comfortable place to wait, especially compared to the high ceilings and architectural beauty of South Station. It also doesn't have the food options South Station has in case you want to grab a bite to eat before your train. * The connections at South Station are better. South Station has the Red Line (the busiest MBTA line) to Cambridge & Braintree and the Silver Line to the airport & the South End (which is, admittedly, a bus, and not really the BRT that the MBTA likes to claim it is). North Station has the Orange Line to Malden & Jamaica Plain or the Green Line to Jamaica Plain & Newton (now that the D line goes to North Station again); these two have quite a bit of redundancy to them.

Looking at the Mexican routes you talked about, I think San Luis Potosi would be a great stop after Queretaro, and could become more competitive if the train keeps going north to Saltillo and Monterrey, allowing to have Mexico City to Monterrey by High Speed train. You would probably say that is too long to compete against trains, but nowadays a lot of people still uses the buses to travel between these two cities, so it seems to me as a wasted oportunity not to build the route all the way to Monterrey. Then for Aguascalientes, I think this city could have three potential routes, a nonstop to Guadalajara, a nonstop to León and a nonstop to San Luis Potosí, hence also allowing to have a high speed route between Guadalajara and Monterrey. You should also check the possibility of having the Mexico to Guadalajara go through Toluca and Morelia to have a faster route rather than going via Queretaro and León

As a gateway to the south, as in older times, Chattanooga has to be considered. It was a huge rail hub for a reason. If you're coming from the North and heading south, there's a TON of places to get to through Chattanooga: Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, Knoxville, Birmingham, Louisville, Memphis Within 300 miles is also Savannah, New Orleans, almost Little Rock, look back on history

Having a HSR from Niagara Falls to Toronto with stops along st. Catherine’s, and Hamilton at the very least, I would imagine would be well used. Especially with the amount of Canadians living outside of the GTA area, and commute to GTA for work. And of course connect buffalo NY with it as well!

The original 1800s rail corridor from San Diego to Phoenix was international and made stops in Tijuana and Tecate, so I think that totally makes sense. It’s one of the busiest border crossings

I’d really like to see videos about smaller cities since the big ones can get the feeling of being repetitive after a while… but that’s just a suggestion

I regularly ride Acela from Back Bay Station in Boston, which sometimes gets lost in the shuffle, but to me, I use Back Bay Station much more than South Station, simply because it has connectivity to the MBTA as well as Amtrak on the Orange and Green lines, which are more convenient for me!

I live in Detroit and I love the look of Michigan Central Station(it's being renovated currently). I've gotten into populations and public transit in the past year and the Northeast is stacked. I might want to fly to Boston, take Amtrak to NYC, Philly, Baltimore, DC, and fly back to see those places. Also, good overall proximity to other cities here(Chicago/Toronto very close)

I find it interesting that Atlanta is so low on many of these rail videos, especially given its large history being *the* rail hub of the southeast. I feel a line Atlanta-Tampa or Orlando would help offset a lot of the traffic on I-75 in S Georgia/N Florida, especially if that line continues on to Miami.

its crazy. you’ve grown 6 thousand subscribers in just a few days. i have to congratulate you.

What is noticeable with the JR/Renfe investment is that both of those countries have high speed systems that do not integrate with the local lines, which could impact the design choices made. France designed the TGV so that it can travel through and on existing stations and lines before transitioning to high speed routes between the cities. One way to keep costs (and opposition) down is to not build so much more infrastructure within cities, unless you have to. Quite why Houston would need an entirely new station when the existing one only gets 3 trains a week is beyond my comprehension.

7:00 Woot! A Grand Rapids reference!!

Bostonian here. South Station is the better station due to its proximity to the center of the city. However, if the Acela ever runs out of North Station, I will be a very happy man. That will mean we finally connected the two halves of our network and can through run trains. The North South Rail Link has been proposed for decades and would be transformative for regional rail in Boston.

For Mexican HS rail, a Guadalajara to CDMX makes more sense given their distances, size, and cities in between. It's Mexico's northeast corridor and later on there could be extensions to Aguascalientes or San Luis Potosi. However an extension from CDMX to Puebla would be hard because there 2 large volcanoes in between them and tunneling thru would extremely expensive.

Since it's come up a few times: You might have a fun video to make that looks specifically at these border crossing pairs. As I understand there's been some discussion about rethinking Amtrak's crossings to Montreal. Specifically, I think they're considering making Montreal's station work more like "an airport" where US bound passengers are pre-cleared by customs, and CA bound passengers go through customs upon exiting the train when they alight in Montreal. If implemented this would really change the outlook for Amtrak's "close to the CA border" service. The current Adirondacker train could run faster, but it also gives the Vermonter the opportunity to extend it's service past St Albans through to Montreal re-becoming the Montrealler. The Ethan Allen Express is also looking at extending to St Albans with a current project (IIRC), and could simply head further north too. Three daily frequencies between NYC and Montreal is quite different from one, and could be a real game changer, especially from an equipment and crew reliability standpoint. Anyways, I'm wondering about a video like "top ten border cities that would grow with streamlined cross border rail service" or something like that. My guess is that the obvious ones would crop up like Toronto, Montreal, and Tiajuana. But I'd wonder about further inland cities like Chicago, Mexico City and New York. How would the Texas cities fare? Vancouver? I know much talk is made of a Boston Montreal connection, but is it all it's cracked up to be? You could assign the current 2h-3h border crossing penalty and then when you take it away see how much things improve!

I was doing MSA population studies back in college in Michigan back in the early 00's and Grand Rapids was one of those cities that did not loose population in the mid-west back in the 90's. It sneaks up on you how big it is.... of course, it doesn't have the best reputation for equal opportunity housing policies during the late 20th century.

The Liga MX shout surprised me! Great video as always man!

This is a pretty cool analysis! I'm from Guadalajara and was surprised to not see CDMX-Toluca since there is currently a big rail project being built to connect the two. Since 2014 there's been interest by the government to build a high-speed CDMX-Queretaro line, and I've always imagined that project could be the first step towards a CDMX-Guadalajara high-speed rail connection. Unfortunately, the project hasn't made much progress past just being an idea.

How did San Antonio - Monterrey fare? Would like to see a corridors video

I know you know more about North America, however I'm keen for you to make a video about HSR in Australia and potential connections. We have some of the busiest air routes in the world and people think HSR is a no brainer. I think it should be built, however I think it's the more intermediate cities with the metropolis' that are where the value is. This is like Sydney to Newcastle, Brisbane to the Gold coast etc. And not necessarily Brisbane to Sydney etc. It'd be awesome to hear your insight.

Glad to see San Diego get some love here.

Interesting video, nice

Back in the day Union Station (DC) used to be its own ecosystem separate from Amtrak. My mother used to take my sisters and I there on Saturdays when it had a movie theater in its basement. It was like a mall. Good good times.

I was a little surprised to hear no mention of Raleigh-Durham. A quick googling suggested this could be due to the area being split into separate MSAs. Albany also falls off the map due to low MSA population. Amtrak's project to build a new line between Raleigh and Richmond is very exciting, though it will be sub-hsr and launch with few daily roundtrips. Then again, I believe regional and intercity service to be a necessary step before HSR construction in the US. Your video does put into perspective Amtrak and the FRA's decision to prioritize capital projects between NYC and Washington in particular.

Suggestion for a series of videos: look at a single city (preferably cities with as little rail as possible) and try to propose a rail system (light, heavy, or both) for it

Thank you for this video. This was what I asked in the other video!

I appreciate that you have kept it honest and dignified

When searching stats on Toronto, the metro area is actually called The Greater Golden Horseshoe, if you just search Toronto metro area it won’t include all of its suburbs. It’s called horseshoe because of its shape and golden because of its unusually warm climate, wealth, and prosperity. -cheers

Surprised ATL didnt make the cut. I live in Tuscaloosa (not even birmingham), and driving the 3 hours to atlanta is a very regular thing. There is already an Amtrak corridor going San Antonio, Houston, New Orleans, Tuscaloosa, Bham, Atlanta, Charlotte, and then up through the northeast as youd expect. I know the distances are immense, but highspeed rail through there would be ridiculously helpful. As it stands, Amtrak from Tuscaloosa to NYC is 24 (thats right, twenty four) hours, a ridiculous amount of time for what is a singular rail line

Raleigh-Richmond Corridor will probably be the easiest straight line high speed corridor to construct. There's few obstacles and will connect the northeast corridor with the southeast piedmont zone.

TOPIC IDEA: ALTERNATIVE TRANSPORTATION. Out here here in UT we're currently debating ways to ease trafic in Little Cottonwood Canyon (home of Alta and Snowbird). The two final proposals are: 1. Widen the road and increase bus service, or 2. A gondola going from the base of the canyon up to Alta. A cog railway was ruled out. Would be interested on your take and other such projects around the world.

great work. Thank you.

Lots of fun. However you have put Washington DC in eastern Maryland near the shore in Item 5

I feel like it’s often overlooked that part of the goal of CA HSR is to spur development in the inland sections of the state and help with the housing affordability crisis on the coast. For example a tech worker might be able to live in Merced and commute to the office 2-3 times a week on HSR. Many people already spend 3+ hours commuting each day so a HSR commute might not even be longer, while also saving a million+ on a typical single family house.

As a resident, was pretty surprised to see Richmond fall above the 2 point threshold with NYC. Pretty cool

Given that there is much talk in Canada of privately funded HSR between Calgary and Edmonton (despite Calgary having no intercity passenger rail of any kind since the late 1980s and essentially needing to build a new train station from scratch), even more than that of the Cascades and the Corridor, how would you rate this city pair by your metric, even if there were no plausible trip generators outside the QE2 corridor? And why would you surmise that there is so much talk about HSR between Calgary and Edmonton despite the transborder routes being scored higher yet barely talked about?

My man just called Rochester "rock-chesther"

I always learn so much in your videos! Thank you for doing what you do!!

love the videos and finally came up with a possible suggestion: streets with greatest transit ridership potential, or city with greatest transit expansion potential. example could be santa monica or venice blvd in los angeles.

I did a fun high speed rail plan in a mock US government thing I was in. I centered it in my district (Nashville) because that my politician loved his pork. It surprisingly does make a nice central location with that perfect distance to St. Louis, Memphis, Atlanta, Birmingham, and Louisville but I can see why it didn't rank. All those cities are a bit small in the grand scheme of things. That was a fun network to put together and explain to everyone else why a cross country route was very very stupid.

Am surprised Harrisburg to NYC did not make the top ten. It’s widely used actually Also the other thing with the Philly/NYC pair is probably two to three times the passenger volume use NJT for this trip Both Philly NYC and Philly Balt have commuter rail options along with Amtrak. Both are within 90 miles

Apparently by US MSA standards, Hamilton and Oshawa would be part of the Toronto Metro.

How does your model rank the Quebec City to Chicago corridor with stops in Montréal, Ottawa, Toronto, London and Windsor / Detroit?

Well, I think you should also consider high-speed night-trains for long distances. Those may take longer than a flight but sleeping in a sleeping car (rail) is MUCH more comfortable than sleeping in a plane...

I wish there were Chicago-Minneapolis and Chicago-NYC HSR! Chicago-NYC is about the very limit of where I think significant numbers would prefer to take a train over flying (I estimate around 3.5-4 hr one way).

A connection of North and South Stations would probably be the greatest thing that could happen to Boston.

I believe the better question when it comes to high speed rail projects is not where to put them based on today’s populations but where they will be advantageous for a population 20 or 30 years from now. Where will we want them decades from now and where will wish we had taken advantage of the cheaper and available land now surrounding those places before being fully built up? Could there be a video exploring the top ten places for building tomorrow’s rail networks based on todays relative ease in acquiring available land, smaller suburbs to get in the way, and projected growth of paired cities? Your existing videos do a good job looking at current data. But do not generally reflect the reality that creating a wholly new rail link between say NY and Boston is magnitudes more difficult and expensive than between St. Louis and Denver, or chicago and Minneapolis, despite the distances being greater. And while Boston and NY are not going to get a lot bigger than they are, the same might not be true for other city pairs. I am not sure what metrics could be used to add this dimension but in a world with scant resources to devote to this issue, we should look for bargains. Surely there are easier targets and harder targets. Let us build a next century resource for where the next century will want and need it. Growth certainly follows airports. Can’t we expect the same from solid rail networks? Love your channel. D

Your videos are so good! Can’t believe you have under 50k subs. Keep it up man! -vancouver

I understand you're using a statistical method here. But the reality is that Toronto - Montreal via Ottawa is getting a much improved service. Granted it's not actually HSR, but it will hopefully draw people from planes and cars.

The funny thing is that I think that a high speed rail connection would be better utilized through Millennium station instead of union station due to better connections with the L and the fact that it's already electrified. That is to say nothing of the fact that most of the destinations are to the east of Chicago where Millennium can better take advantage of it's location

These videos are great! Thank you!

Do you think you could do a video on this except using local transit ridership instead of raw population to account for the "last mile problem". Also what about evaluating specific corridors/hubs cities like how Boston-Buffalo had many comperable intermediaries like Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, Springfield along the natural route. And how Albany is right on the intersection of NYC-Montreal and Boston-Buffalo despite not being the largest itself. (Maybe the corridor could look at highway statistics from the Mass Pike and NY Thruway who both have accurate usage data, atleast internally from the electronic toll system, to evaluate travel demand)

If money were no object I'd hope for a north station - south station connection so commuter rail and Amtrak can pass through the city.

7:48...did you use a photo from somewhere in France for Philly, haha, if only my city looked that good!

I'm hopeful that this series is building towards a map of the ideal high speed rail rollout in North America.

Great videos! I love to see you include Mexico.

South station is in a more central location in Boston. The main reason people want south and north station connected is so trains from the north could go to south station which is closer to the CBD. Also so trains could through run north and south. It’s not really a priority for intercity rail, more-so for regional rail.

I notice my home state of north Carolina and really the whole south doesn’t make any of these lists: I would be interested to see a video on how to connect the regions which don’t make as much sense with the most profitable segments. Until then I’ll be dreaming of a high speed train to new york

Yes, it would make far more sense for Acela to terminate at North Station in Boston rather than South Station! They’ve been talking about building a tunnel but it’s Boston, and everyone is still traumatized by the Big Dig. A new tunnel would be insanely expensive.

I really enjoy your channel. I am curious why Miami, Ft Lauderdale, Palm Beach Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, Atlanta did not make it to High Speed Stations. Brightline has already started here

Michigan’s got a high-speed rail that goes from Detroit to Chicago, although it’s Amtrak and it only does 100mph it stops for freight trains so takes longer than driving.

Another Great Video!

To create a baseline to see what these scores mean, could you create a 10 Key Stations for High Speed Rail in Europe video, and compare it to what has actually been built and this top 10?

Milwaukee to Chicago wouldn’t be very expensive and people here in Milwaukee would really enjoy that….

I'm not from CDMX, but Buenavista seems like a reasonable place for a HSR Station

Hi! Former Durham Region resident here! The 2nd pronunciation of Oshawa is correct!

great video love the channel! I hope that if NA gets its HSR network, you steer away from terminus stations from the get go. Even though a lot of them already exist and they are often these hugely impressive buildings, they really suck from an operational standpoint compared to through stations! I know this might seem abit overreaching but if you have the chance to build a new network you really should do it right. Termini add like 15 minutes of travel time to connections that continue from that station, they often create huge delays because of get congestion as they can create really bad bottlenecks and they are way less convienent to change trains in as a passenger. Theres a reason the DB here in Germany is willing to spend billions of euros on stuttgart 21 and frankfurt21, both projects to turn termini into underground through stations for ICE service.

For Mexico, maybe Monterrey-Laredo-San Antonio, Monterrey-Reynosa-McAllen or even Monterrey-Saltillo-Torreón and if connected Saltillo to SLP you get the connection to CDMX

Why, when talking about running high speed rail through Texas, does everyone always forget that there are cities outside of Texas which would benefit from a HSR connection to metros in Texas? New Orleans metro is ~1.2 million and Oklahoma City metro is ~1.4 and they're both within the distance to make HSR viable from Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth respectively.

As someone from Baltimore, I am also surprised it made the top ten mainly for being on the Northeast corridor (Although connections into Virginia, Wilmington/ The Eastern Shore and Harrisburg or even Pittsburgh would be nice) but also feel mildly insulted to put Baltimore on the same level of of Hartford, Providence and New Haven. The city proper has over half a million people, a metro of over 2 and half million and historically one of the nations largest cities until fairly recently.

If I were a billionaire I would single handedly fund HSR between Vancouver and Portland, going through Bellingham, Everett, Tacoma, Olympia, and Vancouver :)

Hopefully some day Massachusetts builds the North-South connector, which would fix a lot of issues by allowing trains to roll through the city. Complicating the "which is better" question for Amtrak service is that trains also stop at the Back Bay Station. I assume that would be dropped if they went to North and South stops. However, North Station has better access than South for 3 of the MBTA's 4 main rail lines (Green, Orange and Blue).

Originaly buenavista station was de hub center for all de train lines that connected the north of the country with mexico city, maybe another place for the station could be in San Lazaro to the East of the historic center, but the best is buenavista, the only problem I think with buenavista station is the lack of space for expansion, thank you for the video

I was going to ask but could you look at changing the criteria to cities with ~500,000+ population. I think we could get a better idea of how useful HSR could be if that was the criteria

Great Videos! For the Dallas hub I am surprised you did not add Oklahoma City to the route as a northern link. Also, for the Houston hub, New Orleans seems like a very viable route to the east being 4 hours away by car. I do not know if this would make Atlanta a more viable hub. If you would add routes between Birmingham Alabama, Jacksonville Florida and the Greenville Spartanburg metro hub of South Carolina. All of these have metro populations of over 1 million.