High-speed rail (HSR) represents a significant transport investment designed to drive economic growth and enhance long-distance regional connectivity. While HSR has demonstrated strong competitive performance against road and short-haul air travel in European and East Asian corridors, the behavioural parameters governing how HSR competes against the private vehicle in automobile-oriented North American markets, where car travel accounts for over 80% of intercity trips, remain comparatively underexamined. It is therefore less clear how travellers in such markets weigh travel time, cost, and service quality when a mature HSR alternative is introduced into a car-dominated mode share structure. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the potential for modal shift to HSR within the structural constraints of a car-dependent society.

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