How fast does Acela go: an experiment

I frequently take the high-speed Acela train between Washington, D.C. and New York. The train makes the trip in 2 hours and 50 minutes, and I’ve frequently wondered what speeds the train reaches. It’s easy to calculate the average speed, assuming a distance of 200 miles: just over 70 MPH. But I want to know it’s peak speed.

As it happens, I’m bringing my handheld GPS with me to NYC this weekend and I figured that provided an opportunity to get an answer to the question. Sicne the GPS can track ground speed, I can use that to track the trip and capture not only our average speed, but our maximum speed.

Once the experiment is complete, I’ll post the results.

