alt Hacker NewsMost travel happens between cities that are close together, and Chicago has always been the larger gateway to the rest of the nation and the world.
The French urban areas on the TGV aren’t very big; Montpelier, for example, has a total of 600,000 people in its metro area, which is roughly the same size as Toledo, OH or Wichita, KS.
Montpellier probably gets more tourism than Toledo though. And most people taking the train to Paris are probably not doing it so they can fly somewhere else.