Rapids are very nice to have but not when its at the expense of acceleration. With a servo system you can have both, with a stepper you cant, certainly not on a Bridgeport sized machine.
On my Bridgeport when I had steppers I could get over 2500mm/min( 100IPM) but the max acceleration with it was 40mm/s. I reduced the rapids to 2200mm/min and I could increase the acceleration to , if I recall, 120mm/s. There was a huge difference in machining time as acceleration is much more important for that.
I fitted servos to the same machine and could get 6000mm/min rapids and 1000mm/s, could have got a lot more if I had fitted active shunts but 6m/min is plenty for the wee table of the Bridgeport series 1.
Hood