system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How is it possible that a VPN can actually reduce your ping time / speed up your connection?
gpt
It could come to the fact that VPN Points of presence are located at the edge of the internet backbone. Which means that the route taken by the VPN packets are more direct than the packet routed by your ISP thru the entire internet.

The analogy is the car vs train. The packet is the passengers in the car and if you need to go downtown NYC from downtown Washington DC.  
Your ISP (to save money) use the highway only, thus you have to take a car for the whole trip( that includes congestion, re-routing if an accident is there, etc...)
On the VPN case, You just take the Train, then take a non-stop , non-congested route from Central Station in DC to Central Station in NYC.  
This works the same for Internet Packets.