In the early 1990s I did a round-trip, coast-to-coast trip on Amtrak (basically NYC to Seattle and back), stopping at major cities for a few days each. I had a USARail pass (equivalent to a Eurail pass), which at the time was only available to non-US citizens, so I was quite stoked to have 30 days of unlimited travel for a fixed cost.
On the first route (westward) I took the southern route and on the return trip (eastward) I took the northern route, through Chicago. I stayed in youth hostels (except for a couple of cities where I had friends and relatives), and didn't have a fixed schedule so delays were usually tolerable.
While in San Francisco, Amtrak went on strike for about a week, and my pass was extended correspondingly. An extra week in San Francisco was fun! But again, I didn't have any fixed deadlines so it was all good.
All things considered, the unreliability of the system makes me loathe to travel long distances by train, unless my plans are flexible. However, one huge upside is the views, especially in the middle of the country. In fact, some train lines even exist largely to tout their views, e.g. the Rocky Mountaineer (a Canadian company). Train travel is much more leisurely, and a great way to meet people.
These days many Amtrak routes are actually covered by bus, which may come as a surprise when you get to the train station and are told to board a bus. This is not immediately obvious when booking online, although you may be able to tell by reading carefully; the telltale sign might be as subtle as the icon (bus vs train) shown for that leg.
Did they provide lodgings during the period you were unable to use the service?
I don’t know if there are provisions for that in law like there are for airline flights that are canceled or otherwise unable to fulfill their carriage obligations.
It didn't occur to me to ask; I was staying in a youth hostel that was something like $20/night (maybe less). In any case, the way the USARail pass worked, you had to reserve individual tickets to each destination you wanted to travel to. (You could reserve them spontaneously, which is what I did.) Since I didn't have a ticket at the time to a particular destination (just a generic USARail pass), technically they weren't at fault for failing to fulfill a particular obligation.
I tried to roughly replicate the trip booking estimate but the closest I could get was a 77h trip (a bit over 3 days), with one change in Chicago and one Emeryville, CA. Price was about $1430.
In contrast to that, you can get a 7hr direct flight for about $430 (delta, round trip, luggage not included).
Or a full size sedan for about $500 (one way, 3 days, does not include estimate of $400 on fuel).
I wish trains were more affordable because (I think) the experience is worth it.
After a little playing around (prices vary per day of week & how many months in advance) I found $1049 (for a private room still), 81h, departs 20250417. Of course you could also tough it out in coach, in which case I found $198 (!), 85h, departs 20250418.
The northeast corridor sales they've been doing recently are quite something. I swung NYC to Boston for a mere $16 (usually 10x more, especially on the weekends - and the other way was $20). Even at that price my car had only 3 people left by the time we were in Rhode Island.
also, the luggage you can carry is significantly different than a plane.
- one personal item, 25 lbs. (12 kg) and 14 x 11 x 7 inches, and
- two carry-on items, 50 lbs. (23 kg) and 28 x 22 x 14 inches each
checked:
- 2 Bags Free - Up to 50 lbs. and 75 linear inches*
- 2 Additional Bags - $20 each
- Oversized Baggage (76-100 linear inches*) - $20 each
so ~ 300 lbs of luggage and the oversized stuff you can take is comprehensive. (bikes, ebikes, surfboards, skiis, musical instruments, golf clubs, guns, etc...)
That's the policy. The reality is more complicated, inconsistent, and unclear.
Checked baggage service in my experience is rare, and actually figuring out whether it is available is hard. It appears it isn't available on any NYP-ALB service, so unless you're starting from Albany, checked luggage would not work for this trip. It used to be available at some (maybe 10% or fewer) stations on the Pacific Surfliner route, but is 'suspended', so it appears it is now only available on very long distance routes. So if you have a connection, you likely won't be able to check baggage. If your connecting short route does offer checked baggage, you'll need to make sure your connection is at least two hours.
Carry-on items can be larger than on a plane and 50lbs, but the trains are poorly fitted to accommodate these, and you'll need to handle the luggage yourself. On the NYP-ALB trains in my experience, for example,
there is one luggage rack for large luggage, able to fit perhaps eight pieces at most, for an entire car; since it can be converted to a bike rack, if a single passenger checks a bike, all that storage goes away. There's sometimes space on the floor toward the ends of the car, and sometimes not, and using it is unclear. The remaining option is overhead, so you'll need to be comfortable lifting those 50 pound items above your head while surrounded by impatient people. Just to get them on the train, you'll also need to carry them up rather difficult steps, while surrounded by impatient people. You also need to keep in mind, while placing your luggage, that
different doors may be in use at different stations, so if your luggage happens to be in the wrong direction for the the flow of exiting passengers, you'll have a challenge getting to it at a short station stop.
Depends on the station and the route. Trains can be pretty large/heavy luggage unfriendly. I haven't paid a baggage charge on a plane in years and years although I admittedly don't check bags often.
US trains are not worth it in coach. A Greyhound bus is more comfortable with the same amenities and takes about the same time.
If you have lots of money to burn, a train with the sleeper car or roomette is a better experience. You can at least lay down and have more room to relax, the windows are less grimy, you get better shades, lights, and much more room to lay down and relax.
The whole point of mass transit is it's not a car, so comparing it to driving is apples and oranges.
In my experience taking both, Greyhounds are significantly faster and far less comfortable. Maybe it's different in other places in the country, but this was my experience in coastal California:
Greyhound buses run more-or-less on time. The routes are direct, they're predictable, and they will take you where you want to go. They also don't have a dining car, spacious bathrooms, room to walk around and stretch your legs, etc. If somebody has diarrhea, everybody on that bus is going to know it and smell it.
Amtrak is more comfortable in every way. It's also usually late, and subject to delays because of low rail priority. You can't really count on it for anything other than "it'll leave eventually" and "it'll get there eventually". While on the train, it's really quite pleasant - as long as you don't care about arriving when the schedule said you would.
I can easily believe that trains are more spacious and the seating is more insulated from odors.
But my experience riding trains is that they sway/shake obnoxiously while going around curves. Where as busses like Megabus are a very smooth ride the entire way.
> room to walk around and stretch your legs
My experience with busses is that there are somewhat frequent stops where people are encouraged to walk and use the bathroom. Which isn't a complete fix, but it does serve to substantially mitigate those problems.
I had essentially the same experience–I did SJC to SBA a few times a year when I was in college (which for the non-Californians here, is a destination that does not really have an airport you would want to use). I took Greyhound the first few times and then switched to Amtrak, even though it took 2-3 hours longer. I'll take that every time just by being able to get up and walk around. And the views coming in around Point Conception as the sun sets are priceless :)
In my limited experience with Greyhound, the busses are notoriously late. I’ve taken it only 2 times. The first time was around an hour late and the second was running about 5-6 hours late.
I've only used one long-distance Amtrak train (as an international tourist), and it was more comfortable than any long-distance bus I've ever used. Loads of legroom, a power socket, a large toilet at the end of the coach, a big window, a decent seat. There's a table if you book it, e.g. for a group of 3 or 4.
My journey was ~12 hours during the daytime. I wouldn't want to sleep overnight in that seat, but it's still going to be better than a bus.
Amtrak can be decently comfortable by coach, and the ability to stand, walk around, change cars, and (on Western routes) vary seating position by visiting the lounge car outclasses Greyhound in every way.
The whole point of mass transit is it's not a car, so comparing it to driving is apples and oranges.
I completely disagree with this. The point of mass transit is to move people from one place to another. I routinely compare driving, trains, planes, buses, and ride shares. They all have pros and cons and it really depends on the trip.
Maps showed about 1 day and 18 hrs so I accounted for 3 day rental but lodging slipped my mind. So probably another $200-$400, if leaning towards economy options.
It really depends on how you’re calculating driving time.
5 days * 8h/d * ~73 MPH will take you from SF to NYC, which only needs 4 hotels on the way. However, if you’re including stops in that 8h or fail to avoid traffic it can take a lot longer.
It seems like this misses what I think is the point of a driving trip, which is to actually see the country? I'd give Denver to SF two weeks, to see some of the national parks and actually get out of the car and go on hikes.
If you're spending all day driving, might as well fly?
Though, there are other reasons to do it, like if you're moving stuff along with your car.
Sightseeing is unbounded. Your losing 40 hours driving at reasonable speeds from SF to NY before considering detours or extended stops.
As such 5 days is just a reasonable baseline. It lets you see the country along the way, have some slack, and show up without being exhausted. Got an extra day, week, or month and you can find plenty of things to do along the way, but you still need to account for the underlying distance. Alternatively, if you’re in a hurry there’s plenty of ways to cut that down.
Interestingly, I discovered last year that returning from the UK to NYC by ship was in the same general price ballpark as a business class flight. This is admittedly a lot more than economy. But, if you had the time, included eight days or so of good food and entertainment.
With long distance pricing or really any sleeper, one needs to consider that the ticket price basically includes hotel as well since you’re sleeping there and they need the facilities to handle that, meals etc.
It varies by time of year--but monthly in a given direction is probably a rough estimate. Go to Cunard. Mostly Queen Mary 2 although I think they have a new ship that does some transatlantic as well. For crossings, my understanding is their ships with stabilizers etc. are better able to handle the North Atlantic than the average cruise ship.
Dates lined up for me on a trip late last spring and I enjoyed it. Would consider doing again.
Author here :) I paid $70 for the section from New York to Chicago, because I slept in the coach section there. For the section from Chicago to Emeryville, I treated myself to a roomette, and paid $775 – so $845 in total.
Yeah, I also think it's unfortunate that flying is so much more affordable. But, as another passenger said on the train, taking the train is also three times the experience!
And when you have a sleeper ticket, three meals a day are included.
For transportation it mostly stops making sense over 1000km, anyone's time is more valuable than any price difference. The only exception is overnight sleeper trains between major cities.
I began experimenting with long distance (cross-Europe, and long distances, not just one country to the neighbouring country) train travel, as I no longer wanted to fly due to the pollution from flying.
I rapidly concluded long distance train travel is not viable.
On one occasion I had two days of travel booked, and the very first train was an hour late, which led to a missed connection, and that was it - there was no way I could make my next train, and I lost some hundreds of euros of booked tickets and accommodation, and the compensation offered - if I had the will power to fight through the incredibly hostile claims mechanism on-line - was 30 euro. I was also stuck, as I had left my origin (a long-term AirBnB) and the next place I would live was at my destination. Fortunately, I was in Paris, so I travel to de Gaulle and booked a flight to my destination (where it was then necessary to book a hotel for an night, as I was a day early); I paid some hundreds more euros to complete my journey.
Essentially the problem is that the longer a train journey, the more late it will be, and if you miss a connection, you can lose everything afterwards; but you have to book everything in advance, because the main train routes are fully booked if you try to buy a ticket on the day.
As I started reading your comment I had a hunch it was France - and sure enough.
Short train connections are a gamble here, and worse still that risk isn't properly communicated to travelers as the official SNCF trip planner will happily schedule passengers on very tight transfer windows with no warning. I'm travelling across France soon and the planner put me on a a 9 minutes connection just before the longest leg of my trip, which is a 10h overnight train.
There's no way I'm going to gamble my entire holidays on a 9 min delay, and thankfully my ticket lets me take an earlier train for the 1st leg, but I pity the clueless tourists who blindly follow the planner and end up with their plans ruined.
If you get one ticket for the whole journey then it's the provider's responsibility to get you to your destination, even if you miss a connection due to a delay.
If you have bought multiple tickets covering the journey, there are a few European agreements that may be relevant in the event of a missed connection:
- Connections between certain high speed services allow you to 'Hop on the next available train' (HOTNAT) if both services are members of the Railteam alliance
- Connections between most services on international journeys are protected by the newish 'Agreement on Journey Continuation' (AJC)
It's definitely confusing and it's far from perfect, but the situation is improving.
Not all railway companies participate in AJC. E.g. neither Snälltåget operating the Stockholm - Berlin night train and nor Flixtrain offering budget tickets between Berlin and some German cities are participating.
So don't use the open access competitors for complicated trips with multiple tickets. There always are traditional alternatives, especially now when the Swedish government and SJ started running their own daily Berlin service.
I love Italo, Snälltåget etc. but it's best to use them for a well-contained itinerary.
Additionally to AJC rights typically the traveller's insurance covers reaching destinations in case of train delays. It's not as grim as the grandparent makes it sound.
I don't know if it qualifies as long distance, but I have traveled across Japan a couple of times on train, from Sapporo to Fukuoka. Not in one day, I stopped for a few days in between, but I have done Sapporo to Nara and Kyoto to Sapporo in a day.
I loved all of them, worst train journey I had was Tokyo to Osaka... landed in Japan, slept overnight at an Airbnb and got up to get on the train to Osaka, but we missed our first train... was not a problem catching the next one, but we decided to eat lunch first. Got on the next train and got about 1/3 of the way to Osaka when the train had to stop due to a typhoon. We were stuck in the train for hours, by the time they let us off (we were stopped at a station, but not at the platform) it was too late to book any lodgeing anywhere near the station, and all the food was sold out everywhere nearby. We ate snacks we brought with us and slept on the train station floor! It was an adventure for sure. But things like that can happen when flying too and are quite rare on Japanese trains.
Don't have any experience with cross country train travel anywhere else, but I love doing it in Japan!
This is not an inherent problem with trains though - it should absolutely be possible to implement a continent wide railway system, which I believe will happen sooner rather than later.
Switzerland already has a unified system, where the main train operator SBB and the local public transport operators use the same ticketing system. Both monthly passes are available and a half fare card, which reduces the price by a lot(not half, as is suggested by the name of the card). The Swiss people are so used to travel by train they pretty much treat it like their own living room.
> it should absolutely be possible to implement a continent wide railway system, which I believe will happen sooner rather than later.
I wouldn’t count on it.
Most people travel during vacations and typically choose air travel over spending extra vacation days on a train. Likewise, bullet trains don’t make much economic sense across national borders, as few people commute daily between countries for work (in the European Union).
The only way to make train travel economical is by artificially increasing costs of air travel or the costs of owning a car. This has slowly been happening already, but will likely lead to a larger divide within the EU.
Environmental taxation is either 'artificial' or 'fair' depending on where you live in Europe. These taxes will simply further the divide that already exists in the EU.
You'll need to see the breakdown by region. For example, a lot of people commute in/around Belgium or Switzerland, but not a lot of people commute to/from Poland. The rail links in certain parts of "old" Europe are already very good (or sufficient). But the OP mentioned cross-continent (I assume he means cross-EU).
>This is not an inherent problem with trains though - it should absolutely be possible to implement a continent wide railway system, which I believe will happen sooner rather than later.
Of course, it's technically possible, and not really all that hard. But is it politically possible? I doubt it. The EU doesn't even look like it's going to hold together long-term. If the various quarreling nations of the EU couldn't come together after all these decades and make a continent-wide railway system by now, I don't think they're ever going to.
The relevant EU regulation says the trough-tickets should be offered. That's of course useless for the passenger as long as there are no sanctions if they are not offered.
I often travel from Switzerland to Scandinavia or Finland by train, so a journey of about 30 to 40 hours.
There are frequent delays, especially in Germany [0], but it was always easy to get a confirmation from the railway companies, and I was always able to take a later train. I never had to pay more, and I even got quite a bit of money back if the delay was relevant. Even if I booked the tickets at different operators.
I also usually use a buffer of about 4-5 hours in the middle of the ride. This can compensate some delays, and if on time, it's nice to visit whatever city you are in.
[0] I heard that some Swedish trains are too slow for the express connections in Germany. The trains must take detours or stop every few hours to let the faster trains pass.
Getting a refund hardly matters if you miss an important event. A lot of us have to travel on tight schedules due to work and family commitments, and can't spare an extra 5 hours.
With a flight, normally I can go directly from where I am to where I wish to be.
It's a single hop.
With a train, when I'm travelling across multiple countries, necessarily I will take multiple trains; which then brings the problem of missed connections.
The problem is that the distance to be covered is long, and the train is relatively slow.
I left early in the morning to get to Paris in time for the train, and that was the only train that day, and that train left early because it had a long way to go.
Crossing multiple countries over a couple of days, I've never seen this as possibility.
Going from one country to another is normally one train company, from the origin country, and then moving on from that city - in another country - means a different company, from that second country, and so on.
That's exactly why Interrail[1] has existed for many years. I haven't used it in 10+ years and the webpage is a bit confusing, but generally you would just buy one ticket for e.g. a week and then get on/off wherever/whenever you want.
You need seat reservations for most trains per my understanding. They're cheap and flexible so you're mostly right, but it's a little more involved than "get on whenever you want" unfortunately
It very much depends on the operator; Eurostar and SNCF requires very expensive seat reservations for all TGV services, but hardly any services in the German-speaking countries do so. More important than the price though is the availability - only a small proportion of seats are open to Interrailers on the French trains, so if they sell out you could find yourself unable to board a train that is still half-empty!
The situation in eastern Europe is more variable, but the reservations aren't generally as prohibitive as in France.
Ah, I thought ICE also required reservations but that's only the case if the train is otherwise booked out (source https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/72538/what-if-i-u...). For me, trains like TGV, ICE, and perhaps Nightjet make up the bulk of the distance to most places I go, so for me the reservations were pretty much required no matter where you go; apparently not really for ICE then!
I keep seeing in reviews that people get woken up no matter what hour of night and have to present their documents for border checking, despite going between Schengen countries. Is that a guarantee whenever you cross a border or is this review bias? (Where annoyed customers are more likely to seek out where to leave a review, I mean.) Apparently you can't just leave the documents with the conductor because they need to check in the cabin for stowaways and match faces to pictures. I've only ever taken a Nightjet within Germany so I haven't experienced one myself
10+ years ago there were very few checks — the police would need a specific suspicion to carry out a check. I saw this once on a daytime train, when they checked three people who clearly matched a description, and arrested the third one! I've also seen this twice when disembarking a within-Schengen plane, with police on the jetbridge checking documents — until they find the person they want.
The neverending "refugee crisis" (the official reason several countries have introduced checks within the Schengen area) has allowed more frequent checks, but it seems fairly random whether or not they happen. Out of perhaps 10 overnight journeys, I've not been checked going south or east, but around half the time I've been checked going into Denmark from Germany.
It's so disruptive that I no longer take the overnight train into Denmark. You should prepare for it — put the passport in the mesh holder so you can just hand it over — but I find it difficult enough to sleep on a moving train anyway.
Seems to be certain borders. I've only been from Germany to Denmark twice and each time the Danish police decided to check everyone's passports. Denmark to Germany, Germany to Belgium, and Belgium to Germany, they didn't.
From Paris most of the operators for some distance are part of Railteam and will allow you to travel on the next available train given proof of delay. Of course eventually if you have a very long schedule with no slack then you would pass out of the Railteam area, but it's not like you're SoL after one delay and one country change.
> From Paris most of the operators for some distance are part of Railteam and will allow you to travel on the next available train given proof of delay.
But that does not help you much if every train for the day is already booked out.
One big difference between train and plane is that, for planes, it takes me only a few clicks on one single website to book a multiple legs flight across most of the world, transparently using several companies and I dont have to carry my luggage around.
I rarely find the same for train.
Air travel is a mess but it is still much better integrated than train for long distance.
Unfortunately single tickets spanning multiple countries get increasingly rare. Still not too long ago you could by a ticket from any German station to London or Stockholm (or the other direction). In case you miss a connection you still have a ticket and you'll get some compensation (which could be more or less than the extra costs you had). But no longer, those are just not sold anymore.
So if you don't like the reverse gambling (no extra costs if you win, potentially several 100% extra if you lose) you should buy an Interrail pass (Eurail for those not living in Europe). It's often not cheaper than a single advance tickets, but it gives peace of mind that you still have a ticket if connections fail. (You should not try to heavily optimize pass days against schedules though, otherwise you have the same problem, your pass might run out before you are back where you need to be.)
I'm not sure what this has to do with American train travel, since it's all within one country (and, generally, one company). It reads as a rationale for why it couldn't work here, except that none of your issues apply to us.
> On one occasion I had two days of travel booked, and the very first train was an hour late, which led to a missed connection, and that was it - there was no way I could make my next train, and I lost some hundreds of euros of booked tickets and accommodation
This is one thing that Amtrak does well. I've read many accounts of people missing a connection and being put up in a nice hotel by Amtrak with meal vouchers and a shuttle to/from the station. Still it's not a good way to travel if you have a deadline, and it often costs an order of magnitude more than flying for long distances unless you're willing to spend multiple day/night cycles in coach.
That's not really relevant here in the USA though, Amtrak is the only game in town. Although if I had to do it in Europe I would probably buy trip insurance from an independent insurer that had a good reputation.
United Airlines did the same to me. Blamed late takeoff on bad weather, but weather was gorgeous that day in SW USA. Resulted in a number of rebookings as well. Was a business trip, so I thankfully did not bear the financial brunt.
Learned that United airlines is not to be trusted. Not viable, in your terms.
In my (dated) experience with united, they have a fanstasy-land flight schedule they sell tickets for, then cancel flights that aren’t full “due to weather”, and rebook you on an inferior flight.
This way, they never have to pay people when they get bumped for overbooking.
Anyway, I haven’t done business with them for a decade for this exact reason. Maybe it’s different now.
I have over a million miles on United and flew them almost exclusively for over a decade with dozens of flights a year at peak. Not my experience FWIW.
> Learned that United airlines is not to be trusted. Not viable, in your terms.
So what are we advising u/casenmgreen, travel by horse-drawn carriage? Anyone know whether those are viable means of transport for a time-boxed holiday?!
As long as you're just traveling with one company it's usually fine - especially DB, you can usually just hop on the next train.
However with a journey spanning multiple companies you're out of luck... and with seat reservations on TGVs you commonly have to wait until the next day.
It's something that shouldn't be too hard to fix: Give passengers an easy and forgiving way to continue their journey (and make the causing company pay) - ideally this should automatically show up on the App and give the passenger options of new connections etc.
None of this fixes seat reservations on TGVs though, which are also annoying for offers like Interrail/Eurail... EU should probably start regulating seat reservations /s
Delays are only a problem when you put tight connection times. If you increase the buffer between railway companies/countries this is hardly a problem.
And train travel is not like plane, if you have to wait, say 4-5hours in a big city you can easily put your luggage in a locker and spend an enjoyable time in that city as the station is usually located in or near the city center and you aren't locked in a terminal nor do you have to account for extra time to pass security.
I have an upcoming transatlantic flight next week. Train is obviously not an option for this one but I will have to spend 4-5 hours at Paris CDG airport for a connection. I have to stay in the airport, pay an awful lot of money for any drink or food I and my family will need instead of visiting a monument/museum and have a nice lunch in the city...things you can do easily by just stepping out of a railway station.
I did Seattle-Chicago about ten years ago. 48 hours expected duration, and it arrived several hours late.
As a European used to efficient train travel, it was kind of surreal that not only was the passenger train very slow (maybe 1/3 of the speed I’m used to), but it also made long stops to make way for cargo traffic.
It felt like a bit of Wild West time travel to spend days on a train in the amazing landscapes. The food in the dining car was surprisingly good, but got boring by the third day.
Mine was over 12 hours late, as a passenger had to be airlifted off because of cardiac issues. Said passenger had been told not to fly, because of altitude issues, and hadn´t thought through the "mile high" aspect of transiting through Denver.
It is one of the most amazing train trips in the world, and tbh the article doesn´t really do it justice. The day the train spends slowly going up and down the rockies, are just incredible, the scenery is amazing, and you get to know other passengers and the conductors along the way. Had some great card games in the scenery car.
> but it also made long stops to make way for cargo traffic.
This is a huge issue. Cargo trains legally have to yield to passenger trains, but in recent decades cargo trains have been made longer and longer, so they no longer physically fit into the passing sidings (which usually are built for 75 cars). It's a mess.
Cargo (freight) trains have to yield to on time passenger trains. There's a "hole" there in the freight traffic that the passenger train fits into. (It's not simple, because the passenger train is often faster than the freights, so it's a carefully planned, moving hole in the freight.) If the passenger train is late, all that careful orchestration is blown. The hole isn't there any more. The freight trains are not required to create a new hole - the late passenger train becomes just one more train.
The very next sentence is: "However, many freight railroads ignore the law because it is extremely difficult for Amtrak to enforce it, and as a result, people and the American economy suffer."
This entire page is an attempt by Amtrak to explain why the trains are always waiting for freight traffic. I've taken the train many times, and they yield to freight traffic for hours every trip.
I'm not sure I'd interpret "preference" to "right-of-way." Sounds like a much softer expectation, but could be wrong.
Amtrak is a joke either way. The train I took from Chicago to Las Vegas was over 24 hours late, hit a car, flattened the wheels in the emergency braking so they could only go about 20mph to the next station where they had to change out the entire train, then had a mechanical breakdown, and when we finally arrived they had lost our luggage.
> 48 hours expected duration, and it arrived several hours late. […] (maybe 1/3 of the speed I’m used to),
You are used to train journeys of more than 2800 km (more than the distance from Lisbon to Warsaw) with an average speed of over 170 km/h? Where can I find such an itinerary in Europe?
The Seattle-Chicago line is operated by a single company. Europe has dozens of national operators. So any direct comparison is of course difficult to make.
To travel 3000 km on a high-speed train, Japan and China certainly offer the opportunity. Beijing-Guangzhou is 2230 km and operates at 350
km/h.
Good luck finding a sleeper from either Portland or Seattle. They are booked 6 months out. In any other business, that would mean adding another few sleeper cars. But Amtrak doesn’t seem to care…
Amtrak loses money on basically all of their long distance routes, and are pointlessly forced to live up to some profitability standard the highways don’t and the airlines privatize (only possible due to the government paying out of pocket for all the complicated expensive stuff).
They have no incentive to add more sleepers, which would be a pain in the cock to procure, for a service that loses money. Amtrak should not be required to really care about that last part, but they are.
There are several room options for the SEA to CHI train leaving tomorrow, Monday Oct 28th, from $600 to $1100 depending on room size. Them. Being booked six months out might be a misperception or dated, it seemed easy to find.
Why would a train going further be expected to have a lower average speed? Isn't it normal for trains that go further to run if anything faster? 170km/h is a fairly normal average speed for a long-distance train in Europe running within a single country, which is what they were comparing to.
I rode Canada's VIA rail from Vancouver to Edmonton. Some poor Europeans sitting in the seat in front were freaking out when it became apparent the train was going be 10 hours late on what was billed as a 24 hour trip. They had a connecting flight to catch in Edmonton and missed it by several hours.
Additionally, for many kinds of journey the delays are rather unimportant as long as the frequency of service is high, which I think generally is the case in Germany. I can't see anyone being too fussed if their specific S-Bahn connection is early or late when there are still trains running on the same route every ten minutes.
I suspect that the most upset and vocal users of the Deutsche Bahn are the commuters who need to be at work at a specific time yet still travel ~100km or more on hourly RE/IC trains. In that situation it's frustrating to have to catch the train a whole hour earlier to be safe.
Here in Munich the S-Bahn trains typically go every 20 mins during the day and sometimes every 40 very early or late. So that's already a problem if you want to arrive for work and can't just start 30min earlier, the regional trains often go every hour as you mentioned.
So yeah, if you live where there's a subway or a bus then the 10min thing works, but just a tiny bit on the outskirts with only the S-Bahn it often sucks. I was very glad when I moved from "need to take S-Bahn or bus to work, or to the subway" to "walk or bus to subway" neighborhood, even if it's roughly the same distance to the city center, and both decidedly IN the city, not the outskirts.
You know Mussolini was actually pretty progressive on this. He was the first in Europe to introduce green biofuels to public transportation by way of a unique spice based process.
And then the railroad network kind of stagnated for 50 years. the fast speed trains ("Alta velocità") are only available in the North.
In the South you have thoughts and prayers. A trip Bari<>Milano (900km) is mostly around 8-9 hours, going further south elongates the journey incredibly.
I did Chicago-SF on the Zephyr about 20 years ago. It was a nightmare disaster of a trip. Nearly all our movement was at night due to cargo scheduling. We ended up arriving over 48 hours late.
To Amtrak's credit - we complained and they refunded our entire journey.
Is a big problem for passenger trains in the US, freight has priority. Creates these long stops. Worse, if a passenger train is late, then suddenly it has to wait for a large unexpected and unplanned number of freight trains.
> As a European used to efficient train travel, it was kind of surreal that not only was the passenger train very slow (maybe 1/3 of the speed I’m used to), but it also made long stops to make way for cargo traffic.
See recent video "I Spent Over 12 Hours on an Amtrak Train (on purpose)":
To be fair, Europe also kind of sucks at long distance trains. If you want to go the same distance as Seattle-Chicago in Europe by train (say Lisbon-Warszawa or Rome-Northern Sweden) you're often looking at 40-50 hours, mainly due to having to make 5-7 connections.
As long as you are just going between two cities with a direct train line it's trivial. The problem is if you are trying to take a train between two cities without a direct train line, like if you wanted to go from Berlin to for example Lisbon instead of Vienna.
Which is obvious because they are different countries? And, also tourists select specific countries to visit so your "use case" is very rare.
Edit
Rare = majority of tourists in Europe go to specific cities and countries. There are trips between countries but it is rare to go around ALL Europe by train. Trains are significantly more expensive that flights.
If continental Europeans want to visit another distant European country, that's a rare use case? Or are you only referring to e.g. US tourists visiting Europe?
Trains are significantly more expensive that flights
Unless you actually want to travel around ALL of Europe (or even all around a few countries in Europe), in which case trains get cheaper again, thanks to things like the interrail ticket.
That's true, and it requires more planning and available time.
I'd like to add a perspective on the contrast between Europe and the U.S. in this context. Having partially lived in both regions (across various European countries, though my main base is Buenos Aires, Argentina), one of the things that bothers me most about the U.S. is the car-centric culture. It feels almost artificial in 2024, as if it’s been taken to an extreme (I say this with a grain of salt). I don’t intend to start a flame war, but it’s surprising to me that in many areas where a 45-minute walk would be natural, there are no pedestrian paths. I’m not suggesting that cities like Los Angeles should be entirely pedestrian-friendly, but there are places where basic walkability is neglected, despite the infrastructure being suitable.
What I want to convey is that it's difficult to compare both regions' approaches to moving, and say that the article is amazing!
I'm not sure a 30-45 minute walk in cities like NYC, Boston, SF, etc. is considered all that rare. And while that length of walk is probably not someone in the average suburb is doing on local roads, plenty of people will go walk a few miles in a forest or park. Certainly not everyone but also not ~no based on what I see out and about.
> Passenger trains between major cities in Europe are in the 200-300 km/h range.
I don't know which country exactly you mean, I live in central Europe (Slovenia) and no train goes over 200 km/h, most go 60-80 km/h.
Also, every time I'm at the train station in Ljubljana (Slovenia's capital), there's an announcement about the train from Budapest being ~40min late. And it's a way shittier looking train than the local commute ones going 60.
French high speed trains are fast, for instance the average speed of the train on the Paris-Strasbourg section (~400km in length) is 250km/h. This is the global average speed, so it is even faster on the high-speed section, going at around 320km/h. I often take this train, which is very convenient.
To emphasize just how fast this is in comparison to regular rail:
When I was visiting France some years back and took the TER train on the way from Paris to Strasbourg (300mi / 500km), and that crawled. On the way back, we took the TGV, which flew.
If you look at booking tickets on SNCF's website, the difference is stark: about 5 hours via the TER, versus a little under 2 hours via the TGV. (From that perspective, it's a little funny to describe the TER as crawling, seeing as that's not meaningfully different from driving that distance.)
There are some portions of Amtrak that have comparable max speeds (notably, the Acela) but even then, the average speeds on those routes are nowhere near 200km/h.
I took the TER from Strasbourg to Paris just weeks ago (just 2 3rds of the distance for me because I was not in Strasbourg). It travels well over 100 km/h all the time and it makes only a few stops. That is only half or even less of the TGVs' speed, but still faster than by car. Definitely not crawling.
As I mentioned -- it's not actually slow in absolute terms! The experience is lodged in my mind because it took so much more time than the reverse trip, and it was sweltering to be stuck on a train with inadequate air conditioning on a rather hot summer day.
There are of course many benefits to taking even the TER over driving the equivalent distance: you don't have to be laser-focused on driving (especially in a foreign country where you might not speak / read the language or necessarily know the rules of the road), you don't have variation in travel times due to traffic (which, by driving, you would only contribute to), reduced per-passenger emissions, and so forth.
Some information online indicates that the non high speed train takes about 20 mins more than the high speed train on that route. It does not seem a huge time difference
The connection that takes 20min longer has two additional stops (the fast connection is a direct one) but it is still served by TGV or ICE trains, like the direct connection.
The distance between Paris and Strasbourg is >400km, so even the "slow" connection has an average speed of ~200 km/h. The actual regional train connection (TER) takes nearly 5 hours with plenty of stops in between. Slightly faster non-regional but non-TGV connections only exist on lines that are not served by TGVs.
This reminds me of Voyager buses in Ontario during the 80s/90s. They had two routes between Ottawa and Toronto.
One took maybe 6 hours. The other 12+ or some such. The 12+ hour took almost the same route, but stopped at every. single. town.
Woe to the person wanting to go from Ottawa to Toronto, and buying the wrong ticket. This is pre-Internet so research was less common and easy, and if you have no idea it could matter...
New York to San Francisco is roughly 3000 miles (4800 km). At 250km/h, that’s a 19 hour trip.
A 19 hour plane trip from New York gets you to Singapore.
Fast trains are great for journeys up to about 600km. For crossing continents, planes win, whether rail enthusiasts like it or not, and a future of transport that involves “just don’t fly” as the only solution to climate change is an absolute nonstarter in most of the world.
Not a single serious person I'm aware of has proposed
“just don’t fly” as the only solution to climate change.
Any solution would require multiple strategies in tandem to increase efficiencies, reduce unnecessary energy expenditures, reduce GG emmissions, transition to non FF sources, and reduce existing GG in the atmosphere.
It's a daunting task and one that may be impossible to achieve.
That’s all very well if you’re going thousands of km. For a plane journey that takes less than 3 hours, though, the train may still win, because the train doesn’t involve… airports. No getting to the airport, security, hanging around because the train is inexplicably an hour late (trains are sometimes late, but even in the worst systems not on the scale/frequency of plane lateness), no half-hour spent boarding the train, no taxi-ing, no sitting around for 20 minutes at the end while they get around to opening the train door, no walking through a km worth of airport.
Sure, but… cities in the USA are thousands of km. Seattle to Chicago (the example given by the GP) are 2800 km distant. Those cities are slightly more distant than Lisbon and Warsaw. Chicago to Washington DC is almost the exact distance as London to Marseille (1000 km). Chicago to Houston, Texas is the same distance as London to Rome.
To go back to the first example, Seattle to Chicago is a 4 hour (scheduled, which already includes taxi time at both ends and a buffer for late departures) plane ride. Even a TGV running continuously at top speed (320km/h), with no stops, would take 8.5 hours to complete the same journey. Wikipedia tells me that the fastest start-to-end scheduled speed of a TGV is only 280 km/h, which would take over 10 hours.
Chicago to DC is about the break-even distance for high-speed-rail vs. flying. That's already pretty darn good, and it would eliminate a lot of flying.
Unfortunately, the monetary and political interests in security theater became entrenched after 9/11. I'm afraid something similar might happen to trains eventually, if they're ever used in a sufficiently theatrical instance of violence. I'm enjoying the ease of access while it lasts.
This is sadly too true for the Channel Tunnel railway linking Britain with France. The post-Brexit border security easily takes in excess of half an hour as several hundred passengers shuffle single-file through the scanners. Although it is still marginally faster than flying for me due to my distance from an airport (as well as Britain's underdeveloped domestic aviation sector in general) the time spent at the station usually exceeds my actual journey now.
What's most stupid about security for rail passengers is that the original fear from 9/11 doesn't even apply - you can't hijack a train and crash it into a skyscraper!
The security scanners were always there for the Channel Tunnel, though the check is much less intensive than for air travel. They are looking for bombs, gas canisters, guns and maybe large knives.
London had terrorist attacks from the IRA long before 9/11, including attacks on the transport network. There were 13 in 1991, of which 4 were on trains or at stations.
The new delays are for the passport checks. What used to be ~10 seconds for each EU citizen — is the passport/ID card valid and does the face match? — is now 60+ seconds for British people entering the EU, as the official must check they haven't stayed more than 90 days in the last 180 etc.
Yes. I flew 707s etc. before jet bridges. And even after they became common in the US except for smaller very regional planes, it took quite a while longer for them to become common at some, even larger, international airports.
Wait until you find out how quickly you can board and exit a train at a station that’s right in the center of the city, versus traveling to an airport, going through security, waiting to board, and then waiting some more for the plane to hopefully get its take-off slot from air control.
You can get from London to Paris by train in less time than it takes to go from Manhattan to boarding a plane at JFK.
Ah yes, the fake line of argument that for airplanes you have to drive an hour to get to the airport two hours before your flight, while in the case of trains, a powerful genie comes into your house, packs your suitcase and whisks you away in his powerful arms directly to your seat on the train 13.21 seconds prior to departure.
It's BS. In existing cities, train stations are just as hard to build in the city center as airports -- neither happens. You do not in fact need to get to airports hours in advance, and security theater in airports is still excruciating, but you can get PreCheck or Clear and cut the time way down. There is some time advantage to boarding trains, but it's on the order of 20-40 minutes, not hours.
Paris and London are only 213 miles apart! It's about 2/3rds the distance that SF is from LA, much less say SF to Seattle or NYC to Chicago. Rail travel works great in Europe because distances are small, density is high, and the cities grew up centered around rail infrastructure.
In existing cities, train stations are just as hard to build in the city center as airports -- neither happens
only in countries where they neglected building train stations before the cities grew to todays sizes. but even then it's not true. US cities are less dense, so it should be easier to find space. train stations are also much much smaller than airports and trains don't make as much noise as airplanes. there are many more reasons not to build airports in the middle of a city, none of which apply to trains.
the main problem for trains is finding a route for the track into the city. that can be and is solved with tunnels though. or the chinese approach where the high speed trainstations are sometimes built away from the center of the city and instead the center is connected by a dense network of subway lines. a process that started less than 20 years ago but now puts many chinese cities at the top of the list of the largest subway networks in the world.
So you're saying first we should invent time travel. Sounds practical!
If you want to build a transit hub outside the city center and link it via subway, that's no easier or more convenient for a train station than for an airport.
The "big country" contributes in that passenger-only high speed rail would be ruinously expensive to lay down and maintain. Long distance passenger rail exists at all in the US only because it can share track with freight rail.
Yes, but we don't need a train to replace NY-to-LA. At least not right away.
What we need are high speed trains between nearby city pairs. Short-haul flights both waste fuel, don't get up to speed, and have their travel times doubled by TSA security theater and airline boarding nonsense. A Shinkansen-spec high speed train (320kph/200mph) would beat the plane on 200-400 mile trips, both in terms of convenience, carbon emissions, and luxury.
The 2,785 road miles between NY and LA would be 14 rail hours compared to the six a plane takes. Not competitive in the slightest, and not a serious mode of travel, but I'd consider it. The three days the train currently takes sounds like the worst of a road trip combined with the worst of a plane trip.
I've taken the California zephyr a few times over the last few years and it's a phenomenal experience. I'm hoping to do the Chicago-San Francisco trip in the coming years.
My fear is that some influencer/personality is going to start posting about the train system, and then it's going to become a crowded mess :P It feels a bit like a well kept secret right now. I think one of the things that makes it so enjoyable is that it's so uncrowded most of the time. I almost always get two seats to myself every time I take it (in coach). And there's somehow always a table available in the observation car whenever I decide to go there. Or you sit with someone and make a new friend :P
I've taken the family on the California Zephyr a few times — Emeryville to Omaha. On one trip when the (three) girls were older and we had a foreign exchange student the wife and I gave them their own sleeper cab.
Riding the train when I was I young was a memorable experience. I wondered if it would even be around when my daughters were older so wanted to give them that experience too.
I live next to Denver Union Station and coincidentally I took the California Zephyr for the first time yesterday (Saturday). I wanted to experience the train going up into the Rockies and back. I was surprised that seats were assigned; I got an aisle seat. I could mostly catch the scenery anyway, but that was a downside. They were passing out tickets to give more people a turn in the observation car, but they weren't switching until after I was scheduled to get off. I went up to Granby, CO and back. It was a beautiful day (maybe the last one for the season?). Friday, near Oakland, the train that was taking me back was stuck waiting for a bridge malfunction, so it was 4 hours behind. By the time it got to Granby, it was supposed to be 2.5 hours late, but as the day went on the timeline got pushed back until it was 3.5 hours late. It picked me up as it was getting dark after sunset, and the ride back was in the dark. The trip was amazing and disappointing at the same time.
Wow, that's really unfortunate. As I just wrote in a top-level comment, Denver to Salt Lake is definitely the highlight. You get to be up high above some of those creeks and passes where the road doesn't go. I hope you're able to try again in the future and sit in the panorama car.
There are a lot of transit focused “creators” already documenting their trips - the one I tend to follow on YouTube is Miles in Transit but he often intersects with other creators as well
It's less the transit creators I'm worried about, since that's pretty niche. It's if a general influencer starts sharing aesthetics of train travel on eg Instagram which I think would cause its usage to boom.
I understand where you're coming from, but in the long run it'd be a great thing to see this kind of boom in the U.S. If only a tiny fraction of the gobs of cash that are being shoveled into political ads right now were going to some of these influencers to promote train travel instead...
Though most people really aren't in a position to take the train instead of flying for anything other than a vacation. Good luck with your 4x expense account for taking an extra day to travel from NYC to Chicago--much less anything further.
Trains have been all over social media forever. The only reason they aren’t packed is because the logistics of taking an Amtrak long distance are miserable.
The zephyr is a destination, not a mode of travel.
When we both have enough time off (and can get a cat sitter for long enough), my wife and I like to make the 1200 mile (1900 km) trip to visit family by Amtrak. A couple of times that we've done it a single roomette has been price-competitive with flying, especially if you factor in the cost of the free meals and drinks. And at worst, the roomette was about $200 more total cost than flying.
Sure, it takes four times longer, but it is about 20 times more comfortable.
My daughter recently moved to Vancouver. I was in Seattle for a work trip so decided to take Amtrak to visit her for the weekend. This was my first real train travel. Overall, it was pretty good and probably is what I will do in the future in the same situation.
The train moved at a frustratingly slow speed (< 10 mph) for probably 30% of the trip, but aside from that I liked the more relaxed atmosphere of the travel and it was overall more comfortable.
The train itself was a bit bumpier than I expected and the wifi was not very good. Those things and the slow speed would mean I could not imagine taking a much longer trip than this one. With the extra time and hassle of dealing with an airport, this one balanced out as probably only being slightly slower travel but it was less expensive and more relaxed. If it were Seattle to San Francisco, as an example, the slowness would be too much for me. The comfort and amenities like wifi and food would have to be a lot better than they are.
I take the Cascades from Vancouver-Seattle semi-frequently for work. On the US side it can run decently fast, but the Canadian side is very slow and if you’re unlucky you can end up waiting for marine traffic at the Fraser river swing bridge for some time.
Still my preferred way to do the trip if the timing works as I can get stuff done whilst on the train. The WiFi is pretty bad - but if you have a cell plan that covers the US and Canada you’ll have coverage for all of the Canadian side, and a decent amount of the US side.
If someone in the US hasn't been in a position to take commuter rail with any frequency in a relatively small number of places--or maybe take Amtrak on the Northeast Corridor sometimes--it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest that someone would never have been on anything beyond light rail (if that).
The last time I took the Amtrak in California was 4-5 years ago- the toilet was filled with and overflowing with feces and menstrual blood- the tables were covered in trash and of course just like in these photos the trains were cutting edge crumbling/dirty 1980's models.
I started throwing the trash in the bins and an Amtrak staffer came through and told me "You don't have to do that- that's someone else's job" Someone else was nowhere to be found though.
I took the Amtrak several times from southern to northern California and it was always just bearable.
The train experience in the USA is pathetic and depressing.
I have since moved to a "poor" country in Western Europe and the train experience here is MUCH MUCH better than Amtrak in the states as is most everything else.
Am I the only one who finds it surreal to see long distance trains in the US? Don’t get me wrong - I know they exist. It’s just that I feel like they never get depicted anywhere in the media. I also don’t think I know a single American who has gone to another US city by train.
Media depictions are a hugely underrated aspect of public transport perception.
In japanese and korean media (my experience is with a ton of anime and k dramas, more in the former than the latter though) trains are very common casual and serious backdrops for a variety of scenes, either within the train, at the station, or just a train passing by on the bridge in the background.
In Hollywood/American TV, it's always cars, with the occasional airport/plane. It riles me up quite unreasonably that shows/movies set in New York fuckin city with 24-7 subway service, and characters are shown trying to catch a cab in Manhattan in the middle of the night to go 20 blocks away. At least Marvelous Mrs. Maisel acknowledged this directly as a class thing for some characters and other characters took the train, but most movies just assume the American viewer cannot relate to someone using the subway.
As someone both born and raised in Long Island and raised on lots of Japanese media, it seemed perfectly normal to see lots of people taking the subway. Granted, Long Island is still car dependent suburbia, but it at least made sense to me that if you were going into "the city", you took LIRR and the subway. So Japanese media depicting public transit or walking mentally registered in the same headspace as Manhattan.
I moved out of NY almost a decade ago, but car-centric America still feels more foreign to me than Tokyo does. On LI, if my family had to drive off the island, we treated it like Europeans treat driving to a foreign country. In SLC, it's entirely common for people to spend 10+ hours on the road as if it were nothing. Hell, I've done it myself. Still feels weird.
It's almost certainly less to do with location scouting and production design, and more about perceived biases. If studio executives think American audiences can't relate to trains or subways because they're less commonly used in real-life, we're going to see fewer of them on the screen. There's probably a cultural blind spot at play there, too; if writers don't ride trains--or even perceive them--very often, they're far less likely to write about them. It's a vicious circle.
As for locations, a quick Google search found a genuine New York City R17 subway car[0] that can be rented out in LA. The Sierra Northern Railway--a freight carrier in California--has rented out[1] its rolling stock, facilities, and tracks to film productions for nearly a century. They've got quite the roster, spanning multiple eras. There's also Amtrak, the various local/regional metro systems, other rental companies, and even private collectors if they need something specific.
As for stations, that's even easier. Various urban backlots have underground subway station entrances[2] where you could characters exiting the station. Or the station platform itself is just a long room; you don't have to show the actual tracks, or you could composite in a train moving across the frame, etc. Plenty of permanent sets can play that role. Set designers do far more with less all the time. Hell, you can just reference it off-screen for a sitcom. That's a huge chunk of Seinfeld (or any sitcom). Shit happens, everyone reacts...often poorly, with hilarious results.
Well, they also have huge apartments which--like many/most urban TV sitcom characters--are pretty much totally incompatible with where they could actually afford to live.
A subway set is probably expensive, especially if you want a working train.
Almost everything set in London uses either the disused Aldwych Station on the Piccadilly Line, the disused Charing Cross station on the Jubilee Line, or the Waterloo and City line at weekends when it is normally closed — sometimes even when the setting ought to be a much larger train and style of station elsewhere.
Yeah, the technical aspects of the subway shots in Seinfeld are interesting, and really give a sense of how hard everybody worked to make that show what it was.
The first scenes to take place in a subway (to my knowledge, anyway) were in the 30th episode, which was called "The Subway". And indeed, most of the episode takes place in a subway.
The subway set for this show was rented from Warner Brothers and was sent to the Seinfeld lot in several pieces on trucks. It was apparently a huge PITA and presented a lot of technical limitations.
They assembled it on springs and had a bunch of crew shake the car to simulate movement. They had to light it using stage lights, manually simulate the mechanical opening of the doors, etc. And it was apparently difficult to do anything but a closeup without it looking fake.
They redecorated it for each of the different subways that it was used to depict (in the episode, different characters are simultaneously taking different subways to different places).
After the episode, the set was disassembled and placed back on the truck to send back to WB, but the truck driver went under a low underpass, which the set struck and was destroyed. As a result, Tom Azzari, Seinfeld's Production Designer, led a small team within the show to design, engineer, and build an entirely new subway set, fixing all the technical problems while they were fresh in the team's memory. They even got actual subway light fixtures and pneumatic doors. This set was used for the remainder of the show, and went on to be used in other shows and films as well.
(There are a few interviews about this process on the Seinfeld DVD extras, Season 03 "Inside Looks")
Earlier this month I took a train Washington to New York, plenty of people on that.
I then went down to Miami, train was fairly full - not many stayed on the entire trip but I wouldn’t expect them to, they got off at various stations along the way. Everyone I head in the dining car was American.
When I visited New York (from the UK) last year I took trains up to Connecticut and Rhode Island. I was surprised at how regular and comfortable the trains were given the US's reputation for passenger rail. I saw that you could go south as well. Is it just that the each coast is particularly well connected compared to the rest of the country?
Well I got an Uber from my office to Union station, as the metro in DC isn’t great. Obviously no need for an Uber in New York as I could get the subway.
Had I flown to Miami I’d still need a taxi to my hotel, just like I did from the train station. I don’t get that argument.
Why not? Maybe a vicious cycle of insufficient demand.
There are three rental car locations close to Copenhagen Central Station. (Not within it, but within the distance you'd walk around an airport terminal.)
Miami station has car rental, I haven't checked any others.
Damned if I know; best guess would be a consequence of (a) in decently busy cities train stations tend to be in dense areas where it's not economical to stick a car rental, where airports tend to have some acreage around them where you can stick a rental lot and (b) small towns only get a few trains a day and fewer non-residents detraining, so it's neither worth keeping a rental office open just for the train station or even considering its location, since the fraction of rentals from the train station is small compared to eg people getting a rental while their car is in the shop.
The US actually has a handful of pretty nice passenger rail corridors, with decent schedules and nice trains. Washington DC to Boston is one such corridor. Portland to Vancouver is another one I've taken that also worked pretty well.
The with respect to Amtrak, shorter line trains on the east coast and CA capital corridor these trains are commuter trains and often have more ownership/priority on the rails so they are more frequent and punctual. If you took metro north, it’s a pretty extensive commuter line as well.
It’s so funny that this all came up today, last night my partner showed me the episode of Sex and the City where Carrie and Sam travel from NYC to San Francisco by train, though it’s mostly depicted as being an annoying hassle (imo their expectations of what train travel would be like were too high).
I've done it, or at least several long sections. I found that I met more interesting people on long distance buses than Amtrak and VIA. Younger people, more diverse, less moneyed. But the experience is much less comfortable, and the places they drop you to get food are utterly abysmal. My best memory was pulling over at some rest stop in who knows where and everyone is grabbing fast food trash because that's all there is, and I noticed some vegetables on the counter in the gas station, asked about them and the guy says they were free, dropped off by a local farmer. So I got some fresh tomatoes and they tasted glorious after days of stale motel bagels and Burger King.
Another awkward thing about bus travel in the US in particular is if you get off anywhere that isn't a major city, you're often stuck on the edge of a highway miles away from any accommodation that might be available in the town the bus is supposedly servicing. Most people get picked up by friends with cars to get where they're actually going, so if you hitch your pack and walk to town you really are gonna look like a hobo.
To be honest, if where you're going is on the train line, the train is better in almost every way. Much more comfortable, nicer views, somewhat better food, sometimes (but not always) more convenient stops. But there's a lot of Turtle Island the trains don't go and you'd miss so much if you didn't take the bus. Unfortunately even bus service is getting rarer. I remember wanting to visit a town of around 25,000 people and was shocked to discover there was no way to get there at all. I would have had to walk 20km from the closest Greyhound stop, which is absurd. I emailed a local museum and the curator offered me a lift back and forth, which was kind, but holy heck. Imagine being a kid stuck in a place like that! Just bananas.
Subtitling for the non-americans (things I had to look up):
- Amtrak: "national passenger railroad company of the United States" "receives a combination of state and federal subsidies but is managed as a for-profit organization"
- VIA: Canadian rail operator (and a ton of other things, but this is my best guess)
- Turtle Island: "a name for Earth or North America" (heh)
- Greyhound stop: greyhound is a bus company
- hobo: poor person traveling by train hopping. (My dutch brain wanted to read it as "hol-bewoner", cave-dweller, since the word stress works out to emphasize the same sounds and given the context of perhaps arriving disheveled or so, but good that I looked up the right connotation)
Amusingly, I am also non-American, although I have lived and traveled there quite a bit.
I use Turtle Island as a shorthand for "the US and Canada", since it is/was a term used by indigenous peoples who lived in the area that's now split by that border. It feels a bit less inaccurate to me than saying "North America" when you are not including Mexico.
You’d probably spend a lot of time sleeping overnight in a bus station waiting for a bus for the next leg of your journey. Coast to coast by bus sounds miserable.
Certainly does sound miserable - worse than in a seat on amtrak, let alone a roomette or bedroom.
However you can take the 1310 from LA to Phoenix, then half an hour wait before the 2245 to St Louis, and a 1h25 wait at 0720 for a St Louis to New York.
66 hours with 64 hours on the actual bus, miserable for both you and your fellow passengers.
I was thinking that making a trip of it and taking your time and doing it slowly would probably be the only way to make it enjoyable. As a utilitarian means of travel though, miserable.
One can also book seats in night trains -- which I've never understood, btw. That only seems logical as a last resort when you need to be somewhere but got no money to get there, when you're planning to sleep the day away at your destination, or enjoy the prisoner's dilemma where you hope the potential co-passenger decides not to "defect" (buy a ticket) such that the seat next to you is free and you can lay down and sleep at night. But anyway, more on topic, I am wondering if the laying down is what you mean or something else in addition
The seats on long distance Amtrak trains are not at all like you're imagining.
Think of them as more like a lounger/recliner. Not the most comfortable you'll ever sit in, but it's reasonably easy to sleep them in, and even more so if you're young. Someone next to you matters only if they snore or smell.
It's possible, but IME, people really do not exaggerate when they say it's bad. It's bad. I don't consider myself a super pampered traveler - I fly budget airlines, I take overnight layovers, I've slept in Amtrak coach - but Greyhound (which, AFAIK, is pretty much the main long-distance bus service in the US, outside of a few regional lines) is the bottom of the barrel. There are some fine Greyhound routes, I'd say on average they'll usually work as expected and get you to your destination. They're often even comfortable. But they fail often and when they do, they fail HARD.
The most annoying normal, happy-path thing for long-distance travel on Greyhounds is the periodic stops for driver changes. They happen without warning - it doesn't appear as a layover when booking, it seems like a normal stop right up until you get to it, when all of a sudden everyone is asked to get off the bus for an hour or so. You have to decide at the start what stuff you want to take, because you won't be let back on the bus in that hour. During that hour, you'll wait in the bus station, which is pretty much always a run-down, filthy building in an awful part of town. There might be a store if you're lucky; there will at least be a vending machine and a (nasty) bathroom. I don't know if they do these stops overnight, but I have had them happen pretty late when I was trying to sleep.
And yeah, that's just a bit of an annoyance - under normal operation. If something goes wrong? That's the really great part - Greyhound has effectively zero customer support. As far as I can tell (or as far as they make it seem), no customer-facing employee actually has the power to do anything, or any special visibility into the system. The agent in the station, if there is one, will refuse pretty much any question and just tell you to call the customer support number. Once, at one of those driver-change stops, the new driver just... didn't show up? The station agent refused to talk to anyone beyond periodic updates every few hours (which were little more than "the driver might be here by X time", as X kept increasing) and yelled at people to call the customer support line, who also seemed to have zero idea what was going on - and of course, you guessed it - told us to talk to the station agent. It's kind of beautiful, in a Kafkaesque, Catch-22 kind of way, if you ignore all the human suffering it inflicts upon its riders, who are generally the poorest people in society.
A new driver did eventually show, after ten hours of overnight waiting for what should have been a one-hour stop. Obviously, everyone missed their connections, but thankfully at the next major station, the agent helped us out- just kidding, she told all of us to call the customer service number. (I'm still mind-boggled by what the actual purpose is of a station agent if not to rebook people.) Based on some of the interactions we had, I suspect the customer service agent just sees the exact same "change your ticket" UI you do from the booking website. And obviously, as far as I know, nobody got any sort of voucher or refund; nobody was put up in a hotel.
A different time, I had my luggage go missing from the cargo area from under the bus. The driver told me it might have mistakenly been offloaded at an earlier station (cool. thanks.) and told me to talk to the agent inside. You can probably guess what the agent told me to do.
And there's all the issues the others mentioned - mainly the thing with them closing their actual station buildings and just picking up and dropping people off on the roadside or at random gas stations.
I didn't mean for this post to be this long, but it truly kind of depresses and amazes me how bad of a system it is. It is falling apart at almost all levels. People talk badly about Amtrak, but as mentioned elsewhere, they'll at least put you in a hotel if you miss a major connection. Budget airlines are uncomfortable but at least have actual gate agents, and even the worst airport is vastly cleaner and more comfortable your average Greyhound building.
There are some redeeming factors. The buses themselves are usually comfortable and decently clean, and most if not all have power outlets, although often not at every seat. The "weird/gross passenger sitting next to you" thing is exaggerated, though I have had one bad one. The Wi-Fi exists but is generally completely unusable, but if you have a hotspot, it'll generally work pretty well since you'll be on major highways the whole time.
But the punchline to it all? It's not even that much cheaper. It's, like, maybe half the price of an airplane ticket.
If you have a Spirit Airlines route near you, flying will actually be cheaper than a bus.
For the route I take it's around $30 for the plane, and $70 for the bus. The bus takes around 8 hours, the plane takes around an hour and a half but then you have to factor in extra time at the terminal.
It is also worth considering that Spirit will charge you an arm and a leg to bring any kind of luggage, while buses and trains are generally pretty lenient with their baggage allowances.
Of course, as I found out recently, sometimes your baggage will just get lost or stolen and there's not much you can do about it. So that's fun. (At least on Amtrak there's a proper checked baggage option for some routes, and the overheads are big enough to put airplane-sized carryons in.)
I did the same trip. Highly recommended. On the trip I learned that there is an Amtrak Rail pass, which includes 10 rides. It seems that it often is on sale at the beginning of the year. So if you are interested in such a trip, you may want to look out for that.
I bicycled across in 1985 and scariest part was there was no public transport on regular roads. What if the bicycle breaks down? There was no bicycle shops and bicyclists either, except on top of cars. Where they drive to use the bicycle? No idea.
Dutch person here. This seems odd to me, why would a bicycle irrepairably break down without notice? If you have a patch kit and know how to put the chain back on, the only "prevents me from riding" risk I can think of is it literally breaking apart under you, which isn't something I've heard happen. The gears breaking would be a serious nuisance but you can still get to the next town
And wouldn't it be the same no matter what mode of transport you choose? What if the plane breaks down¹? What if you break an ankle while walking a long distance? What if your horse walks away? You'll always have to rely on aid from others pretty much no matter what happens to your mode of transportation
If you're going to be in a place where you're alone, like when hiking, the advice I heard is to tell someone where you're going and when you're checking in. I guess the same goes if you don't expect to receive aid from passing cars?
If you're doing ultra long distances, you've got the possibility of literally everything breaking. You'd be riding more in the single trip than most cyclists ride in a year.
If the derailleur snaps off while you are 100km from anything, you're fucked unless you happened to pack a spare one and all the tools required to swap it.
Bike mechanist here. If your going ultra long distance chances are prepared more than bare minimum and got a good multitool with you [0] and spare links. So let’s do it:
1. Cut the chain using a chain drifts (can be small, sometimes included in kits)
2. Detach the speeds cable and remove the derailleur (hex key, included in kits).
3. Measure minimum possible chain length, cut it.
4. Close the chain with a missing link (get a couple spare ones, they’re cheap and small)
In fact many MTB enjoyers got a chain drifts and missing links with them even for a 2h ride : chains are at higher risk when crushed again rocks and trees.
> why would a bicycle break down without notice
Accident aside, you literally feel the bike parts wearing, or at least when they approach endlife. There’s also regular quick checks you could perform on your bike to keep the macanist away.
"Next town" in rural America may mean 100 km walk.
You clearly do not understand what bicycling 6000 km unaided and heavy load means. Everything breaks down constantly.
Chains and sprockets last only 2000 km, unless you constantly rotate 3 chains.
I bought new tyres 3 times. And then I had a problem with 622mm rim, there was only "700C" type racing tyres in Wallmarts.
And I also broke back axle, because Samsung-type axle was not yet invented. Luckily Minneapolis had America's one good bicycle shop.
And at the end and I started loosing spokes. I had spares, but you need certain heavy tools to remove screw-on sprocket. Getting new spokes of certain size is impossible anywhere in America. Probably mail-order from China.
Well. America is the only place in the world where I was told to "move on" with a gunpoint. In Texas they told they always "procecute trespassers", but local sheriff decided I was not tresspassing, I was camping too close to railroad, so it was government property.
Back in 1985, when mountain bikes were brand-new and not really established? I have no idea.
These days, if it's serious mountain bikes, they're driving to places with wilderness trails to ride on. If it's road bikes, they might be driving to "rail trails", sections of old railroads that have been converted into long multi-use trails that are popular with cyclists because they're generally flat and straight and go through some interesting scenery.
I was pleased to read such positive contagious excitement and someone who can still see the wonder of the American west. And excitement of trying new experiences.
Similar experience in Germany, felt like I did not sleep a wink. I did get a lot of audiobook done during that time though! (And I felt surprisingly okay during the next day, so perhaps my brain did get some amount/form of downtime)
Had expected the train to do like 60 km/h or so because there is no rush, everyone's sleeping, saves costs (wear and energy), easier scheduling by having the same speed as freight, and if the trains normally handle more-than-double speeds then this would be butter smooth. Nah, not a chance. From start to finish it felt like it was springing from station to station, with pretty old equipment so it was loud, plus every station of every tiny village was bright because no curtains, and the shaking and squeaking around curves and especially points/switches were madness.
Asked the passenger from my cabin who got off at the same stop in the morning: he slept great!
Maybe when the novelty wears off and you get used to it, it gets better? I can report back when I do this next time, but for now I'm also left wondering if it's a personal thing. (I'm sufficiently concerned about the rate of climate warming that I'll definitely try this again, it's only a matter of when I'd travel to a sufficiently far destination)
Those few times I've taken a sleeper, both private (Europe) and shared (China) rooms, I haven't slept as if I were in my own bed but I got a decent enough amount of sleep to call it a a "night's rest." But, then, it's also not unusual that, jet-lag or not, I'll have trouble getting to sleep in a hotel especially first night or so of a trip. So I guess I sleep well enough on trains (and on lie-flat seats in planes).
When I was 7 my family moved from the West Coast to the East. We didn’t have much money and my mom was deathly afraid of flying so we took a train. Seeing the U.S. this way is a treat and I highly recommend. Like TFA you meet interesting people, see and experience new things that you just don’t get to see traveling other ways.
Why though? The USA is huge! Even on a 250mph train, theoretical transit times through the Midwest are still going to take a long time!
I love rail travel when I’m in the EU, but it simply doesn’t make sense for the US and its geography.
Here’s my wild opinion so feel free to disagree and point out the shortcomings… Air travel could be a lot nicer, like the days of TWA and on plane lounges; and before you got tased for getting out of your seat to walk around.
Transcontinental train travel across the US? No, it probably doesn’t make sense to design a system for that alone.
But just like European trains don’t only run from Lisbon to Moscow, US trains could very easily set up popular routes from small, medium, and large cities that are around 100-500miles from each other. The new Borealis route, which is nothing more than an additional short run of the Empire Builder, from Chicago to Minneapolis started turning a profit a few days after it started running.
What do you get when you add up all the obvious city-pair routes in all regions? You get a transcontinental system that while likely not most people’s first choice for a NYC-LA trip, is possible without being painful. Not unlike the system that existed before the subsidized highways destroyed the private passenger rail system in the US. We know it’s possible here because it already existed.
Why? IMHO the best travel is not about how fast you can get there. Seeing the land from the ground is an immense experience. More so than a car since interstates are dug out, the land trains cross is amazing. Wild horses in the southwest, mountains in the west. And - you can walk around, observation car, dining car (nothing quite like making bar friends on a train), with close to zero risk of getting tased!
It can make sense in the USA; not every trip is coast to coast. The northeast corridor is a good example of where trains work well (ish) and could be ramped up further.
The best family trip my wife and I did with my kids (8 and 12) was Amtrak from AZ -> DC -> NYC. It was relaxing, fun and different. We even did it in coach (so no private room) and it was still amazing.
We flew home -- and even though the flight time was about 5.5 hours - it was stressful and a let down. Your family's milage may vary.
You can also do any segment. Having done Chicago to Emeryville, I'd suggest folks focus on the Denver to Salt Lake portion.
Chicago to Denver is mostly flat, and at least when I did it, mostly in the dark. Salt Lake to Reno is also boring, but surprisingly the section of rail around Tahoe doesn't have good views either. If you've driven on 80, or 50 or 89, you've seen better terrain.
As other comments have said though, the timeline is unpredictable, since freight takes priority. So you could easily end up in the dark around Grand Junction, CO and miss out on the views.
As a European everything felt like being in a movie. Especially going through desert it felt like I travelled back in time. Literally Wild West. I got see forests, mountains, canyons, and desert all in the same ride. That's definately not possible where I come from.
Years ago I decided to take the Lake Shore Limited from Albany to Chicago for a business trip just to have a different experience. Two things I didn’t expect:
1. It was very difficult to get pre-approved for the expense because my employer’s process had to make sure I wasn’t costing them extra money. Somehow this was not an issue with plane tickets.
2. Overnight stops interrupted my sleep (in seat) as boarders banged luggage around and discussed seat selection when groups were involved.
Interesting, but would book a room if traveling this way next time.
The US has actually pretty good train infrastructure, it's just almost entirely dedicated to freight. The US moves far more goods by rail, farther and cheaper than just about any other country in the world.
We have derailments monthly due to poor track conditions... We have terrible pay and conditions for operators who are exploited by both the companies and then the government. We do not have pretty good infrastructure.
We did, and then when airplanes came around, it turned out that people/other interests found air travel better than train travel for most intercity travel.
Even on the East Coast, there used to be way more rail lines that took passengers -- if this were a hundred years ago, I could have walked a mile or two to a spur which would take me to one of the mid-sized cities connected to The Big City by commuter rail; now they're mostly rail trails.
Unlike in Europe, where rail maintenance is heavily subsidised by the government, in the US it is paid for by the private rail operators to a much greater extent. Thus the rail operators have much more say over how the rail is used and obviously priorities the more profitable traffic, which in the US is cargo.
So if the US government would wanted to build out cross country passenger rail they would either have to build new tracks, or use eminent domain to take back control of the existing tracks. Both options would be very expensive and wildly unpopular.
Which Europe are you talking about? Europe is a collection of independent counties and what you just mention is all wrong.
Most of the European railway companies have been privatized and there are companies that run the rail network and companies that run the train. Subsidies are not a thing in many of the European countries
If you look at the UK for example, the physical network is publicly owned and maintained by National Rail, whilst the ToCs are (currently) mostly private. That said the ToCs are also going to switch to publicly owned over the next few years.
It was, but then all the Class-Ⅰ rail carriers merged until we were left with a west-coast duopoly (UP and BNSF) and an east-coast duopoly (CSX and NS) and they closed all the “redundant” lines they could.
Probably because most cities are so spaced out you'd still need a car to get from home to the train station and from the train station to your office when taking the train to work, for example. So it's easier to just drive there.
You're ignoring how non-dense everything actually is in those places. Americans no longer live in walkable cities and towns like in the early 20th century before cars became popular. After WWII, with the rise of the automobile, the inner cities emptied out and everyone who could afford to moved out to the suburbs. So now, even in a "city" in America (unless it's Manhattan), you absolutely need a car to get anywhere, because nothing is walkable.
It's not like 1905 when you could just walk from your home in Smalltown USA to the local train station, buy a ticket, and get a ride to the nearest city, and get out and walk from that station to interesting places.
Any train trip, even if you look only at the eastern states, is likely to require a car ride on one or both ends to get to/from your source/destination to/from the station. If you have to drive an hour just to get to a train station, and another hour to get from the destination station to your final station, it's probably faster and easier and much cheaper to just drive the whole way. Don't forget dealing with parking, car rental, etc.; you'd probably have to take taxis, and those are quite expensive.
The fundamental problem here is density. America doesn't have it any more.
So it's easier to drive to San Francisco from Seattle instead of parking your car at the train station in Seattle, take a train and then do your business on downtown SF, come back to Seattle and take your car back home?
(It's a figurative example I'm not sure there's a train from Seattle to SF)
Of course not, but even with state of art train technology (let's say 250mph), that would still be an over 3 hour commute each way (just the railway part!). If it's just for a business trip every now in a while, it's faster to just fly there.
I'm just saying, this is such a rare use case that it's not as high of a priority as expanding the roads that 80% or more of the residents in a city use daily. Whereas for freight it makes a ton of sense.
(fun fact, there actually is a train route there!)
As some who used to travel for meetings quite a lot to a city 3 hours away by high speed rail, it really isn't. Once you take into account that you can show up for your train 5 mins before it leaves, plus the fact that the train station is almost always much closer to where you want to be, the difference in time between trains and planes pretty much disappears for shorter trips.
Plus the train is just so much nicer and more comfortable. It's quieter. Your seats are much bigger and have more legroom than even the nicest business class seats. You can get up and walk around if you want. You often have a restaurant car where you can sit and grab a drink or something to eat. Train travel is just so much more relaxing compared to flying.
> that would still be an over 3 hour commute each way (just the railway part!). If it's just for a business trip every now in a while, it's faster to just fly there.
Even for flights which take 45 minutes in the air, I’d never expect to get to the airport, through security, through all the boarding and unboarding nonsense, and from the destination airport to where I was actually going, in 3 hours.
IIRC last time I was in Seattle airport, after I got off the plane (which was late, of course), I spent half an hour just walking through airport and to the rather inconveniently located light rail. Everything involving flying takes forever.
3 hours is about Osaka to Tokyo, a route that sees a massive volume of business travel on the bullet train in Japan, arguably far more than flying. SF to Seattle would be about 1300 km which is more like Hiroshima to Morioka, around 6.5 hours by train including a connection; I think at that point there'd be a split in favour of flying, but around a third of travellers would probably still opt for the train due to its comfort and convenience.
There's huge differences between the US and Japan. When I travel from my home in Tokyo to Osaka or any other city by shinkansen, I take public transit (Tokyo Metro specifically) to get from my home to Tokyo station or Shinagawa, and then transfer to the shinkansen. At the destination city, I just get off and either walk to wherever I'm going, or transfer to another local rail or subway line.
You just can't do that in the US, outside some very select situations (like going from somewhere inside DC to Manhattan NYC). From SF to Seattle, how do you get to the station in SF? In Seattle, how do you get from the station to your destination? What do you do to get around in Seattle? Generally, you need a car, which means renting a car, which is really expensive. The US is set up to handle this at airports pretty well: you get off your plane and go to the Hertz counter and pick up a car (and then after your trip is over and you've returned the car, get arrested for auto theft when Hertz reports your car as stolen--don't use Hertz). I haven't tried trains on the west coast, but on the east coast, I've never seen train stations set up with rental car counters.
Relative to the current situation or in absolute terms? If there was a Shinkansen style trains between LA and SF with the same quality and timetable as the Shinkansen between Tokyo and Osaka, do you not think Americans would flock to it?
A train might make that hour up by not needing to get in and out of SFO/LAX/etc.
In Tokyo, they’re fast partly because you don’t need to trek to the airport (yes, even Haneda) and deal with security etc. You just… get on the train and bam are downtown in the next place.
Sadly, with commercial air travel the time a passenger spends on the plane between say SF and LA represents only a small portion of their total travel time. This is commonly overlooked or not understood by people unfamiliar with traveling by train.
I’ve flown it plenty of times. Get to the airport 60min before flight, and you’re out of LAX in less than 30 min.
How early do you need to get to the train station?
Not to mention if you miss your train how quickly can you jump on another train?
I’m not arguing it’s not a nice alternative, but there is a reason why flying is still highly in demand even with high quality rail systems like in Europe.
You arrive at the station when the train is about to depart, not an hour or more before like you're forced to when flying. But even better, the station is in the center of town, rather than the middle of nowhere, reaching which again significantly lengthens your travel time.
You can jump on another flight faster than you can jump on another train? I rarely fly more than a couple times a month, but for me this is never true.
> When I took the trains in Europe I’d show up early
Why would you do that? Were you worried the train would depart early? Boarding a train is immediate.
> And stations in the middle of cities? Maybe, but unlikely building new infrastructure in existing cities.
1) "Maybe?" 2) The post to which you responded asked about a hypothetical Shinkansen style train from SF to LA, not one connecting El Segundo and Millbrae.
> And sure, if I want to go from SF to LA, there are 20+ flights per day. Are there going to be 20+ trains?
Going from Tokyo to Osaka is like taking the subway in terms of train frequency, so a lot more than that. There also aren't sprawling terminals to traverse on either end, which you quite likely will be forced to do when changing flights.
Let's talk about punctuality. If you think you're content don't look at the numbers for Shinkansen. As for air travel, clearly if you favor flying narrowbodies between cities only a few hundred miles apart you're an extremely patient person, but did you realize your flights between SF and LA will be lucky to break 90% on-time reliability? As a lifelong non-rev I do everything I can to avoid short flights like that.
Originally, the "15 minutes city" is simply a city planning guideline, which tells you that cities should strive to have every amenities close to where people live, ideally everyone should have everything in a 15 minutes radius. Far-right lunatics interpreted it as being constrained by the government in a 15 minutes radius around their home, which is insane thinking indeed.
I live in a "15 minutes city", Paris, I have 5 grocery stores in a 5 minutes walking radius, I go to work in 15 minutes using the metro, and if I want to I can get anywhere in France in a few hours by taking the train. That someone would not want this and instead fight for their rights to commute 2 hours everyday by car is insane to me.
I live in Melbourne (and have for 15 years), so I'm not some rural hillbilly crying about cars per se - in fact I'm not even talking about cars: That placard literally says: 'Stay Home!'
I think bicycle paths and pedestrian access to places is extremely important, and not just for the environment, but being told that I should 'stay home' as part of some bigger picture plan to combat climate change is absolutely redolent of bureaucratic authoritarianism and environmental tyranny, and it really isn't hard to imagine a scenario running from this placard and the idea behind it to one where traveling away from one's 'neighborhood' (as defined in the photo) is punishable.
> it really isn't hard to imagine a scenario running from this placard and the idea behind it to one where traveling away from one's 'neighborhood' (as defined in the photo) is punishable
Please take a deep breath and step away from the Rupert Murdoch. This campaign is merely trying to get people invested in the areas in which they live, which is a noble goal. It's sad that some of the language it uses has been warped into trigger words by the media. Fear is a lucrative business.
> Please take a deep breath and step away from the Rupert Murdoch.
On the off chance that you are actually attempting to persuade me in good faith, you might reconsider in the future the use of phrases like this one and the impact they are likely to have on a person, particularly if, while casting aspersions, they suggest a set of circumstances that aren’t true.
As a fellow Australian I well recall earlier campaigns that started out seeking to modify behaviour and later devolved into draconian law.
Recall the 1970s Life. Be In It campaign?
Started innocently enough and before we knew what had happened there were Aerobics Internment Camps for the ice cream eaters and Big Sister MTV alertotainments from Oliver Newton Goebbels.
Clearly I'm heavy with the sarcasm, there is a difference between enforcing policy with lawfare in the event of a life threatening health crisis such as COVID and doing the same in the event of a life threatening health crisis such as obesity, or a life threatening crisis such as AGW climate change.
I do seem to recall that we (Australia) made it through the AIDS years and increasing road accidents with mostly public campaigns and not so much law.
Probably the best path through public policy is to understand the issues, the risks, and to stay engaged at various levels of setting and enacting policy.
Murdoch's outlets are prime purveyors of this particular conspiracy theory, but you're absolutely right I shouldn't have assumed they had a hand in how you developed your idea. I also agree it's a valid question as to whether the best way to reach someone down a rabbit hole is to gently cajole them or slap them in the face. Where in Melbourne did you see the placard?
so the presentation leaves a bit to be desired but you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
for one i don't think this poster is is presenting a government mandate but i believe it's a demand from people to the government to build like this (it's from the climate action museum, which, as far as i could tell is not supported by government)
likewise it is not about forcing people to stay home but demanding the right for people to do so and live their daily life without having to travel every day.
the title "stay home!" is an unfortunate choice. but to be fair, you also have to read the whole title: "your most radical move! stay home!" which clearly suggests that staying home is a choice you make (just like many of us refuse to return to work in the office) and not something forced on you from the outside. if you read anything else then you either miss the point or you are intentionally twisting it.
do you think fighting against neighborhoods like this is going to help you prevent that dystopia that you seem to be afraid of? negative thinking is not going to help us make the world better.
a commenter above mentions paris. i can share the exact same experience from vienna. literally. that's what we are talking about.
I understand a lot of what you're saying, but the fact is that radical anything - whether it's the radical left or right, radical environmentalists, radical feminists, etc., are all ultimately trying to move their grievances and solutions into the mainstream. Just because the makers of the placard admit 'staying home' would be radical right now doesn't mean that they want it to stay that way - indeed political issues to some extent always begin as radical ideas and by definition those that are eventually accepted by a society are no longer seen as radical when they are accepted.
You might try to say this is just a slippery slope argument, but they are already advocating for something they (and you) admit is radical - the only caveat is that they qualify it as being radical for now. Clearly if a few radical environmentalists 'stay home!' there isn't going to be a dent in any metric that these people swear by - staying home will only begin to affect things if many or most people do it, whether by choice or by force, and that's the kind of wholesale societal change that I find absolutely bonkers and terrifying.
side note: when i lived in singapore i actually felt what it means not to be able to travel outside of city borders. i mean, yeah, you could travel, but you had to check a border crossing point, change currency, etc...
it felt like a trap. china during covid was similar. just replace passport controls with vaccination checks every time you travel from one city to another.
i believe many of the city states and islands would feel the same. even new zealand felt like that when your goal was to be among people. it is perfect to get away from people though.
I think it's a good thing if you never need to travel. Why would I want a 40 minute drive to get to a supermarket if I could instead get to an identical one in 10 minutes?
Similarly why would I want to travel for an hour to go to an office to sit on zoom meetings all day instead of doing it from my spare bedroom.
Reducing required travel is a great thing for me, gives me more time to do things on interesting travel. Rather than spending 90 minutes a week driving to/from the shop I save 78 hours a year, which is more than enough time to take up a new hobby.
They are not, at least no more than anyone else. nimby covers all sides of the asile. most live within a 10 minute drive of a supermarket and are happy with that. Food deserts are generally very left wing - poor people (or framers who are obviously to rural to get anything)
Do you realize that the topic was _walking_ distance, not driving?
I live in a German city where I do not even have to walk a street with cars to get to a super market, a couple of restaurants, three bakeries, barber shop, drugstore, pharmacy, a butcher, a bookshop, a general supplies store, a post office, newspaper/tobacco store, a public library, about a dozen or more doctors and dentists, a massage studio, therapists, two tailors, a bunch of other shops like clothing and such, a cinema, multiple bus stops, a subway station, a park, multiple playgrounds, etc. Once a week there's a larger food market with fresh produce. There are office buildings, a kindergarden/preschool, a church, three hotels.
All within 5 minutes of _walking_ distance. All walkable on foot paths without even seeing or hearing the annoyance of a car. If you cross even just one street, there's a school and a lot more things.
I can take a public bus two stops to a large asia market (or a 20min walk/10min bike ride). There's currently a 50 Euro monthly train pass that is valid for all regional/subway trains and busses all across Germany, so I can simply hop on and off whenever I want. 10 minutes by subway to the main train station and city center, where a lot more can be reached by 5 more minutes of walking.
And no, I am not limited by any of that. It just _adds_ options and convenience.
I don't think anyone thinks that everything you want is within 15 minutes - just that most daily necessities and services are available within 15 minutes.
Nobody on the far left thinks this. If they thought that then why would they be into subway systems so much? Same for progressive urban planners more generslly.
I didn't say a majority but if you follow the urbanist movement for long you will see them. They are not into subways. A minortiy for sure but they exist and are vocal
Judging a whole urban design philosophy by the most fringe members of the most fringe groups hardly seems like a good faith argument. Especially when those people are almost never even urban designers or in any way related to the field.
Did you link to the right comment? I read all the parent comments as well as the reply, and none talk about trains being so rare that they wouldn't exist.
Or do you just make the logical jump from "few trips should require a train" to "no trains exist"? There is no logical connection between those statements.
I'm not going to spend hours in the archives of every urbanist blog and forumn to find a few dozen examples. I was asked for one and so I found the most recient here.
19 out of 20 thinks being in the local neighborhood doesn't sound that crazy.
In the last week, I think I've been to work 5 times (bicycle), the supermarket twice or maybe three (foot), the doctor (foot), a bar (bicycle), a restaurant (foot), a fast food place (foot), visited a friend (train, 35 minutes + 10 walking) etc.
Work in your meighborhood is impossible - most people live in a 'marriage' situation meaning both would limit their job options and even if you get the job in your neighborhood that doesn't mean you won't switch jobs.
I have _never_ seen anyone take that stance; the same people who argue for planning ‘15 minute cities’ (that is, correctly planned cities; this isn’t some new idea and is how cities were historically normally planned) generally also advocate for good _commuter_ (ie medium range) and intercity transport.
I mean, I’m sure there’s someone out there advocating for efficient city design but who’s opposed to developing transport, but they’re an extreme outlier.
OOC, is this a purely theoretical bogeyperson, or have you ever actually seen anyone take this stance? If the latter, just how many (to the nearest ten, say) posters of Pol Pot did they have on the wall?
If you choose to interpret a piece of advice on how to improve your neighborhood as some Orwellian authoritarian propaganda poster commanding you to never leave your house, I'm afraid I can't do anything for you anymore.
In the early 1990s I did a round-trip, coast-to-coast trip on Amtrak (basically NYC to Seattle and back), stopping at major cities for a few days each. I had a USARail pass (equivalent to a Eurail pass), which at the time was only available to non-US citizens, so I was quite stoked to have 30 days of unlimited travel for a fixed cost.
On the first route (westward) I took the southern route and on the return trip (eastward) I took the northern route, through Chicago. I stayed in youth hostels (except for a couple of cities where I had friends and relatives), and didn't have a fixed schedule so delays were usually tolerable.
While in San Francisco, Amtrak went on strike for about a week, and my pass was extended correspondingly. An extra week in San Francisco was fun! But again, I didn't have any fixed deadlines so it was all good.
All things considered, the unreliability of the system makes me loathe to travel long distances by train, unless my plans are flexible. However, one huge upside is the views, especially in the middle of the country. In fact, some train lines even exist largely to tout their views, e.g. the Rocky Mountaineer (a Canadian company). Train travel is much more leisurely, and a great way to meet people.
These days many Amtrak routes are actually covered by bus, which may come as a surprise when you get to the train station and are told to board a bus. This is not immediately obvious when booking online, although you may be able to tell by reading carefully; the telltale sign might be as subtle as the icon (bus vs train) shown for that leg.
Did they provide lodgings during the period you were unable to use the service?
I don’t know if there are provisions for that in law like there are for airline flights that are canceled or otherwise unable to fulfill their carriage obligations.
It didn't occur to me to ask; I was staying in a youth hostel that was something like $20/night (maybe less). In any case, the way the USARail pass worked, you had to reserve individual tickets to each destination you wanted to travel to. (You could reserve them spontaneously, which is what I did.) Since I didn't have a ticket at the time to a particular destination (just a generic USARail pass), technically they weren't at fault for failing to fulfill a particular obligation.
I tried to roughly replicate the trip booking estimate but the closest I could get was a 77h trip (a bit over 3 days), with one change in Chicago and one Emeryville, CA. Price was about $1430.
In contrast to that, you can get a 7hr direct flight for about $430 (delta, round trip, luggage not included).
Or a full size sedan for about $500 (one way, 3 days, does not include estimate of $400 on fuel).
I wish trains were more affordable because (I think) the experience is worth it.
After a little playing around (prices vary per day of week & how many months in advance) I found $1049 (for a private room still), 81h, departs 20250417. Of course you could also tough it out in coach, in which case I found $198 (!), 85h, departs 20250418.
The northeast corridor sales they've been doing recently are quite something. I swung NYC to Boston for a mere $16 (usually 10x more, especially on the weekends - and the other way was $20). Even at that price my car had only 3 people left by the time we were in Rhode Island.
also, the luggage you can carry is significantly different than a plane.
- one personal item, 25 lbs. (12 kg) and 14 x 11 x 7 inches, and
- two carry-on items, 50 lbs. (23 kg) and 28 x 22 x 14 inches each
checked:
- 2 Bags Free - Up to 50 lbs. and 75 linear inches*
- 2 Additional Bags - $20 each
- Oversized Baggage (76-100 linear inches*) - $20 each
so ~ 300 lbs of luggage and the oversized stuff you can take is comprehensive. (bikes, ebikes, surfboards, skiis, musical instruments, golf clubs, guns, etc...)
https://www.amtrak.com/onboard/baggage-policy/baggage-specia...
That's the policy. The reality is more complicated, inconsistent, and unclear.
Checked baggage service in my experience is rare, and actually figuring out whether it is available is hard. It appears it isn't available on any NYP-ALB service, so unless you're starting from Albany, checked luggage would not work for this trip. It used to be available at some (maybe 10% or fewer) stations on the Pacific Surfliner route, but is 'suspended', so it appears it is now only available on very long distance routes. So if you have a connection, you likely won't be able to check baggage. If your connecting short route does offer checked baggage, you'll need to make sure your connection is at least two hours.
Carry-on items can be larger than on a plane and 50lbs, but the trains are poorly fitted to accommodate these, and you'll need to handle the luggage yourself. On the NYP-ALB trains in my experience, for example, there is one luggage rack for large luggage, able to fit perhaps eight pieces at most, for an entire car; since it can be converted to a bike rack, if a single passenger checks a bike, all that storage goes away. There's sometimes space on the floor toward the ends of the car, and sometimes not, and using it is unclear. The remaining option is overhead, so you'll need to be comfortable lifting those 50 pound items above your head while surrounded by impatient people. Just to get them on the train, you'll also need to carry them up rather difficult steps, while surrounded by impatient people. You also need to keep in mind, while placing your luggage, that different doors may be in use at different stations, so if your luggage happens to be in the wrong direction for the the flow of exiting passengers, you'll have a challenge getting to it at a short station stop.
Depends on the station and the route. Trains can be pretty large/heavy luggage unfriendly. I haven't paid a baggage charge on a plane in years and years although I admittedly don't check bags often.
Are you just pricing this out on the Amtrak website?
Yep! Although when it comes time to book I'd recommend the Android app because that experience is better (less login jank).
It'd be nice if we had something that showed a calendar with prices for each box airline style, though. Someday...
Someone built this! https://railforless.us
US trains are not worth it in coach. A Greyhound bus is more comfortable with the same amenities and takes about the same time.
If you have lots of money to burn, a train with the sleeper car or roomette is a better experience. You can at least lay down and have more room to relax, the windows are less grimy, you get better shades, lights, and much more room to lay down and relax.
The whole point of mass transit is it's not a car, so comparing it to driving is apples and oranges.
In my experience taking both, Greyhounds are significantly faster and far less comfortable. Maybe it's different in other places in the country, but this was my experience in coastal California:
Greyhound buses run more-or-less on time. The routes are direct, they're predictable, and they will take you where you want to go. They also don't have a dining car, spacious bathrooms, room to walk around and stretch your legs, etc. If somebody has diarrhea, everybody on that bus is going to know it and smell it.
Amtrak is more comfortable in every way. It's also usually late, and subject to delays because of low rail priority. You can't really count on it for anything other than "it'll leave eventually" and "it'll get there eventually". While on the train, it's really quite pleasant - as long as you don't care about arriving when the schedule said you would.
> Amtrak is more comfortable in every way.
I can easily believe that trains are more spacious and the seating is more insulated from odors.
But my experience riding trains is that they sway/shake obnoxiously while going around curves. Where as busses like Megabus are a very smooth ride the entire way.
> room to walk around and stretch your legs
My experience with busses is that there are somewhat frequent stops where people are encouraged to walk and use the bathroom. Which isn't a complete fix, but it does serve to substantially mitigate those problems.
I had essentially the same experience–I did SJC to SBA a few times a year when I was in college (which for the non-Californians here, is a destination that does not really have an airport you would want to use). I took Greyhound the first few times and then switched to Amtrak, even though it took 2-3 hours longer. I'll take that every time just by being able to get up and walk around. And the views coming in around Point Conception as the sun sets are priceless :)
Why wouldn't you want to use the SBA airport? It's lovely, scenic and has quite a few routes and airlines these days.
In my limited experience with Greyhound, the busses are notoriously late. I’ve taken it only 2 times. The first time was around an hour late and the second was running about 5-6 hours late.
Have you used both?
I've only used one long-distance Amtrak train (as an international tourist), and it was more comfortable than any long-distance bus I've ever used. Loads of legroom, a power socket, a large toilet at the end of the coach, a big window, a decent seat. There's a table if you book it, e.g. for a group of 3 or 4.
My journey was ~12 hours during the daytime. I wouldn't want to sleep overnight in that seat, but it's still going to be better than a bus.
Example with plenty of pictures of inside the train: https://www.seat61.com/california-zephyr.htm and https://www.seat61.com/UnitedStates.htm
Amtrak can be decently comfortable by coach, and the ability to stand, walk around, change cars, and (on Western routes) vary seating position by visiting the lounge car outclasses Greyhound in every way.
The whole point of mass transit is it's not a car, so comparing it to driving is apples and oranges.
I completely disagree with this. The point of mass transit is to move people from one place to another. I routinely compare driving, trains, planes, buses, and ride shares. They all have pros and cons and it really depends on the trip.
Does that sedan trip include the cost of lodging? Because that is built into the cost of Amtrak.
It does not, you’re right to point it out.
Maps showed about 1 day and 18 hrs so I accounted for 3 day rental but lodging slipped my mind. So probably another $200-$400, if leaning towards economy options.
I once drove from SF to NYC. If you drive 8 hours per day it takes over a week. I stayed in at least 4-5 hotels (I pushed the driving to 12 hrs/day)
It really depends on how you’re calculating driving time.
5 days * 8h/d * ~73 MPH will take you from SF to NYC, which only needs 4 hotels on the way. However, if you’re including stops in that 8h or fail to avoid traffic it can take a lot longer.
It seems like this misses what I think is the point of a driving trip, which is to actually see the country? I'd give Denver to SF two weeks, to see some of the national parks and actually get out of the car and go on hikes.
If you're spending all day driving, might as well fly?
Though, there are other reasons to do it, like if you're moving stuff along with your car.
Sightseeing is unbounded. Your losing 40 hours driving at reasonable speeds from SF to NY before considering detours or extended stops.
As such 5 days is just a reasonable baseline. It lets you see the country along the way, have some slack, and show up without being exhausted. Got an extra day, week, or month and you can find plenty of things to do along the way, but you still need to account for the underlying distance. Alternatively, if you’re in a hurry there’s plenty of ways to cut that down.
For me the reason is I was moving cross country and had a dog I didn’t want to put in the cargo of a plane.
Exactly.
Most of the times I've driven across the US, I was either moving, or transporting a vehicle.
Or you can go all out, get 4 people and drive in shifts (rotating a driver and a watchguard) non-stop for next to nothing.
It can be rather quick https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Run_challenge
It requires a copilot to spray saline in your eyes though.
Food as well.
Rest areas, if you want to go cheap.
Then a sedan fits at least 4 people.
Interestingly, I discovered last year that returning from the UK to NYC by ship was in the same general price ballpark as a business class flight. This is admittedly a lot more than economy. But, if you had the time, included eight days or so of good food and entertainment.
With long distance pricing or really any sleeper, one needs to consider that the ticket price basically includes hotel as well since you’re sleeping there and they need the facilities to handle that, meals etc.
I've never looked into this. How often do they sail? I can't imagine more than weekly or even monthly. I would definitely consider it though.
It varies by time of year--but monthly in a given direction is probably a rough estimate. Go to Cunard. Mostly Queen Mary 2 although I think they have a new ship that does some transatlantic as well. For crossings, my understanding is their ships with stabilizers etc. are better able to handle the North Atlantic than the average cruise ship.
Dates lined up for me on a trip late last spring and I enjoyed it. Would consider doing again.
Greyhound is a little over $200 for one adult. Probably $300 when accounting for all the overpriced rest area and bus station fast food you'll eat.
It says 3 days and Google Maps says ~2day drive time so I'm assuming either the passengers or driver swap busses at several points.
That would be a miserable trip and I'd pony up the extra money to fly though.
Author here :) I paid $70 for the section from New York to Chicago, because I slept in the coach section there. For the section from Chicago to Emeryville, I treated myself to a roomette, and paid $775 – so $845 in total.
Yeah, I also think it's unfortunate that flying is so much more affordable. But, as another passenger said on the train, taking the train is also three times the experience!
And when you have a sleeper ticket, three meals a day are included.
There's a pass you can buy. ~$500 for any 10 segments.
Are you talking transportation or entertainment?
For transportation it mostly stops making sense over 1000km, anyone's time is more valuable than any price difference. The only exception is overnight sleeper trains between major cities.
I began experimenting with long distance (cross-Europe, and long distances, not just one country to the neighbouring country) train travel, as I no longer wanted to fly due to the pollution from flying.
I rapidly concluded long distance train travel is not viable.
On one occasion I had two days of travel booked, and the very first train was an hour late, which led to a missed connection, and that was it - there was no way I could make my next train, and I lost some hundreds of euros of booked tickets and accommodation, and the compensation offered - if I had the will power to fight through the incredibly hostile claims mechanism on-line - was 30 euro. I was also stuck, as I had left my origin (a long-term AirBnB) and the next place I would live was at my destination. Fortunately, I was in Paris, so I travel to de Gaulle and booked a flight to my destination (where it was then necessary to book a hotel for an night, as I was a day early); I paid some hundreds more euros to complete my journey.
Essentially the problem is that the longer a train journey, the more late it will be, and if you miss a connection, you can lose everything afterwards; but you have to book everything in advance, because the main train routes are fully booked if you try to buy a ticket on the day.
So it just doesn't add up.
As I started reading your comment I had a hunch it was France - and sure enough.
Short train connections are a gamble here, and worse still that risk isn't properly communicated to travelers as the official SNCF trip planner will happily schedule passengers on very tight transfer windows with no warning. I'm travelling across France soon and the planner put me on a a 9 minutes connection just before the longest leg of my trip, which is a 10h overnight train.
There's no way I'm going to gamble my entire holidays on a 9 min delay, and thankfully my ticket lets me take an earlier train for the 1st leg, but I pity the clueless tourists who blindly follow the planner and end up with their plans ruined.
If you get one ticket for the whole journey then it's the provider's responsibility to get you to your destination, even if you miss a connection due to a delay.
If you have bought multiple tickets covering the journey, there are a few European agreements that may be relevant in the event of a missed connection:
- Connections between certain high speed services allow you to 'Hop on the next available train' (HOTNAT) if both services are members of the Railteam alliance
- Connections between most services on international journeys are protected by the newish 'Agreement on Journey Continuation' (AJC)
It's definitely confusing and it's far from perfect, but the situation is improving.
Not all railway companies participate in AJC. E.g. neither Snälltåget operating the Stockholm - Berlin night train and nor Flixtrain offering budget tickets between Berlin and some German cities are participating.
So don't use the open access competitors for complicated trips with multiple tickets. There always are traditional alternatives, especially now when the Swedish government and SJ started running their own daily Berlin service.
I love Italo, Snälltåget etc. but it's best to use them for a well-contained itinerary.
Additionally to AJC rights typically the traveller's insurance covers reaching destinations in case of train delays. It's not as grim as the grandparent makes it sound.
I don't know if it qualifies as long distance, but I have traveled across Japan a couple of times on train, from Sapporo to Fukuoka. Not in one day, I stopped for a few days in between, but I have done Sapporo to Nara and Kyoto to Sapporo in a day.
I loved all of them, worst train journey I had was Tokyo to Osaka... landed in Japan, slept overnight at an Airbnb and got up to get on the train to Osaka, but we missed our first train... was not a problem catching the next one, but we decided to eat lunch first. Got on the next train and got about 1/3 of the way to Osaka when the train had to stop due to a typhoon. We were stuck in the train for hours, by the time they let us off (we were stopped at a station, but not at the platform) it was too late to book any lodgeing anywhere near the station, and all the food was sold out everywhere nearby. We ate snacks we brought with us and slept on the train station floor! It was an adventure for sure. But things like that can happen when flying too and are quite rare on Japanese trains.
Don't have any experience with cross country train travel anywhere else, but I love doing it in Japan!
This is not an inherent problem with trains though - it should absolutely be possible to implement a continent wide railway system, which I believe will happen sooner rather than later.
Switzerland already has a unified system, where the main train operator SBB and the local public transport operators use the same ticketing system. Both monthly passes are available and a half fare card, which reduces the price by a lot(not half, as is suggested by the name of the card). The Swiss people are so used to travel by train they pretty much treat it like their own living room.
> it should absolutely be possible to implement a continent wide railway system, which I believe will happen sooner rather than later.
I wouldn’t count on it.
Most people travel during vacations and typically choose air travel over spending extra vacation days on a train. Likewise, bullet trains don’t make much economic sense across national borders, as few people commute daily between countries for work (in the European Union).
The only way to make train travel economical is by artificially increasing costs of air travel or the costs of owning a car. This has slowly been happening already, but will likely lead to a larger divide within the EU.
>artificially increasing costs of air travel
Doesn't have to be artificial. The environmental damage from air travel is a real cost which could be put back on air travel.
Environmental taxation is either 'artificial' or 'fair' depending on where you live in Europe. These taxes will simply further the divide that already exists in the EU.
Around 1% of employed people commute cross-border in the EU. This is presumably more than anywhere else in the world, at least of a similar size.
Non-commuting business travel is also very common, including to cities in neighbouring countries.
You'll need to see the breakdown by region. For example, a lot of people commute in/around Belgium or Switzerland, but not a lot of people commute to/from Poland. The rail links in certain parts of "old" Europe are already very good (or sufficient). But the OP mentioned cross-continent (I assume he means cross-EU).
>This is not an inherent problem with trains though - it should absolutely be possible to implement a continent wide railway system, which I believe will happen sooner rather than later.
Of course, it's technically possible, and not really all that hard. But is it politically possible? I doubt it. The EU doesn't even look like it's going to hold together long-term. If the various quarreling nations of the EU couldn't come together after all these decades and make a continent-wide railway system by now, I don't think they're ever going to.
The relevant EU regulation says the trough-tickets should be offered. That's of course useless for the passenger as long as there are no sanctions if they are not offered.
The EU has only existed for 29 years - which is actually very little time for projects of this scale?
It's on the agenda for the next parliamentary session: https://jonworth.eu/tzitzikostas-at-his-ep-hearing-4th-novem...
I often travel from Switzerland to Scandinavia or Finland by train, so a journey of about 30 to 40 hours.
There are frequent delays, especially in Germany [0], but it was always easy to get a confirmation from the railway companies, and I was always able to take a later train. I never had to pay more, and I even got quite a bit of money back if the delay was relevant. Even if I booked the tickets at different operators.
I also usually use a buffer of about 4-5 hours in the middle of the ride. This can compensate some delays, and if on time, it's nice to visit whatever city you are in.
[0] I heard that some Swedish trains are too slow for the express connections in Germany. The trains must take detours or stop every few hours to let the faster trains pass.
Getting a refund hardly matters if you miss an important event. A lot of us have to travel on tight schedules due to work and family commitments, and can't spare an extra 5 hours.
Traveling on tight schedules is always risky, whether you go by car, plane or train.
With that tight of a schedule, international flights will screw you fairly often too. That's just not enough slack for robustness.
With a flight, normally I can go directly from where I am to where I wish to be.
It's a single hop.
With a train, when I'm travelling across multiple countries, necessarily I will take multiple trains; which then brings the problem of missed connections.
The problem is that the distance to be covered is long, and the train is relatively slow.
I left early in the morning to get to Paris in time for the train, and that was the only train that day, and that train left early because it had a long way to go.
I'd trade reliably late over randomly cancelled any day.
If you get everything on one ticket (and sometimes not) you can usually simply take the next train, with or without proof of delay on your ticket.
Crossing multiple countries over a couple of days, I've never seen this as possibility.
Going from one country to another is normally one train company, from the origin country, and then moving on from that city - in another country - means a different company, from that second country, and so on.
That's exactly why Interrail[1] has existed for many years. I haven't used it in 10+ years and the webpage is a bit confusing, but generally you would just buy one ticket for e.g. a week and then get on/off wherever/whenever you want.
[1]: https://www.interrail.eu
You need seat reservations for most trains per my understanding. They're cheap and flexible so you're mostly right, but it's a little more involved than "get on whenever you want" unfortunately
It very much depends on the operator; Eurostar and SNCF requires very expensive seat reservations for all TGV services, but hardly any services in the German-speaking countries do so. More important than the price though is the availability - only a small proportion of seats are open to Interrailers on the French trains, so if they sell out you could find yourself unable to board a train that is still half-empty!
The situation in eastern Europe is more variable, but the reservations aren't generally as prohibitive as in France.
Ah, I thought ICE also required reservations but that's only the case if the train is otherwise booked out (source https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/72538/what-if-i-u...). For me, trains like TGV, ICE, and perhaps Nightjet make up the bulk of the distance to most places I go, so for me the reservations were pretty much required no matter where you go; apparently not really for ICE then!
If you've never seen it as a possibility, have you looked at OBB NightJet? Every one I've taken has been this way.
I keep seeing in reviews that people get woken up no matter what hour of night and have to present their documents for border checking, despite going between Schengen countries. Is that a guarantee whenever you cross a border or is this review bias? (Where annoyed customers are more likely to seek out where to leave a review, I mean.) Apparently you can't just leave the documents with the conductor because they need to check in the cabin for stowaways and match faces to pictures. I've only ever taken a Nightjet within Germany so I haven't experienced one myself
10+ years ago there were very few checks — the police would need a specific suspicion to carry out a check. I saw this once on a daytime train, when they checked three people who clearly matched a description, and arrested the third one! I've also seen this twice when disembarking a within-Schengen plane, with police on the jetbridge checking documents — until they find the person they want.
The neverending "refugee crisis" (the official reason several countries have introduced checks within the Schengen area) has allowed more frequent checks, but it seems fairly random whether or not they happen. Out of perhaps 10 overnight journeys, I've not been checked going south or east, but around half the time I've been checked going into Denmark from Germany.
It's so disruptive that I no longer take the overnight train into Denmark. You should prepare for it — put the passport in the mesh holder so you can just hand it over — but I find it difficult enough to sleep on a moving train anyway.
It's happened to me. The good news is they're unfazed if you present said documents in your underwear.
Seems to be certain borders. I've only been from Germany to Denmark twice and each time the Danish police decided to check everyone's passports. Denmark to Germany, Germany to Belgium, and Belgium to Germany, they didn't.
From Paris most of the operators for some distance are part of Railteam and will allow you to travel on the next available train given proof of delay. Of course eventually if you have a very long schedule with no slack then you would pass out of the Railteam area, but it's not like you're SoL after one delay and one country change.
> From Paris most of the operators for some distance are part of Railteam and will allow you to travel on the next available train given proof of delay.
But that does not help you much if every train for the day is already booked out.
Well, they'll get you on the next one that has any space, which is the same situation as flying. And trains are usually more frequent than planes.
This.
One big difference between train and plane is that, for planes, it takes me only a few clicks on one single website to book a multiple legs flight across most of the world, transparently using several companies and I dont have to carry my luggage around.
I rarely find the same for train.
Air travel is a mess but it is still much better integrated than train for long distance.
Unfortunately single tickets spanning multiple countries get increasingly rare. Still not too long ago you could by a ticket from any German station to London or Stockholm (or the other direction). In case you miss a connection you still have a ticket and you'll get some compensation (which could be more or less than the extra costs you had). But no longer, those are just not sold anymore.
So if you don't like the reverse gambling (no extra costs if you win, potentially several 100% extra if you lose) you should buy an Interrail pass (Eurail for those not living in Europe). It's often not cheaper than a single advance tickets, but it gives peace of mind that you still have a ticket if connections fail. (You should not try to heavily optimize pass days against schedules though, otherwise you have the same problem, your pass might run out before you are back where you need to be.)
I'm not sure what this has to do with American train travel, since it's all within one country (and, generally, one company). It reads as a rationale for why it couldn't work here, except that none of your issues apply to us.
> On one occasion I had two days of travel booked, and the very first train was an hour late, which led to a missed connection, and that was it - there was no way I could make my next train, and I lost some hundreds of euros of booked tickets and accommodation
This is one thing that Amtrak does well. I've read many accounts of people missing a connection and being put up in a nice hotel by Amtrak with meal vouchers and a shuttle to/from the station. Still it's not a good way to travel if you have a deadline, and it often costs an order of magnitude more than flying for long distances unless you're willing to spend multiple day/night cycles in coach.
Any given train company in Europe does the same.
The problems come when you travel is across multiple train companies.
That's not really relevant here in the USA though, Amtrak is the only game in town. Although if I had to do it in Europe I would probably buy trip insurance from an independent insurer that had a good reputation.
United Airlines did the same to me. Blamed late takeoff on bad weather, but weather was gorgeous that day in SW USA. Resulted in a number of rebookings as well. Was a business trip, so I thankfully did not bear the financial brunt.
Learned that United airlines is not to be trusted. Not viable, in your terms.
>Blamed late takeoff on bad weather, but weather was gorgeous that day in SW USA.
That's irrelevant: the weather was probably bad somewhere else, and that caused cascading delays that affected your flight.
In my (dated) experience with united, they have a fanstasy-land flight schedule they sell tickets for, then cancel flights that aren’t full “due to weather”, and rebook you on an inferior flight.
This way, they never have to pay people when they get bumped for overbooking.
Anyway, I haven’t done business with them for a decade for this exact reason. Maybe it’s different now.
I have over a million miles on United and flew them almost exclusively for over a decade with dozens of flights a year at peak. Not my experience FWIW.
Why would you or the purchaser be liable for rebooking costs that are due to canceled or delayed flights in the first place?
> Learned that United airlines is not to be trusted. Not viable, in your terms.
So what are we advising u/casenmgreen, travel by horse-drawn carriage? Anyone know whether those are viable means of transport for a time-boxed holiday?!
[dead]
I had largely the same experience.
As long as you're just traveling with one company it's usually fine - especially DB, you can usually just hop on the next train.
However with a journey spanning multiple companies you're out of luck... and with seat reservations on TGVs you commonly have to wait until the next day.
It's something that shouldn't be too hard to fix: Give passengers an easy and forgiving way to continue their journey (and make the causing company pay) - ideally this should automatically show up on the App and give the passenger options of new connections etc.
None of this fixes seat reservations on TGVs though, which are also annoying for offers like Interrail/Eurail... EU should probably start regulating seat reservations /s
Delays are only a problem when you put tight connection times. If you increase the buffer between railway companies/countries this is hardly a problem.
And train travel is not like plane, if you have to wait, say 4-5hours in a big city you can easily put your luggage in a locker and spend an enjoyable time in that city as the station is usually located in or near the city center and you aren't locked in a terminal nor do you have to account for extra time to pass security.
I have an upcoming transatlantic flight next week. Train is obviously not an option for this one but I will have to spend 4-5 hours at Paris CDG airport for a connection. I have to stay in the airport, pay an awful lot of money for any drink or food I and my family will need instead of visiting a monument/museum and have a nice lunch in the city...things you can do easily by just stepping out of a railway station.
I did Seattle-Chicago about ten years ago. 48 hours expected duration, and it arrived several hours late.
As a European used to efficient train travel, it was kind of surreal that not only was the passenger train very slow (maybe 1/3 of the speed I’m used to), but it also made long stops to make way for cargo traffic.
It felt like a bit of Wild West time travel to spend days on a train in the amazing landscapes. The food in the dining car was surprisingly good, but got boring by the third day.
Mine was over 12 hours late, as a passenger had to be airlifted off because of cardiac issues. Said passenger had been told not to fly, because of altitude issues, and hadn´t thought through the "mile high" aspect of transiting through Denver.
It is one of the most amazing train trips in the world, and tbh the article doesn´t really do it justice. The day the train spends slowly going up and down the rockies, are just incredible, the scenery is amazing, and you get to know other passengers and the conductors along the way. Had some great card games in the scenery car.
> had to be airlifted [...] had been told not to fly, because of altitude issues
I wonder how that worked out for them. Hopefully well!
Sounds weird. I checked Denver altitude and it is hardly air sickness territory.
You need to go significantly higher in the nearby mountains to actually feel the effects of elevation on your breathing, fatigue and brain.
> but it also made long stops to make way for cargo traffic.
This is a huge issue. Cargo trains legally have to yield to passenger trains, but in recent decades cargo trains have been made longer and longer, so they no longer physically fit into the passing sidings (which usually are built for 75 cars). It's a mess.
Cargo (freight) trains have to yield to on time passenger trains. There's a "hole" there in the freight traffic that the passenger train fits into. (It's not simple, because the passenger train is often faster than the freights, so it's a carefully planned, moving hole in the freight.) If the passenger train is late, all that careful orchestration is blown. The hole isn't there any more. The freight trains are not required to create a new hole - the late passenger train becomes just one more train.
Hmmm, but why are the passenger trains late in the first place?
On the train trip I took, it was because of an unruly passenger.
It turned a 9-hour trip into a 15-hour trip.
I'm quite positive freight just has right of way because of the rail ownership. Are you quite sure it is the other way round?
You’re incorrect.
https://www.amtrak.com/on-time-performance
> For over 50 years, freight railroads have been required by law to provide Amtrak with “preference” to run passenger trains ahead of freight trains.
The very next sentence is: "However, many freight railroads ignore the law because it is extremely difficult for Amtrak to enforce it, and as a result, people and the American economy suffer."
This entire page is an attempt by Amtrak to explain why the trains are always waiting for freight traffic. I've taken the train many times, and they yield to freight traffic for hours every trip.
I'm not sure I'd interpret "preference" to "right-of-way." Sounds like a much softer expectation, but could be wrong.
Amtrak is a joke either way. The train I took from Chicago to Las Vegas was over 24 hours late, hit a car, flattened the wheels in the emergency braking so they could only go about 20mph to the next station where they had to change out the entire train, then had a mechanical breakdown, and when we finally arrived they had lost our luggage.
And the DoJ hasn't been enforcing Amtrak's priority dispatch since the 1970s.
There's been a very recent attempt to change this. This was the first thing I found:
https://www.govexec.com/management/2024/08/justice-departmen...
> 48 hours expected duration, and it arrived several hours late. […] (maybe 1/3 of the speed I’m used to),
You are used to train journeys of more than 2800 km (more than the distance from Lisbon to Warsaw) with an average speed of over 170 km/h? Where can I find such an itinerary in Europe?
The Seattle-Chicago line is operated by a single company. Europe has dozens of national operators. So any direct comparison is of course difficult to make.
To travel 3000 km on a high-speed train, Japan and China certainly offer the opportunity. Beijing-Guangzhou is 2230 km and operates at 350 km/h.
Good luck finding a sleeper from either Portland or Seattle. They are booked 6 months out. In any other business, that would mean adding another few sleeper cars. But Amtrak doesn’t seem to care…
Amtrak loses money on basically all of their long distance routes, and are pointlessly forced to live up to some profitability standard the highways don’t and the airlines privatize (only possible due to the government paying out of pocket for all the complicated expensive stuff).
They have no incentive to add more sleepers, which would be a pain in the cock to procure, for a service that loses money. Amtrak should not be required to really care about that last part, but they are.
There are several room options for the SEA to CHI train leaving tomorrow, Monday Oct 28th, from $600 to $1100 depending on room size. Them. Being booked six months out might be a misperception or dated, it seemed easy to find.
Why would a train going further be expected to have a lower average speed? Isn't it normal for trains that go further to run if anything faster? 170km/h is a fairly normal average speed for a long-distance train in Europe running within a single country, which is what they were comparing to.
I rode Canada's VIA rail from Vancouver to Edmonton. Some poor Europeans sitting in the seat in front were freaking out when it became apparent the train was going be 10 hours late on what was billed as a 24 hour trip. They had a connecting flight to catch in Edmonton and missed it by several hours.
> As a European used to efficient train travel
As an European myself, try to do a train trip in south of Italy and then discover if it's efficient enough
Or in Germany where now about half of the rides are on time.
It's sad how bad it became, but when comparing to U.S. Germany is still doing fine. Both due to number of trains and in delays.
Additionally, for many kinds of journey the delays are rather unimportant as long as the frequency of service is high, which I think generally is the case in Germany. I can't see anyone being too fussed if their specific S-Bahn connection is early or late when there are still trains running on the same route every ten minutes.
I suspect that the most upset and vocal users of the Deutsche Bahn are the commuters who need to be at work at a specific time yet still travel ~100km or more on hourly RE/IC trains. In that situation it's frustrating to have to catch the train a whole hour earlier to be safe.
Yes and no and it highly depends where you live.
Here in Munich the S-Bahn trains typically go every 20 mins during the day and sometimes every 40 very early or late. So that's already a problem if you want to arrive for work and can't just start 30min earlier, the regional trains often go every hour as you mentioned.
So yeah, if you live where there's a subway or a bus then the 10min thing works, but just a tiny bit on the outskirts with only the S-Bahn it often sucks. I was very glad when I moved from "need to take S-Bahn or bus to work, or to the subway" to "walk or bus to subway" neighborhood, even if it's roughly the same distance to the city center, and both decidedly IN the city, not the outskirts.
The Balkans are also a great place to experience efficient train travel :)
You know Mussolini was actually pretty progressive on this. He was the first in Europe to introduce green biofuels to public transportation by way of a unique spice based process.
The trains ran on thyme.
And then the railroad network kind of stagnated for 50 years. the fast speed trains ("Alta velocità") are only available in the North.
In the South you have thoughts and prayers. A trip Bari<>Milano (900km) is mostly around 8-9 hours, going further south elongates the journey incredibly.
I did Chicago-SF on the Zephyr about 20 years ago. It was a nightmare disaster of a trip. Nearly all our movement was at night due to cargo scheduling. We ended up arriving over 48 hours late.
To Amtrak's credit - we complained and they refunded our entire journey.
Is a big problem for passenger trains in the US, freight has priority. Creates these long stops. Worse, if a passenger train is late, then suddenly it has to wait for a large unexpected and unplanned number of freight trains.
> As a European used to efficient train travel, it was kind of surreal that not only was the passenger train very slow (maybe 1/3 of the speed I’m used to), but it also made long stops to make way for cargo traffic.
See recent video "I Spent Over 12 Hours on an Amtrak Train (on purpose)":
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPcuL2S2dgk
USA is a rather big country, coast to coast travel is going to take a good amount of time compared to travel times between major European cities
The Seattle-Chicago train operates at an average speed of 50 mph, so 80 km/h.
Passenger trains between major cities in Europe are in the 200-280 km/h range.
The problem isn’t the big country, it’s the slow trains (that even get deprioritized after cargo, to add insult to the injury).
To be fair, Europe also kind of sucks at long distance trains. If you want to go the same distance as Seattle-Chicago in Europe by train (say Lisbon-Warszawa or Rome-Northern Sweden) you're often looking at 40-50 hours, mainly due to having to make 5-7 connections.
That, and train tickets are a nightmare, unless you don’t care about the price.
The ÖBB NightJet is surprisingly cheap, e.g. I payed 59€ for Berlin - Vienna in a sleeper coach
As long as you are just going between two cities with a direct train line it's trivial. The problem is if you are trying to take a train between two cities without a direct train line, like if you wanted to go from Berlin to for example Lisbon instead of Vienna.
Exactly, that’s an organizational nightmare and you just don’t know where you end up stuck.
Which is obvious because they are different countries? And, also tourists select specific countries to visit so your "use case" is very rare.
Edit
Rare = majority of tourists in Europe go to specific cities and countries. There are trips between countries but it is rare to go around ALL Europe by train. Trains are significantly more expensive that flights.
Not arguing against your "majority" characterization, it's certainly true, but throwing out there that my wife and I travelled by train:
I think I have the order right? And all of that cost something under $500 each.If continental Europeans want to visit another distant European country, that's a rare use case? Or are you only referring to e.g. US tourists visiting Europe?
Take a flight, much cheaper.
Trains are significantly more expensive that flights
Unless you actually want to travel around ALL of Europe (or even all around a few countries in Europe), in which case trains get cheaper again, thanks to things like the interrail ticket.
That's true, and it requires more planning and available time.
I'd like to add a perspective on the contrast between Europe and the U.S. in this context. Having partially lived in both regions (across various European countries, though my main base is Buenos Aires, Argentina), one of the things that bothers me most about the U.S. is the car-centric culture. It feels almost artificial in 2024, as if it’s been taken to an extreme (I say this with a grain of salt). I don’t intend to start a flame war, but it’s surprising to me that in many areas where a 45-minute walk would be natural, there are no pedestrian paths. I’m not suggesting that cities like Los Angeles should be entirely pedestrian-friendly, but there are places where basic walkability is neglected, despite the infrastructure being suitable.
What I want to convey is that it's difficult to compare both regions' approaches to moving, and say that the article is amazing!
A large part of this is that ~no Americans would ever consider a 45-minute walk "natural".
I'm not sure a 30-45 minute walk in cities like NYC, Boston, SF, etc. is considered all that rare. And while that length of walk is probably not someone in the average suburb is doing on local roads, plenty of people will go walk a few miles in a forest or park. Certainly not everyone but also not ~no based on what I see out and about.
Is it rare because it’s painful, or painful because it’s rare?
A lot of the former, which then makes it habit and also the latter too.
Not at all rare. I used to make somewhat regular business trips by train from Prague to Berlin.
But that’s not very far - there are multiple services on this route and the trip takes just 4h
Yeah, I admit it’s not a great example.
You =/> major tourists [1].
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/487572/leading-european-....
> Which is obvious because they are different countries?
1980 called and wants your attitude back.
Distance is also a factor. I see train timings listed for Madrid to Berlin to be more than 24 hours.
> Passenger trains between major cities in Europe are in the 200-300 km/h range.
I don't know which country exactly you mean, I live in central Europe (Slovenia) and no train goes over 200 km/h, most go 60-80 km/h.
Also, every time I'm at the train station in Ljubljana (Slovenia's capital), there's an announcement about the train from Budapest being ~40min late. And it's a way shittier looking train than the local commute ones going 60.
French high speed trains are fast, for instance the average speed of the train on the Paris-Strasbourg section (~400km in length) is 250km/h. This is the global average speed, so it is even faster on the high-speed section, going at around 320km/h. I often take this train, which is very convenient.
To emphasize just how fast this is in comparison to regular rail:
When I was visiting France some years back and took the TER train on the way from Paris to Strasbourg (300mi / 500km), and that crawled. On the way back, we took the TGV, which flew.
If you look at booking tickets on SNCF's website, the difference is stark: about 5 hours via the TER, versus a little under 2 hours via the TGV. (From that perspective, it's a little funny to describe the TER as crawling, seeing as that's not meaningfully different from driving that distance.)
There are some portions of Amtrak that have comparable max speeds (notably, the Acela) but even then, the average speeds on those routes are nowhere near 200km/h.
I took the TER from Strasbourg to Paris just weeks ago (just 2 3rds of the distance for me because I was not in Strasbourg). It travels well over 100 km/h all the time and it makes only a few stops. That is only half or even less of the TGVs' speed, but still faster than by car. Definitely not crawling.
As I mentioned -- it's not actually slow in absolute terms! The experience is lodged in my mind because it took so much more time than the reverse trip, and it was sweltering to be stuck on a train with inadequate air conditioning on a rather hot summer day.
There are of course many benefits to taking even the TER over driving the equivalent distance: you don't have to be laser-focused on driving (especially in a foreign country where you might not speak / read the language or necessarily know the rules of the road), you don't have variation in travel times due to traffic (which, by driving, you would only contribute to), reduced per-passenger emissions, and so forth.
Some information online indicates that the non high speed train takes about 20 mins more than the high speed train on that route. It does not seem a huge time difference
The connection that takes 20min longer has two additional stops (the fast connection is a direct one) but it is still served by TGV or ICE trains, like the direct connection.
The distance between Paris and Strasbourg is >400km, so even the "slow" connection has an average speed of ~200 km/h. The actual regional train connection (TER) takes nearly 5 hours with plenty of stops in between. Slightly faster non-regional but non-TGV connections only exist on lines that are not served by TGVs.
This reminds me of Voyager buses in Ontario during the 80s/90s. They had two routes between Ottawa and Toronto.
One took maybe 6 hours. The other 12+ or some such. The 12+ hour took almost the same route, but stopped at every. single. town.
Woe to the person wanting to go from Ottawa to Toronto, and buying the wrong ticket. This is pre-Internet so research was less common and easy, and if you have no idea it could matter...
I recall this being named the "milk run".
See https://openrailwaymap.org/ and choose "Max speeds".
Much of Western Europe has yellow, orange, red and purple lines, i.e. lines over 200km/h.
Parts of Central and Eastern Europe do not, as you say.
Most Western European countries have networks of 300km/h trains; assume that’s what they’re referring to.
New York to San Francisco is roughly 3000 miles (4800 km). At 250km/h, that’s a 19 hour trip.
A 19 hour plane trip from New York gets you to Singapore.
Fast trains are great for journeys up to about 600km. For crossing continents, planes win, whether rail enthusiasts like it or not, and a future of transport that involves “just don’t fly” as the only solution to climate change is an absolute nonstarter in most of the world.
Not a single serious person I'm aware of has proposed
Any solution would require multiple strategies in tandem to increase efficiencies, reduce unnecessary energy expenditures, reduce GG emmissions, transition to non FF sources, and reduce existing GG in the atmosphere.It's a daunting task and one that may be impossible to achieve.
Depends on your definition of “serious”.
You see a lot of “just take the train” in centrist and left-leaning British media (example provided below).
Easy to imagine in the UK. Not so easy from, say, Perth, Western Australia.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200218-climate-change-h...
Is it really a mystery that long routes with less expected users see less investment?
Or do you expect that fast trains would unlock a lot of travel between Chicago and Seattle?
Wait until you find out how fast passenger jets are.
That’s all very well if you’re going thousands of km. For a plane journey that takes less than 3 hours, though, the train may still win, because the train doesn’t involve… airports. No getting to the airport, security, hanging around because the train is inexplicably an hour late (trains are sometimes late, but even in the worst systems not on the scale/frequency of plane lateness), no half-hour spent boarding the train, no taxi-ing, no sitting around for 20 minutes at the end while they get around to opening the train door, no walking through a km worth of airport.
Sure, but… cities in the USA are thousands of km. Seattle to Chicago (the example given by the GP) are 2800 km distant. Those cities are slightly more distant than Lisbon and Warsaw. Chicago to Washington DC is almost the exact distance as London to Marseille (1000 km). Chicago to Houston, Texas is the same distance as London to Rome.
To go back to the first example, Seattle to Chicago is a 4 hour (scheduled, which already includes taxi time at both ends and a buffer for late departures) plane ride. Even a TGV running continuously at top speed (320km/h), with no stops, would take 8.5 hours to complete the same journey. Wikipedia tells me that the fastest start-to-end scheduled speed of a TGV is only 280 km/h, which would take over 10 hours.
Chicago to DC is about the break-even distance for high-speed-rail vs. flying. That's already pretty darn good, and it would eliminate a lot of flying.
I am so often boggled at how crappy air travel is now.
Used to be, decades ago, just show up and go to the plane like it was a bus. Some dude would take your luggage and throw it into the cargo hold.
You'd be boarded and gone in 15.
When landed, they'd open then cargo hold and hand out luggage.
I had this experience in a transfer to a prop plane in Mexico. Fast, easy, quick.
Unfortunately, the monetary and political interests in security theater became entrenched after 9/11. I'm afraid something similar might happen to trains eventually, if they're ever used in a sufficiently theatrical instance of violence. I'm enjoying the ease of access while it lasts.
This is sadly too true for the Channel Tunnel railway linking Britain with France. The post-Brexit border security easily takes in excess of half an hour as several hundred passengers shuffle single-file through the scanners. Although it is still marginally faster than flying for me due to my distance from an airport (as well as Britain's underdeveloped domestic aviation sector in general) the time spent at the station usually exceeds my actual journey now.
What's most stupid about security for rail passengers is that the original fear from 9/11 doesn't even apply - you can't hijack a train and crash it into a skyscraper!
The security scanners were always there for the Channel Tunnel, though the check is much less intensive than for air travel. They are looking for bombs, gas canisters, guns and maybe large knives.
London had terrorist attacks from the IRA long before 9/11, including attacks on the transport network. There were 13 in 1991, of which 4 were on trains or at stations.
The new delays are for the passport checks. What used to be ~10 seconds for each EU citizen — is the passport/ID card valid and does the face match? — is now 60+ seconds for British people entering the EU, as the official must check they haven't stayed more than 90 days in the last 180 etc.
See Spain since 2004. Though it's still only a minor inconvenience compared to air travel.
I read with some horror a article on the California High Speed Rail where they were talking about of course using the TSA for 'security'
Hint when they ran a BART feeder to SFO the first thing the TSA did was start patrolling BART with drug dogs and arresting people for having pot.
That prop plane isn't doing SEA->CHI in 4 hours. It probably isn't doing it all in a single hop.
So? If you look at older movies, you can see people boarding large jets the same way.
Yes. I flew 707s etc. before jet bridges. And even after they became common in the US except for smaller very regional planes, it took quite a while longer for them to become common at some, even larger, international airports.
Wait until you find out how quickly you can board and exit a train at a station that’s right in the center of the city, versus traveling to an airport, going through security, waiting to board, and then waiting some more for the plane to hopefully get its take-off slot from air control.
You can get from London to Paris by train in less time than it takes to go from Manhattan to boarding a plane at JFK.
Ah yes, the fake line of argument that for airplanes you have to drive an hour to get to the airport two hours before your flight, while in the case of trains, a powerful genie comes into your house, packs your suitcase and whisks you away in his powerful arms directly to your seat on the train 13.21 seconds prior to departure.
It's BS. In existing cities, train stations are just as hard to build in the city center as airports -- neither happens. You do not in fact need to get to airports hours in advance, and security theater in airports is still excruciating, but you can get PreCheck or Clear and cut the time way down. There is some time advantage to boarding trains, but it's on the order of 20-40 minutes, not hours.
Paris and London are only 213 miles apart! It's about 2/3rds the distance that SF is from LA, much less say SF to Seattle or NYC to Chicago. Rail travel works great in Europe because distances are small, density is high, and the cities grew up centered around rail infrastructure.
In existing cities, train stations are just as hard to build in the city center as airports -- neither happens
only in countries where they neglected building train stations before the cities grew to todays sizes. but even then it's not true. US cities are less dense, so it should be easier to find space. train stations are also much much smaller than airports and trains don't make as much noise as airplanes. there are many more reasons not to build airports in the middle of a city, none of which apply to trains.
the main problem for trains is finding a route for the track into the city. that can be and is solved with tunnels though. or the chinese approach where the high speed trainstations are sometimes built away from the center of the city and instead the center is connected by a dense network of subway lines. a process that started less than 20 years ago but now puts many chinese cities at the top of the list of the largest subway networks in the world.
So you're saying first we should invent time travel. Sounds practical!
If you want to build a transit hub outside the city center and link it via subway, that's no easier or more convenient for a train station than for an airport.
London built several new stations in the centre of the city within the last few years, for the new Elizabeth Line.
London Bridge, a major station, was rebuilt.
Euston Station has a planned large expansion.
It's impossible to build an airport in a city centre.
Not in a city center perhaps but Boston Logan is pretty close and London City isn't bad either.
The "big country" contributes in that passenger-only high speed rail would be ruinously expensive to lay down and maintain. Long distance passenger rail exists at all in the US only because it can share track with freight rail.
Yes, but we don't need a train to replace NY-to-LA. At least not right away.
What we need are high speed trains between nearby city pairs. Short-haul flights both waste fuel, don't get up to speed, and have their travel times doubled by TSA security theater and airline boarding nonsense. A Shinkansen-spec high speed train (320kph/200mph) would beat the plane on 200-400 mile trips, both in terms of convenience, carbon emissions, and luxury.
The 2,785 road miles between NY and LA would be 14 rail hours compared to the six a plane takes. Not competitive in the slightest, and not a serious mode of travel, but I'd consider it. The three days the train currently takes sounds like the worst of a road trip combined with the worst of a plane trip.
I've taken the California zephyr a few times over the last few years and it's a phenomenal experience. I'm hoping to do the Chicago-San Francisco trip in the coming years.
My fear is that some influencer/personality is going to start posting about the train system, and then it's going to become a crowded mess :P It feels a bit like a well kept secret right now. I think one of the things that makes it so enjoyable is that it's so uncrowded most of the time. I almost always get two seats to myself every time I take it (in coach). And there's somehow always a table available in the observation car whenever I decide to go there. Or you sit with someone and make a new friend :P
Would highly recommend!
I've taken the family on the California Zephyr a few times — Emeryville to Omaha. On one trip when the (three) girls were older and we had a foreign exchange student the wife and I gave them their own sleeper cab.
Riding the train when I was I young was a memorable experience. I wondered if it would even be around when my daughters were older so wanted to give them that experience too.
We enjoy it every time.
As far as influencers, I love this guy on YouTube that has done a lot of train travel videos: https://www.youtube.com/@DownieLive
I live next to Denver Union Station and coincidentally I took the California Zephyr for the first time yesterday (Saturday). I wanted to experience the train going up into the Rockies and back. I was surprised that seats were assigned; I got an aisle seat. I could mostly catch the scenery anyway, but that was a downside. They were passing out tickets to give more people a turn in the observation car, but they weren't switching until after I was scheduled to get off. I went up to Granby, CO and back. It was a beautiful day (maybe the last one for the season?). Friday, near Oakland, the train that was taking me back was stuck waiting for a bridge malfunction, so it was 4 hours behind. By the time it got to Granby, it was supposed to be 2.5 hours late, but as the day went on the timeline got pushed back until it was 3.5 hours late. It picked me up as it was getting dark after sunset, and the ride back was in the dark. The trip was amazing and disappointing at the same time.
Wow, that's really unfortunate. As I just wrote in a top-level comment, Denver to Salt Lake is definitely the highlight. You get to be up high above some of those creeks and passes where the road doesn't go. I hope you're able to try again in the future and sit in the panorama car.
There are a lot of transit focused “creators” already documenting their trips - the one I tend to follow on YouTube is Miles in Transit but he often intersects with other creators as well
It's less the transit creators I'm worried about, since that's pretty niche. It's if a general influencer starts sharing aesthetics of train travel on eg Instagram which I think would cause its usage to boom.
I understand where you're coming from, but in the long run it'd be a great thing to see this kind of boom in the U.S. If only a tiny fraction of the gobs of cash that are being shoveled into political ads right now were going to some of these influencers to promote train travel instead...
Though most people really aren't in a position to take the train instead of flying for anything other than a vacation. Good luck with your 4x expense account for taking an extra day to travel from NYC to Chicago--much less anything further.
What you're missing is that it's a chicken-or-egg problem.
Trains have been all over social media forever. The only reason they aren’t packed is because the logistics of taking an Amtrak long distance are miserable.
The zephyr is a destination, not a mode of travel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SfPyg-mGhU
When we both have enough time off (and can get a cat sitter for long enough), my wife and I like to make the 1200 mile (1900 km) trip to visit family by Amtrak. A couple of times that we've done it a single roomette has been price-competitive with flying, especially if you factor in the cost of the free meals and drinks. And at worst, the roomette was about $200 more total cost than flying.
Sure, it takes four times longer, but it is about 20 times more comfortable.
My daughter recently moved to Vancouver. I was in Seattle for a work trip so decided to take Amtrak to visit her for the weekend. This was my first real train travel. Overall, it was pretty good and probably is what I will do in the future in the same situation.
The train moved at a frustratingly slow speed (< 10 mph) for probably 30% of the trip, but aside from that I liked the more relaxed atmosphere of the travel and it was overall more comfortable.
The train itself was a bit bumpier than I expected and the wifi was not very good. Those things and the slow speed would mean I could not imagine taking a much longer trip than this one. With the extra time and hassle of dealing with an airport, this one balanced out as probably only being slightly slower travel but it was less expensive and more relaxed. If it were Seattle to San Francisco, as an example, the slowness would be too much for me. The comfort and amenities like wifi and food would have to be a lot better than they are.
I take the Cascades from Vancouver-Seattle semi-frequently for work. On the US side it can run decently fast, but the Canadian side is very slow and if you’re unlucky you can end up waiting for marine traffic at the Fraser river swing bridge for some time.
Still my preferred way to do the trip if the timing works as I can get stuff done whilst on the train. The WiFi is pretty bad - but if you have a cell plan that covers the US and Canada you’ll have coverage for all of the Canadian side, and a decent amount of the US side.
It's amazing to me that someone can be around 50 years old and on a train for the first time.
But others might be amazed that I'm around 40 years old and have never owned a car.
If someone in the US hasn't been in a position to take commuter rail with any frequency in a relatively small number of places--or maybe take Amtrak on the Northeast Corridor sometimes--it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest that someone would never have been on anything beyond light rail (if that).
The last time I took the Amtrak in California was 4-5 years ago- the toilet was filled with and overflowing with feces and menstrual blood- the tables were covered in trash and of course just like in these photos the trains were cutting edge crumbling/dirty 1980's models.
I started throwing the trash in the bins and an Amtrak staffer came through and told me "You don't have to do that- that's someone else's job" Someone else was nowhere to be found though.
I took the Amtrak several times from southern to northern California and it was always just bearable.
The train experience in the USA is pathetic and depressing.
I have since moved to a "poor" country in Western Europe and the train experience here is MUCH MUCH better than Amtrak in the states as is most everything else.
Am I the only one who finds it surreal to see long distance trains in the US? Don’t get me wrong - I know they exist. It’s just that I feel like they never get depicted anywhere in the media. I also don’t think I know a single American who has gone to another US city by train.
Media depictions are a hugely underrated aspect of public transport perception.
In japanese and korean media (my experience is with a ton of anime and k dramas, more in the former than the latter though) trains are very common casual and serious backdrops for a variety of scenes, either within the train, at the station, or just a train passing by on the bridge in the background.
In Hollywood/American TV, it's always cars, with the occasional airport/plane. It riles me up quite unreasonably that shows/movies set in New York fuckin city with 24-7 subway service, and characters are shown trying to catch a cab in Manhattan in the middle of the night to go 20 blocks away. At least Marvelous Mrs. Maisel acknowledged this directly as a class thing for some characters and other characters took the train, but most movies just assume the American viewer cannot relate to someone using the subway.
As someone both born and raised in Long Island and raised on lots of Japanese media, it seemed perfectly normal to see lots of people taking the subway. Granted, Long Island is still car dependent suburbia, but it at least made sense to me that if you were going into "the city", you took LIRR and the subway. So Japanese media depicting public transit or walking mentally registered in the same headspace as Manhattan.
I moved out of NY almost a decade ago, but car-centric America still feels more foreign to me than Tokyo does. On LI, if my family had to drive off the island, we treated it like Europeans treat driving to a foreign country. In SLC, it's entirely common for people to spend 10+ hours on the road as if it were nothing. Hell, I've done it myself. Still feels weird.
> In Hollywood/American TV, it's always cars, with the occasional airport/plane.
Except for the movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Classic:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planes,_Trains_and_Automobiles
Yeah, people in “Friends” never took the subway which is just weird.
Of course it’s because these shows are shot in LA, and they have Manhattan street sets built and ready in Hollywood studio lot, but no subway set.
It's almost certainly less to do with location scouting and production design, and more about perceived biases. If studio executives think American audiences can't relate to trains or subways because they're less commonly used in real-life, we're going to see fewer of them on the screen. There's probably a cultural blind spot at play there, too; if writers don't ride trains--or even perceive them--very often, they're far less likely to write about them. It's a vicious circle.
As for locations, a quick Google search found a genuine New York City R17 subway car[0] that can be rented out in LA. The Sierra Northern Railway--a freight carrier in California--has rented out[1] its rolling stock, facilities, and tracks to film productions for nearly a century. They've got quite the roster, spanning multiple eras. There's also Amtrak, the various local/regional metro systems, other rental companies, and even private collectors if they need something specific.
As for stations, that's even easier. Various urban backlots have underground subway station entrances[2] where you could characters exiting the station. Or the station platform itself is just a long room; you don't have to show the actual tracks, or you could composite in a train moving across the frame, etc. Plenty of permanent sets can play that role. Set designers do far more with less all the time. Hell, you can just reference it off-screen for a sitcom. That's a huge chunk of Seinfeld (or any sitcom). Shit happens, everyone reacts...often poorly, with hilarious results.
0. https://www.thevillaserena.com/subway-car-standing-set.asp
1. https://movierailroad.com/
2. https://www.alamy.com/subway-entrance-in-the-soho-set-area-b...
Well, they also have huge apartments which--like many/most urban TV sitcom characters--are pretty much totally incompatible with where they could actually afford to live.
A subway set is probably expensive, especially if you want a working train.
Almost everything set in London uses either the disused Aldwych Station on the Piccadilly Line, the disused Charing Cross station on the Jubilee Line, or the Waterloo and City line at weekends when it is normally closed — sometimes even when the setting ought to be a much larger train and style of station elsewhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldwych_tube_station#Use_in_me...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charing_Cross_tube_station#Use...
https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/filming-and-photography/fi...
Seinfeld was also filmed in LA, but I recall at least one episode where they took the subway.
The TV Guide episode with the cigar Indian?
Yes that’s the one, where Kramer stops to get a gyro.
There is also an infamous episode where they are playing Risk on the subway.
a gyros*
Yeah, the technical aspects of the subway shots in Seinfeld are interesting, and really give a sense of how hard everybody worked to make that show what it was.
The first scenes to take place in a subway (to my knowledge, anyway) were in the 30th episode, which was called "The Subway". And indeed, most of the episode takes place in a subway.
The subway set for this show was rented from Warner Brothers and was sent to the Seinfeld lot in several pieces on trucks. It was apparently a huge PITA and presented a lot of technical limitations.
They assembled it on springs and had a bunch of crew shake the car to simulate movement. They had to light it using stage lights, manually simulate the mechanical opening of the doors, etc. And it was apparently difficult to do anything but a closeup without it looking fake.
They redecorated it for each of the different subways that it was used to depict (in the episode, different characters are simultaneously taking different subways to different places).
After the episode, the set was disassembled and placed back on the truck to send back to WB, but the truck driver went under a low underpass, which the set struck and was destroyed. As a result, Tom Azzari, Seinfeld's Production Designer, led a small team within the show to design, engineer, and build an entirely new subway set, fixing all the technical problems while they were fresh in the team's memory. They even got actual subway light fixtures and pneumatic doors. This set was used for the remainder of the show, and went on to be used in other shows and films as well.
(There are a few interviews about this process on the Seinfeld DVD extras, Season 03 "Inside Looks")
That’s fascinating, thanks for sharing.
Chandler did however take a train to Poughkeepsie
Earlier this month I took a train Washington to New York, plenty of people on that.
I then went down to Miami, train was fairly full - not many stayed on the entire trip but I wouldn’t expect them to, they got off at various stations along the way. Everyone I head in the dining car was American.
When I visited New York (from the UK) last year I took trains up to Connecticut and Rhode Island. I was surprised at how regular and comfortable the trains were given the US's reputation for passenger rail. I saw that you could go south as well. Is it just that the each coast is particularly well connected compared to the rest of the country?
It's that the East Coast is particularly dense compared to the rest of the country, and has a lot of walkable cities.
So you can take a train to New York, or DC, or a number of lesser cities, and not need a car when you arrive.
Well I got an Uber from my office to Union station, as the metro in DC isn’t great. Obviously no need for an Uber in New York as I could get the subway.
Had I flown to Miami I’d still need a taxi to my hotel, just like I did from the train station. I don’t get that argument.
The DC metro isn’t great? Blasphemy! You can get most of the interesting places (including Union Station and both airports) without a car.
(unless you’re in one of the dead zones, I suppose. No metro in Georgetown.)
Yeah it takes as long to walk to a metro station from my office as it does to sit in the Uber to get to Union.
~Every airport in America has rental cars; basically no train station does.
Why not? Maybe a vicious cycle of insufficient demand.
There are three rental car locations close to Copenhagen Central Station. (Not within it, but within the distance you'd walk around an airport terminal.)
Miami station has car rental, I haven't checked any others.
Damned if I know; best guess would be a consequence of (a) in decently busy cities train stations tend to be in dense areas where it's not economical to stick a car rental, where airports tend to have some acreage around them where you can stick a rental lot and (b) small towns only get a few trains a day and fewer non-residents detraining, so it's neither worth keeping a rental office open just for the train station or even considering its location, since the fraction of rentals from the train station is small compared to eg people getting a rental while their car is in the shop.
Miami has a particularly poor placement for its Amtrak station
The US actually has a handful of pretty nice passenger rail corridors, with decent schedules and nice trains. Washington DC to Boston is one such corridor. Portland to Vancouver is another one I've taken that also worked pretty well.
The with respect to Amtrak, shorter line trains on the east coast and CA capital corridor these trains are commuter trains and often have more ownership/priority on the rails so they are more frequent and punctual. If you took metro north, it’s a pretty extensive commuter line as well.
Growing up on the east coast (VA), quite a few people I knew took the train between cities.
Usually it’d be for going into DC for the weekend to party, or up to Baltimore or something. Certainly not uncommon.
> a single American
Hi there, nice to meet you! I've take the train:
It’s so funny that this all came up today, last night my partner showed me the episode of Sex and the City where Carrie and Sam travel from NYC to San Francisco by train, though it’s mostly depicted as being an annoying hassle (imo their expectations of what train travel would be like were too high).
That's the one where Carrie complains about the fact the shower at the toilet are above each other.
I take the train several times a month to different cities in the US
You've obviously never watched a Hallmark Christmas movie. Train travel is pretty much the norm in that world :)
What about long distance bus travel? Is is possible to go coast to coast on a bus?
I've done it, or at least several long sections. I found that I met more interesting people on long distance buses than Amtrak and VIA. Younger people, more diverse, less moneyed. But the experience is much less comfortable, and the places they drop you to get food are utterly abysmal. My best memory was pulling over at some rest stop in who knows where and everyone is grabbing fast food trash because that's all there is, and I noticed some vegetables on the counter in the gas station, asked about them and the guy says they were free, dropped off by a local farmer. So I got some fresh tomatoes and they tasted glorious after days of stale motel bagels and Burger King.
Another awkward thing about bus travel in the US in particular is if you get off anywhere that isn't a major city, you're often stuck on the edge of a highway miles away from any accommodation that might be available in the town the bus is supposedly servicing. Most people get picked up by friends with cars to get where they're actually going, so if you hitch your pack and walk to town you really are gonna look like a hobo.
To be honest, if where you're going is on the train line, the train is better in almost every way. Much more comfortable, nicer views, somewhat better food, sometimes (but not always) more convenient stops. But there's a lot of Turtle Island the trains don't go and you'd miss so much if you didn't take the bus. Unfortunately even bus service is getting rarer. I remember wanting to visit a town of around 25,000 people and was shocked to discover there was no way to get there at all. I would have had to walk 20km from the closest Greyhound stop, which is absurd. I emailed a local museum and the curator offered me a lift back and forth, which was kind, but holy heck. Imagine being a kid stuck in a place like that! Just bananas.
Subtitling for the non-americans (things I had to look up):
- Amtrak: "national passenger railroad company of the United States" "receives a combination of state and federal subsidies but is managed as a for-profit organization"
- VIA: Canadian rail operator (and a ton of other things, but this is my best guess)
- Turtle Island: "a name for Earth or North America" (heh)
- Greyhound stop: greyhound is a bus company
- hobo: poor person traveling by train hopping. (My dutch brain wanted to read it as "hol-bewoner", cave-dweller, since the word stress works out to emphasize the same sounds and given the context of perhaps arriving disheveled or so, but good that I looked up the right connotation)
Amusingly, I am also non-American, although I have lived and traveled there quite a bit.
I use Turtle Island as a shorthand for "the US and Canada", since it is/was a term used by indigenous peoples who lived in the area that's now split by that border. It feels a bit less inaccurate to me than saying "North America" when you are not including Mexico.
You’d probably spend a lot of time sleeping overnight in a bus station waiting for a bus for the next leg of your journey. Coast to coast by bus sounds miserable.
Certainly does sound miserable - worse than in a seat on amtrak, let alone a roomette or bedroom.
However you can take the 1310 from LA to Phoenix, then half an hour wait before the 2245 to St Louis, and a 1h25 wait at 0720 for a St Louis to New York.
66 hours with 64 hours on the actual bus, miserable for both you and your fellow passengers.
In 1981, I spent two weeks on Greyhound buses, traversing the entire country. I only had 1 night off the bus, visiting a hero of mine in Albuquerque.
It wasn't that miserable, but it was sort of miserable. And I was 17/18.
This assumes there will be no delays. In my experience, that probably won't be the case.
I did it in 2006. I stayed at hostels in different cities and it was a three week trip. It was fun
I was thinking that making a trip of it and taking your time and doing it slowly would probably be the only way to make it enjoyable. As a utilitarian means of travel though, miserable.
The comfort of bus travel is way inferior to train travel!
1) More leg space
2) Depending on train you have a small desk so laptop work is possible and comfortable
3) I don't get travel sick on trains while working
4) Toilets are large, many
5) Bar/restaurant on board?
6) On-off boarding usually happens in city center
(From personal experience, not in U.S.)
Due to having to sit up?
One can also book seats in night trains -- which I've never understood, btw. That only seems logical as a last resort when you need to be somewhere but got no money to get there, when you're planning to sleep the day away at your destination, or enjoy the prisoner's dilemma where you hope the potential co-passenger decides not to "defect" (buy a ticket) such that the seat next to you is free and you can lay down and sleep at night. But anyway, more on topic, I am wondering if the laying down is what you mean or something else in addition
The seats on long distance Amtrak trains are not at all like you're imagining.
Think of them as more like a lounger/recliner. Not the most comfortable you'll ever sit in, but it's reasonably easy to sleep them in, and even more so if you're young. Someone next to you matters only if they snore or smell.
It's possible, but IME, people really do not exaggerate when they say it's bad. It's bad. I don't consider myself a super pampered traveler - I fly budget airlines, I take overnight layovers, I've slept in Amtrak coach - but Greyhound (which, AFAIK, is pretty much the main long-distance bus service in the US, outside of a few regional lines) is the bottom of the barrel. There are some fine Greyhound routes, I'd say on average they'll usually work as expected and get you to your destination. They're often even comfortable. But they fail often and when they do, they fail HARD.
The most annoying normal, happy-path thing for long-distance travel on Greyhounds is the periodic stops for driver changes. They happen without warning - it doesn't appear as a layover when booking, it seems like a normal stop right up until you get to it, when all of a sudden everyone is asked to get off the bus for an hour or so. You have to decide at the start what stuff you want to take, because you won't be let back on the bus in that hour. During that hour, you'll wait in the bus station, which is pretty much always a run-down, filthy building in an awful part of town. There might be a store if you're lucky; there will at least be a vending machine and a (nasty) bathroom. I don't know if they do these stops overnight, but I have had them happen pretty late when I was trying to sleep.
And yeah, that's just a bit of an annoyance - under normal operation. If something goes wrong? That's the really great part - Greyhound has effectively zero customer support. As far as I can tell (or as far as they make it seem), no customer-facing employee actually has the power to do anything, or any special visibility into the system. The agent in the station, if there is one, will refuse pretty much any question and just tell you to call the customer support number. Once, at one of those driver-change stops, the new driver just... didn't show up? The station agent refused to talk to anyone beyond periodic updates every few hours (which were little more than "the driver might be here by X time", as X kept increasing) and yelled at people to call the customer support line, who also seemed to have zero idea what was going on - and of course, you guessed it - told us to talk to the station agent. It's kind of beautiful, in a Kafkaesque, Catch-22 kind of way, if you ignore all the human suffering it inflicts upon its riders, who are generally the poorest people in society.
A new driver did eventually show, after ten hours of overnight waiting for what should have been a one-hour stop. Obviously, everyone missed their connections, but thankfully at the next major station, the agent helped us out- just kidding, she told all of us to call the customer service number. (I'm still mind-boggled by what the actual purpose is of a station agent if not to rebook people.) Based on some of the interactions we had, I suspect the customer service agent just sees the exact same "change your ticket" UI you do from the booking website. And obviously, as far as I know, nobody got any sort of voucher or refund; nobody was put up in a hotel.
A different time, I had my luggage go missing from the cargo area from under the bus. The driver told me it might have mistakenly been offloaded at an earlier station (cool. thanks.) and told me to talk to the agent inside. You can probably guess what the agent told me to do.
And there's all the issues the others mentioned - mainly the thing with them closing their actual station buildings and just picking up and dropping people off on the roadside or at random gas stations.
I didn't mean for this post to be this long, but it truly kind of depresses and amazes me how bad of a system it is. It is falling apart at almost all levels. People talk badly about Amtrak, but as mentioned elsewhere, they'll at least put you in a hotel if you miss a major connection. Budget airlines are uncomfortable but at least have actual gate agents, and even the worst airport is vastly cleaner and more comfortable your average Greyhound building.
There are some redeeming factors. The buses themselves are usually comfortable and decently clean, and most if not all have power outlets, although often not at every seat. The "weird/gross passenger sitting next to you" thing is exaggerated, though I have had one bad one. The Wi-Fi exists but is generally completely unusable, but if you have a hotspot, it'll generally work pretty well since you'll be on major highways the whole time.
But the punchline to it all? It's not even that much cheaper. It's, like, maybe half the price of an airplane ticket.
If you have a Spirit Airlines route near you, flying will actually be cheaper than a bus.
For the route I take it's around $30 for the plane, and $70 for the bus. The bus takes around 8 hours, the plane takes around an hour and a half but then you have to factor in extra time at the terminal.
It is also worth considering that Spirit will charge you an arm and a leg to bring any kind of luggage, while buses and trains are generally pretty lenient with their baggage allowances.
Of course, as I found out recently, sometimes your baggage will just get lost or stolen and there's not much you can do about it. So that's fun. (At least on Amtrak there's a proper checked baggage option for some routes, and the overheads are big enough to put airplane-sized carryons in.)
I did the same trip. Highly recommended. On the trip I learned that there is an Amtrak Rail pass, which includes 10 rides. It seems that it often is on sale at the beginning of the year. So if you are interested in such a trip, you may want to look out for that.
I bicycled across in 1985 and scariest part was there was no public transport on regular roads. What if the bicycle breaks down? There was no bicycle shops and bicyclists either, except on top of cars. Where they drive to use the bicycle? No idea.
Dutch person here. This seems odd to me, why would a bicycle irrepairably break down without notice? If you have a patch kit and know how to put the chain back on, the only "prevents me from riding" risk I can think of is it literally breaking apart under you, which isn't something I've heard happen. The gears breaking would be a serious nuisance but you can still get to the next town
And wouldn't it be the same no matter what mode of transport you choose? What if the plane breaks down¹? What if you break an ankle while walking a long distance? What if your horse walks away? You'll always have to rely on aid from others pretty much no matter what happens to your mode of transportation
If you're going to be in a place where you're alone, like when hiking, the advice I heard is to tell someone where you're going and when you're checking in. I guess the same goes if you don't expect to receive aid from passing cars?
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#/media/File:Nu... Compare ~1000 fatalities per year from "hull-loss accidents" in the 80s compared to it being pretty much unheard of today
If you're doing ultra long distances, you've got the possibility of literally everything breaking. You'd be riding more in the single trip than most cyclists ride in a year.
If the derailleur snaps off while you are 100km from anything, you're fucked unless you happened to pack a spare one and all the tools required to swap it.
Bike mechanist here. If your going ultra long distance chances are prepared more than bare minimum and got a good multitool with you [0] and spare links. So let’s do it:
1. Cut the chain using a chain drifts (can be small, sometimes included in kits)
2. Detach the speeds cable and remove the derailleur (hex key, included in kits).
3. Measure minimum possible chain length, cut it.
4. Close the chain with a missing link (get a couple spare ones, they’re cheap and small)
In fact many MTB enjoyers got a chain drifts and missing links with them even for a 2h ride : chains are at higher risk when crushed again rocks and trees.
> why would a bicycle break down without notice
Accident aside, you literally feel the bike parts wearing, or at least when they approach endlife. There’s also regular quick checks you could perform on your bike to keep the macanist away.
0 https://www.wolftoothcomponents.com/collections/tools
"Next town" in rural America may mean 100 km walk.
You clearly do not understand what bicycling 6000 km unaided and heavy load means. Everything breaks down constantly.
Chains and sprockets last only 2000 km, unless you constantly rotate 3 chains.
I bought new tyres 3 times. And then I had a problem with 622mm rim, there was only "700C" type racing tyres in Wallmarts.
And I also broke back axle, because Samsung-type axle was not yet invented. Luckily Minneapolis had America's one good bicycle shop.
And at the end and I started loosing spokes. I had spares, but you need certain heavy tools to remove screw-on sprocket. Getting new spokes of certain size is impossible anywhere in America. Probably mail-order from China.
they absolutely last way longer than 2000km, unless you never maintain them
True sort-of, but then sprockets are ruined for good and new chain does not fit. That is why had three chains and I rotated them weekly.
And then if you throw the oldest chain away after 10000 km, the sprockets will last 30 years. This is how some had done the world on one cassette.
Americans are a friendly crowd and lots of them drive pickup trucks.
Well. America is the only place in the world where I was told to "move on" with a gunpoint. In Texas they told they always "procecute trespassers", but local sheriff decided I was not tresspassing, I was camping too close to railroad, so it was government property.
The country contains multitudes.
> Where they drive to use the bicycle? No idea.
Depends on the type of bike. Sometimes parks and trails.
Back in 1985, when mountain bikes were brand-new and not really established? I have no idea.
These days, if it's serious mountain bikes, they're driving to places with wilderness trails to ride on. If it's road bikes, they might be driving to "rail trails", sections of old railroads that have been converted into long multi-use trails that are popular with cyclists because they're generally flat and straight and go through some interesting scenery.
I was pleased to read such positive contagious excitement and someone who can still see the wonder of the American west. And excitement of trying new experiences.
I finally took an overnight train from Chicago to Pennsylvania to try it out.
Got an Amtrak Roomette. It cost a fortune (relative to flying.) Could not fall asleep at all due to the jerky motion.
Do not recommend.
I have no idea why anyone would prefer this to flying.
Similar experience in Germany, felt like I did not sleep a wink. I did get a lot of audiobook done during that time though! (And I felt surprisingly okay during the next day, so perhaps my brain did get some amount/form of downtime)
Had expected the train to do like 60 km/h or so because there is no rush, everyone's sleeping, saves costs (wear and energy), easier scheduling by having the same speed as freight, and if the trains normally handle more-than-double speeds then this would be butter smooth. Nah, not a chance. From start to finish it felt like it was springing from station to station, with pretty old equipment so it was loud, plus every station of every tiny village was bright because no curtains, and the shaking and squeaking around curves and especially points/switches were madness.
Asked the passenger from my cabin who got off at the same stop in the morning: he slept great!
Maybe when the novelty wears off and you get used to it, it gets better? I can report back when I do this next time, but for now I'm also left wondering if it's a personal thing. (I'm sufficiently concerned about the rate of climate warming that I'll definitely try this again, it's only a matter of when I'd travel to a sufficiently far destination)
Those few times I've taken a sleeper, both private (Europe) and shared (China) rooms, I haven't slept as if I were in my own bed but I got a decent enough amount of sleep to call it a a "night's rest." But, then, it's also not unusual that, jet-lag or not, I'll have trouble getting to sleep in a hotel especially first night or so of a trip. So I guess I sleep well enough on trains (and on lie-flat seats in planes).
When I was 7 my family moved from the West Coast to the East. We didn’t have much money and my mom was deathly afraid of flying so we took a train. Seeing the U.S. this way is a treat and I highly recommend. Like TFA you meet interesting people, see and experience new things that you just don’t get to see traveling other ways.
Why though? The USA is huge! Even on a 250mph train, theoretical transit times through the Midwest are still going to take a long time!
I love rail travel when I’m in the EU, but it simply doesn’t make sense for the US and its geography.
Here’s my wild opinion so feel free to disagree and point out the shortcomings… Air travel could be a lot nicer, like the days of TWA and on plane lounges; and before you got tased for getting out of your seat to walk around.
Transcontinental train travel across the US? No, it probably doesn’t make sense to design a system for that alone.
But just like European trains don’t only run from Lisbon to Moscow, US trains could very easily set up popular routes from small, medium, and large cities that are around 100-500miles from each other. The new Borealis route, which is nothing more than an additional short run of the Empire Builder, from Chicago to Minneapolis started turning a profit a few days after it started running.
What do you get when you add up all the obvious city-pair routes in all regions? You get a transcontinental system that while likely not most people’s first choice for a NYC-LA trip, is possible without being painful. Not unlike the system that existed before the subsidized highways destroyed the private passenger rail system in the US. We know it’s possible here because it already existed.
Why? IMHO the best travel is not about how fast you can get there. Seeing the land from the ground is an immense experience. More so than a car since interstates are dug out, the land trains cross is amazing. Wild horses in the southwest, mountains in the west. And - you can walk around, observation car, dining car (nothing quite like making bar friends on a train), with close to zero risk of getting tased!
It can make sense in the USA; not every trip is coast to coast. The northeast corridor is a good example of where trains work well (ish) and could be ramped up further.
The best family trip my wife and I did with my kids (8 and 12) was Amtrak from AZ -> DC -> NYC. It was relaxing, fun and different. We even did it in coach (so no private room) and it was still amazing.
We flew home -- and even though the flight time was about 5.5 hours - it was stressful and a let down. Your family's milage may vary.
It actually does make sense. America has more amazing landmarks in one country than any country on earth.
If trains were more prevalent, each would become more of a hub and cities would grow around them.
There are no airports situated on top of said landmarks.
I love articles that include nice pictures with the text, I got nothing else to add but keep on going!
You can also do any segment. Having done Chicago to Emeryville, I'd suggest folks focus on the Denver to Salt Lake portion.
Chicago to Denver is mostly flat, and at least when I did it, mostly in the dark. Salt Lake to Reno is also boring, but surprisingly the section of rail around Tahoe doesn't have good views either. If you've driven on 80, or 50 or 89, you've seen better terrain.
As other comments have said though, the timeline is unpredictable, since freight takes priority. So you could easily end up in the dark around Grand Junction, CO and miss out on the views.
I did the California Zephyr and it was the most amazing any type of ride I have ever done. It was surreal. Do recommend.
Ditto. Roomette is highly recommended.
tell us more :)
As a European everything felt like being in a movie. Especially going through desert it felt like I travelled back in time. Literally Wild West. I got see forests, mountains, canyons, and desert all in the same ride. That's definately not possible where I come from.
Years ago I decided to take the Lake Shore Limited from Albany to Chicago for a business trip just to have a different experience. Two things I didn’t expect: 1. It was very difficult to get pre-approved for the expense because my employer’s process had to make sure I wasn’t costing them extra money. Somehow this was not an issue with plane tickets. 2. Overnight stops interrupted my sleep (in seat) as boarders banged luggage around and discussed seat selection when groups were involved.
Interesting, but would book a room if traveling this way next time.
It really is a nice way to travel. I did SF → Orlando and back a handful of times.
I always try to travel by train if I can when im travelling Intercity. Its always so enjoyable and quite cheap.
Don't get me wrong, but there are third world countries that have better train infrastructures
The US has actually pretty good train infrastructure, it's just almost entirely dedicated to freight. The US moves far more goods by rail, farther and cheaper than just about any other country in the world.
> just about any other country in the world.
Well the US is the 3rd largest country in the world, with the 3rd largest population, and in terms of rail tonne-km is also 3rd.
I.e. it sits where you'd expect, per sq km and per capita.
Passenger wise though it's 10th.
We have derailments monthly due to poor track conditions... We have terrible pay and conditions for operators who are exploited by both the companies and then the government. We do not have pretty good infrastructure.
The question is why they don't develop it for people as well. Instead of just "let's add another lane" for cars
We did, and then when airplanes came around, it turned out that people/other interests found air travel better than train travel for most intercity travel.
Even on the East Coast, there used to be way more rail lines that took passengers -- if this were a hundred years ago, I could have walked a mile or two to a spur which would take me to one of the mid-sized cities connected to The Big City by commuter rail; now they're mostly rail trails.
Unlike in Europe, where rail maintenance is heavily subsidised by the government, in the US it is paid for by the private rail operators to a much greater extent. Thus the rail operators have much more say over how the rail is used and obviously priorities the more profitable traffic, which in the US is cargo.
So if the US government would wanted to build out cross country passenger rail they would either have to build new tracks, or use eminent domain to take back control of the existing tracks. Both options would be very expensive and wildly unpopular.
Which Europe are you talking about? Europe is a collection of independent counties and what you just mention is all wrong.
Most of the European railway companies have been privatized and there are companies that run the rail network and companies that run the train. Subsidies are not a thing in many of the European countries
If you look at the UK for example, the physical network is publicly owned and maintained by National Rail, whilst the ToCs are (currently) mostly private. That said the ToCs are also going to switch to publicly owned over the next few years.
They could also adjust the regulations for cargo trains to make mixing freight and passenger trains better.
For example, by limiting the maximum length of a freight train.
Then relatively minor subsidies (e.g. additional passing loops) could be used to improve reliability.
Or, they could let the market decide. The current system seems to work for most people.
It was, but then all the Class-Ⅰ rail carriers merged until we were left with a west-coast duopoly (UP and BNSF) and an east-coast duopoly (CSX and NS) and they closed all the “redundant” lines they could.
See Abandoned & Out-Of-Service Rail Lines map: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=10akDabya8L6nWIJi-4...
Probably because most cities are so spaced out you'd still need a car to get from home to the train station and from the train station to your office when taking the train to work, for example. So it's easier to just drive there.
> Probably because most cities are so spaced out […]
The US population is fairly concentrated around the 'edges'. About 40% of the population lives in a coastal county:
* https://ecowatch.noaa.gov/thematic/coastal-population
And two-thirds of the population with-in 100 miles (160 km) of the border:
* https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone
You're ignoring how non-dense everything actually is in those places. Americans no longer live in walkable cities and towns like in the early 20th century before cars became popular. After WWII, with the rise of the automobile, the inner cities emptied out and everyone who could afford to moved out to the suburbs. So now, even in a "city" in America (unless it's Manhattan), you absolutely need a car to get anywhere, because nothing is walkable.
It's not like 1905 when you could just walk from your home in Smalltown USA to the local train station, buy a ticket, and get a ride to the nearest city, and get out and walk from that station to interesting places.
Any train trip, even if you look only at the eastern states, is likely to require a car ride on one or both ends to get to/from your source/destination to/from the station. If you have to drive an hour just to get to a train station, and another hour to get from the destination station to your final station, it's probably faster and easier and much cheaper to just drive the whole way. Don't forget dealing with parking, car rental, etc.; you'd probably have to take taxis, and those are quite expensive.
The fundamental problem here is density. America doesn't have it any more.
So it's easier to drive to San Francisco from Seattle instead of parking your car at the train station in Seattle, take a train and then do your business on downtown SF, come back to Seattle and take your car back home?
(It's a figurative example I'm not sure there's a train from Seattle to SF)
Of course not, but even with state of art train technology (let's say 250mph), that would still be an over 3 hour commute each way (just the railway part!). If it's just for a business trip every now in a while, it's faster to just fly there.
I'm just saying, this is such a rare use case that it's not as high of a priority as expanding the roads that 80% or more of the residents in a city use daily. Whereas for freight it makes a ton of sense.
(fun fact, there actually is a train route there!)
it's faster to just fly there.
As some who used to travel for meetings quite a lot to a city 3 hours away by high speed rail, it really isn't. Once you take into account that you can show up for your train 5 mins before it leaves, plus the fact that the train station is almost always much closer to where you want to be, the difference in time between trains and planes pretty much disappears for shorter trips.
Plus the train is just so much nicer and more comfortable. It's quieter. Your seats are much bigger and have more legroom than even the nicest business class seats. You can get up and walk around if you want. You often have a restaurant car where you can sit and grab a drink or something to eat. Train travel is just so much more relaxing compared to flying.
> that would still be an over 3 hour commute each way (just the railway part!). If it's just for a business trip every now in a while, it's faster to just fly there.
Even for flights which take 45 minutes in the air, I’d never expect to get to the airport, through security, through all the boarding and unboarding nonsense, and from the destination airport to where I was actually going, in 3 hours.
IIRC last time I was in Seattle airport, after I got off the plane (which was late, of course), I spent half an hour just walking through airport and to the rather inconveniently located light rail. Everything involving flying takes forever.
3 hours is about Osaka to Tokyo, a route that sees a massive volume of business travel on the bullet train in Japan, arguably far more than flying. SF to Seattle would be about 1300 km which is more like Hiroshima to Morioka, around 6.5 hours by train including a connection; I think at that point there'd be a split in favour of flying, but around a third of travellers would probably still opt for the train due to its comfort and convenience.
There's huge differences between the US and Japan. When I travel from my home in Tokyo to Osaka or any other city by shinkansen, I take public transit (Tokyo Metro specifically) to get from my home to Tokyo station or Shinagawa, and then transfer to the shinkansen. At the destination city, I just get off and either walk to wherever I'm going, or transfer to another local rail or subway line.
You just can't do that in the US, outside some very select situations (like going from somewhere inside DC to Manhattan NYC). From SF to Seattle, how do you get to the station in SF? In Seattle, how do you get from the station to your destination? What do you do to get around in Seattle? Generally, you need a car, which means renting a car, which is really expensive. The US is set up to handle this at airports pretty well: you get off your plane and go to the Hertz counter and pick up a car (and then after your trip is over and you've returned the car, get arrested for auto theft when Hertz reports your car as stolen--don't use Hertz). I haven't tried trains on the west coast, but on the east coast, I've never seen train stations set up with rental car counters.
Because Americans prefer to fly?
Relative to the current situation or in absolute terms? If there was a Shinkansen style trains between LA and SF with the same quality and timetable as the Shinkansen between Tokyo and Osaka, do you not think Americans would flock to it?
Some might, not many. Most Americans go for the shortest travel time.
The CA high speed rail is targeting a 2h40min travel time between SF and LA.
The flight saved you more than an hour.
Maybe if it was far cheaper than flying there might be more demand.
A train might make that hour up by not needing to get in and out of SFO/LAX/etc.
In Tokyo, they’re fast partly because you don’t need to trek to the airport (yes, even Haneda) and deal with security etc. You just… get on the train and bam are downtown in the next place.
Sadly, with commercial air travel the time a passenger spends on the plane between say SF and LA represents only a small portion of their total travel time. This is commonly overlooked or not understood by people unfamiliar with traveling by train.
I’ve flown it plenty of times. Get to the airport 60min before flight, and you’re out of LAX in less than 30 min.
How early do you need to get to the train station?
Not to mention if you miss your train how quickly can you jump on another train?
I’m not arguing it’s not a nice alternative, but there is a reason why flying is still highly in demand even with high quality rail systems like in Europe.
You arrive at the station when the train is about to depart, not an hour or more before like you're forced to when flying. But even better, the station is in the center of town, rather than the middle of nowhere, reaching which again significantly lengthens your travel time.
You can jump on another flight faster than you can jump on another train? I rarely fly more than a couple times a month, but for me this is never true.
> But even better, the station is in the center of town
Only better if you live in the center of town.
That's why you have public transit to take you to the center of town.
Depends on the setup no?
When I took the trains in Europe I’d show up early, get tickets, find out what platform.
And stations in the middle of cities? Maybe, but unlikely building new infrastructure in existing cities.
And sure, if I want to go from SF to LA, there are 20+ flights per day. Are there going to be 20+ trains?
> When I took the trains in Europe I’d show up early
Why would you do that? Were you worried the train would depart early? Boarding a train is immediate.
> And stations in the middle of cities? Maybe, but unlikely building new infrastructure in existing cities.
1) "Maybe?" 2) The post to which you responded asked about a hypothetical Shinkansen style train from SF to LA, not one connecting El Segundo and Millbrae.
> And sure, if I want to go from SF to LA, there are 20+ flights per day. Are there going to be 20+ trains?
Going from Tokyo to Osaka is like taking the subway in terms of train frequency, so a lot more than that. There also aren't sprawling terminals to traverse on either end, which you quite likely will be forced to do when changing flights.
Let's talk about punctuality. If you think you're content don't look at the numbers for Shinkansen. As for air travel, clearly if you favor flying narrowbodies between cities only a few hundred miles apart you're an extremely patient person, but did you realize your flights between SF and LA will be lucky to break 90% on-time reliability? As a lifelong non-rev I do everything I can to avoid short flights like that.
How do you know if they never had the option to use a train?
There are also first world countries that have shittier trains than the ones here. I'm saying this from first hand experience.
I don't think you can compare the most advanced and rich country to other first world countries.
Someone can definitely do worst, that's out of discussion. We are looking at the upside potential.
The picture of this post show interstate trains that are old, slow and dirty. I'm sure standards can improve.
USA is an early adopter?
> You could also say: Five megameters!
I love this expression!
The Zephyr is amazing. Fun place to hack on something personal, like freshening up an old Window Manager or library
Thanks for sharing. I've always wanted to drive from Seattle to Boston on I-90 but the train looks fun too.
The company I work for has done this trip a few times. Most recently this year.
wefunder.com/train
It’s a great experience, and something I wish more people tried. The cross country train that is, coworkers optional :)
Very cool experience!
BTW is this article generated from social media posts?
I hope the "French guy" who he didn't like as a conversationalist doesn't read his blog.
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Originally, the "15 minutes city" is simply a city planning guideline, which tells you that cities should strive to have every amenities close to where people live, ideally everyone should have everything in a 15 minutes radius. Far-right lunatics interpreted it as being constrained by the government in a 15 minutes radius around their home, which is insane thinking indeed.
I live in a "15 minutes city", Paris, I have 5 grocery stores in a 5 minutes walking radius, I go to work in 15 minutes using the metro, and if I want to I can get anywhere in France in a few hours by taking the train. That someone would not want this and instead fight for their rights to commute 2 hours everyday by car is insane to me.
I live in Melbourne (and have for 15 years), so I'm not some rural hillbilly crying about cars per se - in fact I'm not even talking about cars: That placard literally says: 'Stay Home!'
I think bicycle paths and pedestrian access to places is extremely important, and not just for the environment, but being told that I should 'stay home' as part of some bigger picture plan to combat climate change is absolutely redolent of bureaucratic authoritarianism and environmental tyranny, and it really isn't hard to imagine a scenario running from this placard and the idea behind it to one where traveling away from one's 'neighborhood' (as defined in the photo) is punishable.
> it really isn't hard to imagine a scenario running from this placard and the idea behind it to one where traveling away from one's 'neighborhood' (as defined in the photo) is punishable
Please take a deep breath and step away from the Rupert Murdoch. This campaign is merely trying to get people invested in the areas in which they live, which is a noble goal. It's sad that some of the language it uses has been warped into trigger words by the media. Fear is a lucrative business.
> Please take a deep breath and step away from the Rupert Murdoch.
On the off chance that you are actually attempting to persuade me in good faith, you might reconsider in the future the use of phrases like this one and the impact they are likely to have on a person, particularly if, while casting aspersions, they suggest a set of circumstances that aren’t true.
Your position is perfectly understandable.
As a fellow Australian I well recall earlier campaigns that started out seeking to modify behaviour and later devolved into draconian law.
Recall the 1970s Life. Be In It campaign?
Started innocently enough and before we knew what had happened there were Aerobics Internment Camps for the ice cream eaters and Big Sister MTV alertotainments from Oliver Newton Goebbels.
Clearly I'm heavy with the sarcasm, there is a difference between enforcing policy with lawfare in the event of a life threatening health crisis such as COVID and doing the same in the event of a life threatening health crisis such as obesity, or a life threatening crisis such as AGW climate change.
I do seem to recall that we (Australia) made it through the AIDS years and increasing road accidents with mostly public campaigns and not so much law.
Probably the best path through public policy is to understand the issues, the risks, and to stay engaged at various levels of setting and enacting policy.
Murdoch's outlets are prime purveyors of this particular conspiracy theory, but you're absolutely right I shouldn't have assumed they had a hand in how you developed your idea. I also agree it's a valid question as to whether the best way to reach someone down a rabbit hole is to gently cajole them or slap them in the face. Where in Melbourne did you see the placard?
so the presentation leaves a bit to be desired but you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
for one i don't think this poster is is presenting a government mandate but i believe it's a demand from people to the government to build like this (it's from the climate action museum, which, as far as i could tell is not supported by government)
likewise it is not about forcing people to stay home but demanding the right for people to do so and live their daily life without having to travel every day.
the title "stay home!" is an unfortunate choice. but to be fair, you also have to read the whole title: "your most radical move! stay home!" which clearly suggests that staying home is a choice you make (just like many of us refuse to return to work in the office) and not something forced on you from the outside. if you read anything else then you either miss the point or you are intentionally twisting it.
do you think fighting against neighborhoods like this is going to help you prevent that dystopia that you seem to be afraid of? negative thinking is not going to help us make the world better.
a commenter above mentions paris. i can share the exact same experience from vienna. literally. that's what we are talking about.
I understand a lot of what you're saying, but the fact is that radical anything - whether it's the radical left or right, radical environmentalists, radical feminists, etc., are all ultimately trying to move their grievances and solutions into the mainstream. Just because the makers of the placard admit 'staying home' would be radical right now doesn't mean that they want it to stay that way - indeed political issues to some extent always begin as radical ideas and by definition those that are eventually accepted by a society are no longer seen as radical when they are accepted.
You might try to say this is just a slippery slope argument, but they are already advocating for something they (and you) admit is radical - the only caveat is that they qualify it as being radical for now. Clearly if a few radical environmentalists 'stay home!' there isn't going to be a dent in any metric that these people swear by - staying home will only begin to affect things if many or most people do it, whether by choice or by force, and that's the kind of wholesale societal change that I find absolutely bonkers and terrifying.
side note: when i lived in singapore i actually felt what it means not to be able to travel outside of city borders. i mean, yeah, you could travel, but you had to check a border crossing point, change currency, etc... it felt like a trap. china during covid was similar. just replace passport controls with vaccination checks every time you travel from one city to another.
i believe many of the city states and islands would feel the same. even new zealand felt like that when your goal was to be among people. it is perfect to get away from people though.
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I think it's a good thing if you never need to travel. Why would I want a 40 minute drive to get to a supermarket if I could instead get to an identical one in 10 minutes?
Similarly why would I want to travel for an hour to go to an office to sit on zoom meetings all day instead of doing it from my spare bedroom.
Reducing required travel is a great thing for me, gives me more time to do things on interesting travel. Rather than spending 90 minutes a week driving to/from the shop I save 78 hours a year, which is more than enough time to take up a new hobby.
Sopermarkets should be that close and normally are. But the special asian food mart or good hobby shop draws people from farther away
Sure, so why are the right wing so against having supermarkets that close?
They are not, at least no more than anyone else. nimby covers all sides of the asile. most live within a 10 minute drive of a supermarket and are happy with that. Food deserts are generally very left wing - poor people (or framers who are obviously to rural to get anything)
Do you realize that the topic was _walking_ distance, not driving?
I live in a German city where I do not even have to walk a street with cars to get to a super market, a couple of restaurants, three bakeries, barber shop, drugstore, pharmacy, a butcher, a bookshop, a general supplies store, a post office, newspaper/tobacco store, a public library, about a dozen or more doctors and dentists, a massage studio, therapists, two tailors, a bunch of other shops like clothing and such, a cinema, multiple bus stops, a subway station, a park, multiple playgrounds, etc. Once a week there's a larger food market with fresh produce. There are office buildings, a kindergarden/preschool, a church, three hotels.
All within 5 minutes of _walking_ distance. All walkable on foot paths without even seeing or hearing the annoyance of a car. If you cross even just one street, there's a school and a lot more things.
I can take a public bus two stops to a large asia market (or a 20min walk/10min bike ride). There's currently a 50 Euro monthly train pass that is valid for all regional/subway trains and busses all across Germany, so I can simply hop on and off whenever I want. 10 minutes by subway to the main train station and city center, where a lot more can be reached by 5 more minutes of walking.
And no, I am not limited by any of that. It just _adds_ options and convenience.
Driving is considered good enough.
I know they mean 15 minute walk and it isn't suyposed to be a limit / jal. However it doesn't always come off that way
It doesn't come off that way because of the nonsense extremists propagate
I don't think anyone thinks that everything you want is within 15 minutes - just that most daily necessities and services are available within 15 minutes.
Nobody on the far left thinks this. If they thought that then why would they be into subway systems so much? Same for progressive urban planners more generslly.
I didn't say a majority but if you follow the urbanist movement for long you will see them. They are not into subways. A minortiy for sure but they exist and are vocal
Judging a whole urban design philosophy by the most fringe members of the most fringe groups hardly seems like a good faith argument. Especially when those people are almost never even urban designers or in any way related to the field.
who said anything about judging the movement? I just said many exist.
Would you please you give us some examples? I've long considered myself an urbanist and genuinely have no idea what you're talking about.
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Did you link to the right comment? I read all the parent comments as well as the reply, and none talk about trains being so rare that they wouldn't exist.
Or do you just make the logical jump from "few trips should require a train" to "no trains exist"? There is no logical connection between those statements.
Well, I guess that single Hacker News comment is an example, if it also seems totally speculative and innocuous. Paranoid people have enemies, too.
I'm not going to spend hours in the archives of every urbanist blog and forumn to find a few dozen examples. I was asked for one and so I found the most recient here.
19 out of 20 thinks being in the local neighborhood doesn't sound that crazy.
In the last week, I think I've been to work 5 times (bicycle), the supermarket twice or maybe three (foot), the doctor (foot), a bar (bicycle), a restaurant (foot), a fast food place (foot), visited a friend (train, 35 minutes + 10 walking) etc.
90% might be a better target then 95%.
Work in your meighborhood is impossible - most people live in a 'marriage' situation meaning both would limit their job options and even if you get the job in your neighborhood that doesn't mean you won't switch jobs.
I have _never_ seen anyone take that stance; the same people who argue for planning ‘15 minute cities’ (that is, correctly planned cities; this isn’t some new idea and is how cities were historically normally planned) generally also advocate for good _commuter_ (ie medium range) and intercity transport.
I mean, I’m sure there’s someone out there advocating for efficient city design but who’s opposed to developing transport, but they’re an extreme outlier.
OOC, is this a purely theoretical bogeyperson, or have you ever actually seen anyone take this stance? If the latter, just how many (to the nearest ten, say) posters of Pol Pot did they have on the wall?
What are you on about? No one thinks being constrained to a 15 minutes radius is a good thing, no one even wants that.
The issue is clearly with maga/qanon right-wingers who were told this benign left-wing talking point was in fact a plot to keep them in their homes.
> The issue is clearly with maga/qanon right-wingers who were told this benign left-wing talking point was in fact a plot to keep them in their homes.
The placard literally says 'Stay Home!'
If you choose to interpret a piece of advice on how to improve your neighborhood as some Orwellian authoritarian propaganda poster commanding you to never leave your house, I'm afraid I can't do anything for you anymore.