cross-posted from: https://lemmy.skoops.social/post/727
crossposted: https://lemmy.skoops.social/post/665
Oh boy…
In the US people will argue it’s quicker to fly or drive than take the train then show up 2 hours early to be sure to make it through check-in and TSA security to be sure to make their flight on time. Then waste another hour waiting for luggage
It would be true. Trains are next to non-existent in the US.
I live near Acela, which is not high speed, not cheap, and does not have enough capacity but is also the only part of the US with convenient intercity rail. I would never fly or drive when I can take this train, but outside of Acela ……
Lol I used to take Amtrak back and forth between Philly and DC. Once I decided to check out if an Acela ticket would be worth it - it was like three times the price and got there a whopping 10 minutes sooner.
The Acela is worth it going to NYC and further north. Every town in Connecticut apparently still has an Amtrak stop (which is cool, but goddamn). Compare the travel times of the Acela and Amtrak between DC and Boston.
Yeah, a lot of people don’t realize that there are major cities in the US without passenger trains. Not just lacking inter-city rail, trams, etc., but literally no train stations for people.
Columbus, Ohio has a metro area of 2.1mill people. And if they want to take the train to NYC, they first have to take a three hour bus ride to Cincinnati. As they tore down their last passenger train station over forty years ago.
You can thank John Kasich for that. IIRC DeWine’s admin is doing a feasibility study of doing the “Three C” route Obama tried to fund
Does Cincinnati still have its one train a day at 2am or some other ungodly hour? Or are they on the “three trains a week” schedule?
I’m inside the 275 loop in Cincinnati but can’t get downtown without getting a ride in a car to a bus station. At that point, might as well just use the car to get downtown. Or to wherever else I’m going. Train travel is WAY too slow in the US. I’ve never had a vacation longer than a week, I’d barely be arriving at anywhere interesting and I would already be due back at work.
I think it’s daily now but yes, still at like 3am. Used to be a few times a week.
a three hour bus ride to Cincinnati
I was about to call you out for this, until I remembered the six hour bus rides I used to have to take from Columbus to Akron when I was in college (less than two hours by car, natch).
And that’s just the people who live nearby. For the 1mill people who live outside the city proper, there’s probably another hour or two of travel and wait before the bus sets off.
Not to mention you’re lucky if you don’t have to take a connecting flight to get where you’re going, which adds a few more hours at least. But at least it gives you more opportunities to eat that delicious, healthy and inexpensive airport food!
Don’t forget the 45m-1hr travel time to and from airports.
deleted by creator
I was so pissed that the only affordable option to get to Bushwick from the airport was a shitty bus that ran late and was packed.
BUILD A TRAIN TO YOUR GODDAMN INTERNATIONAL TRANSIT HUBS
I’m sure the US will make train travel the same grueling experience as they made air travel
Only a car take me ro point A to point B
Only if you mean that point B is the gigantic parking lot where you still have to walk 15 minutes to the Walmart.
Yeah, I’ve been using trains for travel in the northeast lately.
It’s less travel time, there’s no ridiculous security theater, and I don’t get these nickel and dime charges for checked bags.
I did enjoy taking Amtrak between Philly and DC a few years ago - as long it wasn’t raining, that is.
I’m fairly resilient to uncomfortable travel unless it’s actively painful like ear popping sometimes, so I usually just choose on price and speed most of the time.
Even without the check-in and security it is typically faster to fly (or drive) the places people typically go on a plane in the US.
The problem is that the railways are prioritized for freight traffic first, so the commuter train traffic takes a looooong time. My understanding is the freight movement by train is better in the US whereas the commuter train movement is better in Europe.
For example, I live in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. To travel to Chicago by different methods is:
- By car: ~6 hours travel time
- By train: ~9 hours travel time
- By plane: ~1.5 hours flight time, call it 4 hours total travel time
The problem is that the railways are prioritized for freight traffic first
This is de facto true. But, the law is that passenger traffic gets priority. It’s just not enforced because the companies have more power than the government is willing to spend on this issue.
Thanks for calling this out. I had forgotten about that bit.
Many short distance flights are business related but as someone who was working in an international corporation I can tell you there’s plenty of business monkeys who fly simply for the prestige of it. They fly to attend meetings that could’ve been an email or a call just so they can pretend they’re hot shit.
Massively disappointing.
I like getting the train. First class is often similar or cheaper than the flight, it’s better for the environment, it’s easy to get up and walk around, and you get 4 hours of work done (instead of 2 hours of queuing, 1 hour of flying, 1 hour of queuing/waiting).
I find companies are as happy to pay a train fair as they are a flight.And airports commonly need trains/busses/taxis to get to/from anyway.
I’d rather arrive in the city center than the outskirtsI must admit, when I first started working after uni, I thought I was hot shit for flying domestically (Hamburg<>Munich). Even had my BlackBerry set to loud, so people know I don’t belong to the tourist shmucks. God fucking damn it, I’m cringing so hard at the memories. At least I was away for the entire week and not just a single meeting.
Traveling via ICE is so, sooo much better! I do miss the BlackBerry though. The iPhone keyboard is complete garbage in comparison. I keep the phone silent nowadays. Man, what a cringelord I was back then.
I’ve been in Germany two years and gone to France three times by train.
I honestly don’t think people appreciate public transit enough. Trains are the fucking bomb and if people could make trains and trams and buses a priority I think the world would be a remarkably more fun and enjoyable experience.
Vote for the political parties, even at and especially the local level, that want to put more money into public infrastructure focused around public transit. Cars and planes have their places, but they should never be the priority when city planning and a strong country is one connected by high speed rail and convenient, reliable public transit.
I love traveling by train, but in Poland it’s so fucked I have to either drive or waste days just to get somewhere. They just deleted train I could use to get to Warsaw in about 5h, now it’s extra transfer, almost 7 hours, and I have to do it a day earlier, so extra night in a hotel vs 4,5h drive. The same with Berlin, I’d love to just ride a train, it’s less than 4 hours drive vs 6,5 hour train ride (which is fine, I can go with that), price of the single ticket is more than gas for my car, so twice as much for two person – I could live with that, but the transfer time is under 30 minutes, which with notoriously unreliable trains means I would probably miss the connection and lost all my bookings (or just tried to go back with train/bus just to my village (already losing ~80€ for the tickets), and then grab a car.
I’m not familiar with Poland’s political or train situation, but these problems are fixable. Vote for progressives, make it a priority, we need to start taking power back from the inept and corrupt and start fixing problems again.
I’m sorry your trains aren’t good. Everyone deserves good trains.
I travelled with high speed trains from Germany to Barcelona via some French cities. Not fucking over the climate because I want to have a good time is the least I can do.
Would fit really well in !shitamericanssay@lemmy.world
It’s crossposted from there.
Interesting. That doesn’t show on mbin. Maybe the instance is defederated.
Nobody flies a train from Germany to France.
Air travel would be a lot better on rails. It would solve a lot of problems.
YOU go up for rail repairs.
deleted by creator
You can go from Paris to Stuttgart in less 3h 30min by train. No customs, no TSA, downtown to downtown.
Freiburg to Paris in about 3h, just went last weekend.
TGV > ICE
I stopped counting how many times the ICE broke down on this route. Of course I also had delays when using the TGV but not due to the train itself. Also the seats in the ICE are not comfortable at all.
DB is just fucked tbh, it needs serious reformulating.
deleted by creator
They see it working in Japan, but I suspect that is because it’s in Japan. Britain is gonna find out soon I guess.
The ICE restaurant car always cures the delay blues, at least for me :)
In the current political climate, border control is unfortunate becoming much more common. I had the border policy empty our bus and search everyone with dogs and half of us had to open our bags.
On my vacation in Germany we were not once asked on the train for our passports. We are white. The police would demand every non-white persons’ “visa” and most of the time the questioned individual would produce a German ID or an ID from another EU member state.
It was a sad sight.
Well there’s is some racism due to the begger problem in the trains, but they’re also just assholes
Pretty much. And it you look latino… You’ll be lucky if you don’t get interrogated or searched as I heard from close friends…
Greg is a fucking moron, plain and simple.
he’s on twatter, so that’s a given.
I can’t believe no one’s made the, “Hundreds of thousands took the train from France to Germany in the '40s” joke. Not that it’s a joke.
Just you.
I’ve only ever travelled to Germany from France via train. I wouldn’t bother flying,that’s waaay to much of an effort
Ok sure, but that’s going the other way. According to that guy travelling by train to France from Germany isn’t physically possible.
Only if you cannot decide which of the hundreds of passenger trains crossing that border every day to take. IIRC there are over 20 trains a day from Berlin to Paris.
Good point well made
deleted by creator
45 minutes to fly, but god help you if you check luggage, might as well be all day at that point.
Luggage doesn’t matter.
Gotta leave the house 2 hours before the 2 hours before your flight. Then board, Then fly. Then disembark.If flight is noon, you leave the house at 8 to be at the airport for 10. Then security theatre (remove your shoes, you’re going to the LaNd Of TeH FrEe!!!).
If you’re lucky, you’re hailing a cab at JFK at 1:30pm.
That’s your “45 minute flight”. 6 hours, if you’re lucky.
Don’t forget that train stations tend to be in the city centre while the airport is 30-60 minutes outside in a field somewhere, so travel time is much reduced.
Add in 2 hours of traffic between JFK and anywhere you want to get to. Or try your luck with La Guardia!
I actually prefer La Guardia. When I was regularly staying in Brooklyn it was like a 30 minute cab ride from the airport.
Putting transit time to the airport is a bit unfair. Depends on how far you live from the airport.
Airports are almost never in the city center.
Train stations are in the city center, plus in Europe they’re always connected to the rest of the public transportation network, which generally means the subway.
If you live within the urban area getting to the train station is invariably a shorter trip, if you live outside it depends if you’re lucky enough to live nearest the side of the city were the airport is or not.
My own experience when living in London before Brexit is that for example to go to Paris, even when I lived just outside the Greater London area and on the side of the city with an airport (London Stansead), door-to-door going to Paris by flying didn’t end up being any faster than taking the Eurostar train from St. Pancreas and even back then you had to go through passport control for the train because the UK was never in the Schengen Area so taking the train didn’t shave of that time.
Part of the problem is that peripheral airports aren’t anywhere as well connected to the public transportation network as city center train stations are, so often the best way to get there is by car, by which point you’re either doing an Uber or Taxi to it (which if you’re outside the city is actually a bit of an expense) or you take your own car but then you have to park it which unless you’re doing a daytrip or such means longer term parking areas, which are further away from the actual boarding gates, and all that shit adds up. And then on the other side you have the exact same problems but in reverse order, so you “pay” the overheads of having to go through an airport twice each way when you fly.
Fair. It depends on the city too many do have transit to the Airport or are working on expanding out that way.
A couple of main airports are indeed well connected to the public transit network (for example Amsterdam Schiphol has a train station under the airport connected to the main train line and it takes about 15 minutes to get to Amsterdam Centraal Station on a regular commuter train).
However I was talking about the peripheral airports, which are at best on a train line which doesn’t have many options (such as London Gatwick) or at far end of a subway line as peripheral airports are the ones that could potentially be faster to use for somebody living outside a main city (which, as I mentioned above, in my own experience was not the case).
deleted by creator
Wait till this guy finds out you can take a train from France to England.
It’s going to blow his mind
“Trains don’t float, IDIOT”
- Greg, probably
