9 ms·

I do SFO to LAX, SNA, SAN weekly. It is not really fast and you are highlighting a special rate. Tickets easily go for $150 depending on the day, time, etc. Fi

I do SFO to LAX, SNA, SAN weekly. It is not really fast and you are highlighting a special rate. Tickets easily go for $150 depending on the day, time, etc. First, you have to deal with the security boondoggle. Add 30 minutes for that, because you never know what you are going to get. Because of how SFO was built and the fact that they can't use both runways simultaneously with even a hint of bad weather, good luck leaving on time. Pad at least 30 minutes to your destination arrival time to be safe (but I've had plenty of early morning flights get delayed an hour or two waiting for fog to lift). And then when you get into LAX… good luck getting out. Add an hour just to get out of the airport traffic. Unless you want to go north, you are better off flying into SNA… but tickets into SNA cost $175. On a good day you can do it in 3 hours. On a bad day it's 6. The cost is $50-$200, and it's always a stressful and shitty experience. I just recently took the Amtrak all the way down. I took 12 hours and cost $93 for a business class ticket. Yeah, it took forever. But it was really pleasant. It just takes forever. It be nice to have something in-between.

Johnny555 9y ago
The other advantage of rail is that rail is generally less affected by weather. (which anyone that's sat at SFO or waited in the air or elsewhere on the ground for an SFO fog delay will appreciate) Last time I was in Japan, a typhoon hit, and was working its way up the islands. My flight up to Tokyo was already cancelled due to high winds, but I was able to get a Shinkansen ticket and arrive in time to catch my flight before Narita was affected by the Typhoon. The flight would have been 90 minutes (not including travel time to the airport), and the train was 5 hours, but still, it was a comfortable journey and I'd do it again. If I were traveling from downtown to downtown, the airplane time would be more like 4 hours (60 minutes to get to airport with padding to get to gate on time, 90 minute flight (scheduled time is over 2 hours, but usually the flight is around 90 minutes gate to gate), then at least 90 minutes to get off the plan and catch an express bus to Tokyo.
- toyg 9y ago
  Rail is also more environmentally efficient, once the initial infrastructure is put in place. Airplanes burn tons of fossil fuels, trains can run on renewables.
  - r0m4n0 9y ago
    All the trains I have been on in California burn diesel fuel, including the one I commute on every day. Caltrain down the peninsula burns 10 million dollars in fossil fuels a year. I would hope we could convert already heavily used rail corridors to electric sometime in my lifetime. http://www.caltrain.com/Assets/__Agendas+and+Minutes/JPB/Board+of+Directors/Presentations/2018/PCJPB+FY18+Operating+Budget.pdf http://www.caltrain.com/Assets/__Agendas+and+Minutes/JPB/Boa...
    - tschuy 9y ago
      Caltrain is being electrified right now and due to be done in six years, and of course CA High Speed Rail is going to be electric.
    - Johnny555 9y ago
      It's in progress: http://www.caltrain.com/projectsplans/CaltrainModernization/Modernization/PeninsulaCorridorElectrificationProject.html http://www.caltrain.com/projectsplans/CaltrainModernization/... As long as you're still alive in 2022 (and there are no more funding issues caused by the tie-in to HSR), it will happen within your lifetime. Should have happened a decade or more ago, but Caltrain is the underfunded stepchild with the bulk of transit dollars going to BART.
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        Of course, BARTs eBART expansion is diesel, not electric.
        Johnny555 9y ago
        At least it's standard gauge rail, so that's a plus.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > The other advantage of rail is that rail is generally less affected by weather That one does certainly depend on the amount of money the rail operator(s) invest in maintenance and upkeep, as well as how much area on the sides of the track they bought. In Germany, rail has three major issues with weather: - during cold times, railroad switches freeze because they lack heatings and so they become stuck, and special maintenance teams have to be at standby across the country (source: was part of such a team for one season, well paid but shit that was cold) - during storms, stuff gets blown onto the rail. Mostly dead trees, the problem is when the area next to the rails didn't get cleaned up (trees so high that they could fall into the rails are cut to a safe height or removed altogether). This can be caused either by a lack of upkeep - or because the surrounding area is not owned by the train operator - during hot periods, the running gag in Germany is "how many trains will fuck up today?". The trains are either not properly maintained (due to a lack of funds) or simply have not been ordered with strong enough air conditioners. tl;dr: getting rail immune from weather-related influences takes serious money. The Swiss and Japanese railroads did the proper investments and thus have next to zero weather related problems, the German railroads are seen as a cash cow ready to be milked by the politicians, consequences be damned.
  - baud147258 9y ago
    Hey your problems are too serious, in France, each autumn, we'll get delays because of tree leaves on the tracks! (in addition to the cold/storm/hot problems) From what I understood, the leaves increase braking distances, so the trains have to be slowed.
    - mschuster91 9y ago
      > in France, each autumn, we'll get delays because of tree leaves on the tracks! Yeah we get these too, but that's just delays, not the complete shutdown of the entire country's railroad system for sometimes days like last autumn after storm Xavier.
      - baud147258 9y ago
        Quite true. I think I was lucky since I avoided the worst of the latest storm. I just had a lot of delays on my first day of work this year: they had a tree fallen on the tracks, but they had managed to keep a few trains rolling.
- CaptainDecisive 9y ago
  Generally yes, weather is less of an impact on rail, but occasionally you can get <cue ominous music> the Wrong Type of Snow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_wrong_type_of_snow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_wrong_type_of_snow)
cfallin 9y ago
> [Amtrak] was really pleasant. It just takes forever. Absolutely -- IMHO for mid-distance (200 mi to 500 mi or so) trips, Amtrak is a really underrated option. I travel semi-often from Pittsburgh to NYC (450 mi) and choose train over flights because it's actually not that much slower (consider to/from airport, security, and (de)boarding, as you say) and it's much more comfortable: I can walk up and down the whole train, with no fasten-seatbelt sign to stop me; there's a cafe car; I have about 2 feet of legroom; there is reliable AC power and functional wifi. I just make it a work-from-train day and all's well.
- jachee 9y ago
  Having just moved to PGH, I had wondered about the viability and comfort of riding the rails for a weekend trip to the Big Apple. This is encouraging news.
  - cfallin 9y ago
    Yup, the Pennsylvanian is actually pretty nice. The route is the old Penn Railroad mainline and zigzags through some really scenic parts of the Appalachians! The only downside is that it's on a once-per-day schedule (Pgh->NYC at 7:30am and NYC->Pgh at 10:50am). It's 8-9 hr downtown-to-downtown (vs. ~5-6 when flying) so you'd really want to do Fri/Mon for a weekend. FWIW, there are three or four Megabuses per day too, including an overnight bus in each direction, for when the train schedule doesn't work. Also, flying to NYC from Pgh is oddly expensive, like $400 roundtrip expensive. Amtrak is about $150 RT if far enough in advance. Anyway, welcome to Pittsburgh! I hope you're surviving the snow...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - tallblondeguy 9y ago
    Another Pittsburgher here endorsing the Pennsylvanian! From PGH to NYP, it runs from 7:30 AM to 4:50 PM, which is a workday plus lunch and a nap. Really nice. It's longer than it should be; you take those turnpike tunnels for granted until you're in a train and you have to navigate the mountains. If you want to spice it up, check out Southern Airways Express[0]. You can fly between Pittsburgh and Lancaster for as little as $30 on a tiny little 8-to-10-seat plane, which is a really unique and scenic experience. Catch a ride to the Lancaster Amtrak where there are a lot more options for getting to NYC. I've done Megabus and Greyhound on return trips. You get what you pay for. But if you happen to live in the North Hills, the bus depot for Megabus is in Ohio Township and if you ask nicely they'll let you ride up there. [0]: https://iflysouthern.com/ https://iflysouthern.com/
racer-v 9y ago
> First, you have to deal with the security boondoggle. Add 30 minutes for that In all fairness, how many incidents will it take before boarding a train means 30 minutes of security theater?
- electricEmu 9y ago
  Apparently quite a few. I take West coast trains semi-frequently and have never had to wait for security. Officials we're in the station once. In fairness, I believe there's no indication the TSA will appear anywhere but airports anytime soon.
  - rootusrootus 9y ago
    As I recall, a few years back they tried to push their way into train stations but Amtrak put their foot down and set get out. That's a good call. Trains are on rails and the amount of damage you can really accomplish with one is quite limited. Plus, is it even feasible to reach the engineer's position on the front of a train from inside the passenger cars?
    - themagician 9y ago
      I mean, they managed it in Snowpiercer. Just gotta claw your way to the front car.
    - Gibbon1 9y ago
      When BART got a connection to SFO the TSA started using that as an excuse to bust people for pot on BART. That lasted like two days.
    - Symbiote 9y ago
      On a modern trainset (walk through coaches with power integrated along the train) its usually possible. There's probably a door, so the driver's doors can be used to escape in an emergency. But I don't know about high speed trains. The first and last coaches are often first class, I'm not sure I've seen them on the inside.
shard972 9y ago
> First, you have to deal with the security boondoggle. Add 30 minutes for that, because you never know what you are going to get. You seem to be talking like the security theatre in airports is never going to come to rail? Have you ever been on the NY subway?
- patleeman 9y ago
  I take the train daily. I've only ever seen random cops walking around, setting up bag check tables in stations and infrequently armed swat guys on patrol. They never stop people and are more there as a show of force. The subway is no where near how awful the airports are.
  - themagician 9y ago
    Where are their bag check stations? I think I remember seeing this once or twice during Halloween and such by Times Square, but never in any other instance. Unless this is a new thing in that last year or so.
    - patleeman 9y ago
      Usually in larger stations and it is really infrequent. It's usually a bunch of patrol cops with a plastic folding table and they set it up in the station outside the turnstiles. They'll "randomly" select people and check their bags. I've seen them in Queens (Roosevelt/74th) and other random stations.
- themagician 9y ago
  Yes, I have. Literally hundreds of times. I lived in downtown Manhattan for a few years not too long ago (2010). Took the subway multiple times a day, every day. 1,2,3,4,5,6,A,C,R all the time. Metro-North to CT quite a bit one year as well. Never stopped or questioned. Saw some DHS uniforms maybe a dozen times over a period of 4 years? Maybe more, never paid attention as they just seemed to be minding their own business. Have you ever been on the NYC subway? Has something changed recently?
rhizome 9y ago
In the 80s my dad had business with almost every county in California, and they each required annual or semi-annual visits. It didn't take him long to get sick of the airport dance and just start driving everywhere.
stretchwithme 9y ago
Time is money and 12 hours is a long time indeed. And trains experience delays too. But I like the train when I have the time. I took Amtrak when I moved to California. And I've taken it up to Portland and Seattle, but flew back, as it's much faster and cheaper. It's fun to sleep on the train in your own cabin. Just very expensive. And that is subsidized by the government to a degree.
vesrah 9y ago
I recommend looking into TSA PreCheck.
- ashayh 9y ago
  Noooo .. you want Global Entry, as that gets you TSA Pre as well.
archagon 9y ago
Megabus, if you're not too cool for coach? Incredibly cheap (cheaper than gas), really pleasant ride, great views if you grab a seat in the top deck. 7-8 hours.
Aissen 9y ago
As comparison point in France, Paris to Marseille by high-speed train (TGV) takes 3h11 at the shortest, for a similar (should be ~10% longer) distance. And it's not the fastest commercially-operated train line AFAIK.
deepGem 9y ago
"and it's always a stressful and shitty experience" Many people overlook this. Because of this shitty experience, depending on your tolerance for shitty experiences, days of productivity is lost. If you are flying back on a Friday, your entire weekend is lost. If you are flying in for a business meeting on Monday, but for that 2-3 hour meeting, your entire day's productivity is lost. Frequent flying is a horribly stressful experience. No amount of luxury can make this palatable.
hrasyid 9y ago
I like trains and agree with a lot you say here, but trying to be a devil's advocate... American cities are a lot more sparse than those in Europe/Japan, right? e.g. if you're in Silicon Valley, won't you still need 1 hour to drive to SF? Even if there's a station in, like, Mountain View, isn't it still 30 minutes from places like San Jose? Once you arrive in LA, isn't likely that you'll need a car again from the station to your destination? And also for eating, commuting and other daily necessities?

Johnny555 9y ago

The other advantage of rail is that rail is generally less affected by weather. (which anyone that's sat at SFO or waited in the air or elsewhere on the ground for an SFO fog delay will appreciate) Last time I was in Japan, a typhoon hit, and was working its way up the islands. My flight up to Tokyo was already cancelled due to high winds, but I was able to get a Shinkansen ticket and arrive in time to catch my flight before Narita was affected by the Typhoon. The flight would have been 90 minutes (not including travel time to the airport), and the train was 5 hours, but still, it was a comfortable journey and I'd do it again. If I were traveling from downtown to downtown, the airplane time would be more like 4 hours (60 minutes to get to airport with padding to get to gate on time, 90 minute flight (scheduled time is over 2 hours, but usually the flight is around 90 minutes gate to gate), then at least 90 minutes to get off the plan and catch an express bus to Tokyo.

toyg 9y ago
Rail is also more environmentally efficient, once the initial infrastructure is put in place. Airplanes burn tons of fossil fuels, trains can run on renewables.
- r0m4n0 9y ago
  All the trains I have been on in California burn diesel fuel, including the one I commute on every day. Caltrain down the peninsula burns 10 million dollars in fossil fuels a year. I would hope we could convert already heavily used rail corridors to electric sometime in my lifetime. http://www.caltrain.com/Assets/__Agendas+and+Minutes/JPB/Board+of+Directors/Presentations/2018/PCJPB+FY18+Operating+Budget.pdf http://www.caltrain.com/Assets/__Agendas+and+Minutes/JPB/Boa...
  - tschuy 9y ago
    Caltrain is being electrified right now and due to be done in six years, and of course CA High Speed Rail is going to be electric.
  - Johnny555 9y ago
    It's in progress: http://www.caltrain.com/projectsplans/CaltrainModernization/Modernization/PeninsulaCorridorElectrificationProject.html http://www.caltrain.com/projectsplans/CaltrainModernization/... As long as you're still alive in 2022 (and there are no more funding issues caused by the tie-in to HSR), it will happen within your lifetime. Should have happened a decade or more ago, but Caltrain is the underfunded stepchild with the bulk of transit dollars going to BART.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      Of course, BARTs eBART expansion is diesel, not electric.
      - Johnny555 9y ago
        At least it's standard gauge rail, so that's a plus.
mschuster91 9y ago
> The other advantage of rail is that rail is generally less affected by weather That one does certainly depend on the amount of money the rail operator(s) invest in maintenance and upkeep, as well as how much area on the sides of the track they bought. In Germany, rail has three major issues with weather: - during cold times, railroad switches freeze because they lack heatings and so they become stuck, and special maintenance teams have to be at standby across the country (source: was part of such a team for one season, well paid but shit that was cold) - during storms, stuff gets blown onto the rail. Mostly dead trees, the problem is when the area next to the rails didn't get cleaned up (trees so high that they could fall into the rails are cut to a safe height or removed altogether). This can be caused either by a lack of upkeep - or because the surrounding area is not owned by the train operator - during hot periods, the running gag in Germany is "how many trains will fuck up today?". The trains are either not properly maintained (due to a lack of funds) or simply have not been ordered with strong enough air conditioners. tl;dr: getting rail immune from weather-related influences takes serious money. The Swiss and Japanese railroads did the proper investments and thus have next to zero weather related problems, the German railroads are seen as a cash cow ready to be milked by the politicians, consequences be damned.
- baud147258 9y ago
  Hey your problems are too serious, in France, each autumn, we'll get delays because of tree leaves on the tracks! (in addition to the cold/storm/hot problems) From what I understood, the leaves increase braking distances, so the trains have to be slowed.
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    > in France, each autumn, we'll get delays because of tree leaves on the tracks! Yeah we get these too, but that's just delays, not the complete shutdown of the entire country's railroad system for sometimes days like last autumn after storm Xavier.
    - baud147258 9y ago
      Quite true. I think I was lucky since I avoided the worst of the latest storm. I just had a lot of delays on my first day of work this year: they had a tree fallen on the tracks, but they had managed to keep a few trains rolling.
CaptainDecisive 9y ago
Generally yes, weather is less of an impact on rail, but occasionally you can get <cue ominous music> the Wrong Type of Snow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_wrong_type_of_snow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_wrong_type_of_snow)

cfallin 9y ago

> [Amtrak] was really pleasant. It just takes forever. Absolutely -- IMHO for mid-distance (200 mi to 500 mi or so) trips, Amtrak is a really underrated option. I travel semi-often from Pittsburgh to NYC (450 mi) and choose train over flights because it's actually not that much slower (consider to/from airport, security, and (de)boarding, as you say) and it's much more comfortable: I can walk up and down the whole train, with no fasten-seatbelt sign to stop me; there's a cafe car; I have about 2 feet of legroom; there is reliable AC power and functional wifi. I just make it a work-from-train day and all's well.

jachee 9y ago
Having just moved to PGH, I had wondered about the viability and comfort of riding the rails for a weekend trip to the Big Apple. This is encouraging news.
- cfallin 9y ago
  Yup, the Pennsylvanian is actually pretty nice. The route is the old Penn Railroad mainline and zigzags through some really scenic parts of the Appalachians! The only downside is that it's on a once-per-day schedule (Pgh->NYC at 7:30am and NYC->Pgh at 10:50am). It's 8-9 hr downtown-to-downtown (vs. ~5-6 when flying) so you'd really want to do Fri/Mon for a weekend. FWIW, there are three or four Megabuses per day too, including an overnight bus in each direction, for when the train schedule doesn't work. Also, flying to NYC from Pgh is oddly expensive, like $400 roundtrip expensive. Amtrak is about $150 RT if far enough in advance. Anyway, welcome to Pittsburgh! I hope you're surviving the snow...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- tallblondeguy 9y ago
  Another Pittsburgher here endorsing the Pennsylvanian! From PGH to NYP, it runs from 7:30 AM to 4:50 PM, which is a workday plus lunch and a nap. Really nice. It's longer than it should be; you take those turnpike tunnels for granted until you're in a train and you have to navigate the mountains. If you want to spice it up, check out Southern Airways Express[0]. You can fly between Pittsburgh and Lancaster for as little as $30 on a tiny little 8-to-10-seat plane, which is a really unique and scenic experience. Catch a ride to the Lancaster Amtrak where there are a lot more options for getting to NYC. I've done Megabus and Greyhound on return trips. You get what you pay for. But if you happen to live in the North Hills, the bus depot for Megabus is in Ohio Township and if you ask nicely they'll let you ride up there. [0]: https://iflysouthern.com/ https://iflysouthern.com/

racer-v 9y ago

> First, you have to deal with the security boondoggle. Add 30 minutes for that In all fairness, how many incidents will it take before boarding a train means 30 minutes of security theater?

electricEmu 9y ago
Apparently quite a few. I take West coast trains semi-frequently and have never had to wait for security. Officials we're in the station once. In fairness, I believe there's no indication the TSA will appear anywhere but airports anytime soon.
- rootusrootus 9y ago
  As I recall, a few years back they tried to push their way into train stations but Amtrak put their foot down and set get out. That's a good call. Trains are on rails and the amount of damage you can really accomplish with one is quite limited. Plus, is it even feasible to reach the engineer's position on the front of a train from inside the passenger cars?
  - themagician 9y ago
    I mean, they managed it in Snowpiercer. Just gotta claw your way to the front car.
  - Gibbon1 9y ago
    When BART got a connection to SFO the TSA started using that as an excuse to bust people for pot on BART. That lasted like two days.
  - Symbiote 9y ago
    On a modern trainset (walk through coaches with power integrated along the train) its usually possible. There's probably a door, so the driver's doors can be used to escape in an emergency. But I don't know about high speed trains. The first and last coaches are often first class, I'm not sure I've seen them on the inside.

shard972 9y ago

> First, you have to deal with the security boondoggle. Add 30 minutes for that, because you never know what you are going to get. You seem to be talking like the security theatre in airports is never going to come to rail? Have you ever been on the NY subway?

patleeman 9y ago
I take the train daily. I've only ever seen random cops walking around, setting up bag check tables in stations and infrequently armed swat guys on patrol. They never stop people and are more there as a show of force. The subway is no where near how awful the airports are.
- themagician 9y ago
  Where are their bag check stations? I think I remember seeing this once or twice during Halloween and such by Times Square, but never in any other instance. Unless this is a new thing in that last year or so.
  - patleeman 9y ago
    Usually in larger stations and it is really infrequent. It's usually a bunch of patrol cops with a plastic folding table and they set it up in the station outside the turnstiles. They'll "randomly" select people and check their bags. I've seen them in Queens (Roosevelt/74th) and other random stations.
themagician 9y ago
Yes, I have. Literally hundreds of times. I lived in downtown Manhattan for a few years not too long ago (2010). Took the subway multiple times a day, every day. 1,2,3,4,5,6,A,C,R all the time. Metro-North to CT quite a bit one year as well. Never stopped or questioned. Saw some DHS uniforms maybe a dozen times over a period of 4 years? Maybe more, never paid attention as they just seemed to be minding their own business. Have you ever been on the NYC subway? Has something changed recently?

rhizome 9y ago

In the 80s my dad had business with almost every county in California, and they each required annual or semi-annual visits. It didn't take him long to get sick of the airport dance and just start driving everywhere.

stretchwithme 9y ago

Time is money and 12 hours is a long time indeed. And trains experience delays too. But I like the train when I have the time. I took Amtrak when I moved to California. And I've taken it up to Portland and Seattle, but flew back, as it's much faster and cheaper. It's fun to sleep on the train in your own cabin. Just very expensive. And that is subsidized by the government to a degree.

vesrah 9y ago

I recommend looking into TSA PreCheck.

ashayh 9y ago
Noooo .. you want Global Entry, as that gets you TSA Pre as well.

archagon 9y ago

Megabus, if you're not too cool for coach? Incredibly cheap (cheaper than gas), really pleasant ride, great views if you grab a seat in the top deck. 7-8 hours.

Aissen 9y ago

As comparison point in France, Paris to Marseille by high-speed train (TGV) takes 3h11 at the shortest, for a similar (should be ~10% longer) distance. And it's not the fastest commercially-operated train line AFAIK.

deepGem 9y ago

"and it's always a stressful and shitty experience" Many people overlook this. Because of this shitty experience, depending on your tolerance for shitty experiences, days of productivity is lost. If you are flying back on a Friday, your entire weekend is lost. If you are flying in for a business meeting on Monday, but for that 2-3 hour meeting, your entire day's productivity is lost. Frequent flying is a horribly stressful experience. No amount of luxury can make this palatable.

hrasyid 9y ago

I like trains and agree with a lot you say here, but trying to be a devil's advocate... American cities are a lot more sparse than those in Europe/Japan, right? e.g. if you're in Silicon Valley, won't you still need 1 hour to drive to SF? Even if there's a station in, like, Mountain View, isn't it still 30 minutes from places like San Jose? Once you arrive in LA, isn't likely that you'll need a car again from the station to your destination? And also for eating, commuting and other daily necessities?