5 ms·

This article shows how culturally different Sweden and U.S. are. In Sweden it has become taboo to use the plane for any travel destination where you can go by t

• ghaff 8y ago
  Many people are fine with taking the train in the US when it's remotely competitive in terms of time and price. However, in practice, that mostly means a subset of the Northeast Corridor (the whole thing is about an 8-hour trip vs. a short flight) or a handful of various city pairs that are only a few hundred miles apart. But it's simply not practical for me to take the train from Boston to Chicago, much less San Francisco. People can get out pitchforks if they like but I'm essentially always going to fly.
  • isostatic 8y ago
    Quite. Makes sense to do train from NY-Boston or NY-Washington. Maybe Washington-Boston, but 5 hours is probably about the limit. I suspect few people in Sweden would recommend traveling Stockholm to Madrid by train
    • ghaff 8y ago
      Boston to Washington is something over 7 hours. I've done it but it really doesn't make sense most of the time--especially given that Reagan airport is on the metro which neutralizes one of the advantages that taking the train has in a place like Manhattan. It's really the two segments you mention that get a lot of the traffic. You see this when you pull into NYP from Boston and the train pretty much empties out.
  • okmokmz 8y ago
    I've never been in a situation in the US where a train was even close to competitive in terms of time and price
    • ghaff 8y ago
      Maybe your criteria are different but lots of people in the US Northeast Corridor find trains a better value than the alternatives for a lot of segments.
• criddell 8y ago
  Yeah, but Sweden is small. In the US, people routinely drive distances where you would be flying or using the train. The mountains make things a bit different, but I think in general it's true.
  • Kiro 8y ago
    The argument would be that you don't need to travel where you can't take the train. If you have a job that requires it, quit.
    • criddell 8y ago
      You've convinced me. This is my last day as an airline pilot!
    • ineedasername 8y ago
      Congratulations, you have good job mobility. And it biases you towards the privilege that you have, but most other people do not. The vast majority of people do not have that ability to be selective. In a few months, I must travel for work. Should I quit? You would say yes, I suppose. I don't have the luxury, either financially or as a matter of practicality: any other I might take would similarly require such travel on occasion. Maybe I could find another field to work in? Ah, but I live extremely close to my work place, less then 3km. Most other jobs, even within my field, would require I commute daily between 40-50km each way. So, maybe I avoid occasional air travel, but I still produce a larger carbon foot print. Train travel to other locations around me? Doesn't exist, there aren't the rails. Take a bus? Similarly, the routes don't work out: I might have to take 6 buses for 3 hours to get some place 40-50km away. This is just the work side of things. What about family? A loved one is sick, or dies. Should I not travel to be with them, to help, to grieve with my family? Should I ask for a teleconference into the funeral?
    • InitialLastName 8y ago
      That works better in a place where people can reliably and cheaply take trains from A to B. The people arguing with you that they need to fly are almost certainly in places like the US, where even local trains are a pretty terrible, expensive experience relative to flying (or driving, on the shorter end). I'm 90% of an anti-car zealot that lives in the densest city in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the US. I would love to be able to reasonably take a train when I travel, but the ticket prices are astronomical and the reliability is horrendous relative to buses, airplanes or driving costs.
• elbasti 8y ago
  To be fair, NY → LA is over 4,000 KM. Would you fly to say, Bulgaria? Southern Italy?
  • Kiro 8y ago
    Yes, there's a big movement promoting night trains in Europe right now. I see "night train maps" in my feed all the time. Additionally one of the fastest growing Instagram accounts is one shaming influencers who are flying instead of taking the train.
    • ghaff 8y ago
      And I work with lots of people in Europe who routinely fly all the time. I'm not sure how big a "movement" it is to take trains when it doesn't make sense in terms of time and money to do so. Not to put too fine a point on it, who cares what someone with an Instagram account says?
    • ineedasername 8y ago
      You might, but you talk of a movement. If it's in the "movement" stage, then it is very much not an ingrained part of the culture yet, which was your original claim. Ditto for the instagram account. That speaks to something that may be grass roots, but not cultural. Further, this mindset speaks towards an ingrained bias of privilege that many/most people probably can't actually afford. Even assuming the rail cost for a 4,000 to 6,000 km trip is comparable to flight, the ability to take upwards of 3-4 days of your time to leisurely make a trip requires you to have that much leisure time at your disposal.
    • mvexel 8y ago
      I just read that the Austrian national railway is planning to re-introduce them and was surprised. Europe had a pretty decent overnight train network in the 90s and even into the 2000s. Then flying got cheap and people basically didn't want to take those trains any longer. Most disappeared. What, short of making flying much more expensive, would make a new attempt at introducing them successful, you think?
• lupire 8y ago
  How often do you take 3-day train journeys from Sweden?
  • ineedasername 8y ago
    Trick question. Sweden isn't large enough to require trips longer than a day. I'm going to bet they fly when, for example, they need to go from Stockholm to Madrid, roughly the distance from New York to California.
• ineedasername 8y ago
  Undoubtedly there are cultural differences. However, you are attributing to cultural difference things that are more directly linked to geographical differences that have contributed to limited rail infrastructure and route availability. First & foremost, US rail is minimal in terms of routes offered and significantly more expensive. Compared to planes, it's at least double the cost, and 4x to 5x the cost if you want a bed and shower throughout the multi-day trip. Second, the US is also significantly larger, making train travel much less practical. The longest trip through Sweden is roughly 1,000 miles top to bottom. That's most of a full 24 hours day in a train. In the US, it's about 3x that from New York City to California.
  • magduf 8y ago
    This is a terrible comparison. A better one is continental Europe as a whole, which has many rail lines spanning it. This is probably what the Swedish person was referring to, not simply staying in Sweden (the major cities in Sweden probably aren't far enough apart to fly between). Continental Europe is very roughly the size of the US, yet trains are used there extensively. The problem with the US isn't size, it's political will. America simply does not want to have high-quality, high-speed train service.
    • ineedasername 8y ago
      Political will exists when the projects are on a smaller scale, a scale that would span countries in continental Europe. See the high speed plans in California as an example, even with the recent reduction in scope. Trains are extensive in Europe in part because each country was able to make (relatively) smaller investments in their own networks. As time went by over the decades, these grew and were able to connect with each other. That type of gradual growth wasn't possible in the use where small incremental changes weren't useful. Decades ago, and still today, many routes that would be useful would need to span hundred of miles where there are no intervening points of interest. Meaning a massive investment would be required for a single point to point route. It's too simplistic to point toward a single variable for something of this sort. Many variables come together to reach this point. Political will is only part of it, but even then, you have to ask why isn't there political will? It often has as much to do with economic and geographic realities, not a general unwillingness to invest in infrastructure. See our build out of the US interstate system beginning in the 50's as a counterexample to our lack of build out for trains.
• bluGill 8y ago
  Sweden is a small country. Would you take the train from Sweden to Italy? Even that trip is much less distance than the trip in question here, but it is the closest example I can think of that ought to be possible. A more comparable trip would be Sweden to Kazakhstan.
  • isostatic 8y ago
    > Sweden is a small country It's about 1500 miles from one end to the other, and not exactly "dense". Sure it's small compared with Russia or Canada, but it's larger than most. Realistically anything upto about 500 miles shouldn't need flights -- that's 2-3 hours on a train. Once you go over 1000 miles then train stops making sense, it's 5 or 6 hours compared with 2 on a plane. 5 hours might work for an evening meal/relax, departing say 4pm and hotel by 10pm. With decent wifi and power you could probably push it to 7 or 8 hours, so maybe 1500 miles if it was high speed all the way. A sleeper train (which probably wouldn't be high speed) would work at about 1000 miles in 12 hours, leave at 9PM after dinner, getting you there for shower, breakfast, and a 9AM meeting. Would beat a 6AM flight (so up at 4:30)
    • mvexel 8y ago
      > Would beat a 6AM flight (so up at 4:30) Agreed. When the option exists, it's so much nicer than flying. At one point in my career I traveled from Amsterdam to various other European cities for 3-5 day work trips fairly frequently. Where direct overnight train connections existed, I would try and use those rather than get up for a 6am flight. For example Amsterdam - Copenhagen used to exist as an direct overnight connection. The cost for a private sleeper cabin with shower and breakfast was, I think, about €500 -- less than a flight + an extra hotel night. The trouble was getting my company to reimburse it, because it didn't fit neatly in their travel reimbursement policy's categories and rules.
    • magduf 8y ago
      Sweden is really long for a "small" country, but if you look at a map, all the major cities are in the south and not very far from each other. There's some small cities like Umea (population a little over 100k) farther north, but no major metro areas.
• yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
  > In Sweden it has become taboo to use the plane for any travel destination where you can go by train No it hasn't. This might be true in your direct social circle, but I know enough people who shuffle between Sthlm and GBG a few times a week on the plane to prove otherwise.
• dagw 8y ago
  In Sweden it has become taboo to use the plane for any travel destination where you can go by train Not in the Sweden I live in. Sure there is some weak social pressure to fly less and some companies have a policy that you take the train if it's less than 3-4 hours or so (of course with SJ being SJ a 3 hour train ride has an annoying tendency to take 4-8 hours), but no one expect you take the train Stockholm-Umeå.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]