4 ms·

It is not two hours. The flight time from my home town to Moscow is 50 minutes. Whole trip is about 6 hours. Get to the airport, takes about 1 hour (drive 60k

by p2t2p 7y ago

It is not two hours. The flight time from my home town to Moscow is 50 minutes. Whole trip is about 6 hours. Get to the airport, takes about 1 hour (drive 60k or 40 miles). If you don’t have a car - even longer. You arrive in advance, security, luggage check in then boarding, then runway. It’s been around 3 hours so far. Now you fly for 50 to 70 minutes and it doesn’t include the plane driving through airport after landing. Get off, grab you luggage - another 40 minutes easily. 15 if you’re lucky. Now you need to get to the city, so it is 2 hours by car through Moscow traffic or 1 hour using “aero express” train. The thing is, once you get off this “aero express” train, chances are it is still about one hour trip on subway to the office/apartment. I used to fly like that, I was leaving my parents apartment at about 4-30am to arrive by 10/11am. Compare it to train - it takes 13 hours but it leaves from the city centre, no security check in’s no nothing, you take 30 minutes to arrive there. It leaves at 6-30pm, you have supper and sleep. 7-30am BOOM you’re in the center of Moscow right next to subway station. Brush you’re teeth during approach, have your breakfast and off you pop. It feels muuuuch better on the train. Air travel overhead is just too big - 5 hours or something for hour of the flight time. With train you have about two hours of overhead. The only thing it is almost twice as expensive compared to air travel

hinkley 7y ago
From an article last year about new train prototypes in Tokyo: > Chris Jackson, the editor-in-chief of Railway Gazette International, based in London, said JR East wanted to raise their maximum train speed to 224 miles per hour to achieve a journey time between Tokyo to Sapporo that rivals flying. > Currently, the world’s fastest trains in regular service run between Beijing and Shanghai, in China, at speeds up to 217 miles an hour, he said. Sapporo is over 500 miles from Tokyo, and the trains might be faster than a 600mph plane ride...
- mikekchar 7y ago
  But you can only get to Hakodate... The shinkansen tracks to Sapporo aren't finished yet (unless I've missed something). It takes nearly as long to go from Hakodate to Sapporo as it does to go from Tokyo to Hakodate :-) I wonder if they are really serious about that...
  - CaptainZapp 7y ago
    No, you didn't (miss something that is). When I was in Hokkaido the opening of the track was rumoured for about 2030. (usual disclaimer, you got it from a guy on the internet, etc) Also, the trip through the Seikan tunnel (the 33.46 miles undersea tunnel connecting Honshu with Hokkaido) enforces relatively slow speeds, since it's shared with other, slower trains. They would probably have to implement significant extensions that it could be approached with Shinkansen speed. That said, the train trip between Hakodate and Sapporo is a rather nice one. Aided by a Bento box and a couple of Asahis it's a pleasurable experience. Even if you don't have the over-the-top Shinkansen luxury and speed. On the minus side I had to stay a night in Hakodate, because appart from the first two trains to Tokyo there was no seat available on any other train. No matter in which class, alas, that was the Sunday, which marked the end of golden week. Hakodate, while certainly not what you expect of magic Japan, has its attractions in its own rights. Especially when you arrive during the end days of the cherry blossom and there's that really great sushi place, which was a lot cheaper than anything comparable in Tokyo. I digress, most definitely, but - ahh - I really want to go back to Japan.
ses1984 7y ago
>Get to the airport, takes about 1 hour (drive 60k or 40 miles). If you don’t have a car - even longer. Well you also have to commute to train stations.
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  In general trains stop in more central locations than airports, which usually get sited far away from people who might complain about the noise. And if you set up the system to do so, trains can stop multiple times within a metropolitan area for easier access. Tokaido Shinkansen trains call at Tokyo, Shingawa, and Shin-Yokohama; the ICE stops at Berlin Ostkreuz, Hbf and Spandau going west, or Gesundbrunnen, Hbf and Sudkreuz going south.
- reallydontask 7y ago
  > Well you also have to commute to train stations. True enough. I live almost equidistantly from three international airports, all, nominally (that is without traffic) about 75 minutes drive away. The closest main train station is a 15 minute bike ride away or a 10 minute drive away (without traffic). Funnily enough the local train station is slightly further away both by car and bike.
- CaptainZapp 7y ago
  True, takes me 15 minutes from door to (train) door and I don't have to endure the usual airport security shit and calculate a buffer time of a minimum of 60 minutes, which can be significantly longer, depending on the airport. Sure, not every country (notably the US) offers such privileged amenities, but where a good train network is available trips up to six hours are definitely doable, if not preferable.
rayiner 7y ago
In America, most people don’t live near a city center big enough to warrant an intercity train station. 75% of Moscow’s metro area lives in city limits. There is no US city like that. For DC, it’s less than 20%. Also, in America 88% of households own a car, versus 55% in Russia. I can be at my local airport (Baltimore) in less than 30 minutes, and be seated in another 30 minutes if I’m traveling early. If I lived in real America, somewhere like Kansas City or Buffalo, it’d take like 15-20 minutes to get from parking to the airplane.
- BrandonM 7y ago
  To your point, I thought Columbus, OH, would be a good candidate for a large city limits population. According to Wikipedia, "Columbus adopted a policy of linking sewer and water hookups to annexation to the city." This means that Columbus proper includes low density areas which would typically be suburbs outside the city limits of most cities. Even still, the city population was about 880K in 2018, with a metro area of 2.4MM. So even in a US city with a somewhat aggressive annexation policy, still only about ⅓ of the population lives within the city limits. And Columbus has no passenger trains, anyway, neither intracity nor intercity.

by p2t2p 7y ago

hinkley 7y ago

From an article last year about new train prototypes in Tokyo: > Chris Jackson, the editor-in-chief of Railway Gazette International, based in London, said JR East wanted to raise their maximum train speed to 224 miles per hour to achieve a journey time between Tokyo to Sapporo that rivals flying. > Currently, the world’s fastest trains in regular service run between Beijing and Shanghai, in China, at speeds up to 217 miles an hour, he said. Sapporo is over 500 miles from Tokyo, and the trains might be faster than a 600mph plane ride...

mikekchar 7y ago
But you can only get to Hakodate... The shinkansen tracks to Sapporo aren't finished yet (unless I've missed something). It takes nearly as long to go from Hakodate to Sapporo as it does to go from Tokyo to Hakodate :-) I wonder if they are really serious about that...
- CaptainZapp 7y ago
  No, you didn't (miss something that is). When I was in Hokkaido the opening of the track was rumoured for about 2030. (usual disclaimer, you got it from a guy on the internet, etc) Also, the trip through the Seikan tunnel (the 33.46 miles undersea tunnel connecting Honshu with Hokkaido) enforces relatively slow speeds, since it's shared with other, slower trains. They would probably have to implement significant extensions that it could be approached with Shinkansen speed. That said, the train trip between Hakodate and Sapporo is a rather nice one. Aided by a Bento box and a couple of Asahis it's a pleasurable experience. Even if you don't have the over-the-top Shinkansen luxury and speed. On the minus side I had to stay a night in Hakodate, because appart from the first two trains to Tokyo there was no seat available on any other train. No matter in which class, alas, that was the Sunday, which marked the end of golden week. Hakodate, while certainly not what you expect of magic Japan, has its attractions in its own rights. Especially when you arrive during the end days of the cherry blossom and there's that really great sushi place, which was a lot cheaper than anything comparable in Tokyo. I digress, most definitely, but - ahh - I really want to go back to Japan.

ses1984 7y ago

>Get to the airport, takes about 1 hour (drive 60k or 40 miles). If you don’t have a car - even longer. Well you also have to commute to train stations.

bobthepanda 7y ago
In general trains stop in more central locations than airports, which usually get sited far away from people who might complain about the noise. And if you set up the system to do so, trains can stop multiple times within a metropolitan area for easier access. Tokaido Shinkansen trains call at Tokyo, Shingawa, and Shin-Yokohama; the ICE stops at Berlin Ostkreuz, Hbf and Spandau going west, or Gesundbrunnen, Hbf and Sudkreuz going south.
reallydontask 7y ago
> Well you also have to commute to train stations. True enough. I live almost equidistantly from three international airports, all, nominally (that is without traffic) about 75 minutes drive away. The closest main train station is a 15 minute bike ride away or a 10 minute drive away (without traffic). Funnily enough the local train station is slightly further away both by car and bike.
CaptainZapp 7y ago
True, takes me 15 minutes from door to (train) door and I don't have to endure the usual airport security shit and calculate a buffer time of a minimum of 60 minutes, which can be significantly longer, depending on the airport. Sure, not every country (notably the US) offers such privileged amenities, but where a good train network is available trips up to six hours are definitely doable, if not preferable.

rayiner 7y ago

In America, most people don’t live near a city center big enough to warrant an intercity train station. 75% of Moscow’s metro area lives in city limits. There is no US city like that. For DC, it’s less than 20%. Also, in America 88% of households own a car, versus 55% in Russia. I can be at my local airport (Baltimore) in less than 30 minutes, and be seated in another 30 minutes if I’m traveling early. If I lived in real America, somewhere like Kansas City or Buffalo, it’d take like 15-20 minutes to get from parking to the airplane.

BrandonM 7y ago
To your point, I thought Columbus, OH, would be a good candidate for a large city limits population. According to Wikipedia, "Columbus adopted a policy of linking sewer and water hookups to annexation to the city." This means that Columbus proper includes low density areas which would typically be suburbs outside the city limits of most cities. Even still, the city population was about 880K in 2018, with a metro area of 2.4MM. So even in a US city with a somewhat aggressive annexation policy, still only about ⅓ of the population lives within the city limits. And Columbus has no passenger trains, anyway, neither intracity nor intercity.