11 ms·

I don't get the point of all those cross-country routes, isn't air travel both faster and cheaper once you are going long distance? I mean I would love to cross

I don't get the point of all those cross-country routes, isn't air travel both faster and cheaper once you are going long distance? I mean I would love to cross the country by rail for entertainment, but as a common method of travel it doesn't seem to make much sense. It works well in Europe because it is both much denser than the US, and also subsidized.

akg_67 5y ago
Air travel, That’s how you create flyover states.
ghaff 5y ago
And by and large, people don't take trains for Chicago to Seattle type distances in Europe. That's further than the distance from Paris to Moscow.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Of course, there is a Paris to Moscow train. The thing about the coast to coast train routes in the US and the Paris to Moscow train is that you're not in any way required to take the entire trip - there are stations along the way.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I guess I picked a bad example in that, to my surprise, there is a direct train for that route--although it still takes about a day and a half. But I could certainly pick a lot of city pairs in Europe that are 1-2K miles apart that would be anything but efficient to travel by rail.
    - CydeWeys 5y ago
      Well, let's hear some. You're probably gonna want to limit yourself to city pairs that have multiple direct daily flights though, as anything less won't have enough demand to merit a direct convenient train route either.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        Without making a research project out of it: - Rome to Athens - Paris to Barcelona - Madrid to Stockholm Much of Europe is a very far way from having a seamless integrated cross-border train system.
        vinay427 5y ago
        Paris to Barcelona does actually exist: https://en.oui.sncf/en/train/timetables/paris/barcelona https://en.oui.sncf/en/train/timetables/paris/barcelona The next direct train takes 6h39m.
    - gsnedders 5y ago
      It is, I believe, the second longest passenger train in Europe. (The longest is a similar Nice–Moscow service.) But both are weekly services, and even Nice–Moscow (yet alone intermediate stops) has more capacity most days by plane than the once-a-week train.
- apostacy 5y ago
  These long distance routes should be left intact because they are an important anchor for eventually expanding to high speed rail. China kept their unprofitable rural slow passenger routes into the distant corners of their country, and now they are converting them to high speed routes. The Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed line is 2,298km long, and used to be 22 hours but now runs in 8[1] Being able to go from Penn Station in Manhattan to Union Station in Chicago in 8 hours in a comfortable train would be a serious alternative to air travel, and once the track is upgraded, it would probably be cheaper than existing service. And this is completely doable with decades old technology. Other countries have done comparable things with less. I don't think we should abandon "legacy" routes just because they are not profitable right now. And even if they are never profitable that alone is not a good enough reason to abandon infrastructure. [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-20842836 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-20842836
  - T-hawk 5y ago
    Note that New York to Chicago by Amtrak is so slow largely because there's no direct route. You either take the Great Lakes route going through Albany, Buffalo, and Cleveland, or the northeast corridor route to Washington DC and then another line to Chicago. The more direct Keystone line through Pennsylvania only goes as far as Harrisburg.
    - apostacy 5y ago
      I think the absolute time and distance is what matters, and it would still substantially benefit from being high speed, even if it is meandering through upstate NY and along the great lakes. Eventually, a more direct NY - Chicago high speed rail route could be built that is even faster.
      - OldHand2018 5y ago
        You’ll notice that there is a Detroit to Toronto line on that map. It’s not an accident. Chicago to Detroit has been running at 110mph for 80+% of the distance for almost 10 years now. The rail tunnel under the Detroit River already exists. You just need a fast NYC to Buffalo with a little extension on to Hamilton, ON and you’ve got a very direct NYC to Chicago route.
- sofixa 5y ago
  > That's further than the distance from Paris to Moscow. Which has, in regular times, a weekly service by the Russian railways. And it passes through Belarus, and ends in Russia, countries for which you need visas and aren't necessarily the friendliest. If that service makes sense, Chicago-Seattle certainly could ( as an experience, cheap travel, etc.)
freeone3000 5y ago
Ideally, people in Minnesota would also want to go to North Dakota. There's ideally some station-to-station ridership, these aren't express routes.
Stasis5001 5y ago
I started looking at the map in the article and realized I had just booked a flight where there was an existing rail line ! So I checked out the Amtrak site, and what's 1h20m by plane is 14h40m by train -- and 8h by car. Maybe by getting a sleeper cabin I could have had an enjoyable trip by train, but as the trip scales things get dramatically worse. Of course, maybe this is exactly what the future of transportation should look like: more localized travel on modes that can be powered by renewable sources or nuclear.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  It's a mixed bag, really. Compare the journey from my small village in New Mexico to Chicago, about 1200 miles. We just happen to have an Amtrak station 5 miles away. The drive time is about 18-20 hours without stops, which is long enough that an overnight stop is going to be likely. The flight time is only about 3 hours, but that requires first driving 40-70 minutes to the airport, spending time waiting in the airport, and then arriving at O'Hare, and then the 50 min metro journey back into the city. The Southwest Chief, however, arrives here around lunch time, and arrives in Chicago about 24 hours later. If you were optimizing for minimum travel time, you'd probably fly. If you were optimizing for cost, you'd probably drive. But if you want a nice journey, the train is fantastic and faster than driving if you're going to stop. So, there are variations on the theme, and sometimes the train wins, sometimes the train loses.
  - brandonmenc 5y ago
    > If you were optimizing for minimum travel time, you'd probably fly. If you were optimizing for cost, you'd probably drive. But if you want a nice journey, the train is fantastic and faster than driving if you're going to stop. Train fans vastly overestimate the number of people who will optimize for "sitting in a train and staring out the window for days".
    - ghaff 5y ago
      Especially given that, if it's business travel, I expect a lot of companies aren't that big on you adding a couple days of travel time because you feel like taking the train. In the case of the parent's scenario, it seems pretty reasonable in that you're really only talking about maybe an additional half day of travel. But that's probably about the upper limit.
slacka 5y ago
I lived in China for 2 years. Americans have no idea how liberating it is to be able be able to hop on a 200 mph train and arrive at totally different climate in hours. Over lunch, my coworkers would talk about a weekend of drinking tea in mountains in Hunan, visiting Mao' home in Wuhan, or exploring the beaches of Hainan. These are all things we did and were possible because of China's high speed rail system. I think the biggest factor was the convenience. We'd just show up at the train station and take the next train, usually within an hour. No planning, no booking, just bought our tickets at the station, minutes before our trip. All of this for less than 1/4 the cost of a last minute plane ticket. Sure we could have flown, and the farthest places may have been faster to fly. But that only if the tickets were available and security lines in china are just as bad as here. There's also the comfort of a train with a meal coach. And, the thrill of watching the land rush by at lightning speeds. America felt so backwards on my return.
- WanderPanda 5y ago
  You seem to have enjoyed your trip on back of millions of workers who will never witness the same despite paying for it with their sweat and blood.
- jwcacces 5y ago
  Flying used to be like this. I'm from Long Island and I went to college in the Boston area. I remember you could buy a book of delta shuttle tickets (~$100 / fight, book of 5) and show up and use them whenever you'd like, last minute, with no security hassle or whatever. You could also use the same tickets to go to DC if you wanted. Just stay on the plane for the next leg.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Pre-Acela and the electrification of the line north of New Haven that came with it, the only real reason you'd take the train from Boston to NY (much less points south) was to save money. When I was in school in the Boston area, when I went home to the Philadelphia area, I'd take the train for longer vacations but would fly for 4-day weekends.
ris 5y ago
> and also subsidized Name a form of transport that isn't subsidized.
- danans 5y ago
  In many places, walking and biking.
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    I don't pay to walk or bike anywhere where I live, it was all built with tax dollars. Where are you that walkers and bikers pay for their infrastructure?
    - lbotos 5y ago
      > Where are you that walkers and bikers pay for their infrastructure? > Where I live, it was all built with tax dollars. You answered your own question, and, you paid for it too!
      - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
        Just like subsidized mass transit. Which was my point.
    - tinus_hn 5y ago
      Even if there is no government and no infrastructure, you can still walk. We have had men walk on the moon!
      - beowulfey 5y ago
        Well... that was also thanks to the government. Although moreso for the getting there.
myself248 5y ago
Not everyone optimizes for fast or cheap. Some prioritize comfort, or scenery, or not-being-in-an-airplane for whatever reason. Some really enjoy getting off at one stop for a while, and getting on the next train and continuing the journey. Or just deciding that this place looks nice, and getting off here. Try that in an airplane... There's a growing niche of transoceanic travel by container-ship and bulk freighter, too. It's neither cheap nor fast, and that's the point. It's truly unplugged, where the journey is part of the destination. Throughout the entirety of human history except the last hundred years or so, long distance travel has been a borderline-boring activity. Maybe that's not such a bad thing -- our brains need some downtime to reflect and defrag. We're just starting to appreciate en masse that "monotonous" can be kissing-close to "meditative". Rail is part of that, and as people catch onto that, it's making a comeback.
- peckrob 5y ago
  Frankly, even as poor as our rail infrastructure is, there's still a lot to be said for train travel. A couple years my wife and I went Birmingham to New Orleans for $150 round trip on Amtrak. Airfare on the same route was $600, and I would have paid $150 in parking alone in downtown New Orleans. Moreover, the time difference between train, driving or flying was not all that different. The train was scheduled at seven hours, about the same as driving time with stops. And air travel would have been about the same once you factor in getting to the airport early, two flights with a layover in Atlanta, and getting from the airport to downtown. It’s also a whole heck of a lot more pleasant than flying. 50” of seat pitch, width of a first class seat, hot food, alcohol, plenty of room to walk around, interesting people to talk to, no needless security theater, no need to get to the station 30 minutes early, no need to worry about baggage fees or weights. Before the pandemic hit, we were planning on doing the Empire Builder from Chicago to Portland. For the three of us (me, wife, daughter) in a bedroom was $1100. Expensive, but factoring in transportation, room and food for 2.5 days for 3, it’s not a bad deal. And you get to sit back, watch the scenery, read, nap, etc. I mean yeah, if I need to travel across the country quickly, an airplane will always win. But airlines have seemingly gone out of their way over the last 20 years to make flying as miserable as possible to squeeze every cent out of customers. If I can afford to take some time and the train is an option, I will always choose the train based solely on it being less miserable than flying has become.
tzs 5y ago
I think it may be like an elevator. About 15 years ago, I had to spend a little over 3 weeks in Beaumont, Texas, for work, leaving Beaumont just before Thanksgiving. I dislike flying and wasn't paying for the trip and had never taken a train, so asked to take Amtrak. My train trip was from the Tacoma, Washington Amtrak station to the Beaumont station and back, via the Los Angeles, California, station. It's a 3 day trip each way, and so on the return trip I was traveling on Thanksgiving day. Pretty much every stop that day had a ton of people getting on and a ton of people getting off, often whole families. They were all just taking the train to the town a few stops down the line to get together with family from the neighboring towns for the holiday, and then return the next time a train going the other direction came through (trains came through each way three days a week on that segment). So yeah, it may not make sense to have a cross-country route if you just consider people who are traveling from one of the route to the other, just like an elevator does not make sense in many buildings when you just consider the volume of passengers traveling between the penthouse and the bottom of a five level underground parking garage. But just like an elevator between that deep garage and the penthouse is also an elevator between every other pair of floors, a cross-country train route is also a route between every pair of stops between the ends.
- stuaxo 5y ago
  Exactly - just like with roads.
jen20 5y ago
> I don't get the point of all those cross-country routes, Same. I10 is pointless - no-one drives from Santa Monica to Jacksonville - flying is much faster once you’re going long distance. I mean I would love to cross the country by car for entertainment, but as a common method of travel it doesn’t seem to make much sense. /sarcasm (for those who need it pointing out...) Cross country rail lines are just like cross-country interstates: mostly used by people for specific regional connectivity.
hh3k0 5y ago
> I don't get the point of all those cross-country routes, isn't air travel both faster and cheaper once you are going long distance? It's also an absolute atrocity in the face of climate change. And it's long overdue that fact is reflected in the ticket price, imo.
kolinko 5y ago
Cross country - perhaps not. But, living in Europe, I see many people chhosing a train for 4-5h over 1-1.5h flight. For 1,5h flight you end up wasting 3-4h anyway because you need to get to the airport etc, and out of those 3-4h most of the time you can’t do anything productive or relaxing either. With 5h train you can either relax or work and it’s much more productive. Also less co2 produced ofc. And that’s with “slow” trains going 100mph. With faster trains as in France or Japan even more airplane rides are unnecessary
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  Did that a couple of years ago to go from Glasgow to London. Almost exactly the journey times you mention. Bought a ticket the same day as I travelled. It wasn't cheap, but was cheaper than same-day flight tickets. No airport stress, and ended up back in the middle of London, not at some ex-urban or suburban airport with another 35-60 minute journey into town.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  I think most of this demand is already covered by the popular Northeast Corridor. It should absolutely be upgraded, but outside of it, I think everything's either too small or too far to effectively compete with air travel.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    There definitely are city pairs or maybe triplets here and there. North Carolina was mentioned somewhere upthread. I've actually taken Amtrak from Raleigh to Charlotte. Could just walk to the station from downtown Raleigh. Did need a cab at the other end to get to downtown Charlotte but it was closer than the airport. I know people take the train between Seattle and Portland. I'm sure there are other examples.
  - jcranmer 5y ago
    There are four main regions that have viable HSR outside of the NEC. These are: * The CA region (SF/Bay Area/Sacramento/LA/Las Vegas/Phoenix). * Texas triangle * France TGV-like lines in the Midwest, centered on Chicago, connecting to Minneapolis (via Milwaukee), St. Louis, Detroit, Cleveland, maybe Indianapolis, Columbus, Cincinnati * New England/New York outside of the NEC--that is, Toronto-Boston and Montreal-New York with timed transfers at Albany.
Angostura 5y ago
If a country is serious about reducing CO2 emissions, it should be serious about moving people from plain to train, if possible. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49349566 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49349566
lacker 5y ago
This is a very “political” map. Many of these routes are only in there so that every state is included. (Except South Dakota who complained about being left out!) A lot of parts, like the route from Minnesota west to Washington, only really make sense in that light. If this were closer to being a real proposal for what to build, I think the map would look a lot different. This is more like a symbol to hopefully kick off a discussion.
- beowulfey 5y ago
  This is almost certainly built on existing rail corridors though too. I think priority of upgrades will follow your thinking, but these lines weren’t drawn entirely randomly.
meristohm 5y ago
Noise pollution is a big reason I prefer trains.
oceanplexian 5y ago
The laws of physics are clear that trying to push a vehicle through standard atmosphere is always going to be less efficient than one operating in a low-friction or near-vacuum environment. Scrap inefficient airport security for higher tech solutions, and start building hydrogen-powered supersonic aircraft and high speed rail is toast.

akg_67 5y ago

Air travel, That’s how you create flyover states.

ghaff 5y ago

And by and large, people don't take trains for Chicago to Seattle type distances in Europe. That's further than the distance from Paris to Moscow.

pessimizer 5y ago
Of course, there is a Paris to Moscow train. The thing about the coast to coast train routes in the US and the Paris to Moscow train is that you're not in any way required to take the entire trip - there are stations along the way.
- ghaff 5y ago
  I guess I picked a bad example in that, to my surprise, there is a direct train for that route--although it still takes about a day and a half. But I could certainly pick a lot of city pairs in Europe that are 1-2K miles apart that would be anything but efficient to travel by rail.
  - CydeWeys 5y ago
    Well, let's hear some. You're probably gonna want to limit yourself to city pairs that have multiple direct daily flights though, as anything less won't have enough demand to merit a direct convenient train route either.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      Without making a research project out of it: - Rome to Athens - Paris to Barcelona - Madrid to Stockholm Much of Europe is a very far way from having a seamless integrated cross-border train system.
      - vinay427 5y ago
        Paris to Barcelona does actually exist: https://en.oui.sncf/en/train/timetables/paris/barcelona https://en.oui.sncf/en/train/timetables/paris/barcelona The next direct train takes 6h39m.
  - gsnedders 5y ago
    It is, I believe, the second longest passenger train in Europe. (The longest is a similar Nice–Moscow service.) But both are weekly services, and even Nice–Moscow (yet alone intermediate stops) has more capacity most days by plane than the once-a-week train.
apostacy 5y ago
These long distance routes should be left intact because they are an important anchor for eventually expanding to high speed rail. China kept their unprofitable rural slow passenger routes into the distant corners of their country, and now they are converting them to high speed routes. The Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed line is 2,298km long, and used to be 22 hours but now runs in 8[1] Being able to go from Penn Station in Manhattan to Union Station in Chicago in 8 hours in a comfortable train would be a serious alternative to air travel, and once the track is upgraded, it would probably be cheaper than existing service. And this is completely doable with decades old technology. Other countries have done comparable things with less. I don't think we should abandon "legacy" routes just because they are not profitable right now. And even if they are never profitable that alone is not a good enough reason to abandon infrastructure. [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-20842836 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-20842836
- T-hawk 5y ago
  Note that New York to Chicago by Amtrak is so slow largely because there's no direct route. You either take the Great Lakes route going through Albany, Buffalo, and Cleveland, or the northeast corridor route to Washington DC and then another line to Chicago. The more direct Keystone line through Pennsylvania only goes as far as Harrisburg.
  - apostacy 5y ago
    I think the absolute time and distance is what matters, and it would still substantially benefit from being high speed, even if it is meandering through upstate NY and along the great lakes. Eventually, a more direct NY - Chicago high speed rail route could be built that is even faster.
    - OldHand2018 5y ago
      You’ll notice that there is a Detroit to Toronto line on that map. It’s not an accident. Chicago to Detroit has been running at 110mph for 80+% of the distance for almost 10 years now. The rail tunnel under the Detroit River already exists. You just need a fast NYC to Buffalo with a little extension on to Hamilton, ON and you’ve got a very direct NYC to Chicago route.
sofixa 5y ago
> That's further than the distance from Paris to Moscow. Which has, in regular times, a weekly service by the Russian railways. And it passes through Belarus, and ends in Russia, countries for which you need visas and aren't necessarily the friendliest. If that service makes sense, Chicago-Seattle certainly could ( as an experience, cheap travel, etc.)

freeone3000 5y ago

Ideally, people in Minnesota would also want to go to North Dakota. There's ideally some station-to-station ridership, these aren't express routes.

Stasis5001 5y ago

I started looking at the map in the article and realized I had just booked a flight where there was an existing rail line ! So I checked out the Amtrak site, and what's 1h20m by plane is 14h40m by train -- and 8h by car. Maybe by getting a sleeper cabin I could have had an enjoyable trip by train, but as the trip scales things get dramatically worse. Of course, maybe this is exactly what the future of transportation should look like: more localized travel on modes that can be powered by renewable sources or nuclear.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
It's a mixed bag, really. Compare the journey from my small village in New Mexico to Chicago, about 1200 miles. We just happen to have an Amtrak station 5 miles away. The drive time is about 18-20 hours without stops, which is long enough that an overnight stop is going to be likely. The flight time is only about 3 hours, but that requires first driving 40-70 minutes to the airport, spending time waiting in the airport, and then arriving at O'Hare, and then the 50 min metro journey back into the city. The Southwest Chief, however, arrives here around lunch time, and arrives in Chicago about 24 hours later. If you were optimizing for minimum travel time, you'd probably fly. If you were optimizing for cost, you'd probably drive. But if you want a nice journey, the train is fantastic and faster than driving if you're going to stop. So, there are variations on the theme, and sometimes the train wins, sometimes the train loses.
- brandonmenc 5y ago
  > If you were optimizing for minimum travel time, you'd probably fly. If you were optimizing for cost, you'd probably drive. But if you want a nice journey, the train is fantastic and faster than driving if you're going to stop. Train fans vastly overestimate the number of people who will optimize for "sitting in a train and staring out the window for days".
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Especially given that, if it's business travel, I expect a lot of companies aren't that big on you adding a couple days of travel time because you feel like taking the train. In the case of the parent's scenario, it seems pretty reasonable in that you're really only talking about maybe an additional half day of travel. But that's probably about the upper limit.

slacka 5y ago

I lived in China for 2 years. Americans have no idea how liberating it is to be able be able to hop on a 200 mph train and arrive at totally different climate in hours. Over lunch, my coworkers would talk about a weekend of drinking tea in mountains in Hunan, visiting Mao' home in Wuhan, or exploring the beaches of Hainan. These are all things we did and were possible because of China's high speed rail system. I think the biggest factor was the convenience. We'd just show up at the train station and take the next train, usually within an hour. No planning, no booking, just bought our tickets at the station, minutes before our trip. All of this for less than 1/4 the cost of a last minute plane ticket. Sure we could have flown, and the farthest places may have been faster to fly. But that only if the tickets were available and security lines in china are just as bad as here. There's also the comfort of a train with a meal coach. And, the thrill of watching the land rush by at lightning speeds. America felt so backwards on my return.

WanderPanda 5y ago
You seem to have enjoyed your trip on back of millions of workers who will never witness the same despite paying for it with their sweat and blood.
jwcacces 5y ago
Flying used to be like this. I'm from Long Island and I went to college in the Boston area. I remember you could buy a book of delta shuttle tickets (~$100 / fight, book of 5) and show up and use them whenever you'd like, last minute, with no security hassle or whatever. You could also use the same tickets to go to DC if you wanted. Just stay on the plane for the next leg.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Pre-Acela and the electrification of the line north of New Haven that came with it, the only real reason you'd take the train from Boston to NY (much less points south) was to save money. When I was in school in the Boston area, when I went home to the Philadelphia area, I'd take the train for longer vacations but would fly for 4-day weekends.

ris 5y ago

> and also subsidized Name a form of transport that isn't subsidized.

danans 5y ago
In many places, walking and biking.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  I don't pay to walk or bike anywhere where I live, it was all built with tax dollars. Where are you that walkers and bikers pay for their infrastructure?
  - lbotos 5y ago
    > Where are you that walkers and bikers pay for their infrastructure? > Where I live, it was all built with tax dollars. You answered your own question, and, you paid for it too!
    - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
      Just like subsidized mass transit. Which was my point.
  - tinus_hn 5y ago
    Even if there is no government and no infrastructure, you can still walk. We have had men walk on the moon!
    - beowulfey 5y ago
      Well... that was also thanks to the government. Although moreso for the getting there.

myself248 5y ago

Not everyone optimizes for fast or cheap. Some prioritize comfort, or scenery, or not-being-in-an-airplane for whatever reason. Some really enjoy getting off at one stop for a while, and getting on the next train and continuing the journey. Or just deciding that this place looks nice, and getting off here. Try that in an airplane... There's a growing niche of transoceanic travel by container-ship and bulk freighter, too. It's neither cheap nor fast, and that's the point. It's truly unplugged, where the journey is part of the destination. Throughout the entirety of human history except the last hundred years or so, long distance travel has been a borderline-boring activity. Maybe that's not such a bad thing -- our brains need some downtime to reflect and defrag. We're just starting to appreciate en masse that "monotonous" can be kissing-close to "meditative". Rail is part of that, and as people catch onto that, it's making a comeback.

peckrob 5y ago
Frankly, even as poor as our rail infrastructure is, there's still a lot to be said for train travel. A couple years my wife and I went Birmingham to New Orleans for $150 round trip on Amtrak. Airfare on the same route was $600, and I would have paid $150 in parking alone in downtown New Orleans. Moreover, the time difference between train, driving or flying was not all that different. The train was scheduled at seven hours, about the same as driving time with stops. And air travel would have been about the same once you factor in getting to the airport early, two flights with a layover in Atlanta, and getting from the airport to downtown. It’s also a whole heck of a lot more pleasant than flying. 50” of seat pitch, width of a first class seat, hot food, alcohol, plenty of room to walk around, interesting people to talk to, no needless security theater, no need to get to the station 30 minutes early, no need to worry about baggage fees or weights. Before the pandemic hit, we were planning on doing the Empire Builder from Chicago to Portland. For the three of us (me, wife, daughter) in a bedroom was $1100. Expensive, but factoring in transportation, room and food for 2.5 days for 3, it’s not a bad deal. And you get to sit back, watch the scenery, read, nap, etc. I mean yeah, if I need to travel across the country quickly, an airplane will always win. But airlines have seemingly gone out of their way over the last 20 years to make flying as miserable as possible to squeeze every cent out of customers. If I can afford to take some time and the train is an option, I will always choose the train based solely on it being less miserable than flying has become.

tzs 5y ago

I think it may be like an elevator. About 15 years ago, I had to spend a little over 3 weeks in Beaumont, Texas, for work, leaving Beaumont just before Thanksgiving. I dislike flying and wasn't paying for the trip and had never taken a train, so asked to take Amtrak. My train trip was from the Tacoma, Washington Amtrak station to the Beaumont station and back, via the Los Angeles, California, station. It's a 3 day trip each way, and so on the return trip I was traveling on Thanksgiving day. Pretty much every stop that day had a ton of people getting on and a ton of people getting off, often whole families. They were all just taking the train to the town a few stops down the line to get together with family from the neighboring towns for the holiday, and then return the next time a train going the other direction came through (trains came through each way three days a week on that segment). So yeah, it may not make sense to have a cross-country route if you just consider people who are traveling from one of the route to the other, just like an elevator does not make sense in many buildings when you just consider the volume of passengers traveling between the penthouse and the bottom of a five level underground parking garage. But just like an elevator between that deep garage and the penthouse is also an elevator between every other pair of floors, a cross-country train route is also a route between every pair of stops between the ends.

stuaxo 5y ago
Exactly - just like with roads.

jen20 5y ago

> I don't get the point of all those cross-country routes, Same. I10 is pointless - no-one drives from Santa Monica to Jacksonville - flying is much faster once you’re going long distance. I mean I would love to cross the country by car for entertainment, but as a common method of travel it doesn’t seem to make much sense. /sarcasm (for those who need it pointing out...) Cross country rail lines are just like cross-country interstates: mostly used by people for specific regional connectivity.

hh3k0 5y ago

> I don't get the point of all those cross-country routes, isn't air travel both faster and cheaper once you are going long distance? It's also an absolute atrocity in the face of climate change. And it's long overdue that fact is reflected in the ticket price, imo.

kolinko 5y ago

Cross country - perhaps not. But, living in Europe, I see many people chhosing a train for 4-5h over 1-1.5h flight. For 1,5h flight you end up wasting 3-4h anyway because you need to get to the airport etc, and out of those 3-4h most of the time you can’t do anything productive or relaxing either. With 5h train you can either relax or work and it’s much more productive. Also less co2 produced ofc. And that’s with “slow” trains going 100mph. With faster trains as in France or Japan even more airplane rides are unnecessary

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
Did that a couple of years ago to go from Glasgow to London. Almost exactly the journey times you mention. Bought a ticket the same day as I travelled. It wasn't cheap, but was cheaper than same-day flight tickets. No airport stress, and ended up back in the middle of London, not at some ex-urban or suburban airport with another 35-60 minute journey into town.
dehrmann 5y ago
I think most of this demand is already covered by the popular Northeast Corridor. It should absolutely be upgraded, but outside of it, I think everything's either too small or too far to effectively compete with air travel.
- ghaff 5y ago
  There definitely are city pairs or maybe triplets here and there. North Carolina was mentioned somewhere upthread. I've actually taken Amtrak from Raleigh to Charlotte. Could just walk to the station from downtown Raleigh. Did need a cab at the other end to get to downtown Charlotte but it was closer than the airport. I know people take the train between Seattle and Portland. I'm sure there are other examples.
- jcranmer 5y ago
  There are four main regions that have viable HSR outside of the NEC. These are: * The CA region (SF/Bay Area/Sacramento/LA/Las Vegas/Phoenix). * Texas triangle * France TGV-like lines in the Midwest, centered on Chicago, connecting to Minneapolis (via Milwaukee), St. Louis, Detroit, Cleveland, maybe Indianapolis, Columbus, Cincinnati * New England/New York outside of the NEC--that is, Toronto-Boston and Montreal-New York with timed transfers at Albany.

Angostura 5y ago

If a country is serious about reducing CO2 emissions, it should be serious about moving people from plain to train, if possible. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49349566 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49349566

lacker 5y ago

This is a very “political” map. Many of these routes are only in there so that every state is included. (Except South Dakota who complained about being left out!) A lot of parts, like the route from Minnesota west to Washington, only really make sense in that light. If this were closer to being a real proposal for what to build, I think the map would look a lot different. This is more like a symbol to hopefully kick off a discussion.

beowulfey 5y ago
This is almost certainly built on existing rail corridors though too. I think priority of upgrades will follow your thinking, but these lines weren’t drawn entirely randomly.

meristohm 5y ago

Noise pollution is a big reason I prefer trains.

oceanplexian 5y ago

The laws of physics are clear that trying to push a vehicle through standard atmosphere is always going to be less efficient than one operating in a low-friction or near-vacuum environment. Scrap inefficient airport security for higher tech solutions, and start building hydrogen-powered supersonic aircraft and high speed rail is toast.