8 ms·

I don't think 2h is exactly accurate - you have to get to the airport ahead of departure time to allow for security check/etc. Then there's transfer to/from air

by rytis 5y ago

I don't think 2h is exactly accurate - you have to get to the airport ahead of departure time to allow for security check/etc. Then there's transfer to/from airport on both sides, whereas train stations are usually in convenient spots to continue the journey (office/home/whatever). Nonetheless, the base argument holds true - flying is cheaper and quicker...

rp1 5y ago
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done the Berlin-London trip early Monday morning before work. 2h might be an underestimate, but it really is quite fast.
- ghaff 5y ago
  In the US, Acela--which is as good as it gets in the US--is still a full day trip from Boston to Washington DC while a flight is less than two hours. It's not as just-roll-up-to-the-airport as it was pre-9/11 but it's still something you can do to catch a mid-morning meeting. The train is pretty much a full day. I've done it when schedule allowed but going down the day before, working on the train, and spending the night in a hotel as opposed to doing an out and back in a day doesn't work for a lot of people. Of course, shorter segments of the Northeast Corridor work pretty well by train. I pretty much never fly Boston to NYC unless I'm under unusual constraints.
  - ProZsolt 5y ago
    That distance would be perfect for sleeper train. Hop on in the evening, sleep while you traveling and arrive in the morning well rested. You have the entire day for work, and hop on the train back on the evening.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      It's not what a lot of business travelers want. And it usually costs multiples of what hopping on a short flight costs because you need a sleeper compartment to do the well rested thing.
theaeolist 5y ago
Additionally, I can find 6am flights, which means that I can be at 8am at the destination and have a full day ahead of me. By train the whole day will be dedicated to travel. Same on the return. Losing 2/3 days on a business trip is a big cost to pay.
- sofixa 5y ago
  > By train the whole day will be dedicated to travel Or the whole night with sleeper trains, which is a decent workaround for that problem.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Sometimes. But if I'm flying out to somewhere at 6am, the alternative is often that I'd just be spending the night in my own bed. Now, to be honest, I'm sometimes fine with heading down somewhere the day before and having a relaxing evening at my destination. But that may not be ideal for people with families and isn't really justified from a business standpoint.
  - theaeolist 5y ago
    Agreed, if there were sleeper trains available. But finding a sleeper trains from A to B is much harder than finding a plane from A to B.
robotresearcher 5y ago
Sure. But for anyone who isn’t already in the city center it’s probably close to a wash, since getting from home into the city has to happen. And airport to city is likely to be pretty optimized. You can get a coach (bus) direct to Heathrow from almost any town in England. Getting to Waterloo [1] (London’s international) station from outside London could easily be more time consuming and tough with luggage. But of course UK is gonna be an outlier in European train value discussions. It’s an island on the periphery with a single rail connection. The mainland capitals are more competitive. [1] edit: now St. Pancras, which is closer to other London rail stations so likely better on balance. Thanks user sbuk.
- iddan 5y ago
  In most European capitals there are great public transportation options to get to the central train stations and they are almost always better than to get to the airport as it is more far from residential areas
  - maigret 5y ago
    Exact, because the local residents drive to the local train station way more often than to the local airport. I think that’s a factor 10 difference approximately. Probably different figure for big airports hubs that serve mostly connections of course.
- sbuk 5y ago
  London’s international station is now St Pancras, which is much easier than Waterloo. It’s closer to Euston and Paddington, while Kings Cross is literally over the road.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- laurencerowe 5y ago
  > But of course UK is gonna be an outlier in European train value discussions. It’s an island on the periphery with a single rail connection. The mainland capitals are more competitive. While UK train prices are an outlier, London and the South East are very much part of the high density economic core of Europe. A box drawn around London/Paris/Amsterdam/Cologne contains roughly a quarter of the pre-Brexit EU population (and a substantially higher proportion of economic activity.) Rail is already very competitive between these cities - it's only 2 hours on the train from London to Paris or Brussels and since the tunnel was built Eurostar has captured the vast bulk of travel between the cities it connects. The bigger challenge would seem to be making rail competitive to more dispersed cities like Berlin/Vienna/Barcelona/Madrid.
mikepurvis 5y ago
I'm not sure about Europe, but certainly in Canada, even the very best of our train service (Toronto <-> Montreal) struggles to compete on convenience. Flight time for that route is 80 mins vs just under 5hrs for the "express" train that still makes 5 intermediate stops. And those are on twinned, dedicated passenger tracks where you never have to wait on a siding for a freight train to go by in the other direction, like you do with the Toronto -> Vancouver train that takes multiple days end to end. Anyway, they keep studying HSR for the route, so much so that a prominent Canadian comedian made a joke video about it almost a decade ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W32klYkTxCQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W32klYkTxCQ But it's definitely a chicken and egg thing; it'll never gain significant market share under current conditions, but no politician can justify the money required to properly build HSR with current ridership numbers. But of course billions [1] for a new toll highway directly through protected greenbelt farmland (Hwy 413)? Ram it all through! Will it lose money and eventually be sold off to a foreign interest for pennies on the dollar similar to how Hwy 407 was twenty years ago? Probably! [1]: Even without accounting for a likely sell-off, the gov't of Ontario has been super cagey about the planned costs of 413: https://www.thestar.com/business/2021/10/08/the-hugely-controversial-highway-413-will-cost-taxpayers-billions-but-just-how-much-the-province-wont-say.html https://www.thestar.com/business/2021/10/08/the-hugely-contr...
- bregma 5y ago
  The tracks between Toronto and Montreal are owned by CN and freight has priority over VIA. VIA trains are often delayed having to wait for freight trains to clear and can only be scheduled for times and speed that do not interfere with freight. It takes 3 days to travel the 4500 km of rail from Toronto to Vancouver because the first 1500 km are through muskeg and around lakes where building straight, flat, protected 200 km/h high-speed tracks is just not an attainable option. Even if you managed 200 km/h the entire way, it's still 2 days travelling. Planes travel about 800 km/h and can go in a relatively straight line without fear of a moose or a washout. It's 5 hours Toronto to Vancouver and 4.5 hours the other way because of tail winds.
  - mikepurvis 5y ago
    I used to somewhat regularly take Toronto <-> Kingston, and I don't believe I was ever delayed by freight on that leg. Maybe the CN ownership prevents them from doing other kinds of upgrades on them, but they seem to get pretty decent priority during the day, particularly compared with the Toronto -> Vancouver route where you can sit on a siding for 4 hours. And it's not even really a matter of priority; the issue is that the siding is only long enough to accommodate the passenger train— the freight train going the other way is way, way longer. In any case, I don't think anyone has ever seriously suggested HSR for the train out west. VIA has simply embraced that it will always be slow and impractical, and they market and price it accordingly— it's supposed to be an experience, like going on a cruise, not a practical means of getting to a destination.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
908B64B197 5y ago
> I don't think 2h is exactly accurate - you have to get to the airport ahead of departure time to allow for security check/etc. We could honestly skip these checks for no-risk travelers. And it also assumes that you are headed downtown and not to an adjacent town. > flying is cheaper and quicker... In Europe, notice how it's a bunch of private businesses competing with one another vs state ran rail monopolies?
- freeflight 5y ago
  > We could honestly skip these checks for no-risk travelers. How to decide who is a "no-risk traveler" and how do you identify them?
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    Maybe by looking at historical data?
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      Many suicide bombers have an excellent prior travel record.
    - brewdad 5y ago
      Does Europe not offer a Pre-check type program? In the US, travelers can pay a fee and pass a background check to go through a shorter and less rigorous security check at the airport. My local airport is pretty efficient either way, but it probably saves me 15-30 minutes on my departure time. My fastest check-in was in Phoenix. I think it took me 11 minutes from curbside drop-off to sitting in my seat at the gate, including dropping off a checked bag (Southwest Airlines). I don't think I ever stopped moving forward from the moment the machine printed my bag tag until I hit my gate. This was pre-Covid too, so the airport was somewhat busy.
      - freeflight 5y ago
        > Does Europe not offer a Pre-check type program? I'm not aware on any European wide unified airport security structure. The closest to that would probably something EU related [0], but I couldn't find anything related to "pre check" type programs being a thing. My personal international airtravel experience, living in Germany, has been rather limited in the last decade; I flew on vacation to Turkey for a few weeks. There was pretty much zero security theater. The biggest time waste was the slowness of everything, waiting in lines for luggage, pass/ID clearance, traversing the long distances across the different airport wings, really long time window for boarding. Apparently the same airport also offers an "evening before pre-check in", but the website for that seems to have become another pandemic victim. It seems to be the biggest thing that skips is luggage check in and formalities/getting boarding pass, by allowing passengers to do that the evening before. [0] https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/security-and-emergencies/airport-airline-security/index_en.htm https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/security-and-em...
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
I don't think the 14h is correct either. I've done that journey a couple of times and I'm sure it wasn't that long.
gremloni 5y ago
For domestic travel I show up 40 minutes before the flight and I’m out of the airport in 30 mins usually.
thehappypm 5y ago
In a lot of ways, the airport is actually more convenient. Like in New York City, there is 1 Amtrak station in midtown, and 3 airports within an hour. If you’re in many parts of Manhattan it’s just as easy to get to La Guardia as it is to Penn Station, and if you’re on Long Island JFK is far more convenient.
- art0rz 5y ago
  That depends IMO. For local city destinations such as Boston, Philly, DC, etc. trains are much quicker.
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    The NEC is nice but it’s still pretty slow. I wouldn’t want to go much more than New York to Boston. I took Boston to DC once and it takes 8 hours .. it’s like a 1 hour flight.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      Yep. The Boston to NYC train is almost always my choice compared to flying. (Driving would be faster but I hate driving into Manhattan though I could drive to New Haven and take commuter rail from there.) But, while I've done it, Boston to DC doesn't really make a lot of sense unless I'm looking for an excuse to do some reading, etc. for a day.

by rytis 5y ago

rp1 5y ago

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done the Berlin-London trip early Monday morning before work. 2h might be an underestimate, but it really is quite fast.

ghaff 5y ago
In the US, Acela--which is as good as it gets in the US--is still a full day trip from Boston to Washington DC while a flight is less than two hours. It's not as just-roll-up-to-the-airport as it was pre-9/11 but it's still something you can do to catch a mid-morning meeting. The train is pretty much a full day. I've done it when schedule allowed but going down the day before, working on the train, and spending the night in a hotel as opposed to doing an out and back in a day doesn't work for a lot of people. Of course, shorter segments of the Northeast Corridor work pretty well by train. I pretty much never fly Boston to NYC unless I'm under unusual constraints.
- ProZsolt 5y ago
  That distance would be perfect for sleeper train. Hop on in the evening, sleep while you traveling and arrive in the morning well rested. You have the entire day for work, and hop on the train back on the evening.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    It's not what a lot of business travelers want. And it usually costs multiples of what hopping on a short flight costs because you need a sleeper compartment to do the well rested thing.

theaeolist 5y ago

Additionally, I can find 6am flights, which means that I can be at 8am at the destination and have a full day ahead of me. By train the whole day will be dedicated to travel. Same on the return. Losing 2/3 days on a business trip is a big cost to pay.

sofixa 5y ago
> By train the whole day will be dedicated to travel Or the whole night with sleeper trains, which is a decent workaround for that problem.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Sometimes. But if I'm flying out to somewhere at 6am, the alternative is often that I'd just be spending the night in my own bed. Now, to be honest, I'm sometimes fine with heading down somewhere the day before and having a relaxing evening at my destination. But that may not be ideal for people with families and isn't really justified from a business standpoint.
- theaeolist 5y ago
  Agreed, if there were sleeper trains available. But finding a sleeper trains from A to B is much harder than finding a plane from A to B.

robotresearcher 5y ago

Sure. But for anyone who isn’t already in the city center it’s probably close to a wash, since getting from home into the city has to happen. And airport to city is likely to be pretty optimized. You can get a coach (bus) direct to Heathrow from almost any town in England. Getting to Waterloo [1] (London’s international) station from outside London could easily be more time consuming and tough with luggage. But of course UK is gonna be an outlier in European train value discussions. It’s an island on the periphery with a single rail connection. The mainland capitals are more competitive. [1] edit: now St. Pancras, which is closer to other London rail stations so likely better on balance. Thanks user sbuk.

iddan 5y ago
In most European capitals there are great public transportation options to get to the central train stations and they are almost always better than to get to the airport as it is more far from residential areas
- maigret 5y ago
  Exact, because the local residents drive to the local train station way more often than to the local airport. I think that’s a factor 10 difference approximately. Probably different figure for big airports hubs that serve mostly connections of course.
sbuk 5y ago
London’s international station is now St Pancras, which is much easier than Waterloo. It’s closer to Euston and Paddington, while Kings Cross is literally over the road.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
laurencerowe 5y ago
> But of course UK is gonna be an outlier in European train value discussions. It’s an island on the periphery with a single rail connection. The mainland capitals are more competitive. While UK train prices are an outlier, London and the South East are very much part of the high density economic core of Europe. A box drawn around London/Paris/Amsterdam/Cologne contains roughly a quarter of the pre-Brexit EU population (and a substantially higher proportion of economic activity.) Rail is already very competitive between these cities - it's only 2 hours on the train from London to Paris or Brussels and since the tunnel was built Eurostar has captured the vast bulk of travel between the cities it connects. The bigger challenge would seem to be making rail competitive to more dispersed cities like Berlin/Vienna/Barcelona/Madrid.

mikepurvis 5y ago

I'm not sure about Europe, but certainly in Canada, even the very best of our train service (Toronto <-> Montreal) struggles to compete on convenience. Flight time for that route is 80 mins vs just under 5hrs for the "express" train that still makes 5 intermediate stops. And those are on twinned, dedicated passenger tracks where you never have to wait on a siding for a freight train to go by in the other direction, like you do with the Toronto -> Vancouver train that takes multiple days end to end. Anyway, they keep studying HSR for the route, so much so that a prominent Canadian comedian made a joke video about it almost a decade ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W32klYkTxCQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W32klYkTxCQ But it's definitely a chicken and egg thing; it'll never gain significant market share under current conditions, but no politician can justify the money required to properly build HSR with current ridership numbers. But of course billions [1] for a new toll highway directly through protected greenbelt farmland (Hwy 413)? Ram it all through! Will it lose money and eventually be sold off to a foreign interest for pennies on the dollar similar to how Hwy 407 was twenty years ago? Probably! [1]: Even without accounting for a likely sell-off, the gov't of Ontario has been super cagey about the planned costs of 413: https://www.thestar.com/business/2021/10/08/the-hugely-controversial-highway-413-will-cost-taxpayers-billions-but-just-how-much-the-province-wont-say.html https://www.thestar.com/business/2021/10/08/the-hugely-contr...

bregma 5y ago
The tracks between Toronto and Montreal are owned by CN and freight has priority over VIA. VIA trains are often delayed having to wait for freight trains to clear and can only be scheduled for times and speed that do not interfere with freight. It takes 3 days to travel the 4500 km of rail from Toronto to Vancouver because the first 1500 km are through muskeg and around lakes where building straight, flat, protected 200 km/h high-speed tracks is just not an attainable option. Even if you managed 200 km/h the entire way, it's still 2 days travelling. Planes travel about 800 km/h and can go in a relatively straight line without fear of a moose or a washout. It's 5 hours Toronto to Vancouver and 4.5 hours the other way because of tail winds.
- mikepurvis 5y ago
  I used to somewhat regularly take Toronto <-> Kingston, and I don't believe I was ever delayed by freight on that leg. Maybe the CN ownership prevents them from doing other kinds of upgrades on them, but they seem to get pretty decent priority during the day, particularly compared with the Toronto -> Vancouver route where you can sit on a siding for 4 hours. And it's not even really a matter of priority; the issue is that the siding is only long enough to accommodate the passenger train— the freight train going the other way is way, way longer. In any case, I don't think anyone has ever seriously suggested HSR for the train out west. VIA has simply embraced that it will always be slow and impractical, and they market and price it accordingly— it's supposed to be an experience, like going on a cruise, not a practical means of getting to a destination.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

908B64B197 5y ago

> I don't think 2h is exactly accurate - you have to get to the airport ahead of departure time to allow for security check/etc. We could honestly skip these checks for no-risk travelers. And it also assumes that you are headed downtown and not to an adjacent town. > flying is cheaper and quicker... In Europe, notice how it's a bunch of private businesses competing with one another vs state ran rail monopolies?

freeflight 5y ago
> We could honestly skip these checks for no-risk travelers. How to decide who is a "no-risk traveler" and how do you identify them?
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  Maybe by looking at historical data?
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Many suicide bombers have an excellent prior travel record.
  - brewdad 5y ago
    Does Europe not offer a Pre-check type program? In the US, travelers can pay a fee and pass a background check to go through a shorter and less rigorous security check at the airport. My local airport is pretty efficient either way, but it probably saves me 15-30 minutes on my departure time. My fastest check-in was in Phoenix. I think it took me 11 minutes from curbside drop-off to sitting in my seat at the gate, including dropping off a checked bag (Southwest Airlines). I don't think I ever stopped moving forward from the moment the machine printed my bag tag until I hit my gate. This was pre-Covid too, so the airport was somewhat busy.
    - freeflight 5y ago
      > Does Europe not offer a Pre-check type program? I'm not aware on any European wide unified airport security structure. The closest to that would probably something EU related [0], but I couldn't find anything related to "pre check" type programs being a thing. My personal international airtravel experience, living in Germany, has been rather limited in the last decade; I flew on vacation to Turkey for a few weeks. There was pretty much zero security theater. The biggest time waste was the slowness of everything, waiting in lines for luggage, pass/ID clearance, traversing the long distances across the different airport wings, really long time window for boarding. Apparently the same airport also offers an "evening before pre-check in", but the website for that seems to have become another pandemic victim. It seems to be the biggest thing that skips is luggage check in and formalities/getting boarding pass, by allowing passengers to do that the evening before. [0] https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/security-and-emergencies/airport-airline-security/index_en.htm https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/security-and-em...

tonyedgecombe 5y ago

I don't think the 14h is correct either. I've done that journey a couple of times and I'm sure it wasn't that long.

gremloni 5y ago

For domestic travel I show up 40 minutes before the flight and I’m out of the airport in 30 mins usually.

thehappypm 5y ago

In a lot of ways, the airport is actually more convenient. Like in New York City, there is 1 Amtrak station in midtown, and 3 airports within an hour. If you’re in many parts of Manhattan it’s just as easy to get to La Guardia as it is to Penn Station, and if you’re on Long Island JFK is far more convenient.

art0rz 5y ago
That depends IMO. For local city destinations such as Boston, Philly, DC, etc. trains are much quicker.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  The NEC is nice but it’s still pretty slow. I wouldn’t want to go much more than New York to Boston. I took Boston to DC once and it takes 8 hours .. it’s like a 1 hour flight.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Yep. The Boston to NYC train is almost always my choice compared to flying. (Driving would be faster but I hate driving into Manhattan though I could drive to New Haven and take commuter rail from there.) But, while I've done it, Boston to DC doesn't really make a lot of sense unless I'm looking for an excuse to do some reading, etc. for a day.