3 ms·

If flights are considerably shorter than rail trips, then they'll outcompete passenger rail. Sure, it'd be cost effective to travel from New York to Chicago by

If flights are considerably shorter than rail trips, then they'll outcompete passenger rail. Sure, it'd be cost effective to travel from New York to Chicago by rail. But it'd take way longer than a flight. By contrast, trains in Europe are often about as fast as planes since they avoid the overhead time cost of airport security. Transit time by be longer, but a 2 hour train ride is not much longer than a 1 hour flight when you include time spent in security lines.

vidarh 3y ago
For endpoints that are big enough to warrant airports that is true. But trains have the benefit of being able to serve lots of places in between better. You don't need a lot of people to take the whole journey. E.g. to take the North Coast Hiawatha route that they're hoping to resurrect through Souther Montana - it went from Chicago to Seattle. Very few people would be taking it all the way - it took ~47 hours. But many of the stops only have road connections without it. And as you point out the total time spent is not just the journey time anyway. But beyond the raw time spent, there's a difference in how. It's faster for me to fly to Paris, because I can get flights from an airport close enough to me to outweigh the security, and that's small enough to not usually be so bad. But I still have to go through security, wait around for my gate, walk to the gate and go through another round of waiting, and then I might have to wait for luggage at the other end. I'll happily spend the small amount of extra time to be able to just sit down in the Eurostar instead. The biggest issue with respect to choosing trains in the UK is that the cost of train tickets relative to air travel in the UK is criminal compared to much of the rest of Europe.
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  > But I still have to go through security, wait around for my gate, walk to the gate and go through another round of waiting, and then I might have to wait for luggage at the other end. I'll happily spend the small amount of extra time to be able to just sit down in the Eurostar instead. But it's not a small amount of time. Planes travel 7-10 times faster than passenger rail (Amtrak runs at 50-70 mph, and can't go faster without track upgrades). If you're going to a city that's a 1 hour plane ride away that's still 7-10 hours of travel time just to skip security and baggage claim. Not exactly a good proposition. Even St. Paul to Chicago is not viable by rail when the flight is only 90 minutes. Even with a two hour security line that's still 1/3 the total transit time. "trains have the benefit of being able to serve lots of places in between better." Yes, but only when those places are fairly close and have enough population to fulfill travel demand. And the US doesn't have many regions with those conditions.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    > But it's not a small amount of time. You're quoting a part where I gave a specific example where it is indeed a small amount of time difference, and use it to argue over an entirely different scenario. The Eurostar takes <2h30 hours from London to Paris. The plane takes ca 1h. The plane will leave you ca. 40m travel from the city centre via the RER. But the Eurostar terminal in London is further from me than the nearest airport, and so end-to-end travel time from me to the centre of Paris is marginally shorter with a plane. If I lived on the other side of town, or wanted to go North of Paris CDG instead of to the city centre, the numbers might look entirely different. Hence the point of giving the specific example I did in order to make the point that WHEN they are roughly similar, I still prefer the train. The point you quoted had nothing to do about overall viability across all distances. > Even St. Paul to Chicago is not viable by rail when the flight is only 90 minutes. Even with a two hour security line that's still 1/3 the total transit time. That's fine, but a total strawman related to the argument you quoted. > "trains have the benefit of being able to serve lots of places in between better." Yes, but only when those places are fairly close and have enough population to fulfill travel demand. And the US doesn't have many regions with those conditions. As I've elaborated on at length elsewhere, even the lowest population density states in the US have only exceptionally tiny numbers of people in areas where that is true when compared to existing lines considered viable in Europe. To start with less than 5% of the US population live in states where the average population is lower than Norway, and like in Norway, and just like everywhere else, most of the population even in those states live along corridors that are dense enough - and indeed many of those corridors have existing rail and either do have or used to have passenger trains (e.g. South Montana used to be covered by the North Coast Hiawatha until the late 1970's; it's population density is higher now). Norway has a significant proportion of the population - not all, an entire low density region is without rail at all because it's considered too expensive - within reasonable distance of passenger rail. The US could too - just providing rail cover to similar density stretches as in Norway would mean passenger rail covering the vast majority of the US population. Again, nobody is suggesting 100% coverage - just that far more coverage is entirely viable. The US has areas not considered viable due to US political considerations. That's a choice for the US public to make, but this is not because US geography or demographics is exceptional, but because US politics is.

vidarh 3y ago

For endpoints that are big enough to warrant airports that is true. But trains have the benefit of being able to serve lots of places in between better. You don't need a lot of people to take the whole journey. E.g. to take the North Coast Hiawatha route that they're hoping to resurrect through Souther Montana - it went from Chicago to Seattle. Very few people would be taking it all the way - it took ~47 hours. But many of the stops only have road connections without it. And as you point out the total time spent is not just the journey time anyway. But beyond the raw time spent, there's a difference in how. It's faster for me to fly to Paris, because I can get flights from an airport close enough to me to outweigh the security, and that's small enough to not usually be so bad. But I still have to go through security, wait around for my gate, walk to the gate and go through another round of waiting, and then I might have to wait for luggage at the other end. I'll happily spend the small amount of extra time to be able to just sit down in the Eurostar instead. The biggest issue with respect to choosing trains in the UK is that the cost of train tickets relative to air travel in the UK is criminal compared to much of the rest of Europe.

Manuel_D 3y ago
> But I still have to go through security, wait around for my gate, walk to the gate and go through another round of waiting, and then I might have to wait for luggage at the other end. I'll happily spend the small amount of extra time to be able to just sit down in the Eurostar instead. But it's not a small amount of time. Planes travel 7-10 times faster than passenger rail (Amtrak runs at 50-70 mph, and can't go faster without track upgrades). If you're going to a city that's a 1 hour plane ride away that's still 7-10 hours of travel time just to skip security and baggage claim. Not exactly a good proposition. Even St. Paul to Chicago is not viable by rail when the flight is only 90 minutes. Even with a two hour security line that's still 1/3 the total transit time. "trains have the benefit of being able to serve lots of places in between better." Yes, but only when those places are fairly close and have enough population to fulfill travel demand. And the US doesn't have many regions with those conditions.
- vidarh 3y ago
  > But it's not a small amount of time. You're quoting a part where I gave a specific example where it is indeed a small amount of time difference, and use it to argue over an entirely different scenario. The Eurostar takes <2h30 hours from London to Paris. The plane takes ca 1h. The plane will leave you ca. 40m travel from the city centre via the RER. But the Eurostar terminal in London is further from me than the nearest airport, and so end-to-end travel time from me to the centre of Paris is marginally shorter with a plane. If I lived on the other side of town, or wanted to go North of Paris CDG instead of to the city centre, the numbers might look entirely different. Hence the point of giving the specific example I did in order to make the point that WHEN they are roughly similar, I still prefer the train. The point you quoted had nothing to do about overall viability across all distances. > Even St. Paul to Chicago is not viable by rail when the flight is only 90 minutes. Even with a two hour security line that's still 1/3 the total transit time. That's fine, but a total strawman related to the argument you quoted. > "trains have the benefit of being able to serve lots of places in between better." Yes, but only when those places are fairly close and have enough population to fulfill travel demand. And the US doesn't have many regions with those conditions. As I've elaborated on at length elsewhere, even the lowest population density states in the US have only exceptionally tiny numbers of people in areas where that is true when compared to existing lines considered viable in Europe. To start with less than 5% of the US population live in states where the average population is lower than Norway, and like in Norway, and just like everywhere else, most of the population even in those states live along corridors that are dense enough - and indeed many of those corridors have existing rail and either do have or used to have passenger trains (e.g. South Montana used to be covered by the North Coast Hiawatha until the late 1970's; it's population density is higher now). Norway has a significant proportion of the population - not all, an entire low density region is without rail at all because it's considered too expensive - within reasonable distance of passenger rail. The US could too - just providing rail cover to similar density stretches as in Norway would mean passenger rail covering the vast majority of the US population. Again, nobody is suggesting 100% coverage - just that far more coverage is entirely viable. The US has areas not considered viable due to US political considerations. That's a choice for the US public to make, but this is not because US geography or demographics is exceptional, but because US politics is.