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>common in Europe European rail travel is mostly small-town-to-city (for commuting) and city-to-city, mostly when the cities aren't that far apart (a few hours

>common in Europe European rail travel is mostly small-town-to-city (for commuting) and city-to-city, mostly when the cities aren't that far apart (a few hours at most). International travel in Europe is much less common than interstate travel in the US, mostly because of the language and culture barriers, so most trips people take are in the same country. Our countries are far smaller, and the major cities of each country are far close to each other than the major cities in the US, so trains make sense. Trains in Europe mostly replace cars, NOT planes. It's just that a lot more travel here can be done by car/train in a reasonable time. To an average European, SFO to LAX by train would be just about bearable, depending on country and train speed. Anything much farther than that would probably be a flight.

fy20 2y ago
A bit more context: Very few people in Europe travel internationally by train. If you need to go fast you go by air, or if you need to go cheap you go by bus. Train travel works well within some countries (a decade ago, I took a train from Rome to Venice and back for a 1 day conference - driving would have been around 6 hours each way), but for international travel it's usually not worth it. You are also dealing with different ticketing and scheduling systems, not to mention theres a bunch of big mountains in the middle of Europe meaning it's geographically hard to cross.
- leoedin 2y ago
  I live in London and work for a French company. I’m travelling to Brussels and Paris fairly regularly. Many of my colleagues do the same. It’s a 2 hour high speed train. Far better than flying. Europe is a large place, but my experience in Western Europe is that people absolutely travel by inter-city train between countries when the journey time is 3 hours. More than that and flying starts to be favoured. Driving isn’t really an option for these journeys because the trains are so much faster than cars. A 2 hour train journey would take 4+ hours by car.
  - nmeofthestate 2y ago
    A similar distance to NY-to-DC (which would be half an hour slower on the train according to Google).

fy20 2y ago

A bit more context: Very few people in Europe travel internationally by train. If you need to go fast you go by air, or if you need to go cheap you go by bus. Train travel works well within some countries (a decade ago, I took a train from Rome to Venice and back for a 1 day conference - driving would have been around 6 hours each way), but for international travel it's usually not worth it. You are also dealing with different ticketing and scheduling systems, not to mention theres a bunch of big mountains in the middle of Europe meaning it's geographically hard to cross.

leoedin 2y ago
I live in London and work for a French company. I’m travelling to Brussels and Paris fairly regularly. Many of my colleagues do the same. It’s a 2 hour high speed train. Far better than flying. Europe is a large place, but my experience in Western Europe is that people absolutely travel by inter-city train between countries when the journey time is 3 hours. More than that and flying starts to be favoured. Driving isn’t really an option for these journeys because the trains are so much faster than cars. A 2 hour train journey would take 4+ hours by car.
- nmeofthestate 2y ago
  A similar distance to NY-to-DC (which would be half an hour slower on the train according to Google).