10 ms·

I wonder if we'll ever get back to "High Speed Air" in my lifetime. Back in the 70s, you could rock up at the airport twenty minutes before your flight left, j

I wonder if we'll ever get back to "High Speed Air" in my lifetime. Back in the 70s, you could rock up at the airport twenty minutes before your flight left, jump on with minimal hassle, and cruise along at 600mph to your destination. Now, you need to endure two hours of having your fingernail clippers confiscated so that you can fly at 500mph to save on fuel costs. That seems to be the true advantage of rail travel. As it said on the loudspeaker in Berlin HBF last time I was there: "Please try to arrive on the platform at least five minutes before your train is scheduled to depart." Sadly, I bet the way we'll end up equalizing this will be that somebody will eventually bomb a TGV and we'll have to start doing the two hour confiscate-your-kids'-apple-juice routine at the train station too.

mmaldacker 12y ago
>Back in the 70s, you could rock up at the airport twenty minutes before your flight left This still exists, for example Tegel airport in Berlin. Also, in the 70s there was waaaaaay less traffic in airports so it is simply not a fair comparison. >Sadly, I bet the way we'll end up equalizing this will be that somebody will eventually bomb a TGV and we'll have to start doing the two hour confiscate-your-kids'-apple-juice routine at the train station too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Madrid_train_bombings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Madrid_train_bombings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_July_2005_London_bombings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_July_2005_London_bombings
- rwmj 12y ago
  Internal flights in Japan are basically turn-up-and-go (and cheap too), and have only a little security.
  - jusben1369 12y ago
    So that's fascinating. Having no expertise whatsoever on the topic of domestic Japanese transportation my immediate response is "Strong competition from fast rail means that air travel is a superior experience" It breaks my heart we don't have fast rail in the US. Even if it was just the North Eastern corridor (extended maybe to Chicago and Atlanta) it would have a huge impact on air travel. Of course the cost and final date to roll this out means it's probably not worth buying into.
    - vmarsy 12y ago
      Texas has a project of a high speed train between Houston and Dallas, it would link the 2 cities in 90mn (instead of 3:30h of driving, or 70mn of plane. So if you spend more 20mn more at the airport than at the rail station , the train would be faster. http://texascentral.com/the-facts/ http://texascentral.com/the-facts/ http://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/gray-matters/article/Things-you-should-know-about-that-high-speed-rail-6158903.php http://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/gray-matters/article/T... It's a privately own project, supposedly ready in 2021.
  - alanho 12y ago
    you can even bring your own bottled drinks/liquid on Japan domestic flights. they have a machine specifically for "scanning" drink/liquid. put your bottle on it, green light, then off you go. not sure how it works
    - kissickas 12y ago
      There's a UK company in talks with the DoD on rolling these out for military use, and I'm sure they will expand to civilian airports eventually. I'm not sure if this is the same company, but they're doing the same thing: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/02/scanner-analyses-fluid-end-liquid-limits-airports-cobalt http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/02/scanner-anal...
    - easytiger 12y ago
      Something like: num_checks += 1 if num_checks % 200000 == 0: red_light() else: green_light()
    - goodcanadian 12y ago
      Almost certainly a spectral analyzer. Shine a light through it, see what the chemical signature is.
      - colanderman 12y ago
        That certainly won't work for my aluminum water bottle. Granted, neither do X-rays, and yet I've never had it even questioned going through security.
  - practicalpants 12y ago
    I wasn't even asked to show my ID the last time I flew domestically in Japan.
- TillE 12y ago
  Tegel is fairly unique because each gate has its own security checkpoint. It's definitely a bit less stressful.
  - apendleton 12y ago
    Amsterdam Schiphol is like this, too, and yeah, it's great. I think for them it's because they're going for this combination airport/mall/mini-city vibe, and there are enough amenities that they want it to be attractive as a destination, even for people not flying, so they want to keep as much of the airport outside of security as possible.
  - derf_ 12y ago
    I found it more stressful. The biggest place where delays are caused at an airport is at security, so when I arrive at an airport, this is the first thing I want to take care of, and cannot relax until I've passed through it. To be told I cannot go through security until a few moments before the flight departs (because it is not even open, or the gate not even assigned) means that anything that does go wrong will cause me to miss my flight. Not to mention the expense of having screening apparatus at every gate seems a little inefficient. It means everyone on the flight tries to cram through the one line at the same time, whereas if it were in advance, it could be spread out in time and over more lines.
odiroot 12y ago
I am on Hauptbahnhof at least 4 days a month, waiting, and have never heard this announcement. Neither in English nor in German. Was it on top or bottom level?
- jasonkester 12y ago
  Actually, come to think of it, out the bottom level then hail a cab to Berlin Zoo. And make sure it's ten years ago or they might have changed the recorded message :)
binarymax 12y ago
The security won't get blown out of proportion for trains like air, because while trains can do significant damage to themselves and surrounding buildings - you cant take one and crash it anywhere you like. 9/11 never would have happened with a train. A hijacked plane is a missile.
- Someone1234 12y ago
  Trains still have an "end of the line." So, yes, you could if you were going fast enough. Also aircraft security was too much even pre-9/11.
  - rtpg 12y ago
    sure, but wasn't it in 1968 or something where there was basically 200 plane hijackings? I feel like there's good intentions at least
  - wlesieutre 12y ago
    Even if you were going fast enough, you couldn't take one and crash it anywhere you like. Into the platform at Grand Central, maybe. Into the WTC and Pentagon, not so much. Some kind of automatically enforced speed limiter when the train detects that it's near the end of the line would probably not be hard to implement, or maybe has been already. IIRC many trains automatically slow for curvy areas of track. EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control
    - Symbiote 12y ago
      You don't need anything that modern — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatische_treinbe%C3%AFnvloeding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatische_treinbe%C3%AFnvlo... shows a 1950s electronic system which could reduce the speed to 40km/h. (Approaching a terminus stations counts as approaching a danger signal.)
  - masklinn 12y ago
    > Trains still have an "end of the line." So, yes, you could if you were going fast enough. You can overrun the buffer stop (happened last year at O'Hare, a blue line train overran its buffer stop and climbed up an elevator) but you're just going to go a bit past the buffer stop (relatively, most likely a fraction of the train length), at best you'll get just outside the station Montparnasse-style (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montparnasse_derailment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montparnasse_derailment). That's hardly a guided missile with complete freedom of movement in the same way a plane is. You can't drive a train into the white house no matter how often you try, because there's no rail leading to it, or even ending in its general direction, which is anywhere near enough the white house for that to be a concern.
gutnor 12y ago
Thankfully, train do not have checked luggage and no practical technological way to introduce it (i.e. something that does not require to rebuild all the stations, most of them deep in the cities) - so there is a huge commercial imperative to tone down the security theater . I hope at least, I don't want to be proven wrong on that one. Boarding the Eurostar for example, is definitively not a 5 min job, more like 1 hour the bad days, but at least you can still carry most of your stuff and considering you do not have 1 hour transit to the airport, it still beats the plane by a good 2 hours.
- Symbiote 12y ago
  Eurostar is quite exceptional. They recommend 30 minutes. There's a passport check, and a 30km undersea tunnel, which is probably considered a terrorist target. Knives, alcohol etc are permitted, but not compressed gas or liquid fuel. (I tried this once, on a camping trip.) You can take an almost identical train from King's Cross to Glasgow, arriving 5 minutes before departure (or less, 2 is the minimum recommended time).
the8472 12y ago
That still exists outside the US. Last year I took a flight from germany to a conference in poland and strolled through the airport after checking in. I left the security zone by accident - simply walking through a pair of sliding doors which only open from one side - 10 minutes before departure. But it wasn't a big problem, I simply went through the metal detector/xrays for hand luggage and arrived at the gate with time to spare. Someone before me in the line even asked if they had to take their shoes off, the security guy said "haha, no, this isn't america".
- CountHackulus 12y ago
  That's strange, I flew from Toronto to Budapest through Munich, and Munich was by far the strictest security I encountered. They made my take off my shoes and sweatshirt. So it's maybe not "outside the US" just "in some places."
  - apendleton 12y ago
    It's probably a domestic vs. international thing (where "domestic," within Europe, probably includes actual-domestic as well as other destinations inside the Schengen area). To a large degree, US requirements have infected international travel around the world -- you can't fly into the US from a terminal that allowed people that weren't held to approximately the US's standards.
    - vinay427 12y ago
      No, the DHS enforces the ICAO standards for flights entering the US. For example, the press release regarding the Venezuela issue: http://www.tsa.gov/press/releases/2008/09/08/tsa-issues-advisory-travel-venezuela http://www.tsa.gov/press/releases/2008/09/08/tsa-issues-advi... >Under Title 49 of the U.S. Code, Section 44907, the Department of Homeland Security is required to assess security at foreign airports with direct service to the United States to determine compliance with standards established by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
  - vidarh 12y ago
jusben1369 12y ago
In the US we really don't have any rail alternative to flying. I'd love to know how European travellers thinks and weigh up rail (which seems relatively fast and efficient) vs flying. Do you think the two are interchangeable services? Is there a magical breaking point (more than 500km's distance etc) ?
- lmm 12y ago
  I'll take the Eurostar from London to Paris even if it's slightly slower because it's just a nicer experience. But much further and I'll probably fly unless I'm making a point of taking a train for fun. The only other case would be if I'm taking a lot of luggage as that's much easier to do on a train. Back when I only had a big bulky laptop I might prefer a train to work on but these days my ultrabook is usable on a plane.
- comrade1 12y ago
  It just depends on the distance. Fro Zurich and Basel we take the train to Paris, Milan, Frankfurt, even Lille, but to go to Berlin, Hamburg, San Sebastián, we fly. So 3 to 6 hours we take the train. More than that we tend to fly. I can get a lot more work done on the train than flying.
  - TillE 12y ago
    > So 3 to 6 hours we take the train. More than that we tend to fly. Yep. I could tolerate the longer travel times, but long distance train travel gets really expensive really quickly. For the price of a round-trip train ticket across Germany (Berlin to Cologne, around €100), I could also fly to London, Paris, Amsterdam, etc.
- DanBC 12y ago
  The budget airlines provide such a customer hostile experience that many people prefer trains. These are (England) sometimes awful, but mostly okay and can be nice. Commuting tends to be worse than the occaisional train journey. The baffling fare structure drastically needs reform -- the same journey can either cost £27 or £72 -- these will be the same class on the same day, just different times. It's frustrating. I like the Virgin trains - I've only ever had an unfun experience on one when the aircon broke. I really hate GWS and I will try to avoid using them where possible, even using a coach would be better. (Virgin trains have power sockets; GWS don't; even a National Express coach has power sockets and free wifi)
odonnellryan 12y ago
>Back in the 70s, you could rock up at the airport twenty minutes before your flight left, jump on with minimal hassle, and cruise along at 600mph to your destination. I basically did this from Tampa FL. I think I arrived at security for a domestic flight like 30 minutes prior to takeoff.
- brightsize 12y ago
  You can do that at Spokane Int'l (GEG). Flying is still an enormous hassle but at least GEG doesn't add much to the stress. Given a choice I'd take the ICE every time if we had such a thing here. Few hassles, comfortable seats, nice scenery out the windows. A little expensive but worth it to me.
deleted 12y ago
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joss82 12y ago
SNCF actually prints on their tickets "try to arrive 2 minutes before the trains departs" Pretty sure it's marketing though, the TGV can be veeery long sometimes, so it takes a while to walk to your assigned car. EDIT: source: http://tgv.lu.voyages-sncf.com/fr/avant-depart http://tgv.lu.voyages-sncf.com/fr/avant-depart
- masklinn 12y ago
  > Pretty sure it's marketing though, the TGV can be veeery long sometimes, so it takes a while to walk to your assigned car. Each trainset is a single unit though, so you can just step in at the first car and walk through the train to your seat. The only "danger" is paired trainsets (16 cars), if you're in the further one you have to walk a whole trainset to reach your own train (and even then it's only 200m/660ft), if you're cutting it really close you can probably forego your assigned seat and use the first trainset (you may not get a seat at all though).
  - joss82 12y ago
    Yup, exactly, it's not comfortable, but still a possibility.
- joshguthrie 12y ago
  Not marketing, I've seen people being allowed to get on trains while the controllers where whistling for the train's departure.
thrownaway2424 12y ago
Back in the 70's air travel cost triple what it costs today, and there were many fewer people who could afford the ticket.
XJOKOLAT 12y ago
Agreed, London City Airport has been the only saving grace - it's possible to breeze through there in 20 minutes IIRC. Internal flights in Africa and Asia are pretty good in terms of time too . Some actually feel like train stations.
- Sami_Lehtinen 12y ago
  In Malaysia and Egypt it was just so swift. They didn't even care about my bottle of coke.
MichaelGG 12y ago
If you don't have bags and are checked in online, you can totally show up 20 minutes before a flight (just know the geometry of the place cause it might take a lot of walking/trams). I show up usually around 65 minutes before departure at SFO (international flight with checked bags); never had a problem.
- teraflop 12y ago
  > you can totally show up 20 minutes before a flight I'm assuming you're talking about the scheduled boarding time, not departure time? Most airlines' contracts of carriage say that if you're not at the gate 15 minutes before departure, you'll be denied boarding. EDIT: I guess it's not clear whether you meant "show up [at the airport]" or "show up [at the gate]".
dba7dba 12y ago
I would like to see High Speed Rail replace most air traffic. I just read an article explaining how incredibly expensive air travel is for the climate, not to mention the cost to the passengers. Air traffic increases greenhouse effect. Scientists measured noticeable temp drop over sky of US during the days after 9/11 attack with all jets grounded.
stcredzero 12y ago
> Sadly, I bet the way we'll end up equalizing this will be that somebody will eventually bomb a TGV and we'll have to start doing the two hour confiscate-your-kids'-apple-juice routine at the train station too. It would be easier to economically restructure passenger rail cars so that you had independent bomb resistant compartments. Trains have the disadvantage, in contrast with planes, that you can bomb the rails to wreck a train. However, they have the advantage of adding mass more economically. I suspect that we can eventually come up with good (though imperfect) countermeasures to rail sabotage as well. In any case, safeguarding the rails wouldn't impact boarding passengers as much.
- rayiner 12y ago
  Another thing to note is that it's just a lot harder to cause as much damage to a train. The deadliest Amtrak accidents involved collapsed bridges over water. Derailments or even head-on collisions almost always involve a dozen or less, often zero, fatalities.
  - stcredzero 12y ago
    Much of this is a function of potential and kinetic energy. High speed trains are going to have more kinetic energy, and therefore more potential for fatality.
soperj 12y ago
If you ever fly within New Zealand, you'll know how air travel should be. No security at all. (Self)Check in and go have a seat in the lounge area with nice couches that anyone has access to.
js2 12y ago
Just flew out of Boston this morning and was through security in under 5 minutes including the TSA pat-down due to opting out of the scanner. Watched a woman who I was with on the way to the airport make it through even faster as she got to security < 15 mins before departure. In fact, the last several times I've flown security has generally been under 10 mins. SFO is typically the slowest and most highly variable for me, but at its worst I don't think has taken more than 20 mins. Some of the airports this is based on: RDU, MIA, LGA.
- com2kid 12y ago
  Flying out of Boston was nice the one time I did it. Security was fast and polite. I think I showed up with 35 minutes to spare and I just made it to my flight.
mlmonkey 12y ago
> That seems to be the true advantage of rail travel .... till some nut does something stupid, and then the whole security theater moves to railway stations.
Tloewald 12y ago
We need to learn to live without frequent air travel just because it's energy inefficient. What we need to do is get better at going places while asleep (and trains are great for that). Telepresence means getting places in a hurry will be increasingly unimportant for most people. Driverless cars will be an interesting phenomenon (and possibly a net increase in our energy use). People will start living in them, doing ridiculously long commutes, etc.
masklinn 12y ago
> Sadly, I bet the way we'll end up equalizing this will be that somebody will eventually bomb a TGV Already happened, back in '82 Carlos the Jackal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_the_Jackal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_the_Jackal) bombed a TGV killing 5 and injuring 50. Nothing since, it's not really worth it, you can bomb fixed locations and get more bang for your terror bucks.

mmaldacker 12y ago

>Back in the 70s, you could rock up at the airport twenty minutes before your flight left This still exists, for example Tegel airport in Berlin. Also, in the 70s there was waaaaaay less traffic in airports so it is simply not a fair comparison. >Sadly, I bet the way we'll end up equalizing this will be that somebody will eventually bomb a TGV and we'll have to start doing the two hour confiscate-your-kids'-apple-juice routine at the train station too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Madrid_train_bombings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Madrid_train_bombings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_July_2005_London_bombings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_July_2005_London_bombings

rwmj 12y ago
Internal flights in Japan are basically turn-up-and-go (and cheap too), and have only a little security.
- jusben1369 12y ago
  So that's fascinating. Having no expertise whatsoever on the topic of domestic Japanese transportation my immediate response is "Strong competition from fast rail means that air travel is a superior experience" It breaks my heart we don't have fast rail in the US. Even if it was just the North Eastern corridor (extended maybe to Chicago and Atlanta) it would have a huge impact on air travel. Of course the cost and final date to roll this out means it's probably not worth buying into.
  - vmarsy 12y ago
    Texas has a project of a high speed train between Houston and Dallas, it would link the 2 cities in 90mn (instead of 3:30h of driving, or 70mn of plane. So if you spend more 20mn more at the airport than at the rail station , the train would be faster. http://texascentral.com/the-facts/ http://texascentral.com/the-facts/ http://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/gray-matters/article/Things-you-should-know-about-that-high-speed-rail-6158903.php http://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/gray-matters/article/T... It's a privately own project, supposedly ready in 2021.
- alanho 12y ago
  you can even bring your own bottled drinks/liquid on Japan domestic flights. they have a machine specifically for "scanning" drink/liquid. put your bottle on it, green light, then off you go. not sure how it works
  - kissickas 12y ago
    There's a UK company in talks with the DoD on rolling these out for military use, and I'm sure they will expand to civilian airports eventually. I'm not sure if this is the same company, but they're doing the same thing: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/02/scanner-analyses-fluid-end-liquid-limits-airports-cobalt http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/02/scanner-anal...
  - easytiger 12y ago
    Something like: num_checks += 1 if num_checks % 200000 == 0: red_light() else: green_light()
  - goodcanadian 12y ago
    Almost certainly a spectral analyzer. Shine a light through it, see what the chemical signature is.
    - colanderman 12y ago
      That certainly won't work for my aluminum water bottle. Granted, neither do X-rays, and yet I've never had it even questioned going through security.
- practicalpants 12y ago
  I wasn't even asked to show my ID the last time I flew domestically in Japan.
TillE 12y ago
Tegel is fairly unique because each gate has its own security checkpoint. It's definitely a bit less stressful.
- apendleton 12y ago
  Amsterdam Schiphol is like this, too, and yeah, it's great. I think for them it's because they're going for this combination airport/mall/mini-city vibe, and there are enough amenities that they want it to be attractive as a destination, even for people not flying, so they want to keep as much of the airport outside of security as possible.
- derf_ 12y ago
  I found it more stressful. The biggest place where delays are caused at an airport is at security, so when I arrive at an airport, this is the first thing I want to take care of, and cannot relax until I've passed through it. To be told I cannot go through security until a few moments before the flight departs (because it is not even open, or the gate not even assigned) means that anything that does go wrong will cause me to miss my flight. Not to mention the expense of having screening apparatus at every gate seems a little inefficient. It means everyone on the flight tries to cram through the one line at the same time, whereas if it were in advance, it could be spread out in time and over more lines.

odiroot 12y ago

I am on Hauptbahnhof at least 4 days a month, waiting, and have never heard this announcement. Neither in English nor in German. Was it on top or bottom level?

jasonkester 12y ago
Actually, come to think of it, out the bottom level then hail a cab to Berlin Zoo. And make sure it's ten years ago or they might have changed the recorded message :)

binarymax 12y ago

The security won't get blown out of proportion for trains like air, because while trains can do significant damage to themselves and surrounding buildings - you cant take one and crash it anywhere you like. 9/11 never would have happened with a train. A hijacked plane is a missile.

Someone1234 12y ago
Trains still have an "end of the line." So, yes, you could if you were going fast enough. Also aircraft security was too much even pre-9/11.
- rtpg 12y ago
  sure, but wasn't it in 1968 or something where there was basically 200 plane hijackings? I feel like there's good intentions at least
- wlesieutre 12y ago
  Even if you were going fast enough, you couldn't take one and crash it anywhere you like. Into the platform at Grand Central, maybe. Into the WTC and Pentagon, not so much. Some kind of automatically enforced speed limiter when the train detects that it's near the end of the line would probably not be hard to implement, or maybe has been already. IIRC many trains automatically slow for curvy areas of track. EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control
  - Symbiote 12y ago
    You don't need anything that modern — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatische_treinbe%C3%AFnvloeding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatische_treinbe%C3%AFnvlo... shows a 1950s electronic system which could reduce the speed to 40km/h. (Approaching a terminus stations counts as approaching a danger signal.)
- masklinn 12y ago
  > Trains still have an "end of the line." So, yes, you could if you were going fast enough. You can overrun the buffer stop (happened last year at O'Hare, a blue line train overran its buffer stop and climbed up an elevator) but you're just going to go a bit past the buffer stop (relatively, most likely a fraction of the train length), at best you'll get just outside the station Montparnasse-style (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montparnasse_derailment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montparnasse_derailment). That's hardly a guided missile with complete freedom of movement in the same way a plane is. You can't drive a train into the white house no matter how often you try, because there's no rail leading to it, or even ending in its general direction, which is anywhere near enough the white house for that to be a concern.

gutnor 12y ago

Thankfully, train do not have checked luggage and no practical technological way to introduce it (i.e. something that does not require to rebuild all the stations, most of them deep in the cities) - so there is a huge commercial imperative to tone down the security theater . I hope at least, I don't want to be proven wrong on that one. Boarding the Eurostar for example, is definitively not a 5 min job, more like 1 hour the bad days, but at least you can still carry most of your stuff and considering you do not have 1 hour transit to the airport, it still beats the plane by a good 2 hours.

Symbiote 12y ago
Eurostar is quite exceptional. They recommend 30 minutes. There's a passport check, and a 30km undersea tunnel, which is probably considered a terrorist target. Knives, alcohol etc are permitted, but not compressed gas or liquid fuel. (I tried this once, on a camping trip.) You can take an almost identical train from King's Cross to Glasgow, arriving 5 minutes before departure (or less, 2 is the minimum recommended time).

the8472 12y ago

That still exists outside the US. Last year I took a flight from germany to a conference in poland and strolled through the airport after checking in. I left the security zone by accident - simply walking through a pair of sliding doors which only open from one side - 10 minutes before departure. But it wasn't a big problem, I simply went through the metal detector/xrays for hand luggage and arrived at the gate with time to spare. Someone before me in the line even asked if they had to take their shoes off, the security guy said "haha, no, this isn't america".

CountHackulus 12y ago
That's strange, I flew from Toronto to Budapest through Munich, and Munich was by far the strictest security I encountered. They made my take off my shoes and sweatshirt. So it's maybe not "outside the US" just "in some places."
- apendleton 12y ago
  It's probably a domestic vs. international thing (where "domestic," within Europe, probably includes actual-domestic as well as other destinations inside the Schengen area). To a large degree, US requirements have infected international travel around the world -- you can't fly into the US from a terminal that allowed people that weren't held to approximately the US's standards.
  - vinay427 12y ago
    No, the DHS enforces the ICAO standards for flights entering the US. For example, the press release regarding the Venezuela issue: http://www.tsa.gov/press/releases/2008/09/08/tsa-issues-advisory-travel-venezuela http://www.tsa.gov/press/releases/2008/09/08/tsa-issues-advi... >Under Title 49 of the U.S. Code, Section 44907, the Department of Homeland Security is required to assess security at foreign airports with direct service to the United States to determine compliance with standards established by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
- vidarh 12y ago

jusben1369 12y ago

In the US we really don't have any rail alternative to flying. I'd love to know how European travellers thinks and weigh up rail (which seems relatively fast and efficient) vs flying. Do you think the two are interchangeable services? Is there a magical breaking point (more than 500km's distance etc) ?

lmm 12y ago
I'll take the Eurostar from London to Paris even if it's slightly slower because it's just a nicer experience. But much further and I'll probably fly unless I'm making a point of taking a train for fun. The only other case would be if I'm taking a lot of luggage as that's much easier to do on a train. Back when I only had a big bulky laptop I might prefer a train to work on but these days my ultrabook is usable on a plane.
comrade1 12y ago
It just depends on the distance. Fro Zurich and Basel we take the train to Paris, Milan, Frankfurt, even Lille, but to go to Berlin, Hamburg, San Sebastián, we fly. So 3 to 6 hours we take the train. More than that we tend to fly. I can get a lot more work done on the train than flying.
- TillE 12y ago
  > So 3 to 6 hours we take the train. More than that we tend to fly. Yep. I could tolerate the longer travel times, but long distance train travel gets really expensive really quickly. For the price of a round-trip train ticket across Germany (Berlin to Cologne, around €100), I could also fly to London, Paris, Amsterdam, etc.
DanBC 12y ago
The budget airlines provide such a customer hostile experience that many people prefer trains. These are (England) sometimes awful, but mostly okay and can be nice. Commuting tends to be worse than the occaisional train journey. The baffling fare structure drastically needs reform -- the same journey can either cost £27 or £72 -- these will be the same class on the same day, just different times. It's frustrating. I like the Virgin trains - I've only ever had an unfun experience on one when the aircon broke. I really hate GWS and I will try to avoid using them where possible, even using a coach would be better. (Virgin trains have power sockets; GWS don't; even a National Express coach has power sockets and free wifi)

odonnellryan 12y ago

>Back in the 70s, you could rock up at the airport twenty minutes before your flight left, jump on with minimal hassle, and cruise along at 600mph to your destination. I basically did this from Tampa FL. I think I arrived at security for a domestic flight like 30 minutes prior to takeoff.

brightsize 12y ago
You can do that at Spokane Int'l (GEG). Flying is still an enormous hassle but at least GEG doesn't add much to the stress. Given a choice I'd take the ICE every time if we had such a thing here. Few hassles, comfortable seats, nice scenery out the windows. A little expensive but worth it to me.

deleted 12y ago

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joss82 12y ago

SNCF actually prints on their tickets "try to arrive 2 minutes before the trains departs" Pretty sure it's marketing though, the TGV can be veeery long sometimes, so it takes a while to walk to your assigned car. EDIT: source: http://tgv.lu.voyages-sncf.com/fr/avant-depart http://tgv.lu.voyages-sncf.com/fr/avant-depart

masklinn 12y ago
> Pretty sure it's marketing though, the TGV can be veeery long sometimes, so it takes a while to walk to your assigned car. Each trainset is a single unit though, so you can just step in at the first car and walk through the train to your seat. The only "danger" is paired trainsets (16 cars), if you're in the further one you have to walk a whole trainset to reach your own train (and even then it's only 200m/660ft), if you're cutting it really close you can probably forego your assigned seat and use the first trainset (you may not get a seat at all though).
- joss82 12y ago
  Yup, exactly, it's not comfortable, but still a possibility.
joshguthrie 12y ago
Not marketing, I've seen people being allowed to get on trains while the controllers where whistling for the train's departure.

thrownaway2424 12y ago

Back in the 70's air travel cost triple what it costs today, and there were many fewer people who could afford the ticket.

XJOKOLAT 12y ago

Agreed, London City Airport has been the only saving grace - it's possible to breeze through there in 20 minutes IIRC. Internal flights in Africa and Asia are pretty good in terms of time too . Some actually feel like train stations.

Sami_Lehtinen 12y ago
In Malaysia and Egypt it was just so swift. They didn't even care about my bottle of coke.

MichaelGG 12y ago

If you don't have bags and are checked in online, you can totally show up 20 minutes before a flight (just know the geometry of the place cause it might take a lot of walking/trams). I show up usually around 65 minutes before departure at SFO (international flight with checked bags); never had a problem.

teraflop 12y ago
> you can totally show up 20 minutes before a flight I'm assuming you're talking about the scheduled boarding time, not departure time? Most airlines' contracts of carriage say that if you're not at the gate 15 minutes before departure, you'll be denied boarding. EDIT: I guess it's not clear whether you meant "show up [at the airport]" or "show up [at the gate]".

dba7dba 12y ago

I would like to see High Speed Rail replace most air traffic. I just read an article explaining how incredibly expensive air travel is for the climate, not to mention the cost to the passengers. Air traffic increases greenhouse effect. Scientists measured noticeable temp drop over sky of US during the days after 9/11 attack with all jets grounded.

stcredzero 12y ago

> Sadly, I bet the way we'll end up equalizing this will be that somebody will eventually bomb a TGV and we'll have to start doing the two hour confiscate-your-kids'-apple-juice routine at the train station too. It would be easier to economically restructure passenger rail cars so that you had independent bomb resistant compartments. Trains have the disadvantage, in contrast with planes, that you can bomb the rails to wreck a train. However, they have the advantage of adding mass more economically. I suspect that we can eventually come up with good (though imperfect) countermeasures to rail sabotage as well. In any case, safeguarding the rails wouldn't impact boarding passengers as much.

rayiner 12y ago
Another thing to note is that it's just a lot harder to cause as much damage to a train. The deadliest Amtrak accidents involved collapsed bridges over water. Derailments or even head-on collisions almost always involve a dozen or less, often zero, fatalities.
- stcredzero 12y ago
  Much of this is a function of potential and kinetic energy. High speed trains are going to have more kinetic energy, and therefore more potential for fatality.

soperj 12y ago

If you ever fly within New Zealand, you'll know how air travel should be. No security at all. (Self)Check in and go have a seat in the lounge area with nice couches that anyone has access to.

js2 12y ago

Just flew out of Boston this morning and was through security in under 5 minutes including the TSA pat-down due to opting out of the scanner. Watched a woman who I was with on the way to the airport make it through even faster as she got to security < 15 mins before departure. In fact, the last several times I've flown security has generally been under 10 mins. SFO is typically the slowest and most highly variable for me, but at its worst I don't think has taken more than 20 mins. Some of the airports this is based on: RDU, MIA, LGA.

com2kid 12y ago
Flying out of Boston was nice the one time I did it. Security was fast and polite. I think I showed up with 35 minutes to spare and I just made it to my flight.

mlmonkey 12y ago

> That seems to be the true advantage of rail travel .... till some nut does something stupid, and then the whole security theater moves to railway stations.

Tloewald 12y ago

We need to learn to live without frequent air travel just because it's energy inefficient. What we need to do is get better at going places while asleep (and trains are great for that). Telepresence means getting places in a hurry will be increasingly unimportant for most people. Driverless cars will be an interesting phenomenon (and possibly a net increase in our energy use). People will start living in them, doing ridiculously long commutes, etc.

masklinn 12y ago

> Sadly, I bet the way we'll end up equalizing this will be that somebody will eventually bomb a TGV Already happened, back in '82 Carlos the Jackal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_the_Jackal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_the_Jackal) bombed a TGV killing 5 and injuring 50. Nothing since, it's not really worth it, you can bomb fixed locations and get more bang for your terror bucks.