[HN Gopher] Amtrak might add more routes, but they won't be fast...
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Amtrak might add more routes, but they won't be faster than a car
Author : ValentineC
Score : 42 points
Date : 2021-09-04 19:19 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (edition.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (edition.cnn.com)
| amelius wrote:
| Doesn't need to be faster if you can sleep on the train. And
| comfort is also a factor.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Sure, but Amtrak doesn't run enough frequency to make the night
| train use case work. Even on routes that support it, it's going
| to be a day train on the opposite trip.
| ljsocal wrote:
| Once again comparisons ignore the time associated with owning and
| maintaining a car.
|
| Next time you're standing on line at the DMV, ask yourself "Self,
| right now would I rather be sitting in a comfy seat on a train
| sipping an adult beverage and looking out at the spectacularly
| beautiful Pacific coastline?"
| Railsify wrote:
| This will probably be good for elderly people that don't want to
| drive/fly.
| ngokevin wrote:
| What I figured was Amtrak travelers were train enthusiasts or
| looking for a nostalgic scenic route. There are also some
| benefits such as less stress than an airport, being able to have
| a sleeper car, a dining car, more space, and panoramic cars as
| you go over mountains and through deserts (Western US).
| tmh88j wrote:
| >What I figured was Amtrak travelers were train enthusiasts or
| looking for a nostalgic scenic route.
|
| I was genuinely surprised at all the comments here from people
| stating they like Amtrak, but that makes a lot of sense. After
| a dozen or so trips on trains around Europe I now loathe Amtrak
| and don't see myself ever taking another ride with them outside
| of extraordinary circumstances.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Amtrak and trains in general are great if you can work remote.
| Being able to start working as soon as you get on the train if
| you have nothing better to do is amazing.
| someguydave wrote:
| why not fly and get to your destination much faster and work
| remote from there?
| pcurve wrote:
| I don't mind it not being faster than car.
|
| The problem though is, in most American cities, you still need a
| car to get around once you get there.
|
| Uber has made things better.
|
| (and why doesn't CNN have separate volume control for videos?
| They almost always play too loud)
| neonate wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20210902120449/https://edition.cn...
| Kalanos wrote:
| Plus you have to get TO the Amtrack and Back
| dccoolgai wrote:
| It does not matter. The experience of riding AmTrak and just
| being left alone and getting your own space to work on whatever
| you want - especially in the quiet car - is fantastic. Every time
| the trip is over I find myself wishing it was just 30 minutes
| longer.
| b9a2cab5 wrote:
| Having commuted to work via Amtrak before, the train car shakes
| far too much and mobile data is far too unreliable (even with
| 5G) to be able to work without interruption.
| wccrawford wrote:
| My experience on Amtrak is that the lines in the north US are
| nice, and the ones in the south are _awful_.
| thesausageking wrote:
| What route?
|
| I've done NYC->BOS dozens of time and always get a lot of
| work done. Mobile data works for most of the route, the train
| is smooth, and the seats are roomie so you don't feel cramped
| like on a plane.
| brailsafe wrote:
| I suppose this would largely depend on how reliant you are on
| a connection. If you're writing code, you should totally be
| able to do that, but maybe constant emailing or whatever
| would need more consistent connection
| perl4ever wrote:
| My experience on Amtrak is that the train makes good time,
| until a freight train comes along, and the passengers have to
| wait, and wait, and wait...
|
| This is presumably a policy/lobbying/political problem, not one
| of physical infrastructure.
|
| I think people have said that the US rail system exists for
| freight, and without the will to change that, passengers are
| second class.
| mindslight wrote:
| From riding the train cross country a few times and
| researching, my understanding is that the big delays come
| about due to the train getting to be a little late, and then
| losing subsequent reservations down the line. One of the
| biggest delays I experienced was outside of ABQ, which I
| believe was because the train lost its timeslot and had to
| fit in between local commuter trains. Which indicates that
| freight trains do get rescheduled a bit, just not nearly
| enough.
|
| I don't know if there is a straightforward solution, as it's
| death by a thousand cuts right now. The schedules need a
| little more slack, the fines for freight trains that don't
| yield need to have serious teeth (perhaps even reimbursing
| freight traffic that is subsequently delayed down the line),
| and areas under contention need more tracks.
|
| Without a serious infrastructure buildout, the train is never
| going to be competitive with car speeds (we'd need to get rid
| of all level crossings, for starters). But it could at least
| be predicable.
| michael1999 wrote:
| The tracks are owned by freight, and rented for passenger.
| Changing that would be expensive.
| iluvcommunism wrote:
| We just need Amtrak to own their own rails. Or whoever runs
| the passenger lines. It's ridiculous they share it.
| pstuart wrote:
| Agreed. Nationalize the rails, invest in and enforce PTC
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control),
| and make passenger traffic a peer to freight.
|
| We could allow for a "market economy" of the rails where
| you could have differentiated passenger services with
| Amtrak being the the fundamental offering and allow third
| parties to participate as well.
| antognini wrote:
| The British model, where the state owns the rails but the
| train services are private, seems to work a lot better
| than the US model which is the opposite.
| jerrysievert wrote:
| I think that would only work if the freight trains were
| not allowed on the Amtrak owned rails. even now, amtrak
| has legal right of way, but the freight companies ignore
| it because there is no recourse.
| jerrysievert wrote:
| amtrak has right of way over the freight trains, but that
| does not seem to matter to the freight companies, as they
| never get fined over it.
|
| see http://blog.amtrak.com/2019/05/why-are-amtrak-trains-
| delayed... for more context.
| ddreier wrote:
| I'm probably different from most people, but I really wish there
| were more rail options in the US (I'm in Texas). It's a 4 hour
| drive from where I live to my hometown. I really don't enjoy
| driving, and would happily take a train even if it took twice as
| long as driving. I'd visit home a lot more too.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| If it's a high speed rail line at some distance it becomes
| faster to go by rail. Even slow rail. I once took the train
| from Glasgow to London and it was about 5 hours. Same drive I
| think is 7 hours.
|
| Personally I like to remind myself when I'm driving that every
| one taking mass transit isn't on the road with me.
| involans wrote:
| Three West Coast Main Line operates speeds up to
| 125mph/200kmph, so very much high speed rail in US terms -
| faster than the Acela if I recall correctly.
| ljsocal wrote:
| Once again the comparison ignores the time associated with owning
| and maintaining a car. Next time you're standing on line at the
| DMV, ask yourself "Self, would I rather be sitting in a comfy
| seat on a train looking out at the Pacific coastline?"
| leetcrew wrote:
| amtrak isn't exactly cheap. I choose it over car/plane whenever
| it's practical, but I consider that more of a luxury than
| anything. a single DC<->NYC roundtrip is already more than my
| monthly car insurance.
| vuldin wrote:
| This is not a problem inherent to rail systems or travel.
| This is a symptom of the poor state of the US rail system.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| Virtual routes can/should be developed to enable self-driving.
| Anything that can be reliably followed as a "track" by "computer
| vision" would work. Compared to a trains, the infrastructure
| investment would be negligible to install on major interstates.
| Cars that currently have cruise control with emergency stopping
| capabilities could utilize the "tracks" with minimal
| modifications. Confidence in your safety while being distracted
| and commuting is the value-add to transportation of Amtrak, and
| that could be replaced.
|
| However, Amtrak has historically been a socialism that blue-
| collar towns are OK with participating in, so my guess is that
| this initiative has more to do with giving government money to
| those people than solving any real transportation issue.
| syops wrote:
| In 1995 China and the U.S. both had essentially zero miles of
| high speed rail. Today China has tens of thousands of miles of
| high speed rail and the U.S. still has essentially zero miles of
| high speed rail. We did invest $6 trillion in 20 years of most
| less pointless warfare.
| wonnage wrote:
| People argue about how the demographics of china make this
| possible, america is too spread out, blah blah blah...
|
| I would rather have a thousand miles of pointless HSR than
| pointlessly bombing a bunch of taliban who are now back and no
| worse for wear
| 8note wrote:
| China's high speed rail is going to places where they want to
| increase the Han population.
| wonnage wrote:
| thanks for the vaguely xenophobic and mostly meaningless
| comment
| dang wrote:
| " _Don 't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them
| instead._"
|
| a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| mushbino wrote:
| You mean the only ethnicity targeted by the one child
| program?
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads on flamewar tangents.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| Like between Beijing and Shanghai?
| syops wrote:
| Yeah, the demographic density argument fails to hold up to
| the fact that spending $6 trillion on high speed rail would
| have been much more beneficial to society than spending it on
| Iraq/Afghanistan.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| I like inter-city travel via train more than flying or
| driving, but even in the Northeast Corridor, which is the
| most well-serviced rail area in the US and certainly has
| the demographic density, it's not always worth it in
| practice.
|
| Boston to Providence is 45 minutes, faster than driving,
| very happy to take that trip. (For those who don't know,
| Providence traffic is more ridiculous than Boston traffic,
| so even my more car-oriented friends tend to like this trip
| via train)
|
| Boston to NYC is about 3 and a half hours, with the
| convenient location of Penn Station, the lack of
| airplane+airport bullshit, it's not bad. I like it more
| than flying, plus you can just buy a ticket and travel on a
| whim.
|
| But Boston to DC is 7 hours assuming everything goes
| smoothly, and much longer if it doesn't. I can't justify
| the DC trip by train, it's only a 90 minute flight.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Corridor
|
| Wikipedia says "Concepts for improvements to achieve "true"
| high-speed rail on the corridor, which have been estimated
| by Amtrak to cost $151 billion, envision cutting travel
| times roughly in half, with trips between New York and
| Washington that would take 94 minutes."
|
| But I remember something similar being on the Wikipedia
| page when I was in college, and I graduated a decade ago.
| We really have no excuse to not have spent that money on
| our own infrastructure. We could have Boston to DC in 3
| hours. Suddenly the train would be a lot more viable for a
| lot of people.
| blahblahblogger wrote:
| I'm not trying to be a troll with this, but is that true?
|
| I don't mean the fact that Iraq and Afghanistan were failed
| missions. But I've heard that 90% of the money spent on
| those wars went to Americans in some way or another,
| military contractors, suppliers, etc. all the way down the
| line to people like me in tech who may work on software
| used by the military.
| dastbe wrote:
| you could make sure 90% of the money spent on high speed
| rail went to americans. that's orthogonal to what the
| outcome of paying those americans is.
| iluvcommunism wrote:
| That goes back to the Milton Friedman quote I love:
| "what's good for me is good for the country."
| blargarg wrote:
| You could spend all that money employing contractors
| producing weapons and weapons research. Or you could
| spent that money employing contractors producing high
| speed rail.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| Right now, the money went to Americans and the result was
| we blew up countries the Middle East, North Africa,
| Central Asia. Imagine instead if the money went to
| Americans anyway, AND we had much better national
| infrastructure. You could even pitch it as necessary for
| national defense anyway.
| syops wrote:
| According to this Adam Tooze article the wars cost around
| 800,000 dead people. Then there is the incalculable
| emotional cost to survivors and participants. This alone
| means that spending $6 trillion building trains would
| have been much better than on war.
|
| https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-34-how-we-
| paid-fo...
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Public transportation is (almost always) an inferior good. If
| one country is consuming more of an inferior good than another
| country, it means that they are poorer than that other country.
| zeotroph wrote:
| "A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars.
| It's where the rich use public transportation." -Gustavo
| Petro
|
| See London or Paris or even New York City. Just getting
| everyone a car only creates cities which are contain more
| parking lots than buildings and green spaces.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| The richer you are in New York City, the less you spend on
| public transportation. That's an inferior good.
| Bilal_io wrote:
| Look at the "Park & Ride" concept in the Seattle area (I
| am sure it exists in other cities). I've seen a lot of
| people that are very comfortable financially take the bus
| to work. Public transportation only becomes inferior when
| its infrastructure is horrible, and it is humiliating to
| take a bus because of the wait time, delays or how packed
| they get.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| If someone in Seattle goes from 200,000 a year in income
| to 2,000,000 a year in income, do they spend more or less
| money on Park & Ride?
| babyshake wrote:
| In San Francisco and New York at least, one important
| reason public transportation is inferior is you are
| regularly confronted with mental illness, disgusting
| sights and smells, and sometimes violence.
| babyshake wrote:
| I've always wondered why there haven't been more efforts
| to offer certain benefits (more comfort and privacy) to
| those who can pay more to ride public transportation.
| This would provide more funding for these systems and is
| not too different from what we already see on planes and
| trains.
| syops wrote:
| It depends on how one measures poorer. Economists will look
| at a society with more cars per person as a good sign. I view
| it as a bad one if the country is already wealthy. The
| profligacy of Americans is obscene and makes us poorer in
| spirit, morality, and we pay for it with unhealthy lives. The
| accompanying lack of walking by Americans alone leads to a
| less healthy lifestyle. We also lose out on the mental
| benefits that walking provides. We gain a higher amount of
| pollution due to emissions from cars and the increased amount
| of resource extraction that comes with it.
| forinti wrote:
| 1995 is an interesting year, because China's GDP overtook
| Brazil's then.
|
| It is now ~10x larger.
| ews wrote:
| I think this is the core of it, we have moved most of our
| resources to foreign wars and let our infrastructure to rot.
| That this is not even part of the public discourse shows the
| decay of the US as a country.
| whatshisface wrote:
| It is very much a part of public discourse, the military
| industrial complex has been discussed since the 70s. The
| problem is that - well, I don't know what the problem is.
| Maybe it is that everyone is too busy with the meaningless
| stuff that they show on cable news to be too concerned with
| things that affect their lives.
| cogman10 wrote:
| The problem is far too many americans take pride in how big
| and tough our military is. They equate military spending to
| might.
|
| You propose "Hey, maybe 700 billion dollars on the military
| is excessive" and you get "But then china/russia/the
| terrorists/etc can invade us!"
| cheschire wrote:
| 2.1m service members, over 700k civilians employed by the
| military directly [0]. Then you have the endless stream
| of military contractors, and you're looking at almost 1
| out of every 50 working age people in America benefits
| directly from the federal military activity.
|
| So yeah, of course people are taking pride in a big
| military since it provides so much of their community
| income.
|
| 0: https://www.governing.com/archive/military-civilian-
| active-d...
| kasey_junk wrote:
| It's more than that. Culturally they US has a big
| population that is anti-large government social benefits,
| except in the concept of the military.
|
| By joining the military you gain access to federally paid
| education, health care, social services, housing etc.
| that has broad political support. If you yanked those
| funds you'd decimate one of the foundational social
| safety nets in the States.
| syops wrote:
| Nothing would be decimated if we yanked those funds other
| than our ability to destroy other nations. We could build
| a much better social safety system that covers far more
| people. It's not as if military spending is the only
| option as far as this goes.
| version_five wrote:
| Rail is "socialist" (not meant in a political way) in that it
| is generally a government investment for the people. My sense
| is the US is generally less apt to do this vs e.g. europe
| where there has been much more investment. I think this has
| more to do with it than the money not being available because
| of wars.
| syops wrote:
| We could have done both. Opponents of rail decry it's
| apparent inefficiency and call it wasteful spending. Even
| assuming it is wasteful spending it'd still have been much
| better spending $6 trillion on building trains than on the
| wars. Has so many resources ever been spent for so little
| gain?
| scottLobster wrote:
| To be fair a lot of Chinese rail is extremely wasteful and more
| of a government run full employment program than a direct
| economic benefit.
|
| But I'll agree it would have probably been better to spend the
| Iraq/Afghanistan war money domestically on any number of
| things.
| JoshTko wrote:
| Wasteful in that rail laid per dollar is not good or wasteful
| in that the rail in underused?
| brailsafe wrote:
| What's wasteful about that?
| iluvcommunism wrote:
| What's wasteful about paying millions of people to shovel
| dirt? Now take your answer and apply it to your question.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Jobs programs make us poorer on net.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Price is also a factor.
|
| In the UK it is often faster take the train on some routes than
| driving it, but the price is often absurd. For the cost of a
| tank/half a tank of petrol (PS20-50) Vs potentially hundreds for
| a train ticket.
|
| E.g. London to Newcastle is about 280miles. By train I just got
| quotes for PS320 return tickets. I could get there and back in
| perhaps 1.5 tanks of petrol (approx PS60-70) in my hybrid, but
| will take about an 30mins longer by car (4 hours Vs 4.5 hours)
|
| Thanks but no thanks.
| sixothree wrote:
| From my experience (not recent), Amtrak is barely competitive
| with flying.
| murderfs wrote:
| Comparing it now, it looks like it's only competitive if your
| time is completely worthless. A nonstop flight from Seattle
| to SFO or SJC is $50, and is ~2 hours plus whatever time it
| takes to go through security. Via Amtrak, it looks like the
| best case scenario is $57 for a ride that takes longer than
| 24 hours?!
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| $50 is a depressed rate.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Isn't parking in London going to be really expensive though (I
| could be wrong, I've never driven in London)?
| pasture wrote:
| What tickets were you looking at?
|
| I've had a look and booking a train for 14th Sept 18:00 (Kings
| X - Newcastle) with a return the next day at the same time,
| costs PS112.60 (PS74.25 with a railcard).
|
| That brings it a lot closer to the petrol price, but also gives
| you the advantage of not having to bother concentrating on the
| road and finding a place to park.
| elicash wrote:
| Whether you're alone or with a family has big impact on
| train/car price comparisons.
| mattlondon wrote:
| 11:27 Mon 6th PS316.50 return.
| unearth3d wrote:
| I'm in NZ but would gladly take a train (no passenger rail on my
| island), time spent driving is time I usually can't charge for
| (eg general sales), and even where I can it's still hours that I
| can't design. It'd be worthwhile even if it was 10 % slower than
| driving.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| In the US it takes 5 hours to drive from San Francisco to LA.
| It takes 11 hours to take the train.
| finfinfin wrote:
| If we could reduce that to 6-7 hours I would take the train
| every single time. Driving is an active process vs taking the
| train where I can work/read. Current 11 hours is just too
| long.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I've taken the train to LA. It just totally sucks time wise
| (it's been hours late every time I've taken it.) The worst
| part is it will be decades before HSR is even completed.
| treis wrote:
| There are buses that do the trip in that time. For what
| California is spending on HSR they could make the bus free
| and give passengers $50 for their trouble and come out
| ahead.
| byroot wrote:
| > It takes 11 hours to take the train.
|
| How's that even possible? Looking at GMaps, there's roughly
| 650km of tracks between the two, so that's an average of
| 60km/h.
|
| Even regular speed trains in Europe easily average 100 to
| 120km/h.
|
| Are the tracks in terrible shape? Or are they stuck behind
| freight trains?
| iluvcommunism wrote:
| They probably have to stop 100 times.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| Multiple stops and possible transfers.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| My guess? Prioritize freight over people. That's what
| happens in Canada. Greyhound bus when it was a thing here
| was considerably faster to go cross country than the train.
| ac29 wrote:
| Its this. The route from the Bay Area to LA actually
| starts in Seattle. The route is largely on shared freight
| tracks. Due to the nature of rail travel, delays compound
| - if you are delayed at the beginning of the route, you
| will likely be delayed at many additional points along
| the route due to missing your scheduled time.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Amtrak has some 11 hour routes where they stop at a
| bazillion towns but most routes are 7-8 hours.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I took Amtrak from Chicago to Las Vegas once and it took
| about 36 hours, after breakdowns, accidents, random
| delays, etc.
| dnautics wrote:
| And soloing that's $50-ish in gas in a Prius, maybe $80-ish
| for a conventional sedan. 80 is competitive to the train
| fare; when you take into account last mile costs (Muni and
| bart, la metro); plus in a car you can carpool, cut it half,
| thirds, or quarters, but public transportation costs scale
| linearly by passenger.
| AceyMan wrote:
| I am from Atlanta and went to uni in the Philadelphia area. I
| was... low-middle class, and we couldn't afford airfare each term
| for my travels home. (And I still spent Thanksgivings on campus.
| I know what Matt Damon's character felt like in 'The Martian'...)
|
| I regularly took the Amtrak line to make the route--seventeen
| hours, including an hour-long stopover in middle of the night for
| the scheduled locomotion change.
|
| It was one of the best regular experiences of my life and I met
| some cool and amazing fellow undergraduates from other east coast
| schools that I kept in touch with for years.
|
| You won't get that driving on the I-95, it goes without saying.
| quadrangle wrote:
| Train fans will always still take the train, and for good
| reason (they are a better experience in _some_ ways), but the
| fundamental issue of whether we can address car traffic and
| congestion is about whether other forms of transit can be
| faster. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQY6WGOoYis and
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1G0Lyh3uik are great overviews
| dnautics wrote:
| When did you go to college? By the time I went to college, a
| train ticket (chicago-dc) was more expensive than a plane
| ticket.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Amtrak can be OK as an occasional experience when you don't
| really care how long it takes to get somewhere. I did it once,
| and that was enough. For anyone needing to be somewhere on a
| schedule it is a disaster.
| ardit33 wrote:
| I take the NYC to Boston all the time, and the experience /
| service has been good.
|
| I live in NYC and have family in Boston, so Amtrack has been
| my main mode of transportation. I purposely take the slow
| train (not the Accela), as it is both cheaper, and easier to
| work while traveling (restaurant cars).
|
| For people that live in the midwest, I can see how Amtrack is
| this old rag-tag thing, that serves no purpose, but for the
| North Eastern Corridor, Amtrack is a life saver.
|
| I wish this country could invest more into rail routes, and
| make them faster, instead of spending trillion of dollars in
| sensless wars.
|
| With half of that 2 trillion dollars that we spent on
| Afghanistan, (and whatever we did in Iraq), we could have had
| high speed rail in most of the larger cities, at least 10
| major routes, making it almost a national high speed rail
| system.
|
| Right now we have 0.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| Hmm. Interesting.
|
| The US has no intercity trains? Is there a reason? I've
| always seen the NYC subway in movies and just recklessly
| assumed all major US cities are connected by rail...which
| is silly of me in hindsight.
| mastax wrote:
| The northeast corridor (Boston to DC) is very popular and
| profitable for Amtrak. They have routes connecting major
| cities in the rest of the country but they're slow,
| expensive and unreliable. They're pretty much only ridden
| by train enthusiasts, people who are very afraid of
| flying, or banned from flying.
| idunno246 wrote:
| they exist, but arent really used. the us is much bigger
| / less dense intercity. going across the coasts is six
| hour flights but days(4ish i think) by train and
| significantly more cost, with not many cities in the
| middle that people stop at. too few people would use so
| theres no motivation to make it faster. where it works
| decently well is northeast, because the cities are very
| close together(dc,philly,nyc,boston). but it's usually
| much more expensive than driving/bussing and takes
| roughly the same time.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| There are a number of reasons:
|
| * For most of the country, cities are really far apart.
|
| * The US has excellent freight rail network. They lease
| their lines to Amtrak, but they only have secondary
| priority. Passenger trains often have to wait behind slow
| freight, or even allow freight trains to pass them.
|
| * After WW2, the US aggressively built the interstate
| highway system, which simultaneously caused
| suburbanization and killed intercity passenger rail.
|
| Like the other commenter says, the Northeast Corridor
| between DC and Boston is an exception, as the cities are
| closer, and there isn't as much freight traffic, and the
| highways have a lot of car and truck traffic.
| mulderc wrote:
| It really depends on the line. I used the cascades line that
| connects cities in the pacific NW weekly for over a year and
| my experience is it was much more consistent than driving as
| the traffic bottlenecks are far less predictable than the
| Amtrak schedule.
|
| Additionally wifi and beer means I can do a variety of other
| things I can't while driving.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Did you go to college in the 1970s? Airfare has been cheaper
| than the Amtrak ticket for a while now.
| pornel wrote:
| It's bizarre how U.S. makes driving at 70mph "faster" when the
| rest of the world has 200mph trains.
| rmason wrote:
| When they discontinued some of these routes it was cheaper to buy
| each passenger a first class airline ticket than have them take
| the train.
|
| I love trains and there are places where cities are close
| together and if the train went 150 mph or faster where it might
| make sense. I'd love to see a Cleveland to Detroit to Chicago
| train for example. But I'm not taking the train if travelling by
| car was faster, that makes no sense.
|
| We're not more than 5-10 years away from a time where travelling
| by car could mean sleeping (or working on a laptop) in the back
| seat until the end of the trip is possible.
| johnday wrote:
| > We're not more than 5-10 years away from a time where
| travelling by car could mean sleeping (or working on a laptop)
| in the back seat until the end of the trip is possible.
|
| There is no reason to think that this is true beyond marketing
| and sheer optimism.
| ngokevin wrote:
| It's easy to think it if you take Elon at his word (5 years
| away in 5 years).
| wonnage wrote:
| it's amusing that Tesla announced a battery codenamed cold
| fusion, which is also perpetually 5 years away
| ckemere wrote:
| *Hot* fusion is perpetually on the horizon. *Cold* fusion
| most likely doesn't exist.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| To your point (I guess the downvotes are representing people's
| thoughts on Tesla),
|
| Self-driving could still have a major impact like this without
| being the "fully-autonomous" version. Virtual routes can be
| developed with negligible infrastructure(sensors) compared to a
| trains requirements.
|
| However, Amtrak has historically been a socialism that blue-
| collar towns are OK with participating in, so my guess is that
| this has more to do with giving government money to those
| people than solving any real transportation issue.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > We're not more than 5-10 years away from a time where
| travelling by car could mean sleeping (or working on a laptop)
|
| I have a feeling that we might be 5-10 years away for several
| decades.
| techsupporter wrote:
| > But I'm not taking the train if travelling by car was faster,
| that makes no sense.
|
| If you are going purely for minimizing time, all forms of
| shared transport will be slower than going it alone. A plane
| trip on a commercial route is slower than getting a private
| jet, for example.
|
| The difference is in how _much_ additional time the shared
| option takes, and how the experience varies, especially
| relative to cost. For an Amtrak cross-country trip measured in
| days, I agree with you; I won 't ride that (outside of the trip
| being the reason for the trip) either.
|
| But Amtrak Cascades between Seattle and BC or Portland? I'll
| definitely take the train for that. I go from downtown to
| downtown in a bit longer than the time to drive, I don't have
| to deal with the TSA, I don't have to concentrate on driving
| myself, I can get food and use the restroom without stopping my
| trip, and I get a much better seat than on a plane.
|
| If the time comparison is within about 50% extra train versus
| plane or car, I'm taking the train every time.
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