Exactly the reason why the (much slower) train often makes more sense. Sure, the train from Amsterdam to Berlin is six hours. But you only have to be at the station to catch it before it leaves, and it both leaves and arrives right in the center.

We tried this returning from a conference there last fall, and the hotel-door-to-home-door advantage of flying was less than 30 minutes. And on train there was more space, better food, and a bar. Not to mention that there was power and nobody told me to shut down my laptop at any point :-)

This works better in Europe than it does in America. As most trips here on train or car take multiple days. Where as you can fly anywhere in the country in one day. Once you cross into multi-day territory, the train is often too impractical to be used. Which is a real shame, as I really enjoy travelling by train.

The US is large but our trains really do suck and up until the 2010 elections we were on track to build a regional fast speed train system that would connect Chicago, Milwaukee, Kansas City, and then east to DC and NYC. Tea Party governors and other GOP obstructionism killed it, especially in Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida.

NYC to LA shouldnt be our metric for everything. A lot of travel is regional. Why do I need to get up at 5am in Chicago to get on a 10am flight that lasts 2 hours to DC? Or the 30 minutes to milwaukee? Or the 1.5 hr flight to Kansas City? With all the hassle of TSA, airport madness, restrictions, and the horrible crampedness of flying? Chicago > DC is about the same distance as Madrid to Paris. Sure, the train will take longer, but it sure beats flying.

> our trains really do suck

You mean passenger trains. For the most part, the US rail network was constructed for and is primarily used for cargo transportation, where it excels.

The perpetual comparison of the US (cargo) train network to the other passenger train networks (Europe, Japan, China) is a tedius and misguided apples to oranges comparison.

Most of these comparisons blatently ignore the fact that population density is radically different between the US and these other systems, which is an important criteria in understanding the time/economic tradeoffs.

I like train travel a lot and living in the New York to Boston corridor I've always had easy access to commuter trains, the New York and Boston subway systems, and Amtrak for longer regional travel. Regardless, I don't think passenger rail makes much economic sense outside high-density areas and even then only survives with dubious tax subsidies.

In Europe, barges handle the freight traffic that fills the US railroads and trains handle the cross-continent traffic that runs in airplanes in the USA. It's mostly a result of Europe's many great rivers and the USA's vast open spaces.

That doesn't mean we can have great high speed rail from Boston to DC and Florida, from SF to LA, and from Chicago to New York, just like Europe can run freight trains under the Swiss Alps.

The main reason quality passenger rail doesn't get built and run well in the parts of the USA where it should is politics. The FRA regulations, the national transportation funding process, the state funding politics, the work rules, liability rules, labor regulations, safety regulations, and environmental regulations all work to make high speed rail five or more times as expensive per mile as in Europe. At that price, we should just live with the low quality infrastructure we've got. The only alternative is to reform the process and even supposed rail advocates like Obama haven't lifted a finger on the most obvious abuses, e.g. to loosen FRA buff strength standards or strict Buy American rules for rolling stock.

The entire interstate highway system is extremely heavily subsidized (along with gasoline). I'd be interested to see how it would compare with passenger trains without the subsidies, but I suspect it's not as lopsided as we think when it comes to a marginal passenger.

I understand what you are saying about the highway system being subsidized, but I'm not sure I understand your reference to gasoline.

Private energy companies explore, extract, refine, and sell gasoline, with all sorts of taxes (as opposed to subisidies) along the way. What subsidies are you refering to for gasoline?

The government creates foreign policy around the maintenance of oil supplies, which has a very large cost, and is largely a gift to the oil companies. This is reflected in income taxes rather than in the cost of gasoline. There are also large tax breaks given to oil companies. Domestic fossil fuels like coal and natural gas don't get quite the same treatment, since we have plenty.

Less politically-biased information about rail at Wikipedia[1].

Politically biased opinion: the Dems could have done anything from 2008-2010, and they chose healthcare. TSA didn't get any better, nor were trains built. More stringent mileage requirements were handed down, for those eco-friendly types out there, but we are not aggressively pursuing nuclear/fusion power generation like we should.

I would love to be able to grab a train from Houston to Dallas, as it would certainly beat the air travel experience, as other comments have mentioned the additional time required for check-in, security, etc. But the cost of new rail is in the billions per route, and we have lots of land to cover in America.

We are too cheap for high-speed aircraft, but we can (hopefully) do something to rid us of TSA and the accompanying security theatre, which would make air travel so much better.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_the_United_S...

What I always find funny with this type of discussion is that, when an article talks about the state of broadband connection in the US, someone (usually more than one person actually) will inevitably use the argument that the country is too sparsely populated and that's why we can't compare to Europe. While when an article talks about a possible train corridor between some major regional hubs, someone will inevitably mention that there are too many houses on the way and it's not practical :)

+10 for "the Dems could have done anything from 2008-2010, and they chose healthcare."

A decision the nation and the Democratic Party will be kicking themselves for for decades.

Compared to the urgency of high speed rail, they made the right choice!

I do not agree with the exact details of how they chose to tackle health care, but there is no question that it was the right priority at the time. Healthcare costs were at 18% of GDP and rising rapidly.

Even the hospitals and insurance companies recognized that something had to be done very soon. Between increasing poverty and companies dropping health care for their employees, they were losing patients at a record pace.

The risk of launching a startup was becoming almost unbearable. Many young entrepreneurs arbitrage the cost of their health risk by betting they won't get seriously ill and make themselves, their companies, and their investor funds go bankrupt. That is NOT a safe bet.

For Northeast travel in the US, the train is more practical. Pretty much anything from DC to Boston is less painful on the train. You get a seat an continuous alone time.

This holds less on broader travel.

Exactly. The American/Canada east coast and great lakes region is dense enough that an upgrade rail network could really work for us - Chicago, Boston, NYC, Pittsburgh, Detroit, DC, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa... each of these places have another major city about 3-4 hours drive away. Investment in the local passenger rail network could be worthwhile.

Not cheap, though. The train from DC to NY can cost twice that of a plane, depending on the specifics.

I may be wrong, but I put the medians at a similar price. Both systems can go cheaper or more expensive. This is a little frustrating because 1 hour between major metro areas can cost 50-100x the 1 hour subway ride from the Bronx to Coney Island. In part this is because the train sets it's prices based on competition from airplanes.

MTA is heavily subsidized (it only covers ~50% of its expenses from its operational income), AmTrak is probably not.

Also, a train e.g. from NYC to Philadelphia looks inside much more like a plane (seats, tables, power sockets, wifi) than like a subway train, and obviously moves much faster. This all ought to cost more, even at zero profit point.

Amtrak gets federal subsidies too, though I imagine they're far less than 50%. It certainly isn't a profitable enterprise.

And most people don't use the subway for an hour, it's usually less mileage per person. But the extremes do show a big case of opposites.

In part because America is much larger: NYC to Los Angeles is similar in distance to a trip from London to Baghdad. At that scale, trains are always going to be inconvenient.

Now, that's not to say trains in the US are good, but they are never going to be the best form of transportation for a 3,000 mile trip.

I also blame our two-weeks-off-a-year culture.

If we had six weeks off, going four days each way in a train to spend two or three weeks somewhere could be a great vacation.

It depends entirely where you are. Within the northeast corridor (Boston to DC, population of about 50 million, not too much smaller than France) there is almost no point in flying (unsurprisingly, Amtrak has captured 70% of the market between DC and NYC and 50% between NYC and Boston). The hour and a half flight from DC to Boston becomes a 4 hour exercise in self-flagellation versus a very comfortable 7 hour trip on the Acela.

If you can afford it. The Acela will run you $400-$500 round-trip BOS to WAS unless you take the 5am ones (and then it'll be $330 or so). Flying from BOS to DCA nowadays is $220 round-tip on JetBlue, say, at reasonable times of day.

If you happen to be traveling as a family, the price situation is even worse, of course. At some point driving actually starts to look pretty attractive...

The US is huge! My mother back home in India still has a hard time believing that there are 4 time zones between San Francisco and New York.

Why not have the best of both worlds? Rail based hypersonic transportation - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun

Generally speaking, a good means of transportation should not involve killing the travelers with high acceleration.

I'd settle for a regular train that is able to go at what most Europeans countries would consider a normal speed.

Well this is a great example of when I do pay for the premium.

If I am going to Amsterdamn from London, I'll fly CityJet from LCY. London City Airport is brilliant. Mostly because its only used by frequent travellers, no people pushing right up to the baggage belt here, people all know they can spot and politely walk up to grab.

If your going to Antwerpen, their local airport is brilliant as well. LCY if you've only got carry on, you need only arrive 15 min before your flight. Most routes flown have 6-10 flights a day.

I have left the city (London) at 6pm, and been checked in to my hotel, having a nice trappist beer by 9pm on more than one occasion.

When you consider you can do the London to Antwerpn route for £120, return, including baggage, it is really brilliant. It's a 45 min flight total. The thing here is, its the ground facilities that make it so painless.

this is my position. If I have internet and a power outlet, one place is as good as another, why take the hit on degrading security, exorbitant fee's, and cramped conditions for a few extra hours? Trains are efficient. We need to use them more.

Trains have degraded security though. Once a plane leaves, someone has to be on the plane or have had access to it beforehand to affect the flight. You can defend against this through security at those specific points. On a train, the entire trip is over miles of tracks which 'anyone' can access. Security at boarding doesn't affect the attack surface area as much.

That said, I might prefer train travel to flying.

> On a train, the entire trip is over miles of tracks which 'anyone' can access

Indeed, but trains, even high speed ones, are also very robust compared to airplanes.

Even if somebody does manage to get access to the track (not so trivial in many cases), and trigger an explosion on the track with good enough timing to catch the train as it goes by, and manage to derail it, there's still a good chance that all or most passengers would survive the crash.

Similarly, with the size of bomb one might smuggle on board a train, the likely effect would be to just kill a few passengers in the immediate vicinity of the explosion; the train itself would probably be just fine. So basically not much different than setting off an explosion at a random restaurant...

For a terrorist, the odds just aren't all that great with trains, which presumably is why there have been so few attempts at doing such a thing. One of the reasons terrorism is so scary on airplanes is that they feel (and are) so fragile that it magnifies the effect of any attack greatly.

"Degrading" security not "degraded" security. I think the post you are replying to is implying that they would rather take the small risk of being blown up on a train over the certainty of being treated like a terrorist at the airport.

On the other hand, if there is an issue with a train, it can break. Stopping a plane when there is an issue is a lot more hassle.

I'd rather face terrorists than TSA.

I wouldn't call it degraded security, it's just more appropriate to the risk vs convenience tradeoff.

I travel between Amsterdam and Berlin quite frequently and I've all but stopped flying. Yes, it's a bit faster, but it's much less comfortable.

+1 for trains! I dread airplanes and airports! We need more Paneuropean train routes; nice, comfy trains running on electric power.

Damn you Western Europeans complaining about train routes. Here in the US the only remotely usable train corridor is from DC to Boston, and even there the best moment was when they deployed "high speed" trains that only exceed 200kph for very short stretches due to a design error.

[edited to fix 100 vs 200 kph typo]

My last sky trip from Dallas to Colorado: - 30 mins drive to airport - Another 15-30 bus from parking to terminal - 15-30 mins check-in and get through TSA. - At least 1 hr to walk to gate and wait for boarding. - 30 mins for boarding - At least another 30 mins for the plane taxing around that huge airport to reach the runway. then in Denver: - 15 mins taxing - 15 mins unboarding - 30 mins train to baggage claim and collect baggage - 30 mins bus to rental car - 1.5 hrs drive to mountain resort Total: 7.5 hrs of which only 1.5 are the actual flight (400% overhead)

Driving from Dallas to Breckenridge, CO takes 13 hrs so it's still half the time, unless there are delays at the airport (Btw, my trip back took 10 hrs)

Airports and planes are so huge the overhead is reaching ridiculous levels, and we are building bigger and more complex ones instead of evolving flight control technology to make flying itself easier and safer.

We still use the same basic principles of flight control invented 130+ years ago, unfortunately, unless we discover a way to defeat gravity without using thrust and/or lift, this is the best we've got.

It's actually cheaper and faster to fly 1st, cut through all lines and be able to board at the last minute than to fly at Mach 1.

Well Elon Musk has a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aero_L-39

But sadly, its not Mach1, but a hell of a lot more fun than an airliner. My goal is the much more reasonable SR-22 turbo, just need to get my instrument raiting first.

Of course, as long as we're fantasizing about the toys for the rich, Larry Ellison owns a Mig-29, which is capable of Mach 2.25.

The SR22 is an excellent choice, however pardon me if I'll try to favour our European industry instead. :)

Nice - why is the safety record so bad on the SR-22? I thought it had a chute!

The chute might be why: false sense of security. As a safety measure, it's like an air bag in a car. It can turn some bad situations into ones that are somewhat less bad. But I get the impression that a lot of Cirrus pilots treat it as a get-out-of-jail-free card instead of the last-ditch safety measure that it is.

There's also the danger that comes with any expensive, high-powered, prestigious airplane, namely that people with more money than time will see it as a great place to start flying and will end up exceeding their abilities and experience. For an earlier example of this, see the Bonanza and its reputation as a "doctor killer". Flying is tough, flying high-performance aircraft is tougher, and people with lots of money may try to take shortcuts they really shouldn't.

In the New York City area, there are millions of people within 50 miles of 3 major airports. I'm 20 minutes by cab from one of them. I'd love to cut a 6-7 hour trip to most places by half. Ideally, I should be able to land in JFK, take a 15 minute maglev to Newark and take a connecting flight.

Air travel could be so much better.

> It's not just a case of being too cheap, but also it having negligable effect.

For me this is not remotely true.

It's not an issue of spending N hours in travel. It's an issue of spending N hours cooped up in a tight and uncomfortable seat, unable to sleep and developing deep vein thrombosis, on a bumpy airplane filled with recycled oxygen and passengers with all sorts of airborne illnesses. Inevitably I have a variety of, erm, digestive issues after long flights.

For me it's bad enough that I have a special rule: the number of days I must stay at a remote destination must exceed the number of hours I spend flying to get there. This rule does not apply to trains or cars or buses, nor layovers in airports. Just planes.

Given the choice between spending 5 hours on a plane and 15 hours in an airport, or just 10 hours on a plane, I'd pick the former in a heartbeat.

Next time, you can get a comfortable, roomy seat that folds into a flat bed in the front section of the plane where they serve nice hot cooked food with caviar appetizers and ice cream sundae desserts and pump in a higher partial pressure of oxygen so you can get work done.

Sure, it's expensive. Still, it's a lot less expensive than the Concorde used to be and than supersonic travel would be if it were available today. So probably even you would choose against OP's high speed flight.

I'm going to apply your rule too from now on, but with different exceptions (writing this from an uncomfortable bus seat in the middle of 12-hour ride).

Okay, maybe buses.

> 8 vs 12 for the cost of that just isn't going to be worth it.

Which makes it exactly about cost. It's not worth it for that difference. If it was 10% more would you pay it? I would. But being 5x, 10x, 20x suddenly makes it too expensive. I'd rather pay less than get there that fast.