Well, for me one reason is that I've watched countless hours of "Seconds from Disaster" and "Air Emergency" on the National Geographic Channel.
Seriously, though, I think the control thing is big for me. I'm pretty sure that if I was wealthy, I'd be a private pilot--and still would not like flying commercially.
I don't like buses all that much, or cars when I'm a passenger, so that's more evidence in support of the control theory.
I'm OK with reasonable sized boats (e.g., the ferries in Washington State).
Ambivalent about trains--I was OK with them until I took Amtrak from the Seattle area to Beaumont, Texas, and back (yeah, patent lawsuit), and saw just how poorly maintained the tracks are. Fortunately when my train derailed, we were only going about 5 miles an hour so no one was injured. It just caused a several hour delay.
> Why? Because incidents are catastrophic often killing hundreds of people at once.
You're rationalising something that isn't a rational or reasonable response. Exactly the same argument could be applied to trains; but I havn't met anyone who is scared of traveling by train.
People are scared of heights and having no plausible escape routes if something goes wrong is also pretty scary. The statistics are overwhelming that this instinctive response is wrong.
> Right now, if I don't want to drive, my only option is to fly mostly in a shitty plane cramped up with strangers on a 4 hour flight.
Would high speed rail be that different? Not being snarky, I really don't know. I just figure that if it's very fast and/or expensive, it's probably not going to be very roomy on the inside. That Chinese train looks like it's about the same width or less than most airliners.
> There isn't many people in the USA that love the idea of driving their car to ride a train so that they can then rent a car to get where they are going.
You've just described airports, except with trains instead of planes. If I could take a train instead of fly I would.
>While taking train for me was more comfortable, most of the times it is not feasible and definitely a lot longer than taking an airplane.
well personal experience is not always representative - but anyway isn't one of the ways how trains could replace planes by increasing number of connections and speeding them up so that it does become feasible?
> Human-piloted aircraft for routine transportation makes no sense. In terms of safety and ecology for long-distance travel, trains will dominate in the end because flying adds inherent risks and consumes much more energy.
OK cool I'll just take a train.... uhhh absolutely nowhere as I live on an island with extremely limited inter-city rail.
>I'm not convinced trains would be viable economically like they are in Japan.
In my opinion I think rail would displace a great deal of airline traffic because air travel security is such a chore, airlines have done their very best to squeeze out every last nickel and concerns about how green air travel is or is not. Add in the fact that there is far more room per passenger in a train and with dining cars (which are slowly dying) the food can be much better.
The biggest downside to rail travel in the US is the rail lines are owned by and geared for freight train operators. You really need completely separate lines (as you have in Japan) to compete on speed, but then competing on price would be difficult since it means building entirely new infrastructure. It could require government subsidy and in the current political climate that seems unlikely.
Yes I have and your statement is correct. Amtrak is almost entirely dysfunctional but rail as a concept is not dysfunctional and actually works in many other countries.
It's like healthcare, which is an absolute shitshow in the US, however in the rest of the developed world it's not a shitshow.
Likewise with the military.
What is it about the US that makes so many fundamental services needed for the functioning of society into shitshows?
> You’re pattern matching on how the two modes work
No, I'm going by my own experience. I've taken plenty of long-distance bus trips (I've just checked on a map site, one long-distance bus trip I've made many times is around 800 km). Several of them were to cities I could have taken an airplane to (and I did take an airplane to them in other circumstances), and the only difference is that the bus trip usually took longer (and was less expensive).
> If airplanes became seriously unsafe, I would drive. There is no world where I would take a bus instead.
If airplanes became seriously unsafe, I would take a long-distance bus. I can't say there's no world where I would buy a car and learn how to drive just to avoid taking a long-distance bus, but I can't see any advantage other than avoiding the short taxi steps to and from the bus terminal at either end of the trip.
>> I'd really like to travel by train sleeper car, but I just can't justify it as transportation
> What an odd comment. It gets you where you're going, the same as any other form of transportation. For a long time it was the default way people took long distance trips.
But far slower than air travel, which I imagine is a big reason why air travel displaced it.
> Do you also consider road trips or long bus rides to be not transportation?
I don't take the bus, but when I drive, it's cheaper than flying (or flying + car rental).
>> given the prices.
> Again, with two people, it's been about the same price the last few times we've done it.
> Travel by train? That would've probably killed my grandmother.
I'm... having difficulty imagining how travel by train could _possibly_ be more strenuous than travel by plane; anyone who's going to be killed by a train will be killed by a plane far quicker. Assuming you're talking about commercial flights; if you're talking medevac, that wouldn't be impacted by these rule changes.
> There's really no reason a human would try to fly instead of take a train.
My anecdote:
Some time ago I did a lot of business trips around Europe. All business travel was organized by a subcontractor. They sometimes wanted to route me through a crazy amount of short airplane hops to get me to the destination. Sometimes even when a direct flight was available they couldn't put me on it because they didn't have a contract with the operator or something like that.
For some reason they strongly favored air travel and fell back on other means of transport only when there was absolutely no way to get there by air.
One some occassions I was supposed to do 4 or 5 500 km short hops, which would mean a whole wasted day of basically waiting at airports and boarding airplanes. In such cases I just said no, paid out of my own pocket for a train ticket or took my own car. And then spent next 3 months doing paperwork to get travel expenses reimbursed.
> I was so excited about auto-pilot and dreamed of getting in my car and sleeping while it made cross-country trips. So much for that, that seems way far out.
This is more a hijack than a direct critique but I think the general issue is the assumption that we need a private vehicle for that.
Trains are perfectly capable for bringing me from A to B while I am sleeping for years now.
Edit:// with years I mean years. Before that pressure made longer rides usually more uncomfortable than they are now with modern trains. Probably only because my area has plenty of mountain tho.
> Should you tax the flights? But then you basically say that rich people can take the plane.
Rich people will pay premium for a superior experience. If the train is faster than the plane they would like to use it I think. Could railway companies add a very expensive business class to help fund cheaper tickets? They could try a pilot project where they deploy this kind business class between two major cities.
Trains do not have that great of an internet connection as well. Why not provide a yearly internet subscription for a fee? Businesses might pay for this for their employees when they travel between cities and they can keep working.
> But it is complex: first, it works in such a way that the plane tends to be cheaper.
Currently yes that is the case a lot of the times. With renewables getting cheaper and the ever increasing electrification of trains why could trains not become cheaper in the future? Maybe it is not possible but I feel like by banning it we are giving up before really trying.
Airlines have international competition which forces prices down. On the other hand railway companies often face little competition because the states maintain a public monopoly. Public monopolies have little incentive to keep prices low as they are the only game in town.
I would like to see them try more things to increase efficiency, convenience and push prices down to become closer to planes. Maybe they could try to sell more services to fund the rest of the system.
Maybe as you say it is impossible to match current planes prices no matter what improvements we make. I just have not seen evidence that it is impossible to make a system where you can sell train tickets at similar rates to planes. But before doing it I need to see at least an honest attempt at bringing in more revenue.
> the perception is different: people tend to trust the plane more (even though planes have delays, too) and underestimate the commute time for the plane (I often hear people compare the time between two train stations against the time between two airports, completely forgetting all the time to the airport and back, checking in, fetching the bags, etc.
Ok then maybe try to change the perception. If you tell people how much time they waste, you could convince at least some people to change. Do they already have some advertisements that try to change this perception? I have not seen any but maybe they already have.
> While I like the idea of traveling by train, and I even took a night train from Munich to Budapest in the past, but on that specific route I had to share my cabin with a guy who just got released from jail a day earlier so I was not pleasantly relaxed. The fact that the cabin only had 2 bunk beds and I was pretty much isolated from other passengers and I had no way to keep my money and other important things in a safe, made me worried a lot.
>The big advantage of air travel is exactly this, you don't need to spend much time in the actual plane. And the passengers are by definition under full-time supervision by other passengers, so stealing or attacks are not so easy to get away with.
There are also drawbacks to air travel that you're not mentioning. I was in a sleeping segment with 5 other people and felt more safe than in an airplane. The important thing though is: we need to cut down on carbon, and travel by train is an important way to do it.
> 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.
Well, for me one reason is that I've watched countless hours of "Seconds from Disaster" and "Air Emergency" on the National Geographic Channel.
Seriously, though, I think the control thing is big for me. I'm pretty sure that if I was wealthy, I'd be a private pilot--and still would not like flying commercially.
I don't like buses all that much, or cars when I'm a passenger, so that's more evidence in support of the control theory.
I'm OK with reasonable sized boats (e.g., the ferries in Washington State).
Ambivalent about trains--I was OK with them until I took Amtrak from the Seattle area to Beaumont, Texas, and back (yeah, patent lawsuit), and saw just how poorly maintained the tracks are. Fortunately when my train derailed, we were only going about 5 miles an hour so no one was injured. It just caused a several hour delay.
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