cross-posted from: https://lemmy.skoops.social/post/727
crossposted: https://lemmy.skoops.social/post/665
Oh boy…
Greg is a fucking moron, plain and simple.
Even for very long distances (where flying is almost mandatory unless you are ready to spend weeks traveling) trains make things easier.
For example I’m living in a small village in the south east of France and I will be traveling to the carribean in summer for family, I will be walking to the train station is my village to take the train, 2 changes later I will be in London from where I’ll take the plane to cross the Atlantic.
Same thing on the way back but with a night train.
I had a US colleague stay with me in Ireland for a week and he was asking if it was possible to catch a train to England. It’s amazing the geographic ignorance of some people and Americans seem to be especially afflicted. Maybe it’s because the USA is so big, large cities so far apart, and public transport so terrible it doesn’t occur to them that Europe is not the same.
To be fair, these exist not in Ireland but in other places they do.
I’m from Australia and wouldn’t have been able to confidently say there wasn’t a tunnel between Ireland and England. There are long tunnels in a few places and one there wouldn’t be too surprising to me
If it wasn’t for NI being somehow behind the times compared to both England and Ireland, there would be a chunnel between them.
You live in a world with the chunnel. The odds that a similar passage between islands formerly of the same empire is not so remote.
Maybe. On one hand, I’m inclined to agree, but I also don’t know how many of these sorts of tunnels exist. There’s one connecting mainland Japan with Hokkaido too.
Edit: The Wikipedia page lists oodles of underwater tunnels, but most are well below 15 km long, with the channel tunnel at 50.4 km.
The odds are and were actually zero since no such tunnel exists. And if people are aware of the chunnel spanning 20 miles they sure as hell would be aware of a tunnel between Ireland and England which would be a nigh impossible feat of engineering whether it went directly, or circuitously through Wales or Scotland.
Yes it doesn’t exist, but the idea that it could exist and be unknown to an American tourist is not terrifically remote. Sorry if I wasn’t clear enough.
I make no claims for the base knowledge of any of my countrymen - they will make a fool of me if I try. But the distance between ~Donaghadee in N.I. and Portpatrick in Scotland is roughly the same between Dover and Calais.
Not knowing the geographic or hydrological factors of either area, it doesn’t seem to me to be much more impossible a feat than the chunnel was.
Yes there are parts of Ireland and Scotland which are close but the engineering challenge is so vast that it would cost hundreds of billions if not trillions. The channel tunnel was a major feat of engineering made possible by the relative shallowness of the channel and boring through soft rock and chalk.
The sea between Ireland and Scotland is 2-3x as deep and through granite & igneous rock. A tunnel isn’t an option. People have proposed a bridge instead, assuming they can figure a way to sink piles 100-150m into the sea floor and build a 20 mile bridge over waters that can have 15-20m freak waves, high winds and storms. Or the seafloor that is scattered with thousands of tonnes of unexploded ordinance.
But even if they did all that, trains in Ireland / UK aren’t even on the same track gauge. Nor would anyone to travel to the tip of Ireland to get to the hinterlands of Scotland, to change trains, to get another train to catch another train to get anywhere in England. Not when it would be easier and faster to get a ferry/coach or just fly.
So basically the idea comes up every now and again but it is not practical or feasible.
Facts, if you are aware of a tunnel I expect you to be subscribed to Tunnels & Bridges monthly, that kind of arcane knowledge is not for the faint of heart
In their defense, I have no idea what the capital of Kentucky or Virginia is :/
PS: I don’t know it for most states 🙃 actually, I didn’t know California’s, New York’s or Illinois’…this is starting to look like a conspiracy to make your largest city not the capital, lol
Kentucky is Frankfort. Yes its spelled differently from Germany’s one.
California is Sacramento, New York is Albany, and every once in a while the capital is the biggest or most important city like seriously, Philadelphia was nearly the nation’s capital but fumbled even being the state capital.
Oh and ohio is fun here because Columbus has slowly grown to be the biggest city in ohio. Cleveland and Cincinnati are more historically significant while Columbus was just a big city focused on the university and business. But as the great lakes manufacturing and ohio River manufacturing fell by the wayside and Columbus kept growing it beat them out.
Yeah but I do know that I can’t take a train from Hawaii to California, there’s a big wet thing in the way.
Also the country’s called Ireland, it’s a hint.
Yeah except that logic doesn’t apply to the UK and France
this is starting to look like a conspiracy to make your largest city not the capital, lol
Usually this is because the capital doesn’t generally change over time while the relative size of cities often does, especially on the scale of a century or more.
That’s completely wrong. Many states moved their capital away from population centers on the coast into more geographically central locations inland. Other states deliberately planned their capitals to be in central locations when it was already clear where the population centers were going to be.
If anything the capital city only grows and becomes the population center. Population never drifts away from the capital.
Tell that to Albany, NY. Population is about 1.2% of NYC.
Or to Sacramento, CA which is the fourth largest city in the state.
Then there are states where the population doesn’t really concentrate like that, like WV. Biggest city is the capital, but that’s not saying much. That’s largely a result of the geography, where most of the state is forested mountains, with people wherever there’s a flat spot. It’s beautiful, but wildly impractical for large population centers. The only reason Charleston is still the biggest city is the three-way interstate junction that meets at it, and that’s thanks to Robert C Byrd using his influence to help his constituents.
What point of mine are you trying to refute here? Sacramento and Albany were never the population centers of their states as your theory suggests. They were selected because of their central geographic location as with the vast majority of US state capitals.
Its like your hung up on me saying “population drifts towards the capital” because it generally does but rarely overcomes any major metropol on the coast.
I live in West Virginia and a recurring joke is that we should just give up and rename the state to Robert C Byrd. His name is on everything.
I do too, I’m in the greater Charleston area. And yeah, fucking everything is named for him, but to be fair much of the time it’s because he secured the funding to make it happen. Man was corrupt as hell, but he did a lot of good for the state.
I live in Charleston, nice to meet you. Yeah he wasn’t a pleasant man but nobody can deny what he accomplished. Even compared to him our politics is a total shitshow now. I do like the mayor, she’s pretty good for a Democrat.
Looking at China’s provincial capitals and EU’s capitals, they all look like they hoovered up all the population around them, why doesn’t that happen in the US? Lemme guess…car culture?
No its just completely wrong theory. Population centers are usually on the edge of the state and capitals are deliberately kept in the geographic center of the state. If the population center isn’t on the edge then its in the capitol.
Honestly, if I ever get out of this shithole and into a country with decent public transit and healthcare, it’s going to feel like I stepped onto the USS Enterprise.
Is that a no?
One of the factors is that the US is surprisingly huge. It takes EU tourists by surprise that a quick jaunt from NYC to visit their friend in Chicago is several days by road (unless you drive like an American roadtripper for fourteen hours a day) moreover, there’s just huge tracks of land featuring not-too-exciting vistas (unless you plan your road trip to feature pretty routes, in which case multiply the distance by 1.3), so for the short while that airlines were regulated and we weren’t worried (yet) about the air-travel carbon footprint (Huge. Enormous. Colossal.) it made sense to fly everywhere in the US.
Now that it’s insanely expensive and inconvenient to fly, and we shouldn’t be doing it, it’s time for the US to build HSR for realsies, if the automotive / fossil fuel industrial complex will let us.
Now that it’s insanely expensive and inconvenient to fly, and we shouldn’t be doing it, it’s time for the US to build HSR for realsies, if the automotive / fossil fuel industrial complex will let us.
I took an Amtrak from Quebec to Washington DC. The entire process was amazing. Hung out at the train station. Walked around on the train. Sat in massive ass seats. The bathroom was the size of a new York apartment. No TSA, metal detectors, overpriced food and drinks, getting blown up with ads.
Greyhound is unfortunately the next best thing if you don’t live in a major city.
I feel so much frustration that driving and flying are the primary ways it travel in the US.
Greyhound
Sorry it went under, not a thing in Canada anymore.
This comment reminds me a meme about someone’s European family visiting them in Vancouver, BC. The family decided that they wanted to go to Toronto for the weekend.
It’s 45 hour drive between Vancouver and Toronto if you want to stay in one country. 41 hours if you drive through the States. It’s almost 4 days by train.
Not that I disagree that we need high speed rail, but “several days by road”? That’s a day and a half tops.
It’s a day and a half the way we Americans drive which is to run on coffee and fast food and burn above the speed limit for fourteen hours a day.
I am (or was, now I’m having doubts) of the belief that European motorists were more inclined to take their time, see some sights and not exhaust themselves in the transit. That may have been a late-20th century thing.
No, it is a 13 and a half hour drive according to Google, which would be according to the speed limit. We Americans would do it in a single day because hotels are expensive.
The US isn’t as huge as you seem to believe (or Europe not as small). Europe is not as square, so its land area is much smaller, but the distances are comparable.
A trip from Hamburg to Vienna is not that much shorter than a trip from NYC to Chicago, but it’s easily done by train in Europe: Board the NJ491 at 8pm in Hamburg central station (in the city centre, no need to be there more than a few minutes before boarding), have a good nights sleep, get your breakfast served at your bed (in the comfort category), take a shower and arrive well rested in Vienna (city center, no need to wait for your luggage) at 10am the next day.
Admittedly, a lot of people do fly from Hamburg to Vienna as well, as it can be cheaper than the train due to tax exemptions for the airlines (not everything is perfect in Europe), or they just don’t like sleeping in a train, but these trains are usually well utilised.
EDIT: The link to truesize doesn’t seem to work correctly, here’s what I meant to show:
Something I’m curious of is how many train companies exist in Europe that push for more rails.
In America, there’s not that many train companies for people. Most are for commerce. There’s also a lot of political backdoor stuff, like airlines getting priority, states not interested in funding it, counties having a voice about it all.
I was thinking about this when I went to Japan, and how Tokyo has MANY competing rail lines, and the population literally having factions over what company they prefer to ride over. Which sounds like a dream.
The last time I was in the US I took a train from NYC to Chicago. It was very comfortable.
(they won’t)
You’re totally right and we’ll never see it in our lifetimes… but damn it’d be cool to be able to take an express bullet train coast to coast in the states.
I love the multiple layers to it. Obviously European travel is not what he believes it to be, but neither is American airplane travel, and he must know that, but he’s so desperate to pretend otherwise.
I’ve been in Germany two years and gone to France three times by train.
I honestly don’t think people appreciate public transit enough. Trains are the fucking bomb and if people could make trains and trams and buses a priority I think the world would be a remarkably more fun and enjoyable experience.
Vote for the political parties, even at and especially the local level, that want to put more money into public infrastructure focused around public transit. Cars and planes have their places, but they should never be the priority when city planning and a strong country is one connected by high speed rail and convenient, reliable public transit.
I love traveling by train, but in Poland it’s so fucked I have to either drive or waste days just to get somewhere. They just deleted train I could use to get to Warsaw in about 5h, now it’s extra transfer, almost 7 hours, and I have to do it a day earlier, so extra night in a hotel vs 4,5h drive. The same with Berlin, I’d love to just ride a train, it’s less than 4 hours drive vs 6,5 hour train ride (which is fine, I can go with that), price of the single ticket is more than gas for my car, so twice as much for two person – I could live with that, but the transfer time is under 30 minutes, which with notoriously unreliable trains means I would probably miss the connection and lost all my bookings (or just tried to go back with train/bus just to my village (already losing ~80€ for the tickets), and then grab a car.
I’m not familiar with Poland’s political or train situation, but these problems are fixable. Vote for progressives, make it a priority, we need to start taking power back from the inept and corrupt and start fixing problems again.
I’m sorry your trains aren’t good. Everyone deserves good trains.
It’s the other way round. Individualism prevents communism. People drive cars to prevent them from voting for those parties.
Downvoters, do you think all that bad urban planning is incompetence of the specialists while every comment section is filled with geniuses who for some reason are enlightened about public transport but never in the position of power to bring it to life?
It’s the other way round. Individualism prevents communism
Is that supoosed to be a good thing or a bad thing ?
Downvoters, do you think all that bad urban planning is incompetence of the specialists
No, they’re just narrowly constrained as to what they can do eg. They cant knock back a Cosc-Co because there’s no train station so, you end up with a sprawling shit hole as de facto
A good follow on Mastodon who’s an actual traffic expert and teaches it
A good read
https://bookwyrm.social/book/1907724/s/killed-by-a-traffic-engineer
Is that supoosed to be a good thing or a bad thing ?
I don’t judge. I just care about the mechanisms.
No, they’re just narrowly constrained as to what they can do
It’s turtles all the way down. At some point, somebody makes a decision against public transport.
A good follow on Mastodon who’s an actual traffic expert
Thanks for the link. Frustrating content but good.
In the US people will argue it’s quicker to fly or drive than take the train then show up 2 hours early to be sure to make it through check-in and TSA security to be sure to make their flight on time. Then waste another hour waiting for luggage
Don’t forget the 45m-1hr travel time to and from airports.
And if you live in New York good luck with that. It’s more likely you’re going to have a 2-hour travel time to the airport.
I was so pissed that the only affordable option to get to Bushwick from the airport was a shitty bus that ran late and was packed.
BUILD A TRAIN TO YOUR GODDAMN INTERNATIONAL TRANSIT HUBS
I’m sure the US will make train travel the same grueling experience as they made air travel
Yeah I took the train from Chicago to Springfield, and was shocked that I had to go through security and also present the same credit card that I used to buy the ticket. In Europe I literally just get on the train most times…
Even without the check-in and security it is typically faster to fly (or drive) the places people typically go on a plane in the US.
The problem is that the railways are prioritized for freight traffic first, so the commuter train traffic takes a looooong time. My understanding is the freight movement by train is better in the US whereas the commuter train movement is better in Europe.
For example, I live in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. To travel to Chicago by different methods is:
- By car: ~6 hours travel time
- By train: ~9 hours travel time
- By plane: ~1.5 hours flight time, call it 4 hours total travel time
The problem is that the railways are prioritized for freight traffic first
This is de facto true. But, the law is that passenger traffic gets priority. It’s just not enforced because the companies have more power than the government is willing to spend on this issue.
Thanks for calling this out. I had forgotten about that bit.
It would be true. Trains are next to non-existent in the US.
I live near Acela, which is not high speed, not cheap, and does not have enough capacity but is also the only part of the US with convenient intercity rail. I would never fly or drive when I can take this train, but outside of Acela ……
Yeah, a lot of people don’t realize that there are major cities in the US without passenger trains. Not just lacking inter-city rail, trams, etc., but literally no train stations for people.
Columbus, Ohio has a metro area of 2.1mill people. And if they want to take the train to NYC, they first have to take a three hour bus ride to Cincinnati. As they tore down their last passenger train station over forty years ago.
You can thank John Kasich for that. IIRC DeWine’s admin is doing a feasibility study of doing the “Three C” route Obama tried to fund
a three hour bus ride to Cincinnati
I was about to call you out for this, until I remembered the six hour bus rides I used to have to take from Columbus to Akron when I was in college (less than two hours by car, natch).
And that’s just the people who live nearby. For the 1mill people who live outside the city proper, there’s probably another hour or two of travel and wait before the bus sets off.
Does Cincinnati still have its one train a day at 2am or some other ungodly hour? Or are they on the “three trains a week” schedule?
I’m inside the 275 loop in Cincinnati but can’t get downtown without getting a ride in a car to a bus station. At that point, might as well just use the car to get downtown. Or to wherever else I’m going. Train travel is WAY too slow in the US. I’ve never had a vacation longer than a week, I’d barely be arriving at anywhere interesting and I would already be due back at work.
I think it’s daily now but yes, still at like 3am. Used to be a few times a week.
Lol I used to take Amtrak back and forth between Philly and DC. Once I decided to check out if an Acela ticket would be worth it - it was like three times the price and got there a whopping 10 minutes sooner.
Only a car take me ro point A to point B
Only if you mean that point B is the gigantic parking lot where you still have to walk 15 minutes to the Walmart.
Yeah, I’ve been using trains for travel in the northeast lately.
It’s less travel time, there’s no ridiculous security theater, and I don’t get these nickel and dime charges for checked bags.
I did enjoy taking Amtrak between Philly and DC a few years ago - as long it wasn’t raining, that is.
I’m fairly resilient to uncomfortable travel unless it’s actively painful like ear popping sometimes, so I usually just choose on price and speed most of the time.
Not to mention you’re lucky if you don’t have to take a connecting flight to get where you’re going, which adds a few more hours at least. But at least it gives you more opportunities to eat that delicious, healthy and inexpensive airport food!
Love it when people argue that it takes 45 minutes to fly from Y to X. 45 minutes is roughly the time your plane is airborne. The whole process takes 3-5 hours door to door.
This why I drive anything less than 2500 miles. That’s two days of driving and I get to see the country. Flying would take a whole day anyway, and then I’d have to get a rental car on the other end anyway. Plus it’s difficult to find a decent lifted 4wd rental, and I usually travel to spend time in the mountains on unimproved roads and hiking and camping. Probably similar carbon footprint to flying anyway.
Once I flew to a city that’s about 6 hours away by car. Work was paying for it, and I figured it would be easier and less stressful to fly than to drive. A coworker drove instead. He left 2 hours after I left for the airport. After my plane arrived they were cleaning it out and one of the attendants hit his head and had to go to the hospital for stitches. I scrambled and was able to get on to another flight, although it took me about 2 hours into the opposite direction, where I then had to sprint from one end of the airport to the other. When I finally landed in my destination city my coworker had been there for over an hour. There was nothing easier or less stressful about that day.
That said, that was my worst experience flying, usually it is very easy - especially if I’m traveling by myself.
It means your driving coworker was thinking about you the entire time while driving and wishing you went on the ride with them :)
Ah, but only for normal plebs like you and me. If you fly private, you just show up at the hangar half an hour before takeoff and walk right in. TSA and waiting in the terminal are for peasants.
Wouldn’t a private plane start taking off as soon as you arrive? Assuming the runway is free.
If you have a private airport yes!
You don’t?
The world will progress out of sheer spite for Americans and I wouldn’t have it any other way
You can go from Paris to Stuttgart in less 3h 30min by train. No customs, no TSA, downtown to downtown.
Freiburg to Paris in about 3h, just went last weekend.
In the current political climate, border control is unfortunate becoming much more common. I had the border policy empty our bus and search everyone with dogs and half of us had to open our bags.
On my vacation in Germany we were not once asked on the train for our passports. We are white. The police would demand every non-white persons’ “visa” and most of the time the questioned individual would produce a German ID or an ID from another EU member state.
It was a sad sight.
Couple of years ago only they would just check everyone’s id in a rather respectful way. Might depend on the border being crossed?
We took the trains from Germany to the Czech Republic and back. Then from Germany to Austria and back. Finally we went to France.
I recall some checks on regional trains as well, including in Bavaria and I want to say around Berlin but I can’t remember where exactly.
Not once were we asked though, all checks were selective and clearly biased
Pretty much. And it you look latino… You’ll be lucky if you don’t get interrogated or searched as I heard from close friends…
Well there’s is some racism due to the begger problem in the trains, but they’re also just assholes
TGV > ICE
I stopped counting how many times the ICE broke down on this route. Of course I also had delays when using the TGV but not due to the train itself. Also the seats in the ICE are not comfortable at all.
DB is just fucked tbh, it needs serious reformulating.
The DB board: oh, you mean privatising more?
They see it working in Japan, but I suspect that is because it’s in Japan. Britain is gonna find out soon I guess.
The ICE restaurant car always cures the delay blues, at least for me :)
Nobody flies a train from Germany to France.
Air travel would be a lot better on rails. It would solve a lot of problems.
YOU go up for rail repairs.
Thats like 700km so in a proper high speed train it would be 3h or less from station to station. Thats probably faster than flying if you include all the boarding and travel to the airport.
I could walk to France in about 30 mins.
I meant Toronto to NYC is 700km
Germany and France share a border so yeah its 0 seconds if you are standing on the border and for one of the longest distances from Berlin to Strasbourg for example its 6h by train.
I’ve only ever travelled to Germany from France via train. I wouldn’t bother flying,that’s waaay to much of an effort
Ok sure, but that’s going the other way. According to that guy travelling by train to France from Germany isn’t physically possible.
Good point well made
Only if you cannot decide which of the hundreds of passenger trains crossing that border every day to take. IIRC there are over 20 trains a day from Berlin to Paris.
Not to mention a french city named Strasbourg.
No one takes the train from Kehl to Strasbourg. It’s just way too pleasant a stroll to skip that.
If you’re close enough, you can walk.
ETA I’d expect there are fast rails from Berlin to Paris, and if not, why not?
I buy my groceries in Germany from France, and I often do that by bike. Or sometimes I take the tramway.
deleted by creator
Interesting to note is that many trains crossing the east part of France to Paris are actually German ICE trains
You can go via express train non-stop from Cologne to Paris via Belgium. At least if that journey is still I served, I did that 15 years ago several times when I still lived in the area. Took like 3-4 hours? Not sure anymore.
You can do it from Berlin now. Still takes 8h, but that it is possible is amazing. Why it Takes you 4 Hours extra from Berlin to Cologne is another story, bascically: German train Company is terrible and they have not invested enough Into the infrastructure for the past 20 years. This year its especially bad
Well, consider that most Americans couldn’t show you France or Germany on a map.
Hey it’s not our fault their countries are so small.
/s
Texas > France 😮
So most Americans can’t find California on a map? It’s smaller than France.
