Planes, Trains and Automobiles

yeah same here. I use train for everything, going to uni 3x a week which is a total of ~12 hours of commuting, then I drive around Offenbach for free, Frankfurt for free, can go back and visit my parents or my sister for as much as 15 bucks, even with crossing state lines, and also use buses a whole lot to get around the city. I can essentially drive to any city and take any metro everywhere in my state, for free. it's included in the student ticket, which is ~280 per months, about 100 or so I figure go for the ticket alone. that's 17 bucks per month for all of my transportation. no car can compete with that. I don't even bicycle for the most part, I just walk. I really like walking.
That all sounds lovely and almost unfathomable over here. I attended community college near St Louis and received a free metrolink transit card (the light rail system) and I was only able to use it twice in four years.

The light rail system went in a nearly straight line east to west through about half of the city's diameter and did not service many neighborhoods or destinations. One of the trips I took was to an art museum to do research for a paper and it involved a 30 mile / 30 minute drive to a station, a half hour going maybe 10 miles on the train and then 2 connecting buses which took another hour. I only lived 12 miles from the city center to begin with and if I had wanted to use only the public transportation system from within walking distance of my home, it would have been an 8 hour round trip journey which wouldn't leave me any time to actually visit the museum. St Louis is a major city here and I think the shambles that is its transportation system is more indicative of most of the rest of the country than along the major cities of the northeastern seaboard which have much more developed public transit networks.

Anyways, the bus links on that metro ride were not included with my metro card and were a bit expensive for the distance traveled/inconvenience involved and that, plus the gas and time I spent getting to a station made the trip cost-inefficient. I knew that going in though and made the trip that way more or less to see what public transit was like. Oh and the school cancelled the free metro cards soon thereafter as a cost cutting measure, which figures.
 
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I walk, use bus or train all the time unless the journey is to another continent (so a return plane journey every couple of years).
It was great when I lived in a city with a well-integrated transport system (London).
At present our cities and towns are designed around cars (even more so in most of the US I believe) so doing w/o a car can be difficult.
Even with a changeover to electric vehicles which I think will come fairly quickly I still think we'd be better off developing better public transport.
Electric vehicles won't reduce traffic congestion.
 
Electric vehicles won't reduce traffic congestion.
No but driverless ones might and I think by the time self-driving technology is perfected, EV's will dominate most consumer sales.

Does anyone else loathe the security theater and discomfort of flying as much as me? For intercontinental journeys though it's really the only practical way. I looked into taking a boat to Hawaii once and the total one way trip was a few weeks as a passenger in a cramped crew cabin on a freighter - that or a super expensive cruise.
 
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That all sounds lovely and almost unfathomable over here. I attended community college near St Louis and received a free metrolink transit card (the light rail system) and I was only able to use it twice in four years.

*looks up metrolink on wikipedia*

Hmm...cute...
"System" might be a bit of an overstatement, though

and is the 11th-largest light rail system in the country.

Oh...well...

Does anyone else loathe the security theater and discomfort of flying as much as me? For intercontinental journeys though it's really the only practical way. I looked into taking a boat to Hawaii once and the total one way trip was a few weeks as a passenger in a cramped crew cabin on a freighter - that or a super expensive cruise.

I used to and I still loathe the stupidity of the security theater. I kind of got used to it, though. If it wasn't for the security theater, it would feel just like a glorified bus ride if you fly often enough.
 
Federal, state and local governments also shower airports and airlines with subsidies that the rail service doesn't get which further hampers the rail service. Additionally, Amtrak is forced to fund pensions in a similarly weird and usurious manner to what the Post Office has to deal with which also makes it less economically viable. Despite all this, ridership is on the uptick and has been ever since Amtrak consolidated the failing private services in the 70's. If Congress would allow Amtrak to invest in itself as any other private business would, we'd have much better service.
Interestingly, until the late 60s private railroads generally managed to turn a profit on non-commuter passenger rail due to contracts with the Postal Service to carry the mail. Quite a few trains were just strings of mail cars with a couple passenger coaches tacked on the end. Once the Postal service decided to switch to an air/truck combination, there was basically a line forming outside the ICC as railroads tried to get permission to cease passenger service on most lines. This highlights two other issues:
1. Commuter Service. Private railroads were responsible for providing commuter service - notably in the Northeast- and they consistently lost money on commuter service (think stuff like Metra in Chicago). A large amount of equipment, manpower, and upkeep had to go toward maintaining a service they flat out lost money on. Subsidies were uncommon as few cities wanted to give money to otherwise wealthy railroads. Providing commuter service at a lost was seen as a sort of 'cost of doing business' in a city. (Before it went bankrupt, 50% of every dollar Penn Central earned was going to upkeep on the passenger service. It also didn't help that passenger fare rates were often set by the city government and were not index linked.) After Amtrak formed, commuter rail was still the responsibilities of private railroads and it took until the mid 80s for the remaining commuter rail operation be taken over by the city/state.
2. The ICC. By the 60s, the ICC was actively damaging to railroads. Congresscritters, in response to pressures back in their district and an old school distrust of the railroads, appointed to the ICC commissioners who placed heavy burdens on railroad operation despite questionable public benefit. ICC set maximum freight rates (and I'm pretty sure passenger rates also) which hadn't really changed since the 40s. Facing higher costs and declining industries, railroads petitioned the ICC to raise freight rates, but under political pressure from industries and consumers, the ICC demurred and provided resistant to increasing rates. While it isn't related to passenger trains per se, in one situation the ICC mandated that three railroads maintain service to a West Virginia coal town. While that made sense back in the day when the town had multiple coal mines and the traffic level could sustain three railroads competing for the traffic, by the time it came before the ICC most of the mines had closed down and the town was barely capable of generating enough traffic for one railroad, let alone three.
 
I've never found anything better for traveling the US than Mexican-owned bus lines. You don't don't change buses every city like Greyhound does. You ride a much nicer modern tour bus for the whole trip.

Most people get on and off in Texas so the bus was was always less than half full for the rest of the trip to Boston or Seattle. And the ticket prices were pretty much the same as Greyhound.

The only caveat is that their routes are north-south only, but personally I'd still use them to get from the east coast to California over a train or Greyhound.
 
In a couple months I'm flying out of Miami to Panama City (PTY) due to it being much cheaper & a direct flight compared to almost double the price with stopovers from Tampa.

I am not looking forward to an 7+ hour bus ride on Greyhound. Long bus trips are horrible. I haven't taken one in about four years, we'll see if there's any improvement.
 
Does anyone else loathe the security theater and discomfort of flying as much as me? For intercontinental journeys though it's really the only practical way. I looked into taking a boat to Hawaii once and the total one way trip was a few weeks as a passenger in a cramped crew cabin on a freighter - that or a super expensive cruise.

I will admit that avoiding the hassle of security and immigration, long waits, and paying a small fortune for mediocre food and drink is as much a factor as the environment in why my European travel is now flightless.
 
Which comes back to desirability/need thing. Is HSR really like nuclear power in this sense? Is it possible it was actually smart for the US to not go down the HSR route? And most people think we're already well past the 30 year mark and should be looking back with regret right now. Which makes me have two objections. The first is that perhaps it's totally fine we didn't invest in HSR 30 years ago and we probably don't really need to now either. The second is maybe we should have invested in HSR 30-50 years ago, but now the ship has sailed.

The best time to plant a tree is 30-50 years ago, but the second best time is now.
 
The Northeast Corridor is the popular name for the rail services that run up and down the highly populated Northeast of the US. The lines run from DC in the south all the way up to Maine but there is a crucial break in Boston where the North-South lines are broken without any direct connections. This break is only ~1.5 miles in length but it's a major disruptor both within the city and the overall network. Apparently the job market in South Boston is on fire while housing is still somewhat affordable in North Boston. Unfortunately, the city is rated as having some of the worst rush hour traffic in the nation and the lack of complete rail service doesn't help. The city put out a cost estimate of $9 to $18 billion (dependent on the number of tracks) to complete the under-city route but neglected to do a benefit analysis to match the cost analysis. Locals have what they call 'Big Dig Hangover' wherein the memory of a recently completed highway re-route project that ran dramatically over-budget and over-schedule called the Big Dig has sapped everyone of interest in similar infrastructure projects. Proponents say that this route could be done with modern tunnel-boring machines without having to open up massive trenches in the city but it seems unlikely this project will be started (much less completed) anytime soon, especially with a Congress and President with only a passing interest in infrastructure.
 
Basically, I like cars and think the premise that cars are bad and need to go away is a non-starter. In the American context, shifting away from cars as the back bone of our transportation seems extremely unrealistic and undesirable.

There is nothing stopping us from making massive investments in high-speed rail and other forms of mass transit just as we invested massively in car-centric infrastructure through much of the 20th century.

Every time I think about how poorly cars use space and how inefficient they are as a means of transportation (roughly one person per internal combustion engine, what a great idea) it makes me mad. I let my driver license expire and I have no intention of ever driving a car again.

There is also the matter that designing our spaces around cars makes our cities more dangerous and less pleasant.
 
The thing is - the idea that a personal car is not just the idea of freedom, but the embodiment of freedom is not just an old idea from the '50s, it's still 100% true to this day in ~93% of the country where things are too scattered for public transport. Not saying that we shouldn't try to make things better for public transport, just don't hate.
 
A rapid transition to electric vehicles and then self-driving electric vehicles will hopefully help change this. Thankfully, this is one transition that doesn't necessarily need a lot of direct help from the government (though of course it helps). Purely economic factors will speed adoption, my own recent car leasing experiences being a case in point. The lease on my new EV is higher than I'd really like but the savings in gas and maintenance more than make up for it, like it's not even close with the commute my wife has to make.

And I said before that one major piece of new infrastructure going in that's flying under the radar is the mass installation of home and apartment EV chargers. Everyone acts like there is a chicken and egg problem in that EV's won't take off until we have a network of chargers just like gas stations when the reality is that we only need to have relatively cheap home chargers installed at homes and apartments and work places for EV's to work for 95% of daily commutes. This is already happening in a big way but because it's happening without a lot of direct government involvement, it flies under the radar. Of course I am highly biased in that the state I live in is actively supporting this kind of infrastructure but it's not like Teslas are only sold in California or whatever.
 
The thing is - the idea that a personal car is not just the idea of freedom, but the embodiment of freedom is not just an old idea from the '50s, it's still 100% true to this day in ~93% of the country where things are too scattered for public transport. Not saying that we shouldn't try to make things better for public transport, just don't hate.

What you call an embodiment of freedom I call an embodiment of imperial privilege. This is a freedom enabled only by America's consuming far more than its fair share of resources including the world's remaining carbon buffer.

Anyway, I feel far more free on my bicycle than I ever felt in a car.
 
Does anyone else loathe the security theater and discomfort of flying as much as me?

Yes, I hate it; particularly the take your shoes and belt off and
hold your hands over your head metal detection booths, and
having to buy more expensive but smaller shaving creme and
suntan lotion.as anything reasonablely sized gets consfiscated.
 
What you call an embodiment of freedom I call an embodiment of imperial privilege. This is a freedom enabled only by America's consuming far more than its fair share of resources including the world's remaining carbon buffer.

Anyway, I feel far more free on my bicycle than I ever felt in a car.

My boyfriend lives 15 miles away from any town, of which mine has a population of 2,000. Public transport would provide no freedom for this relationship to exist.
 
What you call an embodiment of freedom I call an embodiment of imperial privilege. This is a freedom enabled only by America's consuming far more than its fair share of resources including the world's remaining carbon buffer.
Similar arguments are leveled at India for having a space program; that they can't and shouldn't have one with so long as so many Indians are without cars. The imperial angle isn't there but the underlying 'undeserved-ness' or impropriety of the thing is the same.
 
My boyfriend lives 15 miles away from any town, of which mine has a population of 2,000. Public transport would provide no freedom for this relationship to exist.

Free air travel would allow me the freedom to maintain a relationship with someone on the other side of the world. Doesn't make it a right.
Even without a car e-mail, Skype etc make it a lot easier to maintain a relationship over a longer distance.
 
That's an absurd comparison - and it's certainly not free.
 
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