cross-posted from: https://lemmy.skoops.social/post/727
crossposted: https://lemmy.skoops.social/post/665
Oh boy…
Utterly depressing how this planet is predominantly populated by absolute morons with all the zeal and confidence of the best among us.
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.
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…
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
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 :)
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 from Germany 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.
That doesn’t happen anywhere. Thanks to all stops and what not a german high speed train goes like 100kmh in averge… checkout cologne- berlin
Tokyo > Kyoto is like 475km and takes 2h so its just a matter of will and investment. It even runs every 30 minutes during the day.
Every 30 minutes? Nope. More like every 6 minutes.
Hehe 4sure, everyone knows the german train system is crap. A sad decline
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.
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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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 think it’s daily now but yes, still at like 3am. Used to be a few times a week.
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.
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
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.
The Acela is worth it going to NYC and further north. Every town in Connecticut apparently still has an Amtrak stop (which is cool, but goddamn). Compare the travel times of the Acela and Amtrak between DC and Boston.
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…
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!
45 minutes to fly, but god help you if you check luggage, might as well be all day at that point.
Luggage doesn’t matter.
Gotta leave the house 2 hours before the 2 hours before your flight. Then board, Then fly. Then disembark.If flight is noon, you leave the house at 8 to be at the airport for 10. Then security theatre (remove your shoes, you’re going to the LaNd Of TeH FrEe!!!).
If you’re lucky, you’re hailing a cab at JFK at 1:30pm.
That’s your “45 minute flight”. 6 hours, if you’re lucky.
Don’t forget that train stations tend to be in the city centre while the airport is 30-60 minutes outside in a field somewhere, so travel time is much reduced.
Add in 2 hours of traffic between JFK and anywhere you want to get to. Or try your luck with La Guardia!
I actually prefer La Guardia. When I was regularly staying in Brooklyn it was like a 30 minute cab ride from the airport.
Putting transit time to the airport is a bit unfair. Depends on how far you live from the airport.
Airports are almost never in the city center.
Train stations are in the city center, plus in Europe they’re always connected to the rest of the public transportation network, which generally means the subway.
If you live within the urban area getting to the train station is invariably a shorter trip, if you live outside it depends if you’re lucky enough to live nearest the side of the city were the airport is or not.
My own experience when living in London before Brexit is that for example to go to Paris, even when I lived just outside the Greater London area and on the side of the city with an airport (London Stansead), door-to-door going to Paris by flying didn’t end up being any faster than taking the Eurostar train from St. Pancreas and even back then you had to go through passport control for the train because the UK was never in the Schengen Area so taking the train didn’t shave of that time.
Part of the problem is that peripheral airports aren’t anywhere as well connected to the public transportation network as city center train stations are, so often the best way to get there is by car, by which point you’re either doing an Uber or Taxi to it (which if you’re outside the city is actually a bit of an expense) or you take your own car but then you have to park it which unless you’re doing a daytrip or such means longer term parking areas, which are further away from the actual boarding gates, and all that shit adds up. And then on the other side you have the exact same problems but in reverse order, so you “pay” the overheads of having to go through an airport twice each way when you fly.
Fair. It depends on the city too many do have transit to the Airport or are working on expanding out that way.
A couple of main airports are indeed well connected to the public transit network (for example Amsterdam Schiphol has a train station under the airport connected to the main train line and it takes about 15 minutes to get to Amsterdam Centraal Station on a regular commuter train).
However I was talking about the peripheral airports, which are at best on a train line which doesn’t have many options (such as London Gatwick) or at far end of a subway line as peripheral airports are the ones that could potentially be faster to use for somebody living outside a main city (which, as I mentioned above, in my own experience was not the case).
The high speed Paris to Berlin train just started in December:
There are about 25 trains per day on the route, but I guess according to this American they’re all empty?
I’m not sure that an 8 hour route between these cities with ~900 km between them really makes our case here. I don’t think there’s really a strong argument to be made that taking the train is better than flying between these cities.
International trains in Europe are a weak point of our network, one which we desperately need to improve.
That no one travels from Germany to France is of course entirely false. Frankfurt to Paris would be a far stronger example, coming in at 3 hours 30 minutes for ~500 km.
Germany in general is a bad example for train travel.
Lille Marseille is a 1k km trip and is done in less than 5 hours I believe
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.
And don’t forget, airports all have to be on the edge of town anyway. So even if you’re not in a small town, you’re taking a train or a bus or a cab to the airport.
Meanwhile, big train and bus terminals can exist in the dead center of town. I can walk to the Empire State Building from Union Station in New York. But even one time, Gilbert Godfried suggests a picking up a connecting flight at the Twin Towers and everyone yells at him.
Once, I arrived in Chicago by train, and had time to wander around before my bus departed for home. I walked around for a bit outside of Union Station, scanning the horizon and trying to locate the Sears Tower. (Yeah, I know it technically has a new name.) I couldn’t find it. Then, I realized that I had to look up.
That is, the train station is literally 1 block from the tallest building in the city. I so wish that the Borealis train came through here; it’d be just as fast, cheaper, and so much more relaxing to head down to The Loop for the weekend. As it is, I almost never visit Chicago because getting there is such an enormous pain in the ass. (Contrary to the popular imagination, it is a nice place. I’ve only been murdered there, like, three times, tops.)
Well ackchuwally you didn’t consider me living in the Bay Area who can only get to SFO by car before my 17 hour flight to India. How do you think a train will help me there soygirl?
trains will help by offering emotional support
So… Fucking… American…
'Murican*
I dunno if anyone from the US would use a Canadian city in an example.
I think many americans don’t realize Toronto is in Canada.
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.
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.
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.
Good point well made
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.
(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.
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.
The last time I was in the US I took a train from NYC to Chicago. It was very comfortable.
Several days for an 800 mile trip? Are the roads that bad? That is roughly the distance of Hamburg to Venice and that’s a 12 hour trip.
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.
Google is telling me it’s only 12 hours. I’ve definitely driven that far in a single day, and could probably shave that down to 11
Still though, that’s a huge travel commitment for tourists who are used to major cities being 4-hours apart by 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.
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.
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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.
Is an American tourist really expected to know all that? How many locals even know all that?
Brit here. I had no idea about the rock formations under the Irish sea. None whatsoever. I don’t think it’s on the GCSE geography syllabus!
Estimating by the next reply you got, maybe they’re being sarcastic on a long timescale.
Jesus Christ, everyone should know it especially if they’re flying there, to the island known as Ireland. And yes all the locals would.
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
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
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.
and yes it’s spelled differently from Germanys one
That’s because it’s not named after the German one. It’s named after “Frank’s Ford” which is part of a creek in the area.
Some people say it’s because there is a surprisingly large German population in the area, but it was already called Frankfort by the late 1700s when the large influx of German immigrants really started.
Who really knows haha
That’s really interesting. That said, it’s an unimaginably meh city. Like gorgeous to get to but it’s there alright. Certainly is a city I’ve been to many times.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As an American, neither do i. I was taught them but unlike STEM courses i would never use that knowledge in my adult life.
Meanwhile i knew there wasn’t a tunnel between IE/UK.
Some of us are more worldly i guess…
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
Is that a no?
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.
To be fair, these exist not in Ireland but in other places they do.
If it wasn’t for NI being somehow behind the times compared to both England and Ireland, there would be a chunnel between them.
I doubt it. The enormous cost of the chunnel made economic, as well as symbolic and political sense. Between ireland and UK it wouldn’t.
Come to think about it, maybe now it should be closed
i’d say the largest reason it won’t happen is that ireland has a tiny population, compared to the channel tunnel linking london and france
I actually think that’s a fair question, the distance between Ireland and Scotland is less than the English channel and that can be crossed by rail. If I were to travel to Japan or some other place that I don’t know, then I’d assume that some of the islands are connected by rail and some aren’t, so in a conversation it would be natural for me to ask the same question: can I go there by rail?
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.
I used to take the train from Wales to Scotland. I’d get on at my local station and change once about half way through the trip. On arrival I could walk to my flat. The whole process took about eight hours.
Once I flew. First I had to get a bus to the airport, arrive early for security theatre, eventually fly, land, take a shuttle bus to a train station, then take a train to Cardiff Central, then take another train to my actual destination. The process took about six hours and was utterly exhausting.
Within the Schengen zone it’s like that second paragraph, even for cities in different countries.
(Whilst the UK does have high speed trains to other cities in Europe from St. Pancras in London, even back before Brexit you still had to go through passport control to board so it does add a bit more overhead to the train trip, plus those trains are normally pretty expensive if you don’t book a month or two in advance)
I remember this one time when I went to ski in Austria and to get there I had to catch a train from Innsbruck to the village nearest the resort and as it so happens that was a train that had departed from somewhere in Germany, was passing through Austria and was going to end somewhere in Switzerland. Normal interurban train (not even a high speed train) making its way through the Alpine valleys in Austria, that just happened to stop in cities in 3 different countries.
Huh, Frankfurt - Marseille does sound good for a week of vacation or something like that.
