Inconvenience of Flying

[me_little_me]

Where I travel trains usually have one station with few or no overnight parking spaces in a part of town with few services and limited service hours that has seen better days.

Parking costs? Not enough Parking? Not at the many stations I leave from including Charlotte, Salisbury, Greensboro & Cary in NC, Greenville & Charleston in SC, Savannah and Jessup, GA and Hinton, Prince & White Sulfur Springs, WV. Only Atlanta has paid parking for my departure stations but I avoid that by having kids there.

It's faster, more frequent, and more consistent because it has a more comprehensive network. Amtrak's skeletal network is huge factor in how practical it is.

YES! The government has subsidized air traffic with zillions of $$$ to make it a big success and tried to slowly starve Amtrak at the same time by underfunding it. Then we look at the two and say "See? Flying is so much better!"

 

[MARC Rider]

Parking costs? Not enough Parking? Not at the many stations I leave from including Charlotte, Salisbury, Greensboro & Cary in NC, Greenville & Charleston in SC, Savannah and Jessup, GA and Hinton, Prince & White Sulfur Springs, WV. Only Atlanta has paid parking for my departure stations but I avoid that by having kids there.

On the other hand, the main station I leave from, Baltimore, the parking is $20 a day, so if I take an overnight trip, it will cost me $40. Basically, for anything other than a day trip, I just use Uber or a taxi to g to and from the station.

YES! The government has subsidized air traffic with zillions of $$$ to make it a big success and tried to slowly starve Amtrak at the same time by underfunding it. Then we look at the two and say "See? Flying is so much better!"

Come on, even in the golden age of rail, when the network was great and the service was great (at least on some trains, if you were willing to pay), a coast-to-coast trip was still 4 days and three nights. Flying 5 to 6 hours (OK, 8 to 10 hours if you don't have a direct flight available) will always be cheaper and more convenient for the vast majority of long-distance travelers in this country no matter how much money the government puts into Amtrak.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Come on, even in the golden age of rail, when the network was great and the service was great (at least on some trains, if you were willing to pay), a coast-to-coast trip was still 4 days and three nights.

Nothing in the posts to which you're replying said anything about coast to coast travel. Out of hundreds of flights I can count the number of times I've traveled coast-to-coast on a single hand so maybe that's not the universal standard some people seem to think it is.

Flying 5 to 6 hours [...] will always be cheaper and more convenient for the vast majority of long-distance travelers in this country no matter how much money the government puts into Amtrak.

How can something "always" be true when it was demonstrably untrue as recently as a few decades ago?

 

[Ryan]

The discussion started with me discussing my travel experiences through the lens of a BWI-SAN flight, as that is my most common trip these days. Also living in Baltimore, I'm sure that's the context in which @MARC Rider made his remarks.