PieFed.zipPeople don't hate on plane travel enough
We have /c/fuckcars but no /c/fuckplanes. Yet a lot of the same arguments apply. They cause air pollution (roughly double the amount per km traveled), noise pollution and they (airports) take up a lot of space near dense living areas. Sure, some places can practically only be visited by plane, just like some places can practically only be visited by car. But people don’t consider not having your holiday that far away or giving pushback on a busines trip that should have been an online meeting. Besides work-from-home being encouraged, work-from-home-country should be too.
Cars need to be discouraged in favor of busses, trams and trains. Planes nees to be discouraged in favor of high-speed trains, staycations and hopefully new alternatives like modern sailboats or electric planes.
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Nah… the problem is not the vacation “overseas” but the amount of domestic flights that could have been avoided if we had a proper (fast, cheap, comfortable) rail network.
How many flights do we have between, e.g, Boston-New York, LA-San Francisco, Dallas-Houston, Chicago-any city in the midwest? Thousands of flights that are less than 3 hours in duration, but we have to take it by plane. Maaaybe some of them could be made by bus, but buses are slow and super cramped.
Now imagine if we had good train service. Even if we were not talking about bullet trains, if you count the time it takes to board/deboard + the time it takes to get to airport to the city, there is a good chance that the train travel would take less total time.
I think amtrak is super comfortable, it’s just ridiculously NOT cheap or fast.
For example, driving from Santa Barbara CA down to San Diego, is about 4.5 hours’ drive with light traffic. You can expect to pay like $100 in gas round trip.
Now, the amtrak line is $88 per person round trip last time I checked, and takes like six hours
So
You can drive a sedan and bring several people in your car and spend $100, and have a car in San Diego
Or you can take the train, spend as much as you would on gas for a commuter car for ONE person, take 25% longer to arrive and get home, and then you’re in a city with no car instead of having a vehicle…
Why TF am I choosing the train, again?
It’s hard to compare with cars because cars/fuel/highways are seriously subsidized.