Hacker News Reader

Comment by joejohnson | Hacker News Reader

Including time to get to the airport and through security, flying LAX -> SFO is not high speed :/

The SF Gate tried a plane versus car trip in 2001 and the driver won substantially – and that’s only gotten worse with the post-9/11 security theater and both airline and airport budget tightening pushing the whole system closer into the safety margins:

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/The-Great-Race-car-vs-pla...

Travel time to/from the station only matters if you're closer to the rail station than the airport. As for time to fly, I've made the trip between various airports (SFO, OAK, SMF) and LAX via Southwest many times. I try to arrive about 45 minutes prior to take off and so the whole trip takes about 2 hours. Even adding time to wait for a checked bag would probably still be faster than the high speed train.

Keep in mind airline miles. I take the shuttle out of LGA to D.C. over the Amtrak. The shuttle is cheaper and I get the comfort of earning miles.

I've already invested into making flying comfortable. Lounge-access credit cards, Global Entry (which grants TSA Pre-check), upgrade-giving status, et cetera. I'd need trip time or cost cut in half relative to air travel to make switching worth it.

I'm not the median consumer. But weighted by likely usage, I'm closer to the average.

I optimize miles too but, for short distances, it's mostly not worth it. For Boston to NY I essentially always take the train which is more comfortable if not necessarily faster. And Amtrak points are probably actually more useful for me in general than airline points. I'd get 500 points on United and use of the lounge but, really, that's not worth a whole lot. Amtrak is already basically as comfortable as an airline upgrade--which is hard to get on a weekday peak travel slot.

> Keep in mind airline miles. I take the shuttle out of LGA to D.C. over the Amtrak.

Anecdotally: people where I work do a lot of traveling between our NYC and DC offices. Only one person flies rather than taking Amtrak...

I did a bunch of trips recently. Flying is usually faster and cheaper, but more likely to go awry. Taxis to airports can vary widely in speed and cost. Flights can be delayed, security lines, etc.

Train is easy, consistent and comfortable. Always power, Wi-Fi and cell signal too.

> Train is easy, consistent and comfortable

Fair enough. I'm an infrequent NYC-DC commuter. And my preferred mode to JFK from the city is via the LIRR, a rail route. It takes longer, most of the time, but less time on average. Most importantly: it's consistent.

Of course it's all just going to depend on your situation:

* How often you travel

* How much you will be able to take advantage of perks

* How close you are to various terminals/airports

* How far you regularly need to go

* How you like to travel (fast & cramped, slow & spacious)

etc.

At least at the San Francisco end, the terminus is in the heart of downtown San Francisco near a bunch of major transi tlines. SFO is 45+ minutes away via BART (OAK is a little closer, SJC is way further away). SFO via car is going to be highly variable, less than 45 minutes best case, but worse in traffic.

Additionally there's the problem of airport expansion. There aren't a lot of palatable options as filling in the bay is (rightfully) a non-starter for most people. High speed rail wouldn't replace air travel but it would complement it (especially with the related regional improvements like electrifying Caltrain).

Yeah I see no problem with more choices if they make sense. My reply was in refutation to the point that flying is not faster than high speed rail because of time needed at airport, which is not my experience. Since travel time to/from the station/airport depends on the situation, it doesn't make sense to include it in a general statement (to which I was replying).

Going through the Central Valley and stopping in Fresno, Madera, Kings-Tulare, Bakersfield... (etc) to get to Los Angeles is not faster either. Buy a fully autonomous car and go point-to-point faster/cheaper/better.

The train will stop at SFO and BUR -- if the train's last-mile delivery is better then we should focus on that last-mile rather than the stretch in the middle that is already well-solved.

This is peak Hacker News: "Don't buy a $50 train ticket - buy a not-actually-invented yet probably $120,000 car instead".

The high-speed rail project is a shit show, but more cars is not the answer either.

More cars, or at least more car trips,—independent of whether they need drivers or what kind of powerplant they have—is, in fact, exactly the problem at which HSR is directed.

Almost no one will buy autonomous cars. You will just hail one for less than the cost of gas.

Only rich people and people in and out of a car all day (full time parents, car-based workers, etc) will buy them.

You will just hail one for less than the cost of gas.

If the cost of the ride is less than the cost of gas, how is the operator making a profit? Especially since they have to cover more than just the cost of gas.

(an Uber-style "use VC money to subsidize below-cost services" model is not sustainable in the long term, by the way)

I think the point is that they’ll be electric.

In addition to closeparen's point that such autonomous cars will be electric, they will also have much lower mantenance costs due to the lower internal complexity of doing away with the ICE.

This is self evidently true because incredibly complex software implementations that interact with the real world have no maintainance requirements.

... hoping sarcasm. But you never know on here...

And every family and anyone who likes having a car. I'd expect not more than 10-20% to stop buying cars. Having your own car is about more than just access to transportation.

Some trains will run sf-sj-la without further stops. Those will be far faster than air if you are traveling between city centers.

Not really. The platform-to-platform time from LA to SF is going to be, at best, a little less than three hours. That's comparable to the time it takes to fly from LAX to SFO plus the ~30 minute BART ride to downtown SF.

LA is so spread out that departing from LAX or Union Station doesn't make a big difference. Most people are going to have to fight traffic to get to either location.

It is only two tracks. How can they run express services at the same time as stopping services?

Having an extra track at the station and timing so that they pass while the other train stops. You don't have services every 5 minutes so that works quite well usually. Worst case the express train has to go a bit slower before but they tend not to go at maximum speed so can catch up again later.

> Buy a fully autonomous car

Make sure you put a winged pony on the shopping list too. They're a great fashionable match any time you're making fantasies of acquiring things that don't exist.

At least one of those is far closer to reality than the other.

While that's true, the less flippant question is whether fully autonomous cars -- where "fully autonomous" is defined as being able to climb in one, kick back and do your work with no concern the way you conceivably could on a train -- will (a) exist, (b) be road-legal, (c) be widely available, and (d) be generally affordable within a timeframe that makes a high-speed rail line moot. I don't think that's remotely a given.

We're going to have autonomous cars that can drive SF-LA long before we have high-speed rail. Self-driving cars from the big players are planned for the 2020-2021 model years.

I have this weird feeling that before we have many of them in mass production, we'll have a single car that fits this description.

For the train you also need to include the time to get to LA's union station. So the main difference ends up being TSA time.

Excepting travel time and security time, is the airline imposition of arriving anywhere from 45 to 1.5 hours before departure or you can't check a bag. And all the airlines recommend arrival 1-2 hours before a flight. This is to account for myriad unknown factors that apply to airline travel that don't apply to trains.

If you live in SFO and have a business meeting in LA (or vice versa), you'll only need the trip on one side. Few people will need to travel in both cities.

Union Station is or will by a direct subway ride away from a lot of dense pockets in Los Angeles (Red, Purple & Blue lines when the regional connector opens). Yes, the train will come to LAX as well, but transfer will be less convenient and likely less direct than from Union Station.

From the time an Uber drops me off at SFO to the time I get through security is probably all of 10-15 minutes.

The secret? TSA precheck and the Global Entry program.

And, I'm going to guess, not having children.

Children can be enrolled in the program as well.

Also I do not check in any luggage.

But you are giving up their fingerprints to the government. That's one thing that really bugs me about those programs. I want to remind everyone of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield. They arrested him because some of his fingerprints slightly matched. The FBI claimed they exactly matched. Quoting from the wikipedia article

"His prints were ... taken ... when he joined the military. He became the prime suspect because of his conversion to Islam and because he had represented one of the Portland Seven...

The FBI described the fingerprint match as "100% verified". According to the court documents in judge Ann Aiken's decision, this information was largely "fabricated and concocted by the FBI and DOJ".

This is why I'm reluctant to give the govt. my fingerprints, but my friends think I'm overreacting.

In no way is that remotely acceptable, but the dude got $2 million. The government making a habit of that behavior would get expensive quickly.

Are you kidding, that’s your defense?

$2M in taxpayer money is nothing to them. Just like the expense of incarceration didn’t bring down jail terms for minor offenses. Or settlements for police brutality haven’t affected that one iota either.

If they did that to ten thousand US citizens (.0031 percent chance of being messed with), a 2 million dollar settlement would cost them $20bn. Affordable, but certainly not a rounding error line item.

The officers working on the case do not decide about the govt budget. I'm not even sure if the government tracks expenses from those cases and would know how to react if the costs escalate.

Have child, just got Pre Check. Kids under 12 don't need their own known traveler number. Pack light, gate check the car seat, and you're pretty close to the parent post's timing. Even if you have to check luggage, Southwest's check-in lines are short more often than not.

I would assume that adding children to the mix also increases your time to prepare and get to and from some future HSR train station as well, so it's probably a wash.

I would assume that the vast majority of train passengers between LA and SF would also not be children.

How many minutes before the flight do you usually arrive to the airport? If not 15, why?

30 minutes before boarding they no longer allow you to print a boarding pass (so you’d better be checked in and have it on your phone). I learned this the hard way when I arrived 20 minutes before a flight. However, it’s no big deal really, I caught the next flight an hour or so later since they are obligated to book you the next available flight.

I try to be there about 30 minutes before the flight now, but with boarding pass ready on my phone. The only reason I give 30 minutes is in case of traffic or if I want to grab a quick bite. If I could guarantee my arrival time at the airport it would be even less.

The real secret is not flying United out of SFO. I typically make it through security in Terminal 2 (Virgin / AA / Alaska) in about 10 minutes. Not much longer with the international terminal.

I can usually get door-to-door in 3-3.75 hours flying SFO->LAX, depending on my destination in LA. That's good enough for me.

That's ~100MPH which is basically highway speeds in many areas. http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/31/us/new-york-los-angeles-cannon... While illegal they averaged 98 MPH coast to coast.

Granted this rail project does not really allow for high speed either, but it's still going to be reasonable.

A super-illegal drive isn't really useful for comparison. With moderate traffic you'd be lucky to average 60mph for the entire trip from SF to LA.

Regardless, I'm not talking about what's ideal or perfect; even if HSR could get me there in 2-3 hours, that's not a meaningful enough improvement over 3-3.75 hours to justify a $64B+ price tag in my book.

I am not sure how the price tag is relevant to you personally. If you build an effective network of High speed rail it ends up cheaper per trip which over time means the effective cost is ~0$.

I doubt they are going to succeed, but in other areas it has worked.

I regularly drive ~120mph+ in the empty expanses of Spain and elsewhere that isn’t America, and even I can’t average 100mph in that route in California.

Averaging 100mph is unrealistic for I-5 most of the time. You'll get stuck behind cars doing 80 in the left lane while semis sit in the right, and that can last for miles and miles. I think things were faster in 2010-11, when the economy was slower, but I only drove it twice then -- even then, 90mph was more realistic.

Which is fine I guess? If I'm going above the speed limit I have no issues staying on the left lane if I continue passing other cars. I don't have to always make space for someone 30+mph above the limit (both legally and morally).

If you're only going 10 over just like everybody else you belong in the right lane.

Sure, on current infrastructure 100MPH is unrealistic in that area, but if they added more roads so you could do 100MPH nobody would call it high speed transit.

Honestly if they added a third lane to I-5, that would be good enough. At least from Grapevine to 152.

That's rather striking considering that the "flight" itself is, what, 50 minutes?

SFO to LAX is 85-100 minutes, depending on airline and equipment.

For me it's ~20 mins driving SF to SFO, ~10 mins for TSA junk and walking to the gate, ~30 mins for waiting and boarding, then the 90 minute flight, ~15 minutes for deplaning, walking, and getting a ride, and then then anywhere from 15-60 minutes depending on where I'm going.

travelmath.com says 55 minutes.

Actual flight schedules published by airlines say 85-100. My actual experience flying that route agrees. Taxiing to and from the gate and waiting in the queue to take off may not be included in travelmath's calculations, but that's real actual time you have to spend.

Is the term "flight itself", meaning wheels up to wheels down, somehow unclear?

Along with getting there early enough to be sure that your flight isn't overbooked.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com