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Comment by YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 | Hacker News Reader

>Trains are perfectly capable for bringing me from A to B while I am sleeping for years now.

For a very limited subset of points A and B, though...

Depends where you live. I had no issues in Europe or Asia so far.

Even in Europe to get from A to B you need to switch trains super often. Like in France you almost always need to go to Paris first before going somewhere else because the network is so centralized around Paris.

But even then you can get to paris pretty fast. I have had similar problems where I had to go to Karlsruhe from Flensburg to get a train to paris, as that was the fastest route.

To be fair that's not really a reasonable train trip for people that want to actually get there as opposed to riding a train. Probably above 9 hours compared to a sub-2h flight. Train routes that are more meaningful tend to be better serviced.

I regularly take a train that takes 6.5 hours. The flight would be 45 minutes.

Getting to, into and away from the airport easily ads another 2 hours tho. Also this route has 3 flights a week compared to a train every 2 hours.

With the train I just get in and enjoy nice service, free power and WiFi and usually get some work done.

Not to mention the difference in my ecological footprint.

My point is that it's not like you are wasting time in a uncomfortable environment usually. So I dont mind taking the train, actually usually even prefer it, so do millions of people all over the world.

> Not to mention the difference in my ecological footprint.

Only as clean as the electricity is produced. In many countries electricity production relies on coal, petrol or gas, which are far from being clean energies.

I'm a big train fan and do impractical train rides quite often. I dont think millions of people share our appreciation of trains. Most people use whatever is faster, or cheaper. Trains over 3 hours tend to be neither. Paris to Flensburg is both slow and expensive. By most people's standards, the 6h additional duration of the trip offsets the airport annoyance by far.

LA to NYC is the distance of London to Poti, Georgia.

Or Shenyang to Kunming which takes 18 hours on a train. But what's your point? Trains aren't meant to replace crosscontinetal flights. It would be better to compare regional routes like LA - SF which is super inconvenient.

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