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Comment by t0mas88 | Hacker News Reader

He is entirely right, and since 2013 is has become even more like he described. It now already applies from Amsterdam to Paris... It's a 1 hour flight, for 99 euros return on Air France / KLM and far less than that if you take easyJet or another low cost option (with the downside that you're going to an airport further from the city). The train takes 3 to 4 hours and costs more.

Only on really short trips like Amsterdam - Brussels the train is the better option. And on those the normal train is only 15 minutes out of a total 2.5 hours slower than the expensive high speed train, while the high speed is more than twice as expensive.

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Comparing a 1 hour flight to a 3-4 hour train journey by those times alone is somewhat dishonest: it doesn't take into account the rest of the journey to/from the airport at either end (usually further out of the city than the main train station), nor the 1-2 hour early arrival at the airport for bag drop/security/killing time at the gate.

Not to mention inconveniences like lack of liquids in hand luggage, expensive airport amenities (should you choose to use them), passing through the security theatre, and of course the actual cost of getting to the airport (in the UK, this can be more than the flight!).

The train probably has proper tables, power outlets and useable WiFi or 4G. For a business traveller, a 4 hour train journey can be 4 hours of very productive time, whereas a 1 hour flight can completely obliterate half a day.

Absolutely.

I travel between Paris and Frankfurt a lot; a couple of Thursdays ago the 19h-23h train to Paris was cancelled, and I had to go to Fraport with the S-Bahn (I work close to Hauptbahnhoff), wait a queue of 65’ just to pass security (Fraport security is absurdly inefficient, with e.g. about 10 workers per luggage scanner), take a 70’ flight and then a 30’ taxi ride from CDG. I arrived home at the standard time.

With the train I go from city centre to city centre, I jump on the train upon arrival, and I have 4 hours of work/leisure; ample space, bug windows, a cafeteria and room to walk. The alternative is 4 hours of taxi queue security wait queue finger queue take off have a sandwich please close tray landing taxi, where you can get total 1h of work done if you get lucky (except if you have someone to call).

And the train is half the price.

This is the Q factor that everyone omits when doing the calculus on their own journeys. The pre- and post-flight nonsense are basically another trip entirely.

But that also applies to the train, I don't live at the train station.

Plane:

- Drive 30 minutes to Amsterdam airport

- Park and go to gate, takes me 20 minutes from parking to gate

- Boarding and waiting for take-off: 20 to 30 minutes

Train:

- 10 minutes bike to the station is the fastest

- Another 10 minutes to get from bike into train

- Highspeed train doesn't stop here, so 40 minutes train to Rotterdam

- Wait to switch to the highspeed train, 15 minutes

So they roughly take me the same time to get to. The only upside of the train is that it goes to Paris Nord instead of the airport. But the benefit of that greatly depends on what meeting you're trying to get to, because most larger offices in Paris are not in the middle of the city.

Interesting, I've got the opposite experience.

When taking into account the time required to get to/from the airport and the time required to actually get on the plane, it's just as fast to take the train. Taking into account comfort, stress, and effort required, the train wins by a very large margin.

If you book in advance, €35 tickets are very easy to get, and sub-€60 aren't uncommon either. The article compares last-minute train pricing with the cheapest air fares. If I want to take a plane to Paris tomorrow, I'd have to pay €366 as well. For virtually any date, booking a train is going to be cheaper than booking a plane.

If anything, the biggest problem with high-speed trains is that there aren't enough of them, and that they share too much infrastructure with traditional trains. They are not killing low-speed trains, reality is. Even without high-speed infrastructure, many of them would no longer exist: for longer distances, air travel is simply in every way superior. They are just far too slow and far too uncomfortable to compete.

Besides, actually running those trains is an absolute nightmare. The article suggests giving them priority in order to keep the timetable. In reality, in The Netherlands large portions of the network is transitioning to a train every 7.5 minutes. Any delay whatsoever is unacceptable: having a delayed long-distance train could result in the cancellation of literally dozens of local trains. Overnight trains could work, but that's not really desirable for medium-distance. It was fun while it lasted, but they are just no longer viable.

That doesn’t account for airport taxes and boarding time. Real door-to-door durations are different, and I would take the Thalys over airplanes any day (the WiFi is great and you can get actual work done).

Next to the fact that flights always have more time overhead and train stations are almost always central.

I regularly drive from Bern to Salzburg (Austria). To lazy to Google but AFAIK there are no more direct flights, the last I know of was about 400 dollars and with check in and getting to and from the airport did take about 4 hours. Using a nearby airport gets this to 5 hour or more.

Some cities are well and cheap connected per flight. Most however aren't

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