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Comment by pbadams | Hacker News Reader

Even if the 'bug' of limited time off is solved, I think people's valuation of their time is still pretty high. The trains/airships would have to be quite nice (read: heavy, expensive, possibly less efficient) for you to be willing to spend so much time in them.

On a sillier note, I wonder what the fastest speed you can reach is, in terms of timezones/hr.

My guess was a polar route like ANC-HEL, but there don't seem to be any direct passenger flights. Condor flies ANC-FRA seasonally, which is pretty much exactly 1 hour time difference per hour of flight. Another possibility is TAS->URC, at 1.2.

The author's routes, YVR-LHR and YVR-NRT, are both 0.8-0.9 hours difference per hour flight time, depending on direction.

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URC-KBL pre covid was about 1 hour per hour.

For 1 hour differences,

SI6604/5 between Jersey and Rennes is scheduled for 40 minutes and crossing a single zone, so 1.5 hours per hour.

In the US, South Bend Indiana to Chicago is only about 90 miles, but is scheduled for an hour, and has a 1 hour difference. Driving is far faster.

Flying between the diomedes is a 21 hour difference for a 3 mile trip, although I wouldn't advise it at the moment, a helicopeter could presumably do the trip in a minute or two, with a difference of about 100 hours per hour.

If you're willing to walk instead of flying you can cross 2 hour borders instantly quite easily at many places in the world. 2.5 or 3 hour differences probably exist too, but the big one from Afghanistan into China or 3.5 hours is not really a something you can do.

> In the US, South Bend Indiana to Chicago is only about 90 miles, but is scheduled for an hour, and has a 1 hour difference. Driving is far faster.

That's an interesting route. There is a direct Interstate connection, direct flight connections, and a direct passenger rail connection.

Driving is the fastest option, except when there is traffic and there is frequently traffic. 2.5 hours is not an unusual amount of time for the drive. Also, it feels like the interstate between the two cities is in a permanent state of construction.

The train is around 2-2.5 hours (and strangely the train station in South Bend is in the airport terminal), but there is currently construction along a lot of the route that when finished will shave 10-15 minutes off the time. There are more future improvements planned that will also reduce the time.

It seems crazy to me that a 90 mile trip takes 2.5 hours by train! That's half the speed of the notoriously slow Bristol-Birmingham stopping route.

It makes a lot of stops and has a lot of very slow sections. And in one city, the line runs down the middle of a street - with no separation whatsoever (construction is underway to eliminate this)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Shore_Line#/media/File...

According to Stack Exchange [1], you can do 1.7 h/h flying MHQ-ARN - 1 time zone in a 35 minute flight.

1. https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/134726/what-fligh...

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