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Comment by dartharva | Hacker News Reader

You can't take a train to anywhere you want. Tracks will always be less accessible than roads or the sky.

You can’t land wherever you want in a plane? I’m two minutes walk to my local station, and a 15 minute drive to the nearest airfield.

You can land a plane anywhere you want. Once.

Funny, because i need to use the train to get to my closest airport.

Only in the beginning and it's not linear. One track can be used by an infinite amount of people with very little to no congestion, unlike roads.

You also can't travel anytime you want. What happens when a doctor has to reach his hospital for a critical emergency but the next train is scheduled in half an hour?

Have you ever heard about helicopters? There are hospitals that have them. Why do we need _personal_ airplanes for this to happen? Why you think doctors will have money or space for their own airplane when they have no helicopters yet?

In this scenario of yours where would this doctor have their "airplane" at home? In a airfield?

No, he would have a car of his own. That he can drive himself to the hospital. I'm not sure why you jumped to helicopters.

If he can drive and that’s not an emergency why wouldn’t take the train ? Less stress and more safe if he’s impaired.

For an emergency I would suggest a professional-driven ambulance with flashing light, or an helicopter if it’s remote if your wallet or country medicare afford it.

I think their point was a doctor being called in to work in an emergency not that the doctor is having an emergency.

Oh thanks that makes sense! Those "flying doctors" already exists in Australia and one of them saved my life 13 years ago : landed on a single lane road on the middle of the desert to pick me and my friend in a thought condition after a car crash. We arrived in the hospital 2 hours later, instead of 12 hours car drive. IIRC it was a small propeller plane looking simple and not so new or fancy. Didn’t remember the flight :( they quickly nailed me to dream after landing.

That is why you have rosters.

Nobody advocated against cars, just in favor of more traina. Trains would benefit especially the lower income brackets population with cheap, fast, secure and stress-free transportation.

>the next train is scheduled in half an hour?

Fire your transit leadership. Trains should be running every 5 minutes all day every day (and also have a backup option for night service while you do track maintenance). Incompetent leadership isn't doing that.

For a bus you are sometimes forced to do cost/benefit and run as little as every half hour, but if you have trains that means you have enough demand to run every 5 minutes (if you don't that means you shouldn't have a train at all - a bus is cheaper).

It isn't just doctors that sometimes have an emergency. People have places to be, trying to figure out when the transit system is coming shouldn't be a problem.

He takes the car?

We're in a discussion about flights replacing 100/400 miles trips.

Trains are orders of magnitude more accessible than airports could ever be, what are you talking about?

You can get the rest of the way by bike or walking. Japan does this really well by having rail even going high into the mountains. The majority of people shouldn't be using cars - if we're serious about sustainability and tackling climate change, countries would be investing much more in rail than car centric infrastructure.

It is not the #1 reason. #1 reason is being in the same train with other human beings. Nobody wants to deal with public transportation anxiety. Trains are so relaxed and loose security compared to airplanes.

I've never heard anyone ever be concerned about the "relaxed" security of trains, and virtually everyone here uses them. I did hear everyone who flies complain about the theatre and how they accidentally took whatever prohibited item on, forgetting they had a water bottle in some bag for example

If fear of people were the #1 reason not to go on public transport where you live, I'd be deeply worried for your culture

I've never ever had anything happen to me on a train in 37 years of life.

My SO takes the train everyday to go to work, literally every day (we live in Colonna, near Rome, and she works in Rome center) and this has never happened to her.

There are downsides, trains might be full at peak times like 7.30 AM and you get to stand in middle of many other people, but what would the alternative be? Twice the amount of time and a magnitude of order more of stress to get there by car? She doesn't even need to buy a car, we only own one in our household and it sits in the garage most of the time.

I’m subject to social anxiety but public transport never bothered me. You’re among an anonymous group that just wait to arrive at destination. Very different than driving where everybody is involved with their journey, resulting in constant interaction to handle.

On the other side it’s easy to picture why a regular driver would be stressed in a train : you’re not in control.

I feel much more anxious about car traffic (which is about massive number of people in metal boxes) where I rely on all the other drivers to be careful than about public transportation where the driver is a trained professional and everything is highly regulated for safety (much stricter rules than for personal cars).

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