Hacker News Reader

Comment by JKCalhoun | Hacker News Reader

Train rides across the country?

Actually though, road trips scratch that itch for me as well. I don't plan them out except to say — let's wander off to the Great Lakes or lets follow the Mississippi River south — see all the river towns along the way. I've used AI to throw out ideas of things to see while on the road, or the wife and I fall back to looking for antique stores as an excuse to wander through the small downtowns of towns no one has heard of.

View on HN

That’s still doing something though. On a cruise ship you can wake up, walk out of your room and stop for breakfast on your way to the deck where you sit in a chair and watch the ocean for hours. It can be way more chill.

Driving is very unpleasant for some. Trains in the US are not exactly luxurious by any stretch: compare the food on a nice cruise to the food available on a train.

This was the biggest shock when seeing Europe, their trains are so much better. Considering how sprawling the continental US is, it's a shame we don't have more and better quality trains.

It’s because the US is so sprawling that trains lost out to planes there. Almost all of Europe is accessible in a day on a train. Only planes can do that in the US. So the US trains don’t have their costs amortized over a large fraction of business travel as well as vacationers.

High speed trains could still help connect a lot more hubs in the US. And more low speed trains and trolleys could reduce local traffic. IMO car culture took root, and we dove in head first with little thought to the long term consequences.

> Almost all of Europe is accessible in a day on a train. Only planes can do that in the US.

The US isn’t that much larger, I don’t think this argument holds. The geography and locations of population centres seem more of an issue.

Yeah, NYC to Chicago is about 18 hours over a continental divide. You do out west and things get even further. Outside the Northeast corridor and a few other city pairs, train trips are pretty long in the US.

I've been tempted to do at least part of one of the long distance US train routes but I think I'd get pretty bored, I'm guessing the food isn't very good, and I've spent a lot of time out West.

"The US isn’t that much larger"

Just search for one of the many pictures of the state (state!) of Texas superimposed over Europe.

The US is freaking huge compared to Europe.

> The US is freaking huge compared to Europe.

I have compared them, and I don’t see what you’re seeing. Depending on how you measure (do you include European Russia, ie the bit west of the Urals?) Europe is larger.

https://www.worldatlas.com/geography/are-the-usa-and-europe-...

https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/country-size-comparison/unit...

The EU is 1.5 million square miles of land area. The continental US is 3.1 million square miles of land area. Continental Europe incl. non-EU countries is over 4 million square miles of land area.

And there's very little day-to-day train travel across that area.

Based on what he said he's from the Midwest where driving across a state is a short trip. I assume they are in the Minnesota/Iowa/Wisconsin tri state area. 2 hours is normal to get to any bigger city.

I think you are mentioning a dichotomy that is more important than most people realize: those who like driving and those who don't.

Driving is relaxing or interesting for me, almost no matter what. Even when it gets stressful I don't mind it. But I feel for those who don't have that same predilection, because everything would be blocked behind a chore.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com