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Comment by rsynnott | Hacker News Reader

That’s all very well if you’re going thousands of km. For a plane journey that takes less than 3 hours, though, the train may still win, because the train doesn’t involve… airports. No getting to the airport, security, hanging around because the train is inexplicably an hour late (trains are sometimes late, but even in the worst systems not on the scale/frequency of plane lateness), no half-hour spent boarding the train, no taxi-ing, no sitting around for 20 minutes at the end while they get around to opening the train door, no walking through a km worth of airport.

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I am so often boggled at how crappy air travel is now.

Used to be, decades ago, just show up and go to the plane like it was a bus. Some dude would take your luggage and throw it into the cargo hold.

You'd be boarded and gone in 15.

When landed, they'd open then cargo hold and hand out luggage.

I had this experience in a transfer to a prop plane in Mexico. Fast, easy, quick.

Unfortunately, the monetary and political interests in security theater became entrenched after 9/11. I'm afraid something similar might happen to trains eventually, if they're ever used in a sufficiently theatrical instance of violence. I'm enjoying the ease of access while it lasts.

This is sadly too true for the Channel Tunnel railway linking Britain with France. The post-Brexit border security easily takes in excess of half an hour as several hundred passengers shuffle single-file through the scanners. Although it is still marginally faster than flying for me due to my distance from an airport (as well as Britain's underdeveloped domestic aviation sector in general) the time spent at the station usually exceeds my actual journey now.

What's most stupid about security for rail passengers is that the original fear from 9/11 doesn't even apply - you can't hijack a train and crash it into a skyscraper!

The security scanners were always there for the Channel Tunnel, though the check is much less intensive than for air travel. They are looking for bombs, gas canisters, guns and maybe large knives.

London had terrorist attacks from the IRA long before 9/11, including attacks on the transport network. There were 13 in 1991, of which 4 were on trains or at stations.

The new delays are for the passport checks. What used to be ~10 seconds for each EU citizen — is the passport/ID card valid and does the face match? — is now 60+ seconds for British people entering the EU, as the official must check they haven't stayed more than 90 days in the last 180 etc.

I read with some horror a article on the California High Speed Rail where they were talking about of course using the TSA for 'security'

Hint when they ran a BART feeder to SFO the first thing the TSA did was start patrolling BART with drug dogs and arresting people for having pot.

See Spain since 2004. Though it's still only a minor inconvenience compared to air travel.

It is impressive... though I must admit the prices are impressive, too. I'm going to be driving a relative to Florida next week from New England, and then flying back. Anyone that knows the seasonal migratory patterns of the new england elderbird knows that the market is heavily in my favor, but even still, the airfare, fees, taxes and everything come out to about $60 to fly over 1200 miles. That's like a nickel-a-mile. One round-trip ticket to the furthest spot in Boston's commuter rail system (terminating in Rhode Island) is nearly half that price.

That prop plane isn't doing SEA->CHI in 4 hours. It probably isn't doing it all in a single hop.

So? If you look at older movies, you can see people boarding large jets the same way.

Yes. I flew 707s etc. before jet bridges. And even after they became common in the US except for smaller very regional planes, it took quite a while longer for them to become common at some, even larger, international airports.

Sure, but… cities in the USA are thousands of km. Seattle to Chicago (the example given by the GP) are 2800 km distant. Those cities are slightly more distant than Lisbon and Warsaw. Chicago to Washington DC is almost the exact distance as London to Marseille (1000 km). Chicago to Houston, Texas is the same distance as London to Rome.

To go back to the first example, Seattle to Chicago is a 4 hour (scheduled, which already includes taxi time at both ends and a buffer for late departures) plane ride. Even a TGV running continuously at top speed (320km/h), with no stops, would take 8.5 hours to complete the same journey. Wikipedia tells me that the fastest start-to-end scheduled speed of a TGV is only 280 km/h, which would take over 10 hours.

Chicago to DC is about the break-even distance for high-speed-rail vs. flying. That's already pretty darn good, and it would eliminate a lot of flying.

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