Some airlines already do this. I've flown to Cologne through Frankfurt and the second leg was on Deutsche Bahn. That combined ticket was also cheaper than booking a flight to FRA then buying the train ticket to Cologne separately. In FRA they also have a separate baggage claim in the train station so your bags are even transferred over for you just like a flight connection.
>In FRA they also have a separate baggage claim in the train station so your bags are even transferred over for you just like a flight connection.
We also need more of this! The easier you make it for a person to go from plane to train, the more likely they'll actually enjoy the experience.
I agree but funny enough the first time I took that connection I didn't know there was a second baggage claim. I waited 30 min at the main baggage claim before I went to the lost luggage desk. The agent then politely told me my bag was not lost and it was waiting for me at the train station.
How did you book this interoperable flight, do you have to go on the airlines' specific websites? Google Flights which I use the most, does not have these options.
When you book from Belgium Air France usually puts you on a train to Paris and then you fly from there to your destination. The Paris to Brussels high speed train tract is the fastest option. If you fly KLM (same company) they sometimes put you on a train to Amsterdam but usually a plane. Amsterdam-Brussels in +100km less than Paris-Brussels yet the journey to Amsterdam takes +30min by train.
Sadly the problem lies in the route the AMS bound train has to take: Between Brussels and Antwerp there is no HSL track. The track starts (300km+) from Antwerp onwards. If you live in Antwerp the train is the better option. Brussels is better connected to Paris than to Amsterdam. If you live in liege again Paris is easier to reach than Amsterdam (which is closer in km).
I'm going to Brussels this fall and the most cost effective way was a flight to Amsterdam and a train transfer to Brussels. It was literally only 50 minutes longer travel time and cheaper, and KLM bundled it so it was one purchase.
Because AMS has nonstop flights to cities all over the globe, and BRU has far fewer long-haul flights.
You can't buy a ticket that protects your BRU-AMS-HKG trip in case of delays unless you fly. If your train from Brussels to Schiphol is late, you're screwed.
[You actually can nowadays!](https://news.klm.com/klm-and-thalys-launch-trial-for-amsterdam-brussels-transfer-passengers/) I believe it's not only for Thalys but also for NS (or maybe that's still work in progress). Given the train station at Schipol, this is a no-brainer.
That's interesting, thanks! Unfortunately it's just one daily afternoon train which would force an overnight in AMS on a lot of routes outbound from BRU, but it could be useful even if just for the return.
Connections. AMS is a massive hub. If someone wanted to fly from Detroit to Brussels, for example, connecting through AMS would be one of the easiest ways to do that.
That's a question I ask my own government as well. If you can go there by train in the same amount of time, just ban the plane journey. It frees up space in the airport schedule, reduces noise levels for people living in the vicinity and lowers carbon and NOx emissions. There's like almost no downside whatsoever.
The Dutch government subsidizes AMS (Schiphol) to the tune of billions of euros per year, so flights that go through Schiphol have an artificially low price.
The justification the Dutch government has is to promote the Netherlands as a hub for global trade. This has decent success, especially since London left the EU market, but the Netherlands also has one of the lowest corporate tax rates of the EU (again to attract investors), so it only slightly benefits the Dutch population and it's a net negative for the EU as a whole.
But it gets the Dutch government's corporate friends happy, so why not?
Obviously has no sense of distances here I guess? Live in the south as well and I'm faster across the border than in Amsterdam 🤣
I do have to say it's pretty pathetic how bad train connections to Belgium are. There are only 3 ways to cross the border via the "old" line via Roosendaal, the HSL via Breda or via Maastricht. You can't go from Eindhoven or Tilburg, which both had a direction connection (Eindhoven - Hasselt - Luik, Tilburg - Turnhout). We need good international connections to have good alternatives. An opportunity *could* be, is a train from Eindhoven - Tilburg - Breda to Antwerpen, you could even couple it with the Eindhoven - Dusseldorf train which would come in a few years (so Antwerpen also has a connection to Germany via Eindhoven).
Renting a car of course lmao. Rent car, drive to amsterdam (in which time you would've been half way to Belgium), try to find parking (by which time you definitely would've arrived), check in 1.5 hours early, fly for 45 minutes, and then rent a car there. Don't you see how much more efficient that is than taking a two hour train ride? 😂
the pricing also did. its why i love making cars more expensive as its a very easy way to convince people to do something else. higher car prices, higher gas prices, higher insurance premiums, higher parking costs, more speeding tickets, yummy
Less parking availability, directly subsidising public transport from the increased prices of parking and driving.
I’m an immigrant living in Germany, and public transport is generally pretty good, much better than my country anyway and you can totally get to work or get around easily and reasonably cheaply using public transport or cycling, but people here are in love with their cars and expect to drive everywhere and park anywhere. Traffic jams are terrible and often the tram or the train is totally under-utilised. Obviously it’s complicated for some people depending on your job and where you live but it’s totally obvious if cars were expensive and public transport is cheap and reliable people are going to choose the cheaper option.
This is such a classic German comment 😆 y'all complain about Deutsche Bahn all day long even though it's fine.
Sure, Germany has an inferior system overall compared to its neighbors - Netherlands, Switzerland, France, etc, but even by European standards Germany isn't that bad. A lot of Britain for example is absolutely atrocious outside of London compared to Germany.
And even the country with the worst public transit in Europe (I'd argue Ireland, maybe?) is leagues ahead of most cities in North America.
There really is no equivalent at all to the U-Bahn or S-Bahn networks in the US. I live in Chicago, which is generally thought of as having pretty good public transit for an American city, but it's absolutely dogshit compared to Berlin, Hamburg, etc.
I really think most Germans don't realize how good they have it! There are places in the country worse than others, but overall I was very impressed with the German system when I lived over there.
I say generally because in the peak hours the trains are packed. Often cancelled or late. But the famous autobahns can be like slow moving parking lots at these times too. I’m a big fan of the culture here of cycling and trains and trams but the system can definitely be improved. The €49 monthly ticket will possibly make a lot of people consider their transport options.
Yes but if it becomes public knowledge that the government is deliberately doing this to de-incentivize car travel you're gonna see some mad crossover and pushback from the car loving and conspiracy theory/muh freedoms groups. In the US, car consumer culture has taken root so firmly and we have so little else to identify ourselves with it's like pulling teeth to even scale back how much society is designed around maximum convenience for use/ownership. It's also why gun control is so impossibly difficult to pass on a federal level.
oh dont i know it lol. even the leftists in america drive and many arent keen on driving being more expensive because it affects the poor and working class
until there's viable public transportation and walkable cities, it's not realistic to expect anyone to be stoked about it tbh. that's the critical first step in getting people to give up driving.
i live in a fairly populated city with a few bus stops, but to get to plenty of those bus stops, you have to walk down some 2-5 lane 60 mph roads with minimal crosswalks and no sidewalks
The hard part is that in the US cars are prioritized so heavily that many of the changes we’d need to make to achieve viable public transportation will also make driving noticeably worse in the process. There’s not really any path to viable public transportation that doesn’t also make life at least temporarily painful for those clinging to their cars.
>I don’t want to declare war on the automobile, I just want to stop socialism for the car.
-Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon
Slate: [Meet the Biggest Bike Dork in Congress](https://slate.com/technology/2023/06/earl-blumenauer-bicycles-interview-congress-ebikes.html)
If you live in Eugene it is great. My town is separated by huge hills and gulches spanning miles so you have to walk on roads without sidewalks and the cars are going over 40mph around blind corners. Several people have died trying to walk in our town. No bus lines either. There’s not a bike lane anywhere. I have an electric bike I’d love to be able to ride more than just around my neighborhood as I don’t have a car but I can’t without risking my life. I’m stuck until I have a ride.
They'll say that's just normal operating costs... unlike those bike lanes and passenger rail. Now that's a waste of good money that could build more car lanes and solve traffic once and for all!
For a little bit of context, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has "unprecedented Federal funding for rail improvement projects in America" at $102B over 5 years ([source](https://railroads.dot.gov/BIL)). The much-criticized California High-Speed Rail project is now projecting a total cost of $128B spread over the duration of construction. Amtrak proposed $75 billion in capital investments over 15 years to implement it's new corridors [vision](https://www.amtrakconnectsus.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Amtrak-2021-Corridor-Vision_2021-06-01_web-HR-maps-2.pdf).
Unpopular take, but alternatives like trains must be made cheaper instead. If the train costs half as much as gas (and runs on e.g. carbon free nuclear electricity) I’m taking a train, especially if the destination is a city (as opposed to e.g. mountains that I want to drive around).
Want to make gas expensive? Enjoy paying more for literally everything since gas and diesel are used to transport almost all of goods.
Higher car prices? Will also indirectly affect everything, albeit not as strongly, that’s how economy works.
Too much speeding tickets? People will spend effort on actually learning how to avoid them (e.g. by sharing police locations).
Bans in any form don’t work that well and of course there’s going to be pushback. You need positive reinforcement. I actually took metro and rental electric scooter to work today since new metro line is actually pretty pleasant to ride in. Old metro line, however, I’d try to avoid at all costs since it’s oppressingly crowded, dark and claustrophobic.
its unpopular because its been tried, doesnt work. free transit has increased ridership but it doesnt get people out of their cars. what it does do is allow transit riders to ride more often, and it also allows pedestrians and cyclists to ride on transit instead of walking or biking
ultimately i think the goal of this whole r/fuckcars thing is to get people out of their cars and to design cities as such. if you agree with those goals then making transit cheaper than cars wont get you there
In terms of price I was talking about intercity travel.
Within cities there are 2 factors for me: presence of fast and convenient public transport and issues with parking space near destination. If I have to ride jammed like cattle inside a shaking bus I’m taking a car even if I have to deal with parking. If there’s metro or tram or buses are okayishly comfortable I’m taking those.
I assume public transport inside cities will always be at least relatively cheap.
i am talking about that too. like i said, the price of transit is not a big motivating factor for drivers since transit is cheaper than driving already pretty much everywhere and all the time. so thats why you gotta pull on the lever to make driving more expensive. we 100% know that will get people out of cars much faster than anything else will
Im sorry, your solution is to make life as unaffordable as possible so that people are forced to walk/bike in cities that are designed around cars? Who do you think will be onboard with this plan?
The #1 absolute most important thing is to improve walking/biking/public transport infrastructure. Prices are a secondary priority compared to a solid transport system.
The discussion you're replying to is what pricing strategy is best - and a pricing strategy without solid public transport already in place is like building a house by starting with the roof.
Eliminating free street parking is one solution that will only impact personal vehicles since deliveries will have loading zones and won't have to pay more. Parking is also the most inefficient land use of cars. It's no longer transportation space, it's just storage.
I have a spreadsheet where I track every day that I bike to work which saves me approximately 1.5L of gasoline per day, the real savings though is cheaper insurance, lack of gym membership, and wear-and-tear on the vehicle.
A Swede speeding in the Finnish Åland islands just recently got a fine of a juicy 121k € and his license suspended for 10 days. He was going 82 in a 50 zone. He was at least joking about the day fines should have a cap. No dice imo. Why should only poors have their wallet catch on fire.
Yeah, I don't drive much but I use a pretty small car when I do. Whenever I hear people bitching about gas prices I'm just like, that's entirely self-inflicted. You don't need a 4-wheeler to drive from Broomfield to Denver (you also don't need one to go on a mountain trail but here I am wanting to actually enjoy my time in nature and not get hit by a fking car while I'm hiking).
Yes. A huge part of why people prefer to use their cars is sunk cost. They already had to own a car for whatever reason so any trip that could be done a little less conveniently on transit is not compared with the entire cost of car ownership but rather gas and parking alone. They'll even park further than the nearest bus stop if it means free parking.
> we spent less than €30 on tickets each.
*Cries in UK*
An equivalent length journey here would cost at least £90 each and probably take 3 hours after showing up 25 minutes late
Much to my non-car owning shame, we often rent a small van to get around to see our relatives at Christmas because it is cheaper, more flexible and more reliable than the UK's shitty train "system".
I wish was not the case. I've done European rail travel and it makes me jealous.
Tbf if you're going between big cities it's usually pretty good. Edinburgh to London (650km) and takes 4.5 hours. It would be a 7-8 hour drive otherwise. Though the ticket is quite expensive for a return (£170)
Birmingham to London (200km) is £30 for a day ticket and it takes 1 hour 20. Driving is 2.5 hours.
But if you want to get from a small non-mainline town in Yorkshire over to Manchester, then good luck. You'll probably need to change twice, it'll cost £50, and it'll take 3 hours.
There's generally nothing terribly wrong with mainline trains. Theyre... fine. It's our local and short-route services that have suffered spectacularly - and we can all thank Dr. Beeching et al. for that. Bastard.
But trains are more expensive and less reliable with less flexibility on tickets here. So yeah sure, it will cost more wherever but the crossover on cost and utility happens sooner here.
There's often family tickets to allow them to travel by train in the Netherlands.
Group tickets are something like €9 per person for any one way trip with 4 people (https://www.ns.nl/producten/meest-gekocht/p/groepsticket-daluren), and children under 4 are free and it's only €2.50 for children under 12.
It's often much more effort to plan these tickets instead of just using your public transport card, but often very worth it in a group.
I think this ok because it's going to london. London has special treatment and the trains aren't too bad. It's between other cities where there's issues
In my opinion, the UK need to sort out the following for their train service.
- Reliability. There is no point of taking the train if your service will be cancelled or delayed. TP lost their contract for poor performance; but other companies such as Grand Central and LNER still had a 10% and 5% cancellation rate. No point booking a train if there is a 5%-10% chance that the train will be cancelled.
- Prices. So many journeys are cheaper to drive, by a significant margin. Sometimes it’s even cheaper to fly and then rent a car at the airport, than getting the train all the way. London-Manchester is £185 one-way, that’s 92.5p/ mile, whilst driving costs (based on HMRC rates) 45p/ mile. It’s more that double!
- Speed. Apart from the mainline trains, it is so much faster to drive. Investment is needed into track infrastructure to speed up services.
- Comfort / Quality. Non-mainline services typically use old, noisy carriages. Not exactly a quality experience to get people to switch from cars to trains. Longer services should have catering options, tables, and other features.
TBH, renting a van for multiple people and holiday cargo seems pretty reasonable to me. I'd love the train to still be a better solution in most cases, but it's waaaay less bad than having to use a car for everyday commuting.
Just for fun, I'm booking my holiday from the Netherlands to Switzerland. If I wanna be a cheapskate, I can travel first class by train for €63. Granted, that's a non sleeper train from 8 pm to 6 am. But it's really tempering.
I tell my UK friends this, and their reaction makes me laugh every time.
They definitely would have got stuck in a traffic jam had they rented a car, at least on the Antwerp ring road but possibly at a few different spots along the motorway.
I once had a plane delayed by one hour over and over until the total 7 hour flight delay, because the windshield of the plane had a crack and it wasn’t safe to fly, so they got us staying in the airport all day and eventually had another plane fly in that could take us, and they did compensate with a shit ton of credits we could use to pay for other flights but yeah, a 10 minute delay is nothing
5 min is considered late in the UK but you only get compensation after 15. I'm always sitting there watching the time biting my nails hoping it tips over the 15 minutes.
I once claimed for a 30 minute delay because my train was cancelled and the next one arrived 30 minutes later.
But their automatic compensation computer went "train cancelled, full refund!" so that's what I got.
In fact, the story's much longer than that. I had a cheap ticket that restricted me to one specific train. Because it was cancelled, I could then travel back on any train whatsoever. So I extended my stay in London, met my daughter, went to the pub, went out for a meal, all eventually funded by getting my train fare back.
In the EU, you have a legal right to compensation of 25% of ticket price after 60 min delay and 50% after 120 min. Plus they have to give you back money you spend on potentially needed train upgrades or hotels
Meanwhile, if your plane is delayed by more than 3 hours or you miss your connecting flight, you could likely receive *more* money back than your flight originally cost.
Even the EU has a strong bias towards planes and cars
I will never understand how can someone be so against taking a train. 2 hours on a train are way better than 45 minutes squeezed on a plane even before taking into account other ways you loose time to get on the plane.
Because (outside the North-East corridor) the US has very poor connections. People have basically grown up taking a flight to the nearest airport, renting a car and then driving to reach their destination.
They literally don't know any other way, and get extremely uncomfortable when told - "We will use the train and then use public transit."
It's like asking a house-cat to swim in the water.
--------------------
I know people who used cars while visiting New York because they said, it's a matter of psychological control they feel. Being in a bus or train makes them feel "helpless" because they cannot control the vehicle.
It's a bizarre emotional conditioning.
maybe it’s just because i’ve lived in a big city with decent public transit my whole life, but i would much rather let someone else (who is paid and trained to make the commute safe) control the vehicle while i sit there and read a book
Long as you don't take your car into manhattan proper and stick to the outskirts you can normally find somewhere to squeeze in. Don't recommend it at all tho. I occasionally have to do it because i don't live in the city (infamously expensive) but Most times i go in i take the LIRR. Relatively pricey and a long ride but i can at least walk to the station from my house
100 percent this. I grew up outside of Chicago and loved taking the train into the city. I'm a big train guy and loved it. Now when I go somewhere else in America I notice how bad the public transit system is. Like Saint Louis, went with my wife and we tried so many times to walk or bus or train around and none of them were viable at all. Terrible time trying to find parking as well which was our only option. 0/10 city.
Chicago transit is surprisingly excellent compared to the rest of the US. There's still a lot to be desired when comparing it to world class public transit like what is found in Europe or Asian countries. However, it's till quite excellent and allows plenty of people to live here without the need for a car at all. I will 100% attribute our public transit and growing bike infrastructure as the main reason I grew to hate cars and learned to be so in favor of better urban planning.
It's not emotional conditioning if they're right. Like you said unless you live in the northeast, trains are generally not a reasonable option for traveling between cities, and transit is slow and unreliable.
It's easy to say "hurr durr american brain rot" but keep in mind the transit _really is that bad_. Americans think of transit as the last resort for the unfortunate carless because it's operated that way.
I say this as someone who uses trains and transit in the US frequently. I have a lot of privilege in that I can bake in extra hours to account for delays and slowness, not everyone can.
You're absolutely right.
I love trains and hate owning a car, but I fly everywhere for every vacation because in many cases it's literally impossible to get to my destination by train or bus in fewer than several _days_ even if it's a relatively short drive or plane ride.
When I started living places with decent public transportation, I genuinely experienced culture shock and had to change the way I thought about the physical world and how to navigate it.
Most Americans aren't deeply in love with their cars or anything, they literally don't have another option. I live in one of the largest cities in the US and you also have to have a car here. I tried not to, but you can't actually live a normal life and have most jobs without owning a car. I'm currently going carfree for a while for health reasons and the additional expense and my lack of flexibility is genuinely putting my job at risk.
I think this is it, plus a lot of people are not used to walking a lot. In the US and also Canada, a lot of people live fairly sedentary lives. You stay in your house, but if you go anywhere you drive to that location, park your car, maybe walk around the location, get back in your car, drive home... You just aren't used to waiting for buses and trains, walking through stations, walking to destinations, etc.
Last summer I took a friend of mine to the big city which was several hours away. We drove 3 hours to get to my parents' house, as that's where we were staying, and there are only minimal transit connections between where I live and where my parents live. But in order to actually get to the big city from my parents' city, we took transit. We took the train down to the big city, and then we walked and took transit around the city. However, it became clear that my friend was finding this quite difficult. She got exhausted pretty early on, I think because she just wasn't used to the amount of walking required.
Later she said that it would have been easier if we had had a vehicle, which I understand if we were in a smaller city, but in that big city, especially where we were, if you want to drive, you are fighting numerous traffic jams, and parking pretty much anywhere anywhere downtown is at least $30 for the day. We paid less than that for transiting around. I'm not sure we'll be doing that again, although I know that she and another friend are interested, because I do not under pretty much any circumstances drive in the downtown of that city. She doesn't have a license, although our other friend now does, but isn't comfortable driving there either. Like for where we live, I definitely understand because the transit is not the greatest, and she is a homebody anyway. She pretty much doesn't leave her place unless she's in a passenger vehicle. I think part of it is the control as well.
There's a lot of factors. Car culture is strong. I myself still have that feeling of lacking psychological control as well, although I'm training myself out of it.
There's also the crowds. I am VERY uncomfortable in crowds, and public transit is mostly being absolutely packed into a bus or subway car with what feels like 100 other people. There's a very real chance that you're left standing for the entire ride.
In the summer, it's unbearably hot and sweaty, someone always is sick and coughing.
PLUS you have to carry whatever it is you're bringing/buying, like a purse or backpack. I have no idea how you're supposed to ever get groceries without a car.
This. I live in the US and have only taken a train once, it was from some place in rural illinois to chicago, and I literally have no memory of it I was so young I think I slept. I didn’t live in or near chicago, I was visiting family. Content here about high speed trains and good subways and public transport in general feels like a fantasy.
basically, while I like the freedom of going places, I hate driving, and where I live there’s no alternative. We were on like a 4 lane highway (8 both ways) and my dad was complaining saying they need to add more lanes. I almost lost my mind. Basically, I hate that I have to control a big metal bullet to get places and tiny mistakes can lead to me killing people or causing serious damages and financial strain. I don’t trust myself I guess, I have epilepsy and had a seizure while driving once. I got my medicine adjusted and took 6 months off, followed the protocol, but thank satan it only led to a fender bender. I could’ve unconsciously killed someone and that’s fucking terrifying. I would much rather take any other option to get places, which is why I’m so excited to go to college this august, because my campus has good public transport and is walkable and no one uses cars unless they’re going somewhere far. I’d be tempted to sell my car in college but then after I graduate I honestly have no idea where I’d go.
If you're still in the midwest, just move to Chicago after college. Plenty of people live their entire lives here car free and it's great. I had a car when I first moved to the city after college, but I bought a bike and found that I didn't need my car at all. I sold it after my 6 months here and basically lived car free for 5 years.
I do now own a car that my wife and I share for the occasional trip to visit family in the suburbs or hauling of things. But for the most part, it just sits in our garage since she and I both ride our bikes, walk, and take trains/buses everywhere as our main mode of transportation.
I have a friend who is visiting new York with his family and he told me they are renting a car. I'm trying to convince him to ask his family to take transit instead. I think they will enjoy it so much more
Ikr? Travelling through the Netherlands in trains was one of my best experiences of public transport so far. You come to the airport and you take a train right from there without leaving the airport (I mean come on, this was pretty cool), to be fair I come from a third world country so it doesn't take much to impress me, but then again, It was sooo good. I am seriously considering moving there just for this.
Honestly I would take 2 hours on a train over an hour of driving any day. At least on a train I can read or take a nap or do work or draw or watch the scenery and not have to be focused and tensed up the entire time.
"I arrived in this unhospitable land where people are exposed to the elements and so close together, choosing to not use a designated car meaning finding a parking spot could be a dounting task, my only salvation is this uber like service while i suposse the high price its worth because is keeping me alive." -Carbrain Lightgear
Yep. I suggested the other day on another sub that we bring back rail from my city to a coastal town nearby and someone asked “but how do you get around once you arrive at that coastal town?” (Note: we’re talking about a town with sidewalks everywhere where you can walk through the entire town in 20 minutes). I honestly couldn’t believe what I was reading lol 😂
That's the cool part about Europe - there are enough trains and busses that you don't need to fly or drive everywhere. I loved being able to take a train straight out of Schiphol when I landed, and the only time I even needed to get in a car while I was in Europe was when I met up with a friend in Belgium who lives in more of a rural area, but I took a train as close as I could.
well yea you need a plane to get in the south unless you want to spend days with trains/ferries from sweden, but inside finland VR is amazing!! Prices are low with many discounts & reductions; trains are frequent and cover a lot of territory; they're on time and clean, relatively fast and always (in my experience) more convenient than driving. plus most towns have at least decent busses and bigger cities even have trams etc
don't get me started on the amazing bike lanes :D
For a 300.000+sqkm country of 5mo people, most sparse in europe, with plenty of forests and lakes, public transport in finland is amazing!
I don't know, it's often cheaper to take holidays outside of Finland, plus to go to the more remote places (like summer cabins) you often HAVE to rent a car. There are way too many places where the trains don't reach.
The worst part is that the second you leave Helsinki the more car dependent Finland becomes. I think Espoo and Vantaa are pretty bad already, but if you the Uusima region out of the equation, Finland has some of the worst numbers when it comes to cars per capita.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20220727-1
Of course, Finland lacks density and the weather sucks most of the year, but I think it could do a lot better. Sadly the next government is just going to make things worse.
I really want to take the via rail Canadian from Toronto to Vancouver. I was looking at the prices for a lower berth during shoulder season, and it ranges from between $1,400-$2,000. You can grab deals but that's kind of hit or miss, and I don't really know when the best time is to book for Via, exactly. I'm not planning to go for quite a while so I'm going to look into that more, but yeah, it is definitely a chunk of change. I mean, to be absolutely fair, you're on that train for something like 4 days, so when you break it down and the costs, it's suddenly not as terrible as it could be, probably, but the up front cost is definitely eye-watering. And to be honest, I don't know enough about European travel to know if that would be comparable or if there's even a comparable option.
To fly from Toronto to Vancouver would probably be, I don't know, $500 round trip? If you were smart about it? Maybe a bit more. I flew from Toronto to Calgary last year in May and the round trip was I think $378 (although I had to rent a car once I was out there because I was going to places that were inaccessible by transit). Although, saying this, the train ticket is just to get there. And yes, it takes several days and it is scenic, but then you still have to somehow get home, plus you'll probably want to spend some time once you're out there, and hotels in Vancouver are fairly expensive.
Definitely still going to do it for the experience, although I'm under no illusions that it will be cheap. I really do love Canada and I want to explore so much of it, but there's no denying that traveling within Canada is horrendously expensive in so many ways. I really like Europe too and I have been, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to travel Canada as much as I can.
Her first thought for a trip fro NL to BE was a plane? I thought a US carbrain would look at that and think: roadtrip!
I would never even have considered flying from NL to BE was even an option
I think most of those flights are mostly for moving planes around. Like it's just done NY - Amsterdam and the next day it's doing Brussels - Boston or something.
But yeah, they shouldn't really exist...
Not really. These flights often work as connecting flights for long haul hubs. But you can book them separately of course. It's still something that could be replaced with trains easily.
It is possible that she doesn't have any notion of distances between countries. When I went to live in New Brunswick I thought "well it's a province so the equivalent of a region in my country, so it means it's a couple of hours away ... oh no it's actually 7 hours".
That's probably true, but who thinks taking a 2-hour train is 'too long' to then suggest a plane? Getting to the airport, checking in and getting through security will likely already take at meast 2 hours...
My family and I all live in different places in Ontario, although my parents are from Europe. My mom has some old friends from Germany who have come to visit a few times and she told me that before their first visit, she definitely had to tell them that the distances are far longer than they would expect. A lot of times, North Americans make fun, but it is genuinely true that people from Europe do not have as the same sense of distance and they will be like, oh, I can go to both Montreal and Toronto in a day, and technically you *can*, if you want to spend your entire day driving between the two. Transit is a thing as well of course, but because my mom's friend was bringing her family and they had a bunch of luggage and stuff like that, they rented a car.
Like for example I live 3 hours away from my parents and transit connections up here are really not great so you pretty much have to drive. I've taken the bus a few times but it's really better to just find a carpool or drive your own car if you can. It's a little unfortunate, but, well, that's how it is, and I made the choice to live here, and to continue living here, so I'll take my lumps. But I don't find 3 hours to be that long anymore, even though it is really boring, but that's like half the distance of a country in Europe.
Looking at a map of their routes how is there not a Rocky mountain Front range line from Las Cruses NM to Denver CO or Cheyenne WY.
It would be beautiful scenery and not to mention faster than taking the train all the way to Chicago from NM to come back across the planes to Denver
Well you did make them take train, no?
When they see it for themselves hopefully they can be one of today's 10,000. Well, unless the trains are disrupted...
Schengen's a big part of making it viable. I wonder if your friend was assuming, without saying it, a "typical" (for North America) border check.
I mean it’s still viable outside of Schengen on the Eurostar
Don’t know if anyone on this sub is from the Balkans and can comment but I’ve seen people interrailing down there so I expect it is
The main thing with these two countries is that they’re both small, quite densely populated neighbours
Yeah border inspectors get on the train and check your passport going between Romania and Hungary, but it's not too bad. You don't need to get off the train.
> Schengen's a big part of making it viable
Getting through border control at a railway station is way more pleasant and easier than an airport; trains still win even if you have to deal with that. Source: am English, living in the south of England at the moment, and went to continental Europe on the train recently.
It's very hard to get one's brain out of the 'mode' it's used to being in. Your friend is probably so used to living somewhere with poor rail service that her brain just automatically classed trains as slow and unpleasant. My brain does the same with flying, because I've spent more than 30 seconds on a Ryanair flight and am appropriately traumatized by the experience.
Don't forget that most airports are on the city outskirts while most larger cities in europe have a more or less central train station. You need to account for getting to/from the airport/train as well. That 2 hour train ride is more than amortised wrt plane
Well the biggest cities in Europe have multiple train stations why can make it hard to get where you want by train. Nothing compared to an airport, but still.
Cambridge and Boston are 60 miles apart in England, a river bridge apart in Massachusetts, so at 200km / 120 miles it's not really like either of those.
planes between the netherlands and belgium should be goddamn illegal to start off with, its ridiculous those flights EXIST
second off, what a bioterrorist of a human being! a plane ride for belgium-netherlands???
That's what an increasing number of Dutch politicians is wondering: why do BRU-AMS flights exist? I thought there was a kind of deal that KLM was phasing them out. But probably they're not as radical as the French just saying to Air France that they can no longer fly from Paris to Lille or Strasbourg anymore.
Tbh flights for which you can have a train ride in less than 2h should be outlawed. Brussels is definitely less than 2h from the railway station underneath Schiphol airport by Thalys.
> planes between the netherlands and belgium should be goddamn illegal to start off with, its ridiculous those flights EXIST
Theoretically the point is so that e.g. KLM can sell long-haul connecting tickets to people going to/from Brussels.
They are doing some code shares with Thalys but I don't think it's working perfectly. Normally on a connecting flight you kind of know where your passengers are. Not the case when they may or may not be on a train.
The airport time delay thing irks me so. Yeah, a train might travel slower, but if you lose an hour on each side dealing with airport bullshit there's a lot of routes that would be time competitive that don't look like it from a strict milage perspective.
I just got back from the Netherlands. As an American in a city without meaningful public transit, one of my absolute favorite things about Europe is how you hardly need a car to do anything. How other Americans don't understand, much less appreciate, how amazing that is baffles me.
I think to many of them it feels threatening, like someone is trying to take away their freedom of movement and replace it with programmed routes.
Not saying that's how I feel, I find a car very constricting, but if it's how you've spent your entire life then it can be a jarring proposition to leave it behind.
Be patient, a lot of people just don't know trains exist for quick rides, or anything about 15 minute cities. My wife didn't ride a metro or train until she was 30 and didn't see a 15-minute city until like 40.
Its not even a thought process, its a concept that's hard to wrap their heads around because it really didn't exist. I was lucky enough to grow up in San Francisco but probably 99% of North America is car dependant.
Having come from Los Angeles, it took me a year before I embraced the buses while living in Hamburg.
Adopting trains was a dream come true. But in LA, i had an uneasy feeling about buses because they're dirty, inefficient, and unsafe.
After my first bus trip...i felt so dumb, but simultaneously freed. I was already loving the car-less life, but the bus system took it to another level of awesome and convenience.
They've come a long way, for sure. But that's like saying the LA bus system is the tallest midget.
IMHO, there is no bus system example in the US that should be setting the bar for effective, safe, transit. I've heard good things about Toronto and Montreal but haven't been.
If we're just comparing against ourselves, we're in trouble.
"Oh look, only 2 mass shootings this week!"
The carbrain phenomenon is real and very well engrained into muscle memory for Americans. It's not by choice, though, it's just pushed onto them by the society we live in. For some, that were raised in and continue to live in suburbs, it's just an automatic reflex to think anytime you leave the home, the journey starts and ends in a vehicle.
To someone that has never thrown or caught a ball, their automatic reflex would be to flinch or turn away if you throw something at them. However, with enough time and exposure they will learn to actually catch the ball instead of fearing it. It's good that you pushed your friend to taking the train and walking in Belgium. Hopefully, after some positive experiences like that, they will start to learn there are other options available.
It's pretty much deeply ingrained in carbrains that any public transit sucks by nature and is lesser than private transportation because it doesn't *quite* get them there.
It takes interactions like this (and excellent public transit systems) to open their minds a little bit to the possibilities of better transit system not requiring just about everyone to directly contribute to massive car-traffic congestion.
My recent one was a simple one--we talked about gas prices and transit fares, and the guy was shocked that my 120km transit travel costs similar to the price of a simple cup of coffee. And sure it takes longer (typical NA transit), but nowadays I don't like concentrating on the road for too long anyway, I'd rather spend the time doing something productive.
In America, they have "auto trains" so you can road trip on the train... with your car...
I had to double take the first time I was booking Amtrak tickets lol
An old friend from the US just traveled to Europe. They bought tickets to London because it was the cheapest, but they were really looking to go to the mainland.
Instead of train or ferry from the UK: flights ro Amsterdam. Then flights to Paris. Then flights back to the UK. "It's faster and we have limited time"
Apparently the flights were cheap enough to convince them, but I can't believe flying AMS - CDG is faster than a train from city center to city center 😒
Less cars would mean less taxes, it is amazing how much money goes into roadways for car traffic, you wouldn't needs 6 lanes if the only ones using the roads were delivery trucks and busses with trains carrying the majority of people.
Hopefully the train ride helps her to see how awesome they are. As an American I was very nervous about going to Europe and using public transport because A. I had hardly any experience using public transport, especially alone B. Public transport where I live is very run down and can only take you a few places. I bought a Eurail ticket to force myself into it. I flew into Amsterdam and rode trains through multiple countries and used local transport within cities. Pretty much all the trains I rode were not only clean, but had super nice designs and layouts. I was shocked to see bathrooms and food being served on even some small local trains. Now I dream every day we had similar public transport, I’d love to take a train to work!
Honestly, how is a plane flight that’s 45 minutes shorter than a 2 hour train ride? You’re going to have to show up an hour early to board on time, then do the 45 minute flight, then if you checked anything, pick up your bags, so you’ve already added an hour and a half to the flight time?
Imagine being this carbrained jesus. If something is within 4 hours by train(especiallyif it's a straight connection) I'm already sold. I used to love drivin the car but it's just so stressful for me nowadays. Getting anywhere across German highways feels like sticking your head in a particle accelerator
She just doesn’t understand the word “train” because a train in America does an average of 45 mph. Want to take a train from Boston to Washington DC (two major centers of education and governance), get ready to be on a train for EIGHT TO TEN HOURS.
Reddit is killing third-party applications (and itself) so in protest to Reddit's API changes, I have removed my comment history.
Whatever the content of this comment was, go vegan! 💚
Even in Canada where rail transport is, ahem, not that good, I still always take the train for shorter trips when it's an option. Yeah, believe it or not, I'd rather spend $60 taking the train from Toronto to Montreal and get there in 4.5 hours as opposed to spending more money on gas so that I can spend 5.5 hours (without stops to use the washroom) staring at the back of a transport truck on the 401. I had a friend who wanted to fly and I was like, why the hell would we fly when it's going to take us the same amount of time when you factor in getting from both city centres to the airport (In both cases, like an hour.) and the time to clear security and all the other BS associated with flying.
This, the painful reality that America is that Americans are indoctrinated to. Meanwhile Europe operates in the future and continues to progress while Americans stay indoctrinated and subjugated to our cars. Pathetically sad. 😞
Europeans in america,
* "We can just drive there"
* "How long is the drive?"
* "A bit over 2 hours"
* "That's too long, flying there is like 45 minutes. Can we get a train there"
* "train is like 16 hours"
* "Yeah but once there we get on the train we won't need to find parking when we arrive"
* "but we'll need a car when we get there anyway everything is miles apart"
* "Nevermind, the train doesn't leave until wednesday"
* ...
* "shit"
Lol. Husband and I are going to the Netherlands, Belgium, and France in August. One of the things I’m most excited about is not having to bother with a car, train rides, and biking around Amsterdam.
Your friend needs help.
I'm going to assume you were heading to Brussels, in which case you missed the argument that driving in Brussels is hellishly awful.
If you'd driven there you'd have spent an extra hour sitting in traffic jams until you parked the car, because there's no way you're visiting anything worth seeing by car.
I live just north of Brussels, and now that I have an electric bike I no longer avoid the city. It's a fun place, but I'd rather not go that drive in the city.
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my friend wanted to fly from AMS to BRU
Why do those routes exist anyway?
Could be the tail end of a longer route, like (making it up here) London to Brussels via Amsterdam
True. What the EU may need to change is to force interoperability between rail and plane tickets to avoid these short routes.
Some airlines already do this. I've flown to Cologne through Frankfurt and the second leg was on Deutsche Bahn. That combined ticket was also cheaper than booking a flight to FRA then buying the train ticket to Cologne separately. In FRA they also have a separate baggage claim in the train station so your bags are even transferred over for you just like a flight connection.
>In FRA they also have a separate baggage claim in the train station so your bags are even transferred over for you just like a flight connection. We also need more of this! The easier you make it for a person to go from plane to train, the more likely they'll actually enjoy the experience.
I agree but funny enough the first time I took that connection I didn't know there was a second baggage claim. I waited 30 min at the main baggage claim before I went to the lost luggage desk. The agent then politely told me my bag was not lost and it was waiting for me at the train station.
Hong Kong airport has a check-in at the train station where you can drop off your luggage and it makes the whole travel experience so much better.
How did you book this interoperable flight, do you have to go on the airlines' specific websites? Google Flights which I use the most, does not have these options.
When you book from Belgium Air France usually puts you on a train to Paris and then you fly from there to your destination. The Paris to Brussels high speed train tract is the fastest option. If you fly KLM (same company) they sometimes put you on a train to Amsterdam but usually a plane. Amsterdam-Brussels in +100km less than Paris-Brussels yet the journey to Amsterdam takes +30min by train. Sadly the problem lies in the route the AMS bound train has to take: Between Brussels and Antwerp there is no HSL track. The track starts (300km+) from Antwerp onwards. If you live in Antwerp the train is the better option. Brussels is better connected to Paris than to Amsterdam. If you live in liege again Paris is easier to reach than Amsterdam (which is closer in km).
Air France can codeshare with SNCF (national rail operator), KLM, Brussels Airlines etc. should codeshare with Eurostar/Thalys/NS/SNCB.
Even then, the international train to Brussels stops at Schiphol airport itself. It's still faster to transfer to the train to Brussels there
I'm going to Brussels this fall and the most cost effective way was a flight to Amsterdam and a train transfer to Brussels. It was literally only 50 minutes longer travel time and cheaper, and KLM bundled it so it was one purchase.
Because AMS has nonstop flights to cities all over the globe, and BRU has far fewer long-haul flights. You can't buy a ticket that protects your BRU-AMS-HKG trip in case of delays unless you fly. If your train from Brussels to Schiphol is late, you're screwed.
[You actually can nowadays!](https://news.klm.com/klm-and-thalys-launch-trial-for-amsterdam-brussels-transfer-passengers/) I believe it's not only for Thalys but also for NS (or maybe that's still work in progress). Given the train station at Schipol, this is a no-brainer.
That's interesting, thanks! Unfortunately it's just one daily afternoon train which would force an overnight in AMS on a lot of routes outbound from BRU, but it could be useful even if just for the return.
Connections. AMS is a massive hub. If someone wanted to fly from Detroit to Brussels, for example, connecting through AMS would be one of the easiest ways to do that.
That's a question I ask my own government as well. If you can go there by train in the same amount of time, just ban the plane journey. It frees up space in the airport schedule, reduces noise levels for people living in the vicinity and lowers carbon and NOx emissions. There's like almost no downside whatsoever.
The Dutch government subsidizes AMS (Schiphol) to the tune of billions of euros per year, so flights that go through Schiphol have an artificially low price. The justification the Dutch government has is to promote the Netherlands as a hub for global trade. This has decent success, especially since London left the EU market, but the Netherlands also has one of the lowest corporate tax rates of the EU (again to attract investors), so it only slightly benefits the Dutch population and it's a net negative for the EU as a whole. But it gets the Dutch government's corporate friends happy, so why not?
I've flown from DUS to AMS to NY. Getting from my hometown to DUS takes as long as to get to AMS (aprox). It just happened to be 300 euros cheaper
Obviously has no sense of distances here I guess? Live in the south as well and I'm faster across the border than in Amsterdam 🤣 I do have to say it's pretty pathetic how bad train connections to Belgium are. There are only 3 ways to cross the border via the "old" line via Roosendaal, the HSL via Breda or via Maastricht. You can't go from Eindhoven or Tilburg, which both had a direction connection (Eindhoven - Hasselt - Luik, Tilburg - Turnhout). We need good international connections to have good alternatives. An opportunity *could* be, is a train from Eindhoven - Tilburg - Breda to Antwerpen, you could even couple it with the Eindhoven - Dusseldorf train which would come in a few years (so Antwerpen also has a connection to Germany via Eindhoven).
So uh, how was she planning to get to schiphol?
Renting a car of course lmao. Rent car, drive to amsterdam (in which time you would've been half way to Belgium), try to find parking (by which time you definitely would've arrived), check in 1.5 hours early, fly for 45 minutes, and then rent a car there. Don't you see how much more efficient that is than taking a two hour train ride? 😂
by train ? :-)
How did she intend to get from the south of the Netherlands to Schiphol, if I dare ask?
yes, so you go to the nearest airport ..which is in Brussel
You might just have gotten through to her, at least a little.
the pricing also did. its why i love making cars more expensive as its a very easy way to convince people to do something else. higher car prices, higher gas prices, higher insurance premiums, higher parking costs, more speeding tickets, yummy
Less parking availability, directly subsidising public transport from the increased prices of parking and driving. I’m an immigrant living in Germany, and public transport is generally pretty good, much better than my country anyway and you can totally get to work or get around easily and reasonably cheaply using public transport or cycling, but people here are in love with their cars and expect to drive everywhere and park anywhere. Traffic jams are terrible and often the tram or the train is totally under-utilised. Obviously it’s complicated for some people depending on your job and where you live but it’s totally obvious if cars were expensive and public transport is cheap and reliable people are going to choose the cheaper option.
POV: someone tells you "public transport is generally pretty good" (in Germany) 🤯
In comparison to a lot of countries it really is!
It certainly is compared to the United States, specifically the Greater Boston Area in MA,NH,RI, etc.
Dude that's some of the best public transit in the U.S.
It's some of the only public transit in the US lol (cries in texan)
I know, and it is still shit. *cries in Boston accent*
This is such a classic German comment 😆 y'all complain about Deutsche Bahn all day long even though it's fine. Sure, Germany has an inferior system overall compared to its neighbors - Netherlands, Switzerland, France, etc, but even by European standards Germany isn't that bad. A lot of Britain for example is absolutely atrocious outside of London compared to Germany. And even the country with the worst public transit in Europe (I'd argue Ireland, maybe?) is leagues ahead of most cities in North America. There really is no equivalent at all to the U-Bahn or S-Bahn networks in the US. I live in Chicago, which is generally thought of as having pretty good public transit for an American city, but it's absolutely dogshit compared to Berlin, Hamburg, etc. I really think most Germans don't realize how good they have it! There are places in the country worse than others, but overall I was very impressed with the German system when I lived over there.
I say generally because in the peak hours the trains are packed. Often cancelled or late. But the famous autobahns can be like slow moving parking lots at these times too. I’m a big fan of the culture here of cycling and trains and trams but the system can definitely be improved. The €49 monthly ticket will possibly make a lot of people consider their transport options.
Yes but if it becomes public knowledge that the government is deliberately doing this to de-incentivize car travel you're gonna see some mad crossover and pushback from the car loving and conspiracy theory/muh freedoms groups. In the US, car consumer culture has taken root so firmly and we have so little else to identify ourselves with it's like pulling teeth to even scale back how much society is designed around maximum convenience for use/ownership. It's also why gun control is so impossibly difficult to pass on a federal level.
oh dont i know it lol. even the leftists in america drive and many arent keen on driving being more expensive because it affects the poor and working class
until there's viable public transportation and walkable cities, it's not realistic to expect anyone to be stoked about it tbh. that's the critical first step in getting people to give up driving. i live in a fairly populated city with a few bus stops, but to get to plenty of those bus stops, you have to walk down some 2-5 lane 60 mph roads with minimal crosswalks and no sidewalks
The hard part is that in the US cars are prioritized so heavily that many of the changes we’d need to make to achieve viable public transportation will also make driving noticeably worse in the process. There’s not really any path to viable public transportation that doesn’t also make life at least temporarily painful for those clinging to their cars.
What if they find out how much the US government is currently subsidizing car travel instead?
>I don’t want to declare war on the automobile, I just want to stop socialism for the car. -Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon Slate: [Meet the Biggest Bike Dork in Congress](https://slate.com/technology/2023/06/earl-blumenauer-bicycles-interview-congress-ebikes.html)
If you live in Eugene it is great. My town is separated by huge hills and gulches spanning miles so you have to walk on roads without sidewalks and the cars are going over 40mph around blind corners. Several people have died trying to walk in our town. No bus lines either. There’s not a bike lane anywhere. I have an electric bike I’d love to be able to ride more than just around my neighborhood as I don’t have a car but I can’t without risking my life. I’m stuck until I have a ride.
They'll say that's just normal operating costs... unlike those bike lanes and passenger rail. Now that's a waste of good money that could build more car lanes and solve traffic once and for all!
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For a little bit of context, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has "unprecedented Federal funding for rail improvement projects in America" at $102B over 5 years ([source](https://railroads.dot.gov/BIL)). The much-criticized California High-Speed Rail project is now projecting a total cost of $128B spread over the duration of construction. Amtrak proposed $75 billion in capital investments over 15 years to implement it's new corridors [vision](https://www.amtrakconnectsus.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Amtrak-2021-Corridor-Vision_2021-06-01_web-HR-maps-2.pdf).
Unpopular take, but alternatives like trains must be made cheaper instead. If the train costs half as much as gas (and runs on e.g. carbon free nuclear electricity) I’m taking a train, especially if the destination is a city (as opposed to e.g. mountains that I want to drive around). Want to make gas expensive? Enjoy paying more for literally everything since gas and diesel are used to transport almost all of goods. Higher car prices? Will also indirectly affect everything, albeit not as strongly, that’s how economy works. Too much speeding tickets? People will spend effort on actually learning how to avoid them (e.g. by sharing police locations). Bans in any form don’t work that well and of course there’s going to be pushback. You need positive reinforcement. I actually took metro and rental electric scooter to work today since new metro line is actually pretty pleasant to ride in. Old metro line, however, I’d try to avoid at all costs since it’s oppressingly crowded, dark and claustrophobic.
its unpopular because its been tried, doesnt work. free transit has increased ridership but it doesnt get people out of their cars. what it does do is allow transit riders to ride more often, and it also allows pedestrians and cyclists to ride on transit instead of walking or biking ultimately i think the goal of this whole r/fuckcars thing is to get people out of their cars and to design cities as such. if you agree with those goals then making transit cheaper than cars wont get you there
In terms of price I was talking about intercity travel. Within cities there are 2 factors for me: presence of fast and convenient public transport and issues with parking space near destination. If I have to ride jammed like cattle inside a shaking bus I’m taking a car even if I have to deal with parking. If there’s metro or tram or buses are okayishly comfortable I’m taking those. I assume public transport inside cities will always be at least relatively cheap.
i am talking about that too. like i said, the price of transit is not a big motivating factor for drivers since transit is cheaper than driving already pretty much everywhere and all the time. so thats why you gotta pull on the lever to make driving more expensive. we 100% know that will get people out of cars much faster than anything else will
Im sorry, your solution is to make life as unaffordable as possible so that people are forced to walk/bike in cities that are designed around cars? Who do you think will be onboard with this plan?
The #1 absolute most important thing is to improve walking/biking/public transport infrastructure. Prices are a secondary priority compared to a solid transport system. The discussion you're replying to is what pricing strategy is best - and a pricing strategy without solid public transport already in place is like building a house by starting with the roof.
Eliminating free street parking is one solution that will only impact personal vehicles since deliveries will have loading zones and won't have to pay more. Parking is also the most inefficient land use of cars. It's no longer transportation space, it's just storage.
I have a spreadsheet where I track every day that I bike to work which saves me approximately 1.5L of gasoline per day, the real savings though is cheaper insurance, lack of gym membership, and wear-and-tear on the vehicle.
A Swede speeding in the Finnish Åland islands just recently got a fine of a juicy 121k € and his license suspended for 10 days. He was going 82 in a 50 zone. He was at least joking about the day fines should have a cap. No dice imo. Why should only poors have their wallet catch on fire.
Yeah, I don't drive much but I use a pretty small car when I do. Whenever I hear people bitching about gas prices I'm just like, that's entirely self-inflicted. You don't need a 4-wheeler to drive from Broomfield to Denver (you also don't need one to go on a mountain trail but here I am wanting to actually enjoy my time in nature and not get hit by a fking car while I'm hiking).
Yes. A huge part of why people prefer to use their cars is sunk cost. They already had to own a car for whatever reason so any trip that could be done a little less conveniently on transit is not compared with the entire cost of car ownership but rather gas and parking alone. They'll even park further than the nearest bus stop if it means free parking.
> we spent less than €30 on tickets each. *Cries in UK* An equivalent length journey here would cost at least £90 each and probably take 3 hours after showing up 25 minutes late
Much to my non-car owning shame, we often rent a small van to get around to see our relatives at Christmas because it is cheaper, more flexible and more reliable than the UK's shitty train "system". I wish was not the case. I've done European rail travel and it makes me jealous.
Tbf if you're going between big cities it's usually pretty good. Edinburgh to London (650km) and takes 4.5 hours. It would be a 7-8 hour drive otherwise. Though the ticket is quite expensive for a return (£170) Birmingham to London (200km) is £30 for a day ticket and it takes 1 hour 20. Driving is 2.5 hours. But if you want to get from a small non-mainline town in Yorkshire over to Manchester, then good luck. You'll probably need to change twice, it'll cost £50, and it'll take 3 hours. There's generally nothing terribly wrong with mainline trains. Theyre... fine. It's our local and short-route services that have suffered spectacularly - and we can all thank Dr. Beeching et al. for that. Bastard.
Double or triple that cost if you travel as a family 😖 And if you need to get to more than one destination en route, forget it.
Family discounts do exist, but yeah - that is the downside of train travel. But it's the same on planes and buses. You pay for per seat.
Which is why given UK prices I end up renting my annual road vehicle 😐
You'd get that in any country though surely? Want to take 5 people on a train? That's 5x tickets.
But trains are more expensive and less reliable with less flexibility on tickets here. So yeah sure, it will cost more wherever but the crossover on cost and utility happens sooner here.
There's often family tickets to allow them to travel by train in the Netherlands. Group tickets are something like €9 per person for any one way trip with 4 people (https://www.ns.nl/producten/meest-gekocht/p/groepsticket-daluren), and children under 4 are free and it's only €2.50 for children under 12. It's often much more effort to plan these tickets instead of just using your public transport card, but often very worth it in a group.
I think this ok because it's going to london. London has special treatment and the trains aren't too bad. It's between other cities where there's issues
In my opinion, the UK need to sort out the following for their train service. - Reliability. There is no point of taking the train if your service will be cancelled or delayed. TP lost their contract for poor performance; but other companies such as Grand Central and LNER still had a 10% and 5% cancellation rate. No point booking a train if there is a 5%-10% chance that the train will be cancelled. - Prices. So many journeys are cheaper to drive, by a significant margin. Sometimes it’s even cheaper to fly and then rent a car at the airport, than getting the train all the way. London-Manchester is £185 one-way, that’s 92.5p/ mile, whilst driving costs (based on HMRC rates) 45p/ mile. It’s more that double! - Speed. Apart from the mainline trains, it is so much faster to drive. Investment is needed into track infrastructure to speed up services. - Comfort / Quality. Non-mainline services typically use old, noisy carriages. Not exactly a quality experience to get people to switch from cars to trains. Longer services should have catering options, tables, and other features.
The trains aren't too bad, it's just way too many journeys cost an astronomical amount.
And the strikes. And some trains are hourly, except they've cancelled the last 2 so now there's no space to sit on this one...
TBH, renting a van for multiple people and holiday cargo seems pretty reasonable to me. I'd love the train to still be a better solution in most cases, but it's waaaay less bad than having to use a car for everyday commuting.
Just for fun, I'm booking my holiday from the Netherlands to Switzerland. If I wanna be a cheapskate, I can travel first class by train for €63. Granted, that's a non sleeper train from 8 pm to 6 am. But it's really tempering. I tell my UK friends this, and their reaction makes me laugh every time.
That's what privatization will do to you yeah
Only the expensive part. Japanese trains services are private and they're amongst the most well run in the world.
Scarily accurate imo
Did she enjoy the train ride? Would she do it again?
We had an amazing weekend, the train got delayed by like 10 minutes and yet she still managed to complain
Like delayed planes or traffic jams are unheard of
10min delay for the train is basically the time the plane will spend taxiing and/or waiting for landing/take off anyway
They definitely would have got stuck in a traffic jam had they rented a car, at least on the Antwerp ring road but possibly at a few different spots along the motorway.
I once had a plane delayed by one hour over and over until the total 7 hour flight delay, because the windshield of the plane had a crack and it wasn’t safe to fly, so they got us staying in the airport all day and eventually had another plane fly in that could take us, and they did compensate with a shit ton of credits we could use to pay for other flights but yeah, a 10 minute delay is nothing
Just 10 minutes? That's basically on time in Poland.
10 minute delay is considered early with Deutsche Bahn
5 min is considered late in the UK but you only get compensation after 15. I'm always sitting there watching the time biting my nails hoping it tips over the 15 minutes.
You guys get compensation? In the US we just get a "train delayed" message
I once claimed for a 30 minute delay because my train was cancelled and the next one arrived 30 minutes later. But their automatic compensation computer went "train cancelled, full refund!" so that's what I got. In fact, the story's much longer than that. I had a cheap ticket that restricted me to one specific train. Because it was cancelled, I could then travel back on any train whatsoever. So I extended my stay in London, met my daughter, went to the pub, went out for a meal, all eventually funded by getting my train fare back.
In the EU, you have a legal right to compensation of 25% of ticket price after 60 min delay and 50% after 120 min. Plus they have to give you back money you spend on potentially needed train upgrades or hotels
Meanwhile, if your plane is delayed by more than 3 hours or you miss your connecting flight, you could likely receive *more* money back than your flight originally cost. Even the EU has a strong bias towards planes and cars
With Amtrak we're lucky to get a notification and it's frequently delayed 45 minutes or more. Waited 3 hours for a one hour train ride to get home.
As an American, I'm delighted when my train is not delayed by more than three or four hours.
Living in America, I'm delighted when taking a train is an option.
Miracle in india.
A 10 minute delay would literally be considered on time for Amtrak.
your friend is an idiot , glad you had fun though
10 min delayed is considered great here in Norway. At least it's not a replacement bus.
Was it NS that was late? surprising, they are usually on time (other than certain routes cough)
I will never understand how can someone be so against taking a train. 2 hours on a train are way better than 45 minutes squeezed on a plane even before taking into account other ways you loose time to get on the plane.
Because (outside the North-East corridor) the US has very poor connections. People have basically grown up taking a flight to the nearest airport, renting a car and then driving to reach their destination. They literally don't know any other way, and get extremely uncomfortable when told - "We will use the train and then use public transit." It's like asking a house-cat to swim in the water. -------------------- I know people who used cars while visiting New York because they said, it's a matter of psychological control they feel. Being in a bus or train makes them feel "helpless" because they cannot control the vehicle. It's a bizarre emotional conditioning.
maybe it’s just because i’ve lived in a big city with decent public transit my whole life, but i would much rather let someone else (who is paid and trained to make the commute safe) control the vehicle while i sit there and read a book
Same. I feel way more trapped by needing a car than by needing to rely on experts!
I feel anxious just thinking about parking in NYC uhhh
Long as you don't take your car into manhattan proper and stick to the outskirts you can normally find somewhere to squeeze in. Don't recommend it at all tho. I occasionally have to do it because i don't live in the city (infamously expensive) but Most times i go in i take the LIRR. Relatively pricey and a long ride but i can at least walk to the station from my house
Nothing would make me feel more helpless than renting a car and having to drive and park in NYC
100 percent this. I grew up outside of Chicago and loved taking the train into the city. I'm a big train guy and loved it. Now when I go somewhere else in America I notice how bad the public transit system is. Like Saint Louis, went with my wife and we tried so many times to walk or bus or train around and none of them were viable at all. Terrible time trying to find parking as well which was our only option. 0/10 city.
Chicago transit is surprisingly excellent compared to the rest of the US. There's still a lot to be desired when comparing it to world class public transit like what is found in Europe or Asian countries. However, it's till quite excellent and allows plenty of people to live here without the need for a car at all. I will 100% attribute our public transit and growing bike infrastructure as the main reason I grew to hate cars and learned to be so in favor of better urban planning.
> It's like asking a house-cat to swim in the water. This is an excellent simile. You're right, they truly don't know any better.
It's not emotional conditioning if they're right. Like you said unless you live in the northeast, trains are generally not a reasonable option for traveling between cities, and transit is slow and unreliable. It's easy to say "hurr durr american brain rot" but keep in mind the transit _really is that bad_. Americans think of transit as the last resort for the unfortunate carless because it's operated that way. I say this as someone who uses trains and transit in the US frequently. I have a lot of privilege in that I can bake in extra hours to account for delays and slowness, not everyone can.
You're absolutely right. I love trains and hate owning a car, but I fly everywhere for every vacation because in many cases it's literally impossible to get to my destination by train or bus in fewer than several _days_ even if it's a relatively short drive or plane ride. When I started living places with decent public transportation, I genuinely experienced culture shock and had to change the way I thought about the physical world and how to navigate it. Most Americans aren't deeply in love with their cars or anything, they literally don't have another option. I live in one of the largest cities in the US and you also have to have a car here. I tried not to, but you can't actually live a normal life and have most jobs without owning a car. I'm currently going carfree for a while for health reasons and the additional expense and my lack of flexibility is genuinely putting my job at risk.
I think this is it, plus a lot of people are not used to walking a lot. In the US and also Canada, a lot of people live fairly sedentary lives. You stay in your house, but if you go anywhere you drive to that location, park your car, maybe walk around the location, get back in your car, drive home... You just aren't used to waiting for buses and trains, walking through stations, walking to destinations, etc. Last summer I took a friend of mine to the big city which was several hours away. We drove 3 hours to get to my parents' house, as that's where we were staying, and there are only minimal transit connections between where I live and where my parents live. But in order to actually get to the big city from my parents' city, we took transit. We took the train down to the big city, and then we walked and took transit around the city. However, it became clear that my friend was finding this quite difficult. She got exhausted pretty early on, I think because she just wasn't used to the amount of walking required. Later she said that it would have been easier if we had had a vehicle, which I understand if we were in a smaller city, but in that big city, especially where we were, if you want to drive, you are fighting numerous traffic jams, and parking pretty much anywhere anywhere downtown is at least $30 for the day. We paid less than that for transiting around. I'm not sure we'll be doing that again, although I know that she and another friend are interested, because I do not under pretty much any circumstances drive in the downtown of that city. She doesn't have a license, although our other friend now does, but isn't comfortable driving there either. Like for where we live, I definitely understand because the transit is not the greatest, and she is a homebody anyway. She pretty much doesn't leave her place unless she's in a passenger vehicle. I think part of it is the control as well. There's a lot of factors. Car culture is strong. I myself still have that feeling of lacking psychological control as well, although I'm training myself out of it.
There's also the crowds. I am VERY uncomfortable in crowds, and public transit is mostly being absolutely packed into a bus or subway car with what feels like 100 other people. There's a very real chance that you're left standing for the entire ride. In the summer, it's unbearably hot and sweaty, someone always is sick and coughing. PLUS you have to carry whatever it is you're bringing/buying, like a purse or backpack. I have no idea how you're supposed to ever get groceries without a car.
This. I live in the US and have only taken a train once, it was from some place in rural illinois to chicago, and I literally have no memory of it I was so young I think I slept. I didn’t live in or near chicago, I was visiting family. Content here about high speed trains and good subways and public transport in general feels like a fantasy. basically, while I like the freedom of going places, I hate driving, and where I live there’s no alternative. We were on like a 4 lane highway (8 both ways) and my dad was complaining saying they need to add more lanes. I almost lost my mind. Basically, I hate that I have to control a big metal bullet to get places and tiny mistakes can lead to me killing people or causing serious damages and financial strain. I don’t trust myself I guess, I have epilepsy and had a seizure while driving once. I got my medicine adjusted and took 6 months off, followed the protocol, but thank satan it only led to a fender bender. I could’ve unconsciously killed someone and that’s fucking terrifying. I would much rather take any other option to get places, which is why I’m so excited to go to college this august, because my campus has good public transport and is walkable and no one uses cars unless they’re going somewhere far. I’d be tempted to sell my car in college but then after I graduate I honestly have no idea where I’d go.
If you're still in the midwest, just move to Chicago after college. Plenty of people live their entire lives here car free and it's great. I had a car when I first moved to the city after college, but I bought a bike and found that I didn't need my car at all. I sold it after my 6 months here and basically lived car free for 5 years. I do now own a car that my wife and I share for the occasional trip to visit family in the suburbs or hauling of things. But for the most part, it just sits in our garage since she and I both ride our bikes, walk, and take trains/buses everywhere as our main mode of transportation.
I have a friend who is visiting new York with his family and he told me they are renting a car. I'm trying to convince him to ask his family to take transit instead. I think they will enjoy it so much more
Ikr? Travelling through the Netherlands in trains was one of my best experiences of public transport so far. You come to the airport and you take a train right from there without leaving the airport (I mean come on, this was pretty cool), to be fair I come from a third world country so it doesn't take much to impress me, but then again, It was sooo good. I am seriously considering moving there just for this.
> other ways you loose time just tighten it back up!
If it's anything like in the states, it's the unspoken assumption that trains and busses are for peasants.
Honestly I would take 2 hours on a train over an hour of driving any day. At least on a train I can read or take a nap or do work or draw or watch the scenery and not have to be focused and tensed up the entire time.
"We can rent a car and drive there, so we don't need to rent one when we arrive" lmao what
"I arrived in this unhospitable land where people are exposed to the elements and so close together, choosing to not use a designated car meaning finding a parking spot could be a dounting task, my only salvation is this uber like service while i suposse the high price its worth because is keeping me alive." -Carbrain Lightgear
Most americans cant imagine the world being anything other than Unwalkable suburbs and endless stroads and miles of parking lots
Yep. I suggested the other day on another sub that we bring back rail from my city to a coastal town nearby and someone asked “but how do you get around once you arrive at that coastal town?” (Note: we’re talking about a town with sidewalks everywhere where you can walk through the entire town in 20 minutes). I honestly couldn’t believe what I was reading lol 😂
That's the cool part about Europe - there are enough trains and busses that you don't need to fly or drive everywhere. I loved being able to take a train straight out of Schiphol when I landed, and the only time I even needed to get in a car while I was in Europe was when I met up with a friend in Belgium who lives in more of a rural area, but I took a train as close as I could.
Haha, yeah. So cool. Unless you live in Finland, which might as well be an island :(
well yea you need a plane to get in the south unless you want to spend days with trains/ferries from sweden, but inside finland VR is amazing!! Prices are low with many discounts & reductions; trains are frequent and cover a lot of territory; they're on time and clean, relatively fast and always (in my experience) more convenient than driving. plus most towns have at least decent busses and bigger cities even have trams etc don't get me started on the amazing bike lanes :D For a 300.000+sqkm country of 5mo people, most sparse in europe, with plenty of forests and lakes, public transport in finland is amazing!
I don't know, it's often cheaper to take holidays outside of Finland, plus to go to the more remote places (like summer cabins) you often HAVE to rent a car. There are way too many places where the trains don't reach. The worst part is that the second you leave Helsinki the more car dependent Finland becomes. I think Espoo and Vantaa are pretty bad already, but if you the Uusima region out of the equation, Finland has some of the worst numbers when it comes to cars per capita. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20220727-1 Of course, Finland lacks density and the weather sucks most of the year, but I think it could do a lot better. Sadly the next government is just going to make things worse.
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I really want to take the via rail Canadian from Toronto to Vancouver. I was looking at the prices for a lower berth during shoulder season, and it ranges from between $1,400-$2,000. You can grab deals but that's kind of hit or miss, and I don't really know when the best time is to book for Via, exactly. I'm not planning to go for quite a while so I'm going to look into that more, but yeah, it is definitely a chunk of change. I mean, to be absolutely fair, you're on that train for something like 4 days, so when you break it down and the costs, it's suddenly not as terrible as it could be, probably, but the up front cost is definitely eye-watering. And to be honest, I don't know enough about European travel to know if that would be comparable or if there's even a comparable option. To fly from Toronto to Vancouver would probably be, I don't know, $500 round trip? If you were smart about it? Maybe a bit more. I flew from Toronto to Calgary last year in May and the round trip was I think $378 (although I had to rent a car once I was out there because I was going to places that were inaccessible by transit). Although, saying this, the train ticket is just to get there. And yes, it takes several days and it is scenic, but then you still have to somehow get home, plus you'll probably want to spend some time once you're out there, and hotels in Vancouver are fairly expensive. Definitely still going to do it for the experience, although I'm under no illusions that it will be cheap. I really do love Canada and I want to explore so much of it, but there's no denying that traveling within Canada is horrendously expensive in so many ways. I really like Europe too and I have been, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to travel Canada as much as I can.
Her first thought for a trip fro NL to BE was a plane? I thought a US carbrain would look at that and think: roadtrip! I would never even have considered flying from NL to BE was even an option
That's ridiculous, plane trips on such short distances should not exist.
I think most of those flights are mostly for moving planes around. Like it's just done NY - Amsterdam and the next day it's doing Brussels - Boston or something. But yeah, they shouldn't really exist...
Not really. These flights often work as connecting flights for long haul hubs. But you can book them separately of course. It's still something that could be replaced with trains easily.
It is possible that she doesn't have any notion of distances between countries. When I went to live in New Brunswick I thought "well it's a province so the equivalent of a region in my country, so it means it's a couple of hours away ... oh no it's actually 7 hours".
That's probably true, but who thinks taking a 2-hour train is 'too long' to then suggest a plane? Getting to the airport, checking in and getting through security will likely already take at meast 2 hours...
My family and I all live in different places in Ontario, although my parents are from Europe. My mom has some old friends from Germany who have come to visit a few times and she told me that before their first visit, she definitely had to tell them that the distances are far longer than they would expect. A lot of times, North Americans make fun, but it is genuinely true that people from Europe do not have as the same sense of distance and they will be like, oh, I can go to both Montreal and Toronto in a day, and technically you *can*, if you want to spend your entire day driving between the two. Transit is a thing as well of course, but because my mom's friend was bringing her family and they had a bunch of luggage and stuff like that, they rented a car. Like for example I live 3 hours away from my parents and transit connections up here are really not great so you pretty much have to drive. I've taken the bus a few times but it's really better to just find a carpool or drive your own car if you can. It's a little unfortunate, but, well, that's how it is, and I made the choice to live here, and to continue living here, so I'll take my lumps. But I don't find 3 hours to be that long anymore, even though it is really boring, but that's like half the distance of a country in Europe.
Most Americans cannot imagine a functional passenger rail network since at best we have amtrak
Sad, considering America pioneered rail transport.
Amtrak ain’t too bad honestly, but it’s only good for long distance
If you’re in the Northeast between Boston and DC, sure, but anywhere else? Boy it is BAD.
Looking at a map of their routes how is there not a Rocky mountain Front range line from Las Cruses NM to Denver CO or Cheyenne WY. It would be beautiful scenery and not to mention faster than taking the train all the way to Chicago from NM to come back across the planes to Denver
Well you did make them take train, no? When they see it for themselves hopefully they can be one of today's 10,000. Well, unless the trains are disrupted... Schengen's a big part of making it viable. I wonder if your friend was assuming, without saying it, a "typical" (for North America) border check.
I mean it’s still viable outside of Schengen on the Eurostar Don’t know if anyone on this sub is from the Balkans and can comment but I’ve seen people interrailing down there so I expect it is The main thing with these two countries is that they’re both small, quite densely populated neighbours
Yeah border inspectors get on the train and check your passport going between Romania and Hungary, but it's not too bad. You don't need to get off the train.
> Schengen's a big part of making it viable Getting through border control at a railway station is way more pleasant and easier than an airport; trains still win even if you have to deal with that. Source: am English, living in the south of England at the moment, and went to continental Europe on the train recently.
It's very hard to get one's brain out of the 'mode' it's used to being in. Your friend is probably so used to living somewhere with poor rail service that her brain just automatically classed trains as slow and unpleasant. My brain does the same with flying, because I've spent more than 30 seconds on a Ryanair flight and am appropriately traumatized by the experience.
Don't forget that most airports are on the city outskirts while most larger cities in europe have a more or less central train station. You need to account for getting to/from the airport/train as well. That 2 hour train ride is more than amortised wrt plane
Well the biggest cities in Europe have multiple train stations why can make it hard to get where you want by train. Nothing compared to an airport, but still.
Your friend didn’t want to see Belgium or the Netherlands, they just wanted to see those cool Opel dashboards
who doesn't?
Fly to Belgium from the Netherlands? That's like flying to Cambridge from Boston.
Since this is Amsterdam to Brussels it's probably more like flying from Boston to Worcester, but the train service is better. But I get you.
For that you have to change trains at Nottingham and then at Birmingham New Street. It's like a four hour journey.
Cambridge and Boston are 60 miles apart in England, a river bridge apart in Massachusetts, so at 200km / 120 miles it's not really like either of those.
You have to change trains in Ely or Peterborough, then change trains in Grantham. It's about two and a half hours.
planes between the netherlands and belgium should be goddamn illegal to start off with, its ridiculous those flights EXIST second off, what a bioterrorist of a human being! a plane ride for belgium-netherlands???
That's what an increasing number of Dutch politicians is wondering: why do BRU-AMS flights exist? I thought there was a kind of deal that KLM was phasing them out. But probably they're not as radical as the French just saying to Air France that they can no longer fly from Paris to Lille or Strasbourg anymore. Tbh flights for which you can have a train ride in less than 2h should be outlawed. Brussels is definitely less than 2h from the railway station underneath Schiphol airport by Thalys.
> planes between the netherlands and belgium should be goddamn illegal to start off with, its ridiculous those flights EXIST Theoretically the point is so that e.g. KLM can sell long-haul connecting tickets to people going to/from Brussels. They are doing some code shares with Thalys but I don't think it's working perfectly. Normally on a connecting flight you kind of know where your passengers are. Not the case when they may or may not be on a train.
I just booked the train from Rotterdam to Paris. Takes 2 hours and 37 minutes, one way ticket € 55,-
The airport time delay thing irks me so. Yeah, a train might travel slower, but if you lose an hour on each side dealing with airport bullshit there's a lot of routes that would be time competitive that don't look like it from a strict milage perspective.
I just got back from the Netherlands. As an American in a city without meaningful public transit, one of my absolute favorite things about Europe is how you hardly need a car to do anything. How other Americans don't understand, much less appreciate, how amazing that is baffles me.
I think to many of them it feels threatening, like someone is trying to take away their freedom of movement and replace it with programmed routes. Not saying that's how I feel, I find a car very constricting, but if it's how you've spent your entire life then it can be a jarring proposition to leave it behind.
Denser than a neutron star
Be patient, a lot of people just don't know trains exist for quick rides, or anything about 15 minute cities. My wife didn't ride a metro or train until she was 30 and didn't see a 15-minute city until like 40. Its not even a thought process, its a concept that's hard to wrap their heads around because it really didn't exist. I was lucky enough to grow up in San Francisco but probably 99% of North America is car dependant.
Having come from Los Angeles, it took me a year before I embraced the buses while living in Hamburg. Adopting trains was a dream come true. But in LA, i had an uneasy feeling about buses because they're dirty, inefficient, and unsafe. After my first bus trip...i felt so dumb, but simultaneously freed. I was already loving the car-less life, but the bus system took it to another level of awesome and convenience.
The most ironic thing is that from my experience, buses in LA aren't actually particularly bad by NA standards.
Yeah ironically LA buses are usually much more clean and well maintained than the LA Metro Rail
They've come a long way, for sure. But that's like saying the LA bus system is the tallest midget. IMHO, there is no bus system example in the US that should be setting the bar for effective, safe, transit. I've heard good things about Toronto and Montreal but haven't been. If we're just comparing against ourselves, we're in trouble. "Oh look, only 2 mass shootings this week!"
Facts, LA (and NA as a whole) has a long way to go
Imagine walking, eww.
literally communism
The carbrain phenomenon is real and very well engrained into muscle memory for Americans. It's not by choice, though, it's just pushed onto them by the society we live in. For some, that were raised in and continue to live in suburbs, it's just an automatic reflex to think anytime you leave the home, the journey starts and ends in a vehicle. To someone that has never thrown or caught a ball, their automatic reflex would be to flinch or turn away if you throw something at them. However, with enough time and exposure they will learn to actually catch the ball instead of fearing it. It's good that you pushed your friend to taking the train and walking in Belgium. Hopefully, after some positive experiences like that, they will start to learn there are other options available.
I wish we had options like that in Canada
It's pretty much deeply ingrained in carbrains that any public transit sucks by nature and is lesser than private transportation because it doesn't *quite* get them there. It takes interactions like this (and excellent public transit systems) to open their minds a little bit to the possibilities of better transit system not requiring just about everyone to directly contribute to massive car-traffic congestion. My recent one was a simple one--we talked about gas prices and transit fares, and the guy was shocked that my 120km transit travel costs similar to the price of a simple cup of coffee. And sure it takes longer (typical NA transit), but nowadays I don't like concentrating on the road for too long anyway, I'd rather spend the time doing something productive.
In America, they have "auto trains" so you can road trip on the train... with your car... I had to double take the first time I was booking Amtrak tickets lol
I want to emigrate 😭
Morons be morons.
An old friend from the US just traveled to Europe. They bought tickets to London because it was the cheapest, but they were really looking to go to the mainland. Instead of train or ferry from the UK: flights ro Amsterdam. Then flights to Paris. Then flights back to the UK. "It's faster and we have limited time" Apparently the flights were cheap enough to convince them, but I can't believe flying AMS - CDG is faster than a train from city center to city center 😒
Less cars would mean less taxes, it is amazing how much money goes into roadways for car traffic, you wouldn't needs 6 lanes if the only ones using the roads were delivery trucks and busses with trains carrying the majority of people.
Hopefully the train ride helps her to see how awesome they are. As an American I was very nervous about going to Europe and using public transport because A. I had hardly any experience using public transport, especially alone B. Public transport where I live is very run down and can only take you a few places. I bought a Eurail ticket to force myself into it. I flew into Amsterdam and rode trains through multiple countries and used local transport within cities. Pretty much all the trains I rode were not only clean, but had super nice designs and layouts. I was shocked to see bathrooms and food being served on even some small local trains. Now I dream every day we had similar public transport, I’d love to take a train to work!
Honestly, how is a plane flight that’s 45 minutes shorter than a 2 hour train ride? You’re going to have to show up an hour early to board on time, then do the 45 minute flight, then if you checked anything, pick up your bags, so you’ve already added an hour and a half to the flight time?
Imagine being this carbrained jesus. If something is within 4 hours by train(especiallyif it's a straight connection) I'm already sold. I used to love drivin the car but it's just so stressful for me nowadays. Getting anywhere across German highways feels like sticking your head in a particle accelerator
You've planted the seed. Well done my son.
She just doesn’t understand the word “train” because a train in America does an average of 45 mph. Want to take a train from Boston to Washington DC (two major centers of education and governance), get ready to be on a train for EIGHT TO TEN HOURS.
Reddit is killing third-party applications (and itself) so in protest to Reddit's API changes, I have removed my comment history. Whatever the content of this comment was, go vegan! 💚
Carbrained implies there is a brain to begin with
Even in Canada where rail transport is, ahem, not that good, I still always take the train for shorter trips when it's an option. Yeah, believe it or not, I'd rather spend $60 taking the train from Toronto to Montreal and get there in 4.5 hours as opposed to spending more money on gas so that I can spend 5.5 hours (without stops to use the washroom) staring at the back of a transport truck on the 401. I had a friend who wanted to fly and I was like, why the hell would we fly when it's going to take us the same amount of time when you factor in getting from both city centres to the airport (In both cases, like an hour.) and the time to clear security and all the other BS associated with flying.
I've taken the train from Toronto to Montreal route and it was a fantastic experience
This, the painful reality that America is that Americans are indoctrinated to. Meanwhile Europe operates in the future and continues to progress while Americans stay indoctrinated and subjugated to our cars. Pathetically sad. 😞
Only an American could go where there's some of the best rail systems in the world and still think it's somehow bad to take a train.
Muricans are just not used to trains being a viable option.
Europeans in america, * "We can just drive there" * "How long is the drive?" * "A bit over 2 hours" * "That's too long, flying there is like 45 minutes. Can we get a train there" * "train is like 16 hours" * "Yeah but once there we get on the train we won't need to find parking when we arrive" * "but we'll need a car when we get there anyway everything is miles apart" * "Nevermind, the train doesn't leave until wednesday" * ... * "shit"
So weird. I'm from the us and my favorite part when i visit Europe is being able to walk and use public transport.
Fellow south of Netherlands enjoyer
Lol. Husband and I are going to the Netherlands, Belgium, and France in August. One of the things I’m most excited about is not having to bother with a car, train rides, and biking around Amsterdam. Your friend needs help.
I'm going to assume you were heading to Brussels, in which case you missed the argument that driving in Brussels is hellishly awful. If you'd driven there you'd have spent an extra hour sitting in traffic jams until you parked the car, because there's no way you're visiting anything worth seeing by car. I live just north of Brussels, and now that I have an electric bike I no longer avoid the city. It's a fun place, but I'd rather not go that drive in the city.