Originally Posted by
Rayeli
Pretty much every single one of those points are wrong. It’s definitely not cheaper, definitely not more efficient (moving up to 500 people at once instead of 76 per hour on an E175), safety is debatable, but flying is definitely not faster in the grand scheme of things (going from downtown to downtown and of the distance of the NE corridor except maybe BOS-DCA). When you factor in traveling to/from the airport, going early for security, etc.
actually it is cheaper, the cost to fly is cheaper on a per mile basis than taking the train is. You're not going to find a train ticket from orlando to Chicago for 100 bucks like you do on many airlines.
Efficiency is more than just the number of people you can haul around, it's also about the time and cost. Again aviation is proven to more than rail. A rail network like and airline network is not possible. It's much easier to create an airline network overnight than it is to plan and lay track for rail route.
Originally Posted by
Rayeli
For example in France, Paris to Lyon is roughly the same distance as Boston to Philadelphia. Air France blocks the flight as 1 hr 5 min ($128). The train (from downtown to downtown) is 1 hr 57 min ($52). Which would you take?
Again, this is in a corridor where there’s a dedicated high speed train line pretty much the whole way and the train can hit its top speed (186 mph) for the majority of the trip.
Air France also has a monopoly on that route. I also looked on the SNCF website and the cheapest I found was 97 euro. If you also reread my orginal post you would see that I said that over a couple hundred miles is where these advantages are the most pronounced. The thing is we're in the US not in France. France is the size of about texas, if the US population lived in that small of a footprint.