It costs $30 round trip – if you’re traveling from OAK to SFO.
1 Like
I don’t think voters have much say in the improvement of services they use daily, unfortunately. For that, I look to Republican lawmakers.
http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/318324-california-gop-asks-trump-to-halt-high-speed-rail-grants
12 Likes
So, yes, then?
3 Likes
But no guarantee you’ll arrive even within a few hours of the scheduled time.
That’s the real deal-breaker for us. If people trains weren’t held up all the time by the oh-so-much-more-important-because-money cargo trains so that they actually stayed on schedule, your points about the comfort advantages would hold.
5 Likes
I can’t find that button…
6 Likes
Why are train tickets so expensive?
Should be “Why are US train tickets so expensive?”, in this case.
Boing Boing has an international audience.
10 Likes
That’s not the average commuter’s daily trip, though; anything involving the airport is automatically going to jack the price up.
1 Like
a few years ago I had a couple of conferences in Boston and I decided to take the train from Philadelphia - about 6hrs with all the station stops. Its only like 1hr flight, but you loose at least 2hrs on either end at the airports. By train I could walk to my hotel, and get dropped at the station 10mins from home. By comparison the train seat was roomy, had power and wifi, and I could spread out and get work done a good part of the trip.
On my second trip I got talking to the guy who sat next to me pulling out of Phila. He was only going at far as NYC, his company had a client there and they went up a few times a week. His ticket was about twice mine - $120 each way for him, $118 round trip to Boston for me.
3 Likes
Frequently overlooked in these discussions are the vast sums of public money that effectively subsidize air travel. If we added-in the cost of the FAA, TSA and all the municipal expenses incurred to buy land and build airports on them, the costs might not look so unfavorable for rail travel.
11 Likes
Rail ticket prices seem to be very complicated in the US but they are far worse in the UK where you have more than one operating company running trains on the same route. You not only have to choose the destination but also which company you will go with and the ticket office won’t always help you make that decision because they are owned by one of the operating companies.
Generally seems to be simpler, and cheaper, in Europe and Scandinavia. I live in Norway and the airport train takes exactly an hour for my journey and is about USD40 each way, same price every day whatever time I go, no discount for return tickets but children travel free, students, pensioners, etc. half price. Would be about 20% cheaper if I took the regional train or the local train. There are trains roughly every fifteen minutes.
For a really nice train trip take the Spanish Alta Velocidad from Madrid to Barcelona. Dead quiet at 300kph, hardly feel you are moving, pay the extra few Euros for first class and get a cooked breakfast served at your seat.
5 Likes
Oh no, we have that. NJ Transit and Amtrak use the same Northeast Corridor. To get to Newark Airport from Penn Station, for example, is either a $10 ticket or a $30 ticket that takes about the same time.
We’ve got the worst of both worlds! Expensive, confusing, and badly run slow trains!
4 Likes
Except for when they pull off to let a train load of coal go by. The rail system in the US is built around getting product to market, and you’ve already payed your fare. You might actually get to your destination faster if you were cattle.
11 Likes
For business travel, it’s obviously necessary to go by air. For leisure travel, it’s far better to go by rail, for comfort, for human dignity, and for the entertainment value of the view out the window. If your leisure travel requires you to arrive exactly on time, then I pity you.
ETA: speaking of train travel in North America, which is seldom on time because nobody cares enough to do it right. In Europe, travel by train is by far superior scheduling wise.
2 Likes
Sidebar:
I loved this series.
3 Likes
last time I flew from Oakland to San Francisco it was way more than $20 r/t.
like by a whole $10.
Mark must be calculating fares for two people.
But at $10+ a day to round trip, I agree BART isn’t exactly cheap. But it is acceptable.
3 Likes
Here in Seattle I can take a train to Vancouver for like $60+ one way, or take the Bolt round trip for less than that and in pretty much the same travel time. This makes no sense at all.
4 Likes
Bit odd that he seems to imply that the airlines are hugely profitable and not subsidised when both are completely wrong. The airline industry is only marginally profitable in the long term and benefits from extraordinary subsidies.
2 Likes
SFO isn’t San Francisco or in San Francisco.
4 Likes
And of course the prices for gas being complained about are heavily subsidized by the govt. If prices were like they are in Europe, with the subsidies going to trains instead, then trains could be even cheaper.
3 Likes
