Cpt._Funkotron wrote:That's so strange to me as an American. Over here the rail system is generally quite shitty, privatized to hell and back between various freight magnates with the passenger services having to wrangle between them for access, but quite cheap if you're transiting between major cities and don't mind it taking awhile.
It's really not, though, at least not outside the Northeast Corridor.
As someone from near the Northeast Corridor, I frequently took advantage of trains. They were slower and considerably more expensive than driving, and I had to drive to Springfield anyways, but a lot more pleasant than driving all the way, at least if you're going to a big city where traffic and parking are issues. Even at peak times, I think they were usually somewhat cheaper than flying, however I would never
dream of flying anywhere I can drive in under six hours, so I'm not sure about ticket prices for such short distances.
But the Northeast Corridor is the only part of the US where passenger rail service is generally profitable, and also the only part of the US where it's generally affordable. In fact ticket prices in the Northeast Corridor are severely inflated so the profits can be used to subsidize the rest of the country, and still relatively affordable.
I was annoyed by the inflated ticket prices in NE corridor until I looked into rail travel in Texas, and then I was
really annoyed, because the subsidies
still don't make passenger travel a viable option here. Not only do most trains run only two or three times a week in each direction and take about twice as long as driving over long distances and as much as four times as long over shorter distances, not only is it basically impossible to take a train from Austin to anywhere (rail travel from Austin means taking take the slow train to San Antonio and then waiting for hours or days), but if you're booking at least a month out, coach-class train tickets from San Antonio to anywhere are
considerably more expensive than a coach-class plane ticket from Austin to the same destination.
Unless you're talking about jumping boxcars in which case, yes, carry on.