Salisbury to AshevilleTrain: 3 hours and 35 minutesCar: 2 hours and 10 minutesBus: 3 hours and 30 minutes
Raleigh to AshevilleTrain: 6 hours and 47 minutesCar: 3 hours and 50 minutesBus: 6 hours and 20 minutes
Charlotte to AshevilleTrain: 4 hours and 26 minutesCar: 2 hours and 10 minutesBus: 2 hours and 55 minutes
So it's objectively worse on every option, as well as extremely expensive. (They're not even offering a comparison to flight times: Charlotte to Asheville is a route I fly regularly, and it takes about 30 minutes although you have to factor in security and other things too.) But it's a train, and good people love trains.
Look, I like riding on trains too. It's peaceful and kind of a pleasant throwback to an earlier time. However, this isn't Europe, and trains just aren't practical in most of America.
Easy solution!!
ReplyDeleteNo tourist may enter Asheville except by train. If you drive, or take a bus, you must stop at the city limits and walk the rest of your journey.
(Maybe I shouldn't have given them that idea.)
I'm frankly astonished there isn't a political movement to emulate Britain and re-establish a network of canals for freight, passenger, and simply tourist transport.
ReplyDelete"Despite a period of abandonment, today the canal system in the United Kingdom is again increasing in use, with abandoned and derelict canals being reopened, and the construction of some new routes."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canals_of_the_United_Kingdom
There's a "canal gap" between the US and UK that must be addressed.
In particular, while much of the existing network merely duplicates water routes available to US East Coast cities, most of the rest of our urban population centers are utterly bereft of canal options. Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Denver, Boise, El Paso ... cut off. And even lucky cities like Tulsa and Omaha can't connect one directly to the other, but must navigate to some connecting point(Like Nashville) along one route, change boats, then navigate back a nearly-but-not-completely parallel route to get to the desired destination.
It's not as if technology has offered our civilization any alternatives of the same speed and capacity of canal boats.
The comparisons increasingly favor driving, or at least decreasingly disfavor it, when the total time to make the trip is compared.
ReplyDeleteCar: time from front door to car parked on the curb: 30 sec (it's a slow mosey, or being Texas, it's a long walk to the street even in the city); it's a wash for the car in the garage with opening/closing the garage door.
Bus and train: the commute to somewhere near the station, finding parking, walking the final distance to the station, schlepping the luggage.
The same on the return trip.
For a lot of commuter-distance flights, too, cars are competitive on total time and on cost.
Then add the cost of renting a car or taking taxis/ubers/lyfts at the destination....
Trains can have the advantage of comfort and lack of need to attend to traffic; flying sometimes has that comfort advantage. Maybe time have changed, but years ago when I was taking Greyhound from upstate Illinois to central Iowa to go to college, buses were an adequate means of transportation, but blissfully comfortable.
About all buses, trains, and airplanes are good for is mass transit, and they're not outstanding at that.
Eric Hines
I have taken a couple of longer trips (Boston - Richmond, Houston - Tucson) just for the fun of it and enjoyed them. There is some advantage to having a bathroom and the ability to stretch your legs available at all times. In terms of convenience, I decided years ago that trains work out only if you are going where the train goes. We have to drive or bus down to Dedham or Boston (60 min), so we are already hurting for convenience without even figuring out what's happening on the other end. If you live near a stop and will be staying near a stop, it's not that inconvenient. But how often does that happen?
ReplyDeleteThere is a constant undercurrent of advocacy for trains to come up to Nashua and even beyond from Boston. Fortunately, Governor Sununu can do arithmetic and keeps squashing it.
What it costs taxpayers is the real kicker. There is no way to justify it.
Even in Europe, one still has to hail a taxi or walk to their destination from the train station.
ReplyDeleteIt's not about transportation efficiency.
ReplyDeleteIt is about herding, collectivizing,and control.
That's why they love mass transit, and hate cars.
Too much freedom with a car.Why, a person could get in one and just go anywhere whenever they wish, without approval from People Who Know Best.
Yes, Raven is exactly right, as is AVI here: " I decided years ago that trains work out only if you are going where the train goes."
ReplyDeleteYou have to understand how planners think- they're thinking they'll build the train lines, then they'll put in place incentives to build up the areas along the lines with "enterprise zones" and other government thumbs on scales, and pour tax dollars into those areas while ignoring other areas away from the lines. They aim to force us all into cities where they can control the votes, your mobility, better utilize social pressures, etc. They know what they are doing, they are not actually idiots, they're quite nefarious, in fact.
I will add, as evidence of said theory, that in L.A., we were a unique and wonderfully sprawled city that was car centric, and they've built the train lines, and established zoning codes that encouraged built up areas around those lines, and you're seeing now a European style densification of the city, and it's quickly losing it's old character and taking on a new one. Not an accident.
ReplyDeleteThe old Redline streetcars were more akin to buses, with their density of stops, so they didn't really change the nature of the city fabric much. More a supplement than alternative, and cars were still somewhat expensive in the 20s, so there's that. Those numbers confirm what I've felt and seen myself, thanks for that.
ReplyDeleteAs a fun experiment, plug in your destination and Chicago or NYC or Orlando. Compare driving, flying and train.
ReplyDeleteThe only time I take the train is to D.C.
Without a car, the savings in parking fees just about pay for the train.