• badbrainstorm@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    I was looking at Amtrack vs flying just the other day. Was really wanting to avoid flying. But the round trip flight was roughly $130 at cheapest, with layover. All options under 24 hrs. each way. 4 hr direct flights around $200.

    Amtrack one way, was around $300 dollars. Three trains, with layovers. 100 hours each way.

    Sucks that we still have no better options available! We should have had high speed rail infrastructure for decades now already

        • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)@lemmy.sdf.org
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          12 hours ago

          Pretty tiny. It’s Slovakia. 49,035km2
          But if you travel daily, you’ll still do quite some distance.

          Just tried checking the Amtrak website, but I am not sure what I am looking at. Is it different train classes? Does the price differ by time?
          I just checked something that seems like a more or less normal route. New York City to Philadelphia, 1 hour 27 minutes, can’t find the distance, at 7:17am. “Coach” option says $92.

          Oh, hell, you even have to give them your ID? Why? I chose Adult ticket.

          Oh well, looks more or less like a straight line on map. Let me get the distance from map, let’s say 82mi approximately. Closest for comparison is Považská Bystrica to Bratislava at 6:54am, 169km (105mi), but I really just wanted to avoid something shorter. That’s 1 hour 39 minutes, so close enough by time at least. 2nd class is €8.30.

          So if I checked right, for more or less the same thing that’s $92 vs €8.30. Wild.

          • badbrainstorm@lemmy.world
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            9 hours ago

            Train infrastructure is definitely better on the east coast, and in the process of getting better with the northeast corridor work their doing, that will speed things up in most sections once completed.

            I am planning a vacation out of LA to the Midwest. Two of the trains were needed to get to Vegas to start the final leg. So that will also be better if/when they get the high speed rail completed from LA/Las Vegas