<p>one of the reasons my D chose Reed, was because Portland has decent public transportation.
She now lives in Portland and has never owned a car.She takes the bus- or train when she wants to visit us in Seattle, if she can’t find a carpool.
She can take the light rail to the airport to visit friends on the East coast.</p>
<p>Ive often taken the train to Portland or Vancouver BC.
Yes, because Seattles public transportation is poor, I rarely take the bus to the train station, I have to bum a ride from a friend or take a taxi.
However, I don’t even rent a car when I get to either Portland or Vancouver, because those cities are so accessible by foot and by public transportation.</p>
<p>Yes we have also had delays with trains, particulary when freight is coming up from southern Ca and is blocking the tracks- but no problems when we limit our selves to trains that originate closer to our boarding station or destination.
Love being able to look at the scenery, get up and move around and stretch out.
Last Thanksgiving we drove to Portland ( 2006), its about 185 miles, we averaged about 25 miles an hour. Yes we drove the freeway.</p>
<p>Even if the train had taken us that long- we would have been able to move around or even sleep. We were so stressed by the time we got to our hotel, the whole holiday suffered.
I love the train & I am disappointed that we bailed on a similar system for my neighborhood.</p>
<p>don’t forget you are talking about an amtrak which is SLOW compared to what other countries have or what this article talks about. trips between cities like DC and NYC is actually perfect for a bullet train. i thought a lot of people are already traveling between those two cities by train? there would be way more people doing it if it were faster. it would be faster than flying if the amtrak had the bullet train. by the way, how do you know it’s gonna be more expensive than flying? are you thinking only the ticket you booked 2 months in advance? what if i want to just take the dc/nyc trip this coming weekend?</p>
<p>American roads should be contrasted with European trains, not Amtrak. Europeans are ahead of the power curve; they use their trains because they are excellent, and because they are excellent, they use them. </p>
<p>And be sure to consider the walk-up vs. walk-up fares, and advance purchase vs. advance purchase, when comparing train and air prices.</p>
<p>exactly. if there’s a bullet train to sf, i probably will be up there this weekend (from los angeles)! because there isn’t one, here’s my situation: i can’t plan so far in advance but i don’t want to spend more than, say, $150 on a flight ticket. so i guess i don’t know when i will be there next. :(</p>
<p>i actually did have an impromtu trip between nyc/dc while visiting nyc; i forgot how much it costed but it was reasonable or i wouldn’t have done it.</p>
<p>Trains are amazingly cheap, specially considering price of gas & wear & tear on car. ( if it is just two of us, it can be cheaper even with Amtrak than to drive- hotels charge more for parking, than it costs for a transit pass- I do admit, then I have to pay attention to what I pack though & not just throw everything in the car- but with itunes and movies on my laptop as well as in the car- the train is very pleasant)
however I am also a dog lover who likes to travel with my dog.
I won’t put her on a plane and she is too big to take on a train- she isn’t great at long car rides either, but I do hate to leave her at home.</p>
<p>However for short trips I do know that I can take her on the bus- but as I said, I don’t ride Seattles buses much.
( D does every day though to school)
However in Portland, I see dogs all the time on the MAX.
I love the MAX - having great public transportation is a big perk to living in a city- and I hope I will have that eventually.</p>
<p>I have also heard great things about the train that goes to the midwest ( Empire builder?)
My Ds kindergarten teacher used to tell stories about her family riding the rails.
Yes, apparently just what you think.
I was horrified, D was fascinated.
Since Seattle is actually a small town, Ive also gotten to hear stories of her current train rides ( although now I assume she buys a ticket), since her traveling companion is in my book group.</p>
<p>I miss when we used to go visit D- now that her sister is so busy, we don’t use school breaks to go to Portland.But perhaps when she is in Ghana midwinter break, I can have a little adventure :)</p>
<p>Outside of a few cities our execution of train travel has been pretty bad. Is it worth building a new system from scratch to replace some car and plane travel? I doubt it. Maybe on a few dense routes in the northeast.</p>
<p>America needs to invest in its transportation infrastructure.</p>
<p>I agree that on certain routes and corridors, high speed trains are an option. They’ve been planning a route through California for years.</p>
<p>The solution will be a combination of options. </p>
<p>Freeways are very efficient when they aren’t clogged with traffic. I would like to see California double deck all freeways in the greater LA basin. In the future, cars will be “smart” and will be able to essentially drive themselves at high speeds with smaller spacing and little accidents on freeways…this would increase capacity.</p>
<p>Razorsharp, you responded to the arguments about subsidies for passenger rail vs. subsidies for car travel, but did you hear them objectively? By no means do we drivers pay the full cost of car travel. The vast majority of toll- free roads are paid for by public money (and states continue to collect tolls long after toll roads and their maintenance are paid for. And yes, I hate paying tolls). And while we are at at it, let’s discuss air travel. All major airports in the U.S. were built with public funds. And the airlines got two huge gifts after the 2001 terror attacks; $$ millions from Congress to stay afloat and immunity from tort lawsuits (from survivors and victims willing to accept $$ compensation from the federal 9/11 victims fund). Let’s be candid my friend, most forms of transportation in the U.S. get substantial subsidies from tax coffers. We should be happy about that. The oft-neglected Amtrak deserves sufficient funds from Congress (without the micro-managing). Finally, do you support the elimination of transit buses too? I don’t know any transit system-- NYC, LA Metro, Chicago TA, Massachussettts Bay TA-- that operate at a profit. That includes the most efficient and popular systems, like Cleveland’s, Seattle Metro and Alemeda County (Oakland CA).</p>
<p>Caltrans seriously needs to widen the 5 freeway from two lanes to five lanes in each direction between Los Angeles and the Bay Area.</p>
<p>When I was driving back to Berkeley after Thanksgiving weekend several years ago, it was 40 MPH bumper-to-bumper through the entire central valley…it took 9 hours!</p>
<p>yikes, when they do that though, the traffic would be <em>even</em> worse!</p>
<p>it took them forever to widen small segment of 405 (i think that’s what they’ve been doing; though i haven’t seen all that much difference…it’s like they seem to be constantly doing something on its side but i hardly notice any improvement…lol) and the traffic got worse as a result of road work.</p>
<p>The biggest issue with the Maglev trains is cost. It requires brand new expensive-per-mile tracks (and hence new real estate) and the engines and cars would be expensive as well. Maintenance, given the high-tech nature of the Maglev trains and high speeds (you don’t want to have even a slight glitch at 200-300 mph), will be very expensive. A real cost for this (excluding heavy subsidies) is bound to be expensive - likely more than an equivalent flight. If fuel costs were to continue to climb and a way for these trains to use inexpensive non-carbon based fuel (i.e. nuclear power) were in place, then eventually they could be more financially viable.</p>
<p>Route selection will be important as well in order to make it work. That’s why in the west I mentioned LA to Las Vegas. La to San Jose would be another one to target. There’d be decent public transportation at the stations on either end to make it practical as well. I’ve thought about using the train between here and UCLA but UCLA is so far from LA’s Union station and the trains and subsequent buses so slow that I can drive directly to UCLA in far less time and with more convenience.</p>
<p>Do you mean walk-up fares or advance purchase? Does anyone know how much it costs to travel on bullet trains in Japan? UCLAri? How about Europe?</p>
<p>I’ve traveled on the bullet train in Japan as well as the Chunnel Eurostar train in Europe. I only took the Shinkansen because it was late at night and the other more local train I should have taken had already quit for the night. I really can’t remember the cost but I know the Chunnel train isn’t exactly cheap. You should be able to see the cost by going to the ‘Eurostar’ website.</p>
<p>I even flew back from Japan once with a Canadian guy who was working on the Maglev. It was interesting to talk to him about it. That was over 20 years ago and still no Maglev.</p>
<p>i just did a search for london –> paris round trip on eurostar and british airways. if i leave on friday and return on sunday, they cost about the same. if i leave on friday and return on monday, eurostar is about 50 pounds cheaper. i haven’t tried other combinations yet.</p>
<p>It might not be a fair comparison since building the Chunnel was obviously somewhat expensive. You might want to check some other high-speed train route instead. </p>
<p>The Maglev might be even more expensive than the existing high speed trains though due to its technology and cost to build.</p>
<p>One problem when checking these is that there can be a large amount of government subsidies so even if you see a particular price, it doesn’t mean the operation would actually be profitable or break even if not for the subsidies.</p>
<p>And motor vehicle taxes are several times higher than in the US, and everything is closer together. The Eurostar between London and Paris is a great service, but it’s also only 289 miles – shorter than the distance between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Tying major US cities together by rail would cost a couple of orders of magnitude more than the European railroads (my guess – not a true fact). Even the respected German autobahn system only includes about 7,500 miles of road, compared to more than 46,000 miles of Interstates in the US. </p>
<p>Public transit always works best in areas of greatest population density, especially where the public transit predated population growth, or the government in charge is willing to ruthlessly displace people and businesses to build the system (see “China”). It is unbelievably expensive to build new transit systems where the land in already in private use in societies where individuals have property rights, access to the legal system, and the support of environmental laws.</p>
<p>The two lane freeway is rapidly becoming outdated in all but the most empty parts of the US. US 95 is a 1500 mile parking lot from DC to Florida much of the time. I-5 same thing from Seattle to Eugene.</p>
<p>Eighty years the San Francisco Bay had a well established system of ferries which whisked pedestrians and motorists across the Bay in short order. Was it a mistake to build the Bay Bridge at a cost orders of magnitude above the cost of the existing system?</p>
<p>At this point tying the entire US together is not practical (and I’d note the linked article didn’t propose that.) The west coast and the Northeast are obvious places to start. LA is 350 miles from SF; San Diego is 150 miles south of LA; Sacramento is a “spur” off the north-south line. Most of the route between LA and norcal is essentially uninhabited; the hard part are the ends. The sooner the job is started the sooner finished; every person transported by 200 MPH train (and I’d vote for wheels, not Maglev, but I’m open to discussion) will be a savings in fuel cost and personal wear and tear. But failing to plan ahead and build for the future is, sadly, a hallmark of our time. If the 30’s had been populated by America’s current electorate I imagine we’d all still be riding ferries.</p>