Woodchuck: Putting the airlines on the same footing as the trains as to operating outlays changes the dynamic quickly.
Actually, it doesn’t. Look back at my figures: opportunity cost is the killer. But as has been pointed out in other comments, your assertion that airlines (and therefore passengers) aren’t paying for the system is mistaken anyway.
Marco, I picked Denver ’cause I live in Denver. Nothing deep.
Ben: I disagree with your argument.
No you’re agreeing with my argument: intercity trains with large ridership and a distance/travel time of 4-5 hours make sense; nationwide passenger train service doesn’t.
Ken: It is much cheaper to send cargo by train than by air. How come it is more expensive to move a person a given number of miles by train? I’m sure that the figures quoted are accurate, but something seems fishy.
Just consider the difference in the accommodations, Ken: if we could send passengers stacked like boxes of lettuce, nine-high, in windowless refrigerated cars with no facilities, and not care if they get sidetracked (heh) for 12 or 24 hours, then it would be a lot cheaper.
And a lot like airline travel, except longer.
John: First I think there is something missing in the calculations — required stayover cost. All the majors now have a 1 day layover requirement. So that cost for hotel and meals has to be included in the trip cost for airline use. No it won’t close the gap; not by a long shot.
John, there’s a lag of several days to a couple weeks between when I submit an article and when it’s published; I tend to write things that aren’t very time sensitive. In this case, the required stopover thing came around since I submitted the article, but I think you’re misunderstanding the “required stopover” thing: it’s not that you can’t get a flight without the weekend stopover, it’s that they won’t sell you the cheapest ticket without a stopover. I just popped over to Frontier’s site and looked at the pessimal schedule: flying Denver-La Guardia tomorrow, returning tomorrow night. The highest fare was leaving just past midnight on a red-eye, returning at about 5PM, arriving about 8PM — which is a horrible trip, I’ve done it a couple of times — and costs $850. Still less than half the price of a roomette, and not much more than the price of the coach seat on the train.
Continuum: (Q? Is that you? Anyway…) I believe that your analysis in using current train travel times from the Amtrak schedules is open to question. Inter-city train travel is currently hindered by Amtrak routes. Those routes often do not travel the direct line that freight trains might use, but, instead they are tremendous circumnavigations.
You bet — if I had used, say, Denver to Miami I could have made it look lots worse. But I didn’t. I wonder why?
Response39: You miscalculate – if you count in the cost of lodging and meals during the time you’re not flying but would have been traveling by train, it comes out almost even.
You’re missing the point. Most travel is done by people — like me, traveling on business — who want to be somewhere, not for the romance of travel in itself. If I go to NYC on business, my employer is paying me to be in New York, not for time in the moving hotel, no matter how pleasant. See above about how much I like trains — if I could work a scam that let me travel in a roomette for four or five days to do a couple days work in NYC, I’d be Amtrak’s most traveled passenger. On my usual trip, the time I would spend traveling by train is spent in my own office, and sleeping in my own bed.
General comment: on travel times: remember that I’m quoting travel times in all cases for round trips. The 90 hours for NYC is a round trip, with a 4-5 hour wait in Chicago for connections.
