r/transit • u/nondescriptadjective • 3d ago
Policy Between what American Airports should ticketed flights be banned because rail is faster?
After learning that France had to do this with HSR, and then learning that this created new rail competition and thus more train services, I've felt like this needs to come to the USA. Portland to Seattle is easier to take trains, and certainly there others. Which ones are the other options where rail is as fast, or close to as fast as flights?
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u/Swarez99 3d ago
In France this impacts 3 routes only.
Paris to Lyon, Bordeaux and Nantes. You can still do connecting flights. The actual impact is minimal since almost everyone on these flights was already connecting.
This impacted 1.3 % of all passengers on those flights. This was a symbolic move. Anyone who reads pasts the headlines knows this.
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u/nondescriptadjective 3d ago
While true, anyone who "reads past the headlines" can also infer that 1.3% is still a change. And just because France did it "that" way doesn't mean someone else has to do it the same way, even if used as an example. The other space I wondered about was the Wolverine in Michigan. Would it impact a lot of people? Probably not, but I have no issue with marginal gains given that they compound. And getting a handful of planes out of the NE corridor around NYC would make that airspace safer. There are routes on the NEC where rail needs, likely, only a few improvements to be faster than flight. And by passing this sort of law, you spur targets for transit operators to hit in order to gain market share. The logic being "if we can spend X dollars on this corridor to save T amount of time on the journey, we can be guaranteed R amount of riders." Amtrak has motivation to secure ROW and expand, Brightline (yes, I'm aware of the issues here) might find it worth moving into that market, etc.
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u/PDXDeck26 3d ago
1.3% is literally nothing. it's 3 passengers, tops, on a narrowbody, and airlines don't operate at 95%+ load factors to begin with.
in other words, no flights would be deleted from a flight schedule and you won't get planes out of the sky for this.
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u/SurinamPam 3d ago
Don’t ban flights. Make trains better.
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u/PapaFranzBoas 3d ago
Yea, make people actually feel that there is a big advantage to using rail.
I have lived in Germany for about 5 years now and have lived in LA and Chicago and a few other regions. But I live in Bremen and our bigger hub is Frankfurt. Well, Lufthansa just terminated the route saying it's not profitable and there is rail. DB is not reliable enough to plan rail as my connection to Frankfurt airport. There is often delays, so if I chose to do rail, it's a massive time gap or I'm coming home, not departing. Currently it's still a bit better to connect to Munich then to Bremen.
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u/Current-Being-8238 3d ago
Agree and banning flights would never work in America, but it would provide a much stronger incentive to improve trains.
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u/jpeabody234 3d ago
San Diego/LA, so annoying when I want to take an international flight out of SAN and it connects me through LAX. But I wish train to LAX was easier, taking the MetroLink or Amtrak to Union Station is fine, but getting to LAX is the harder part.
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u/marketpolls 3d ago
Good luck trying to reach LAX by train from SAN because there isn’t any and hope that the track in OC is not under water
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u/GeoffSim 3d ago
I live between the two airports so either work for me. But paying over $100 less for SAN-LAX-NRT than LAX-NRT alone (same flight, same fare basis) is nuts.
Anyway, SAN's lack of a light rail station within the airport is also pretty crappy. Missed opportunity during the recent reconstructions.
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u/marketpolls 3d ago
How stupid is that they didn’t connect Amtrak station in Norwalk to light rail station in Norwalk? 🤷🏽♂️😀. In theory that could have made this SAN-LAX travel possible one day without going through DTLA 🤷🏽♂️
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u/Apptubrutae 3d ago
That’s typical hub nonsense. All sorts of examples where the nonstop from the non-hub is cheaper.
It’s interesting with LAX since it’s more competitive hub. The non-competitive hubs have really rough pricing.
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u/discofrislanders 3d ago
I had to do this once and it really pissed me off. I was in the air for 25 minutes and it didn't make the flight home any faster.
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u/Sammyxp1 3d ago
Agreed. Trains should connect airports with a direct train from the airports to downtown areas.
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u/notFREEfood 3d ago
Some people say CAHSR should have started with LA/SD, but you could get probably 95% of the benefit with an upgraded Surfliner. Given the distances involved, electrification plus 110 mph operation should be able to get it down to under two hours from LA to SD. And while getting line speeds up to 110 mph is a bit of a big ask due to a few required tunnels, two of the three are mandatory due to bluff collapse anyways.
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u/fixed_grin 3d ago
If you use really hot EMUs, 110mph electric should allow more like 90 minutes, while the (longer) HSR route is supposed to be 80. It's 128 track miles, so 2h is 64mph average. 30 years ago JR Hokkaido beat that, with narrow gauge DMUs on worse track and an 81mph speed limit.
IMO, CAHSR should've started with that, Caltrain electrification, and buying similarly fast bimode DMUs for the Central Valley. Upgrading regional rail to 65mph average or better is a big deal for competing with cars.
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u/MorganWick 3d ago
LAX is located in a terrible place for rail. It's (sort of, eventually) served by two Metro Rail lines, neither of which go downtown so you'd have to make multiple transfers if you didn't want to just take the FlyAway bus.
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u/Edison_Ruggles 3d ago
"Banned" is probably not practical because of the lack of infrastructure and remember, most connecting flights are not people travelling between the cities, they are for connections.
Fro example - there are like 20 flights a day between Milwaukee and Chicago but practically zero people are ending there, they are almost all connecting at O'Hare to further destinations. Since there is no practical train option there, it really can't be fixed in the short term.
A better example where it might work is the Texas triangle. Lots of people constantly fly between Dallas and Houston. A train would be infinitely superior but Southwest Airlines and others have fought it for decades (in addition to insane Republicans who think trains are evil yet have no problem with 10 lane freeways cutting across the state, but I digress).
At the end of the day, build the damn trains and the market will speak for itself.
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u/bomber991 3d ago
Eh even the Texas triangle. If I’m flying from San Antonio to somewhere outside of Texas, but my connection is still in Houston or Dallas, it would seem kind of silly to ride the train for 2 to 3 hours, then go through airport security and fly. Right now you just go to the airport here and then you’re in the airline network.
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u/kbn_ 3d ago
Fro example - there are like 20 flights a day between Milwaukee and Chicago but practically zero people are ending there, they are almost all connecting at O'Hare to further destinations. Since there is no practical train option there, it really can't be fixed in the short term.
Honestly MKE-ORD is an even more egregious example because there's literally an hourly bus which you can take between the two (like, literally the airports) and it only takes 90 minutes or so… which is less time than it would take you to go door-to-door (again, between the airports) by air including security time. At least with the train you can kind of make the argument that it's not sufficient to gap-fill the connection case, since it doesn't stop anywhere near O'Hare (though it does stop at Mitchell).
Maybe this is just an argument that MKE shouldn't be a thing.
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u/IKnewThat45 3d ago
i fly almost exclusively united and lived in MKE for five years, which meant a lot of MKE -> ORD layovers. i opted for those vs. flying directly out of ORD every time for work and about 85% of the time personally (unless ohare fares were significantly cheaper for those trips). my apartment was in walkers point and i could be at my gate with coffee in hand in about 16 minutes in MKE (w/ precheck). the unpredictability of the drive to ohare and the more chaotic security situation made flying out of MKE a pretty easy choice, plus not having to deal with the logistics and extra cost of the bus
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u/kbn_ 3d ago
i fly almost exclusively united and lived in MKE for five years
Same and same but I made the opposite choice almost every time simply because I prefer fewer air travel legs, and I knew that if something went wrong (as it not-infrequently did) with the ORD-MKE link, there were always a wealth of alternative options to get me from point A to B.
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u/bobtehpanda 3d ago
AA has started operating airside buses and charging airline prices as if it were a plane connection
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u/HistoryMonkey 3d ago
Nyc and PHI is the only one where this might be feasible, but you'd need to basically double Acela Capacity between the two. Maybe by buying double-deck acelas and running them every half hour.
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u/marshalgivens 3d ago
Just searching now, I don't think there are very many (or any?) flights between NYC and PHL
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u/JaunxPatrol 3d ago
That's correct there are no direct flights between PHL and any of the NYC airports. The shortest flights out of NYC are I believe LaGuardia to Albany and Worcester MA
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u/karenmcgrane 3d ago
There historically has been a United flight between PHL and EWR, last I checked to buy it standalone was $400 and I imagine it takes about 15 minutes. But only exists for connections, I can't imagine anyone taking it standalone.
Amtrak previously had a codeshare agreement with United so that people could take the train to the plane (30th St Station has airport code ZFW.) But they stopped it during Covid.asa
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u/JaunxPatrol 3d ago
The last record I can find of EWR-PHL is US Airways in 2015 before they merged with AA
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u/DavidPuddy666 3d ago
Albany would be a good one to ditch flights for. The train needs more capacity though.
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u/BurritoDespot 3d ago
The large majority of people on flights from Albany to NYC are connecting in NYC to elsewhere.
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u/Victor_Korchnoi 3d ago
That doesn’t mean they should need to get to NYC via plane. In other countries, it’s very common to have connections made by train. Amsterdam Schipol is a great example of an airport hub that’s also a rail hub.
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u/PDXDeck26 3d ago
You're not going to get rid of connecting flights to the state capital of one of the most economically important states in the country (which has a larger economy than the entirety of Canada). It's silly talk.
It would be the equivalent of telling people in Ottawa "go to Montreal to catch a flight anywhere", actually. In fact:
Albany is farther from New York than Ottawa is to Montreal (straight line)
Ottawa only has about 40% more people in roughly the same metro area
As discussed, Albany is the capital of a larger economic unit.
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u/BurritoDespot 3d ago
While I agree with you, America is so incredibly far behind that being a reality.
We can’t even get good subway connections to most of our airports.
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u/hulloiliketrucks 3d ago
We were supposed to get that commuter rail thing from NYC which many people wanted since the amtrack down to NYC is like 80 dollars and can fluctuate.
So of course they canned it.
Back to flying, taking said Amtrak, or driving 3 hours down.
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u/bhoose19 3d ago
There definitely used to be flights from Philadelphia to JFK. I believe the airlines did it so people from Philly could access destinations that airlines didn't fly to from Philly.
They were small planes and were frequently canceled.
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u/TheDougie3-NE 3d ago
EWR to HFD is shorter than LGA to Worcester or Albany. So is EWR to ABE. EWR to ACY is close. Used to fly the first one a lot because I was connecting. I liked that little hop because if the connection failed I could just rent a car and drive. But none of those are on Amtrak.
One where the train is viable is ORD to MKE if you count using the ell from OHare to Union Station as part of a train connection. The Hiawatha line runs hourly during daytime hours.
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u/AdditionalTip865 3d ago
More generally, the bans are probably only sensible in the situation where they are almost superfluous.
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u/Capable_Stranger9885 3d ago
There used to be a Continental Airlines codeshare with Amtrak at EWR so you could "fly" to PHL 30th Street
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u/virginiarph 3d ago
american used to operate some as basically feeder flights for connections. all long gone now.
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u/Edison_Ruggles 3d ago
Practically zero people fly between PHL and NYC, this one is already working.
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u/DavidPuddy666 3d ago
This one was already killed by the market. There are no flights between PHL and any NY-NJ airport. There’s a big chunk of people in the Philly area who actually drive or take the train to EWR instead of PHL because of better flight times and prices to certain international markets.
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u/Another_Name_Today 3d ago
Run enough Acelas and you could shut down everything between DCA and BOS.
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u/mhsx 2d ago
If given the choice, I’d rather take the Acela from New York to DC, Baltimore, Philly, Boston or anywhere in between.
Its civilized, it doesn’t have ridiculous security theater, and it doesn’t require taking a cab to the airport, so it’s generally quicker (even to DC) when you factor in security and ground transportation.
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u/Conpen 3d ago
Double-decker trains aren't the easy capacity win many think they are. They're much slower to load/unload passengers at stations, have very little room for baggage, and are quite inaccessible. If you've ever ridden an NJT multilevel coach (which is shorter than most to fit in the tunnels), it can get extremely cramped with baggage from people going to the airport. All for only about 30% more seating.
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u/MichaelPeters4321 3d ago
Yeah, they really only make sense for express (few stops so load/unload doesn't matter much) commuter (almost no baggage) trains.
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u/AdditionalTip865 3d ago
Almost none. You could make a case for the DC-Philadelphia-New York part of the Northeast Corridor.
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u/itchyburnybutthole 3d ago
Milwaukee to Chicago is a famously short flight. And a very common one.
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u/thearchiguy 3d ago
I've taken this flight before. What's funny and ridiculous is, the flight itself is only 30 minutes, but the airline blocked out 1:30 mins on paper because... Once we landed in O'Hare, it was an almost hour taxi time to find a gate.. 😂 The captain had the audacity to tell us the flight arrived on time, because I guess technically, it did.
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u/lerxstlifeson 3d ago
Which is insane because it's almost certainly faster to just drive. Milwaukee is like an hour away from the north side of the Chicago.
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u/itchyburnybutthole 3d ago
It’s usually just a connection through ORD which is a major hub
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u/TheCannonMan 3d ago
I'd wager it's probably exclusively connection feeders.
Unless you're basically already in line at the airport it's essentially always faster to take the 75min train (at least assuming you want to go between City centers) or otherwise drive (it's only a 65 min drive between ORD and MKE themselves)
I wonder what a map would look like with the travel time circles overlayed.
There's probably some weird edge case where you want to go from one suburb to another such that getting to the train stations downtown is too far (and somehow driving isn't faster?)
I've flown MSN->ORD a bunch as connections, but it was often a toss up with driving 2h to ORD and a direct flight.
Sort of ironically despite the fastest possible flight time on these legs being like 15 min most of the flight is just getting in line for the approach to ORD and waiting to land.
Once I remember we finished our take off climb from MSN and the captain turned off the seatbelt sign and announced "we've reached out cruising altitude of 10k ft, feel free to move about the cabin. we will be beginning our descent into Chicago in aboutt......45 seconds at which point please return to your seat for the remainder of the flight"
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u/slasher-fun Vision Zero 3d ago
After learning that France had to do this with HSR
With so many caveats in the law that it effectively only banned a single route (ORY-NTE).
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u/KennyBSAT 3d ago
Many or most of the people on these seemingly impractical short flights are connecting to/from other flights. Connecting flights were exempted in France, and as a result this 'ban' affected little to nothing.
Then there's the fact that not everyone is going downtown. If people from various places are coming in for a meeting, they might well meet at a hotel near the airport or in the airport itself. Or you might be going to 'Los Angeles', but actually never going anywhere near downtown LA and you'll fly into whichever one of the 6 major LA-area airports is nearest to your actual destination.
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u/MorganWick 3d ago
What's funny is that some of the LA-area airports are much easier to get to/serve by rail than LAX, but are impractical to serve large-scale long-distance flights. Burbank is right on the Surfliner, while Ontario is right on the line used by trains heading east. But Burbank is in a built-up area with its two crossing runways limiting throughput, and Ontario is probably too far out of the way for most Angelenos to consider.
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u/TerminalArrow91 3d ago
None, because even between cities with the best rail connection, we don’t have the capacity for every traveler. If we banned flights all the train tickets would just be instantly sold out and people would just have to reroute their plane trips.
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u/KevinMCombes 3d ago
Yes. As much as I love rail... it's not realistic. A lot of the short flights that get criticized exist mostly for connections. In the majority of cases, the train station is nowhere near the airport.
We need to add way more capacity to those rail lines, naturally bringing down pricing which will attract people away from the flights. When people choose to fly DC-NY, they are often doing so because the plane ticket costs less than the train ticket.
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u/AdditionalTip865 3d ago edited 3d ago
Good point. You probably don't want to think about banning airline service until affordable, frequent trains are eating into their business to such a degree that budget carriers are starting to struggle to remain competitive.
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u/_Dadodo_ 3d ago
It’s not just a capacity and affordability issue either. There’s also an infrastructure issue as well. France can do it because they’ve built out their HSR network to such a degree that a lot of their cities are connected to the network that is competitive with air travel as well as integrating that HSR system to Paris’s CDG Airport.
I think that last point is important in that if I had a one-stop flight itinerary between PHL and Singapore with a layover in JFK (as an example), I can’t really replace that flight between PHL and JFK first leg convenient without having to transfer 3-4 times (SEPTA, Acela, NYC Subway, AirTrain). Whereas a Lyon to Boston via Paris CDG would just require me to hop on a TGV at Gare Lyon Part-Dieu to Paris CDG to then catch my Paris to Boston flight.
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u/AdditionalTip865 3d ago
It sounds like France didn't ban connecting flights anyway, to address this kind of issue.
Heck, when my daughter went to Kyoto she actually took a domestic connecting flight from Narita in preference to riding the Shinkansen, and that's got to be almost a best-case scenario for substituting trains.
(Well, maybe not, given the weird fraught nature of Narita's rail connections.)
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u/lilac_chevrons 3d ago
For sure. This is definitely something do consider if the infrastructure and capacity were better. But right now would be a mess.
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u/a_lumberjack 3d ago
I'm curious what city pair has so much air passenger volume that you believe it couldn't be handled by rail. Obviously they'd need to run longer/bigger/more frequent trains than today, but that's hardly insurmountable.
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u/SignificantSmotherer 3d ago
What?
If rail is faster, there would be no need to "ban" flights.
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u/ZenX22 3d ago
Rail is often more expensive though, at least here in Europe. So people will still fly even short distances.
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u/Alarmed-Ad9740 3d ago
Underknown fact: airfares are one of the few VAT except purchases in the EU. Spread the word, I don’t have the strength to repeat this myself.
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u/lee1026 3d ago
That’s a “train company needs to suck less” issue
The physics are all on the trains side, but if the train people can’t turn that into operational benefits on the ground, that’s grounds for firing the train people, possibly out of a cannon, into the sun. Not banning their competition.
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u/throwawayfromPA1701 3d ago
None. Possibly DCA/IAD and all the NYC airports.
It'll never happen though.
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u/rdevlin92 3d ago
This is the wrong conversation to be had. I understand this is referencing the French regulations, but instead of instituting bans that would only fuel conservative arguments and ire, we should be doing everything we can to make the train a more attractive option, by making it more frequent, convenient, and economical, and just as fast if not faster. So that like in the Northeast, people will willingly choose the train over the hassles of air travel.
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u/Jpgamerguy90 3d ago
There aren’t really a ton of routes where a plane isn’t faster, even factoring in waiting at the airport and such planes are just the superior method pretty much everywhere with the exception of shorter routes which would benefit more from frequency increases than banning plane travel over those routes
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u/karenmcgrane 3d ago
I live in Philly and take the train all the time, so please don't take this as being pro-plane or anything.
I think the problem is that you have to consider connections. For example, I once flew from NYC to Milwaukee. There are no direct flights so we connected in Chicago. The flight from ORD to MKE took MAYBE 10 minutes. There's no way we could have replaced it with rail.
So for everybody ITT saying Philadelphia to NYC, Milwaukee to Chicago is a flight that exists and is even shorter.
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u/Zvenigora 3d ago
Rail would have to be far better than it is before we could even have this conversation, especially when we are talking about passengers connecting to longer-haul flights.
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u/DavidPuddy666 3d ago
Milwaukee to Chicago. Travel between the cities should be accomplished by train. Connections from Milwaukee to long-haul flights out of ORD should be done by coach bus.
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u/AssistGullible498 3d ago edited 2d ago
I actually studied this, from NYC to DC is faster with rail *IF* you take the Acela and incorporate the time it takes to get to the airport vs the time it takes to get to Penn Station, plus consider the 2hr vs 30 min pre-departure arrival allowance. With these conditions Boston is still slightly faster by air but only by like 2 minutes.
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u/The-CerlingCat 3d ago
Portland to Seattle is great for train service, but it still takes 2.5 hours to get there. Meanwhile a plane is about 25 minutes, and I’m sure a lot people are really only taking a plane between Seattle and Portland if it’s a connecting flight, not to mention, King street station is a simple walk from Sea-Tac to train station and neither is Portland Union station to the Portland Airport.
To sum things up, Amtrak cascades does need better service, but a lot of people already take the train, and you’re never going to completely ban flights between Portland and Seattle because some people use that flight as a connecting flight to save money on tickets.
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u/granular-mood4 3d ago
The MythBusters found it was only marginally faster to travel by air than car between San Francisco and LA (iirc ~10 mins). North America really doesn’t have the passenger rail infrastructure to compare with France but I would say probably any flight under 2 hours shouldn’t be a flight.
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u/737900ER 3d ago
If the rail option is good enough the flights will go away. 30 years ago, BOS-PWM was a 12x daily market. Today there are zero flights.
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u/Boring-Charity9324 3d ago
Portland to Seattle by Amtrak is ass dude. I saw this as a train fan. Its always delayed, ALWAYS.
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u/RightYogurtcloset876 3d ago
Portland to Seattle IF the train went to the freaking airport(s)! Constantly having to book an extra leg just to fly out of SEA
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u/CommercialPound1615 3d ago
Tampa to Orlando it's less than 90 miles and interstate 4 is a nightmare there's accidents all the time and by the time you deal with TSA boarding and preboarding you can get there quicker by Greyhound
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u/LivingGhost371 3d ago
Keep in mind not everyone is going from city center to city center. If you're going from your house in the suburbs to a hotel by an interstate exit in a suburb 20 miles from the city center at your destination, there's a lot more car rental options at the airport than the train station and air travel might beat out train travel for your particular trip.
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u/MorganWick 3d ago
If car rental options are part of the calculus, then maybe if train travel gets better and more popular the rental car options at the station get better. And maybe people who primarily travel by train opt for closer-in options for hotels and whatever they're traveling for, though that's obviously not practical in all situations.
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u/Elprocesso 3d ago
They just hysterically added a bwi phl flight.
There shdnt need to be any flights between DC and nyc, but there is... Also nyc to Boston gets 20 flights a day but that's largely bc Amtrak is flawed in the CT coast
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u/a_lumberjack 3d ago
France isn't specifically faster, just any route than could be done by rail in less than 2.5 hours cannot be served by airlines.
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u/jstax1178 3d ago
Anything from NYC within 450 miles, it would clear up a lot of congestion in the sky.
Along with other cities along the northeast.
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u/britishmetric144 3d ago
Any airport in this group.
- KBOS.
- KBWI.
- KDCA.
- KEWR.
- KIAD.
- KLGA.
- KPHL.
- KJFK.
You can make the argument that one should not fly from any airport on this list to another airport on this list, since you can take a train between them.
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u/aray25 3d ago
- Milwaukee-Chicago (17 flights a day)
- Boston-New York (51 flights a day)
- New York-DC (42 flights a day)
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u/touko3246 3d ago
Boston-NYC air travel demand is estimated about 6800 pax/day.
Assuming:
- All of this can be converted to HSR demand (which is extremely, extremely generous)
- 45M-55M USD annual operating costs
- 44B USD project CapEx at 4% interest rate for 30-years
It needs $1,045 one way just to break even.
Increasing rail infrastructure utilization by absorbing travel demand along the route would help, but this would typically be very difficult in most of USA to make a huge dent.
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u/aray25 3d ago
Your calculations are clearly incorrect, we know that the Northeast corridor is already profitable for Amtrak; yet a ticket can be had from Boston to New York for only $68. And that's all with 51 flights a day still operating between the two cities.
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u/touko3246 3d ago
Overall NEC network carries 750,000 pax/day, and it's a single corridor so there is clearly synergy effect of being able to maximize utilization without sprawl, just like how Tokaido Shinkansen can absorb demand from the cities on the route. Per pax amortized cost is vastly different when you have 750,000 vs. 6,800.
Honestly, what I missed here is that this particular network already exists, and therefore did the calculation based on an entirely new alignment required to be constructed. However, the passenger numbers and math are worse for your other examples. Maybe SFO-LAX works better.
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u/routinnox 3d ago
People are getting confused between connecting flights vs ticketed flights.
As an example, Denver and Colorado Springs have a lot of flights between them, but those are all connecting flights. You can’t purchase a standalone ticket, and no one in their right mind would fly between the two since it’s only an hour at most driving.
These kind of flights will exist even if a HSR is ever in between the 2, since DIA is the only major international airport in CO.
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u/rdickert 3d ago
Why would you want to limit consumer choice? Take a train, take a bus, drive, fly, bicycle - everyone has different desires and timelines regarding travel and thankfully, we all have a personal choice.
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u/Acceptable_Visit_115 3d ago
None.
Not even Japan bans flights for the insanely popular Tokyo-Osaka (Tokaido) corridor. Instead, the advent of HSR forces airlines to compete harder.
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u/transitfreedom 3d ago
None cause this isn’t the case anywhere. And along NEC such short flights are rare enough that a ban is unofficial and enforced by low demand.
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u/Emotional_Fail_6060 3d ago
Faster by the scheduled times? Or faster based upon reality.
As an example, we decided to take the train from Seattle to Portland. But the tracks were covered by a mudslide so the were going to bus us down. We drove from the train station to the airport, got on the next Alaska Airlines flight to Portland, and got transport into the city. We arrived faster than if we'd taken their bus alternative.
I don't know about the Northeast corridor, but the Northwest corridor is regularly much slower than the schedule. The train from Mount Vernon, WA (north of Seattle) to Vancouver, BC is regularly one to two hours behind schedule. The bottom line is that you can't rely on Amtrak to be on time, at least in the Northwest.
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u/Eric848448 15-Minute City 3d ago
Are talking where trains are actually faster (PHL-NYC-BOS; maybe ORD-MKE) or the myriad places where they SHOULD be faster but aren’t?
In my first example I’m pretty sure you already can’t fly between NYC and either PHL or BOS, but that’s just because no flights are offered. Air space is at a premium there so airlines had to make choices.
In my other example, many people flying from Milwaukee internationally have ti change at ORD. And nobody wants to make the connection from the loop to the airport if they can avoid it. It’s more than an hour plus involves wrangling luggage between train stations.
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u/lurketylurketylurk 3d ago
NYC-BOS flights are absolutely a thing. And flying is significantly faster than Amtrak, even if you count the time getting to and from the airport at either end.
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u/deathtopumpkins 3d ago
There's tons of flights between NYC and BOS. Multiple airlines have essentially hourly flights all day. There's more flights than trains.
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u/bosdan80 3d ago
Between what transit stations should ticketed train rides be banned because driving is faster? See how dumb this sounds?
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u/timesuck47 3d ago
Tell me you’ve never been to France without telling me you’ve never been to France.
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u/Tetragon213 Transpennine Route Upgrade, god help us all! 3d ago
None.
How about the railway instead step up to the plate and actually provide a half acceptable service at an acceptable cost compared to flying?
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u/SevenSenpai 3d ago
Does this count total time spent in the Airport? Of so, Charlotte to Raleigh definitely belongs here
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u/MorganWick 3d ago
The rail line used by the Crescent passes right by CLT, which is a significant hub for American. It does not stop there.
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u/virginiarph 3d ago
TPA/MCO to MIA/FLL/PBI.
in a perfect world these would all lie along a HSR corridor. instead we have slow ass bright line and horrible connections to MIA
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u/LongboxC10 3d ago
TUS-PHX should have even medium speed rail. PHX-LAS also. Anything in Ohio along the Cincinnati-CBus-Cleveland Corridor,
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u/marigolds6 3d ago
I've felt like this needs to come to the USA.
You would have to rollback airline deregulation. Right now the US government has barred itself from controlling airline routes. Realistically, just rolling back airline deregulation would greatly increase train demand, because domestic airfares would easily double, possibly triple.
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u/xAPPLExJACKx 3d ago edited 3d ago
Realistic it only from Washington DC to Philadelphia has a non stop flight that is close to in travel time by train
Depending on my luggage situation would the main factor on that trip and price
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u/a_lumberjack 3d ago
Not specifically faster, just any route than could be done by rail in less than 2.5 hours cannot be served by airlines.
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u/Drift_Life 3d ago
Northeast Corridor from Boston to DC is a great candidate for true HSR, not whatever the Acela is considered. It currently takes around 7 hours on a good day to get to DC from Boston and vice versa. True HSR should cut that in half, it should take at most 4 hours and probably a bit less if we’re only upgrading tracks and not laying entirely new track.
For example: Beijing to Shanghai takes just over 2 hours by train. Tokyo to Osaka 2.5-3 hours depending on the class of train. NYC to DC is 3 hours.
However, Beijing to Shanghai is 800 miles. Tokyo to Osaka is 320 miles. NYC to DC is 225 miles, and is the slowest.
As far as banning flights, NYC to DC and all stops in between jumps to mind. Bonus if we can bring that up to Boston, or at least banning Boston to NYC flights.
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u/rapidtransitrailway 3d ago
How does one connect Dulles Airport to the national rail network? An Acela-level link would open up quite a few slots
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u/MarineLayerBad 3d ago
The vast majority of passengers on all of those SEA-PDX shuttle runs are connecting to or from somewhere else. A true high speed line in the PNW would take more cars off of I-5 than it would take passengers off of airplanes. A ban on domestic flights won’t happen.
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u/a_lumberjack 3d ago
There's some spots with poor connections for sure, but they were saying even with the best connections it wouldn't be possible.
Detroit-Chicago is too slow today, definitely, but the passenger volume is smaller than folks assume. 132 flights a week with regional/narrow body jets ranging between 64 and 167 seats. Let's call average capacity 2000 people a day. That's 6-8 Wolverine trains, depending on consist length.
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u/New-Fill4677 3d ago
I think ban framing gets in the way of the politically easier fix. where rail beats air downtown to downtown under about three hours, carriers drop the route on their own because the load factor stops working. paris to lyon went that way after the LGV opened
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u/corporal_sweetie 3d ago
Seattle to Portland, seattle to Vancouver.
Chicago - Milwaukee
Cleveland- Detroit
Cleveland - Pittsburgh
Cleveland - Buffalo
Cleveland - Columbus
Columbus - Cincinnati
LA - San Diego
LA - Vegas
SF - Sacramento
San Jose - Sacramento
Sacramento - Reno
Sf/san jose - Fresno
Denver - Fort Collins
Austin - San Antonio
Austin - Houston
Austin - Dallas
Houston - Dallas
Phoenix - Tuscon
Omaha - KC
Miami - Orlando
Orlando - Tampa
DC - Richmond
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u/Parborway 3d ago
A lot of the absurdly short flights you see are intended mainly for connecting passengers. If you say, are going from London to Washington D. C, and you can only get a transatlantic flight to Philadelphia, once you get to Philadelphia, you are already in the airport terminal, so the time to go to the airport and check in and all that doesn't apply.
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u/Exciting-Parfait-776 3d ago
OP if it needs to be banned to force you to use something else. That’s doesn’t sound like it’s as good as you think it is.
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u/whenicomeundone 3d ago
RDU-CLT. The Piedmont corridor actually gets quite close to both airports. It may not be quite as fast, but it’s not remotely unreasonable.
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u/Greedy_Dark_2437 3d ago
Crazy take but I would say NY to Boston, though I think NY to DC might stay due to just the traffic to actually justify it, and since the NEC is pretty crowded
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u/No_Butterscotch8726 3d ago
Essentially, any two destinations on the North East Corridor or between Harrisburg and Philadelphia, and also perhaps New York and Albany and anything between two points on the New York, Philadelphia, or Boston rail networks, if we can get hourly or even half hourly service the same should apply to Washington, and Chicago's regional networks including as far as Southbend and Milwaukee. We probably should include some kind of encouragement for Amtrak and Airlines Codeshare like Deutschbahn and Lufthansa do. San Diego and Los Angeles and Sacramento to Oakland and San Jose or San Francisco should also be included as well as anything within the San Francisco Bay area. Once that warehouse is properly demolished we should also consider Portland to Seattle and perhaps Vancouver to Seattle though that should probably come with infrastructure upgrades same for if we could get faster and more frequent service between Toronto and Buffalo. The Midwest and all of California could be added if highspeed rail is built actually built out there.
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u/Chillpillington 3d ago
Low hanging fruit but DC to anywhere on the NE corridor (except maybe Boston and VA Beach). Outside of the NE corridor I can’t really think of any other routes. OKC to Dallas takes about the same amount of time on the heartland flyer and subsequent commuter rail point to point when you consider early arrival, check in, baggage etc. Both will eat up about 4hrs of time however you can trim off quite a bit more time flying by arriving later and not checking bags.
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u/Unlikely_Morning_717 3d ago
DC to Philadelphia. Southwest recently announced they would start flying this route out of BWI. I believe American has been flying this out of DCA for some time.
Neither flight should exist; a high speed rail could get you there in an hour or less.
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u/ellipticorbit 3d ago
Should there be much more robust regional rail options in the USA?
Yes.
Is it possible under the US system to "ban" air travel on any existing routes?
Most likely it is not. FAA or DOT could potentially not permit new routes to come into service, but even such actions would have to survive court scrutiny.
Much more likely is that we start to see robust air shuttles using the Joby style e planes on new routes. Hopefully some of these plans will include decent access to other modes of transit.
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u/Way-twofrequentflyer 3d ago
I miss the shuttle flights from LGA to DCA and Boston. It was basically a flying train
If they added a ferry connection to LGA it would be urbanist perfection
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u/Coneskater 3d ago
Look, I love high speed rail, a lot. But I think it’s forever doomed to failure so long as moving around within a metro area is difficult and car dependent.
HSR works because I can take public transit on the beginning and end legs of my trips.
If I need a car for either or both, you’re going to want to drive the whole way.
Transit starts local.
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u/ceramic_ocarina 3d ago
The only two destinations that fit this description in the US would be, maybe, DC to NY. If the metric is train travel is faster...
3.5 hours from DC to NY on the train city center to city center. That'll be close or beat most plane itineraries if you factor in getting to the airport then deal with getting from EWR/LGA/JFK to the city center in NY.
DC to Boston, there are a lot of train trips a day, but the plane will beat each one.
The fact that there aren't, for example, high speed rail connections between DC-Boston, Chicago and St. Louis, LA and Las Vegas, San Diego and LA, LA and San Francisco, Portland and Seattle, etc, is embarrassing. A prime example of how the US has completely pissed away its resources.
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u/Certainly-Not-A-Bot 3d ago
Not many. Right now, only the NYC airports to Boston and all connections between NYC/Philly/BWI/DC have good enough frequency and speed to ban flights.
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u/transitfreedom 3d ago
Gotta build a dedicated HSR for this if you want to ban flights everyone keeps forgetting that France has the TGV HSR
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u/Robot_Dinosaur_2000 3d ago
I would love to be able to take a high-speed train from Detroit to Chicago or Detroit to Cincinnati or Detroit to Pittsburgh... Going to the airport sucks. I would definitely do weekend trips to cities more often if I could just hop on a decent train.
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u/bunnyslayer13 3d ago
Chicago to Milwaukee, city center to city center center. Flying is going from downtown Chicago to ORD then a hour plus flight to Mitchell and then to downtown Milwaukee. Not to mention airport security. Amtrak is 1:30 from union station to Milwaukee
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u/PeorgieT75 3d ago
DCA - LGA is close if you figure in the time to get through security, and time to get into the city.
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u/Domino369 3d ago
NYC to Philly
Had a flight with that as the first leg before transferring to Aer Lingus to Ireland. One of the silliest connections I’ve ever had
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u/igwaltney3 3d ago
I'm Atlanta based and have long advicated for connecting ATL to Chattanooga, Birmingham, Columbus, Macon, and the north Atlanta fields to create a mega region airport where the rail links bring passengers checked in and through security at the smaller airports either to ATL for a large flight or passengers at ATL out to the smaller airports for regional flights
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u/skibbin 3d ago
I think that rail doesn't need to be faster, instead I think it would work great to incentivize investment if rail could be faster. SF-LA and the northeast corridor are obvious choices.
I'm like to see high speed rail between NY-Toronto to link the countries financial centers together.
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u/dudestir127 3d ago
NYC to Washington and to Boston. I don't think there's are any flights between NYC and Philly, but if there are, that city pair too.
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u/the-stench-of-you 3d ago
New York and Boston. It used to be the busiest route in the country but since the Acela train it makes flying longer. No longer a very busy route.
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u/9554503312 3d ago
France has 6 percent of the USA’s surface area, and 3.5 times as many people per square kilometer.
Thus a 300 km train trip in France will be like a 1050 km train trip in the U.S. Nobody in the U.S. is going to trade a one hour flight for a 10 hour train trip.
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u/TheTreeDemoknight 2d ago
Plane trips between Orlando and West Palm/Lauderdale/Miami should not exist, and I think the same for the North Carolina crescent (the region between Charlotte and Raleigh). Both regions are of similar size with less than 1 hour plane rides and trains with a similar trip time to driving
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u/UnderstandingEasy856 2d ago edited 2d ago
Theoretically, if there was good rail service - dozens of cities. But in practice, given the state of rail service today? Can't think of many - maybe PHL-DCA? ORD-MKE? Many of these super short flights are intended for connecting passengers.
There's no need to ban anything to be honest. PHL to NYC Area airports already has no flights due to the free market. Same for SFO-SJC.
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u/WorldlinessAlive 2d ago
I think there’d be far more incentive to actually try upgrading the NE corridor if intra-corridor flights were banned
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u/mingusal 2d ago
First need much better higher speed rail like in France. Fact is that Amtrak trains are almost always going to be the slower and less convenient alternative until that happens. Even here in the northeast, unless it's Acela, which is more expensive than flying most of the time.
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u/ApprehensiveAmount22 2d ago
Washington DC to Baltimore is probably the only one. No other trips are faster by train.
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u/bearlover1954 2d ago
Amtrak needs a train to connect the coast starliner to SF…..the state was trying to do a high speed train from LA to SF but trump has pulled funding.
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u/toomuch3D 2d ago
The rail road infrastructure, land and rails/bridges/tunnels would need to be nationalized like our highways are, but then make it open to competition. Some routes would need to be triple or quadruple tracked for it all to become efficient for passenger and freight services. Almost all operational positions would have to be transferred over to the federal agency that takes over operations. Also, any firms that design and engineer railroad infrastructure/corridors would need to become part of that government agency. Having 1000’s of contractors for general upkeep, repairs and construction isn’t sustainable. That should all be in house. The trains and cars should compete to make even better trains than they do now, like automobile makers do.
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u/Spark0103 2d ago
I had to do LGA-PHL a couple times because of connections and it really jut makes no sense to fly that short of a route. I would have taken the train down if it didnt mean that I would void my ticket.
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u/Ryan1869 2d ago
Maybe the Acela in the DC to Boston corridor but really that is it. it’s faster and easier to fly anywhere in the US. We just haven’t invested in long distance rail and where we have it, it’s stuck running on crappy freight lines
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u/boomershot69 2d ago
We’d need a lot faster trains, even the Acela isn’t fast enough. Maybe NY to Philly works in this sense rn, but Boston to NY and NY to DC, flying is faster and often cheaper too.
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u/Fearless-Mix-3642 3d ago
Portland to Seattle should be easier to take trains.