Driving 8 hours round trip today to pick up one person, and I'll never understand why Americans think this is more convenient than my colleague taking a train.

Yeah it's not that we don't want to use the train, it's that the train has been successfully turned into an objectively worse option in every way thanks to decades of lobbying and underfunding. If there even is a reasonable train route between your destinations, it would likely take 2-4x as long as driving, be 4-10x more expensive than the gas for the drive, and would be an uncomfortable and unpleasant experience that would still require a pickup and decently long drive (or further use of the barely functional public transit system) to get to the final destination.

If you're not a shipping container, there basically is no public transit infrastructure in the US. It only exists in cities that have chosen to make significant investments in it, and even then in most places it's like one arterial light rail and then some busses with crappy coverage. For anything between cities or states, it's nearly the same price as flying to get a charter bus or train ticket.

The only thing that would solve this problem is extremely aggressive and unpopular legislation, or some benevolent trillionaire to actually do a hyperloop type project without immediately coopting it into just a shittier highway. Market forces and city governments will never create real interstate transit networks. Less aggressive legislation making it more expensive to keep and especially buy/make new cars would help, but it's political suicide to say "I'm going to tax the good that almost every voter, and especially the ones with money and influence, have and use every day".

Intercity rail is being built and improved on in CA, TX, FL, and the north east. The main issue is the terrible city planning in every city. City planners need to be brave enough to build non-car-dependent neighborhoods, and zoning restrictions need to be brought into the 21st century to allow that.
- Intercity rail is only really useful if you have good public transport in both cities. It does defeat the purpose if you need a car to get to and from the train station.
@verdigris

@fuck_cars @DontMindMe Market forces cannot give you a good transit network as the market needs to compete against roads which are essentially free. Adding insult to injury, if you try you will discover that your taxes are going to support the road network you are trying to compete against.

Private transit did very well in the US until regulations (NYC didn't allow subways to charge market rates and thus they went bankrupt) and the highway system messed things up. So long as things like that are a risk you would be a fool to invest in private transit.
- NYC didn’t allow subways to charge market rates and thus they went bankrupt
  
  Simple solution: full statization of public transport infrastructure. Look at Europe (or even Brazil, ffs) - the state can afford to freeze prices or make the service free, if taken as a priority (which it is).
there happens to be a great train from my town to the next that:

is a lot cheaper than a ride share (only $7 for 30-40 miles)

your bike rides for free

is quicker or at least the same amount of time as driving

picks you up and drops you off downtown

my only complaint is that it only runs 4 times per day, and it can’t really be used as a commuter train or getting home late because of the hours. most people here (raleigh and durham) don’t even know it’s an option.

In America the train costs as much as a plane ticket. Driving is cheaper. We also have very little in the way if trains. Most of our long distance travel is by bus. Tiny, dirty, cramped busses where if someone takes a shit in the toilet everyone smells it for hours. I would rather drive.

@Caradoc879
True, but it's a bit more than that. They seem to think that cars are always the ultimate in convenience. I know a couple that opted to drive in central London instead of taking the tube. 🙄
- That's because there's a weirdly narrow subset of our population that have both experience with public transportation being available, and it being nice.
  If your only experience with public transit was a slow, infrequent and unreliable bus that reeked of piss and came by once every two hours with no way to know if it's running late or cancelled, you'd also come to the conclusion that a car was more convenient.
  
  It's one of those self fulfilling prophecy things. People expect public transportation to be awful, so they don't use it, so usage numbers drop making sure funding gets cut further.
- @DontMindMe
  
  @fuck_cars @Caradoc879 People - including you - are creatures of habit. I've seen people drive to a neighbor's house even though they had to park in the street and thus the total walk was more than if they had just walked - when the only option for almost everything is to drive you don't think of alternatives when/if they would be viable.
In America the train costs as much as a plane ticket. Driving is cheaper.

Damn, is it that bad in the states? I just did a quick lookup for Toronto to Montreal by train, and it's about the same price as driving (maybe less, depending on the cost of gas that day).

But the convenience, and not wasting two people's lives, makes it totally worth taking a train.
- Bruh it's that bad here. Eastern Canadians are lucky, in Western Canada within cities it's barely acceptable in some cases and as bad as the average US city in many others. You will not find an inter city train in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan or Manitoba that actually connects you to where you want to go. Via Rail is an absolute JOKE and I'm literally hundreds of kilometers away from the nearest station.
- I'm glad to be living on the west coast where we have Amtrak. Amtrak round trip from sac to SF and back is only like $20. Busses pretty much run everywhere in the city too so you don't absolutely need a car/uber to get around.
- @Showroom7561
  
  @fuck_cars @DontMindMe @Caradoc879 Pretty much or worse. If you have a family it gets even worse - I'm trying to take my family - 3 kids and driving is the only reasonable option - gas is cheap, 3 nights in hotels on the way, and a few restaurants along the way. We save at least $3000 vs flying - I gave up on Amtrak when I realized it was going to take even longer than driving and was at least $1000 more (I'm not sure if I gave up at one-way price or the round trip price) At that price I can afford to spend a few days in a car. We will just make sure to see something on the way - though having done the trip before I'm not sure what is left.
- The train from Chicago to Boston this weekend is 22 hours and $140. It's not even cheaper than flying.
  
  https://www.rome2rio.com/tickets/Chicago/Boston?oDateTime=2023-12-09&adults=1&mode=train
  
  https://www.kayak.com/flight-routes/Chicago-Midway-MDW/Boston-Logan-Intl-BOS
- Mostly. If your locality is served by Amtrak - and only a few dozen cities are out of the 3 million square miles of ConUS - then it can be somewhat convenient and cost effective if you plan your travel more than 2-3 months in advance. It’s about 2/3 the speed of car travel, but more comfortable, generally. If you buy tickets less than 3 weeks ahead the prices are about 4x what they are for booking at 3-6 months out. Also, unless you live in one of the 2-3 hub areas, trains run only once or twice a day. For comparison, Last time I checked it’s like £70 to go from London to Aberdeen and takes 7 hours and trains leave every hour or two. From Roanoke to New York - 80 miles closer than the UK route I know of - it’s $200, 9 hours, and only two trains run per day - the first departs at 6:20am, the second at 4:15p (and gets in around 2am). It’s only a 7.5 hour drive and $40-50 in gas to go from Roanoke to NYC, and it’s pretty easy to park outside the city and take a commuter train in.
  
  Oh, and there’s no workable hub and spoke system due to the few trains and long travel times. My daughter is just 300 miles away at school and the city has a train stop. It’s a 5 hour drive one way. It takes two days and 3 train changes to get from her city to the closest station to me, about a 45 minute drive away. It’s ridiculous.
In America the train costs as much as a plane ticket.

While this is often true, I think there's a habit of comparing apples-to-apples, when they are not the same. Getting to/from the airport is often expensive while train stations are commonly in convenient downtown locations.

Driving is cheaper.

Again, I feel like a lot of people over simplify and just go, "My gas is X, the train ticket is Y. X<Y, so driving is cheaper." It completely ignores maintenance costs and depreciation, which are a lot more than people give them credit for.
- Again, I feel like a lot of people over simplify and just go, "My gas is X, the train ticket is Y. X
  
  I don't think it is an oversimplification honestly. It might work out as a favorable arrangement if we're only talking about only moving around within a larger city with robust infrastructure, but the scenario of the post with a 4 hour drive speaks to the fact that this isn't the case.
  
  For driving a fair distance your expenses will be gas, tolls, and parking generally. A long-range train ticket will likely cost more than all those combined and then on top of that you'll still likely have to pay for extended parking and/or other transportation on one side of the trip if you don't have someone you can rely on.
  
  I don't by any means live in the middle of nowhere and the nearest train station to me is still over a two and a half hour drive. I don't enjoy it, but the infrastructure just isn't there to make this a feasible option for many people.
- “Convenient Downtown Locations” assumes that there is ample public transit to and from those locations. For example, we took a train into Chicago from a small town in Iowa. There was absolutely no public transit going to that station. It was literally a 2 hour drive to the station, and that was the closest train station to us. Additionally, once we got there, we found out that our train was running 6 hours late. This wasn’t communicated to passengers until it was about 30 minutes from the scheduled departure time. This was for a train ride that took 4 hours, and was the same cost as a plane ride that would have been about 45 minutes, and the airport was about a 25 minute drive from our home.
  
  We could have driven the whole thing in 4 hours and it would have been about 1/4 the cost.

Holy shit 8 hours is terrible. When I pick someone up from the airport is a 1 hour round trip. There's a reasonably conveniently-located train option, except that its inconveniently infrequent off-peak, costs $20 per person, and takes an hour. All of which unfortunately makes driving kind of a no-brainer. The ridiculous cost is one thing that could be easily fixed and frequency wouldn't be too much of a problem given the political will, but travel time is a little trickier. It sucks that under current conditions, driving is so much more convenient.

You might be better off having him rent a car where he is and then return it where he's going.

Permanently Deleted

Because to them being able to drive 4 hours one way in a day is somehow more "liberating" than taking a train. Even going the same distance, they for some reason think its better to drain multiple tanks of gas (at $4.50 a gallon where I am) to go that distance than to purchase a $20 dollar train ticket and do the same distance while being able to read, play games, whatever.

@scrubbles
I think it also has something to do with sharing space with other people, which they're not used to.
- I have midwest friends who have admitted this, that they don't like sharing a space. This is generally just a problem with rural people, they shut themselves out from the general public for so long that they get fearful of anyone outside of their social norms.
  
  Which of course I say "Get tougher and deal with it", your fear of other people shouldn't drive society. (But that's human history - aint it)
Hey bud, almost no one thinks that. Idk where the hell you are pulling that info from but most people would love to not have to own cars and pay so much of their income on it. Also how much do you think train tickets cost in the usa cuz its not 20 fucking bucks. It can be several hundred dollars like just as much as plane tickets depending on where you are and where you are going.
- I actually was agreeing with you? Maybe I worded it wrong? I'm in the PNW and coach from Portland to Seattle is about 20ish, probably more like 30, and it's 4 hours away, so that's my example

Where are you picking them up from, the train station? Because the closest one to me is an 8 hour round trip away.

That is the problem. Need more trains, stations and routes.