Comment on "We Took a 100+ Hour Greyhound From Boston to Seattle"
mercano@lemmy.world 8 months agoThe slower speed is why it’s so expensive. Instead of employing a pilot, co-pilot, and flight attendants for a few hours, you have to employ engineers, conductors, and car attendants for days. Labor is one of any business’s highest expenses, and when you require 10x as much for the same result…
YIj54yALOJxEsY20eU@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I think you forgot to factor airports, ground crew, atc, and federal flight infrastructure in
mercano@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It’s roughly equivalent to maintaining train stations (some of which see less than one train, per direction, per day), FRA oversight, rental fees to the host railroad outside of the limited tracks Amtrak owns, locomotive and car maintenance, etc.
Wendover broke down the numbers a few years ago, I don’t think they’ve changed significantly since then.