Complete rubbish.
Comment on Why is us rail travel so expensive?
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Even the hassle of flying is worth the time and money saved.
You’ve touched on the answer here. The answer is duration of travel. The same labor that is required to move one trainload of passengers on a long haul route can move many many times that number of passengers on an aircraft simply because the aircraft spends less time traveling. So the cost of the tickets must rise to cover the costs and eek out some profit.
FelixCress@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Tiresia@slrpnk.net 4 days ago
That just isn’t true. It takes far more people to build, maintain, and service airplanes and the infrastructure to support them than to do the same for trains, and even when traveling a train requires fewer personnel per passenger-kilometer. Airplanes and cars are massively subsidized, and their uncovered externalities are much more costly to society too.
cogman@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Yup. In basically all terms, rail is more efficient than airplanes.
The only thing that makes Amtrak less efficient in the US is the fact that it’s unused. And the reason it’s unused is because it’s an afterthought in government spending.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 4 days ago
If you want a well researched and referenced argument. Here is a good one.
If you’re moving the goalposts to include all the infrastructure of air travel, then you must also include the infrastructure costs of long haul rail travel. Building out new rail travel for hundreds of miles of long haul service (which is what I think OP is looking at, and what I specifically replied to) is monstrously expensive.
Can you point me at examples unsubsidized financially self sustaining (profitable) long haul rail anywhere in the world?
We’ve to enough moving parts in this conversation. Lets table this one to include actual costs paid and ticket prices please.