cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43181347
Americans IRL: (Standing in the TSA queue at the airport) “Train? What’s that?”
this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2026
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I've had to take a train from Boston to NYC and back a few times. Round trip, it costs anywhere from $200 to $500 depending on whether you want to leave / arrive at a reasonable time or not, and it takes about 5 hours each way, which is slightly longer than driving takes. Incidentally I can fly from BOS to JFK round trip for about $200, assuming reasonably early booking, and the flight is about 1 hour. So this doesn't surprise me at all.
Had a similar comment in mind. The cost for a coach seat on a train to the nearest destination city that there's actually a route to costs about 3x as much as a round trip flight (budget airline) and takes over 24 hours. I would prefer rail were it practical, but it's not.
No secret that our rail systems suck though. I have taken trains in Europe and Japan, and those experiences were great!
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I'm not disagreeing with you but I think we all need to start including airport hassle time into our statements of flight times. In my limited experience train stations involve less of that bullshit, although obviously you can only go when the train is ready, as opposed to starting your car and hitting the highway. Neither Logan (Boston) nor LaGuardia (New York) is swift or easy, especially if you have any baggage, and there is also the travel time to actually get into the city, which can easily add another hour in traffic. Train stations tend to be in the heart of downtown.
(Tbf, I in Los Angeles live much closer to LAX than to Union Station so ymmv)
Train stations definitely have less bullshit, but it's a 5h trip vs a 1h trip in this case. I could have spent 3 hours in the airport before the flight each way and added 30 minutes to get from the train station to the airport and back, and still saved time by flying.
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This happens in Europe too.
A few years back I had to go to my company's northernmost office. It took about 20 hours of travel, 19 hours of which was on trains, and I didn't even reach my destination. The train couldn't get far enough because of the snow, and was replaced with a bus. Only I couldn't go on it, and so my company shelled out about another $170 for a taxi from one town to the other.
All in all, trip there and back costed ~$500, not counting the taxi.
Meanwhile, looking now, I could take a flight instead. I'd have to take a train or a bus to the airport, that'll take about two hours of course, but it'll cost me about $30. The flight will take 1½ hours, and will cost $150 including the trip back. So, about $210 for the entire trip.
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Clearly you don't know the Deutsche Bahn
Luckily the metro in Germany is not operated by Deutsche Bahn
Where I live, the U-Bahn is by far the most dependable transit. I love it! Nowadays I mostly use the bicycle, plenty of bicycle lanes to go around. It's nice to have options.
No, that the train being only seconds late is a Japanese thing. In Europe we have anything between "No Train Today" to "Train passed through the station without stopping"
Or Swiss, but certainly nowhere else in Europe.
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clearly never been in a German train
fuck DB man
Public services need to be publicly owned.
Politicians are corrupt, but business people are corruption embodied.
It is publicly owned, it was just defunded by conservatives
It's more complicated than that. The DB as an umbrella organization (consisting of over 100 companies) is publicly owned, but:
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The infrastructure is completely separated from operations, with a lot of regulations to make sure that the infrastructure company doesn't cooperate with any operations company for fear they might discriminate against other companies, effectively throwing sand into the gears of railroad operations because many communication paths that are standard in other railroads are banned.
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The companies that carry out operations are expected to be completely self-sufficient, with no direct support from the government, but only through contracts auctioned off to the lowest bidder for local services (definitely no connection with competing companies who bid really low regularly going bankrupt /s). Long distance services are expected to finance themselves but are expected to cross subsidize services to cities that aren't quite as lucrative (because they are, after all, owned by the government) and at the same time compete with companies that aren't government owned that just offer rides on the most lucrative routes.
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The budget that is available for infrastructure is decided by the government every year, meaning absolutely no financial stability. This means that construction companies don't end up growing because it could be too risky, and when suddenly there's a lot of work to be done the few construction companies that are able to do the work demand insane prices and conditions, and the infrastructure company is essentially forced to swallow if they want anything done at all.
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As an American living in Germany ❤️ DB
I know it used to be better, and compared to neighboring nations its bad, but I've never had access to a better transit system.
Plus I do feel like DB is not given enough credit for its volume of trains. No other country in Europe is running so many trains so frequently. You have several hourly train routes that would be a bus ride every 3 hours in other European nations
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No, fuck corrupt politicians - our rail network used to be great before it got privatized.
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It really depends on the part of the US. Amtrak is very reliable in the north east. Lot of the commuter train services are quite good as well. Subways and metros are pretty good in most of the north east as well.
Amtrak is much more limited in its coverage on the west coast, but still ok from what I’ve heard. BART in the SF area has good ridership although it needs some more investment, LA is doing some big expansions right now as well.
Chicago has a good but a bit old transit system as well. The Amtrak from NYC/DC to Chicago is a long but pleasant ride, about 18 hours; but this is to be expected given that the distance is 1146 Km (714 miles) which is about the same as Brussels to Warsaw, and most of the routes for that appear to be about 18 hours as well.
I’ve heard some rumblings about projects in the Pacific Northwest, but it’s not really something to write home about as it stands. Needs more investment and not to have the projects price gouged by contractors.
Some mid sized cities and towns all over the country will have decent bus services, some even a light rail or two, but it’s a coin toss.
The South West, Mountain west, South East and Midwest (outside of Chicago and the twin citiest) absolutely atrocious, like, you are basically screwed if you don’t own a car. Like there are a few example of decent local transit systems in particularly big cities but their ridership and coverage are pathetic given the size of the cities and there aren’t any plans for serious expansions on the scale that needs to be happening. Regional rail is just… hope you like a 2 week train ride where you’re spending half the time waiting for 40 mile long trains full of gravel to pass.
Chinese train infrastructure is next level. Forget about Japan with their high speed railway and punctuality. For example just Hangzhou East railway station runs 800 trains a day, mostly high-speed trains.
Chinese rail has currently completed testing the CR450 which will be the latest fuxing version to run at operational speed of 400 km/h and will start carrying passengers by the end of year. The next project in development is a maglev running at 600 km/h but is only in prototype for now.
Didn't japan have like the first maglev train like 10 years ago?
Japan has been building a long distance one for a while now. It got held up in one prefecture because of environmental and political reasons though. Currently running maglevs anywhere are all kinda gimmicky (really no point in going super fast when the distance is very short anyway, waste of money).
In China they will run it between Shanghai and Beijing initially, which is about 1200 kilometer. Currently it is either a 2.5 hour flight plus getting to and from the airport or a 4.5 hour high-speed train which starts and stops in the heart of both cities.
With the maglev the duration will drop to 2 hours. That is not trivial as you suggest. It is a genuine transport solution to counter the more polluting flights. In China people prefer the train over plane wherever possible. It is more comfortable, quiet and enjoyable.
Shanghai also has a Maglev since 2001: 25 years ago, from the airport with a topspeed of 430 km/h.
But this new Maglev will be a proper commercial maglev to replace the older generation high-speed trains.
Damn, that's so cool. Meanwhile, in the US of A, we're cutting back on Metrolink train lines to save money
fake. i live in a big european city. i routinely miss my train but it doesn't matter because the next one goes in 5 minutes anyways.
UK train travel is abysmal, it's often trained just get straight up canceled or delayed, I was stuck for 2 hours on a 30 minute journey last week it's incredibly stupid
This is wildly overstated. In the period Jan-Mar, 86% of station stops were made within 3min of the timetable, with a cancellation rate of only 3.2% of services.
However, extensive hot weather is playing havoc with everything, rail no exception. Heat affecting equipment, medical emergencies, buckling track, even the ground drying out so much the trackbed is becoming unstable in some places.
British rail travel is quite punctual as a whole, despite being complex and near-saturation and prone to knock-on delays.
Houston Texas. Population 2.3m. Number of inter city trains a day: 2. One in each direction.
The service only operates 3 days per week. That's 6 trains per week, total. 3 in each direction.
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This is why I moved to Massachusetts after growing up in the south: the trains here might be old, late, and apparently catch on fire once in a while from what ive heard, but we have trains.
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Slovakians: "Our train was less than 2 hours late AND didn't crash, awesome!"
Edit: Some context
Trains are frequently late.
As for crashes, some timeline and pictures:
2025-10-13 - Jablonov nad Turňou
2025-11-09 - Pezinok
2025-12-09 - between Liptovský Mikuláš and Liptovský Hrádok
Just a few meters from crash
2026-06-05 Krpeľany
Slovakia, are you okay?
Idk it seems like they could use some training. Things are going off the rails over there.
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I saw an opportunity to share this: Where are America's trains? by the very excellent edutainment channel Climate Town
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I was that European transit user years ago. I did buy a BMW because I hated the train system, but crashed it and then bought a Saab. I sold it 3 years ago and bought an electric bike. Only take the train like twice a year or so. When I go to Berlin for a weekend trip or something. But then I'm using DB which is way worse than the trains in my country, so I won't use trains for a while after that. Taking the train to the station where the ICE stops: 2 minutes delay. FFS... ICE: 3 hours late, doesn't stop here anymore, need to take another train to a other station to get it. FUUUUUUUCK DB! YOU'RE NOT EVEN IN GERMANY YET AND ALREADY FUCK EVERYTHING UP! Wo ist der Deutsche pünktlichkeit eh?
I like trains and all I want more. But I'm 100% will never not own a car. Far too fun.
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also the american ones are not HSR and are very limited to a few regions. being extremely car centric, public transportation is often neglected.
That Transrapid is located in china though, not europe. Germany developed it but never followed through and even China only uses it for one line. Would have been better to show a TGV or a Siemens Verlaro to represent EU
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