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If americans come to germany and act like german public Transport is the best, how frickin bad is american public Transport? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Genuine Question. Even if I look at hungarian Transport, and they to this day use trains from the UdSSR, they come more consistantly then the DB.

They are really Bad sometimes, with like 20 seperate prices: Theres the bayernwald ticket that only works in the alps, then theres the official ticket to the destination. Theres a special offer, but only in the very special APP. You can use a d-ticket, but look! Some random ass slum in the middle of the worlds ass dosent accept that, but it does the MVV zone Tickets. But then you need the MVV zone 11-M, a ticket to the beginning to the Nürnberg zones, and a ticket for the Nürnberg zones.

And yet this shit is better than americas rails? How?

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[-] [email protected] 15 points 5 days ago

I happen to be a prime example of how bad US Rail is this week. I'm taking my son from near Fredericksburg (the real one), up to Ballston for a summer camp. We have a couple options:

  1. Drive
  • Distance: ~70 miles one way, ~140 round trip
  • Time: 1 hour and 45 minutes one way, with traffic. ~3.5 hours round trip.
  • Cost:
    • 4 gallons (US) of gas @ $3.50/gal: $14
    • Wear and tear: estimate at 0.5 gas cost: $7
    • Parking: $11
    • Total: $32/day
  1. Virginia Railway Express (VRE) and Washington Area Metro (WMATA)
  • Distance: N/A
  • Time:
    • Drive to Fredericksburg station: 20 minutes
    • VRE (Fredericksburg to L'Enfant station) - 1 hour 20 minutes
    • WMATA (L'Enfant to Ballston) - 20 minutes
    • Total: 2 hours one way, 4 hours round trip
  • Cost:
    • Drive: we'll just ignore this, it's close enough to zero.
    • VRE: $23.56/person * 2 people: $47.12
    • WMATA: $3.45/person * 2 people: $6.90
    • Total: $54.02/day

So, for the low, low cost of about 1.68 times the cost of driving, we can take slightly longer to get to our destination and have zero control over our schedule, which makes the actual time devoted to travel considerably longer. We tried the public transit route last year, and it meant leaving earlier in the morning (about 30 minutes) to catch a train to get us there on time, and getting us home around 45 minutes later. And this is right around the US Capitol, which has some of the better transit options. Needless to say, we're driving this year.

I really want to be able to take transit, but it's basically dead in the US. Earlier this year, I needed to go to Boston for work. Catching a train from Washington, DC to Boston meant an 7 hour train ride (using the "high speed" Acela line) at ~$500 round trip. Flying was 1.5 hours and cost ~$300 round trip. Wanna guess which option I used?

Basically, all of the incentives are stacked against transit options in the US. Except within certain metro areas, driving or flying is always cheaper and faster. Yes, inside those metro areas, public transit can be great. I used to work in Washington, DC and used the VRE I mentioned earlier to get there and then WMATA or the Capital BikeShare to get to my office. That was great, since I didn't have to drive into DC every day, which sucks big donkey balls. But it probably wasn't cost effective and wasn't really time efficient either.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I think Americans have a somewhat distorted view of what trains do.

I live in Sweden's second biggest city, and visit Stockholm the capital regularly as I have family there. I can tell you that the price for flying often is cheaper than the train, and the train takes about 4 times as long to arrive to Stockholm. But I can't think of a single person I know that doesn't take the train to Stockholm from here.

There's more to travel than the number of minutes on the mode of transport. There's getting yourself to the airport here, and from the airport in Stockholm. There are security checks in airports that take time and are often frustrating. There's the crammed space where you sit very uncomfortably. There's the bad air in the plane itself. Planes are just a frustrating exoerience. The train takes me from the train station at the center of my city to the center of the destination, it's spacious, it's comfortable, you can move around in a train, you can even do a lot of work during the trip if you want to. Trains are a pleasure to ride, planes are a pain. So just looking at the ticket cost and travel time on the transport mode itself ignores the many advantages trains have over planes. Hell, even my dog is always with me on the train, while he'd be staying at home if I was flying.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago

As a Dutchie, I was amazed at the night trains in Sweden and Finland.

Especially Finland was crazy: 92 eur for two in a private sleeper to get from Helsinki to Lapland (with interrail) is nothing compared to a seat in the sleeper train from Amsterdam to Vienna (50+ eur p.p. for a six person dorm).

Although coming back it's weird that we whine about the Dutch railroads. Those are crazy reliable, I must never realised.

this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
376 points (98.0% liked)

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