When you factor in a couple hours of wading through security checkpoints (at least in the US), it flips the timescale again for the short/medium trips.

It’s not only that. Even ignoring security checkpoints, jet planes almost always take people from where they do not are to where they do not want to be. Using them to go from where you are to where you want to be means spending additional time to travel to and from the airport.

Trains (most of the time) are a bit better in that regard because stations are more plentiful and often closer to where people want to be.

Cars, bicycles, and feet (mostly in that order; depending on infrastructure, it may be faster to get into your car than to hop on pot your bicycle) are even better.

Speed wise, it’s reversed. If there are no obstructions, speeds are feet < bicycle < car < train < jet plane.

That means that, only looking at trip duration, the detour to an airport and from the destination airport only is worth it for fairly long trips. Similarly, walking can be faster than cycling if you don’t have to go far, cycling can be faster than taking the car, etc.

Unfortunately, people also take trip costs into account, and those often are cheaper for air planes, compared to trains.

So, to ‘quit’ cars, we have to make it easier for people to go to a train station or to hop onto their bicycle and/or have to make it more difficult to hop into their car.

Banning on-street parking, requiring car drivers to walk a few hundred meters to a parking garage cuts multiple ways there. Using less space for parking allows for higher density, which leads to shorter travel distances, and increases the time to hop into one’s car.

> we have to make it easier for people to go to a train station or to hop onto their bicycle and/or have to make it more difficult to hop into their car.

The former is fine, since it's an improvement to society. The latter is not fine, since it's a worsening of society.

I get that humans would rather have the carrot than the stick. However, there are arguably a lot of positive benefits that result from making cars a more inconvenient choice. For example, one design choice that makes cars convenient is that towns and cities in the U.S.A often prioritize parking lots. Parking lots take up a lot of valuable space. If we used that space for something else (housing, a restaurant, a park, a museum, office space, anything really), then it becomes much less convenient for cars to be in the area, but more attractive for people who do not depend on a car. If that happens at scale in area, you also get other nice benefits like less air pollution, less noise pollution, fewer traffic accidents, etc.

The problem is you need to be able to get to that area before you can eliminate cars. If you are not careful you can kill an area because the people who used to drive there cannot anymore and so they just go elsewhere. If you already have a lot of people arriving by something other than cars, then you can replace the parking lot with something else and make better use of the space, but most areas don't have that advantage.

Building such places is not easy where they don't already exist. It isn't impossible, but you need to start there.

Currently car drivers are subsidised; vast amounts of valuable public land are turned over to them to use for free, while they're allowed to spew pollution and kill people on a scale that would get any other activity banned at a fraction of that level.

We don't need to be punitive, but we should make drivers pay their fair share of the costs they impose on the rest of us.

It would be fun to see the numbers on what that fair share is. These threads never have any numbers on how much things cost. From trains, to cars, to bike paths it always amazes me we cannot put prices on things.

> The latter is not fine, since it's a worsening of society.

That’s an opinion, not a fact. IMO, the negative effects for society of it being easy to hop into their cars for so many are plentiful. Cities get worse, the environment is worse of and the population gets less healthy.

> The latter is not fine, since it's a worsening of society.

Not necessarily. It's entirely possible that changing those incentives will improve things, overall.

Where do you live that takes multiple hours to get through security?? Also, https://www.tsa.gov/precheck

You have to arrive at least 1hr early before your scheduled boarding time. 30 minutes boarding, means your "6hr" flight is actually more like 7.5hrs because you need to be at the airport.

Then you need to factor the fact that airports are not often in easy to reach places. (exception: LCY and JFK). That applies to both ends. The times stack up very rapidly.

In theory it's 2hrs to Birmingham from Copenhagen, but that trip will take approx 5hrs when you factor in all the "early arrive" and last mile shenanigans.

> You have to arrive at least 1hr early before your scheduled boarding time.

You don't have to. It's a recommendation. The only true "have to" is that you have to be at the gate before the scheduled end of boarding, which is usually 15 minutes before takeoff.

I've had to wait in the security line for over an hour before. That is proof security is not about terrorists - if it was you would not be allowed to stop until after they verify you don't have a bomb with you. Those lines are a perfect place for a terrorists to kill a lot of people.

Perhaps it is not a universal truth but I have certainly been in situations where my boarding card was not accepted because I was at the entry gates to security (where you scan your boarding card) less than 30 minutes before boarding.

This was in Amsterdam Schipol.

That must have been some kind of local rule. There's no such rule in the US.

Not a compelling argument, I will always make sure this doesn't happen.

And I also distinctly remember being unable to drop my bag at EWR for being "too late" to do so.

Always better to be early, so people will factor that in.

> And I also distinctly remember being unable to drop my bag at EWR for being "too late" to do so.

That is indeed a universal thing when you have bags to check. I just don't consider that a "have to" since you don't have to check a bag to fly.

The airport in Seattle has had many 75 minute security lines lately. I think it has to do with a TSA labor shortage than anything.

End-to-end the train travel between Stockholm and Malmo is almost exactly the same as the total time it would take to fly from Stockholm Arlanda to CPH and take the train across the bridge to Malmo.

However, people very often are taking the plane instead of the train, partially because it's cheaper, and partially because on paper it looks faster.

So... maybe?

We largely did. The long distance passenger train in North America is mostly a curiosity.

Virtually no one is taking the train from Chicago to Seattle, even when the train is full, its to get on the train, go 4-5 stops and exit.

In the US, passenger takes lower priority to freight. This is why I rarely go by train.

Isn't the Acela the big exception to that rule? And it just happens to run between the very two cities in the sentence I quoted, and still slower than air travel.

The USA has TONS of intercity rail that nobody knows or cares about. Here's some by name: Pacific Surfliner, Cascades, Brightline. And that doesn't count things like Metrolink and other commuter rail.

There are more and I don't know them because I don't live near them. Acela isn't the only one.

Surfliner is about 3.5 hrs from LA to San Diego; ain't nobody gonna fly that, but lots of people drive it.