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Why an eight-hour bus ride from Los Angeles to San Francisco might beat a flight

economist.com

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Re: Why an eight-hour bus ride from Los Angeles to San Francisco might beat a flight

#91

Post by matthewowen »

ghaff wrote: post #53
nfriedly wrote: post #8

My wife and I got a room on the California Zephyr train from SF to Chicago one year and we loved it. So much less hassle than flying. Better food and scenery too.

I don't think I'd have the patience to go all the way from San Francisco to Chicago. But I've definitely had my sights on doing the San Francisco to Denver leg (or vice versa) at some point if the travel stars even lined up in a way that made sense. I've also thought about the Empire Builder route as part of a trip to Glacier.

That leg is definitely the most scenic part (although going through Burlington, IA is also surprisingly neat).

Re: Why an eight-hour bus ride from Los Angeles to San Francisco might beat a flight

#92

Post by matthewowen »

mschuster91 wrote: post #2

In Germany, we have had a quite extensive network of night trains with proper beds (and the more expensive tickets also have a shower in the carriage); unfortunately the network got massively thinned out in the last years and only the profitable core routes are in service now by Austrian ÖBB. Shouldn't something like this be possible in America, especially between far-away cities? Could at least be more profitable be…

The USA is really big. I took the train from Chicago to San Francisco. I loved it, but it took the best part of three days.

Flying is always going to be more compelling for functional travel like this.

Re: Why an eight-hour bus ride from Los Angeles to San Francisco might beat a flight

#93

Post by vosper »

melling wrote: post #69
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #10

> the current route is a perfect example of that awkward travel distance to which there is no good solution. Others abound, such as Washington-Boston or London-Edinburgh There is a very good sleeper train, the Caledonian Sleeper, between London and Edinburgh (and several other points in Scotland). That's a "good solution" for that route, and I'm more than a little surprised that the London-based Economist seems not t…

50 years ago in Japan they invented fast trains to cover such distances. We didn’t adopt them in California because Americans prefer cars. Fast forward 40 years and it’s not so easy to get the right of way to build straight track. Now 10 years in we’re hoping to invent an even faster method of transportation so we can take a longer route.

Not to get into this again, but California also only has 1/3 of Japan's population density, there's very little between the obvious Bay Area and LA endpoints, and there's no viable route up the coast so you have to go inland, which means putting rail through quite a lot of mountains. There's also no realistic world where you get from SF to LA on rail in close to the time it takes to fly (SF to Burbank is only an hour).

Re: Why an eight-hour bus ride from Los Angeles to San Francisco might beat a flight

#94

Post by noobermin »

kevmo wrote: post #55
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #10

> the current route is a perfect example of that awkward travel distance to which there is no good solution. Others abound, such as Washington-Boston or London-Edinburgh There is a very good sleeper train, the Caledonian Sleeper, between London and Edinburgh (and several other points in Scotland). That's a "good solution" for that route, and I'm more than a little surprised that the London-based Economist seems not t…

The author has probably heard of it, but deemed the solution as not being good enough by their criteria to be worth mention.

Or rather, it would diminish the value of the article as an ad by mentioning another service.

Re: Why an eight-hour bus ride from Los Angeles to San Francisco might beat a flight

#95

Post by tesseract »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #21
archagon wrote: post #7

I’ve taken Megabus from LA to SF (for like $20) and it’s one of the most beautiful routes I’ve ever been on, especially from the observation seats on the second floor. Just miles and miles of rolling, golden hills. Sleeping through it seems like a waste.

The 5 is horribly boring once you've done it a couple of times. It also smells very badly (like cow blood + poop) for a long stretch. Hot, dry, high winds, farms on both sides, just 2 lanes, cops around, many semis... Door to door, driving is the same as the airport, but having a car in LA is nice given the lack of public transit (Bay Area too).

I usually opt for 101 if I can afford the slight extra driving time. I find it much more pleasant in terms of both scenery (maybe that is the Megabus route? "Rolling hills" sounds about right) and normal traffic conditions (significantly less truck traffic).

Re: Why an eight-hour bus ride from Los Angeles to San Francisco might beat a flight

#96

Post by melling »

vosper wrote: post #93
melling wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50 years ago in Japan they invented fast trains to cover such distances. We didn’t adopt them in California because Americans prefer cars. Fast forward 40 years and it’s not so easy to get the right of way to build straight track. Now 10 years in we’re hoping to invent an even faster method of transportation so we can take a longer route.

Not to get into this again, but California also only has 1/3 of Japan's population density, there's very little between the obvious Bay Area and LA endpoints, and there's no viable route up the coast so you have to go inland, which means putting rail through quite a lot of mountains. There's also no realistic world where you get from SF to LA on rail in close to the time it takes to fly (SF to Burbank is only an hour…

I was merely pointing out that this technology was invented in Japan. Since then it has also been installed and about 20 other countries, including France and Spain. The population excuse was debunked years ago.

Also, no one said that it had to had to take an hour. If you go from downtown LA to downtown San Francisco, it’s a pretty nice accomplishment in 3 hours.

Re: Why an eight-hour bus ride from Los Angeles to San Francisco might beat a flight

#97

Post by dver23 »

tesseract wrote: post #95
seanp2k2 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 5 is horribly boring once you've done it a couple of times. It also smells very badly (like cow blood + poop) for a long stretch. Hot, dry, high winds, farms on both sides, just 2 lanes, cops around, many semis... Door to door, driving is the same as the airport, but having a car in LA is nice given the lack of public transit (Bay Area too).

I usually opt for 101 if I can afford the slight extra driving time. I find it much more pleasant in terms of both scenery (maybe that is the Megabus route? "Rolling hills" sounds about right) and normal traffic conditions (significantly less truck traffic).

I do the same with 99. Much of it has three lanes now so less issues being stuck and mad passing by others. Ass in the chance for more stops along the way. My cutoff is LA area, I'll drive there, but fly to San Diego.

Re: Why an eight-hour bus ride from Los Angeles to San Francisco might beat a flight

#98

Post by ColinWright »

toyg wrote: post #83
matthewmacleod wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More to the point, the standard train service between Edinburgh and London is less than 4:30, and around £50 each way booking a few weeks in advance. I do this fairly frequently, and generally it takes the same amount of time as flying, while being a fair bit more convenient. Rail is pretty good :)

> around £50 each way booking a few weeks in advance Man, how many of those £50 tickets are actually available? A train from Manchester to London, which is less than half the distance, costs twice as much on a lucky day (and 3x on the same day, if not more).

I just ran this search for MAN -> EUS on 2017/08/23 leaving after 10:00.

http://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/service/timesandfares/MAN/Lond...

I got this result:

    Dep 11:15 Manchester Piccadilly [MAN] Platform 7
    Arr 13:20 London Euston [EUS] Platform 3
    Duration:  2h 05m
    Changes :  0

    cheapest fare
    Single Fare
    £27.00
Services at 10:15, 10:35, and 10:55 are £38.00.

Yes, tickets for travel on Monday are over £80, but the poster was talking about buying advance tickets.

What service are you using? How far in advance are you looking? Buying on the day can and will be stupidly expensive.

Oh, and FWIW, split tickets can frequently do better. I've reduced my annual train fares bills from over 11k to under 6k, despite travelling 20% more.

Edit: Just ran a split-ticket search for Monday 14th and got this:

    £33.80
    MAN CRE 10:04 11:01  £4.80 Advance
    CRE EUS 11:02 13:50 £29.00 Off-Peak

Re: Why an eight-hour bus ride from Los Angeles to San Francisco might beat a flight

#99

Post by gozur88 »

melling wrote: post #96
vosper wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to get into this again, but California also only has 1/3 of Japan's population density, there's very little between the obvious Bay Area and LA endpoints, and there's no viable route up the coast so you have to go inland, which means putting rail through quite a lot of mountains. There's also no realistic world where you get from SF to LA on rail in close to the time it takes to fly (SF to Burbank is only an hour…

I was merely pointing out that this technology was invented in Japan. Since then it has also been installed and about 20 other countries, including France and Spain. The population excuse was debunked years ago. Also, no one said that it had to had to take an hour. If you go from downtown LA to downtown San Francisco, it’s a pretty nice accomplishment in 3 hours.

HSR was first demonstrated in France. Japan is the country with the first commercial service.

Re: Why an eight-hour bus ride from Los Angeles to San Francisco might beat a flight

#100

Post by closeparen »

ghaff wrote: post #80
jetti wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Amtrak is that it takes so long. My wife and her family went to Orlando from Chicago last December and flying was way too expensive for all 4 of them. They ended up driving, after not wanting to, but I looked into Amtrak for them. It would've taken 36 hours to get from Chicago to Orlando with 2 major stretches. The second stretch was 19 hours and had NO food car. I assume you can buy stuff at the sta…

In San Francisco, there is no Amtrak station in the city proper. It's on the other side of the bay. I believe there's a connecting Amtrak-operated bus from the Ferry Building to Emeryville.

Sure, but this <1 hour bus ride is well within the margin of error on your 30+ hour train ride. It shouldn't make a meaningful difference.
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