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My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

whatever.scalzi.com

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Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#121

Post by mycall »

bb101 wrote: post #117

"But since I flew into O’Hare on a commercial flight, like a common schmuck, Hertz wouldn’t give me the car, even though they clearly had it to give. Basically, I wasn’t rich enough to rent the car Hertz had allowed me to reserve, so they weren’t going to let me have it. Which, I don’t know. Seems like a real dick move on Hertz’s part, and doesn’t incline me to use them ever again for anything." The author's experien…

To finish your saying: Would you like a hertz donut? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7P7BFBWQ1E

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#122

Post by pdonis »

tptacek wrote: post #107
mulmen wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very convenient way to define parity. If we funded railroads at 175bn per year what would be subsidy come to? Presumably there would be a lot more passengers at that level.

The point of the exercise is to look at air passenger statistics to get a broad sense of what the high watermark of usage would be, since air travel is the dominant way of navigating the continental US.

> air travel is the dominant way of navigating the continental US.

That's because, even with all its faults, averaged over all travelers it beats the heck out of all the other alternatives for trips that would take more than a few hours by car or train. Scalzi's experience, as messed up as it was, is an outlier.

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#123

Post by tptacek »

gok wrote: post #120
tptacek wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean besides Milwaukee, Madison, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Cedar Rapids, St Louis, Cincinatti and Toledo? That's more people than Chicago itself. If you take Chicagoland as an endpoint and not the city boundaries, Des Moines is also within 300 miles. Transcontinental high speed rail is, I agree strongly with your subtextual argument, a pipe dream. But regional HSR in the midwest would make a lot of sense.

Honestly I'd start with high frequency, non-high-speed rail. With no new track or stations, a lot of routes would be competitive with driving if they just ran more often and reliably.

One problem is that the rail routes themselves are incredibly expensive; they involve rights of way through valuable urban land and across multiple states. If you're going to invest billions in new passenger rail routes, you need the ridership to fund it, and if you're running the kinds of routes Amtrak does today (outside of Acela), you're not getting those riders.

One reason existing tracks and routes don't run that frequently is that there aren't the passengers to make them worthwhile. Another is that those tracks are also used for freight.

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#124

Post by tptacek »

pdonis wrote: post #119
tptacek wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, you're right! My brain always stops at Ann Arbor, which I thought was too small to include.

Too small? Hey! Ann Arbor is nice, I lived there for about 8 years. But I can totally understand stopping your brain at Ann Arbor if the alternative is to go on to Detroit...

I lived there for 4 and love the place, but I grew up in Chicago, and Ann Arbor is not a city. :)

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#125

Post by jeron »

bb101 wrote: post #117

"But since I flew into O’Hare on a commercial flight, like a common schmuck, Hertz wouldn’t give me the car, even though they clearly had it to give. Basically, I wasn’t rich enough to rent the car Hertz had allowed me to reserve, so they weren’t going to let me have it. Which, I don’t know. Seems like a real dick move on Hertz’s part, and doesn’t incline me to use them ever again for anything." The author's experien…

Every time I think of Hertz I think of how Accenture royally fucked them in their website redesign: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/23/hertz_accenture_law...

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#126

Post by tempestn »

mulmen wrote: post #98
envy2 wrote: post #42

This is a fun story—but he should've just booked a round-trip rental car, and dropped it off in Dayton anyway. I've done this a bunch of times, and all they'll do is charge you the one-way rate and grumble a bit... Better to ask forgiveness than permission.

What's the benefit in lying to them about your intentions? Is it just because nobody wants to rent you a car one way in the first place? My (very limited and probably outdated) understanding of the rental car industry is that the locations are franchises and the cars are owned by the franchise. If you rent a car round trip and leave it in some other city they have to deal with getting it back.

Yes, as the topic post detailed, no one was willing to rent a car one way.

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#127

Post by tempestn »

geofft wrote: post #103
awinder wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“So... do you want the car back or not?”

"So... do you want us to report the car as stolen or not?"

It actually wouldn't count as theft! As I learned from another post on HN a few weeks back, it would be 'voluntary parting'.

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#128

Post by geofft »

tempestn wrote: post #127
geofft wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So... do you want us to report the car as stolen or not?"

It actually wouldn't count as theft! As I learned from another post on HN a few weeks back, it would be 'voluntary parting'.

According to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18332918 (surprisingly, on the SERP for "voluntary parting"), that's an insurer's term, not a lawyer's—but the police might still refuse to take a police report anyway.

(Though I do wonder if "Hi, I'm a photographer and I lent my camera on the internet" and "Hi, I'm with the loss department of a major national rental car company" get you different responses from the police for reasons entirely unrelated to the legal status of the misdeed.)

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#129

Post by closeparen »

tptacek wrote: post #123
gok wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I'd start with high frequency, non-high-speed rail. With no new track or stations, a lot of routes would be competitive with driving if they just ran more often and reliably.

One problem is that the rail routes themselves are incredibly expensive; they involve rights of way through valuable urban land and across multiple states. If you're going to invest billions in new passenger rail routes, you need the ridership to fund it, and if you're running the kinds of routes Amtrak does today (outside of Acela), you're not getting those riders. One reason existing tracks and routes don't run tha…

Chicago has existing rail rights of way to several of those places already (Milwaukee and St. Louis routes are both quite popular).

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#130

Post by tptacek »

closeparen wrote: post #129
tptacek wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem is that the rail routes themselves are incredibly expensive; they involve rights of way through valuable urban land and across multiple states. If you're going to invest billions in new passenger rail routes, you need the ridership to fund it, and if you're running the kinds of routes Amtrak does today (outside of Acela), you're not getting those riders. One reason existing tracks and routes don't run tha…

Chicago has existing rail rights of way to several of those places already (Milwaukee and St. Louis routes are both quite popular).

Yes, I've taken the Amtrak to MKE before. Amtrak doesn't own those tracks. Canadian Pacific does.
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