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My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

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Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#151

Post by 0xfaded »

My experience is that jet centers like Signature Flight Services (from the article) employ concierge people with superpowers.

Once as a private pilot of a 4-seater derping above Colorado I needed to divert to Colorado Springs due to a developing thunderstorm and decided to hanger the airplane to not risk hail damage.

Basically you ring an FBO like Signature (in this case Cutter Aviation), book some hangar space, and show up. Same problem though, flights were being cancelled out of Colorado Springs and every hotel and rental car was booked. It took an hour, but concierge arranged for TWO hertz employees to deliver a car from out of town. My rate was $25 with unlimited miles plus a bit extra for the hail damage waiver. I think the hangar was $50 for the night.

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#152

Post by dredmorbius »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #149
dredmorbius wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rail passengers to Denver, CO, in 1869, numbered nil. Construction of the 100 mile Denver Pacific spur line to the transcontinental railroad route in Cheyenne not only increased that somewhat, but saw Denver's population grow from 4,700 th over 35,000 within ten years. Induced demand is a thing.

You can only induce as much travel demand as there are people to potentially travel. No amount of induced demand will let US travel infrastructure transport the number of people that Chinese travel infrastructure does.

the number of people that Chinese travel infrastructure does

... and that's not my argument. But lowered real costs -- not merely price, but time, convenience, flexibility, time-sharing (work/eat/sleep in transit), predictability, safety, baggage allownce, efficiency gains, and more -- should increase effective utility and utilisation.

The biggest pitfalls of rail have been right-of-way acquisition in mature economic regimes (high induced land values, themselves a result in large part of improved transport, impede further transport development), transfers and mode-transitions (especially rail-to-local endpoint travel), and technological lock-in and stagnation.

China has the benefits of late adoption, relatively low economic development, and critically, a regime of weak real (land) property rights. All enable it to adopt recent and advanced technologies, and to plan and acquire rights of way at low cost.

Even in parts of the United States where China's other, and more usually noted advantage, exceedingly high population density, is more closely matched, the US is hugely hampered by built rail infrastructure and extant technologies, high land values, and an increasingly oppressive private land ownership tradition.

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#153

Post by jjeaff »

learnfromstory wrote: post #136
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.

Once I rented a car in Seattle one way to Vancouver. Apparently there is some shitburg nobody has ever heard of called Vancouver, WA but I was going to the more famous Canadian city. The flunkie at the counter booked the domestic trip and I drove to the proper Vancouver. When I got there they tried to charge me over $8000 in fees. I think there is no practical upper bound to what they'll try to charge you for such th…

..."nobody has ever heard of".

You shouldn't project your obliviousness on everyone else.

Vancouver, WA is a suburb of and part of the greater Portland area. Also referred to as the Portland / Vancouver metropolitan area.

It's completely understandable that the "flunkie" at the counter assumed someone leaving from the largest city in Washington would be be referring to the 4th largest city in Washington (Vancouver).

Sounds like the big fee was well deserved.

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#154

Post by rayiner »

p2t2p wrote: post #75
refurb wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t imagine a train leaving every 10 minutes could ever be cost effective. There just aren’t that many people who want to do that trip (8 hours?) when you could do it in 2 hours by plane.

It is not two hours. The flight time from my home town to Moscow is 50 minutes. Whole trip is about 6 hours. Get to the airport, takes about 1 hour (drive 60k or 40 miles). If you don’t have a car - even longer. You arrive in advance, security, luggage check in then boarding, then runway. It’s been around 3 hours so far. Now you fly for 50 to 70 minutes and it doesn’t include the plane driving through airport after l…

In America, most people don’t live near a city center big enough to warrant an intercity train station. 75% of Moscow’s metro area lives in city limits. There is no US city like that. For DC, it’s less than 20%. Also, in America 88% of households own a car, versus 55% in Russia.

I can be at my local airport (Baltimore) in less than 30 minutes, and be seated in another 30 minutes if I’m traveling early. If I lived in real America, somewhere like Kansas City or Buffalo, it’d take like 15-20 minutes to get from parking to the airplane.

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#156

Post by rayiner »

dredmorbius wrote: post #152
thaumasiotes wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can only induce as much travel demand as there are people to potentially travel. No amount of induced demand will let US travel infrastructure transport the number of people that Chinese travel infrastructure does.

the number of people that Chinese travel infrastructure does ... and that's not my argument. But lowered real costs -- not merely price, but time, convenience, flexibility, time-sharing (work/eat/sleep in transit), predictability, safety, baggage allownce, efficiency gains, and more -- should increase effective utility and utilisation. The biggest pitfalls of rail have been right-of-way acquisition in mature economic…

> The biggest pitfalls of rail have been right-of-way acquisition in mature economic regimes (high induced land values, themselves a result in large part of improved transport, impede further transport development), transfers and mode-transitions (especially rail-to-local endpoint travel), and technological lock-in and stagnation.

Rail is more expensive than roads in the US even where the right of way already exists. The Silver Line was built along an existing right of way and still cost $250 million per mile. (There is tons of excess freeway median in the US that could cost rail.) The problem is actually the high cost of skilled labor in the US. I don’t suppose you’d consider US labor rights to be “oppressive.”

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#157

Post by dredmorbius »

rayiner wrote: post #156
dredmorbius wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the number of people that Chinese travel infrastructure does ... and that's not my argument. But lowered real costs -- not merely price, but time, convenience, flexibility, time-sharing (work/eat/sleep in transit), predictability, safety, baggage allownce, efficiency gains, and more -- should increase effective utility and utilisation. The biggest pitfalls of rail have been right-of-way acquisition in mature economic…

> The biggest pitfalls of rail have been right-of-way acquisition in mature economic regimes (high induced land values, themselves a result in large part of improved transport, impede further transport development), transfers and mode-transitions (especially rail-to-local endpoint travel), and technological lock-in and stagnation. Rail is more expensive than roads in the US even where the right of way already exists.…

Which Silver Line are you referencing?

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#158

Post by whywhywhywhy »

refurb wrote: post #29
khrbrt wrote: post #24

This is why we need a train system with funding parity to the highway and airport systems. There should be trains leaving constantly, at most every 10 minutes, from Chicago to the east, and frequent, semihourly, trains between neighboring cities along the way. Even if the author could rent a car, having to drive 300 miles is astounding waste of time and mental energy.

I can’t imagine a train leaving every 10 minutes could ever be cost effective. There just aren’t that many people who want to do that trip (8 hours?) when you could do it in 2 hours by plane.

> when you could do it in 2 hours by plane

a 2 hour flight isn't 2 hours, there is also the 1-2 hours getting into the plane itself and the 1-2 hours getting off it and this is before we get into having to drive out to the deep outskirts of the city to even begin that process.

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#159

Post by lutoma »

Reminds me of something that happened to a friend of mine once. He was booked on the last train from Cologne to Brussels for the day, but missed his connection due to a delay on an earlier train.

Due to EU passenger rights regulations, train company was on the hook to get him there somehow, so they ended up paying a taxi to drive him across the Netherlands into Belgium.

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#160

Post by credit_guy »

skinnymuch wrote: post #12
OrangeMango wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couple of years ago there was a professional football player that took an Uber from O'Hare to Buffalo, NY for just under $1000 to make it practice on time. Anyway, this guy could have taken a Megabus to from Chicago to Cincinnati for $25 and then done a rideshare the rest of the way. It would have been far less expensive.

If making it on time to practice is really important, do you want to depend on a bus? Bus Being late to pick up or leave isn’t uncommon. I assume if something goes wrong along the way you should be able to get off with your stuff without too much trouble and order a ride. But if there’s a big traffic jam. And you might be able to save some time taking inside roads or what have you. A bus isn’t going to do that. You a…

> I think the situation depends on how important making practice is.

Just ask Jonas Gray of the Patriots [1].

“On November 16, 2014, Gray rushed for 201 yards, and a franchise-record four touchdowns on 38 carries “

This was such a historic event that he promptly featured the cover of Sports Illustrated [2].

A little bit later he was late for practice. He was essentially benched for the rest of the season. It was also pretty much the end of his career in the NFL.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Gray

[2]https://amp.si.com/nfl/2014/11/18/new-england-patriots-jonas...

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