[gaius]

Dublin's a lot further than Paris, journey time wise. I can quite literally have breakfast at home and lunch in Paris and be back home in the evening (and have done that a few times). Travel to Dublin by rail/ferry is an entire day. And domestic rail travel in the UK is often not a pleasant experience. Even 1st class doesn't insulate you from the delays. And flying's likely cheaper too.

I dunno, based on my own friends, long roadtrips seem to be more of a Canadian thing, Americans seem to fly more :-) When I lived in the US catching the Delta service between Boston and NYC was "normal", that's only what, 3 hrs drive?

[philwelch]

Closer to 4 hours, and American cities have rush hour twice a day 8 hours apart, and rush hour usually lasts 2-3 hours, and "no one drives in NYC, there's too much traffic" and we don't like passenger rail, so that explains all of that.

Right now I live 5 hours of driving away from the largest major city. Most of the American West is like that. 8 hours? I do that twice a month. People in built up areas on the East Coast see longer distances differently because a long distance actually gets you across three or four states, not less than one like it is out here.

[afterburner]

Yeah, Canadian flight prices are more expensive than US domestic flight (even when going to the US), not by a huge amount but enough to dissuade frequent use.