[ehnto]

That's part of what made high speed rail so compelling. When done well you can be on the train, sat down and moving in just a few minutes. No airport security, long ticketing lines, baggage check-ins or fuss at the gate. Just walk in, bags in the overhead, sit down and away you go.

[darkwizard42]

I think high speed rail is compelling because of the speed and accessibility (which if built right -- looking at Japan) becomes an easy option for commute and transport between cities that is vastly more accessible than airports (Narita airport is FAR from Tokyo central)

The security check in, long ticket lines, etc. are all byproducts of security theater that has come through and honestly in the US, with TSA Pre, I'm pretty sure I spend more time sitting at the gate than ANY other process (check in, 5 min, security, 5 min, walking to gate, 5 min, sitting at gate waiting for boarding, 40 min)

100% agree that the ability to walk straight into a train, find your seat through multiple doors (even the wrong car) feels pretty good.

[tommi]

Well said though to clarify the reason why you wait 40 minutes at the gate is probably because you have to calculate some extra per each step leading to it. You can't be sure you'll make it in 5 minutes per check in, security and walk to the gate. Also, the added cost in time and money of missing a plane is quite high compared to missing a train e.g. in Europe, so that further increases the buffer you add to the process.

[NotSammyHagar]

I've been reluctant to get precheck because I hate to give up my fingerprints. There have been a few infamous mistakes where they messed up like the Oregon lawyer thought to be involved with the Spanish train bombers. Being in software, I know many immigrants to the us and they all have precheck and the border check version - while me and many of my natural born citizens don't have it, at least partly for that reason of fingerprints. I solved that problem for now by not flying during covid ;-) Am I unnecessarily paranoid? Probably.

[justaguy88]

Applying for a US work visa or residency involves writing down so much about yourself (inc. getting fingerprints), that pre-check afterwards feels like just re-providing a subset of the same paperwork

[darkwizard42]

Yeah this is a good point... I definitely don't want to miss my flight and now I have a really good and predictable handle on how long security and check in takes, but I never seem to have a good handle on how boarding will go (I usually just abide by the "domestic gates never close till 30 min before the flight earliest" rule)

[lifeisstillgood]

With all due respect, if they had built airports in the middle of cities, we would all be complaining about why we had to take a taxi to the train station miles from the city centre.

The big advantage of the train is being on the property ladder 100 years early.

[Symbiote]

Most cities that had relatively central airports have closed them (due to noise and pollution) and built new ones further out.

Cities continue to build new railway stations and lines, usually underground, to improve access to the centre.

[lifeisstillgood]

ok so my conjecture: an electric VTOL aircraft will mean cities rebuild airports. Of course it means Kitty Pride will be flying a Electric VTOL ...

But this will free up enormous tracts of land - the railways don't just use land for stations, but the railtrack takes up most of the land (in long strips as it were).

Imagine cities in 50 years, with rail land reclaimed, with Tokyo-like laws that prevent on-street parking (a valuable gift to car owners), freer flowing traffic, more walkable neighbourhoods. There is a lot to unpick.

[ehnto]

I think you're overstating how impactful railway land usage is, in total amount it's definitely a lot but per suburb or area it's not much and it more or less sits next to the rest of the suburb rather than dominating it. It provides far more value than an airport in my opinion. I can walk out my door and 5 minutes on to a train then into the city, there's no way to get a plane from my house to the city.

What you really want to reclaim I feel is roads from cars, we devote insane amounts of land to cars, car parking, and car travel..

The city of Adelaide is an interesting example if you're interested, it's a young city and built an airport 4km from the CBD, which means the CBD can't have tall buildings, the airport has a curfew, noise is a constant hot topic, and it takes up more land than our CBD and most prized suburbs do. It's likely sitting on hundreds of millions worth of real estate, while the train station takes up less than a city block and then the rails weave their way through the rest of suburbia. The most recent Southern Interchange, a car highway interchange, takes up more land than the train station does including it's convergence and junction yard, and all it does is connect two roads together.

The city also tore up all it's rail network when cars took over, and now it can't afford to put the rail back in now that it's proven to be the more sustainable and pragmatic option.

[lifeisstillgood]

>>> there's no way to get a plane from my house to the city.

I think I was drinking too much coffee.

But railway is just another road. In fact i suspect that we will find self-driving cars are too hard to put into the mix with human drivers and pedestrians. So we shall build / cordon off roads and end up with railways without rails.

Fascinated by the adelaide example - thank you

[tpmx]

Yeah, the amount of metro/central land railroads use is surprisingly huge.

[fomine3]

Airport is NIMBY