Honest answer? Partly because I can operate on my schedule and not the train’s schedule. And the rest of it is getting to have adventures along the way that otherwise would mean getting off the train, finding a bus, taking a long bus ride to the thing, taking a long bus ride back to the train, getting on the train again…

Sometimes I drive to Seattle, sometimes I take the train. There are times when I like the relaxing ‘let someone else get me there’ vibes, but there are times when the train schedule doesn’t work with my schedule, or I want to check stuff out on route, like fun restaurants I’ve read about, cool educational places, silly tourist traps…

I remember seeing a sign for ‘World’s Largest Egg!’ one trip, so I just took that exit and went to find the World’s Largest Egg, because why not?

And another reason is sometimes I just don’t want to be around a lot of people. One crowded train trip up I was treated to a child that felt the best way to pass the time on the 3.5-hour journey was to scream. A lot. It was also a trip where I’d forgotten my headphones. Not fun.

If only people tended to live together in big conglomerations this would be so much easier to solve!

My brother bringing the receipts!

I have traveled all over the world and I have never driven a car.

https://theauthoritarians.org/

This book explains it. But it's really frustrating.

My friend showed me a map of their snowbird parents' neighbuorhood in AZ and it's literally an hour walk to the nearest non-house with zero bus service.

Rest of the world can't comprehend such levels of car-brainedness.

Spent a couple of weeks in Japan and got to take the shinkansen twice. Of course Tokyo's subway system was awesome aside from shutting down at midnight but I had no problems getting around in Osaka or Kyoto either. The shinkansen is so dope it's hard to describe. They provided the best views I got of Fuji on the way down to Osaka and back from Kyoto. I tried to get a picture of a passing train but it was over in a blink. I took a train from San Francisco to Chicago and it took 3 days. The scenery was beautiful but the roomlette was like trying to sleep in the Disneyland Star Tours ride. 3 days proved too long to rely on edibles and sublingual distillate and I ended up with CHS. The southerly route back was awful, nothing but the drabbest of views and I didn't get a roomlette for the trip back and trying to sleep in economy was very difficult and uncomfortable.

So you only flew to the Americas?

Or you don't like cities abroad?

car industry would lobby any meaningful change to it.

I mean, it makes perfect sense particularly if you don't want (really, get paid to not want) people to get off cars

Have you looked at railway maps?

There's a huge sprawling rainwater railway network across America... It's just only used by freight cause the bastards that own it decided passengers are unprofitable

You use ELR in lower population areas

Look at Russia & China, they're just as spread out, more so, yet they have an excellent rail network that covers the whole country

hyperloop

Hyperloop are a scam

I'm in my 50s (weep), have visited* 60 countries, and lived in 4 of them - and have never driven a car, much less owned one, since the day I passed my test.

People don't rent a hire car because they need to, they do it because it's their programmed default.

.* visited == spent at least one night in, not including airports

As a Tor user, I will not patronise an anti-Tor establishment.

In light of all of Amtrak’s other problems, they have a looong way to go.

I would be tempted to try train-hopping on freight trains.

Yes, so it's a testament to how ridiculously ideal for public transit this fictional scenario is that in this fiction, hyperloop might be a worthy investment.

One of the reasons hyperloop was a scam is that they never really tried. There were some very public-facing stunts, like the design competitions, but they didn't do the SpaceX thing of throwing a couple billion dollars worth of government subsidies at failing prototypes until they started working.

Another reason is that high-speed rail makes a lot more sense when you have regular stops like a real-world HSR line would. Accelerating and decelerating take distance, so the faster you go the longer you need to go between stops for a top speed to matter.

And another reason is that high-speed rail didn't exist yet, and this was presented as a better alternative. If you already have the best open-air HSR money can buy, the next logical step is to stop having it be open-air.

Though, saying that, an atmospheric pressure pneumatic tube where the surrounding air is brought up to the same speed as the maglev train would probably make a lot more sense than a vacuum tube.

HSR existed long before hyperloop

Assuming rail autocorrected to rainwater, agreed. There are interesting parallels between rail in the 1800s and the life cycle of the internet - successful network technology explodes in utility and popularity, then is cannibalized and constricted

It's impressive how terrible the amtrak website is. I've used amtrak pretty extensively over the years and haven't been able to login in over a year. I know it's probably due to some verification code that my tech stack violates but the site certainly doesn't fail gracefully. I won't touch the app, of course.

I can still buy tickets, but I need to checkout as a guest and manually enter my rewards number for each transaction. I imagine at some point I'll need to transact by phone or in person.

Hot take. I don't think we've ever heard its like here before.

It is not only the AmTrack website. The rail line is really bad as well. In summer your train can be stopped because the rails are too hot. The rails expand too much and warp enough to make it unsafe to run the train on.

I think we need a new system from the ground up.

That's a problem that can be solved with an angle grinder

Man, I'd love to be able to get on a train to Tulsa or Springfield, or Kansas City. The problem is that they'd have to lay entirely new rails because the only ones around here are for freight and stay pretty busy all around the clock.

Does that mean, your long-distance buses do not have toilets? Or is it a joke how bad they are?

The railway is good for staying relatively close to the railway. But if you want to go out and touch grass as people say you really need a vehicle. Maybe the Green Wave will fix all this in a few years. But they got to be affordable and they're not at all

Only in car oriented societies. In Austria it is certainly harder to get around with only public transportation if you are not along railway corridors or in metropolitan areas but it is still perfectly feasible to get almost anywhere with train and bus. If you have a Klimaticket it doesn't even cost anything other than the flat rate of that ticket, which many already have just for commuting alone. (Just for context a Klimaticket for entire Austria, almost all trains and regular bus service included for a full year is 1400 EUR.)

It's the story of the USA in general, y'all seem to fall for it every time, gov makes something mildly socialist, corporate muscle their way in, cannibalise and constrict it, and then everyone's told "see, there's no way it could have worked! USA is just too big/different/free/wilddelete as appropriate"

I bet you're American. I know you have terminal car brain. It's a great shame, over here public transit has always been so good that I genuinely never felt the need to get a car. I save so much money, save on the environment, don't have to breathe carcinogenic exhaust fumes in traffic and in garages on my commute, can spend the time working or watching shit on my phone...

It should be a no brainer but I know the US has been going through a rough patch for... checks watch... a few centuries.

That's insane. But just imagine how rich they are on all the taxes they don't pay! Probably jet setting all over the world...

Yeah for sure. Thing is I save so much on not owning a car that whenever I need it, I can easily just book a cab.

So because I've never owned or driven a car you... Bet I'm American?

You sure about that champ?