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Uh, it’s like comparing the best life you could have in Western Europe with the worst life you could have in American suburbs.
It’s no different from comparing an American surgeon earning 400k yearly in Manhattan to a person surviving in Belarus or Albania. Same bias but flipped in opposite direction.
Both comparisons would be unfair.
I am not saying life is worse in the EU than in the US, but there are many better ways to argue that more logically using data.
“Best life” is when one has to commute to work by train?
Pretty sure it is about the Alps and the wine.
Didn’t have wine every day when I went to school by train.
Fair enough, although I thought OP was talking about just general travel, while the guy I’m responding to made it about commuting.
Ikr. People aspire to get cars so they don’t have to take the fucking stupid ass unreliable public transportation. Back in my day the only people who relied on public transportation were poor people, retards and immigrants but I guess with the mental health crisis and the economy tanking, we’re all poor retards.
Taking a train to work isn’t a luxury only afforded to the 1%, not only are they a better experience, trains are cheaper than driving in most of the world.
See, what you’re not getting is that the average US experience is just incredibly fucking mid. I live in Canada, specifically Montréal because the rest of the country is very much like the US. Cars are the only way to get around, you can’t even safely and confidently ride a bicycle in most North American cities.
The best the US has to offer is worse than pretty good but not the best in the EU. The worst the EU has to offer is nowhere near as bad as a fairly common, even if not universal, experience in the states.
Nothing from of either of our comments even fuckin’ matters though because this post is specifically calling out the people who think sitting in traffic “freedom” but 15 minute cities are tyrannical overreach.
And those of us in Japan
/ Though the winds are so high that our line partially will shut down a few times a year. It was elevated after the tsunami which led to a new issue.
Yeah cause everywhere they go is in the Swiss Alps with wine. Not a single European has a shitty commute. This is grass is greener at its finest.
This is obviously an exaggerated example for dramatic effect.
It’s not that far off though. I travel a lot across Switzerland by train and either I’m working in the train if it’s a commute to work or I’ll drink wine, beer or eat in the train restaurant. Worst travel experience is when I watch a series on my phone or computer since it is kind of “lost time”.
Traveling in a train is not just waiting, you can almost always do something. Either productive, fun or that you would need to do anyway
One of my former bosses commuted an hour each way by train every day, and he used the commute time to write a series of novels. He left after the second one was published. We were all cursing ourselves for living too close to work, lol.
Yeah but some trains come every two hours like the commuter rail. So like wait two hours for a train or be in traffic for three hours and then and then that’s not even taking into account the travel time which could be up to another two hours. … There’s no fuckin’ winning
What could take an hour on a good traffic day can be a four hour total trip by public transportation.
If your commuter rail in a major city comes only every two hours your system is simply bad. I commute a good distance and there is a fast train every 30 min, from early morning to late night, every day. Frequency gets only worse to places that are alreadx outside of reasonable commuting distance and even than there is usually a train every 60 min.
Commuter rail usually comes more frequently than that, no? And if you know when it comes and it’s not two hours late then you’re waiting around for it unless you’re way too fuckin’ early.
it’s quicker for the city but if you’re going into Woburn for a dispensary run, that takes less than 10 mins to perform the transaction (saying for the sake of actual example that I’ve been in, the dispo workers are the best and I didn’t mean they’re slow) and takes 10 mins to walk there from the CR stop, that’s less than 40 mins away by driving so lets say about an 80 minute round trip, that’s an hour and twenty minutes round trip. If I take the commuter rail that’s 20 minutes to the city using the local train , the 15 minute wait at North Station (because YOU DO want to be early for the commuter rail and that’s if you know your schedule and you know you’re gonna make it, sometimes there’s games and you lose out waiting at the fare gate lines), and about an hour and a half there and then a two hour wait after the short shopping trip.
So to put it into perspective: That’s half your day wasted for what could be an hour and a half there and back. Traffic with driving could maybe add about 25 minutes but the amount of time I use on a single dispensary run to Woburn and back using the local train and the cr, I could take a plane to Denver, not even kidding about that, I just used Google Maps and double checked that flight time.
Ok? Really just sounds like the commuter rail could come more often which is a very easy fix. Public transit is pretty much only ever bad because governments won’t fund it, car-centric infrastructure is highly propritized and its peak is still trash.
Traffic is bad enough here, adding the million people who use just the metro per day to that would be the end of it all, and that’s not to mention our bike network and ability to walk to so many things. We upgrading our commuter rail to a proper high-frequency, dual-direction light rail system that will connect much of the island that has never been properly served. It’s gunna pop the hell off.
Why wouldn’t you just leave 2 hours later and not wait at all in that situation?
Not the person you’re replying to, but if you happen to miss a train or it gets cancelled you generally are already at the train station. Depending on travel time and conditions it might be safer or more convenient to wait at the station, even if it’s for two hours.
I’ve never had to wait for a next train for longer than 30 minutes (maybe once it was an hour because it was a very small train station and during the weekend), but I live in a place with a pretty dense railway network and have mostly lived near one of the biggest routes.
the local trains are the most convenient the Orange, Blue, Red and Green with delays up to about 20 minutes but a lot of people tend to wait for an Uber (again someone with a car) if it’s over 20 minutes of a wait.
Commuter Rail depending on your arrival station and your destination station, your wait time can be 2 hours okay yeah if you miss a train you’re waiting the 2 hours but I gave an example below of a short shopping trip where you’re fucking yourself taking the commuter rail out to a dispensary that can be an hour and a half round trip by car vs 4 a 4 hour round trip by public transportation/the equivalent to a flight to Denver.
LIke doing groceries by public transportation sucks too, I usually call an uber, again the person with a car and a personal storage area where you can load up your own shit.
You can’t attach a camper to a bus and go to Maine, right? You can actually have like freedom to do shit and experience life when you have a car. You can take public transportation for fun and make it something to do for fun when you have a car. You still appreciate it, it just doesn’t suck to be an individual. Again, this is coming from the 16 years of doing it and i’m just good on it.
I don’t even drive, I don’t even own a car yet, I’m still biking and using the T, my back fucking hurts at 33 and I’m really sick of it. After a while you start questioning a lot of things but I won’t lie I love biking and I end up always being thrown that bone by nature and life and having those moments where my music syncs to my surroundings and/or everything feels perfect like I’m the only one on the planet or just everything has that, “it’s for me,” feeling and for that i truly don’t hate being a cyclist. and there are times on public transportation where i get to see crazy shit happen, like the last time on the orange line there were two boneheads jumping back and fourth between moving carts after they opened the door between the two, I don’t 100% hate public transportation it’s just over time you start to need to get around a little easier is all
It’s not that i absolutely fucking hate it it’s unreliable for absolute needs. Like doctors appointments, getting to work, getting groceries, getting cannabis from the dispensary that has the strain that actually helps. If my mom was taken to the hospital that’s an all day affair for me to get there by public transportation, she could die by the time I get there, if I drove it’s less than 45 mins away.
I live in Germany currently and am from the US.
I love train travel. Even the delays people always rag on DB is really not that bad. It could be better yes, but not having to drive everywhere is so nice.
However I do often miss the small conviences of a car. Going to the store and traveling in bad weather were much easier, and yes I’m aware you can have a car here too I just won’t be getting one.
Although I must admit I do miss a good road trip too. Where the journey is part of the trip. It’s much easier to find something spontaneously while driving and stop to enjoy it.
Overall though not having to drive and being able to relax makes train travel the best
Can’t you still rent a car for a trip?
Yes, but it’s much harder to justify the cost with the significantly cheaper train travel.
Plus driving here feels different. My guess is it’s the population density.
You can always just don’t plan and go from train to train and travel around europe, ofc this will not leave you easy access to smaller towns and villages, maybe if you also take your bike with you
Even the delays people always rag on DB is really not that bad. It could be better yes, but not having to drive everywhere is so nice.
Lmao.
Try going on a inter-metro train (usually designated as MEX) and have it not be delayed by >10min during day time.
My best record was 1h30min.
Meanwhile the DB navigator app says nothing about delays or cancelled trains and marks the route as done.
It’s can’t be that hard to get the GPS location of a train, can it?I won’t disagree with you on the DB app. Absolute dumpster fire. If they could accurately display their delays it would be so much better. They have so many trains running at major hubs people would find the next best train if they were honest and reported accurately. Nothing like watching an alternative train leave and then the app adds 10 more minutes to your delay.
Don’t even get me started on trying to find a bus with DB navigator. Would it kill them to put the fucking stieg info on there? I’ve missed so many bused because of this.
Wouldnt kill them to put a direction triangle for viewing direction in the damn map like on google maps.
Fucking goole maps is more accurate and better to navigate the routes than DB navigator. How??? They have literally all the data for the trains but google maps manages to make a better product ;-;
Conspiracy theory: Germany is surrounded by countries doing quite well with their trains. Germany has the strongest car industry in Europe. Thus Deutsche bahn executives must be payed off by the German car industry to keep the trains run bad.
Just a side note here: MEX trains are a product for Baden-Württemberg (often designed with the bwegt brand in mind), which is not used anywhere else as far as I’m aware. They replaced the older RB trains that have become a rarer sight in BW.
Even the delays people always rag on DB is really not that bad
No, it is. Go to the UK or Spain and try their trains there. Miles better. Delays of maybe a few minutes on average
I thought the UK trains were trash and over priced because Thatcher privatized them?
The best way to get from the Netherlands to Germany by train is to take the train to the border, taxi/über across the border, then back on the train.
Are you in Bavaria?
In Northern Germany I heard that you need a car and no one takes trains because they’re always late.
BW, but I’ve traveled Berlin to Munich to Stuttgart with stops in between via regional rail with a D-ticket. So I’m most unfamiliar with the Northwestern parts of the country.
Trains were mostly on time, if late they seemed to average 10 minutes late, and a few times there were some very late trains. But between the major hubs it was usually possible to just take a different train. I feel like people don’t give Germany enough credit for the sheer number of trains it has. You’re running trains on lines every hour that other European countries would only have a train every 2 or 3 hours.
Although I’ll admit the first place I lived was a small village and my daily commute relied on one train that was nearly 15 minutes late every day. I learned to adjust for it.
No train delay has ever compared to getting stuck in Atlanta traffic for 4 hours. It should on average take 1 hour to drive through Atlanta. I’ve yet to have a train delayed by 3 hrs
If the Honda accord is good enough for Jesus it’s good enough for me
Not a Honda Accord, but a Honda Ridgeline.
However, it’s the only comfortable seat I own, so I don’t mind it.
Trains where I am suck because the seats are too small, and no matter how little space there is next to me in a train seat, some fat guy always sits there. Usually right after he’s eaten a meal of nothing but raw garlic.
Mine is only 15-20 minutes. But recently leadership gave an employee at a different office an award for something else. The guy had to give an impromptu speech about it. He mentioned the usual stuff but then commented on how his commute was an extra hour compared to his previous job, but “so worth it”. I wanted to reach through the screen.
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Some of those Americans are washing their gas station sandwiches down with gas station wine too.
You might be joking but I saw a guy a few years back in an old SUV drinking the last remnant of wine out of the bag from some box wine on the highway.
A gas station that does not sell beer and ammunition is not some place I will buy gas from!
and gas station dick pills
As a german: Are those 200mph trains in a room with me?
They said Alps, they meant the Swiss, maybe the French.
Definitely French, the Swiss trains are very reliable but generally not fast.
Pendolino is an Italian family of high-speed tilting trains (and non-tilting) used in Italy, Spain, Germany, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Finland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia (Czech railways are operating), the UK, the US, Switzerland, China, and Greece.
they can go up to 250km/h
according to wikipedia even the americans have a few! thought with their infrastructure i doubt they get used much
German made Siemens and French made Alstom can reach 400 and routinely go 300.
No they got delayed, then cancelled
Sometimes they go that speed around Mannheim/Frankfurt/Köln… If they go at all… And they don’t get stuck behind another train… Or surprise bauarbeiten…
Just how bad is the European commute that they need to go through the alps at 200mph everyday?
I’m not even sure there are any trains going 320 km/h anywhere in the alps. AFAIK the highest speeds in that region are around 200 km/h, maybe 230 km/h.
You can have a 30 minute commute and still take a train through the alps if both your house and your job are in the alps.
I heard that when they built the Lötschberg train tunnel to connect the upper Wallis area with Thun and Bern, people started commuting through there. Visp-Thun is only half an hour and Visp-Bern is only an hour now. But yeah I still don’t think it’s that many.
Also Swiss trains don’t run that fast, it’s more like 155 mph in the Lötschberg.
X repost, downvote this shit
I drive a Ford Fiesta thank you very much. 😉
If you saw how expensive and shitty our trains are you’d pick the accord too
At least you recognize that the system is forcing you to make that choice, and not your “individual freedom”.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Soft Sleeper trains in China are quite nice and like 10USD/100 miles.
What’s that adjusted for income?
Somewhere between 40 and 100 USD depending on location.
But as wages increase and the market is able to bear higher prices, its unlikely to increase to those prices, since the rail network isn’t run for profit.
Prices will still go up as labor costs increase, just not as much as they could, similar to rent and food.
There are of course far cheaper options such as hard sleepers, soft seats, and hard seats, which pack 6 beds per birth, 8 seats, or ~12 seats respectively
Intrigued by the different options. I can search images of each of the four seating option types to compare… I am curious if you might find it a good use of your time to share photos of each of the options as you remember them, maybe with little annotation wherever is relevant?
Also quickly in my defense, the soft sleeper Wikipedia article features a hallway photo instead of a bed photo. :)
Sorry, I don’t have pictures I took myself that show the layout, but the app has examples. I think the top business class pic is actually Premium Business Class.
Theres a few other layouts, but you get the gist.
spoiler
High speed from Beijing to Shanghai:
And for slow trains:
Most slow trains have a dining car in my experience.
Put a smile right on my face, a hundred pics & all better than web image search results :D asked the right alcoholicorn
So - And then there’s standing!
Great look into all those options, American Amtrak has a fraction I think
No problem, I would have taken pictures myself if I expected anyone to care. Maybe when I return in 3-4 months.
Unrelated, here’s a simulator at a train museum in Tokyo.
Omg, the soft sleepers. Took them all over China. Hangzhou, yinchuan, chengdu, kunming. Once completely fucked up with language and took a slow train hard seat to Xian from Beijing. More than 24hrs over May Day/labor week. People were crawling in the windows in the middle of a field. Cannot recommend that.
Was it just absolutely packed and the window was the only way to make it inside? Maybe you ended up spending hours pressed against other people? Not sure if folks would be motivated to try to board without a ticket
Yes. Climbing in the windows and sitting in the aisle. I went to the bathroom once. It was like those puzzles with one piece missing, including those standing in the bathroom.
It was like those puzzles with one piece missing, including those standing in the bathroom.
Perfect visual :D
It doesn’t have to be that way but it currently is, and that’s why Americans don’t take trains. Have you seen Amtrak? It’s like an 1800’s coal train; the LA metro (light rail) is great if you want to get stabbed by a tweaker on the way to work.
I used to take Amtrak between Philly and DC. It took about 2 hours which is a bit shorter than driving if you’re lucky enough to not hit major traffic. The problem was that if it rained you had water pouring into the car from multiple spots in the ceiling. Just an amazing thing to see in 200-year-old technology. Even Amish buggies don’t leak like that.
I thought about taking the Acela on that route once. Cost 4X as much and shaved a whopping 10 minutes off the time.
I do not understand Amtrak at all. The Keystone has been the absolute best thing about moving back east for me. $25 to Manhattan, grab a bagel, see a show, $25 home. And the Keystone is the crappy commuter train, the Pennsylvanian is way nicer. I’ve done it tons of times and it’s only been late once, and no leaks on the rain.
Getting to DC costs hundreds each way and isn’t any faster than driving. I’m better off buying a ticket to Baltimore and then taking the $7 commuter to DC…
Yes it does, sadly. Our trains are basically set up to fail. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN7e38Q7e1U
Wait you just posted a video about how the system was intentionally designed to fail.
If it can intentionally be designed to fail then it can be redesigned to succeed. There is no reason it has to be the way it is
Wait 'til you hear about the ice cream machines at McDonald’s
Probably an intenet myth. But I have somewhere in my memory, that the machines are hard to clean. So enployees mark them out of order to not have to clean them.
Urban Legend. Probably.
It doesn’t happen to ice cream machines at other fast food franchises nearly as frequently, and the machines at McDonald’s give unhelpful error codes and are generally designed to require pricey field technician visits (that are helpfully provided for by the manufacturer) to resolve.
There was a third party device that was created to get around the error code issue, providing actual details of what was wrong and saving franchise owners thousands of dollars. So naturally the manufacturer sued the creator and petitioned McD’s corporate to disallow its use.
There are billions of dollars aligned against fixing the problem though so its going to look bad on paper to start fixing things, at least at first. You’d need to fix the political system to allow that kind of multi election cycle thinking to exist.
Yeah, but money has lost elections before.
It’s not money controlling the issues. It’s hatred of minorities and mistrust of the government (that people voted in), as well as of course a slew of other issues. But it starts with mentalities, not dollars.
Its really mixed tbh. Some make sense others cost a lot.
Expensive? Sure. Shitty? Not so much. I like our trains, at least the major lines.
