When was the last time you traveled on intercity rail for a purpose other than a day’s commute?
For the pedants:
This question covers non-commuting trips that DO NOT begin and end in the same metropolitan area (can be between two metro areas, between a metro area and a small town or rural area, etc…) Commuting by rail between DC and Baltimore, or similar close metro areas, doesn’t count, but traveling between DC and Baltimore for some reason other than a day’s commute (e.g. visiting family overnight) counts. Travel by “commuter rail” in an intercity context counts (e.g. MARC commuter trains run between DC and Baltimore), as long as you weren’t actually commuting on it. Subways are RIGHT OUT.
Never. The closest passenger train station is about a two hour drive from my house. There’s not really much in the way of rail travel in the rural South. The train lines we have are mostly freight, but they do see heavy traffic.
Greyhound Bus, yeah…that’s widely available, but extremely tedious. I last did that when I shipped out to basic training in 1988. Took all day to cover the distance I could have driven in about 4 hours, because the bus stops at damn near every wide place in the road.
I put never which is true in the U.S. but I have used trains for transportation in Europe. I could take a commuter rail about 7 miles from here to go into into Boston and then down the East Coast via the best trains available in the U.S. but it I won’t because that would be dumb. It would be a partial reverse trip plus ticket costs and then I would need to be going somewhere in NYC or Washington D.C. proper and back again. I think I will just drive.
Never. Although we have a train station close by in Jackson, it only gets four trains a day. One northbound; one southbound; one eastbound; and one westbound. You can’t go anywhere and come back on the same day.
I once rode the train from the suburbs into Boston, when I was there visiting. And I rode the subway in NYC and Chicago a couple of times while visiting my sister there. But that’s it.
I have taken Greyhound from North Mississippi to Chicago, and also from there to Shenendoah, Virginia. Those are some lengthy trips!
Never in the US. Rail in the US sucks and it’s a waste of time and money.
I could easily hop on a ‘highspeed’ rail from Boston to New York but considering my other options.
A plane is cheaper and faster.
Driving even if I included the cost of renting a car, paying for gas and paying for parking, is still cheaper and takes a similar amount of time(can be slower with traffic)
Taking a buss is ridiculously cheap but it’s a long crappy ride.
I remembered a more recent train trip than the one I had thought was the last one. I said > 20 because it would have been in the early 60’s. But we took the Car Train from Orlando to DC in the late 90’s. Except for Metro and other subway rides that was the latest. Thus my vote is wrong.
For just one person it was (barely) cheaper then gas, took roughly the same amount of time, and I got to just sit back and relax in a comfortable seat rather then drive (some people like driving - I’m not one of them).
Of course it helps I can literally walk to the train station on my end, and the train station on the other end is like a 5 minute drive (if that) from the friend who picked me up’s house.
Also it sure as hell beat taking the bus, the train is much nicer and because it’s a bit more expensive, significantly less crowded.
“Less Than One Year” due to recent visits to Europe. Crappy Ukrainian overnight trains to be specific, Kiev to Nikolayev, Kherson, Evpatoria, Simferopol and various recombinations. Anything short of first class is remarkably uncomfortable.
Prior to that, it would be 21 years, when I was in Year-In-Europe program in college. During the winter break, I had a Eurail pass and slept on trains with the other (relatively) poor kids. Less uncomfortable than Ukraine, but my companions still whined about it.
And for the last time I took the train in the USA was 26 years ago when my Dad bought a go-anywhere-in-the-west-for-two-weeks Amtrak ticket, and we went all over the place (where the ticket would let us go), but nowhere in particular. The point was to take the train. Memories are fuzzy about the details going back that far, but I remember neither being uncomfortable or any whining.
Two years ago, NYC to Washington DC. The only other trip was the year before, going from Cusco to Aguas Calientes, Peru. I was thinking about taking a day trip to Brussels during my vacation in Paris last year, but the fares were pretty high for just a day trip and the machine wouldn’t even take my magnetic stripe-style American credit card. I looked at the long line of people waiting to buy tickets from a cashier, so I said screw it.
A little over a decade ago, I took the Eurostar from London to Paris. I slept through most of it to maintain my sanity. (I dislike underwater tunnels. A lot.)
I’ve also done Amtrak from Florida to Pennsylvania. It would’ve been more palatable if we weren’t low-prioritied (made to wait for a freight train to use the rails, they own them so they go first) six different times, for delays totaling nearly 4 hours.
I used to use Metra to travel from Chicago to Aurora to visit my folks. The last time I tried to do that was for my mom’s retirement party in 2009. I missed the train and ended up renting a car from Enterprise. After that, I got a membership for iGo carsharing and haven’t looked back. It’s so much more convenient, and really not expensive over the 4-6 times a year I need it.