23 December 2008

Fast Trains Attract Frequent Fliers

The ...300-mile Milan-Rome route... in three hours and 30 minutes 18 times a day. (speeds up to 186 mph)
...
...one-way ticket can cost around euro67 ($90.52), while an airline trip is at least euro90 ($121.59) and driving can cost some euro85 ($114.84) in gas and toll charges.

Italian Railway ... aims to snag 60 percent of the 3.7 million passengers who fly the route every year.

...they won't really start taking a bite out of air travelers until the time gets under three hours. Attainment of that goal is expected at the end of 2010 when the track between Florence and Bologna is improved to shorten that leg to 30 minutes.
...
The Spanish railway's high-speed service from Madrid to Barcelona took off in February, going after a chunk of Europe's busiest air route, which registered 4.7 million passengers in 2006.

The 400-mile trip by rail takes two hours and 38 minutes — well under the three-hour benchmark for attracting frequent fliers...

As a comparison, 300 Miles is the distance from Cincinnati to Chicago. Cinci to DC is 520 miles and driving takes over 8 hrs.

The Acelafrom Washington DC to Boston is the fastest US train line.

3 comments:

VisuaLingual said...

FYI, The Boston-NYC Acela leg is not that fast. When you consider how horrendously expensive US train travel is, and not entirely reliable, it's not a good value at all. The European prices make a lot more sense.

CityKin said...

If you read the Acela info on Wikipedia, you see that the Acela line is a compromise, and not quite a high-speed line as originally proposed. To make a truly high speed, line, different routes would be needed with fewer turns.

Randy Simes said...

It is absolutely absurd that the United States doesn't have a high-speed rail network. North Africa will soon be connected into the European network and thus have HSR before the United States and Canada. That is something to scratch your head about.