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Comment by theamk | Hacker News Reader

I think that analysis captures why people drive very well actually. Let's assume trains are 32x safer in US as well:

Car: 2 hour 32 minutes driving door to door + 37 minutes of death = 3 hour 9 minutes

Train: 2 hour 37 minutes on train + 1 minute of death + 30 minute early arrive buffer + 30 minutes public transport to departure + 30 minutes public transport to destination = 4 hours 8 minutes

Trains already lose, unless both your source and destination are right next to the train stations. And once you factor possibility of other things, like having multiple stops or how you have to adjust the schedule around the trains, the car gets even better.

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I think it depends on what type of rail you’re referring to here. If you’re in a city like LA where more or less no matter what your car drive will take hours… I think a dedicated rail would actually save people time. Obviously there would need to be huge investment in new infrastructure for that to happen.

When I lived in NYC same dynamics… it would have actually taken significantly longer in most cases to drive than take the subway.

So I think it depends on how a city is laid out and planned. If public transportation was not a priority and kinda shimmed in then totally, but in cities where they prioritize public transportation generally it’s a better experience than driving.

I guess it depends on the details. I do a journey regularly that is about the same time, an hour, by car or by train + tube + walk. I tend to do the train because I can sit and work on something whereas in the car you can't. It's changed with time - I used to like driving but find it a bit tedious now.

for any random trip it is far more likely that the car will be a better choice, but likely trip choice is a power law with most trips focusing on few routes.

This to say that the purpose of trains is not to be better than cars at what car do, but rather to allow as many people as possible not to need a car for most trips.

Depending on how trips are distributed this can be anywhere from easy to impossible.

I think this is true in the US where everything is designed around the car, but not as true in Europe. Somewhere like Amsterdam it’s actually generally faster to ride a bike than anything else. Also for longer trips high speed rail can be significantly faster and cheaper. So I think it really depends on the city context.

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