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Comment by kylehotchkiss | Hacker News Reader

I just took the LA-Seattle overnight train a few weeks ago to add a mini trip in before heading to Alaska. A lot of you HNers are west coasters. Do it! Get the little bedroom, it makes the trip a lot more fun.

Few of my pictures are here https://www.kylehotchkiss.com/photography/collections/2024-c...

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"The content of this site is geofenced and not available in your region."

Why? This is in the EU

GDPR

I'm in Brazil, it still blocks me.

And I’m in the EU, and didn’t get blocked… Enjoyed the photos, but don’t really understand attempting to geofence a personal website.

Do you mind sharing how much the ticket cost? That’s always my main deterrent for USA rail travel. The prices I get quoted are ludicrous compared to plane tickets. I’d love to ride a train instead but I don’t feel like it should come at the premiums it does.

You need to factor in meals and hotel stays when comparing prices. You will get to your destination a couple nights earlier, but you’ll need to eat and sleep during that time as well.

The railroad trip is a destination in itself.

On the other hand if taking off work means forgoing income, taking the slower rail journey is even more expensive. Instead of taking 6 days off work to fly and take a cruise, maybe now I need to take 8. For retirees or folks who can work on a train, the calculation might be very different.

I think that was parents point, the train /is/ the cruise

I get that, that’s one way of looking at it. But other folks look at train vs plane for more utilitarian “getting there”. Depending on your situation and what you consider the train ride to be, the value offered by the train can be considered a reasonable deal or outlandishly expensive.

Economy class airplanes are all utility and zero experience. The business is viable because utility and torment can cancel out because the trip itself has need to have a perceived value - all the value is in moving from A to B.

A drive, a cruise, or a train trip have intrinsic value beyond moving from A to B. You experience the movement in a different way.

We need to start thinking a bit differently about the economics of transportation when travelling for leisure.

Just picking two large cities, Dallas to New Orleans takes 33 hours by Amtrak vs. 7 hours just driving a car. It’s hard to understand how anyone would make that choice. I’d really like rail to be a choice in the USA for being able to get somewhere instead of the train ride being the destination.

It looks like $104 by coach, which seems really reasonable but I can’t imagine sitting in a coach seat in a car that has both upper and lower levels for 33h. A private room is $619. A round trip plane ticket is about $139 and the flight is 1h37m. Amtrak needs to enter our universe.

Well, you've chosen two large cities that don't have an Amtrak route between them so you have a layover in San Antonio

That sounds like a super boring route. I’d much rather do Chicago to LA, SF, or Seattle, as all those routes pass through interesting to me scenery.

I will say the coast starlight was pretty full when I took it from LA to Seattle. A lot of people take it and really really like it. The staff seemed more personable and to be enjoying themselves over the ones I’ve experienced in northeast corridor

Any location in Texas, aside from El Paso?, seems like a hassle by train. I priced DC to Austin a few years ago and it was way too expensive even for a consumer that wanted to take the trip by train.

Amtrak seems to be good at North to South on the coasts, and East to West in the middle, but bad at any diagonal routes.

~$200 per person ticket ~$600 for the room

So for 2 people in a room, about $1000

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