Comment by vel0city | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vel0city | Hacker News Reader

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> but it's on the order of 20-40 minutes, not hours

Just driving to the airport in Denver is nearly an hour for most of the city. It'll take a half hour to get from Uptown Dallas or Frisco or Saginaw to DFW. It's like a half hour to get from Orlando International to any of the Disney resorts. About 20 minutes from downtown KC to MCI. All of this is without any time parking or going through security and assuming traffic doesn't get bad.

Dallas has a train station downtown. Same with Fort Worth. Kansas City Union Station is downtown. Manhattan has several train stations. A lot of cities have a big train station downtown, as many cities were built around the train station. A decently sized train station uses considerably less space than a busy airport.

Which of these seem easier for the people in the city to actually get to and use?

Dallas Union Station: https://maps.app.goo.gl/aMwyguz98hptWPNo6

DFW Airport: https://maps.app.goo.gl/5iUpUoqvUkhJr1D98

Penn Station: https://maps.app.goo.gl/JysFmwFhc3cwqHLC6

JFK Airport: https://maps.app.goo.gl/MHWe4UM4wCk9iL1F7

Don't get me wrong, I agree even door to door air travel will usually be faster when talking about the kinds of distances a lot of US travelers go at and often people act like a train is 0 minutes of time getting to/from the station, but arguing the whole travel time getting to/from the airport and dealing with more security is only 20 minutes is a massive stretch for a ton of Americans. Most people should budget probably an hour before their scheduled boarding time to deal with the about half hour drive, the time navigating the airport, and the time dealing with security. Plus add another half hour after landing to actually get someplace interesting.

And then there's San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New Orleans... there are plenty of cities that have airports that are very convenient to them, and train stations that aren't.

My point is if you have a substantial sized city that does not already have a large train station in its center, you aren't building a train station in its center, in the same way that if your city doesn't have an airport that you've built up around, you aren't going to build it. We're all at the mercy of history here, unless you're going to try to build a new planned community where there currently is only light population.

SFO is still about a half hour drive in decent traffic for most of San Francisco. I've only flown in once, but it took like 40+min in traffic for me to go from there to Moscone. Meanwhile the train station is an 18min walk from Moscone.

LAX, sure, it is mostly surrounded by the city on three sides, but the sprawl there means the vast majority of the city sees 30+min traffic. Meanwhile Union Station there is right downtown and far more central.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/iKfLwgvCpapoCA6R8

It's incredible how your first two examples are such massive swings and misses at naming cities which have airports more convenient for their city than their train stations. In both the train station is more central to the actual city with a lot of people having a shorter walk to the station than most would have as a drive to the airport. About the first city in that list where the airport is actually more conveniently located is Las Vegas but largely because Amtrack just doesn't serve Vegas by train at all. Sounds like you didn't bother actually researching the list at all and just put down some cities that came to mind. Did you bother actually looking where the train stations were in comparison to the airport?

Another example, New Orleans. It is a half hour drive to/from the French Quarter. It is like a half hour walk from the train station to the French Quarter. Assuming the train and the plane arrived at the same time one could walk there from the train station before you even left the parking lot of the rental car agency.

> My point is if you have a substantial sized city that does not already have a large train station in its center

Just continuing to ignore most historic US cites (and the vast majority of the large ones) do have train stations in the middle of the city

> in the same way that if your city doesn't have an airport that you've built up around, you aren't going to build it

Just continuing to ignore the massive difference in land use requirements for even a medium airport compared to a train station. Just look at those Maps links I shared earlier. Look at how much space Penn Station in Manhattan uses. Think we can build an airport like JFK or even La Guardia in that same footprint? How would they even take off/land? Its way easier for a city to build a train station in its core than to put a whole airport with multiple runways and taxiways and tons of hangars large enough to hold a 737. It's incredible you think they're on the same level of scale to build in terms of land use.

There is no real train station in San Francisco: you're insane if you think that the Caltrain station could move significant fractions of the traffic that SFO does. SFO is more convenient to a much larger percentage of the people who live in the area (sure, not the strict city limits of SF proper) than a hypothetical station in downtown SF would be.

Like, this is pure fantasy. It's just people who have some kind of weird identity built up out of "liking trains" ignoring the actual world.

I said, "there's about a 20-40 minute advantage to train stations" and you're like trying to go to bat for the idea that an intracity commuter station which is 12 minutes from the airport somehow disproves that.

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