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Those sort of "issues" are why I tend to prefer travelling by rail for most city to city journeys (anything to avoid EasyJet!). You do have high speed rail links in the US, don't you? ;P
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
Nowhere near as convenient as what exists in western europe. ON the Northeast, there some, there's a rail link from NYC to Washington DC, and some from NYC to Boston, and various other cities. But in a lot of other places it's a PITA. The US desperately needs to pull it's head out of it's rectum regarding it's setup for public transportation/mass transit.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog Just Say No to Web 2 Point Oh
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Ennis, On your website is the following sentence: "While I don't advertise it as a comprehensive list it does make for a nice quick read that can give
perspectivebusiness owners a glimpse into what questions to ask and just how to approach a software project." The word you want there is "prospective," not "perspective."Nice to know people read what I write. I will have to fix that tonight. Thanks.
Need custom software developed? I do C# development and consulting all over the United States.
If you don't ask questions the answers won't stand in your way.
Doing a job is like selecting a mule, you can't choose just the front half xor the back half so when you ask me to do a job don't expect me to do it half-assed. -
Nowhere near as convenient as what exists in western europe. ON the Northeast, there some, there's a rail link from NYC to Washington DC, and some from NYC to Boston, and various other cities. But in a lot of other places it's a PITA. The US desperately needs to pull it's head out of it's rectum regarding it's setup for public transportation/mass transit.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog Just Say No to Web 2 Point Oh
That's a shame really - although the rail service in the UK is nowhere near as comprehensive as in mainland Europe, you can at least get to most major cities relatively quickly (even though the maximum line speed on most lines is still limited to 125mph, London-Edinburgh is something like 4 hours). We travelled to Berlin last November by rail (using a combination of Eurostar, TGV and ICE) and it was far less stressful than air travel (no worries over baggage allowances, for a start!) or indeed driving (which is far slower, obviously). Isn't there a high speed rail building plan being mooted in the US at the moment? I seem to remember seeing a news article somewhere.
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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Nowhere near as convenient as what exists in western europe. ON the Northeast, there some, there's a rail link from NYC to Washington DC, and some from NYC to Boston, and various other cities. But in a lot of other places it's a PITA. The US desperately needs to pull it's head out of it's rectum regarding it's setup for public transportation/mass transit.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog Just Say No to Web 2 Point Oh
The biggest problem with the US railnetwork is that the the right of ways mostly date back to the mid 19th century; and the companies at the time didn't see any need to make them flatter or straighter than was needed at the time. Since the eastern US is fairly hilly most of the existing tracks are unusable by trains going much faster than 30-40MPH. The southwest and west coast never had much residential rail to begin with because their populations were far smaller until the rise of the car. The western plains probably have fairly flat and strait right of ways but don't have anywhere near the population needed to make commuter trains practical.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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That's a shame really - although the rail service in the UK is nowhere near as comprehensive as in mainland Europe, you can at least get to most major cities relatively quickly (even though the maximum line speed on most lines is still limited to 125mph, London-Edinburgh is something like 4 hours). We travelled to Berlin last November by rail (using a combination of Eurostar, TGV and ICE) and it was far less stressful than air travel (no worries over baggage allowances, for a start!) or indeed driving (which is far slower, obviously). Isn't there a high speed rail building plan being mooted in the US at the moment? I seem to remember seeing a news article somewhere.
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
The only seriousish ones I've seen've been limited in scope. There're a few places fighting to get a federal grant for a high speed monorail link, and a single set of tracks between DC and NY (Boston???) has largely been upgraded to somewhere in the 80-100 mph range; but otherwise I'm not aware of anything. The only real customers of most of the rail are bulk freight and the cost of upgrading the rail net is far exceeded by the cost of having more coal/steel/oil/etc in transit at any given time.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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The only seriousish ones I've seen've been limited in scope. There're a few places fighting to get a federal grant for a high speed monorail link, and a single set of tracks between DC and NY (Boston???) has largely been upgraded to somewhere in the 80-100 mph range; but otherwise I'm not aware of anything. The only real customers of most of the rail are bulk freight and the cost of upgrading the rail net is far exceeded by the cost of having more coal/steel/oil/etc in transit at any given time.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
That's a shame. The report I saw was talking about new lines - comparable to the TGV or ICE in scope (300km/h or thereabouts, and long distance).
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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Against my better judgment I booked a flight out of Atlanta (I don't wish Hartsfield on my worst enemies) to Maine on Continental. It had been 4 years since I had flown out of Atlanta that is how bad my experience was, well this was no better. But to make a long story short, I wanted to move my flight up from mid-march to the 1st of March or any arbitrary day. The rebooking fee with Continental is more than my ticket! It is going to be cheaper for me to toss my Continental flight and buy a ticket from Southwest into Birmingham and bum a ride (I already have one but thanks for offering) BTW, when flying out of Atlanta my bag was 59lbs not 50. The extra charge would have been $90 dollars! Warning, the rest of this is about to get Soapbox: I wish the federal government would stay out of corporate affairs and let companies like Continental, Delta, and these major Banks FAIL and take all the looters with them. I wish we could just rebuild with a solid foundation instead of propping up an inverted pyramid.
Need custom software developed? I do C# development and consulting all over the United States.
If you don't ask questions the answers won't stand in your way.
Doing a job is like selecting a mule, you can't choose just the front half xor the back half so when you ask me to do a job don't expect me to do it half-assed.Lighten up, pal. You could've been on the Continental that went down in NY last night. Good thing you didn't move it up that far! :wtf: There's always a silver lining somehwere.
What does an agnostic, dyslexic, insomniac do? He lies awake at night wondering if there's a dog.
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Lighten up, pal. You could've been on the Continental that went down in NY last night. Good thing you didn't move it up that far! :wtf: There's always a silver lining somehwere.
What does an agnostic, dyslexic, insomniac do? He lies awake at night wondering if there's a dog.
Society progresses by fixing what is wrong not by being complacent and saying, "it could have been worse". Living life thankful just to be alive is no way to live.
Need custom software developed? I do C# development and consulting all over the United States.
If you don't ask questions the answers won't stand in your way.
Doing a job is like selecting a mule, you can't choose just the front half xor the back half so when you ask me to do a job don't expect me to do it half-assed. -
That's a shame. The report I saw was talking about new lines - comparable to the TGV or ICE in scope (300km/h or thereabouts, and long distance).
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
aside from the monorail pork bids I'm not aware of any. One proposed route is LA-Vegas but I know there're a few others vieing for the same funds. Except in a few dense urban areas passenger rail's basically dead in the US; and the costs needed to develop a high speed infrastructure to revive it are too large for private investors to touch on spec. If whoever wins the monorail starts making money hand over fist that might change, otherwise I doubt it will. The US pop is much more spread out than in Europe. LA to NYC and Lisbon to Moscow are roughly equally long journeys, and Continental Europe to Moscow has a significantly higher population: 300M vs IIRC 450-500M. Our population distribution's much poorer as well. Concentrated in areas where there's no cheap land to build on, with vast empty stretches between them.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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Against my better judgment I booked a flight out of Atlanta (I don't wish Hartsfield on my worst enemies) to Maine on Continental. It had been 4 years since I had flown out of Atlanta that is how bad my experience was, well this was no better. But to make a long story short, I wanted to move my flight up from mid-march to the 1st of March or any arbitrary day. The rebooking fee with Continental is more than my ticket! It is going to be cheaper for me to toss my Continental flight and buy a ticket from Southwest into Birmingham and bum a ride (I already have one but thanks for offering) BTW, when flying out of Atlanta my bag was 59lbs not 50. The extra charge would have been $90 dollars! Warning, the rest of this is about to get Soapbox: I wish the federal government would stay out of corporate affairs and let companies like Continental, Delta, and these major Banks FAIL and take all the looters with them. I wish we could just rebuild with a solid foundation instead of propping up an inverted pyramid.
Need custom software developed? I do C# development and consulting all over the United States.
If you don't ask questions the answers won't stand in your way.
Doing a job is like selecting a mule, you can't choose just the front half xor the back half so when you ask me to do a job don't expect me to do it half-assed.Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr. wrote:
I wanted to move my flight up from mid-march to the 1st of March or any arbitrary day. The rebooking fee with Continental is more than my ticket!
Next tiime you want to move up a flight, you can always go out to the airport during a slow travel period and ask if you can get on an early flight w/o paying the re-booking fee. They will usually say yes if they have lots of empty seats, especially if they can re-sell the seat on your future flight. It has almost always worked for me, but occasionally there will be a hard a$$ that says no. So be prepared not to fly that day. You have to do it at the counter, they will never agree over the phone.
