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What mode of transportation did you choose for your last trip of 1000km (about 600 mi)?

#EvanPoll #Poll

  • Plane (46%, 184 votes)
  • Train (23%, 92 votes)
  • Car (26%, 107 votes)
  • Other (please specify) (3%, 15 votes)
398 voters. Poll end: 1 year ago

Car, and I wrote about it:
https://chrisalemany.ca/2022/08/15/saving-co2-on-a-cross-country-ev-journey/

#ElectricVehicles #RoadTrip #Canada #EVCrossCanada #Family #CarbonEmissions #CO2 #ClimateAction
Greyhound to a suburb of Memphis although that was almost 20 years ago.
plane, but if a fast train were available I would take it instead.
plane, but i wouldn't have minded taking a train if it was available.
"What is a 1980 John Hughes film that I really want to rewatch now?"
They messed up my reservation and upgraded me. It was the only time I, on a fixed income, had ever gone any other way than coach. Eugene, OR to Palatka, FL, a decade ago.

I don't travel these days, but I did then ... on trains.
Woman riding in the best seat on the train as a result of a scheduling mishap.
Do try it sometime! Oh, and if you go to Seattle from here, take the Cascades. These trainsets can do 120 mph on upgraded track, of which, alas, there's almost none in the US. πŸ™„ They get up to about 80 in the Willamette Valley.
Cascades train ready to depart from Eugene, Oregon under a cloudy sky. Passengers walking to their cars.
Passenger on the Cascades train in the Pacific Northwest.
I just stay mostly locally, on my feet.
but if I can remember, the longest trip was on a ship πŸ›³ Costa Cruises
Plane. Sadly there's not a lot of choice in New Zealand. Our interregional public transport is terrible and of course there's sea right in the middle.
oh USA, you make it so hard to travel the west by rail. Ended up taking Route 66 west from OK to CA, then up 99 or 5 to Seattle.
Car, if 1000km roundtrip… Luxembourg, last year. If one way, sort of, then also car: a 7000km road trip around scandinavia (NL-GER-Ferry-FIN-NOR-SWE-DEN-GER-NL. In dire need of a change of scenery again.
600 miles is the entire length of the UK and I've never come close to that.
Other: motorcycle.
@fschaap that's a long motorcycle trip! Where did you go?
Not really 1 trip but nearly 1000km in 2 days: visiting a friend at the other end of the country and going to a concert across the border in Germany. But planning some longer camping trips πŸ˜„
OBB Night train to Berlin, then the ICE to Hamburg and a Danish regional train to Copenhagen, and finally the Swedish west coast train to GΓΆteborg.

On the way back we took the OBB night train from Hamburg.
I was travelling the height of South America, so I didn’t really have a choice!
exactly 😁
I live in New Zealand, so any journey that long necessitates flying.
in the US, car is the only economical way to travel with a family of 6.

But every time I'm on an interstate driving through a low-population area in the middle of the night, with my kids asleep in the back of the minivan, baggage piled all around, I wonder how we got to the point where anyone thinks this approach is superior to a compartment on a train.
train and book (or e-reader)
I wouldn't really say 'chose', since that implies I had options πŸ˜…β€‹
@genevieve oh, really? Where was the trip?
out to blue ridge parkway in the us, nearest airport was far enough away that driving the whole way just made more sense
I skew the stats a bit given I live on an island.
@vivtek neat! So, boat or plane or what?
Plane. The Jones Act ensures I don't have the option of boats.
Car but an electric one. Went for a round trip through Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and back through Germany to the Netherlands.

Roughly 3500 km.
@marco so, that seems like it's way more than 1000km.
Train of course, it’s the best way to travel. The week before last I traveled 800km for work, stayed at destination for three nights and took the overnight train home. Good times.
Oh this is sad. I can't remember the last time I went 600 mi. It was pre-pandemic.
@SeaGoatGirl It was plane but returning from ~800 kms of biking.
Train and ferry in combination.
Plane, because there's not really any other reliable way to get from the UK to Kenya other than by air!
Combined bike, plane, car, boat-ferry, and train.

Ottawa (Bike) Montreal (Plane) Boston (Bike) Bar Harbour (Boat) Yarmouth (Bike) Halifax (Train) Montreal (Bike) Ottawa

Total distance approx. 2,300km
Plane. I wanted to take the train but the only available options for my travel dates involved several stops and half a day, and car rental was 3x as expensive and involved driving in some places I didn't want to try driving.

(I usually drive an EV, which won't make the trip without several recharges.)
@kat I feel you on this! Our EV has a range of 250-300km, so we'd need 3 charges minimum to make a 1000km trip. Chargers aren't always spaced exactly 250km apart, though!

We'd probably split it up into two days: drive and lunch + charge, then drive and sleep + charge, then drive and lunch + charge, then drive.
@Kat
yep, this was for a two-day trip so that seemed inefficient! (I often rent a gas car if I need to make a trip longer than my 150-mi range.)
@brion so, I think 1000km gets you to the Bay Area, right? I think that's a 20-hour trip on Amtrak; a pretty close equivalent to driving! But I think it leaves and arrives in the evening.
@brion yeah, I was just using this route as the example in my human-computer interface class. I'm doing a project on selecting transportation modes based on real experience like door-to-door times.

The drive time from SF to Portland is about 15 hours, iirc. While it's possible to do that if you have multiple drivers and can trade off, it's more likely that you'll need to stop for meals and sleep, so I estimated a door-to-door time of 29 hours (15 drive, 8 sleep, 6 meals).
@brion flying is about 1.5 hr in the air, but with getting to the airport, check-in, security, then arriving and getting out of the destination airport, I anticipate about 6 hours door-to-door.

That's still a big advantage over driving or train! It only makes sense if price or carbon footprint are *really* important to you.

Once you have 3 or 4 people travelling, that 2-day drive starts to look really economical.
@brion I think it's probably fair to say that while a solo 15-hour drive is kind of a test of your sanity, a 15-hour drive with 3 other people is a *R*O*A*D* *T*R*I*P* wooooooooo

WOW. These results are wildly different than my poll about distances around 500km:

https://prodromou.pub/@evan/109855866780546735

...and the one around 200km:

https://prodromou.pub/@evan/109790441129698185


What is your preferred mode of transportation for a trip of 500 km (~300 mi)?

#Poll #EvanPoll


This entry was edited (1 year ago)
I think there are two reasons for this.

First, there's a threshold between 500km and 1000km where train travel becomes significantly uncompetitive on time compared to air travel; 2x or 3x the door-to-door time commitment.
Second, I changed the phrasing of my question. Instead of, "What is your preferred mode of travel...?" I asked, "What mode of travel did you choose last?"

I think this cuts down a lot on the social desirability bias in responses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social-desirability_bias
For me, the last trip I took of this distance was a family wedding in New Jersey. We drove down in our electric car. It was harder than we expected; the availability of chargers in the Adirondacks was pretty lacking.
I may go back and re-run my shorter-distance polls with this new phrasing and see how they compare.

Thanks to everyone who replied!
that difference is important. I prefer taking the train for most long trips but often can't for various reasons.
I expect country variability also. Trains and distances in Europe vs US vs Australia very different. (Compared with most everywhere else, Australia has very large, nearly empty gaps between major centres and slow trains)
Not just *social* desirability bias, but true desirability vs practicality. I’d love to take the train more often, but it lends itself best for travel to city centers and not for camping or roadtrips (by definition, of course, but also based on the smaller, more rural stops I’d like to make then).
@photovince so, first, read about social desirability bias.

It's the tendency to give answers that conform to one's image of oneself, rather than to one's actual behaviour.
@photovince agreed. I can go to Seattle or Chicago by train. Anywhere else I’m driving or flying. I wish I could take the train more.
@aaron why can't you take the train?
because it goes two place from where I am.
@aaron I mean, it's a connected network. If you want to, you can get to most cities in the US and Canada by train.
sure. But I don’t want to spend a week getting somewhere. We need high speed rail.
ah. So you *could* take the train, but you choose not to.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
I want better investments in infrastructure so it’s a more viable option.
@aaron do you think that's likely?

I don't think policymakers are going to invest in a network that nobody uses.

That's just throwing money away.
actually let me rephrase that. I would love to spend a week on a train getting somewhere, but the capitalist hellscape we’re forced to live in does not allow for that extra travel time.
@aaron I think if those of us who can manage it shift some of our travel to low-carbon modes like rail, especially when it's only somewhat more inconvenient than flying or driving, it will help build out the rail service and make all trains better.
on the empire builder is as specific as I will get. https://www.amtrak.com/empire-builder-train
@aaron oh, that's a great train! And it goes right into Chicago, North America's rail hub!
I certainly prefer trains when I can take them, but often end up having to drive, because Australia's train network is very limited.
I'd also guess thst traveling more than 1000 km happens a lot less often (in Europe) than 200 / 500 km travel.
@_tillwe_ yes, I think that's true everywhere.
I can think of a few other reasons that could change one's mind, at least where train and plane are concerned:
  • Having to go through complex security procedures (train tends to be easier) cross border
  • Having to go way outside the city to get to/from the transport hub
  • Noise levels (deafening vs normal)
  • Ability to stand up, stretch your legs
  • Snack choice and when to get them
  • Environmental concerns (fuel per 1000 km per 1000 passengers)
@GuillaumeRossolini that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about why many respondents might prefer trains at shorter distances but not longer distances.
I do believe we are talking about the same thing, at least, that was my intent

Distance might not be the only or the main reason, and respondents may not have made the link between the polls (I hadn't)
@GuillaumeRossolini

So, 69% of respondents said they'd prefer trains for a trip of 200km.

23% of respondents said they booked trains for their last trip of about 1000km.

I am trying to explain the difference in those percentages -- 69% vs 23%.

I said that two possible explanations of those different percentages are a) the way the question was phrased, and b) the distance.

I agree that there are lots of factors in choosing a transportation mode.
well-mangaged sleeper service largely fixes this problem presuming hotel stays anyway. And, the OBB NightJet is pretty awesome.
Its a different question, though. Preference versus reality...

I guess that comes down to how you define "preferred".

I'd say that my preferred form of exercise is lifting weights, since that's the one I do most commonly.

If wine-drinking helped me stay in shape, I'd "prefer" to do that instead.

It doesn't, though, so my habitual or "preferred' form is weight lifting.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
@roguelazer but, yes, many people thought of "preferred" as "wished-for" instead of "habitual".
@Evan Prodromou My "preferred" transport was a 5–7-hour train that doesn't exist but could and should, so it was a plane rather than a 25-hour train ride (wall clock time) with 4 interchanges.
yeah, I think "preferred" in terms of "habitual, typical" wasn't understood by a lot of people. So this new form is better.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
Your willingness to convert metric to Imperial/American units betrays your non-native status
@penryu proud to be non-native! It puts me in good company.
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