Skip to main content


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

#Poll #EvanPoll

  • Car (22%, 127 votes)
  • Train (68%, 391 votes)
  • Plane (6%, 39 votes)
  • Other (please specify) (2%, 12 votes)
569 voters. Poll end: 1 year ago

Evan Prodromou reshared this.

I'm in the US so the train is only even an option for very specific trips and I'm 6'2" which makes modern commercial planes extremely uncomfortable. The length from my hip to knee is long enough that I can't move my legs the entire trip because I'm literally wedged.

Historically, I sleep well on trains and really like them but they're not a realistic option for any of my usual destinations.
where I live (central western Germany) traffic is dense and there are lots of national train connections. 500km is about the distance from here to Munich. Going there by car during the day would take at least 5-6 hours, breaks not included.

The fastest trains take 4.5 hours to get there.

However, all this is only valid on selected routes. If you'd need to switch trains more than twice to get somewhere, it's a totally different story.
What would my preferred mode be in an ideal world or what is my preferred mode in the place that that I actually live?

I would much prefer to take a train, but realistically I am going to take a car 90% of the time because the rail options that are available are unsatisfactory.
@Kyleric why do you prefer an unsatisfactory transportation mode?
@Kyle
I would prefer functional rail travel. I have traveled by rail in Europe and it was fantastic. Relatively affordable, fast, and I could read a book or do something productive on the trip instead of focusing on driving, and it is much safer and better for the environment.

At least in my area of the US, to make a trip by rail would take ~3 times as long as driving. Even if it was only 1.5 times as long I would prefer it. In Europe it is usually slightly faster than driving.
I travel from south of Netherlands to Stuttgart, Germany every once in a while (I work remote, office is there). Train takes about 6 hours with 4-5 switches in total, car would be a bit faster, but not too much. Benefit is: I can work or relax on the way there. While going 250km/h.
The cross border train is the worst, if that would be an intercity, it would be on par with car travel in terms of total duration
If teleportation was an option, it would be my preferred mode of transportation. 😀
preferred: Train (Due to the port state of rail coverage in the US) Most likely: car/plane.
@aaron why do you prefer a form of transportation that is poor?
if the US actually built out the infrastructure they wouldn’t be. I wish they where here what they could be.
@aaron so, you *want* to prefer trains, but you don't.
whenever it’s I viable option I take them. It’s my first preference, but it’s rarely viable.
@aaron People have said that they would prefer teleportation if it were available. I think that's a reasonable stance to take: "I prefer rides on mode X; unfortunately those rides are not available here."
It’s a vague question because it neglects to establish whether the train system is well implemented or the garbage such as what you have in most of the US.

Considering it’s an international poll & you don’t know where responders live, we have to make assumptions. What if an American visits Europe? Should they answer in terms of travel from home, or within Europe?

I move around, so I have a different preference with each place I find myself. Then I also have a preference of fast trains in a hypothetical region where all forms of transport are at their best. But even that’s not a simple answer, because pricing affects my preference. Sometimes the fast train is /cheaper/ than the slow train due to marketplace idiosyncrasies, but not typically.

@aaron
@gerry @aaron every question is vague if you look closely enough.

One benefit of intelligence is the ability to deal with uncertainty about complex situations.
Train is my preferred mode, but isn't available for most of my destinations...🙄
@erchanda really? Where are you going?
I love trains but the only amtrak train that goes from Chicago to SF (yeah, more than 300 miles) doesn't even have WiFi. Wtf? its 2023! Oh and its like a 50 hour trip.
@krolden

Right, but the question is about 500km/300mi trips.

So from Chicago, that's like Detroit, Cincinnati, St. Louis.

Similar distances, maybe Cleveland and Minneapolis.

CHI -> STL on Amtrak is ~5 hours, $25.
oh I know my vote for trains stands despite my rantings.
@krolden Being able to go from downtown STL to inside the loop really is fantastic.

But for me it depends what I'm doing at my destination. My wife & i started our relationship 321mi apart, and car was necessary to do stuff & travel as we need to. If we could have had rail would we have done it? yeah probs.
@splicer That's a long ride on a motorcycle. Like, 6 hours? At what point does it become a slog?
I quite fancy walking to India (from England). It's 74 days walking time, according to Google.
@Irreverent_B so what, 7 months or so? Google Maps gives nonstop times, doesn't it?
Yeah, I'd need to sleep, eat etc. And neither Iran nor Afghanistan offer attractive routes for a white Brit right now, so a longer route might be needed.
Plane... only because I live in the US & trains are not an easy, reliable option at all. I wish this weren't the case...
This depends on where in the world I am. Generally speaking if I'm visiting the partner's fam in Zurich it's gonna be train, but the US it's generally plane unless I'm on one of those areas that train is actually good for (few)
in this poll: people who live where the trains aren’t horrible
It's always going to be train.

Make sleepers a reasonable cost in this country and let me sleep my way to Vancouver. 🚂
My preferred mode is train, unfortunately I live the U.S., so that's rarely an available option.
500km here is just down the road

Evan Prodromou reshared this.

@quokka1
500km here is 13 different countries.
Map with a circle of 500km around Dortmund in Germany.
@quokka1
😀
PS: Again, I feel totally lost after the poll. There are so many hidden `if``else` and/or both clauses like e.g.

- Is there interest to discover places in between?
- Are there fixed `via`?
- Do I have luggage?
- Do I have time?
- Do I care for friends with different targets or can resources be shared?
- Do I need the luggage I have when I arrive?
etc.
@sl007 @quokka1 so, I guess for me the idea is that you'd consider those options, kind of do a weighted average over the probabilities, and come up with a rough idea of which mode you'd prefer to take.
@quokka1

well, this was what I did.
Then experiences kicked in and overruled probabilities – like missing 2 very important appointments due “Sänk ju for träwelling Deutsche Bahn” or the problem with flights
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/lost-luggage-ontario-airtag-air-canada-1.6723976
It is just a tough life 😀
I am really hoping that travelling gets easier again and that we find/found climate neutral ways to cross oceans (without involving Elmo).
i think it’s fair to say it depends on where you are, and how fast you wanna get somewhere. if i’m in most of europe, much of asia, the coastal US i am taking the train. taking amtrak long haul routes means 1 train a day, risk of delays, whether the train is going the direction i want to go. i absolutely want to take Amtrak between European capitals, or from my home in Eugene to visit friends in Seattle, for example, but i have to drive or fly to boise or eureka. when I lived in Phoenix, San Diego to Tucson was always a drive-instead-of-fly, but train was never even on the table because the nearest train station is an hour drive south of Phoenix in the approximate middle of nowhere. tokyo to kyoto is a train ride every single time (so long as i’m on that JR pass tourist ticket!)

prefer train but with many caveats/weighting factors.
@rrix I think 500 km is about where the speed issue comes out the same. Flights are about an hour, but your door-to-door is maybe 2 hours on either side. Driving is 5 hours and change, and trains usually are the same, or close to it.
Prior to the pandemic, I'd have said train. Since we're still doing absolutely nothing to reduce the spread of Covid, meaning the pandemic is going to continue for the foreseeable future, I'm going to have to say car.
Did you ever separate this poll out for what continent the participants are from. Intrastructure for train travel varies greatly from place to place.
Taking the train from London to Amsterdam today. Getting to an airport is more hassle, but it can be cheaper.
Where I live it is a 300mi trip to the nearest passenger train station. The local airport doesn't really have short haul services unless you count irregular sub-20 passenger flights. A car is literally my only option for trips like this if my home is the start or end point.
Most of the comments are, "I want to want to take the train, but I don't."

I'm train by default. This distance is also pretty tractable by our electric car. It's not great by plane.
I would if I could trust the trains. But it's a clusterf*ck
I definitely prefer trains, but alas there are few to be found in my area and the ones you can find are incredibly slow.
@jameswynn so, you prefer imaginary trains that are plentiful and fast.
Well, we only have one train here and it only goes to two places and runs once per day, so my bar is pretty low for "plentiful". I lived in Japan for a bit and they had amazing trains.
I always want to take the train. But in the USA, the train doesn't want to take me.

Major tourism cities like Las Vegas and Nashville have no train service at all.

The way to get a ride on a train in the United States is to be a shipping container.
I almost always took the train pre-covid. Once did Boston to San Francisco in coach. It's a nice environment to work on certain things
I think about 500km as the crow flies may be the point at which I start to wobble - but in our pre-child days, we once took trains (and back then this included the train that rolled onto a ferry!) from Hamburg to Gothenburg. That was a long trip at 9 or so hours IIRC, you get kind of numb and pretty bored by then.

My sons both love trains but they're also pretty young and restless, I want to give them another couple of years before we take an epic long train journey.. 😀
Many people in the US responded that the train system there isn't good, so they wouldn't use it.

I am mixed about the results, as before.

The question doesn't ask about travelling in any particular place, nor about travelling from your home.

I may specify that in the future.
I also find the idea of what your preference would be in counterfactual universes a little hard to grasp.

A lot of the responses said things about how if the train system near them were faster, more frequent, more convenient, etc. they would prefer it.

It is a strange kind of discussion.

We could come up with counterfactuals on any mode of transportation that would eventually make it preferred.

Why would it be worthwhile to talk about preferences for imaginary transportation systems, then?
Because they are the conditions we need to create to succeed. They're the blueprint for civic action, and in a dynamic social-technical system, they're a huge influence.
I think there might be some cognitive dissonance at work.

https://w.wiki/J7Q

People are trying to resolve the two conflicting frames "cool people like trains" and "I don't take trains", and the result is expressing a preference for a non-existent ideal train system.
the confusion is 100% due to location differences. With only a few rare exceptions public transit in general among US users is abhorred. When it can take 2-3 hours to travel a distance you can do in a car in 30-40mins just because of lack of routes, rails and frequency. Its extremely hard to live a normal life in most of the US and rely on public transit.

IMO most people are really saying "if i had a functioning system I would happily use it but I dont so I dont"
i feel you're being intentionally(?) obtuse here. "if the trains in North America were as convenient and efficient as the trains in Europe, I would take the train more" is a very common and reasonable opinion
@nev Common, yes. Reasonable, no.
@nev
Then why are you requiring that we consider train travel in an abstract place, rather than originating from home?

Most trips originate from home, by definition.
@PeteForsyth I'm not requiring anything. I think starting from home is probably how most people can visualise this question.
Sorry, probably summarized that poorly. Was talking about this toot: https://prodromou.pub/@evan/10…

I missed the initial poll, but if in were to answer it, the only way that makes sense to me would be from home (since I don't travel a lot), and that means it would reflect the shitty rail of the western US.

Or else I'd be talking about a hypothetical in which I originate 300 mile travel from other places in the world frequently.
If it’s from home, then some of the choices aren’t even possible (depending on where home is). And in that case, the results are borderline useless.
@PeteForsyth
There’s probably some of this at work, but providing context, rules, or parameters along with the question might improve the responses.
This is why it's always better to ask what someone last did, than what they think they would prefer to do. What they last did is then a proxy for preference. It might be that it wasn't the norm. But it's still what they actually chose to do given the opportunity.
Certainly if there is a train that is 20 minutes from you home that goes to Paris at 200 MPH and leaves every hour you are more likely to take a train than say if the train goes 60 MPH leaves once a day and you have to transfer to a bus for part of the ride and takes you to Los Angeles.
Interestingly, I used to commute from Lyon to Paris (60-80% remote, 1-2 days per week in the office) in 2006 - that's about 460km - which was only feasible because it was a 2h train ride in the TGV. I could leave home at 6:30am, and be in the office in La Défense at 9:30; and get a 7pm train that had me home by 9:30pm.
I disagree. You can't really make cars work as well as trains, because they always going to be less efficient, since they transport fewer people per vehicle.

Given that, it makes sense that people dream of better train systems. It's a counterfactual universe that we need to progress towards, given climate change and all.

Expressing a preference for something that is non-existent *YET* is dreaming of some better future, and I think it's important to share those dreams.
I don't think it's so much counterfactual as people thinking "that time I traveled to a civilized country and took a train, it was the best 300 mile trip of my life, but I live in the USA where trains are considered socialist demon vehicles and thus impractical for such a trip"

That being said, I took the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner down the coast of CA once and it was great (although comically, unbelievably slow).
I think there is merit in discussing those. Some small barriers or temporary circumstances might be resolved quickly.

Aka preference to go to train, but tickets are too expensive (In germany there is some strange stuff happening pricewise), having a kid and that means it is an hassle, or small other things.

Discussing it as if USA would transform to a trainfirst country is imho useless tho.
I think people might be answering more along the lines of what they would prefer their cities to be designed around.
I think this is easily explained. A lot of people acknowledge deep down that train is the 'correct' answer for sustainability and the environment. The plethora of excuses is simply a justification to themselves of why they actually voted 'Car'.

As for me, well it's obvious. If jetpacks were commercially available at an affordable price with sufficient range and an exemplary safety record - Jetpacks.
@andyc if ifs and buts were candy and nuts
@Evan Prodromou Your two statements here are contradictory.

> The question doesn't ask about travelling in any particular place, nor about travelling from your home.

So then Americans can say trains.

> I also find the idea of what your preference would be in counterfactual universes a little hard to grasp.

So then Americans can't say trains.
so you want to hear what the preference is for a hypothetical trip based on current situation near respondets' homes?
Thar doesn't say anything that would be of interest when making any decisions, does it? Except maybe for PR companies or for car-industry lobbyists.

What people would pick if all the options were viable options tells us if people could change their mode if given a chance.

If Copenhagers were asked how they prefer to go to Malmö in 1990 car+ferry would >
Maybe part of the problem here is the ambiguity of the word "Preferred". The mode I would prefer to use is not the mode I would typically use in practice.
@mcc Is that right?

What does it mean to prefer something that you don't like and don't use?

Are people actually comparing all the aspects on these transportation modes, like price, schedule, door-to-door travel time, comfort, on-time rate, and then choosing a mode that *doesn't* meet their personal priorities?
@mcc
Well, what I mean

If I say "I prefer to travel by train" then I am clearly stating a preference (a desire).

But if I say "My preferred mode of travel is car", that *implies* it is the desired mode of transportation, but I could imagine interpreting that sentence to idiomatically mean "I most commonly travel by car" without stating a value preference.

I could be wrong about this, but I think there may be an actual quirk of colloquial English here.
@mcc I think it's like, absent any other factors except the name of the transportation mode, I would prefer trains, but with real-world attributes, I'll make a more nuanced decision.
@mcc
Sure sure, your intent came across clearly to me in the original question. However if you are trying to figure out why people did not interpret the question as you intended, this is my theory as to why.
here in the US it's easy for people in the suburbs to not realize how expensive their cars are because life without them is unthinkable

it's when they move to the city they see new possibilities, we have a ton of work to do here
I don't drive myself so I'm an outlier here, obviously, since I'm always a passenger (and I've been traveling internationally since I was five/since the 60s so I'm very adaptable to all kinds of things). But even if I could drive, I really like taking trains, including ones that are a bit older and janky. That said, I also enjoy flying but I'm also not someone who's constantly traveling for business (having family in Australia means that any travel budget I have goes into getting back there to see family).

Basically, as a lifelong passenger I enjoy looking out the window and trains and planes often have more interesting things to look at out the window. I will never not be excited by flying over the ocean and seeing a pod of whales. the patchwork of land below or mountains and clouds from above.
If I can go by train and it's practical I will. I'd rather never fly. I haven't left New England in 4 years.
@brion I don't know. I'm kind of down a rabbit hole here myself.

Like, if you prefer an idealized version of trains that doesn't actually represent how trains work near your home, or even anywhere, what information are we getting out of that?
I’m in Europe and regularly take the train. I’d take them more often for even longer journeys if there were more direct/express routes that didn’t require lots of transfers and long waits along the way.
I also occasionally use car-sharing, take the bus, cycle and walk for shorter excursions, and I haven’t owned a car in more than two decades.
I keep saying I’ll probably buy a car some day, but there’s a good chance I’ll never get around to it.
One option could be to ask about "the most recent time you did X", rather than "when you do X" in general. An option "never did/don't remember" is needed.
Bicycle. It is usually a nice 6 day trip.
I was too late to answer the poll, but slow trains are roughly the same price as buses & roughly take the same amount of time. Buses often have lower GHG emissions than trains (even electric trains!). So I let the price decide (which often depends on how much advance notice you give).

If price is not a factor, then fast trains are the winner.
@gerry sorry, but that's just not true. Buses are about 2-3x the emissions per person per km as trains.