Good trains in Australia? :lol2:

I was thinking fondly of Japan.
Walk to subway. Train within 7 minutes. Transfer to different line. Train within 5 minutes. Transfer at bullet-train station; buy ticket from machine (maybe $50 or $100, can reserve a seat. No searches, scanners, milling about in departure lounges. Whoosh off to Tokyo or wherever at 270kph. Arrive on time about 99% of the time. And by on time I mean to the bloody minute. And the subway is right there. Door to door there is no way a plane could beat that.

It's all relative. The trains in Australia are good compared to say.....hmmmm....am going to have to think about this...suggestions anyone? In the meantime, I'll talk about what I can be sure of.

Chile-they're ok. They do the job, but in a fairly non-spectacular way from what I remember. The Santiago Metro is pretty good though, apart from at peak-hour (being short, I dislike being squashed in small spaces with strangers as I just get a view of everyone's chest and shoulders and can't breathe).

China-trains between cities aren't that salubrious (specially in cattle class and hard sleeper), but they're cheap and they get there in more safety than a Chinese aeroplane + you get to see the scenery.

Japanese trains are definitely great though. No argument with that.

Interstate trains in Australia used to have peculiar problems.

We started as six independent colonies which all built their own railways. Each made their own decisions about, for example, the guage (how far apart the two rails are). As a result, when the country federated in 1901, no state had rail lines that matched the guage of any state it shared a border with. :smack:

And it was up to the state governments to fix the problem, and no-one wanted to be the one to spend the money on changing. It took until 1992 (!!) for the federal government to force through a standardisation.
In the meantime, we used to take a train to the border and then change trains. And then we invented a machine that could remove the wheel bogeys from a railcar and replace them with different guage wheel bogeys - while the train was still moving. I went over such a machine in 1988.
Smegging bureaucracy.

Buses between NYC and Washington DC are very popular. I don't have any ridership statistics to give you, but at any time, I can walk out the front door of my office building and see a bus being loaded to go to NYC in the parking lot across the street . It's around $20-30 for the ticket, and the buses look really nice. They all offer wifi. Many of them are double decker. The sides of the buses advertise fares of only $1, but when I've gone to the website, I have never been able to find that rate.

This is amazing to me, because my experiences with buses a couple decades ago was that they suck very badly.

Around here, riding the Amtrak seems like something you'd do more for fun, than as a way to get from Point A to Point B. There just aren't that many routes that will get you where you want to go. A shame, I would love to ride the Amtrak.

Cincinatti to Ann Arbor $111 each way. takes 16 hours :eek:

(It's a 3-hour $30 gas cost drive, folks)

Ok I have another airfare ticket challenge...Santa Fe to New Orleans Dec. 21 coming back roundtrip, 4-5 days after....

Under $400.00.

did you try priceline?

are you willing to fly late on Dec 25?

Nope....

I'll try priceline....I am willing to expand dates too..

So far just travelocity, but the stay would be 2 weeks long @ 349.00....

yeah, you really have to stay over a saturday to get most cheap rates.

So, we need to get to the UK sometime in the next year or two. But we need not to pay $1200/ticket. Are there any sites/services that will watch the prices for you and alert you when a deal comes up?

I've had the best luck with southwest. Taking in to account that they fly where I am going, of course.

Holy crap. Just swim it.

I just found 750 in Feb if we go to Manchester. Much better, but still a shitload when there's 5 of us...

yeah, I should have the kids swim and we can cheer from the plane. I knew they weren't getting those ribbons for nothin'..... :lol: