Do you travel by bus, metro, taxi or own private vehicle?

@AngelUnforgiven The same for me.

@catastrophecarnival very expensive?

@Jonjdw it's fine ...just prefer other modes

@catastrophecarnival some people don’t like to drive. I don’t like to drive either, but I would not want to rely on public transit. I’ve never used public transit.

@WillaKissing That problem is becoming common in suburban areas too. I live near a medium-sized town, including all its surrounding villages and spreading housing-estates, and although my part of it is well served by buses others have only very thin services. There are plenty of bus-stop signs still in place, marking routes no longer used, even among big housing-estates.

Once out in the countryside there are few or no bus routes.

On the other hand I can reach any part of the country served by rail, easily from my area; and my local railway station is only a short bus trip away.

@ArishMell You have to be in the UK or Europe, because the rail access is not like that in the United States, only in our major cities.

I drove a newly married Amish couple (Friends of mine) that invited me to their wedding from Southern, Ohio where we all live to Cleveland, Ohio. It took a little over four hours to do one way just to drop them off at an Amtrak Station so they could take the Amtrak train to Floridia for their honeymoon. The trip on the Amtrak train from Cleveland, Ohio to middle Florida took 40 hours on the train, and 50 hours on the return trip where I picked them up in Cleveland two weeks later.

Train travel is sparse and only convenient in larges cites with subways.

@WillaKissing I am actually, yes! The UK in fact.

Though I do recognise that inter-city distances are far greater in the USA so journeys taking two days are perhaps not surprising. Is that by low train speeds and many stops over a huge distance, or by having to change trains in mid-trip with many hours between trains?

The railways in Britain struggled to recover from World War Two while also facing growing competition for both passenger and freight trade, from road transport. The fast passenger trains were quicker than any bus or car, especially before the motorways were built, and where they weren't, but the old forms of goods transport by rail were undeniably inefficient and slow.

In recent decades both sides of the industry have started to reverse, and many stations even more than a hundred miles from Lonodn and other city centres are used by commuters who drive from home to station then complete their journeys train. Another is engineering development, especially speed. I think for example the fastest services between Edinburgh and London now take only about four hours for the four hundred miles, with only two or three intermediate stops.

In some ways it has become a victim of its own success, in that parts of the network are now at full operating capacity with many of those trains crowded to standing-room only, at peak times.

The goods the railways now carry are bulk commodities and in shipping-containers, with strategically-placed rail-road interchange depots dotted around the country. Most people don't realise there is so much because a lot of this traffic, although fast, is nocturnal, so as not to impede the faster passenger services.


I don't know what it's like in other European countries; it probably varies considerably.

However, France has recently banned internal flights where the journey can be by train. Especially their "TGV" services.

Many people forget when they say things like "It only takes an hour by 'plane!", though that is true for a relatively short flight of about 400miles, it is runway-to-runway time and the overall journey between airport doors may take much longer.

That is roughly the road distance from my home to my brother's but despite most of that being on a motorway (normal speed limit 70mph) and him driving with minimum stops, the journey still takes around 8-9 hours.