Or deaths due to people driving instead of flying.
"Increased delays and added costs at U.S. airports due to new security procedures provide incentive for many short-haul passengers to drive to their destination rather than flying, and, since driving is far riskier than air travel, the extra automobile traffic generated has been estimated in one study to result in 500 or more extra road fatalities per year."https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/excess_automo...
Maybe this will get enough people to FINALLY start demanding funding for high speed rail corridors. I can't imaging getting to the airport, waiting in line for like 2 hours and then getting on a 45 min flight to Portland from Seattle.
Its crazy that the US doesn't have true high speed rail on the northeast corridor and the other high speed rail corridors identified such as between Chicago and St. Louis. Many other counties have HSR so its obviously a matter of priorities.
I know the current California HSR project is a bit of a mess but instead of abandoning HSR altogether we should find out why it's a mess and try to streamline projects like this going forward.
Hyperloop will be cool once/if its built, but for now HSR is the only game in town for fast ground transportation that moves a lot of people.
It's not really worth it to fly if your destination is < 4 hours away by car. Even the shortest flight is going to take about that long to complete if you're going through a major airport.
Example itinerary:
Flight leaves at 6:00pm, gotta be there bare minimum 1 hour early, preferably 2+, going to split the different and say 90 mins.
Leave home at 4pm, drive 35 min to airport. Wait in line 15 mins to check bag. Allocate generous 20 mins for a quick security scan (this can blow up to 60 mins+ if it's a busy day and/or your airport sucks, but 20 mins is about the fastest you can really get through including time to walk to the checkpoint and be scanned). It's now 5:10. Sit around for 20 mins until your plane starts boarding. It's now 5:30. Sit on horrifyingly uncomfortable plane for 30 mins awaiting takeoff/other passengers to board. It's now 6. Your plane takes 10 mins to taxi and 45 mins to fly from point A to point B. It's now 6:55. Plane takes 10 min to taxi in (though I've waited 45 min+ before, especially at LAX). It takes 10 min for everyone to deplane. It's now 7:15. Once off plane, go wait at bag claim. We'll say it takes 20 mins to get there, wait for your flight to be unloaded, and wait for your bag. Now it's 7:35. Now you have to get from destination airport to actual destination, and you're probably looking at another 30 mins. That's 8:05. 4 hours and 5 minutes since you left your house.
So it takes 4 hours to do a 45 minute flight, and that's assuming everything is running quickly at the airport, which is often not the case. We also didn't include any time involved in arranging rides to/from the airport and/or parking, carefully reviewing your bag to make sure you didn't accidentally pack any liquids or gels that are larger than 3oz, etc.
It's faster to drive than to fly if your destination is within 4 hours' drive, and it's generally a no-brainer to drive due to the greater comfort it provides within 8 hours' drive. Flying is really only necessary once you get past that 8 hour drive barrier, and the only reason we tolerate flying being what it is is because it can turn a 24-hour+ drive into a 3 hour flight.
It's 6-7 hours to drive home vs a 1 hour flight for me, and I _still_ sometimes prefer road travel. 7 hours of uninterrupted time is far better than the excruciating start-stop-wait-walk-wait-walk-shut_off_devices of air travel. Especially for a 1 hour flight, there's usually like a 20 minute window where I can actually use my laptop and even reading a book is a pain when you're standing in a line.
That 4 hours is based on living near a major airport or flying into one and booking far enough in the future to get the best routes. If you live near one of the endpoint cities (say Austin TX out in the burbs), and you want to fly to another endpoint city (say SantaFe NM) and your choice of airline is poor (say united in this case) and you want to fly in two weeks. The flight/transfer time itself can be just as long as driving. It takes ~11 hours to drive that route, and the shortest listed flight on United for the date search I just ran is 8 hours 57 mins, up to 13 hours and 58 mins (out of the 4 united results returned on the first page). Add in security/etc and its likely even the 9 hour will take longer than the 11 hours driving.
