transcription: two girls on opposite sides of the country: "hey girl, come on over" "omg id love to"

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[–] 57 points 4 months ago* (6 children)

$80 for the overnight nationalized bullet train

Oh wait, yea

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago* (4 children)

    yeah airplanes are typically faster above a range of 300 miles or sth

    the problem with long-distance trains isn't ideology, it's just an issue of physics/engineering. Airplanes typically travel around 800 km/h (~ 600 mph), which means you can make the 3000 km (2000 miles) distance from seattle to new york in roughly 4 hours.

    good luck trying to achieve these speeds with a train.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah but you can get a pleasant experience overnight in a cubbyhole bed on a train. Functionally speaking, the time spent traveling while getting good sleep doesn't really count, does it? You were gonna have to sleep anyway. Good luck doing that on a plane. Plus then trains can be built to go right into the heart of downtown, meaning a much shorter "last mile," which planes can't really do. Then you got the airport vs train station experience, the café car on the train, the larger seats, etc etc etc

    Ain't everything about the advertised speed.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago*

    I used to work remote in Brooklyn and occasionally have to report to the office in Baltimore. HR would always offer plane tickets and I would decline in favor of having them pay for cheaper business-class Acela tickets. It was better in every possible way: I could walk to and from the stations at both ends, didn't have the TSA porno-scanner hassle, had more personal space in transit, and ironically when the entire door to door trip was considered the train was actually 40 minutes faster. Regional trips are that sweet spot where even a slower train beats flying.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago

    My math was Portland to NYC = 2500 miles / 200 mph = 12.5 hours, thus the overnight. The $80 came from a certain other country's nationalized high speed rail price tiering. I don't care that planes are faster, they're a miserable experience and an ecological travesty, rock me to sleep on the coast to coast redeye.

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  • [–] 20 points 4 months ago* (2 children)

    Plot twist, their both in Salem.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago*

    Oregon doesn't really do original place names. Best they can do is a mispelling or mispronouciation of another place's name.

    This is to make up for the fact that the name "Oregon" is so original that nobody is certain of it's origin.

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  • [–] 14 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Even across countries 🥲

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  • [–] 13 points 4 months ago

    I too, wish there were cross-country high speed trains.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago

    At least y'all are in the same hemisphere, I'm next to Antarctica

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago
    [–] 4 points 4 months ago

    Me in Europe and my gfs in Brazil and the US :(

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Just hop on the transcontinental high-speed train and...

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago

    This is me with nearly every trans friend I have (am trans)

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    You might want to add they are in the US in the description.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    At least they are in the same country, some couples aren't even in the same continent.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    Meet up in Minnesota!!! It's in the middle

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    both trapped ;(

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    yeah centralization would mitigate these issues, i.e. there should be a central location where we all meet up. the difficulty is figuring out where to place this center.

    in fact, if you look at population maps, you can easily see that most people are concentrated on the east or west coast. this is largely already because it reduces average travel times between one person and the next. (it also helps the economy, shorter transport -> cheaper transport).

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