What are /r/highspeedrail's favorite Products & Services?

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btw, looking at that Spanish network...some of these times are ridiculous.

They have a 516 mile track and it takes five hours 24 minutes??? How is that high speed??

https://www.thetrainline.com/trains/spain/map

Really you're going to sit on a train for five hours when a plane could get you there in one hour? That makes no sense.

Again maybe in Spain they're willing to do that...but here in North America and in Australia too, that would be unacceptable in light of the fact that jet aircraft get you there so much faster. The private sector went to aircraft because they're so much faster and it's a lot easier to add routes. Look at all the new destinations Southwest Airlines has added recently. Try and do this with HSR. You can't.

https://www.southwest.com/destinations/route-expansion

We have long distance trains in the USA. There's one that goes from Seattle to Los Angeles, and I rode it from Seattle to San Jose as my ride home from the Navy, in a nice little stateroom on the train. It took 24 hours. Very few people were riding that thing for that long of a distance. Americans might get on it in Seattle and get off in Portland. Anybody who rides the whole length is someone with a LOT of vacation time to spare. Like myself, I had an infinite amount of time since I was getting out of the Navy.

So we have trains like that but they're for foreign tourists mainly, or people who are making the scenic route part of their vacation. They're not trying to replace aviation.

I copied that phrasing from some page on the internet and interpret it as miles or time because there's real world trains that are on high speed capable track for only part of their trips. But they're broadly thought of as high speed rail. For example Paris to Rome is about 700 miles if you can fly directly. But you get websites like this one saying

>High-Speed trains from Paris to Rome

>The average train time from Paris to Rome is 13h 55m, although it takes just 10h 31m on the fastest TGV INOUI and Frecciarossa services.

So TGV and Frecciarossa both market themselves as high speed, but the trip between those cities sure ain't.

Or maybe the site whose definition I copied meant 500 and 750 miles as the crow flies between cities whereas my map uses distances based on freeways which are not straight lines.

China and Japan might be the only places in the world where high speed trains could actually do 775-1100 miles in 5 hours or less.

Even within the same country, Hamburg to Munich, Germany are less than 400 miles apart as the crow flies, but the quickest high speed train trip still takes five and a half hours.

All well and good if you're planning one month in advance. If you're a frequent commuter you're buying your tickets to travel soonish like in the case of a business traveler: https://www.kayak.com/flights/SPK-TYO/2019-08-19?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app

But yes, I stand corrected that you can get much cheaper prices if you're a tourist and book in advance.

I don't know where Rome2Rio gets it numbers from. But Amtrak says for March 23, it is $167 and 25 hours.. While Kayak says $304 for a 15 hour flight.. So the guy in the video isn't making numbers up.

Also I modified my trip on Kayak so I can fly this month. There are no flights until the 25th. And the prices are $200-400. Amtrak I can leave the 22nd and the price is still $167.

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