Re: VFT letter

[G.Lambert@unsw.edu.au (Geoff Lambert)]

markbau1@aol.com (MarkBau1) wrote:


>TGV works because it is faster than air. Even if you ran a VFT from Syd. to
>Melb. in 3 hours its probably going to be quicker to drive to the airport, fly,
>get off the other end and get to the city. Canberra does not have enough people
>to anchor one end of a VFT type route unless you picked up along the way,
>(defeating the purpose of high speed) Melb and Syd would work but as I just
>said, it would still be quicker to catch a plane.

Question (possibly already answered?)

For Intercity trips of the type mentioned (Melbourne-Sydney or
Canberra-Sydney), what proportion of journeys would commence and end
in the relevant CBD and what proportion would commence eleswhere?  Or,
to rephrase it, does rail really nearly have a time advantage over air
on intercity trips because it doesn't involve a long time-consuming
trip to the terminal before and after the core journey?  In my case,
all my long-distance trips by either mode have involved travel from
home or work (suburban) to the station or airport, except when I lived
in Manhattan, where the train was definitely conveniently closer to
home than was the plane..

Are there survey figures to show this sort of thing for Australia?
For other countries with fast trains?

And, at the risk of bloating this message, here is something from
misc.transport.urban-transit

Even When It's Quicker to Travel by Train, Many Fly 
by Susan Carey 
The Wall Street Journal  Friday, August 29, 1997

Short Hops, Long Hauls

Factoring in airport check-in times and transportation to outlying
airports, traveling from downtown to downtown is cheaper--and often
faster--by train than by plane over these short routes.

* San Diego - Los Angeles
Amtrak: 2 1/2 hours each way; $26 round trip
United Airlines: 2 1/2 hours; $110 to $204

* Chicago-Milwaukee
Amtrak: 1 1/2 hours each way; $38 round trip
United Express: 2 1/2 hours; $68 to $372

* New York-Albany
Amtrak: 2 1/2 hours each way; $65 round trip
US Airways Express: 3 1/2 hours; $88 to $428

* Charlotte-Raleigh
Amtrak: 3 3/4 hours each way; $38 round trip
US Airways: 2 3/4 hours; $158 to $372

A one-way flight from Milwaukee to Chicago costs between $34 and $186
and can take as long as three hours, including check-in time and
transportation to and from the airports.  The Amtrak train takes half
that time and costs only $19.

So why did Kali Klena fly from Milwaukee to Chicago one recent Friday?
The Kellogg Co. marketing manager, whose job requires a lot of travel
between a lot of close-together cities, says, "Little planes are
pretty much my life."  She says she never takes the train because,
well, she never thinks of taking the train.

Air travel is based on the premise that travelers will pay more to get
to their destinations faster.  But plane travelers on short hops --
New York City to Albany, for example, or Los Angeles to San Diego --
often pay tremendously more to arrive later and to encounter more
hassles along the way, as compared with riding the train, or even
driving.  And why do they do that?  "It's a force of habit," explains
Nikie Tanagiotakis, a manager at Rex Travel in New York.

Among other reasons.  With Amtrak until recently having done little to
attract the nation's short-haul business travelers, many fliers are
unaware of the benefits of ground transportation.  Others don't care
whether trains cost less and arrive sooner; all they want is
frequent-flier miles, says Montie Brewer, a vice president of UAL
Corp.'s United Airlines.  Most carriers give a minimum of 500 miles no
matter how short the flight.  "It's a quick hit," Mr. Brewer says.

Sometimes it isn't so quick.  Airlines now demand that passengers
arrive at least 60 -- and sometimes as many as 90 -- minutes before
boarding.  By the time a Chicagoan starting out downtown actually
steps onto the plane at that city's O'Hare Airport, the Amtrak train
he could have caught a couple of blocks from his office is pulling
into downtown Milwaukee.

This isn't a fact that airlines are eager to point out.  At O'Hare,
even a United Airlines check-in agent, Mary Andreotta, wonders why
people take the Chicago-Milwaukee flight.  Yes, the actual flight is
only 18 minutes; but it "can't be easier [to fly short distances]
because of the traffic" on the way to the airport, she says, adding:
"And God knows the weather is insane.  Nothing flies when it's bad."
Indeed, a two-hour rain delay can give trains and cars the edge on
even longer flights--Chicago to St. Louis, for example.

Of course, most of the passengers on these short-haul flights are
connecting at airline hubs onto other flights.  But even for these
fliers, staying on the ground can make sense.  Jerry Stretch, a sales
manager from Santa Ana, Calif., says it costs him half as much fly to
Milwaukee from Los Angeles, with a change of planes at O'Hare, than to
fly only to Chicago.  But he says he sometimes gets off in Chicago and
drives to Milwaukee even though he is booked to fly on. It's quicker,
he says.

The situation presents Amtrak with a marketer's dream: the chance to
sell a superior service at a much lower price.  For years, Amtrak has
aggressively marketed its popular metroliner service linking Boston,
New York and Washington and made it a well-known alternative for
business travelers to the more expensive air shuttles.  But most of
its marketing efforts have targeted leisure travelers going long
distances.  Now, sensing new opportunities, Amtrak has  begun focusing
on business people traveling on short routes such as Charlotte-
Raleigh and Tampa-Miami.  It is adding greater frequency and
advertising more aggressively, and its results are starting to pay
off.

After adding an eighth daily round trip in the San Diego-Los Angeles
corridor and launching ads trumpting the trains' price, routing and
travel time on  billboards and drive-time radio, Amtrak says ridership
was up more than 8% last year and 5% so far this year.

In the Northwest, a recent two-for-one ticket promotion aimed at
business travelers taking the train between Seattle and Portland
helped boost ridership 10% so far this year, Amtrak says.  The
110-mile-per-hour Turboliner train on the new York-Albany run
regularly sells out, Amtrak says, and 40% of the  passengers are
traveling for business.

But it's still uphill for Amtrak, not least because it faces a
possible strike in October and Congress may not pass a bill that would
secure its survival by providing much-needed capital funding.

Even if the trains continue to roll, there is a more intractable
problem: Many travelers no more think of trains than of horses.  Bob
Webster, a printing- company employee in Richmond, Va., often drives
to Washington to catch direct flights to another city.  Although
Amtrak offers a two-hour train that costs only $20, Mr. Webster hadn't
been aware of it -- and doesn't seem interested when told about it.
"I've never been on a train," he says.

Some of the shortest flights end up being nonsensical, even for
connecting passengers.  Thom Nulty, present of Associated Travel
Management, a Santa Ana, Calif. travel company, says he once had the
misfortune of flying from Los  Angeles to Orange County, 25 miles as
the crow flies.  After the one-hour  layover, his commuter flight was
delayed.  He would have arrived much sooner renting a car and driving.

"Local people figured out right away that it's a hassle to fly to
Orange County," he says.  Indeed, AMR Corp.'s American Airlines,
citing low demand, this month said it would discontinue its four daily
commuter flights between there and Los Angeles at the end of
September.

Rolfe Schellenberger, a travel consultant in Palm Desert, Calif., is a
firm believer in the multimodal approach.  Last year, he says, his
$900 flight to Philadelphia from Nashville, tenn., got caught in an
air-traffic delay and had to land in Baltimore to take on fuel before
completing the journey.  That got him shopping for alternatives.  The
next time he took that trip, he flew to  Baltimore and took Amtrak to
Philadelphia.  The trip cost $400 and took only 30  minutes longer in
total elapsed time than if he had flown to Philadelphia, he says.

Lisa Fox, a United flight attending working a recent Chicago-Milwaukee
flight, has another theory about why these short flights are so full.
"Maybe people do it because they're lazy," she whispers.