Google Flights Now Uses Amtrak Data To Show 'Trains To Consider' Alongside Flights

Google Flights is offering train routes as an alternative to airlines, thanks to a new partnership with Amtrak. 9to5Google reports: In the US, this option surfaces routes and pricing directly provided by Amtrak, as the rail service announced recently: "Amtrak and Google have joined forces to help travelers choose more sustainable transportation options when searching for intercity travel. Thanks to a newly launched, direct data integration, travelers using Google can now view the most up-to-date Amtrak departure times, trip durations and fares directly on the Google Search results page. Amtrak's new integration with Google also means that once customers select a train, they can click through to Amtrak.com to complete the booking for their chosen itinerary without needing to re-enter their trip details."

Amtrak says that choosing a train route over a flight can cut a customer's carbon footprint by up to 72%. Of course, train routes in the US often take considerably longer than flights, but this new option should make it far easier to make the comparison.

Good idea!

[ls671]

I love trains since I am kid, find them cool and enjoy riding them. As stated, carbon footprint is much less, even very much less if train is powered only with electricity. Take into account the time wasted because of the airport when checking travel time and pick the train when you can.

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[bleedingobvious]

carbon footprint is much less, even very much less if train is powered only with electricity.

I'm sorry.. .whut?!

Unless you're damned sure the bulk of the power is sourced from nuclear or renewable this statement is false. Coal conversion is abysmal and nowhere near the energy density or conversion rate of modern fuels.

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[kop]

>Coal conversion is abysmal and nowhere near the energy density or conversion rate of modern fuels.

This might be true, but an airplane just uses way more energy per passenger than a train for the same trip, so even if coal or diesel is burned the CO2 footprint of train travel is much smaller than that of flight
The difference is staggering, this data is from the UK so it may differ from the states a bit.
https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint

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[bleedingobvious]

this data is from the UK so it may differ from the states a bit./quote>

UK/EU claim natural gas as being "green" so buyer beware...

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[LazarusQLong]

To be clear, trains use a shit ton less fuel than aircraft, that speed costs a lot, among other things. That said, the last time I used AMTRAK, it was delayed for 6 hours (4 on one part of the route, 2 on another) so the 11 hour trip from DC to Boston, well, that was 17 hours. I see old movies and such and they make train travel seem 'elegant' and all, but my experience (4 trips during my lifetime) has made it seem .... unpleasant and not reasonable for the cost, and that is said as I, a disabled vet, get a

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[Malc]

One of the things that makes electric trains (overhead or third rail) more efficient is that they're lighter. They don't have to carry their fuel, and they don't have a heavy engine to convert that in to traction. Think of a diesel-electric train and eliminating the diesel part of it.

An electric train today powered by dirty electricity always has the ability to be cleaner in the future without any changes to the train or the rail infrastructure simply by the virtual of changing electricity provider as cle

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[nonicknameavailable]

Where i live trains are expensive and unreliable (you can get stuck on a train in the middle of nowhere for 10 hours)

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[Anonymous Coward]

Where I live in northern Virginia, trains are expensive, time-consuming and inaccessible. For any given destination, a plane ticket is usually cheaper and gets me there faster, and I don't have to worry about parking or otherwise getting to the station/airport.

I can drive 15 minutes to Dulles and park extended term for $13/day, or take an Uber to the Metro station and take a short ride to the airport. If I go to Union Station, I can drive 45+ minutes there and park for $25/day, or take an Uber to the same

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[LazarusQLong]

soooo, you live on the East Coast of the US? I have been stuck for 6 hours myself.

kiwi.com has had this for years

[SpzToid]

Given a route, kiwi.com will suggest not only trains but various bus companies in addition to airlines.

Kiwi is extremely configurable with its plethora of search options. For example if you can input a handful of cities you'd like to visit in no particular order and it'll give you a plan with prices. Kiwi.com is pretty cool.

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[phantomfive]

The last time I took a Greyhound, it was an interesting situation, in the last few minutes of the trip the bus driver kept repeating, "Everybody settle down. You can call the police when we get to the station." Believe me, it was entertaining, and I survived.

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[SpzToid]

The last time I took a Greyhound, it was an interesting situation, in the last few minutes of the trip the bus driver kept repeating, "Everybody settle down. You can call the police when we get to the station." Believe me, it was entertaining, and I survived.

The last time I rode greyhound was from Arizona to California. I had the great fortune to sit next to an older, retired African American who I assume knew some shit about life. He was great company while we both admired the landscape and the setting sun. That was a fantastic trip thanks to him and the landscape and the whole circumstance of things.

The best part was what he said to me, which I struggle to recall with accuracy. Something to the effect of, 'one day when you get older, you also won't mind takin

Re: kiwi.com has had this for years

[phantomfive]

Indeed. You should not think I was complaining. It was an extremely memorable trip, and along the way I found one of the nicest service station bathrooms in the country. My brother was afraid to park at the station when he picked me up.

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[LazarusQLong]

the last time I took Greyhound, there was this 'interesting' character that had a fascination with lady's feet and skulls. I (a male) was travelling with a bunch of females and dozing when I was awoken by a scream, one of the ladies I was with had been dozing also and was awakened by him licking her toes (he had taken off her shoes while she slept)... I went to her seat sat down next to her and told him to leave her alone, at which point he said something like, 'but she has such a beautiful skull, I would l

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[pz]

On this glowing recommendation, I just tried an example search with Kiwi. At first blush there may be some advantages to Google Flights, but there are some serious disadvantages. The biggest is speed. For me, that's a serious problem.

The second biggest is lack of transparency. I want to know what the connecting cities are in an itinerary, and you can't see those at a glance -- you have to hover over each connection to see where it is. In a similar vein, but arguably more serious, for code-share flights

Wait...

[Sique]

You are telling me that Google Flights is now on a technology level the likes of http://bahn.hafas.de/ [hafas.de] and similar sites were 25 years ago? (Site does no longer exist, it since long is integrated into https://bahn.de/ [bahn.de] and similar sites).

When in 1998, I was in the U.S. for the first time, and travelled to Silicon Valley, I wanted to check if I can do a trip to Old Faithful in Napa Valley. And then I tried to get a public transport schedule from WWW, as I was used to at home. But there was none. All there was were some disperse time tables and the occasional public transport map, and you had to do it all like in the times when schedules were printed out on paper. And I was wondering what all the big brains of the Silicon Valley were up to instead.

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[Luckyo]

Many European nations have fairly integrated infrastructure. US does not. It's a function of size. US is much more sparsely populated, so logistics companies are much more naturally separated compared to much more population dense nations.

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[Sique]

You don't need that level of integration. HAFAS, the company creating it more than 25 years ago, did the work. They asked all the public transport companies for their schedules, put them in a large database, published an API for the companies to do updates of their own schedules, and then created a path finding algorithm along all those different schedules.

25 years ago, you could go to HAFAS' website, enter two points of interest somewhere in the vicinity of at least one of the public transport providers,

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[Sique]

PS: HAFAS was not the company [hacon.de], but the system they created at the end of the 1980ies(!). At first, it was designed for Deutsche Bundesbahn, but with time, it integrated more and more companies. It was available on disk and on CD-ROM, to use it offline, and only update the database from time to time. In the mid-1990ies, it also went to WWW. HaCon is now a subsidary of Siemens AG, and they sell their apparently highly customizeable system to many public transport providers throughout Europe, and have the sche

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[Luckyo]

Your entire post is fundamentally extolling the greatness of integrated infrastructure. That was my point:

>Many European nations have fairly integrated infrastructure.

We appear to be in agreement that integration of this level is possible in well integrated nations fairly easily.

The point is that it's much harder in nations far less integrated like US.

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[Sique]

No. My point is that you don't need any integration to start with. You just need the geographical location of the stations and the schedules. The integration happens when someone actually creates the database where all those locations and schedules are consolidated. My point is that you have it backwards. Integration happens, because someone is actually doing the work and integrate stuff. In this case, it was HaCon in creating HAFAS, but the U.S. was not able to bring up a similar entity which just starts i

From an American perspective...

[Pollux]

American trains suck. Until we fix our train infrastructure so that they don't suck, Americans won't ride trains.

When I was in college, I took a study-abroad trip to Europe. European trains are awesome for three reasons: 1) There's no waiting for the train; 2) The train ride is fantastic; and 3) The train is fast and efficient.

When I got back from college, I took a train ride to Chicago on Amtrak. Cost was cheap, but the ride wasn't worth the expense. American trains absolutely suck for three reasons: 1) Schedules are terrible; 2) The train is a dump, and 3) The train is slow and stops for every damn reason.

To expand on these issues...

1) In Europe, as long as I got on that train before the doors closed, I was good. For one trip in Italy, I was on it about five minutes before departure time, just walked right into the station, bought my ticket, got onto the platform, and hopped on the train. But in America, I had to be up at 3:30am in the morning to be ready at 4:00am to get to the station at 5:00am to catch a 5:30am train.

2) Europe's trains were clean, spacious, and had large windows for beautiful views of the landscapes. The air was clean. There were tables for groups of four to sit at and play cards or talk shop together. Chairs reclined for those that wanted to rest. Meanwhile, Amtrak felt like I was in an airplane on wheels; the seats were tightly packed, aisles were narrow, and the interior was metallic.

3) In Europe, trains get priority status on the track, and our train only stopped once in Florence as it ran from Ravenna to Rome. But the ride to Chicago took about 12 hours, and included nine stops at stations, slowdowns in every town we went through, and one 30+ minute stop because a freighter train the length of the state of Nebraska had priority over us.

Until America makes these improvements, there's no good reason to take the train.

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[qbast]

"But in America, I had to be up at 3:30am in the morning to be ready at 4:00am to get to the station at 5:00am to catch a 5:30am train"

Why? Do you get some kind of security screening like at airports?

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[wyHunter]

Agreed. There's also the cost; at almost no point is a long distance train journey cheaper than driving or flying. I also like rail travel - but I look at the schedule and it says a trip between X and Y costs ~ $1K and an airline ticket is $400. Then there's the time; if a journey takes ~20 hours from, say, Denver to Chicago and can be driven in 14..yeah. Yes, you don't have to do the work when you're riding, but that's only a single leg journey. Dagny Taggart would be apalled.

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[TuballoyThunder]

I too have taken trains many times and it rarely is on time--often the delays are hours. I would say the upper limit where train travel in the US is reliable is about 250 miles, though Brightline may be greater than that because they own a portion of the track they run on.

Just checked on a train trip from Ga.

[bsdetector101]

It would take 29 hours for $721 one way.......No Thanks. !!! I know it's cheaper IF you live in a big city up north, But...

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[wyHunter]

Yeah i think only if you're centered around NYC or Chicago does it make sense.

Why Amtrak is slow

[ArchieBunker]

People have claimed freight trains have track priority over passengers in the USA but that isn't true. The government actually did give passenger trains priority over freight. However, and this is a massive however. Freight trains are much longer than the antique side line tracks. So Amtrak should not have to wait but they do anyhow because the freight train is much longer than the side track. https://www.amtrak.com/content... [amtrak.com]

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[necro81]

Furthermore, even if Amtrak ought to have priority by statute, but rail operators frequently violate that to prioritize freight, because it pays better. Until recently, there was little pushback. In July the DoJ finally took notice [justice.gov]. News: [1] [marketplace.org], [2] [washingtonpost.com].

The proverbial litmus test

[Petersko]

Now we get to see what people in the region who profess to be concerned about their carbon footprint will really do to change it.

- It's a significant reduction. It's meaningful.
- It's truly inconvenient. Verging on painful.

I'm willing to bet that the vast majority will choose convenience. Some may try to rationalize it by playing games with the numbers, but it will basically come down to, "I don't wanna."

There's no easy answer to the problem of personal emissions in a free society, and that's why it'll neve

Train is way too expensive in Europe

[jmke]

for this to work in EU; Brussels -> Berlin Train 8 hrs €220 Flight 1hr €25 https://int.bahn.de/en/buchung... [int.bahn.de] https://www.ryanair.com/gb/en/... [ryanair.com]

Maybe this can help start a discussion?

[damn_registrars]

And I mean on a national level here. We have the space, we have the technology, and we have reason to expect the demand. We just have to put it all together and commit to building out high speed rail. The fastest trains we have in this country barely go faster than freeway speed, and they serve only the east coast corridor. If we started building out high speed rail connecting more distant major cities we could see real benefit.

The question we should ask is who is benefiting from this discussion not