I've taken Amtrak. It's honestly not bad service wise. It is slow, has the lowest priority on a lot of track, has almost no backup options if something goes wrong on the train, and has some very old equipment in service.
If it were just twice as fast, was given priority or had it's own tracks, and had enough trains that a following one could pick you up in a disaster, and without random bedrooms that just smell like the 1970s, I would take it almost exclusively.
Otherwise.. sadly.. Amtrak is for when I don't actually care if I arrive at my destination or not. If I'm lucky I get where I'm going and most of the time I get a steak on the way.
You usually need to factor the whole trip as most trains start and stop in city centers while airports are sometimes very remote from the cities.
YMMV but where I live, I need to either pay for the parking at the airport, have someone shuttle me or take a taxi/regional train/bus to the airport.
For domestic use in my country, plane is competitive on paper, meaning some flights are much cheaper than train tickets. However the cheapest flights are the early and late flights which means regional train/bus to go to the airport are not an option. Usually you don't want to annoy friend/family very late in the morning/night because...well that's kind of rude. So you have to either use your own car and pay more for the parking than the actual plane ticket, or take a taxi that will also cost more than the plane ticket. Congratulations! The cost of your trip has already doubled or tripled from the advertised price! Now if you haven't thought of making your own sandwich add the aditionnal cost of buying food + drink at the airport and you will be adding again more than the original price of the one-way plane ticket! And that is without even mentionning the shady tactics of some cheap companies. Take a ryanair flight for instance, and once in a while they will ask you to check your luggage in one of their bagage check gauge and charge you whenever you have a bag that cannot stand upright on its own even if it fits the gauge and will force you to pay an aditionnal 70€ fee.
As for the time, it is also something where you have to consider the sum of all. My rule of thumb is regardless where I am flying, I know I will lose pretty much half a day. When doing sub 3h flights you are usually spending as much or more time commuting in/out of the airport and in the airport than flying.
On the other hand the train station will allow you to take your own drinks, and even if you didn't have time to make yourself a good sandwich, and don't want to pay for the more expensive options at railway station you will always find some cheap takeaways or supermarket close to it. The railyway station is usually in a city center as well which may be more convenient in many situations and you can reach the railway station 5 minutes from the departure time and you will still be fine.
Once you have factored all that, the train can often end up being the cheaper option, as well as the fastest one if this is an high speed train and you don't have to change train.
> as most trains start and stop in city centers while airports are sometimes very remote from the cities.
You write that as a negative, but for me that's just an even bigger bonus. The only thing I want from a city center is how to get out of the city center. I never actually want to go there.
I have not personally noticed much difference in commute costs plane vs train. Car trips, taxis, and public transport, have all been around the same time and cost to both. And the plane tickets I've looked at have been at all kinds of hours, early, middle of the day, and late. Exactly the same with the train, there's no specific pattern. (Obviously this is very specific to the location.)
You have a point with the food, it's easier to bring on a train - luggage as well, but then again the plane is so much faster you don't need to bring as much food.
And I do factor in wait time for an airport, very short trips are faster and cheaper in your car, longer trips are better in a plane. The train just doesn't really fit in anywhere - it's the same speed, or slower, than a car, and less convenient. (Even if the train is physically faster, getting to/from the station adds so much time the car works out faster.)
I book a lot of Spirit flights, and not only are they cheaper than a train, they are even cheaper than a bus! Every one in a while I go back and check all 3 options, and the plane and (occasionally) car win every time.
If you want people to take more train trips they need to cost 1/10 of what they currently do, or at least be 5 times faster. Without that, well, people just aren't going to use them.
More and more airlines are selling plane+train (or plane+bus) itineraries and giving the train system its own 2 letter value + “flight” number. Might happen.
That's because you're searching search.gov, not all government websites. Besides this being what it "obviously" is doing, the error message also states this plainly:
>Are you looking for information from across government? Please search again on USA.gov. Click the "Search again on USA.gov" link above the search button here, or use the link below to go to the main USA.gov website. Search.gov is a service powering the search boxes on government agencies' websites. You are currently searching the Search.gov website, and this website only contains information about our service.
This search box only searches search.gov, so it's not surprising if there are no results for topics that are not about search engines. For "Israel" you can click the "Search again on USA.gov" tab.
Thanks for the heads up. There is an email address to send applications to in the posting, and I am getting the applications opened up again. Thanks again!
