MikeJ
1671
The nickel and diming thing was what customers asked for when they always always chose the cheapest ticket.
Yup. People will spend hours trying to find the absolute cheapest fare online. Multiply by millions of customers over years, and it takes its toll.
On the other hand, the bulk of the decline in airfare prices happened between 1980 and 1994, when there was no such thing as searching online for the cheapest prices. Average round-trip airfares fell by about a third, from $600 to $400, during that period. They were relatively stable from 1994 to 2000, and from then they’ve fallen by about 20%.
It was deregulation, not the internet. Deregulation ushered in an opaque pricing model and a race to the bottom, wherein airlines effectively competed to be bus services and created arcane algorithms for dynamically managing dozens of different prices for the same seat on the same flight.
Air travel went from something most Americans had never done to something most Americans do at least once per year. Cheap air travel killed any potential for short- and medium-distance passenger rail service. One only has to look at the pricing of flights across Europe, where a flight between two cities is usually cheaper than taking the train between those cities, to get that this is the point: airlines are trying to cannibalize more efficient transportation means.
It’s true that people like cheap air travel. It’s not at all clear that letting private enterprise provide it is the right answer.
Ex-SWoo
1674
What are you trying to optimize for? Based on demand, it looks like cheap air travel is what the people want.
Not destroying the world?
Based on demand, they want unlimited vodka and heroin and — occasionally — to kill their neighbors. Maybe demand doesn’t trump everything?
Ex-SWoo
1676
So life was better than no one can afford to travel outside of their country or go back to visit family? Seems like a pretty arbitrary line.
An individual life, no, but the planet, probably? It’s an interesting notion to explore, at the least, especially since we’re about to hit an unavoidable calamity-driven reset button on the broad availability of air travel.
Do you have a book full of strawmen like that one, or do you have to make them up as you go along? Seems like a lot of work, that.
Ex-SWoo
1679
You’re the one arguing that lower travel cost is a net bad, not me. I think the burden of proof is on you.
You’re the one ignoring the manner in which I think it might be a net bad in favor of inane formulations like life was better. So, a strawman.
Ex-SWoo
1681
The only argument you made was a vague framing around “efficiency”. What are you trying trying to make efficient? What is the metric?
If you’re throwing strawmen around, wouldn’t “not destroying the world” qualify as well?
If you don’t know the basic fact that rail travel is more efficient than air travel, I can’t be bothered to explain it to you. Really. Just pretend I said what you claimed I said, that the real argument is that life was better before. I’ll shut up now.
spiffy
1683
Is it more efficient, or simply more environmentally friendly, by rail, in a large country with so much open space like the US or Canada? I can imagine the rail links and switches and time required for a customer to navigate between two smaller towns on the other side of the country by rail could take days. I’m all for it, if it cuts emissions, but it would change how frequently people will travel… again, a net positive in my book, but an economical loss, possibly, unless that’s made up by tons of new rail lines needing to be built.
I’ve done it a few times from the northeast to midwest and separately from the Midwest to pacific coast. It absolutely does take days, so you’ve got to adjust your expectations accordingly, bring plenty of reading, get up for frequent walks & etc.
But OTOH it could certainly be faster if the track & trains were in better condition, suffered fewer delays an so forth. The American system has had so little investment that it is VERY slow compared to other countries.
Diego
Nesrie
1685
I’d love to travel by train. First we need to actually put a station near me since, you know, I see train all the time, but they’re never passenger trains. And then I need the same thing every American basically needs, more time off to burn on this additional travel days.
There’s a sweet spot for rail travel, particularly the high-speed rail travel, that some US regions are looking to build. It’s the too-close-to-fly but the too-far-to-drive corridors.
At a certain point, rail travel is faster and more efficient than flying. There are tons of flights from Seattle to Vancouver BC and Portland, Oregon every day, but those flights are so short that you’re practically landing as soon as you level off. And most airline jets burn tons of fuel taking off, so it’s really inefficient from a carbon perspective. A high-speed rail could get you there in just about the same amount of time, once you take all the boarding, taxiing, and security issues at the airport into account.
It’s why there’s a push for Cascadia, a high-speed rail system that would link Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver BC.
There are similar pushes in California and other regions.
Nesrie
1687
If we could throw CA in there and a station near me, that would be awesome. I’d probably travel that all the time. I drive to the Seattle area every couple/few years, and CA is nightmare to drive in so I don’t do that.
This was an interesting graph. Of course, we have NO idea how long the downturn is going to last as we don’t know how long the pandemic will be severely messing with the world, but …
Well, I guess I’ll have to wait till I’m 67 to retire (if they keep me around that long and my health holds up, knock on wood).
