airport delays are hell!

[Pupik]

I do wonder why you slackers up in the Northeast don't use trains that much, seeing that you're all bunched up into a small area.

Actually, the Northeastern US uses passenger trains much more than the rest of the nation; mostly in the area from New York City to Washington D.C. use it for commuting. Some cities have their own municipal or area-wide rail transit (subways and elevated trains), or use the existing rail infrastructure for projects like [wikipedia]Tri-Rail[/wikipedia]...which after 20 years is finally at 50% capacity thanks to high gas prices, security-patrolled parking lots, and nicer facilities.

But the rest of the nation primarily uses railways for freight; there's some things like Amtrak (which gets government bail-outs) that allow you to travel the nation by train, but the major lines are owned by three different companies, so that inhibits certain types of destinations; but it is not impossible to travel the US by rail.

We've had high-speed rail projects proposed in Florida since 1976. The troubles are:

No agreements on where the lines would go.
+ No agreements on where the trains would stop.
-----------------------------------------
= Massive eminent domain nightmare paid for by tax-payers.

I was really for it for years, and then the more research I've done, the more infuriated I am that hundreds of millions have already been wasted in wineing-and-dining other companies with nothing to show for over a 30-year period.

 

[STLbarcelona5]

Well I'm flying American Airlines to Guatemala sunday morning, connecting in Miami from LaGuardia at 8.30.

All I can say is, it's a good thing I'm traveling light, because I'm having issues trusting that my bags will end up in guatemala when I do. Just have to cross fingers that my suitcase is still small enough to be carried on.