More railcar thoughts while I wait for my breakfast to cook.
If you're not already at an airport, and even worse if you're not in a city with an airport then your total travel time when flying is actually a lot worse than it appears. ie, the convenience & speed of flight for domestic travel is kinda a myth.
I like to use an imaginary journey between Stratford & Waipawa as an illustration as its a not entirely unrealistic journey that is currently very awkward flying.
Just driving to the airport at each end is likely 90 minutes plus of driving. So even with the best case scenario of a connecting flight with flight times of 2h 30, then you're still looking at 4 hours minimum total travel time let alone having to get to the airport early to check-in & do luggage drop.
So even if a railcar journey between those two towns, changing lines in Palmerston North took 6 hours* that's only half as bad as the best possible scenario flying.
*Bearing in mind we have NZ rail speed records from pre WW2 doing similar journey lengths in far less time than this.
Jimmy
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2026-03-27 18:01:24 UTC
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2026-03-27 18:01:24 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "More railcar thoughts while I wait for my breakfast to cook.\n\nIf you're not already at an airport, and even worse if you're not in a city with an airport then your total travel time when flying is actually a lot worse than it appears. ie, the convenience \u0026 speed of flight for domestic travel is kinda a myth.\n\nI like to use an imaginary journey between Stratford \u0026 Waipawa as an illustration as its a not entirely unrealistic journey that is currently very awkward flying.\n\nJust driving to the airport at each end is likely 90 minutes plus of driving. So even with the best case scenario of a connecting flight with flight times of 2h 30, then you're still looking at 4 hours minimum total travel time let alone having to get to the airport early to check-in \u0026 do luggage drop.\n\nSo even if a railcar journey between those two towns, changing lines in Palmerston North took 6 hours* that's only half as bad as the best possible scenario flying.\n\n*Bearing in mind we have NZ rail speed records from pre WW2 doing similar journey lengths in far less time than this.",
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