Charlie Martin (who lives in Colorado) looks at why passenger trains can't compete with airlines as they do in Europe. The answer is simple arithmetic -- long distance trains take much too long:

I can imagine taking the train to New York on vacation, because I am a train nut and the trip would be fun in itself. But let's think about this as a business trip: taking the train would not only cost about 1.5 times as much -- or four times as much with a compartment, and I'm just sure I'd be all set to go right to work in New York after two full days in a coach seat -- but it consumes four working days in travel time. I can manage a one-day business trip by plane, but a one-day trip to New York by train is a five-day trip. Subsidies won't help: counting in the lost time, Amtrak would have to pay me $4,000 to make up for the time difference. The travel time difference is so large that Amtrak couldn't compete if train tickets were free.

So why are trains so popular in Europe? Simple: Europe is smaller. My Basel to Paris trip is 250 miles; Denver to New York is 1,625 miles. Why is Amtrak popular in the Northeast? Because, here we go, the distances are comparable to Europe: Washington, DC, to New York is 203 miles.

But to fly from Philadelphia to New York (something that was once routine) would be an act of insanity these days. Because of runway congestion and bureaucratic inefficiency, planes rarely take off on time from Philadelphia. As to landing on time in New York, you might have better luck winning at the Atlantic City crap tables. And that doesn't include the hour and a half you have to set aside to get past security and onto the plane. Or the often-impossible airport parking. To call it "insanity" is no exaggeration.

Even flying to Chicago is so iffy that depending on the circumstances, you'd often be better off driving. When I drove to the Midwest during the recent series of thunderstorms, I remember thinking how impossible it would have been to fly. On several occasions when I have tried to fly from Philadelphia to Chicago, I have ended up having to drive home because of weather-related flight cancellations and try the next day. I always end up thinking that had I known in advance about the cancellations, I could have gotten there faster by driving.

Taking the train to Chicago, though, is not as reasonable an option as driving. If you look at these Amtrak schedules, the listed time durations range from 17 to 27 hours, but each listed time period has an asterisk with this ominous message:

Approximate duration does not include layovers.

Even considering all the grim options, flying to Chicago still seems like the best of the worst.

But for the shorter Northeast corridor routes, not surprisingly, buses are emerging to fill the void between trains, planes, and driving. And I don't mean Greyhound, where passengers are treated like criminals by local narcs acting under authority of "Homeland Security."

The last time I went to New York, I tried a newer line called Megabus.Com. Despite having to go through New York's rush hour, they got us there nearly ontime, and the late night return trip was a snap -- even in pouring rain. These are slick new buses equipped with WiFi, and they even showed a DVD of one of the Narnia Chronicles (I was a bit too tired to watch fantasy, but I'm sure it helped my dreams while I slept....)

Best of all the Megabus costs $12.00 round trip. That's much, much cheaper than Amtrak's prices for the same trip, which range from $86.00 to $278.00.

It's even cheaper (and faster) than driving, because not only do you have the fuel costs, but there are whopping bridge tolls with long waits, and have you ever tried parking? In New York? Hah! You could sleep overnight in the average Motel 6 for less. The fastest way for me to drive to New York is to drive to Newark, park there, and take a local train across the bridge to New York Penn Station. But even then, the parking is $11.00, then the train fare is another $8.00. So the bus saves $7.00, and spares you the aggravation of two long and aggravating drives on the New Jersey Turnpike (something best used only by seasoned portal-travelers in Being John Malkovich).

In any case, getting from point A to point B is no fun unless you make it fun, and the best way to do that is by attempting to beat the system through economic navigation. Thank God we still have the free market system, which still allows (for now, at least) new companies like Megabus to appear out of nowhere and offer genuine services to human beings.

But if you think things are bad now, just wait till the carbon footprint people (a subdivision of the infernal "they" class that wants to run our lives) get their dirty mitts on every last aspect of what remains of our ability to simply get from point A to point B.

Our cherished constitutional right to travel will become infinitely more challenging.