I can't believe it...it's cheaper to drive from Philadelphia to Chicago than take the train!

[Pab Sungenis]

I'm going to have a table for "The New Adventures of Queen Victoria" at the Wizard World Chicago convention in June, and have been making my travel arrangements.

To fly from Philadelphia to Chicago, 60 days out, for two people would be $520.00 for the cheapest fare I could find.

To take Amtrak would be a 23 hour trip, and $360.00 round trip for two people.

Door to door, from our house in Jersey to the hotel at O'Hare, is 819 miles. At 25 MPG for highway (which 90% of the trip is), that's 32.75 gallons of gas. At $4.00/gallon, our round trip would be $262.00 in gas. Add in our tolls, we're still under the price of the train in almost half the time.

This is why mass transit in America isn't working. For rail transit to be a viable alternative, our trains need to be (a) considerably faster, and (b) considerably cheaper. Even at the current Bush-inflated price of gas, I shouldn't be tempted to burn so much fuel and pump so much CO2 into the atmosphere.

As for air travel, we'd be on a scheduled flight, which would be burning all that fuel anyhow, so it wouldn't really add to the total carbon footprint. But when it's still $200.00 more to fly than drive, plus not having to deal with TSA bullshit, it's tempting to just hit the highway.

Can we ever make it worth people's while not to drive?