Never take the train -- I took it once in college to get home for winter break because the only nearby airport was one of those propeller jobs. And... it took twenty-three hours. I can't begin to describe how awful it is to be pent up in a train for twenty-three hours. Needless to say the next year I opted to take the rickety ten seat-er prop plane... and I can also say: never do that if you can avoid it!

Apart from the US and probably Canada, places like Europe and Asia have excellent rail services, though they are sometimes massively overpriced. OK, all the time.

If we could take trains from Texas to Virginia in four hours, believe me, we all would (At that speed, it would also benefit people from other countries).

From what I understand, you can't have anything on your lap. And you can't get anything out of your carry on, above or below.
In any case, I feel sorry for my friend who is currently in Japan for Christmas. She's going to have to take an 18 hour flight back here to Portland. Not helping the matter is the fact she has ADHD and is going to go insane with nothing to do but watch shitty movies and read the Airmall catalogue 500 times.

According to the article, that's only for the last hour of the flight. It's still unreasonable though. It's not like forbidding someone from having something in their lap will prevent a hijacker from pulling out a gun...

I am not. A good friend who is very into politics has been keeping me up on this, but the current administration has shown interest in a national rail. In fact, the feds are providing stimulus and grant money to help with the Huge investment costs. Its a multi-phase project. Money would flow to cities to help update/start local commuter rail. Money would flow to states to link the local systems together with "high speed" rail to create local and regional hubs which would finally be linked by high-speed national rail.
Of course, this is still in the planning stages and subject to oversight and approval. I've read the proposal documents for my state and they concluded it would be profitable, but the deterrent is the massive start up cost to involved in building/retrofitting, etc.

All these new restrictions will do is piss off honest passengers. It certainly won't deter wannabe terrorists. Can't do anything an hour before landing in the US? Fine. They'll do 1 hour and 1 minute before.
One of these days, the airlines are going to go a step too far. It'll be fun to watch what happens when they do.

A little rebellion now and then is a good thing.

Interesting, I hadn't heard about this. I'll have to look into it a bit. Thanks for the information.

Partly why I'm excited about a national rail system. Once the airline industry has strong competition, I think their policies/pricing will change. As it stands right now, driving 8 hours is what 500-600 miles(ish)? The airlines have a strong advantage when you get past that distance in terms of "time-saving" and "convenience".
DarrkPhoenix:
I really need to look into the rail idea more as well. For example, I have no idea how many states are looking into this or how a national system would look/work or if any of these ideas have been approved or funded. From what I've been told, right now any hopes of national rail are still in the conception/proposal/research stage. In my city this caused a bit of buzz last spring as our city would be a hub on the regional line, but I really haven't heard much since. I'll ask my friend tonight at work where I can get more info.

Part of the reason flight prices are so steep is that they seem to be constantly losing money. I don't know how, but now doesn't seem to be a very good time to own an airport or an airline.

Long-distance rail in the United States = dumb idea.
It works in Europe because of high population density and a smaller distances between major destinations. Outside of the Northeast Corridor (DC-Boston), rail will not work unless taxpayers become complete masochists. Translation: The cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure would not justify any perceived benefits.
Until an inexpensive, flexible, and super-high speed rail system is developed, it would be foolish for a nation with the geography and population distribution of the United States to invest heavily in rail (unless of course, the government can persuade taxpayers to give up more of their money to support even more projects that will not directly benefit them).

And of course, said restrictions on entering US apply doubly to the UK citizens, because that's where the idiot flew from...even though he was an Islamic Nigerian who's dad had reported him to Homeland Security over SIX months ago because "I'm afraid of his extreme religious views".....and what did HS do? start a file, then NOTHING!
UK people entering the US now have to be singled out for full searches, interrogation, and gods know what else...but not anyone else...people from other nations (not on the watch lists) get to pass through with "normal" delays" :rolleyes:

Oh, I doubt people from other nations will be exempt from the cavity searches and the underwear searches and feeling a wee discombobulated. Then them bastards will just fly into the US and do evil through France or something.
Speaking of discombobulation, how about recombobulation?