Travel speed

The anniversary of the Concorde reminded me of arguments about it from back in the day. It got you from airport A to airport B twice as fast (provided you were flying over the ocean), but you really wanted to get from home a to meeting b, and the overhead of getting to and from and through airports (and customs) would seem to make the difference less significant.

Let's see.

• Getting to the local airport: 1/2 hour, including parking
• Getting checked in: 1/2-1 hour
• Waiting for the local flight: 1/2 -1 hour.
• Local flight to Chicago: 40 minutes
• At this point you might wonder if the bus is faster. Well: 1/2 hour to bus stop, 1/4 hour wait, 3 hour drive, 1 -1 1/2 hour checkin at Chicago. O'Hare's TSA is slower than Madison's and generally less courteous. No, unless the local plane is late, the bus is a bit slower.
• Wait for Brussels flight: 1-2 hours. Just boarding takes about 1/2 hour.
• Brussels flight: 8 hours
• Customs: varies. 1/2 - 1 hour
• Waiting for Geneva flight: 1-2 hours (you weren't planning to risk missing the next flight on a trans-Atlantic trip, were you?)
• Geneva flight: 1 1/2 hours
• Getting out of the airport and to my destination: 1 -1 1/2 hours

So about 15-18 hours, of which only 8 could have been that supersonic flight. So, joy joy! If I could have taken the Concorde, it would have only been 11-14 hours! Even with teleportation from Chicago to Brussels, it would still take 7-10 hours. It beats taking 3 months. Gotta remember to be grateful!

Now, teleportation from Madison to Geneva would be cool, and worth a premium. There are several reasons why that won't happen, so I'll sigh and pass by. Pity.

We're easily willing to invest an hour in getting to someplace interesting. An hour there, spend half the day, come back. My rule of thumb is that if I spend less time there than the trip takes, it is probably not worth it. What if everything were an hour away, though?

Sounds like old sci-fi: "Honey, let's superdrive over and see the pyramids of Egypt today!" The devil's in the details--they're all closed for the evening now; You'd have to get up at midnight to make a day of it.

Details, details. I'm not sure travel speed matters so much for long journeys anymore. The overheads are as large as the travel times. Although bullet trains would be nice. If they weren't more expensive than air travel.