MSP to SEA: Three ways

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RRUserious

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Just did this for fun. Ran pricing for three ways to go to Seattle from Minneapolis and back in late July. Came out this way:

Sun Country coach (including insurance and change protection) $599.60

Amtrak $532.95

Alamo Rental with Unlimited Mileage: $832.55

Of course, with Amtrak and Alamo, you have to add some expenses, such as meals, lodging, gas. So total cost is something else. I just thought renting a new car and driving would be way outof line. People with late model cars wouldn't even have to consider this cost. To the Amtrak price, add 3 days' meals (9 total) plus snacks. Then adjust for the unique qualities of train travel.

I'm not a bargain hunter at heart. To me, all the options have things to recommend them. You can see scenery on train. You can STOP and visit sites in a car.
 
If you searched for this July, then you probably found high or higher-than-minimum bucket fares for the EB. And Sun Country is based in MSP, so no surprise for the fares at only one month in advance.
 
As an MSP - based person --

SunCountry is the only competitor vs Delta here.

AMTK is the only reasonable priced way to get from here to anywhere in Montana,

Delta owns the airport. Fares to the far east are many hundreds worse than from any nearby hub.

Myself - take the Megabus to CHI and go from there - save a few hundred or a thousand - or just ride AMTK to Milwaukee or ORD.
 
RRUserious said:
Just did this for fun. Ran pricing for three ways to go to Seattle from Minneapolis and back in late July. Came out this way:

Sun Country coach (including insurance and change protection) $599.60

Amtrak $532.95

Alamo Rental with Unlimited Mileage: $832.55

Of course, with Amtrak and Alamo, you have to add some expenses, such as meals, lodging, gas. So total cost is something else. I just thought renting a new car and driving would be way outof line. People with late model cars wouldn't even have to consider this cost. To the Amtrak price, add 3 days' meals (9 total) plus snacks. Then adjust for the unique qualities of train travel.

I'm not a bargain hunter at heart. To me, all the options have things to recommend them. You can see scenery on train. You can STOP and visit sites in a car.
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Did the same thing for wife and I's trek from Las Vegas to WAS for Christmas 2011 via LAX-CHI-WAS Sleeper for our AMTRAK ride since1991 and it was:

Amtrak $1660 + $340 for (2) week car rental= $2,000

Auto $2500 Gas, food, lodging, taxes, tips, oil change= $2,500

US Air $780+$340 car rental+$210airport parking+airport meals+baggage fees= $1,600

I got a sleeper, all my meals, beautiful views of the country, unlimited coffee and juice, a newspaper, met great folks from all over the country, met a AU poster on board and never once was I groped and I saved 6,000 miles of wear and tear

on my truck and my body.

Priceless !!!!

NAVYBLUE
 
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Assuming no missed connections anywhere in there. I wasn't really pricing out the cost with MY CAR. It would be seriously cheaper. Actually, it seems to me to come down to "missed connections vs. uniformed personnel groping you". Many of the things you mentioned don't matter to me. Standing in a line for three hours waiting for a hotel voucher because the train missed my connection is a biggie for me. I'd rather two seconds in the radiation box than three hours because Amtrak just can't do this sort of thing in a timely way. But I admit the freedom of my own vehicle really appeals to me right now. Though in the lightly-traveled seasons, I could change my views a lot. It is my misfortune that I travel to escape heat, and that is precisely when Amtrak fills up its trains (and lowers its standards of service).
 
This thread really points out how people very seldom think about the true costs of driving. When you get right down to it, that $800 Alamo rental car doesn't even represent half the direct cost of an automobile trip like that. A round trip from Minneapolis to Seattle is well over 3,000 miles, which at todays prices is probably at least $500 in gas. And with that distance you're probably talking three days driving time each way ... so even staying at cheap motels and eating fast food is going to add another couple hundred bucks each way. And then there's the opportunity cost of spending that much of your vacation glued to the desolation that is Interstate 94.

Though of course there'd be no rental fee, all of the other costs would still be in place with a private car. And when you're talking about a 3,000+ mile trip, its extraordinarily naive to assume that the use of the car itself is free. Ignoring maintenance, risk of damage, depreciation, and insurance is disingenuous.

Bottom line: the only way a car becomes even remotely price-competitive for long-distance travel is if you've got multiple people riding inside.

Not to mention all the possibilities for unexpected delays on a roadtrip like that, too. It would be pretty frustrating, for example, to have to spend three hours waiting to get a flat tire fixed in middle-of-nowhere North Dakota ... and that's that's a far likely scenario than having to wait three three hours for an Amtrak voucher after a missed connection, since there's no change of trains on that route. :)
 
MSP - St Paul-Minneapolis, MN

SEA - Seattle, WA

1670 miles, 3 days drive time.

3340 miles round trip total time in a car 6 days.

Good interstate run I94 - I90 straight across. Be sure you have a cruise control if you rent. I seem to get the cars with out it. Got to upgrade to high / large size. Small and mid size are not equipped. You don't want to drive long distance with out it.

Also stop and see the scenic is a trip killer, got to push 560 miles a day, can not be done if your stopping and opening the door every 10 minutes.

Take the train if you can, just lose your watch at the house. Your way to focus on the time. Sit back and relax, life short enjoy the view.
 
Montanan said:
This thread really points out how people very seldom think about the true costs of driving. When you get right down to it, that $800 Alamo rental car doesn't even represent half the direct cost of an automobile trip like that. A round trip from Minneapolis to Seattle is well over 3,000 miles, which at todays prices is probably at least $500 in gas. And with that distance you're probably talking three days driving time each way ... so even staying at cheap motels and eating fast food is going to add another couple hundred bucks each way. And then there's the opportunity cost of spending that much of your vacation glued to the desolation that is Interstate 94.

Though of course there'd be no rental fee, all of the other costs would still be in place with a private car. And when you're talking about a 3,000+ mile trip, its extraordinarily naive to assume that the use of the car itself is free. Ignoring maintenance, risk of damage, depreciation, and insurance is disingenuous.

Bottom line: the only way a car becomes even remotely price-competitive for long-distance travel is if you've got multiple people riding inside.

Not to mention all the possibilities for unexpected delays on a roadtrip like that, too. It would be pretty frustrating, for example, to have to spend three hours waiting to get a flat tire fixed in middle-of-nowhere North Dakota ... and that's that's a far likely scenario than having to wait three three hours for an Amtrak voucher after a missed connection, since there's no change of trains on that route. :)
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Or having the car completely die. My daughter & her husband were moving from DE to UT and her husband went with his dad in the moving truck while my daughter & a friend took the car out. The car died in Iowa and the friend's mom had to fly out to Iowa, rent a car & drive them the rest of the way to UT.

I'll take public transportation, thank you very much, even though I have a 2009 car with low mileage.
 
I'm sorry but you're going to have to do better. I've traveled by car too many times across North Dakota and Montana with no unexpected delays. My father did it with his 1940 Chevrolet in the middle 50's with no interstate at all. If I own the car and there are two or more drivers so we can drive 24 hours a day and not stop and rent a room, we can easily beat the cost of other forms of transportation.

But this ASSUMES somehow that the ultimate measure is "how much". The reason so much transportation is so bad is the temptation that travelers succumb to to reward whoever bids lowest, no matter what they give at the price. Quality is an afterthought. There is no reasonably priced public transport that matches the flexibility and convenience of the private automobile. The ONE drawback is that it might generate more greenhouse gases. BUT I think the carriers are pressing their luck to let their service deteriorate and then play the emissions card. You can't go too far in treating travelers as cattle before they'll just take their freedom back and drive!!!
 
RRUserious said:
If I own the car and there are two or more drivers so we can drive 24 hours a day and not stop and rent a room, we can easily beat the cost of other forms of transportation.
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Yes, thanks to the fact that you're driving on our subsidized roads.

It might not be quite so cost competitive if we raised the fuel taxes to the point where it covered all the costs of our roads & highways.
 
The airports are subsidized, the rails are. I don't see the difference. And the subsidy for the roads is something I pay for in many ways. Subsidies aren't somehow funded independently by government. They come out of the pockets of taxpayers. Of which I've been one for over 50 years. So when I travel other than on the road I've been paying for for half a century, I'm actually giving up an advantage.

Doesn't really matter WHY I can drive cheaper. The fact is that if the industries fall down on the job, they must face the fact that they don't have a captive clientele. We can all curse all their houses and exercise our freedom. Except......................I do think some people have been brainwashed into thinking they have to take abuse and accept low quality service. They imagine they have to curse it and then pay anyway. That's slave mentality.
 
About relative subsidies for various modes of transport - I won't argue it - there are so many subsidies and some of them well hidden - nah - there's been books written.

My preferred mode - walking - is not subsidized - but it won't get me from Minneapolis to Seattle in any reasonable time.

For more than two people and more than 1000 miles, driving will be cheaper. Other situations -- check Orbitz - check Expedia - check Kayak - check Amtrak - check Megabus - check Greyhound and Hertz and Avis and Alamo and all - and make your own decision based on the market and your own preferences. Some of us retired people spend time figuring the best combination of air, amtrak, commuter trains, buses both long-distance and local, car rental, own car, and walking.

Most people don't have time for that in-depth research.

But !! some people actually like a long drive - less stressful than their job - whatever.

Some people totally hate driving especially on parts of I5 and/or I95.

So basically - I compare my wants with what the not-so-free market offers -- and choose - and sometimes lose and sometimes win.
 
Yep, I've driven across North Dakota successfully a number of times, myself ... I have nearly 250,000 miles on a car I bought new in 2005, so I clearly enjoy road trips. I've also happily and uneventfully ridden Amtrak across the northern prairies a number of times. And I've spent an almost-sleepless night curled up on the floor of Concourse D at MSP, because Minnesota's dominant air carrier totally dropped the ball when I had a scheduled connection through there one evening. But I didn't devote my life to complaining about it afterwards, because travel in any mode has the potential to turn into an adventure, no matter how careful a traveler is, or how thoughtful a carrier tries to be.

As for the cost/quality issues, it still seems very clear that the initial post heavily misstated the real comparative costs of undertaking a long journey. And the muddied notion of making a 1,700-mile drive nonstop in a carful of people should be a pretty terrifying one for someone who ostensibly cares about the quality of a journey. I've done that sort of thing before, too, and I know it's not pretty.

Maybe the real message here is simply the futility of participating in a discussion that's built on a foundation of simply wanting to be angry.
 
Montanan said:
Yep, I've driven across North Dakota successfully a number of times, myself ... I have nearly 250,000 miles on a car I bought new in 2005, so I clearly enjoy road trips. I've also happily and uneventfully ridden Amtrak across the northern prairies a number of times. And I've spent an almost-sleepless night curled up on the floor of Concourse D at MSP, because Minnesota's dominant air carrier totally dropped the ball when I had a scheduled connection through there one evening. But I didn't devote my life to complaining about it afterwards, because travel in any mode has the potential to turn into an adventure, no matter how careful a traveler is, or how thoughtful a carrier tries to be.

As for the cost/quality issues, it still seems very clear that the initial post heavily misstated the real comparative costs of undertaking a long journey. And the muddied notion of making a 1,700-mile drive nonstop in a carful of people should be a pretty terrifying one for someone who ostensibly cares about the quality of a journey. I've done that sort of thing before, too, and I know it's not pretty.

Maybe the real message here is simply the futility of participating in a discussion that's built on a foundation of simply wanting to be angry.
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**LIKE**
 
AlanB said:
RRUserious said:
If I own the car and there are two or more drivers so we can drive 24 hours a day and not stop and rent a room, we can easily beat the cost of other forms of transportation.
Click to expand...
Yes, thanks to the fact that you're driving on our subsidized roads.

It might not be quite so cost competitive if we raised the fuel taxes to the point where it covered all the costs of our roads & highways.
Click to expand...
Typical gas tax, federal and state, is what - maybe 50 cents a gallon at most? You claim gas tax only covers 50% of the roads and highways? OK, lets go with that figure (wrong though it may be). If the gas tax only covers 50% now, to have the gas tax cover everything, lets double it. That would add another 50 cents per gallon. If a vehicle gets only 20 miles per gallon highway (pretty lousy), the additional cost to cover the extra tax and eliminate those "subsidized" roads would be 2.5 cents a mile. Each 500 mile travel day would cost an extra $12.50 for the vehicle (not per passenger), about the cost of a one-night SCA tip. If there are two or more people in the car, the per person cost becomes financial noise. I don't think $12.50 per day or less is going to swing the mode vs mode economics one way or another.
 
jimhudson said:
Just realized the Header on this thread may imply Something a little Kinky on the Train!!! ^_^

It's a Slow Day down here in Hot! Parched Texas!!)
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Funny how I didn't even think of it that way and change it. Well, I never regret brightening up someone's day, even if the humor is unintentional. And hey, with a big enough sleeper, you could really "eat up the miles". Get a few bottles of booze in there. :giggle:
 
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