Hi, everyone. And welcome back to America Under the Microscope. 欢迎回来【闲话美国】.

Hi, James.

Hi, LuLu. Hi, everyone.

Actually I would like to propose a topic.

Cool.

Now around the holiday I wanna travel back to Wuhan, I was trying to get a train tickets. When I'm now traveling from Beijing to Wuhan, I almost always get the train because it's so fast. If you consider the flight takes about 2 hours and then there's a long commute to the actual airport. But the train station is also usually located center of town and the train only takes 4 hours, sometimes even a bit under 4 hours.

I know I love Chinese high speed trains, so nice.

So I thought let’s talk about the transport in America. I know you guys don't really have a lot of trains or like your trains are not really great.

We have trains. We have a whole two high speed trains in the whole country.

You have high speed train? That's news to me. How fast are they?

Well, the one in the northeast that goes between Washington DC and I think up to Boston, I think it can get up to 190.

kilometers per hour.

But for very limited stretches because it has many stops. There's a brand new one in Florida between Miami and Orlando and it can go 378 kilometers in 3.5 hours.

OK, that is like 120, 130 per hour. Yeah. That doesn't sound very impressive. Sorry to say that.

It’s not.

So really, trains that I wouldn't say that you have kept up with the world in terms of development of trains.

We have not. America is well behind. If you look at many European countries like France, the UK, Germany, Italy, they all have forms of high speed rail. And then if you take Japan, it's like their high speed rails are outstanding. Chinese, high speed rail is really outstanding. Yeah, there's America. It’s sad.

But why is that? Because it's such a vast country why?

Money.

But even building airports also cost money, right?

Yes, it does, but there's a few things. So it's just really expensive to build rail because it's not just about the train station. You also have to lay down the track and all that other stuff which you don't have to do for an airport.

Oh, I see. So is it fair to say that when it comes to traveling cross country, most Americans won't even think of rail travel.

It's not even on the radar now.

Who's taking the trains then?

It depends on which part of the country you’re in. If you're in the northeast. So New York city region, there are quite a bit more trains where you can usually go from like New York to Boston, New York to Washington DC, New York to Philadelphia.

In that part of the country, there are quite a few trains that you can take. But if you're from where I am, there is no train station in my hometown. The closest train station is an hour drive away and the train comes once a day.

And you might as well just take the plane.

Yeah, it would honestly be cheaper.

But air travel, I mean I've also watched a lot of videos of people complaining about air travel and it's almost like a meme. When you watch a TV shows from America, people also complain about air travel.

其实很多美剧或者美国电影里面都有很多人去吐槽美国的飞机，就航空业各种各样的，说服务也好，什么也好，基建也好，so what do you think about the air travel?

Right. So air travel is the easiest way to get across the country because a lot of people always seem to forget that America is really big. It takes 5 hours to fly across the country.

It's a big place, but because it's high demand and there's high competition, a lot of the airline companies have done... done things to try to remain competitive.

And consumers have voted with their feet and they decided that they want cheaper tickets than having all the bells and whistles of airlines.

I see. I see you can't blame the service because you didn't pay for it, that kind of idea.

So that's why I'm very happy when I go home for this winter break, I am taking a Korean airline which does have all the bells and whistles.

I mean, internationally you can't take cheap flights because if it's gonna be a long haul flight, you're gonna want the service and the comfort level.

You need it.

Yeah, would you say that for most Americans, when they are traveling even within like domestically, when they're traveling, first things they think about is taking flights.

That's... we'll talk about... they also considered driving but we'll talk about that a little bit more later, but definitely flying.

Because if I wanna go from my home and I wanna visit say Miami, I wanna go playing on the beach, I gotta fly it. It's all the way on the other side of the country. And if you're living in New York city, I mean the flight to London is the same amount of time as a flight to Los Angeles.

Oh, well, of course, because it's just from New York to London is just the other way. It's just crossing the Atlantic. Yeah. Yeah, I see. It is easy to forget how big America is, how long it takes to travel from point A to point B.

It’s always the joke about the tourists like today we're in New York and tomorrow we're going to LA, it's like. No, you're not.

Yeah, I mean tourists make the same mistake. First time travelers to China, they are saying...yeah. I was hosting some people, older people, from the UK they were like so tomorrow we want to go to Shanghai and then we want to pop to Chengdu to see pandas like no, you can't do that. It takes very long...

And what about the airports in America? Are they... How far are they from city center or how easy it is to transit from these airports?

So American airports like Chinese airports are always located on the outside of the city because you need the land that's where you're gonna find it.

In terms of connection to the rest of a city's transport, it's really hit or miss on that. If you like New York city, it's directly on the subway line. My closest big airport would be Seattle. And Seattle also has a rail line that takes you straight downtown, but not all airports are like that. Many airports, you rely on shuttle buses, public buses, taxis, Uber, car rental, car rental.

So now we arrived at the airport. We finally made it to downtown area. How to get around the city? You don't have that many cities that actually have a sort of underground subway system, do you?

No, there aren't that many. The big cities have them, LA, New York, DC, Boston, Chicago, they all have some sort.

The area like Seattle has a little bit of one, but a lot of places, it's still mostly buses is still the primary one. But a lot of people still don't take them because there's still an image of them being old and unreliable and at least by Chinese standards, expensive.

That is actually my next question because there are so many jokes about Oh, I had to get on a bus, I had to get on crosstown bus. It seems like buses are not seeing as people's normal everyday commute.

I don't honestly get that because I've taken public buses in America and they're just buses. And people just have this image of it's like Oh you're taking a bus? It's like I live in Beijing and I still take the bus because sometimes it's the best way to get somewhere.

Yeah like Beijing subway doesn't always take you to through the roots that you really want to.

No, it doesn't.

Okay. Now we come to the final one, the big one, driving. I suppose most people prefer driving, right? It's your entire culture, it’s very much based on car.

Sadly. If you don't know how to drive when you visit America, yet you are very much handicapped about what you can and cannot do because American cities and everything is built around a car in assuming you have a car. That's why if you fly into any big airport, they have a massive line of car rental companies.

I see.

When I go home this winter, I'm gonna have to rent a car for the 2 weeks I'm there.

So basically because everybody prefers to drive anyways and it's everywhere so far away from other places. So I guess they just couldn't be bothered to build like that much public transport because you're driving anyways.

Actually America used to have lots of public transportation, but it was the cars, motor companies and the oil companies that killed it because they wanted business.

I see. So it's先有鸡还是先有蛋的问题.

So you drive and then the car companies want you to drive more, so that's the way they got rid of the public transport.

By the way, just out of curiosity, if a Chinese tourist, traveler, wants to drive in America, that is okay in most of the states?

Yeah, it's pretty much fine now. You do wanna make sure you have an English translation to go with the license. But like many of my Chinese colleagues they go to America, they rent cars there, they drive on their Chinese license. They have had zero issue.

It's not legal if you're like going there as a student because if you're there as a student, you do need to get a local license, but if you're there as a tourist, you're fine. Make sure you have an English translation though.

What about these car hailing apps like Uber? How easy it is to get Uber or taxis for that matter?

Well. This is a kind of similar to China if you're in a major urban area, easy. If you're where I'm from, nobody has Uber.

I suppose it is the same in China if you are in a smaller town, then perhaps it’s much more difficult because just simply not that many drivers around.

Yeah. that is the same, but it's also not cheap. It's not a cheap way to get around.

Okay, all right. On that note, we're gonna wrap up the basic episodes where we talked about different types of transport in America, both between cities like cross country and within the city how to get around the city.

In the advanced episode, I suppose we can get a little bit more into the topic.

Yes, we definitely can, we can talk about major issues.

All right. On that note, if you have any comments leave us a line in the comment section. Thank you, James, for coming to the show.

Thank you for having me. Bye everyone.

Bye.