A question about driving and such to those living in smaller nations

[korn469]

I'm from the good old USA, a nation that spans from sea to shining sea. Anyways last week I went to visit a cousin who lives about 350 miles (560km) away. About 200 miles (320km) of that trip is on interstates highways which made the trip fairly pleasant (it took me about 6 1/2 hours each way). I also used to have a girlfriend who lived like 50 miles (80km) away and it'd take me about an hour to drive to see her. Trips of between 35-65 miles (55-105km) are quite common for me. Now what I was wondering is what's it like in smaller nations when it comes to driving? How much do you drive, and how long are your usual trips? Do you know people spread throughout the nation? I was just wondering. I would appreciate any of your driving experiences, same things goes for other Americans as well.

[Eli]

Yikes. Here in Israel anything in a distance of 100 km is far, far away.

[korn469]

i actually worked a job one summer where we'd drive about 100km to work and then another 100km back every day, i hated driving that far without getting paid for my drive time, so i quit

i've driven 200-250km on many occasions to go see bands since i live in a suck ass part of the US

[Spiffor]

France is roughly 1000 km North-South and 1000 km East-West (this is a gross approximation, but you get the idea).
Most people I know have short pendular drives between home and work, but that's because I'm from close Parisian suburbs. The car is widely used for these pendular trips, despite mass transit systems being crowded.
It appears many people from more than 100 km away do work in Paris too, and they take the train or the car to do so.
Several people live as far as ~300 km from their job, but they can only use the fast train then. They aren't many though.
In France, train is widely used by vacationers, especially if they are alone (it is faster, more comfortable and cheaper than car on most distances at French scale). Car is rather used by people going with their families or with much luggage.
Almost all French high-density transportation ways are centered on Paris : highways and fast trains converge to the capitol, and the development of Non-Paris to Non-Paris areas is still lacking.

Only a few airports are widely used as means of intra-national transportation : Paris, Nice, Toulouse are the most important. The size of the country makes it rarely worthwhile to go with planes rather than train. The trains' speed (second fastest in the world after Japan) helps.

[marcuspeddle]

I live in South Korea and traffic here is a nightmare. There are 45 million people living in a small place and on the weekends every man and his dog jumps in the car and hits the highway. City streets are congested with illegally parked cars and people don't follow traffic rules. I think Korea has the third highest rate of traffic deaths in the world. If you live in the country it's somewhat better but if you are driving the speed limit or slightly under then people will be passing you like crazy. No passing zones, blind hills and turns, bad weather, it doesn't matter. What's worse is that people driving huge cargo trucks drive like that. Although Korea is not a large country it takes a long time to drive anywhere because of bad trafiic and slow speed limits. Well, it takes law-abiding people a long time.

[korn469]

Spiffor

how fast are the trains? on the interstate the average speed is somewhere between 100-120km per hour if you aren't caught in bad traffic, and between 70-100km per hour on average highways

[Spiffor]

Our train depend : We have very fast trains from Paris to Lyon, Marseille, Lille, Brussels and Frankfurt IIRC. These go at 300 km/h ca.
Our regular trains for long fares are about 130-150 km/h, which is fast for this category (at least, I didn't see trains this category's that fast in other Euro countries I railroaded in)
Our highways' speeds highly depend on the traffic. You can go about 120-140 km/h when there is nobody, but during vacation starts and bigger week ends, you can expect long jams around every major city.

Urban traffic depends highly from the city. I only lived in Paris and Bordeaux. Paris sure has a terrible reputation for traffic (you can need more than an hour for a 5 minutes drive in the highway surrounding it at rugh hour). But Bordeaux is even worse because of its old, shallow streets, the lack of worthy mass transit, which end up jamming the only modern infrastructure.

I also forgot to mention there is a very dense network of smaller roads pretty everywhere in France (several administrative layers historically had to build roads, which led to a multiplication of them). They aren't fast and can be pretty dangerous if you're not cautious, but they sometimes relieve the traffic on more jammed highways. Medium ("national") roads are limited to 90-110 km/h, while small ("districtal") ones are limited to 60 km/h

[Jon Miller]

trains take a while to speed up though, a lot longer than cars

that is why the maximum speed does not mean much

Jon Miller

[Saras]

These TGV trains go at, correct if I'm wrong, at ~300 km/h.

[Jon Miller]

130 is often drived

but that is the point where you really have to start worrying about getting caught (and paying a hefty ticket)

there are people who go all the way up to 150 for standard travel, they almost always end up paying lots of money in tickets for it (or worse)

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

I really like trains, I wish the US had a better system (I like the subways)

jon Miller

[Spiffor]

This is the average speed. Fast trains rarely stop between major cities, and their maximum speed (in cruise) is slightly superior to 300 km/h. Their max speed in optimal conditions have been about 350 km/h.

[Frozzy]

Sometimes on a weekend I clock up around 400km (the distance most americans would happily travel to buy, say, a taco, from my understanding), and this is a twice-yearly event. Normal weekends I clock up 100kms max.

[Dominikos]

Living in Canada, you get used to driving long distances and having more than two cars.

I've driven from coast to coast more than once.

All things considered Canada and the United States are by far the best when it comes to enjoying driving. Just hop on the highway and keep on going and going and going...that is of course if you can pay for all that gas. I even have a nice thick travel book titled America from the Road

The larger the country, the better. However, Russia has terrible roads (been there, done that).

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~Dominik - Lord of the Putumayo~

[JohnT]

Originally posted by Eli
Yikes. Here in Israel anything in a distance of 100 km is far, far away.

Wow. And I've been known to drive 1500 miles for a 2 day weekend with my family.

You know, my wife and I will quite often pack up the baby in the SUV and just go driving and driving. This past weekend, we went up to Kentucky (things are beginning to bloom and the mountains are turning quite nicely), had lunch at some Wendy's off the highway, and drove back. Total distance: 150 miles, about 3.5 hours, all told (babies slow you down even more than women do).

Cost? Eh, about 25-30 bucks. About the same if the three of us had eaten at a sit down restaraunt.

Other day trips have taken us to Chattanooga (160 miles round trip), Nashville (300 miles round trip), Asheville (250 miles round trip... but it's a hard 250 miles. We're not doing that again).

Most of the time though we'll just drive around town, going around 20-40 miles all told, just looking at the new homes and other construction, Sophie in the back, babbling and "singing" along with us to her favorite songs... driving makes for a very pleasant family experience (as long as Baby is being pleasant, that is.)

Sophie is a very good traveller - we once drove from Knoxville, TN to New York City in a single stretch (750 miles), and she didn't complain at all. She's done long hauls before, and she handles them quite well.

As you can tell, I like to drive. I find it very relaxing - as long as I'm moving, that is!