Other peoples' money, your back, everybody's carbon

[fivemack]

[Poll #1398090]

Comments

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

Also: Fly instead of taking a cheaper train, because it's quicker: depends how much you're saving. To Prague, yes. To Scotland, no. (That said, if it were just about the money, yes).

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

I flew to Scotland for some conventions, because it meant I could complete a day of work and then head up there whereas the slower train would mean taking additional half or full days off work ... put a value on my vacation time and it's *much* cheaper to fly in those situations!

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

We went to Interaction by sleeper and it was fantastic and not significantly more expensive than flying would have been. It was more expensive than the train but it felt like two extra days of holiday.

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

I thought I'd have to do this for Satellite 2 (25th-26th July), but it turns out that from Cambridge the timing's right to get a train quite late Friday evening and catch the midnight sleeper, then catch the 2140 from Glasgow on the Sunday and get back into Euston; this is about the same price as a return train to Stansted, a flight and an extra night in the con hotel, gets me a calm evening in Cambridge rather than a panicked taxi from the office to the station, and in mid-July should have incomparably better views out of the window of the breakfast car.

I spent five years in dormitories at boarding school, and so don't require privacy to sleep; I've had a reasonable night's sleep in second class on the Delhi-Varanasi sleeper, and am sure Scotrail is more comfortable than that.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

It depends on your company's policy too. I'm won't go to Scotland by train for meetings in general, because it means that a two hour meeting is a 15 hour day and I'm not normally prepared to do 15 hour days. But if it was an overnight trip for some other reason, I'd happily go by train; I like trains and I don't much like planes.