Considering driving to SF is around 10 hours (depending how fast you drive and how often you stop) 11 hours isn't terrible.

Actually Oakland works better for me, since my family is in Danville. But we couldn't find a route that made sense. Maybe Alex was looking in the wrong spot or something.

Yeah, you can definitely get from LA to Oakland on Amtrak with no buses, but you have to take the Coast Starlight.

There is another option it will show sometimes (and often before the Coast Starlight when I've done it) that takes a bus from Union Station to Bakersfield and catches the San Joaquin from there to Oakland.

Note that if your destination is really Danville then in addition to getting off in Oakland (at any of the stops already mentioned), you can also disembark in Martinez, which might be easier if someone is picking you up (though not so convenient for connecting to other public transportation).

The train situation from Vegas to LA is ridiculous. Instead of holding out and building the route they needed to, Vegas bitched out and is building a crap version. Vegas to Victorville! Yeah, that will be useful...

When I go on vacation, I want to go to Victorville.

What makes you say that? I'm flying up later in the month, and I don't see it being a 4-hour process, much less one of misery. What happened to you that was so miserable?


On the real topic at hand (sort of): Is there train service from L.A. to Victorville from which you can catch the wonderful train to Vegas?

10 hours is a worst-case scenario IMO. I've done it in 6 and Google Maps puts it at 6:50.

Missed the 10-hour estimate. How often are you stopping? My average Dublin (10-minutes closer than Danville) to DL time is probably 6 hours.

Also don't consider flying to be a miserable experience but four hours door-to-door probably isn't a huge exaggeration depending on the travel time to and from and airports.

And the Southwest Chief route goes from Union Station through Victorville. But at Barstow it follows the 40 to Needles instead of the 15 to Vegas.

Well, I live really close to LAX and I'm not checking a bag, so I'm gonna cut half an hour off that misery estimate. Still, that's about a third the time of driving, and my airfare was a bit less than what round-trip gas would cost. Plus what would I do with a car in San Francisco anyway? ;)

But if there were a train there, it would have to be substantially cheaper than driving, for me to choose that option. If a bullet train that would cut the time in half, tho, I'd choose the train over both flying and driving. I don't think I'll live to see that. Maybe some young whippersnapper will enjoy the ride in 2075.

From Samland on Miceage:

Click here for whole article

This ticks me off that they gave this offer up so the oil companies could sell more gas, and now they are spending billions on rail. Shame on them!