[HN Gopher] Europe is investing heavily in trains
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Europe is investing heavily in trains
Author : prostoalex
Score : 296 points
Date : 2022-04-11 19:51 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| hardwaresofton wrote:
| Shameless plug for my friends substack all about public transit:
|
| https://lovetransit.substack.com
|
| It's wonderful and bounces back and forth between japan, sweden,
| and greater europe
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| I feel that when the total cost of rail is taken into account,
| there are only a few very high density areas or high traffic
| routes where they make sense. I was recently reading about how
| large stretches of China's bullet train system cost tens of
| billions of dollars, and ongoing expenditure of billions more,
| and have hardly enough traffic to justify their maintenance, let
| alone their construction costs. There are some routes that are
| well utilized, but it seems that when you empower the government
| to make such infrastructure, there is massive malinvestment ...
| and its hard to know what the alternative could have been without
| such centralized planning.
| larschdk wrote:
| Agree. Trains make perfect sense in metro areas like London,
| Berlin, Paris, Frankfurt, etc. Everywhere else, they are a
| complete waste of money, are difficult to run on a regular
| schedule, service only narrow corridors, are inconvenient to
| get to/from for daily commutes and increase total commute time
| 2+ times. To increase use of public transport, we need to
| increase convenience, not reduce cost.
| tonmoy wrote:
| You can't just look at the income from fare and use that to
| justify the construction cost. The train may have brought
| development and investment into the area that wouldn't have
| happened otherwise earning tax for the government in other
| ways. Highways/interstates in the US would have been an
| infinite percentage of loss with your original assumption since
| they don't produce anything directly.
| riffic wrote:
| Skate towards where the puck is going to be. This is a wise
| investment for the future of mobility.
| efxhoy wrote:
| Rail travel here in Sweden is unfortunately not reliable at all.
| In february only 75% of long distance and 90% of short distance
| trips were on time. Many departures were canceled due to a myriad
| of problems ranging from technical issues with the tracks caused
| by poor maintenance, to staffing problems caused by staff being
| off sick or failures of the new staff planning system to allocate
| staff. The problems aren't uniform, some parts of the country are
| worse affected.
|
| The train is fantastic when it runs but it takes a heavy toll on
| quality of life for thousands of commuters when they unexpectedly
| have to spend several hours a day every week waiting for trains
| that don't work. Today my partner spent 3 hours on what should be
| a 70 minute commute.
|
| Instead of spending much more on maintenance (which has been
| underfunded and mismanaged for years) to increase reliability the
| government is spending billions to build a new fancy high speed
| line between Stockholm and Gothenburg. I guess maintenance and
| reliability aren't sexy enough for political campaigning.
|
| Stats in Swedish: https://www.sj.se/sv/om/om-
| sj/hallbarhet/punktlighet.html
| ATsch wrote:
| I wish this was true. European leaders have been speaking a great
| deal about how much they are going to invest into trains and how
| they are the future of green transport, but then in reality they
| are unwilling to do the things that are needed to improve trains
| or even actively sabotage them. (see e.g.
| https://www.investigate-europe.eu/en/2021/derailed-europe-ra...)
|
| Austria is pretty much the only country in the EU that is
| actually making genuine strides in this area.
| golemotron wrote:
| Do they run on renewables?
| avianlyric wrote:
| Like most developed countries, Europe has mostly electric
| trains for passenger transport.
| thriftwy wrote:
| They run on overhead wires?
| occz wrote:
| Depends on the country. In Sweden, mostly yes. Entirely fossil-
| free, with some nuclear in the mix.
| 12baad4db82 wrote:
| In Germany 100% of the ICE and IC trains are run on renewable
| energy.
|
| https://www.bahn.de/service/ueber-uns/umwelt
|
| You can even buy green energy from the Deutsche Bahn
|
| https://www.dbstrom.de/
| ParksNet wrote:
| It doesn't make sense to emphasize passenger travel over goods
| transport for rail. Rail's strength is efficient transport of
| heavy loads at slow speeds.
|
| People are light and often want to go at high speeds.
|
| Europe should reorient its rail network for rail transport, and
| passengers can travel by bus or plane.
|
| But - Europe's rail network is completely reliant on subsidies,
| and its easier to get them when you're transporting politicians
| instead of lumber, steel, milk.
| fundatus wrote:
| Not sure about other countries, but Germany's long distance
| trains are run for-profit. Only commuter trains are subsidized.
| Tracks are paid for by taxes - but so are streets.
| gpvos wrote:
| In most European countries, even if the financing is
| organized differently than in Germany, the long-distance
| trains bring in the most money and would be profitable if run
| entirely commercially.
| sschueller wrote:
| The not so long ago completed Alp transit Gotthard Basistunnel
| was primarily dug for cargo, yes passengers also go through it
| but the idea is for fast, clean cargo transit all the way from
| Amsterdam to Italy through the Swiss alps.
| randomsearch wrote:
| According to a relative who has spent a lifetime being a
| transport nerd, rail is actually more suited to people
| transport and roads to goods.
|
| The reason is surprisingly obvious in hindsight. You bring 1000
| people into a city centre train station and then they deliver
| themselves to their final destination. But goods either have to
| be sent to single purpose custom built lines and depots (eg
| power stations) or else transferred to road and taken onwards
| in a multitude of vehicles.
|
| I am personally very good at delivering myself autonomously on
| foot for several miles, and I will even transfer myself to
| another train in minutes without external equipment. Coal is
| generally less cooperative.
|
| Worse, if you decide to keep people in cars, you have to build
| parking spaces absolutely everywhere they might possibly want
| to go, whereas most goods just need to be dropped off.
|
| People on trains, goods on lorries.
| Aperocky wrote:
| > I am personally very good at delivering myself autonomously
| on foot for several miles
|
| Meanwhile in America people drive a 2 ton vehicle to deliver
| themselves to the parking lot next block (guilty as charged).
| foepys wrote:
| No, just no. You obviously don't have experience with European
| infrastructure. Rush hour traffic on any German Autobahn will
| quickly tell you that adding more busses and cars is the worst
| idea here.
|
| European roads are also impossible to build and maintain
| without subsidies but somehow nobody or at least very few
| people talk about that.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Time is money, so I don't think trains can ever compete with
| flying for long-distance travel (>1000miles).
|
| They could do like the USA does and make flying such a time-
| consuming pain in the ass that it's rarely worth it for trips
| under 5 hours.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Taking a train from Hamburg to, say, Malaga, would be pretty
| uncomfortable. The distance is too big and you would have to
| switch trains several times, with a risk of one train running
| late and missing the next connection.
|
| But for distances up to 4-5 hours by train, especially if the
| connection is direct, it is better to take the train. While the
| flight time may be much shorter, the need to get to/from the
| airport (which tend to be far away from the city itself, if
| only because of noise issues) and to be at the airport 2 hours
| before departure will consume a lot of time.
|
| Train stations, OTOH, are usually located fairly close to the
| city center, if not squarely in it, for historical reasons
| (most important railway links were built prior to 1870, when
| the cities were much smaller than today).
| andbberger wrote:
| high speed night trains can compete at longer distances but
| capital costs become problematic. they would be more cost
| competitive if rail received the same amount of subsidy that
| air does
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I don't think anyone is expecting people to start taking a
| train from London to Istanbul, unless they are doing it for the
| trip in itself. The sweet spot for trains is travel > 100 miles
| and < 500 miles, so say Paris-Nice like is highlighted in the
| article.
| occz wrote:
| In around the 150-800 km span, high speed rail reigns supreme
| over all other modes of transport. Above that, airplanes start
| making more sense, but for any trips in that span HSR should
| really be the default.
| lrem wrote:
| It _really_ depends on the distances and sizes of the cities
| you're going to. Paris-London train is about 3 hours, which is
| likely less than you'll spend on getting to+from an airport.
| Paris-Berlin on the other hand is miserable, unless you love
| trains.
| gpvos wrote:
| Or unless you take a night train. Get in in the evening,
| sleep most of the way and wake up at your destination. That
| can actually save you time compared to a flight, or be a lot
| more comfortable than, e.g., getting up at 4 AM to take a
| flight to a meeting in the morning somewhere.
| room271 wrote:
| 2hrs 16 min is the usual time for London to Paris. So much
| quicker and nicer than flying all round really.
| mywittyname wrote:
| This is exactly my point, trains can't compete with point-to-
| point travel at 500mph. So injecting a bunch of padding on
| either side of flights is the best way of making train travel
| more appealing.
| smcl wrote:
| Those points are usually fairly far outside of their
| respective cities though, to be fair. Planes are always
| going to be preferable for long journeys, London-Istanbul
| is a trip only big train fans would plan to take by rail.
| But I can take some really nice direct train journeys where
| I am - Budapest, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Belgrade and more.
| And since I end up in the city centre it's usually a quick
| tram or subway to where I'm staying, or hopping another
| train onwards to a smaller town. And travelling on the
| train with friends and a beer is really pleasant :-)
| sschueller wrote:
| I can hop in a train at Zurich main station in Switzerland and
| be in Paris in 4 hours or I can get in another one and be in
| Milan in 3 and half hours. On my trip I can use the internet,
| go to the restaurant or relax in the quiet carriage. No
| turbolance, no weather delays and the ride is very quiet.
|
| How much work can you really get done going via airplane? How
| much time do you waste going through security and how well can
| you work crammed into a tiny seat?
|
| Sometimes taking it a bit slower is also good for your health.
| DrBazza wrote:
| Yup. Door to door from south east England to the French Alps
| is nigh on identical if you take a plane and all then
| ceremony around that, or just jump on the Eurostar and travel
| mostly at 140mph or so.
| anamax wrote:
| Zurich to Paris (489km) is shorter than San Francisco to Los
| Angeles (559km).
|
| Europeans think that 100km is a long way while Americans
| think that 100 years is a long time.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Trains could easily beat air travel if they could skip the
| ridiculous security theater. Having to get to the airport 2
| hours early is a whole lot of slack to let trains catch up.
| Shadonototra wrote:
| i love trains, it's cozy
|
| too bad they are trying to make them insanely fast and silent af
|
| life is meant to feel your surroundings
| Aperocky wrote:
| Maybe when you get off at the station then, train as an utility
| should aim for the lowest common denominator.
| tistoon wrote:
| ..and Canada is yet the only G7 country to not have a high-speed
| train.
|
| In fact, in Canada, trains are slow, expensive and not well-
| deserved that you are better-off using your car or plane
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
|
| Barcelona-Madrid | 503km | 2h30 by train | 46$CAD (33 euros)
|
| Toronto-Montreal | 541km | 5h by train | 93$CAD (68 euros)
| reggieband wrote:
| My dream is a high-speed train from Vancouver to Kelowna and
| Calgary, with an optional leg to Edmonton. Like a Rocky
| Mountain Express. I believe this would be a massive driver of
| economic growth for the West Coast of Canada.
|
| What hurts my soul is that Canada has the wealth to afford it,
| the engineering chops to build it but we lack the political
| will. Even more I feel we lack the belief and the vision.
| blamazon wrote:
| One thing that's cool about intercity train travel is that, while
| high speed rail is an ~=obvious economic miracle, trains can be
| slow and still be commercially competitive.
|
| I would much rather take an overnight sleeper train than either
| an early morning flight or a night flight with hotel room. The
| sleeper train will arrive right to the city center and save a lot
| of hassle and I always sleep like a rock on sleeper trains.
|
| My impression is that Europeans are 'waking up' to this
| fundamental difference in value proposition vs aeroplanes and
| overnight trains are becoming more popular.
| gpvos wrote:
| Also, train companies were (and RENFE still is) neglecting
| night trains because their marketing department and direction
| were more interested in snazzy high-speed trains, so they
| didn't upgrade old train stock and stopped night services that
| were still filled to the brim with passengers.
| pm90 wrote:
| I think there's a good value proposition for high speed rail
| when it comes to business travel, which is usually same day.
| But for non business travel, overnight does seem good. However,
| there is simply not a culture of overnight train in the US. In
| India, it is really common and many routes can be quite
| delightful.
| SergeAx wrote:
| Typical distance between European capitals is ~500km. It is less
| than an hour net time by plane, but adding travel from city
| center to the airport, check in, security check, waiting time,
| waiting for luggage, travel from destination airport to city
| center - all those are compounding into 4-5 hours door to door
| depending on road traffic. High speed train is about the same or
| even better, and you have internet connection on board all the
| time.
| chernevik wrote:
| The price comparison with air travel is why a serious carbon tax
| might make sense.
| gigatexal wrote:
| That's going to be tough: the bit about competing with low cost
| flights. We flew Ryan air to Italy for 50 bucks a person each
| way. By train would have been much more expensive and taken a ton
| longer.
|
| But let's see how they build this out. I do love living in a
| Berlin. The public transit system is amazing. It's not perfect.
| But it's reliable enough that I do not miss my car.
| lqet wrote:
| Here in Germany, for as long as I can remember, the government
| praises itself _every year_ for investing as much in rail as
| never before. I have not noticed the service quality to change
| for the better over the last 15 years. The ever-rising
| investments seem to be only enough to keep the status quo of the
| crumbling infrastructure.
| DominikPeters wrote:
| That seems wrong. New high speed lines are being built and have
| recently opened (e.g. Berlin-Munich, soon Stuttgart-Ulm). The
| number of passengers using high speed trains (ICEs) is steadily
| increasing: from 75 million trips in 2009 to 99 million trips
| in 2019. To increase the number of trips like that, lots of
| investment in rolling stock / signalling / lines is needed.
| https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/162877/
| Etheryte wrote:
| The numbers seem large when they're in absolutes, but per
| capita it's moved from ~0.91 trips per person per year to
| ~1.19 trips per person per year. Not to say there is no
| progress, but rather that the number of trips is low to begin
| with. If you contrast the money spent with the end result of
| roughly one trip per person per year, things are not that
| rosy.
| ascar wrote:
| > The numbers seem large when they're in absolutes, but per
| capita...
|
| Which is still an absolute number. Just in another context.
|
| It's a relative improvement of 32% which is approximately
| 3% per year. Not ground breaking, but a nice steady
| improvement.
|
| ICE usage is also much higher (~6x ) than in-country plane
| usage to give another point of context. [1](percentage of
| domestic flights) [2](total air passengers)
|
| I think trips per capita is misleading as a high percentage
| of the population isn't doing much in-country long distance
| travel to begin with.
|
| [1] https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/20
| 21/06...
|
| [2] https://knoema-
| com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/knoema.com/atlas/G...
| Goronmon wrote:
| _The numbers seem large when they 're in absolutes, but per
| capita it's moved from ~0.91 trips per person per year to
| ~1.19 trips per person per year._
|
| I mean, if the goal is to make the smallest number, why
| stop at "per person per year"? If you instead reflected the
| number as "per person per second" then you would see that
| the improvement is barely measurable.
| noirbot wrote:
| But that seems like a reasonably understandable number?
| For all that everyone talks about how amazing trains are
| in other countries, I'm a little surprised to learn that
| I take Amtrak more in the US than the average German
| citizen takes DB, which is generally a much better
| system.
|
| That said, that seems like a pretty good improvement,
| percentage-wise, but a lot of folks talk about trains in
| Europe as if it's so amazing that everyone is taking it
| all the time. I'd be curious of that number relative to
| the number of flights taken per year per capita.
| DominikPeters wrote:
| Looks like in 2019 there were 200-250 million airplane
| trips starting or ending in Germany. So maybe the
| surprise is how little average people travel rather than
| how little they rail.
| ascar wrote:
| Also all international trips are irrelevant for
| comparison as the ICE traffic is national.
| noirbot wrote:
| Give or take. There's plenty of trains between countries
| in Europe that would also be within driving distance.
|
| In my mind, the optimal realistic situation is to have
| rail for longer distances (1-8 hours), but not trans-
| oceanic obviously, and then either ICE or local light
| rail for smaller trips
| ascar wrote:
| The relevant point is that there are no (or very few)
| international ICE trains. Cross-border are usually slower
| Euro-city trains that shouldn't be included in the ICE
| statistics.
| noirbot wrote:
| Yea, that doesn't seem like that useful of a number,
| since Frankfurt is a fairly major layover airport for
| international travel.
|
| I guess the more specific question would be how many
| Germans fly to elsewhere in Germany or Central Europe vs.
| taking a train. I generally have to either do a long car
| trip or a flight to get around in the US outside of some
| specific corridors. Presumably most of Europe has the
| option to take the train instead, but are they?
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| And yet layover flights are decreasing since the 2 engine
| restriction was "lifted". A 787 can fly non stop for as
| long as would be comfortable for someone to be on a
| plane.
|
| According to Wendover Productions.
| twelvechairs wrote:
| > I take Amtrak more in the US than the average German
| citizen takes DB
|
| Its more than ICE trains not more than the whole of DB.
| Its 100m ICE trips per year but 2600m DB trips per year
| in 2019 (c. 31 per capita per year)
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/936254/deutsche-bahn-
| pas...
| noirbot wrote:
| Sure, but then the better US comparison includes things
| like the Chicago/NYC/Boston/DC/Atlanta train systems,
| which I'd imagine a decent number of folks in those
| cities take more than 31 times a year. Heck, I think I've
| taken more than 31 MTA rides per year and I don't even
| live in NYC.
| ascar wrote:
| City train systems are not offered by Deutsche Bahn AG,
| but by local city carriers, so they are not part of that
| statistic. E.g. Munich is mostly run by MVG and had 596
| million passengers in 2018 [1], which aren't included in
| the numbers above. DB only runs the S-Bahn in Munich.
|
| But yes, the 2600m DB passengers probably mixes long
| distance and short distance service to some degree.
|
| https://dewiki.de/Lexikon/M%C3%BCnchner_Verkehrsgesellsch
| aft
| ascar wrote:
| > I'm a little surprised to learn that I take Amtrak more
| in the US than the average German citizen takes DB
|
| Amtrak had 31.3 million passengers in 2016 [1]. That's
| 0.095 passengers per capita. And that's on all Amtrak
| trains, while the German number is just for the ICE high-
| speed trains. Amtrak's high-speed Acela trains only had
| 3.5 million passengers in 2019 or 0.01 per capita. [2]
|
| Per capita is just not a useful number for this
| discussion.
|
| [1] https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/en
| glish/p...
|
| [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1155658/acela-
| high-speed...
| noirbot wrote:
| Sure, but Amtrak is a weird comparison since its "real"
| service area isn't anywhere close to the full population
| of the US. There's plenty of whole states that don't have
| an Amtrak station in them. Most EU countries have a much
| lower median distance to a train station than the US
| does.
|
| I'm not expecting to have them be similar numbers. My
| original point was purely anecdotal - I usually take 1-3
| Amtrak rides a year and I don't even live in a part of
| the country that has good Amtrak service. It's odd to me
| that folks in a country with much better service use it
| less than I feel like I would use Amtrak if I could.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| You probably just travel more than most people. Also,
| America is much bigger than any given European country
| and that leads to greater travel distances.
| ascar wrote:
| My point wasn't to dismiss your anecdotal evidence, but
| just to highlight that the number per capita can be
| easily misleading. Yes Amtrak doesn't serve a lot of the
| US and IIRC has effectively only a single high-speed
| line. But the average German citizen is using high-speed
| railway 100 times more often than the average US citizen
| (for the obvious reasons we both mentioned). You're just
| not the average citizen.
|
| I'm pretty sure many Germans don't use the ICE at all.
| While service is a lot better, the way to and from the
| high-speed train station often makes it inefficient,
| especially because the German autobahn is also world-
| class and doesn't suffer from a "last miles" problem.
| luciusdomitius wrote:
| Well it could be per capita in decade for a ten-fold
| increase, but given that a human career lasts around 4
| such periods, this metric would not be too useful.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Per capita is a standard way to contextualize things in
| statistics and since the original measure is per year,
| per capita per year. The point is not to "make the
| smallest number". 99 million trips per year alone doesn't
| tell us anything. If it was made by 1 million people, the
| scale is big, if it was made by 100 million people, not
| so much. That's why contextualizing per capita is
| important.
| agumonkey wrote:
| A youtuber explained that Italy overlayed high speed rail
| routes now and that it's pretty brilliant. Things are moving.
| NoLinkToMe wrote:
| Absolutely loved taking the train in Italy, fast, convenient,
| cheap, good amenities. Of course the country very much lends
| itself for rail (more or less an elongated territory that can
| run a very fast high-capacity north/south backbone, with
| slower but more ubiquitous horizontal offshoot rail to the
| various smaller cities and villages), but it was still very
| well done. Especially considering how much tunnelling was
| required.
|
| My big concern is that we're not really moving towards a
| single european market nor a single european train
| infrastructure system. I'm not sure if it can thrive as a
| patchwork of different ticketing systems and different rail
| systems. Without it it can't compete for international
| travel. And without it it's hard to get the right economies
| of scale.
| moonchrome wrote:
| Just solving urban transport with train would be a huge
| thing here in Croatia. Rails are so shit that if you need
| to commute it's faster to travel through peak rush hour
| with a car than ride a train. It's depressing really
| because good rails would really connect less developed
| places near the capital and offload the pressure on city.
| isaacimagine wrote:
| I live in Italy and can attest that the high-speed rail
| running along the backbone of the Italian peninsula is really
| nice: it's clean, faster than a regional flight (no need for
| security, etc.), quiet, and it's fun to watch the hills roll
| by out the window.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I only remembered the regional one which was so strange.
| twic wrote:
| I went from Rome to somewhere like Florence by train. Fast,
| easy, reasonably priced, and it was a short walk from my
| seat to a cafe car where a team of sharply uniformed
| gentlemen made me an excellent espresso!
| mikepurvis wrote:
| At least they're speaking into a culture that _wants_ to hear
| about investment in rail, regardless of whether the work being
| done feels like it 's yielding tangible improvements or not.
|
| Here in Canada, it sometimes feels like they're almost ashamed
| of what little they're spending and even try to hide it away,
| or spread the big capital expenses over multiple years to make
| it look like even less.
| lorenzfx wrote:
| > Here in Germany, for as long as I can remember, the
| government praises itself every year for investing as much in
| rail as never before.
|
| Unfortunately, that's not true (the investment part). In
| preparation for the IPO (that never happened because of the
| crash) Deutsche Bahn was heavily tuned for profit since the mid
| 90s which led to a massive decrease in investment. As rail
| infrastructure has a rather long service life, a lot of those
| cost-cutting measures have only beginning to be felt rather
| recently. Now not only do the investments that have not been
| made have to be made up for, but the funding gap has caused the
| infrastructure to decay even further.
|
| Also, a lot of money has been spent on vanity projects like
| Stuttgart 21, instead of much-needed extension of freight lines
| like the one in the upper Rhine valley.
| Lamad123 wrote:
| At least you have that option!! Sounds better than unmaintained
| "crumbling infrastructure."
| toshk wrote:
| Deutsche Bahn is a disaster. Extreme delays up to 2 hours more
| often then not. Rude staff. Forcing moms with kids out of the
| train by police. Travelled for 3 summers through germany, now
| just take the plane.
| [deleted]
| ithinkso wrote:
| It's different in Poland. Here, everyone always complains about
| the rail and it was shit like you wouldn't believe only like 15
| years ago. I've been using trains only sporadically but the
| improvements are absolutely immense, I couldn't believe my
| eyes. Not perfect of course but holy shit did it improve,
| especially regional rails
|
| Of course we had to improve from much lower standards than
| Germany, I guess, so I have no idea if our expectations of good
| are the same but nevertheless
| mszcz wrote:
| Yeah, around that time I was still in college and used trains
| a lot. I remember we had a running joke about everything
| inside the trains we traveled in had some sort of sticky,
| yucky film. When you grabbed something and then let go you
| could kind of feel the train clinging to you. The heating in
| the winter was always either broken or turned to 11. My
| friend once, by accident, melted a big chunk of his shoe on
| the radiator under his seat.
|
| I've recently traveled by that same line. The train has
| changed a bit, the film seems to be gone but the ~100km trip
| takes 5 minutes longer than it used to, averaging <50km/h...
| So still ways to go.
|
| edit: spelling
| cromka wrote:
| > My friend once, by accident, melted a big chunk of his
| shoe on the radiator under his seat.
|
| This happened to me while on a train to Warsaw 20 years
| ago, as a high-school student. Ironically I travelled to
| the Parliament where Buzek, the at-the-time PM, came back
| from Athens having signed the EU Treaty of Accession to
| give an impromptu press release. Crazy how much progres we
| had seen since, and how many set backs.
| tester756 wrote:
| Here (southern Poland)
|
| I do believe that trains are really good in compare to what
| we had like decade or so ago
|
| Quiet, looking modern, clean, reasonable seats and their
| "placement" strategy
|
| For comparison: monthly ticket price is like 10% of minimal
| wage (or 50% of that for students) for distance around
| 100km/day
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| I use trains here in Poland and although there have been big
| improvements, a lot of them are only a facade.
|
| Long distance PKP trains are still late everyday. The
| regional trains in my city tend to be over-packed, and from a
| technical pov they're more like larger diesel buses than
| trains.
|
| However, in response to the earlier comment and this one as
| well, I would have to say that investment doesn't always mean
| immediate visible effects. The biggest investment to make in
| rail is in the infrastructure. You don't feel as a passenger
| which parts of the track are old and which are new, and they
| are pretty expensive to build and maintain.
|
| I also would wonder how much freight rail is in that
| investment, because that we don't see or feel at all.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| I can't help but feel much of this argument is relative.
| From my experience (I'm no longer a European resident)
| almost all of the European rail network that I've traveled
| on (and that's quite a lot) beats much of the
| infrastructure in Anglophone countries--and I'm referring
| to both track and rolling-stock).
|
| (...Perhaps my view has been formed by the fact that I've
| come from a low base in Anglophone countries, so everything
| seems much better in Europe.)
| emteycz wrote:
| Even a diesel bus on rails is much more efficient than a
| diesel bus on roads. It's also much easier to electrify
| than a fleet of buses, an much more ecological when you do
| (because no significant battery). Thus, anything on rails
| is a win.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Agreed - especially in the context of how unbelievably
| clumsy the US is at doing trains.
|
| Here in western Poland however it was a bit easier - lots
| of tracks remained since 19th century. And with these
| diesel buses popping up, an opportunity presented itself
| to go relatively low investment and lots of political
| bang. Those trains are usually way too packed in my
| personal experience.
|
| Similarly, Pendolino high speed rail was developed and
| implemented to huge fanfare. Only the tickets ended up
| being so expensive that basically only the upper-upper-
| middle class wants to take them. Why take the high-speed
| train at double the price to get you there twice as fast,
| when all you need is to get there?
| luciusdomitius wrote:
| Well. In Germany the middle class flies or drives, the
| lower class takes the bus and the upper-upper-middle
| class drives teslas or takes ICEs
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| So who takes the train?
| komadori wrote:
| I think: ICE = Inter-City Express (train)
| axiomsEnd wrote:
| Poland made a huge step back when it comes to trains after
| 1990 - there is a good book by Karol Trammer "Ostre ciecie"
| about disastrous cuts.
|
| On the other hand - Pendolino is a real step forward, and
| at least Cracow is trying to improve general quality and
| invest in intra-city trains, which maybe not the fastest,
| but still much better than buses or trams.
| mickotron wrote:
| At least your trains run on time, or at all. I guess your
| criticism is based on the level of service you have become
| accustomed to in your country, which is incredibly good by
| world standards.
| sshagent wrote:
| As someone who uses UK trains semi frequently, and German
| trains less so....I'd take your trains in a heart beat
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| In the US, trains are seen as ancient cowboy technology. Trying
| to build more train infrastructure is surely an uphill battle.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| It's hard to say. Trains have been chronically underfunded in
| the US for so long that I don't think the US even knows what
| decent train infrastructure is like. Amtrak hasn't had a
| guaranteed budget until the recent infrastructure bill passed
| and was originally designed to just be a publicly-funded
| holding company to sell off its rolling stock and lines.
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| We don't really want the trains (because of the way the US
| developed its cities). Let me give an example. In order to
| add a few more daily routes from Chicago to Milwaukee on
| Amtrak, a freight train would have to hold on a holding
| line for several hours in residential areas to let the
| Amtrak through. The increase in ridership, not just riders
| shifting their schedules, would have been at most a few
| hundred.
|
| So in order to get a few hundred cars off the road, Amtrak
| would have to build a holding track (carbon cost), add more
| rolling stock to the route, burn more diesel, and a
| residential neighborhood full of children would have had
| diesel trains idling for hours a day.
|
| The total economic and environmental value of the program
| was negative by most measures.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| This seems poorly argued to me. You're making a number of
| assumptions here which I don't see why they would hold:
|
| 1. Amtrak ridership will barely grow, at most by a few
| hundred riders per day. If you're this bearish on trains
| then naturally you'll think nobody wants to take the
| train and you don't think Amtrak should build more
| trains. You're coming into this assuming that nobody
| wants to ride the train.
|
| 2. Building dedicated track between Chicago and Milwaukee
| would be cost prohibitive for Amtrak or otherwise
| infeasible. The majority of the cost for building track
| comes from acquiring ROW (so purchasing the land), grade
| separations, and utility relocations needed for laying
| the track. Chicago to Milwaukee in particular is one of
| the cases where these costs are probably _lowest_ as much
| of the ROW is cheap to acquire (outside of the direct
| Chicagoland area), the land is fairly flat so grade
| separations are rarely needed and utility relocations are
| cheap to build.
|
| 3. The opportunity cost in carbon for added vehicles on
| the road would somehow be less than the opportunity cost
| for rolling stock to idle. Even if freight rail continues
| to refuse to electrify in perpetuity, the added carbon
| from private vehicle emissions will quickly dwarf extra
| carbon emissions from idling freight cars.
|
| I think you're coming at this from a "trains are stupid,
| here's why" perspective rather than an unbiased cost and
| carbon perspective. These arguments change in areas where
| ROW acquisition is expensive or grade separations and
| utility locations are difficult, but Chicago to Milwaukee
| has very few of these problems. In particular the problem
| in this part of the US is that while rail works to move
| from city-to-city, most Midwestern cities (other than
| Chicago) have no actual transit to speak of. Once the
| Amtrak drops you into Milwaukee, if there's nowhere to go
| via train, then you're stuck, in which case you may as
| well drive the whole way. That goes back to the fact that
| rail in the US has been historically and systematically
| underfunded.
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| Trains kill lots of people and the noise is excruciating.
| They also impede other traffic when at grade, and require
| massively expensive carbon guzzling infrastructure when not
| at grade. The stations are often designed or located more
| optimally for getting freight to and from, rather than
| people.
|
| The bathrooms are less claustrophobic though.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Trains kill lots of people
|
| Vastly fewer, per passenger mile, then passenger cars,
| comparable to busses, less than scheduled airline flights.
| ls15 wrote:
| > Here in Germany, for as long as I can remember, the
| government praises itself every year for investing as much in
| rail as never before. I have not noticed the service quality to
| change for the better over the last 15 years. The ever-rising
| investments seem to be only enough to keep the status quo of
| the crumbling infrastructure.
|
| And the ticket price inflation is twice as high as regular CPI.
| gtirloni wrote:
| I've used trains many times in Germany and they are far far
| from crumbling.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Trains are incredibly expensive to maintain. The US still
| relies a lot on manual operations when running trains. I wonder
| if they will ever be able to fully automate their travel.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Not so. The whole point of trains is that expenses are
| largely one-off. Building the infrastructure is expensive.
| Recurring costs are _much_ lower than other modes of land
| transport, ceteris paribus.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Rail is much more expensive to maintain than roads on a
| per-kilometer basis - where are you getting your numbers
| from?
| Symbiote wrote:
| High speed rail is much more expensive to maintain than
| ordinary rail. Motorways are also more expensive to
| maintain than normal roads, but I think the railway has
| more capacity than both.
|
| The comparison for a freight railway vs. an equivalent
| road is obvious: private companies who need the entire
| capacity, like mines, build railways.
|
| (I will leave it to someone else to find figures for high
| speed rail vs. an equivalent motorway.)
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Do you have a source? I'd expect rail to be more
| expensive from a capital expenditure perspective (laying
| rail, ties, buying cars, etc) but much cheaper to operate
| (coefficient of friction is lower between train wheels
| and rails than with rubber tires and roads, optimal
| speeding and slowing causing less wear on tracks, less
| downtime as rail repairs are much simpler than road
| repairs, etc)
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| In the UK, Network Rail spends about PS150k per track
| kilometer per year on maintenance and renewal. Track
| needs constant maintenance through ballast redistribution
| and compaction to maintain track geometry; the rail
| itself needs to be ground regularly to maintain its
| shape; points systems need to be maintained, as well as
| signaling systems, earthworks and embankments, even
| vegetation.
|
| Maintenance costs for major roads in the UK (trunk
| motorways and A roads) is something about half that.
| Symbiote wrote:
| All Network Rail railways: PS4479M / 20,000 miles of
| track = PS140000/km
|
| Strategic Road Network: PS700M / 4,436 miles = PS98000/km
|
| Not included: cost of pollution, injuries and deaths on
| the roads.
|
| Not considered: potential and actual capacity of the
| roads vs the railways, potential for historic
| underinvestment meaning higher current costs, whether
| these statistics mean a single track/road lane or all the
| tracks/lanes, usage costs for passengers and freight.
|
| A breakdown of the railways costs would be useful for a
| better comparison, i.e. major lines only.
|
| https://www.networkrail.co.uk/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/07/Ann...
|
| https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploa
| ds/...
| buttercraft wrote:
| You need to factor in the cost of moving goods for each.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| You need to divide maintenance by the actual usage of the
| infrastructure. Railway can handle much larger usage of
| the infrastructure per km than a motorway can. You may
| need 4 motorway lanes to support the usage of a single
| train track in order to handle the same capacity. Per
| capita, rail costs tend to be a lot lower as rail can
| handle much more than 2x motorway throughput.
| saddlerustle wrote:
| Land transport yes, but the operational cost of long
| distance trains is quite a bit higher per passenger-mile
| than planes
| arcticbull wrote:
| Is it though? Or is it the fact that airlines are able to
| externalize their environmental costs, and are generally
| both under-taxed and subsidized.
|
| [edit] I'm not saying that rail isn't subsidized - it
| usually is, and often heavily, to be clear. It's the
| environmental impact that's the thrust of my claim.
| trainsarebetter wrote:
| This. Rail lines don't need much maintenance once
| installed. Compared to a hwy which starts to fall apart
| immediately. Trains are a relatively simple and robust
| transportation method. I wonder what the insurance costs
| look like between the different methods of transportation
| arcticbull wrote:
| Rail infrastructure can be expensive (especially when done as
| inefficiently as in the US) but the actual economics of
| running trains are fantastic. They're the second-most
| efficient way of transporting goods and people - after marine
| shipping.
|
| A freight train can move 1 ton of cargo _480_ miles using a
| single gallon of diesel. [1]
|
| Even city rail, Bart trains in SF average 249 miles per
| gallon equivalent.
|
| Not to mention you only need what - one or two people -
| manning a train carrying the average equivalent of 700
| truckloads. Once you commit to putting it up, it's super
| cheap and efficient, which is why we do it.
|
| [1] https://www.aar.org/article/freight-rail-moving-miles-
| ahead-...
|
| [2]
| https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/GreenSheet.pdf
| krsdcbl wrote:
| I think there's two factors playing into this:
|
| first, Germany has had a high level of sefvice quality with
| trains for the last 15 years, compared to much of the world,
| there's little to improve
|
| and second, DB had become a HUGE holding company of many kinds
| of business endeavours and rail service is not in the states
| hand anymore, while the company "optimizes" for profit which
| makes travel aside of high traffic routes become worse and
| worse and coverage deteriorates.
| AnonCoward4 wrote:
| And in addition to that they also removed a lot of rail lines,
| especially goods traffic. It would've been a boon to have fewer
| trucks on the motorway and probably better for the environment.
| novembermike wrote:
| European trains don't really do that much freight though.
| They tend to be optimized to carry people. America is
| actually way ahead of Europe in terms of rail freight,
| something like 10x depending on the measurement.
| cheschire wrote:
| Having commuted with both american and german rail systems
| before, my educated guess it's likely due to who owns the
| rails. American rail freight companies have far more
| control over prioritization than european freight
| companies.
|
| DB Netz owns the vast majority of german rail and therefore
| prioritizes what makes them the most money. Historically
| that's been carrying people due to all the government and
| company subsidies they get for supporting commuters and
| students. During COVID times the rail freight increased
| dramatically because the personen trains were offline. I
| suspect that will have generated some inertia towards
| freight, but it will take years to see and only if the
| right folks at DB crunch the right numbers.
|
| On the american side, I've sat for 20 or 30 minutes
| regularly (up to an hour on the worst days) while our
| commuter train had to wait for the rail owner's freight
| train to roll through. And that's a regularly scheduled
| commuter!!
| einpoklum wrote:
| But why couldn't DB Netz do both people and freight, if
| both are profitable (after subsidies for passenger
| traffic)? i.e. why does it have to be a choice?
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Because things which are designed to be good at one thing
| will not be as good at other things. There's only so much
| rail network and given a conflict either freight is a
| priority or passengers are. You can't have two number 1
| priorities.
| chiph wrote:
| I'm pretty impressed with India opening dedicated freight
| corridors. It's double-track that is optimized for
| longer, heavier freight trains. It seems obvious that the
| different operational patterns of freight and passenger
| rail means they each should have their own tracks. The
| only thing they did "wrong" IMO was to have level
| crossings where cars & trucks can get hit by the trains.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd6EW9QsRto
| jhgb wrote:
| Russia is ahead of the US, even in absolute tonne-km terms.
| And I don't know about other EU countries, but we (Czech
| Republic) seem to be transporting almost exactly as many
| tonnes per capita per year as the US, despite the fact that
| we have mixed rail traffic. The US just wins on tonne-km
| since it's larger, so the average distances are larger as
| well. But purely the volume of freight seems to be about
| the same, despite heavy passenger traffic.
| sien wrote:
| It's really worth looking at freight modal share by
| transport type. The US does do really well. As does
| Australia.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usa
| g...
| vkou wrote:
| Is it possible that the investments are targeted at improving
| rail service for regions that you don't live in?
| skrbjc wrote:
| Thanks for your perspective from someone close to the situation
| there. I believe many Americans have a picture of a perfect
| system in Europe, but the truth is likely different. Can you
| elaborate on the negative aspects of the train system, as you
| see it?
| nfin wrote:
| my short answer would be: bad at punctuality. Frequent delays
| bigger than 10min.
|
| France for example is better at punctuality IMO. But granted:
| smaller population density, therefore less stops needed in
| rural areas. And lower population density made it also a lot
| easier to build many complete own tracks for fast trains
| (TGV). Also more centralized way of thinking, so if you are
| around Paris: good, if you live far away of big cities, not
| so lucky.
| jmcgough wrote:
| I haven't taken European trains, but Amtrak in the US is
| often atrociously late. They pay to rent tracks from
| freight companies and have to cede right-of-way to not
| block them.
| melenaboija wrote:
| > Frequent delays bigger than 10min
|
| Im an European having spent few years in US and also used
| to complain about this, until I learnt what delays mean in
| domestic US flights.
|
| Not unusual to be few hours and already spent a couple of
| nights at the airport.
| kergonath wrote:
| > smaller population density, therefore less stops needed
| in rural areas.
|
| I see this argument regularly, but I do not find it very
| convincing. There are places in the US about the same size
| as France with much lower population densities as well.
| France is about the same size as Texas. Surely there are
| Texas-sized bits of land with similar densities as France
| in the US.
|
| > Also more centralized way of thinking, so if you are
| around Paris: good, if you live far away of big cities, not
| so lucky.
|
| The network is still very centralised, but it is much
| better than it used to be. Thanks to the Paris south and
| east bypasses, as well as progress on the high speed line
| in the south made things like Lyon-Lille, Lyon-Toulouse,
| Strasbourg-Nantes, or Marseille-Bordeaux quite nice. Lyon-
| Bordeaux is still a pain in the backside because of the
| mountains in the middle.
| Krasnol wrote:
| Deutsche Bahn is a weird construct.
|
| It's been separated into many subsidiaries in preparation for
| a privatisation. It never happened and while subsidiaries
| like Schenker work quite well and drive profits, others like
| those responsible for network or train maintenance create
| only costs and have been neglected. This results in delays in
| your daily experience with DB. DB's "punctuality" or the lack
| of it is actually a running gag here in Germany.
|
| tl;nr: mismanagement.
| kergonath wrote:
| It was quite similar in France. It was a step before
| privatisation, true, but the final step would have been the
| re-nationalisation of the infrastructure and maintenance
| branch, in a usual "privatise the profits and socialise the
| losses" that the European Commission seems to so love.
| Because efficiencies, or something.
| noahtallen wrote:
| I'm an American who recently took a train in Europe from
| Paris to Brussels.
|
| Some brief thoughts:
|
| - It was so fast! Under 90 minutes for a journey which would
| have taken a few hours by car. Clearly much faster than a
| plane on this particular route, due to extra waiting and
| security in airports.
|
| - It was also a very comfortable mode. If you're traveling
| with friends, it'd be very easy to socialize around a table.
| Quieter than a car or plane as well.
|
| - Love being able to hop on/hop off without a huge ordeal or
| waiting in a long line.
|
| - Too expensive for the route. I would have to book much
| further in advance to think it was worth it. I think maybe 6x
| the cost of driving, if I compared to a similar route in the
| US.
|
| - Obviously this is a high speed route. That doesn't exist
| between all cities.
|
| - Looking at other tickets, connecting between two routes can
| be tricky. For example, if I wanted to go from Amsterdam to
| London, I'd might transfer to a different train in Paris.
| That adds a huge amount of time.
|
| I mean, compared to the US, it's a delight! For a similar
| city-to-city distance (Portland to Seattle), I'd love a 90min
| transit mode, especially if it was relatively cheap.
|
| Obviously there are still some route and cost drawbacks, but
| there just isn't much comparable in the US. It's a much
| better system, obviously, even if it's not perfect. At least
| they _have_ high speed rail!
| mynameisash wrote:
| > I mean, compared to the US, it's a delight! For a similar
| city-to-city distance (Portland to Seattle), I'd love a
| 90min transit mode, especially if it was relatively cheap.
|
| Fully agree. Years ago, I took Amtrak from Minnesota to
| Seattle, and it was 36 hours. I enjoyed most everything
| about it except that it took. So. Long. I rarely drive down
| to Portland, but if we had a ~1.5hr train, I'd probably do
| it several times a year. Same for Seattle to BC.
|
| I may have a rose-colored perspective of Europe's rail, but
| I also really enjoy Paris <-> Caen or <-> Versailles. My
| kids loved the night train from Paris to Venice, too. And
| having just flown from the Midwest to Seattle with a
| layover, I would GLADLY trade that ~11 hour travel day
| (from arrival at the airport to getting picked up at
| SeaTac) for an ~18 hour cross-country TGV. It'll never
| happen, but I can dream.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > It'll never happen, but I can dream.
|
| Sorry, but people give up too easily. This isn't a fusion
| power plant. We only have to vote for it.
| yywwbbn wrote:
| Minneapolis to Seattle is around the same distance as
| Madrid to Warsaw. And for that trip you'd need ~4
| transfer and it would take ~30 hours in total. So it
| doesn't seem that much better.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Too expensive for the route
|
| That's the one that surprised me the most. I shouldn't have
| been surprised, I suppose, given that even Amtrak is quite
| expensive compared to air travel, but I was a little
| shocked at just how expensive trains in Europe can be.
| Especially the good ones.
| ghaff wrote:
| The capital of the EU to the capital of France in an
| adjacent country is pretty much the definition of good
| train travel in Europe. Also anything TGV in France. As
| sibling noted, Eurostar from London is also great. Various
| other routes are pretty good.
|
| Prices are pretty high by and large especially if you
| haven't booked well in advance.
|
| As someone else mentioned, very fragmented in Europe
| generally. I actually try to take trains in Europe but not
| always a great option especially when traversing multiple
| countries.
| recuter wrote:
| Eurostar runs direct trains from London to Rotterdam &
| Amsterdam, 3.5 and 4 hours respectively.
|
| You can't really compare to a similar route in the US
| because there are hardly any and hardly anybody uses them.
| The train routes in EU are busy and frequently _full_ ,
| just like planes. Obviously booking ahead is cheaper, how
| else could you do it?
|
| Top tip, plan a head and read up a little bit on seat61:
|
| https://www.seat61.com/trains-and-routes/london-to-
| amsterdam...
|
| Top tip 2:
|
| Overnight trains is one of the best ways to see Europe as a
| backpacker on the cheap. The routes are often scenic and
| the cost is frequently cheaper than anything else since you
| don't have to pay for accommodations.
|
| Buses are a thing too. And they are not greyhound bad, but
| definitely not as good as trains.
| gbear605 wrote:
| Long distance trains in the US are frequently full, they
| just don't run as often. And the US does the same thing
| where it's cheaper in advance.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| We have the same buses as you these days. Megabus exists
| to connect many larger metropolitan areas. More or less
| the same vehicles as you'd find for similar services in
| Europe. Sadly, none of the "sleeper bus" variety that
| have existed (from time to time) in Europe.
| avianlyric wrote:
| On this specific example
|
| > Amsterdam to London
|
| Eurostar runs a direct route, with passport control in
| Amsterdam. But looking at any link from Europe to London
| that isn't directly served by Eurostar (i.e. any city
| except Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels) is going to suck.
| prennert wrote:
| Depends what you optimize for. I used to travel from
| Germany to London and had to change in Brussels. Yes you
| have to wait a bit, but not like at an airport. The
| walking distances and wait times are very small and the
| trains connect timewise so it is fairly stress free.
|
| If you want to play it super save, you can stop for a
| good meal in Brussels as you are taking a break in the
| middle of a city, rather than hanging around in an
| airport.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| I've taken Eurostar from London and changed in Paris for
| Grenoble and Brussels for Amsterdam (before the direct
| train.) It was completely fine. No different from any
| other train journey with a change.
|
| I think it may have taken a while to get from Brussels to
| Amsterdam because that line hadn't yet been upgraded at
| the time but the journey time wasn't far off what it
| would have been getting to and flying from
| Heathrow/Gatwick/Stansted.
| lqet wrote:
| A short answer for Germany would be: the system is operating
| at its absolute limits. The results are employee burnout and
| bad reliability.
|
| An example: a few years ago, they introduced a new way to
| reduce delays caused by trains arriving so late at their
| destination that they cannot make their scheduled return
| trip. This is the so-called "Pofalla-Turn", named after the
| manager who supported it: if a train has a delay of over 30
| minutes, the train will often just stop at some station and
| the passengers are told "the train ends here". They then have
| to figure out their journey using alternative trains.
|
| Just imagine this happening on a flight. I often witness
| completely helpless tourists lost at my local rail station
| who don't speak the language and cannot understand why the
| train _they have an expensive ticket and reservation for_
| just stopped, drove back, and left them stranded here.
|
| If you are meeting/visiting someone in a city more than 200
| km away, and if you tell them that you plan to take the
| train, the usual response is: "Oh, good luck".
| jhgb wrote:
| > the train will often just stop at some station and the
| passengers are told "the train ends here". They then have
| to figure out their journey using alternative trains.
|
| In the Czech Republic, what would happen in that case would
| be that the railway company would shuttle the passengers to
| their destination using buses. This doesn't happen in
| Germany?
| [deleted]
| ls15 wrote:
| The typical scenario is that passengers can just take
| another train. Depending on the ticket, the railway is
| responsible for refunding cost for alternative
| transportation (EU law), but there can be frustrating
| edge cases where people are left stranded, because there
| is no alternative, but a lot of bureaucracy. The railway
| may be responsible for refunding accommodation then, but
| I think this would not necessarily be the case for
| monthly tickets, student tickets and so on, when there is
| no explicit booking for a canceled train like with a
| regular ticket.
| jhgb wrote:
| What I meant was that the buses are provided if there's
| no other option, like another train.
| ls15 wrote:
| In some cases, but not always. Probably depends on
| multiple factors.
| lioeters wrote:
| My most memorable train experience in Germany was when
| Deutsche Bahn left me in Munich in the middle of the
| night. I had a connection there but my first train was
| ~10 minutes late, and my second train had already left.
| So I spent the whole night at the train station until
| ~5am when I could catch another train in the direction I
| needed. I've taken many train trips in the Czech
| Republic, and that has never happened.
| ls15 wrote:
| I never take the last possible connection of a day,
| because of this risk.
| bombcar wrote:
| Amtrak does that sometimes (the train and/or crew die on
| the rails) but then they produce a bus from somewhere and
| get you to your destination.
|
| At least in the US, once a company has accepted you on your
| journey they have to _eventually_ get you to your
| destination, or get you to agree to give up. One time the
| train even stopped and told people trying to make a
| connection to get out; they 'd called taxis to meet the
| other train.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > if a train has a delay of over 30 minutes, the train will
| often just stop at some station
|
| I've seen that happen in London, sadly, although it's less
| of a problem given the general frequency and other
| alternatives (bus, etc.) Also the "if the train is going to
| be delayed enough to cause payouts, just take it out of
| service before the deadline" trick.
| emn13 wrote:
| One bit that might surprise people is how fragmented it was
| (probably still is?). I'll see if I can find more sources,
| but e.g. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=1
| 0.1.1.67... illustrates some of the issues. Gauges vary.
| Voltages vary. Safety systems vary. Edit: here's a nice
| diagram from (of course) wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/
| wiki/Railway_electrification_system...
|
| Europe doesn't have a rail system, it has dozens of systems;
| and they're not all compatible - which given this all
| originated in pre-EU times, is hardly surprising.
|
| And that also means that it can take quite a long time to
| travel by rail, despite high-speed rail. If you need to cross
| rail-system borders - some of which are even intra-national
| like in France, you may need to change trains and/or take
| illogical routes. If, however, you're lucky and your route is
| on the happy path - then it can be quite competitive with
| short-haul flights both in hassle (if not quite speed) and
| cost.
|
| Then there's the fact that operators are fragmented too, so
| booking a ticket or finding the optimal route can be
| surprisingly tricky once you need to cross several borders.
| I'm not sure this is _worse_ than navigating airline booking
| systems, mind you, but it sure isn 't efficient either.
| gpvos wrote:
| The thing is, you _used_ to be able to buy a ticket from,
| say, Lisbon to Copenhagen, from any ticket booth, and just
| take any reasonable train on the (multi-day) route. But
| nowadays many national railway companies use yield
| management, so that original price is now the full price
| which is a lot higher, and actually you simply can 't buy
| such tickets anymore, you must use booking systems that
| just cannot book all trains. In some countries such as
| France and Spain reservations are now obligatory for long-
| distance trains.
|
| At some international ticket booths you can still book
| complicated trips, but if you try to book them yourself
| over the internet, you will have to cut up the trip into
| separate parts which are treated as separate trips for the
| travel guarantee, so if you miss a connection due to a
| delay beyond your control you don't have the right to take
| the next train if it's not part of the same trip.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Nothing is perfect, but also remember that people always find
| things to complain about, particularly if they don't have
| personal experience of less well functioning systems.
| uoaei wrote:
| By that logic, no one should complain about anything,
| because we don't live in literal hell. But that is of
| course preposterous.
| Sharlin wrote:
| That's not what I meant. Only that the fact that people
| complain about X in both A and B does not tell much about
| the relative quality of X in A compared to B because the
| expectations and standards may be very different.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| It's good to complain and improve things but having moved
| to the US I now miss even British trains!
| dijit wrote:
| Parent: people often complain because it's the worst
| they've ever had, take it with a pinch of salt.
|
| You: well you can't complain about anything then can
| you!?
|
| ----
|
| You can complain, but it's good to have an understanding
| of what you're complaining about, the parent is right. We
| are quick to complain about imperfection when a lot of
| what we have is truly quite good.
|
| Sometimes it's legitimate criticism, sometimes it's being
| spoiled.
|
| Any criticism that is not specific can (and probably
| should) be dismissed outright. Complaints and criticism
| should always be specific.
| lelandbatey wrote:
| They're not saying there's no reason to complain. They're
| pointing out a very valid phenomena. For those of us on
| the total outside, it helps us temper bad feedback.
| Otherwise, you can end up with a situation like the
| following:
|
| Person A from place without infrastructure X: wow, life
| with infrastructure X sure would be better. I wonder if
| we should invest in X?
|
| Person B from place with infrastructure X: There's lots
| of problems and it annoys me daily.
|
| Note that in this situation, the wrong conclusion is to
| say _" well, then maybe infrastructure X is a bad idea"_.
| We want to avoid that line of thinking (since it's not an
| appropriate conclusion given the statements), so it's
| worth pointing out many tempering factors, such as those
| mentioned by the parent comment.
| neoyagami wrote:
| I went to germany a cuple of years ago, and my experience was
| delightful, here in chile in the years of the coup, the rail
| system was almost completely dismantled in favor of trucks and
| buses, I dream the day I could travel in train to the north of
| the country in a moderate modern train :)
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" The ever-rising investments seem to be only enough to keep
| the status quo of the crumbling infrastructure."_
|
| It's quite a while since I've traveled by Deutsche Bahn but I
| found it very efficient and on time when I did. What do you
| reckon is the reason for the crumbling infrastructure? There
| was huge reinvestment after the war to renew war-damaged
| infrastructure and rail infrastructure usually has a very long
| life (many rail bridges and viaducts built in the mid 1800s are
| still in service today).
|
| Was that war reconstruction rushed/not well implemented or
| what?
| Fargren wrote:
| Living in Spain, I love trains and take them over airplane when
| it's an option. However, trains are often around twice as
| expensive as flying for may routes. I know nothing about trains,
| but intuitively I would expect the opposite, and I really wish it
| was more affordable, specially high speed rail.
| Glawen wrote:
| A plane doesn't have to build and maintain km of tracks, it
| just uses airport facilities (subsidised usually) and untaxed
| kerosene. A high speed train can only go to a few destination,
| the tracks can hardly be repaid
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| A lot of time those tracks are already paid for by freight
| trains.
|
| The track tax is just what governments choose to do -
| especially since cargo trucks barely pay any road access tax.
| Leherenn wrote:
| Rail infrastructure is very expensive compared to planes. An
| airport is expensive, but once you've built it you're pretty
| much immediately connected to half the world. With a train
| station, you need a track to each surrounding stations,
| maintain them, and so on. Also, train doesn't scale down as
| well, it quickly becomes inefficient for the less dense routes.
|
| People are talking about subsidies (by not taxing fuel for
| instance) for planes, but trains are also directly subsidised
| to the tune of billions each year. The rail network just costs
| a ton to build and maintain.
| emn13 wrote:
| Sure, but so are airports and so are roads. And all forms of
| infrastructure are sometimes prestige projects, and all are
| sometimes subject to political choices that while legitimate,
| in retrospect turn out to have been questionable.
|
| It's possible that despite all that rail has higher costs -
| but it's also quite possible that the dominating factor is
| the unreasonably subsidized airline fuel. The tax-exempt
| status is absurd, especially given other fuel and power
| duties - not to mention that a reasonable accounting _should_
| be taxing fuel high enough to cover the costs of the climate-
| change externalities, which would result in an even higher
| price (as it happens, due to cloud formation, air travel
| causes even more warming than ground based fossil fuel
| consumption, though I 'm unaware of whether that's a
| significant difference).
|
| If indeed an honest accounting were to reveal that flight is
| still cheaper: great! But I seriously doubt it; and in any
| case it's certainly time to stop subsidizing air travel like
| this. Let the sector succeed or fail on its own merits, not
| by virtue of tax shenanigans.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Yeah, rail infrastructure costs O(distance) while plane
| infrastructure costs O(trips).
| occz wrote:
| >but trains are also directly subsidised to the tune of
| billions each year. The rail network just costs a ton to
| build and maintain.
|
| Just wait until you hear about how subsidised the
| infrastructure for cars and trucks are.
| julienb_sea wrote:
| Construction of road infrastructure can be compared to
| construction of tracks and stations, and it's fair to say
| taxpayers foot the bill in full for both.
|
| The difference is that trains operate at a loss even with
| high ticket prices and operational subsidies are necessary
| for market viability. That is not the case with car and
| truck usage.
| burlesona wrote:
| At least in the US, local road networks in the suburbs
| and rural areas bleed money terribly, and as fuel taxes
| have not kept pace with inflation even the inner city
| streets and crowded highways can barely break even.
| namdnay wrote:
| The major subsidy to planes is that you don't have to clean
| up the CO2 you spew out
| emn13 wrote:
| But even beyond that - fuel and other power sources have
| been taxed well before climate change was a political
| issue, and jet fuel is exempt from all of that. It smacks
| of regulatory capture.
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| The train feels more civilized.
|
| You can afford to have a bit more space to sit, wider aisles to
| walk and can fit a much nicer kitchen.
|
| Bigger tables too so you can spread out your
| work/shopping/food.
|
| If you haven't tried train food before I highly recommend it.
| It's stereotypically good in the same way plane food is
| stereotypically bad.
| ews wrote:
| RENFE (national railroad company) had no competitors until very
| recently, they opened the market just months ago. I am hopeful
| the new high speed companies (i.e Ouigo) makes the market much
| more competitive and lowers pricing in all tiers. Still, for
| same price and roughly same time, I always prefer using the
| train to the planes.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The article hints at why this is:
|
| > The fact remains that, despite the European Union's support
| for rail, the bloc's governments continue to grant enormous
| subsidies to airlines -- in the form of bailout packages as
| well as low taxes on jet fuel -- although that could change
| soon.
| Hermel wrote:
| By definition, low taxes are not a subsidy. It is the trains
| that are heavily subsidized. The main reason behind the price
| difference is that there is plenty of competition between
| airlines for a given flight, eg Paris-Berlin, but no
| competition for the same train connection.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| The argument that lower taxes isn't a subsidy is just
| stupid. It makes absolutely no meaningful difference if
| someone pays the same taxes as everyone else but then the
| government pay them some money, or if someone pays
| correspondingly lower taxes. In the end the recipient ends
| up with exactly the same amount of more money, and the
| government ends up with exactly the same amount of less
| money.
| jhgb wrote:
| > By definition, low taxes are not a subsidy.
|
| The conspicuous lack of Pigouvian taxes on a fossil fuel
| for just one industry is definitely a subsidy. Someone else
| is paying for the externalities.
| [deleted]
| namdnay wrote:
| Flag-carrier Airlines are heavily subsidized by the
| implicit guarantee that the state will do everything it can
| to bail them out
| pc86 wrote:
| They are if other industries consuming the _same product_
| pay different tax rates. In this example, an airline
| purchasing 1L of kerosene pays a different rate than a
| train purchasing the same 1L of the same kerosene. That 's
| the textbook definition of a subsidy.
| [deleted]
| vmception wrote:
| Flying in Spain and many parts of Europe is insanely and
| artificially cheap. I've seen bus passes more expensive, and
| the bus passes were the price I expected.
| kergonath wrote:
| Yes. This is not sustainable.
| cryptoz wrote:
| Same in the US. I would love to take the train from Seattle to
| SF, but, it costs so much more than a flight would, and takes a
| very long time compared. Sleeper cars make the price nearly
| double, and for such a long trip, train seats without a sleeper
| are somehow worse than plane seats.
|
| I have taken many Amtrak short trips, like 1h, and 50% of the
| time the train leaves more than 1h late (and 100% it leaves
| late, some amount). So I leave my departure location after I
| was meant to arrive at my arrival location.
|
| In 2005 I took a night train from Budapest to Belgrade, but not
| really - the ticket I paid for, the platform sign, the ticket
| agent, all told me that. But once on the train passing the
| border, the passport checker told me that the route hadn't gone
| to Belgrade in some time, and that I would be dumped at 2am in
| Novi Sad, where I was meant to buy a bus ticket. Tickets closed
| and Euros not accepted. Was a difficult time to resolve, but I
| bought overpriced Dinars from some travellers with my Euros and
| got a last minute ticket. Arrived in Belgrade to find 0 hotel
| rooms due to a football match.
|
| I love trains. But the process needs improvement, just like
| airplanes. Long-distance travel without a car is honestly quite
| difficult in Europe and USA imo.
|
| Planes will sell you tickets that don't exist and then pretend
| like a night in a hotel makes up for it. They abuse you at
| security. They treat you like trash and everybody deals with
| it.
|
| Please make trains better, Amtrak, and EU. Please.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Every improvement you are asking for (except for lower
| prices) is going to cost more money.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Does it really cost money to have the Belgrade train
| destination sign say "must buy bus ticket and transfer in
| Novi Sad"?
| dwighttk wrote:
| Oh yeah a sign would work... (I was thinking continuing
| the train to the stated destination.)
| ciupicri wrote:
| I find it odd that the train ticket didn't get you to your
| final destination. If the train doesn't travel on some part
| of the route, the railway company usually gets you on a bus
| for that part and you don't have to do anything. Just get off
| the train and hop in the bus.
|
| N.B. Hungary has been an EU member since 2004, but Serbia is
| still not.
| lost_soul wrote:
| If I had to apply an "aggravation factor", air travel is
| worse. The train just doesn't seem to bug me as much. One
| difference is that when the train arrives I'm in the city
| center. When the plane arrives I'm at the airport.
| simonsarris wrote:
| This is mentioned near the end of the article but the reason
| those short domestic flights are so cheap in Europe is that
| commercial kerosene is currently tax exempt in every single EU
| member state. Jet fuel is cheaper per gallon in the EU than it
| is in the USA! (or was, before the current war)
|
| In typically tax-happy Europe this always struck me as odd,
| agree it is sad when you find out an airplane ticket is cheaper
| than a corresponding train.
| saddlerustle wrote:
| Yes, but note usually around 30% of the ticket price of a
| european short-haul flight is already other taxes. This is
| compared to train tickets that include a 30%+ _subsidy_
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| Airports, especially smaller ones, are heavily subsidized
| in Europe.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| "Follow the money..."
| KarlKemp wrote:
| I believe this is a remnant of some complications with
| regards to taxation in an international context, similar to
| duty-free shopping.
|
| Another consideration may be the consequences of possibly
| diverging tax rates for kerosene: if it's much cheaper to
| fill up in, say, Spain, than it is in France, it might become
| cheaper to carry the fuel for the return leg, even if the
| increased weight increases fuel consumption.
|
| I'm not saying that any of this _justifies_ the state of
| affairs. But it 's possible to arrive at it even with mostly
| good intentions.
| PaywallBuster wrote:
| as I remember, the discussion went that if EU implemented a
| tariff on on jet fuel companies would simply load their
| planes elsewhere, e.g. Russia/Dubai where there's abundant
| fuel with little to no tax
|
| not so relevant for the shorter trips intra-EU, but still a
| factor
| dkural wrote:
| It'll be more expensive to constantly fly back and forth to
| Dubai to load up than to simply pay the tax. Dubai is not
| that close to Paris. It takes about 7-8 hours. I don't know
| if you've been checking the news lately but Russia is out
| of the question for airplanes. They won't even return
| leased airplanes back anymore.
| megablast wrote:
| Most flights are local.
|
| They aren't going to russia for the Paris London flight.
| verve_rat wrote:
| If they did do that then the EU could introduce a tariff on
| the fuel they import when they fly back in.
|
| There would be rules around a fuel flight vs a legit
| passenger/cargo service, assuming they don't want to tax
| the extra fuel left in a plane at the end of a flight.
|
| But that seem like a pretty straightforward problem to
| solve.
| cinntaile wrote:
| I bet this keeps a lot of national airlines afloat and
| they're already barely afloat, if they start taxing kerosene
| they'll require even more subsidies from their governments.
| pydry wrote:
| There's also intense competition among airlines which cuts
| costs to the bone. That doesnt happen for rail.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| I used to travel frequently between Vienna and Paris (to visit
| relatives in Paris) and I quickly stopped flying between the two
| cities when I discovered the city-to-city train then called the
| _' Mozart'_ (it ceased service in 2007):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_(train).
|
| I found that whilst the duration of the flying time was
| considerably shorter than the train trip the overall flying time
| was still quite long given all the rigmarole at the airports and
| getting to and from them.
|
| I found that traveling this intercity circuit on the _Mozart_
| much more enjoyable and relaxing than flying even though the trip
| took typically between 13 and 14 hours (Wiki says 13h10), the
| food was quite excellent (for a train) and the trips were in the
| daytime so there was much scenery to look at. When not doing that
| I could occupy myself with written /paperwork work or read a book
| and not be interrupted. What was really excellent about the
| _Mozart_ was that it was not only an intercity train but also it
| took me directly to the very heart of both cities--there was no
| need to travel to the outskirts of the cities to their airports
| (I 've always found traveling to and from airports a nuisance and
| pain so I've always considered train travel a great advantage
| over flying (except when flying exceptionally long distances,
| intercontinental, etc.).
|
| I've not done that circuit for quite some years now and I'm sorry
| to see the _Mozart_ service terminated. After reading the article
| I did a check on its replacement service and it seems that now a
| section of the trip is by TGV and that there are now two changes
| between the cities. Despite the introduction of the TGV, the
| travel time between Paris and Vienna is 13h15 -- which is all of
| 5 minutes longer than the nominal time taken by the _Mozart._
| Shame really.
|
| Nevertheless, I cannot help but believe that Europe's investment
| in passenger train transport will pay off handsomely. When I was
| doing a lot of traveling around Europe by train I found most of
| the services quite excellent--much more so than in Anglophone
| countries--and I reckon that the main reason for this is that
| culturally the Europeans seem to be much more at home with and
| adapted to train travel. As such, it's very unlikely that that
| investment in trains will be wasted.
| monksy wrote:
| As someone who just rode in a sleeper car for the second time. I
| like amtrak when I can do this. It's completely unreasonable for
| a round trip, but I did Chicago->Seattle and Chicago to Boston
| (Where I"m currently here.. and will be flying back tomorrow).
|
| It's a mostly great experience... all due to the scenery you're
| watching, not so much everything else.
|
| What worries me if it becomes more privatized: You'll see the
| experience drop a lot more, features you need for long distance
| trips (big seat+power outlet) removed. You'll get a lot more
| stressed employees who will create conflicts etc.
|
| What I would like to see:
|
| - More prioritization on autonomous cars
|
| - More frequent routes
|
| - Infrastructure improvements for faster service (We could and
| should have a hub/spoke model for ICE like passenger rail)
|
| - Support with integration into the communities they connect
| into. (Build the town around it) Create a standard that local
| rental car companies are working with the passengers arriving and
| leaving.
|
| - General equipment refreshes (A lot of it is maintenance by
| schedule rather than reactory.. a lot of the experience is pretty
| dirty) Also there is an attitude with the coach passengers that
| the train is a trashcan because it's already pretty dirty. Being
| in coach is freaking brutal if you have to be on it more than 9
| hours or overnight.
|
| Btw Their employees are a lot more helpful about being
| functionally helpful when something goes wrong. Airline employees
| just escalate and pull the "screw you, you won't get help" when
| something goes wrong in person. (Yea I'm looking at you IAH gate
| agent that just left the desk right before boarding.. the captain
| was playing secretary). No the empire builder doesn't have WIFI..
| but how will dinner work.. they're more than helpful at
| explaining it, etc.
| bgorman wrote:
| The Brightline is probably the nicest railway experience in
| North America, and it is 100% private. (South Florida)
| thebean11 wrote:
| I can't wrap my head around how expensive Amtrak is, given that
| it's so heavily subsidized by the government.
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, it's not really. It makes money on the Northeast
| Corridor and loses it on (most of)the rest of the country. A
| profitable Amtrak would basically service Boston to DC.
| chrisbolt wrote:
| Part of the reason that Amtrak is expensive is that it's so
| slow. For a flight from Chicago to Seattle you only need to
| pay pilots/flight attendants/etc for around 5 hours of work,
| whereas for Amtrak it's 46 hours or more.
|
| Wendover Productions goes into detail:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwjwePe-HmA
| monksy wrote:
| Yes/No.
|
| You can get a California zephyer ticket from Chicago->Seattle
| for 160 in coach one way. That's a really good deal for 2k+
| miles, generous baggage allowance, etc (if you can tolerate
| that).
|
| Sleepers can go 1k+ for the 2.5d. In the winter (what I did)
| was 600$. I'm also not paying for the efficency. I'm paying
| for the experience of the hotel, meals, convenence of travel,
| and the ability to watch out the window.
| thebean11 wrote:
| I remember trying to get from NYC to DC and the prices
| being higher than flights. I took a bus instead.
| gbear605 wrote:
| Train prices go up a lot (a factor of 2 or more) when
| it's close to the time of the train, since the price is
| based on how full the train is currently booked. You
| might get cheaper train trips by booking further out.
|
| Buses will still beat the cost, but they're slower and
| less comfortable.
| ghaff wrote:
| Buses on the northeast corridor will certainly be
| cheaper. Trains (especially Acela) are competing with
| flying given the huge amount of business travel.
| Tushon wrote:
| I've never seen this personally (living in DC area since
| 2014). At best, flights were on par and you still had to
| transport from airport to destination vs being likely in
| the city center (as noted elsewhere in this thread
| already) and deal with all the other airport time. Bus is
| definitely cheaper today though with highly variable
| experience along the way.
| supertrope wrote:
| If you consider the time-money spent in security
| checkpoints and riding taxis it's a wash. Amtrak is able
| to charge more because it's a better experience than a
| flight! But only on the NY-DC route.
| uuyi wrote:
| Good on you Europe. Here in the UK we are heavily investing in
| rail replacement busses at the moment.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Bus networks are a pretty decent solution as well. Rail is very
| expensive and there's not that many regions where you can
| operate it economically. In particular with electrical busses
| becoming better you can shift a lot of traffic away from
| personal vehicles on existing infrastructure.
| jsinai wrote:
| fyi GP's post is sarcasm. In UK "rail replacement bus" means
| the train route is cancelled and there's a replacement bus
| instead.
|
| Bus networks can work over small high density areas.
| Johannesburg has been building a bus network with exclusive
| lanes for years, but it's designed to work in conjunction
| with its part complete metro. Cambridge, UK, has limited
| "busways" which connect the local villages. However, over
| large distances, I fail to see how buses can be more
| efficient. A single train can move hundreds of people over
| hundreds of kilometres, at much higher speeds than a bus, and
| with very little pollution.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Rail replacement buses are what the rail companies lay on
| when they can't run their trains because of some failure. It
| isn't an investment in the way you interpreted it.
| fredoliveira wrote:
| The UK is a European country. Not in the EU anymore, but you
| folks didn't move continents ;-)
| chrisseaton wrote:
| In the UK, 'Europe' in this kind of context has almost always
| meant 'the continental mainland'. That's not a Brexit thing -
| that's the terminology for as long as I've been alive.
| avianlyric wrote:
| Culturally we generally consider Europe to mean continental
| Europe i.e. Europe without the islands. Thus the U.K. being
| an island nation isn't part of Europe.
|
| But the definition of Europe will change depending on who
| you're talking to and what your talking about.
| namdnay wrote:
| To be pedantic, they never were on the continent :)
|
| Apart from Gibraltar I guess
| detritus wrote:
| *stares at continental shelf depth map around the UK
| described on old European map on wall
| IshKebab wrote:
| Ha yes well... "the continent" refers to the European
| land mass. C.f. "continental breakfast". But the UK is
| part of the European continent in the continental shelf
| sense. The word "continent" is not really well defined.
| Here's a nice video about it:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrsxRJdwfM0
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It does seem poorly defined. If it were the land mass, I
| would expect that Europe extended all the way to the
| other end of Russia.
| DrBazza wrote:
| Never you say? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland
| jbverschoor wrote:
| You can invest all you want, but if you can't manage it properly,
| people will keep flying... Get better management and then invest
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| Certainly not in the UK, our ticket prices keep going up
| massively and the service is getting worse and worse, putting on
| smaller and smaller trains and more delays and cancellations than
| ever, with most train stations badly run down.
|
| It's a complete joke. The trains are far worse and largely more
| expensive than they were ten years ago.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Well our train service is highly privatised, and in a way that
| does not engender competition.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| As an American who doesn't drive, the experience of trains in the
| EU compared to the US is just delightful. Yes, there are super
| cheap flights and I used them often for longer haul trips but the
| trains were always amazing- I've done trips including Mariupol to
| Lviv, Budapest to Berlin, and Berlin to Munich and always had a
| great experience. The Romania-Chisinau line is quite old but part
| of its charm. I see a lot of people talking about the expense
| compared to the cheap flights- those are solid and I've used them
| a lot but after you factor in the waiting time at airports, the
| unexpected fees in case your bag is a kilo too heavy, the uber to
| and from a far away airport, etc. it's really not that much of a
| difference. There is no comparison to trains in the U.S. (e.g. I
| took one for 3 days from DC to LA; while I enjoyed it, it was a
| slough with no real food facilities for the passengers not in
| sleeper cars, old chairs, etc.). I hope there will be more
| investment, especially in the Baltics.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Sadly, anyone noticeably younger than me missed the chance to
| ride the Hellas Express (Dortmund to Athens). 3 days, 2 nights.
| Rode it twice. Then Yugoslavia came apart, war broke out, and
| the Hellas Express was no more.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| That would have been incredible. I had actually started one
| journey in Athens and did the usual beach thing on an island
| before flying to Hungary to begin a train trip up to Germany
| (where I was starting a new job some days later). I would
| certainly have taken a train if I could. I had a chance to
| spend a few days in Albania and Serbia just before the
| pandemic and was very pleasantly surprised as to the
| countries. I don't know why but Albania I had a picture in my
| head as a very Soviet brutal country stuck in the mid 1900's
| but I think I saw far more prosperity in Tirana than say in
| Skopje.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| I remember going to Crimea one summer some 20 years ago, it
| took almost 40 hours but boy it was something I'll never
| forget! Especially the babushkas with local produce, pelmeni
| and so on at every stop so you could buy them (so cheaply) just
| grabbing them from their hands through the window. Delicious
| food, great views and an excellent company.
|
| On the other side of the equations are superfast trains like
| the TGV, this one is expensive but in my humble opinion it is
| faster than plane on routes like Paris-Lyon and I'll take train
| over plane on any day at distances shorter than 500-700km.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Ah that sounds amazing! On the trains in Ukraine they did
| still have the babushkas hawking produce and fish at the
| stops and I have had some lovely conversations on these
| trains but I would have loved to go to Crimea. A Siberian
| railway trip is still on the bucket list but I will wait
| until things are less contentious and so I'm not putting
| dollars into the hands of the Putin regime.
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| > I hope there will be more investment, especially in the
| Baltics.
|
| There is an ongoing development, Rail Baltica, European gauge,
| being built to join Helsinki through the Baltic states, to
| Poland, which will link up with Germany. The end date has
| slipped (it was supposed to be in 2024, now it's pushed to
| 2026) but construction is already ongoing, and it looks quite
| promising.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Yes, I was thinking specifically about this. I was working
| for the Estonian gov a while back and thought it would be
| great for this to be pushed forward; unfortunately the
| mistiming probably would have killed that new mall that was
| built around one of the stations if covid didn't. But maybe
| they'll get that and the tunnel to Helsinki done at the same
| time :)
| gandalfian wrote:
| Here in the UK the train to London is five hours and PS75. The
| coach is PS15 and eight hours. Four people in a car perhaps PS10
| a head. Trains are nicer but there is something annoyingly
| mysterious about the ecomomcs of it all.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| It's a question of economy of scale. The amount of road vehicle
| that has been built over the last 150 years vastly supersedes
| the amount of train over an even longer period. More train,
| means better train. Hopefully advances in computer aided design
| will allow some narrowing of that gap.
|
| EDIT: There is also an inherent feature in trains that greatly
| reduces the rate of progress. With toad vehicles there is very
| good decoupling between the track and the vehicle, from a
| design pov. With trains the chassis design is more coupled to
| the track design. And since you can't really upgrade track
| easily, on both train and road, there are more constraints in
| new train design.
| elthor89 wrote:
| It is there but I wish there was a more comprehensive network of
| high speed rail in Europe.
|
| Going from Amsterdam to Spain the plane seems to win on price and
| travel time.
|
| One thing that isn't infrastructure but could easily be improved
| is buying international train tickets. So often I see that one
| needs to call or you can only book one month ahead.
|
| Surely we could have solved that by now..
| dmitriid wrote:
| Flying from Stockholm to Copenhagen (or even Malmo or
| Gothenburg) is often a better alternative to trains. Thankfully
| there's now an express train to Gothenburg, but that's about
| it.
| ATsch wrote:
| It is absolutely possible, however government leaders have
| stubbornly blocked it: https://www.investigate-
| europe.eu/en/2021/european-governmen...
| DominikPeters wrote:
| I agree that ticketing is terrible. But note that you can take
| the train from Amsterdam to Barcelona or even Madrid or Sevilla
| using essentially only high-speed lines (the only segments that
| aren't high-speed are Amsterdam to Lille and Avignon to
| Perpignan). So at least on those routes, one can't really
| complain about the comprehensiveness of European HSR. Amsterdam
| to Barcelona can be done in 12h17 with two changes, giving an
| average speed of 100km/h (measuring straight-line distance!).
| emn13 wrote:
| Note that if you travel from The Netherlands to Spain you might
| be traversing 6 different railway electrification systems that
| vary in critical stuff like voltages (and by more than a factor
| 10!) and possibly Hz, and some are AC and some are DC (not
| kidding). Also there will be at least 2 incompatible track
| gauges involved. And I bet other stuff like communications and
| routing systems are incompatible and safety critical too.
|
| As a result, such a trip would take a long time, even if high-
| speed rail is a possibility for part of the trip; it's not
| possible for a simple train to go even most of the way; you'll
| need to change trains multiple times not just due to logistical
| issues, but simply to be on a train that can even use the rail
| you need to traverse.
|
| If we can't fix that (and that's a _really_ hard and expensive
| problem), we 're never going to get a fast connection from the
| netherlands to spain.
|
| And I'm sure you can find even worse scenarios (say, tack on
| denmark and germany to that route for 2 more technologically
| incompatible systems!). Baltic states still use a soviet-
| derived system, and much of eastern Europe a yet different one.
| andbberger wrote:
| incredible almost everything you said is wrong!
|
| > Note that if you travel from The Netherlands to Spain you
| might be traversing 6 different railway electrification
| systems that vary in critical stuff like voltages (and by
| more than a factor 10!) and possibly Hz, and some are AC and
| some are DC (not kidding). Also there will be at least 2
| incompatible track gauges involved. And I bet other stuff
| like communications and routing systems are incompatible and
| safety critical too.
|
| none of this is nearly as problematic as you seem to think it
| is. modern powertrains traverse various electrification
| schemes without difficulty. signaling systems are trending
| towards ETCS, trains that traverse incompatible signaling
| systems (eg the eurostar) simply carry a set of onboard
| signaling equipment for each standard. gauge changes are the
| most challenging technical limitation in your list, but are a
| solved problem. spanish talgo's regularly change gauges at
| speed [1]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiH4kt14yGw
| ATsch wrote:
| > modern powertrains traverse various electrification
| schemes without difficulty.
|
| Indeed, however the majority of currently existing stock is
| only fitted for operation in at most one or two countries
|
| > signaling systems are trending towards ETCS
|
| "trending towards" is doing a lot of work here, ETCS
| rollout has been stalling for ages. New train sets are
| still being delivered today that do not really support it.
| Most countries have somewhat understandably not been in a
| hurry to make the huge investments required to replace
| their current, working systems with ETCS.
|
| > trains that traverse incompatible signaling systems (eg
| the eurostar) simply carry a set of onboard signaling
| equipment for each standard.
|
| Yes, which is extremely expensive and also requires full
| re-certification for every country, which means that in
| practice most trains are only certified for one or two
| countries at most.
|
| None of these would be unsolvable with some more willpower
| of course, but they are still absolutely an issue today.
| m2fkxy wrote:
| I believe you could get from the Netherlands to Spain in
| just two trips: Amsterdam > Paris in Thalys, and Paris >
| Madrid in AVE (seasonal) or > Barcelona in TGV (neither
| involve track gauge change). You could do that in the span
| of a day and still have spare time, depending on how well
| the schedules match.
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| > Baltic states still use a soviet-derived system
|
| Rail Baltica [1] (already being constructed) is using
| European gauge.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_Baltica
| aarroyoc wrote:
| There's no gauge change. Spain high-speed tracks already use
| the international one (older tracks still use Iberian gauge).
| There are already high-speed trains that go to France without
| stopping at the border.
| m2fkxy wrote:
| yes, Madrid <> Marseille, Lyon, and Paris on AVE, and TGV
| services on Paris <> Barcelona. No track gauge change,
| direct link.
| david927 wrote:
| People want to use trains and we want people to use trains --
| which means whatever is left over is an irrelevant detail. We
| should subsidize it more and invest more.
|
| I lived in the south of France for a while and it always struck
| me that instead of one huge, heavy engine pulling ten cars,
| arriving once an hour, along that stretch (from Cannes to
| Menton), it would be better served to have light, individual cars
| that ran every five minutes. (More like a large tram.)
|
| We can do so much better. And it will happen the minute we get
| the greed of the oil/auto/airline industries from getting in our
| way.
| ape4 wrote:
| More feasible than planes to electrify or switch to hydrogen
| (hydrogenify?)
| pg_bot wrote:
| Batteries are still too heavy and take too long to recharge for
| most commercial travel by plane. If we had better batteries,
| planes would become electric.
|
| Hydrogen has an infrastructure problem. Planes aren't designed
| for holding hydrogen and they would need to be redesigned
| entirely to accommodate for using it as a fuel. Hydrogen is
| hard to store and transfer as it tends to embrittle a wide
| variety of metals. There are also no hydrogen refueling
| stations near airports, you would have to build all of that
| infrastructure as well. You might be able to generate hydrogen
| on demand via a chemical reaction with something like NaOH and
| Silicon or Aluminum, but I haven't run the numbers to see if
| that would be technically possible, economically feasible, or
| safe for passenger travel. Theoretically you could use
| hydrogen, but it would cost trillions of dollars to get
| everything up and running without some sort of breakthrough.
| sschueller wrote:
| Switzerland is one of the few countries that is 100%
| electrified (decision was made in 1902) and has 5,196 km of
| rail.
|
| China has 100,000 km electrified which is 66% of their rail
| while the US has only 2,025 km electrified which is 0.92%
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_tr...
| namdnay wrote:
| You still have diesel trains ?!
| gpvos wrote:
| Depends on the country. Most of the UK away from London and
| apart from a handful of main lines is diesel. Elsewhere in
| Europe, most rural lines still are. It's likely many of these
| will switch to either hydrogen or battery trains, the latter
| possibly with shorter stretches of overhead wire to recharge.
| paddez wrote:
| Most of the intercity trains in Ireland are powered by
| diesel.
|
| I believe there's a long term electrification plan for the
| greater Dublin area, but I don't see a change from using
| DMU's for a while.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Wikipedia shows the percentage of electrified railway for all
| countries. It's 56% for the EU+UK.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_tran.
| ..
| fosk wrote:
| Caltrain in the Bay Area, the capital of world technology, is
| still a....diesel train. I can't help but chuckle whenever I
| see one.
| ibiza wrote:
| Did you miss the wires strung above the tracks? They're
| working on it:
|
| https://www.caltrain.com/about/MediaRelations/news/Caltrain
| _...
| jlmorton wrote:
| However, it's moving to electric, with the first electric
| locomotive undergoing testing now, and the first electric
| fleet arriving this spring, with fully electric service
| expected to begin in two years.
| xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote:
| It seems likely that hydrogen will replace diesel in trains.
| Companies like Alstom[1], PESA[2] and Talgo[3] are developing
| hydrogen trains. Germany has already started deploying them on a
| small scale[4], while Poland is planning to[5].
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alstom_Coradia_LINT#iLint
|
| [2] - https://fuelcellsworks.com/news/poland-pesa-presented-a-
| hydr...
|
| [3] - https://www.railwaypro.com/wp/talgo-to-launch-hydrogen-
| train...
|
| [4] - https://constructionreviewonline.com/news/construction-of-
| hy...
|
| [5] - https://www.orlen.pl/en/about-the-company/sustainable-
| develo...
| TeeMassive wrote:
| I'm not against using Hydrogen but the problem is always what
| are they producing Hydrogen with and how is it more efficient
| energetically and emission wise?
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Most Hydrogen is produced from Methane by steam reforming
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming
| gopalv wrote:
| > what are they producing Hydrogen with and how is it more
| efficient energetically and emission wise?
|
| Even if it is just Blue hydrogen being burnt here, the
| splitter plants can have some carbon capture in it which
| would be impossible to install on a moving train (beats
| diesel and also direct LNG burning).
|
| That said, with trains there's no real argument against
| electrification. The wheels have been electrically driven for
| a few decades now. It's not like they need to come up with
| motors or work out batteries.
| wolfgang000 wrote:
| Bad idea in mi opinion, this is a solved problem, overhead
| wires, the amount of energy lost between the converting water
| into hydrogen and then back into water to get electricity can
| be as high as 70%, it's just a bad idea when you can use that
| energy directly using wire to get the same job done
| sva_ wrote:
| Overhead wires are not a solution on a large scale, and also
| an eyesore.
| analog31 wrote:
| I'd like to see trains and planes integrated to a greater extent.
| Many of the "hub to spoke" connections could be replaced by
| trains, that could actually arrive quicker than a plane. And
| trains are less affected by weather.
|
| They could even check you into your flight while you're on the
| train.
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