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France’s new high-speed trains

citylab.com

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Re: France’s new high-speed trains

#181

Post by falsedan »

dingaling wrote: post #155
jdietrich wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU competition rules prohibit preferential treatment of domestic businesses in state procurement - any public contract worth more than €5.5m must be open to fair competition from firms in all EU member states. Alongside the State Aid rules, this is one of the most important principles in maintaining the fair operation of the Single Market and preventing internal protectionism. https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/se…

> and preventing internal protectionism Which is the key phrase. The EU is perfectly fine with protectionism so long as it is non-EU countries who are being excluded. For example, the cap of foreign ownership of EU airlines at 49% has no basis other than protecting local companies.

good

Re: France’s new high-speed trains

#182

Post by falsedan »

mc32 wrote: post #21
frutiger wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Side note: grammatically "fattened liver" should be preferred over "fatted liver".

For the fattening of animals intended as food it’s typically accepted grammar to use “fatted” as in a “fatted pig”. Same as “datums” is correct in some contexts.

> it’s typically accepted grammar to use “fatted” as in a “fatted pig”

no it ain't, it's extremely out-of-mode

Re: France’s new high-speed trains

#183

Post by mcv »

icebraining wrote: post #154
mcv wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the lease is about to run out, it means you need to reserve money for that, meaning the price of the house will be lower. I think you can still use the mortgage to pay for that lease. So overall it doesn't make much difference, it's just an extra thing to pay attention to, or you'll end up with unexpected costs.

If the lease is set to expire in twenty years, can you know in advance how much it will cost to renew, so that you can include it in the mortgage? If so, then it doesn't really seem to help the city to capture the gains that may have accrued over those years. If not, what happens if the lease now costs much more and you can't afford it? Do you get kicked out of the house?

I think the cost of the lease depends on an estimated value of the house. So if the lease expires soon, you can fairly accurately estimate what it's going to cost. If it expires in 20 years, it depends on what your house is going to be worth in 20 years.

There are also arrangements where you pay this lease every month or every year, rather than paying it off for 50 years at once. If you can't afford to pay the whole thing at once, you can probably take a mortgage to pay for it, but you may also be able to switch to a monthly or yearly payment system.

This estimated value of the house (the WOZ value) is also used for property taxes and you can appeal the estimate if you think it's wrong.

In any case, it ensures that the city benefits to some degree from the rising value of the land.

Re: France’s new high-speed trains

#184

Post by mcv »

kmlx wrote: post #151
mcv wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More comfortable than the TGV? The train I'm most familiar with is the Thalys, the high-speed train from Amsterdam to Paris, and I'm not sure if it's more comfortable than other TGVs, but it's always a joy to travel in. I recently went to London in the Eurostar, and they'd managed to make the train experience feel like a plane. Very disappointing.

Having recently used both the TGV and the Tokaido Shinkansen, I'd say the Hikari line is much more comfortable than any of the TGV trains. Regarding the Eurostar, it works like that because the UK is not in Schengen. As such, border control needs to happen. Not to mention the potential issues with terrorism. And the Eurostar is net inferior to any of the Shinkansen trains.

The border checks absolutely added to the plane feeling of the experience, but Eurostar seats are also significantly more cramped than those of the Thalys.

Re: France’s new high-speed trains

#185

Post by icebraining »

rsynnott wrote: post #170
__m wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly something to be proud of. Also "The idea was envisioned by Tesla CEO Elon Musk in a white paper in 2013". No, it was hyped by Musk, the idea dates back to 1904

Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous how much credit Musk gets for this idea. I remember one being a plot point of an old (70s-ish?) Larry Niven novel.

It's an interesting phenomena that seems to happen all the time.

Generic idea exists for a while, then someone proposes a more specific implementation and gets known for that, then people start rethinking those details and arrive at the generic idea again, but still think of it as coming from that person.

Another example is how plain-old Merkle trees are now being called "blockchain": Satoshi combined them with other ideas (like POW) to arrive at Bitcoin, then other people started separating those off and got back at just Merkle trees, but still think of them as originating from Bitcoin.

Re: France’s new high-speed trains

#186

Post by 7952 »

isostatic wrote: post #168
7952 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in London rail let's people avoid higher house prices by having a longer commute. But that expands the commuter belt, and raises prices for everyone else. It would be better if people could live closer to work. I think they should use subsidy to make shorter local journeys free or very cheap. Include bus travel also. Ramp up the prices on longer journeys. They could also help out regional airlines to take st…

Generally we all agree that flying when you could use the train is a very bad thing.

A new generation of electric planes could change that. And a lot of the cross country fleet is diesel anyway and produces CO2 and other emissions.

Re: France’s new high-speed trains

#187

Post by cowl »

isostatic wrote: post #179
cowl wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's because you're not travelling with a valid ticket. Try driving off from the petrol station without paying, or boarding a plane without showing a boarding pass. that's not even remotely close. I don't know exactly how it is in France but in Italy (and I suspect it's similar) I may have a monthly ticket clearly stating the validity FROM-TO, having my name on it and yet still if i don't time stamp it at the star…

Does that monthly ticket has a start date printed on it before you compost it?

Of course it does. it's a monthly ticket valid from first of the month until end of the month. And even for the tickets without a date Why should the passenger be penalised when there are no working stamping machines in the train station? how is that the passenger problem?

Re: France’s new high-speed trains

#188

Post by james1071 »

ownagefool wrote: post #128
supernova87a wrote: post #31

SNCF is fiddling with the wrong things. It doesn't need to separate train operations from rail track network maintenance. It doesn't need to open up the network to competition. What it needs to do is cut the number of excessive public sector workers, reduce costs, and stop running the business like a political arm of the government. I can bet that the reason they think they need to do all these things is that cost pr…

Err UK rail was famously terrible before "privatisation". Not that privatisation is the answer, nor that being public was at fault, but I'm not sure rewriting history is helpful. Looking at UK water companies being privatised so their owners can stuff them full of debt to get around the profit caps is probably a better case study. Profit percentage caps are silly because the obvious way to make more money is to make…

What you said about the water companies is not correct. They are regulated on the basis of price - the regulator sets a pricing formula for the industry RPI + X (i.e. X is the annual price increase above inflation).

There are no caps on profit.

The reason why companies carry large amounts of debt is that debt finance is much cheaper than equity. Given that a utility has stable cashflows, it makes sense for it to use a high proportion of debt finance.

Re: France’s new high-speed trains

#189

Post by adev_ »

kmlx wrote: post #157
speedplane wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Public rail is a money-losing venture, ... But it's important to have. Just how much money-losing depends on the political environment and skill of the management. Arguably, all public rail should lose money. Quality transportation is a huge economic driver of regional economies. If a rail service is making money, it likely means governments are underinvesting in their own economies.

> TOKYO -- East and West Japan Railway have both forecast record profits for the fiscal year ending March 2018, anticipating more bullet train passengers and higher income from real estate and other noncore operations. > West Japan Railway said Friday it expects a group net profit of 109 billion yen ($978 million) for the fiscal year through March 2018, up 19% on the year. Full article: https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor…

JR rails makes an important part of its benefits from the huge commercial centers (Atrée & others) they run in their stations. That's a model that works in Japan, but cannot run everywhere. Not every country is a tiny island with such a dense urbanisation.

Re: France’s new high-speed trains

#190

Post by dsfyu404ed »

rswail wrote: post #76
supernova87a wrote: post #31

SNCF is fiddling with the wrong things. It doesn't need to separate train operations from rail track network maintenance. It doesn't need to open up the network to competition. What it needs to do is cut the number of excessive public sector workers, reduce costs, and stop running the business like a political arm of the government. I can bet that the reason they think they need to do all these things is that cost pr…

"Public rail is a money-losing venture" So are public schools, public hospitals and national defence. But they are enablers of everything else that we do and the actual purpose of government and taxes. Public transport needs to be as efficient as it can be while providing the services needed . There are additional benefits like providing a training environment for trades, ensuring that a heavy engineering skillbase i…

The government should not be engaging in money losing ventures to provide services that private companies will provide at no cost (other than point of service cost) to taxpayers.

If they want to run a jobs program then fine, run a jobs program. Don't pretend your jobs program is an infrastructure program though.

I have no problem with the government spending tax money on things, that's kind of its job, but resources are not infinite (eventually you run out of other people's money). I know this is a much hated opinion among the HN demographic and I won't win internet brownie points for saying it but government should not be spending taxpayer money on services private entities are willing to provide. Government should spend its money on things private industry won't do (like social safety nets, education and funding R%D for things private industry doesn't care about).

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