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Trains are more efficient and less polluting than other transportation modes

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Re: Trains are more efficient and less polluting than other transportation modes

#251

Post by apexalpha »

bartimus wrote: post #246
apexalpha wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are now comparing a star-form rail network in the Netherlands that runs in a country of 300km by 400km to a fish-grate network that runs in Japan. Also, the famous punctuality comes from the Japanese High Speed train network, a network purpose built for a single model of train. There are no intersections, road crossings or freight or slow trains on that network. Obviously any Dutch train would also fare well on a…

I'm not just comparing the Shinkansen. I'm comparing the whole Japanese network in its entirety. It isn't just a fish-grate network. It expands deep into the rural areas where it's highly integrated. Indeed they have multiple forms of trains and railways optimized for each purpose. If you take the train in Japan you might pass through numerous operators and types of railways. It's why it's so complicated to buy a tic…

You are allowed to compare it but just make sure to compare the right numbers. The stereotype 'apology for 20 seconds delay' and stuff are all from high speed trains. Not from regular tracks.

>In the Netherlands the railway system still needs state funding every year. I don't see how we could ever transition to the Japanese model. Which is a shame.

Other than that you seem to see the Japanese system as some end goal that we should all try to achieve: but the Dutch system is already in the top 3 of punctuality as it is today.

It does require some subsidies, but then so do roads or the military. It's just because it's not there to make a profit but to be an enabler of economic growth.

Re: Trains are more efficient and less polluting than other transportation modes

#252

Post by usrusr »

narag wrote: post #142
jfoutz wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if batteries, motor and third rail connections could be added to the flat cars that carry shipping containers. Skip the engine all together, and make trains fully dynamic. Probably not worth the cost. It would be kinda cool to see a long train split in half , front and back taking different routes.

It would be kinda cool to see a long train split in half , front and back taking different routes. That happens all the time here, in Spain. Some trains from Madrid to Andalusia travels to Seville with two locomotives, one in the front, another one in the rear. Then half the train goes on to Cádiz, half to Huelva. Oh, and it's sometimes very long, forty passengers cars + 2 locom. + several restaurant cars. I guess th…

Turn around is also solved with a special car that has a driver cockpit for remote control of the locomotive on the other end. But some high speed trains like the Velaro (also running in Spain) don't even have locomotives anymore, they just have cockpits at each end of a multi-car segment, and all the motors, transformers and so on are distributed along the whole length of the train.

I think that GP meant with "Skip the engine all together, and make trains fully dynamic" would be something where every single car could be autonomous and they just connect together (on the go?) for slipstream and traffic control. This is both real (segments are joined primarily for traffic control, "cars" already have their own motors etc) as it is far away (the individual cars of a segment are joined together at the factory and form a single articulated unit)

Re: Trains are more efficient and less polluting than other transportation modes

#253

Post by adrianN »

jodrellblank wrote: post #171
mabbo wrote: post #112

My wife and I took a trip to the middle of nowhere in Wales last fall. Train to Cardiff from London, then from Cardiff to our little cottage in the Pembrokeshire coast, I drove for 2+ hours in a rental car, learning to drive on the left. The day after we arrived, we learned we could have caught a train to Fishguard, a tiny village nearby, and then the local bus would have gotten us within a ten minute walk from our r…

And perhaps that London to Cardiff is 150 miles, less than New York to Baltimore, and that Wales is about as big as New Jersey. It's a whole culture that says places are really close.

Contrary to popular opinion on Internet forums, almost all car trips in the US are less than thirty miles long and about 80% of all trips are less than ten miles long despite the country being pretty big.

Re: Trains are more efficient and less polluting than other transportation modes

#254

Post by qwsxyh »

cr1895 wrote: post #248
maccard wrote: post #229

My biggest issue is train costs. I live in Edinburgh, and I can fly to London in 6 weeks for £19, or I can get the train for £160. The overall travel time is roughly the same, but at 6 times the price it can be very hard to justify. Especially when you have to travel with more than one person.

Why is it so absurdly expensive in the UK? Privatization? Looks like that trip takes almost 4.5 hours. For comparison, a train trip from Groningen to Vlissingen in the Netherlands (about as far as you can go) takes a similar time but costs only 26.50 euros each way, whenever you get a ticket. It's only about 16 euros if you've got one of the discount subscriptions.

Prices have steadily climbed since BR was privatised, and that puts people off of using rail meaning the prices have to go higher to get the money back.

Re: Trains are more efficient and less polluting than other transportation modes

#255

Post by mac01021 »

evgen wrote: post #223
gsanghera wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't the US car companies actively lobby against and destroy the budding streetcar transport in most cities? I admit its not exactly rail, but you do have trams / streetcars in many European cities too - like Amsterdam. I would think they would be a much preferred public transport option than everyone driving their own car. Culture is not something which happens automatically - sometimes its driven by corporates, a…

This is a rather popular lie that ignores the facts on the ground at the time. No, the US car companies did not lobby against or destroy the streetcar industry, the growth of the suburb and government policies that promoted such growth managed to do that all on their own. The auto manufacturers just set themselves up to take advantage of this decline and the shifting of subsidies to road construction. In this case cu…

Which government policies promoted the growth of the suburbs, out of curiosity?

Re: Trains are more efficient and less polluting than other transportation modes

#256

Post by mises »

fyfy18 wrote: post #207
masklinn wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Washington-Baltimore is actually a very good connection by rail--you'll have a train at least once an hour That's really not a lot, especially between major cities.

For comparison, in the UK there are around 8 trains per hour during peak times between London and Cambridge (around twice the distance of DC-Baltimore). I'd imagine there are cities that have even more per hour in central Europe.

Part of the problem with starting that here is that many railroads have to just stop roads dead for 5-10 minutes every time they go by. Even if it's a fast train and it's 2-4 minutes, that would cause a crazy traffic increase here, because you've just lost between 27 and 53% of your roads' capacity.

Re: Trains are more efficient and less polluting than other transportation modes

#257

Post by dsfyu404ed »

>When journey times are less than four hours, people usually prefer to travel by train instead of alternative options, such as air or road.

I'm sure the airport security theater plays no small part in this. Would you rather sit on a train for four hours or spend two hours at an airport, get treated like cattle, get told you can't bring X Y or Z past security, get felt up by a stranger, and in a cramped tube for an hour? I'll take the train every time.

Re: Trains are more efficient and less polluting than other transportation modes

#258

Post by Symmetry »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #66

Rail requires significant investment to overcome the last mile problem, meaning the problem that often you need to walk the last mile from the station to your destination. Some may scoff at this but it is a major deterrent. Combine this with ride sharing apps and rail transit use has actually declined in the US in the past several years.

I really want a ride-sharing app that can plan a trip across transit modes, send me somewhere by train, then have a car waiting to take me that last mile.

Re: Trains are more efficient and less polluting than other transportation modes

#259

Post by bamboozled »

Veelox wrote: post #173
apatheticonion wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse my ignorance, but my foreigner layman's opinion is that your cities ain't broke, the US is the richest nation on Earth. Y'all just need to tax better and spend wiser.

Part of it is the US has a lot of land. Japan is one of the more extreme examples but they have ~8.7x people per unit of land. That makes a big difference on the kind of buildings and transportation you build.

Here’s the thing, you could say the same for many small or population dense countries, this is because Japan is population dense but most of the population still live in very concentrated areas, Osaka, Tokyo etc.

One begs to ask the question, Why do Americans need to live so sprawled out? I think the difference is not just one of geography, it’s cultural. It makes sense for Japanese to live in close quarters and there are benefits and negatives for doing so.

Look at France, Germany, Belgium, UK Etc they’re allrelatively population dense countrirs with far more hopeless train networks.

Re: Trains are more efficient and less polluting than other transportation modes

#260

Post by sunstone »

This article is irritating in that it doesn't give a balanced and useful view of the transportation trade offs. Very likely the author is aware of them but chooses to sweep under the carpet what doesn't suit his narrative.

A few observations to balance things out. First, rail is not the cheapest way to move freight, ships are by far, but rail is a distant second.

Rail obviously requires a lot of upkeep on the tracks, in addition to fuel and maintenance, whereas ships and planes have very little cost to maintain the fluids they travel in.

Electric transport on highways will quickly become very much cheaper than it is now because electric motors are much more efficient than fuel motors, solar and wind electricity costs are dropping precipitously, maintenance of electric motors is much less than fuel motors. Yes the roads still have to be maintained and heavier trucks mean much more maintenance.

Clearly, optimal transportation and shipping requires a hierarchy of trade offs that depend primarily upon scale. Two large cities that are 200 miles apart (eg New York and Boston) can support the overhead of a passenger rail connection. On the other hand San Francisco and New York, while large are too far apart, while another pair of cities might be 200 miles apart but the city populations are too small to support the rain infrastructure.

At the other end of the scale, an individual might take their bicycle on a 2 mile trip to the post office but would take their car on a 2 mile trip for the week's groceries.

Between these two extremes is a hierarchy of trade offs and there is no "one size fits all". Not even close. Rail is not the solution to all our transport problems. Neither are cars or bicycles. Each has its niche. If ships had legs then they might come close but unfortunately they don't, not to mention they are kind of slow.

So it's complicated but some trends might be usefully be predicted. Short haul flights will likely become cheaper as these planes become electrified and both energy and maintenance costs drop significantly. Trucking will become electrified and will compete even more effectively against trains and planes unless there is a labor shortage. Trains will continue to do what they are good at, long haul of heavy commodities and passenger service on intense routes. Electric cars will have lower fuel and maintenance costs so automobile miles will increase.

Perhaps the sum total of all this will mean that medium and smaller sized cities will become more competitive vis a vis their larger cousins over the next 50 years.

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