The New Austrian Railways' Intercity and Nightjet Sleeper Train Interior Design • Hacker News Board

Re: The New Austrian Railways' Intercity and Nightjet Sleeper Train Interior Design

#211

Post by Reason077 » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 6:37 AM UTC

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #208

Reason077 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US spends more subsidizing fossil fuels than on defense, according to a report from the International Monetary Fund: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/fossil-f...

The "subsidy" is not straight-up tax dollars being given to Exxon & co, but computed against "prices fully reflected supply costs plus the taxes needed to reflect environmental costs and other damage, including premature deaths from air pollution".

The total includes direct subsidies, such as tax incentives that reward fossil fuel investment, exploration, and extraction in addition to indirect ones you describe.

In the US, like many countries, these are very substantial:

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/oil-tax-break.asp

Re: The New Austrian Railways' Intercity and Nightjet Sleeper Train Interior Design

#212

Post by DocTomoe » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 6:46 AM UTC

legitster wrote: post #102

munificent wrote: post #99

I recently took a train from Seattle to Portland with my family. One difference compared to flying that it took me a while to realize was how amazingly quiet it is. On a plane, the engines are right there out on the wing screaming and conducting that sound directly into the airframe next to you. With a train, the engine is way up front, hundreds of yards a way, separated by several linkages. The end result is that a…

Love that route. Also, on a train the ride is so much smoother - no starts or stop or dealing with traffic. The pricing is nuts, though. A one way train ticket for that route is $36. The same trip via car takes about the same amount of time and $20 in gas. The train is a nice luxury for one person, but for the whole family it becomes very expensive. Passenger rail in the US is absurd.

Distance Seattle Portland is about 280 km. That's similar to the Distance of Munich to Würzburg in Germany. The Deutsche Bahn takes 75 Euros, about 85 USD from you in economy class.

The problem with the US is not that rail travel is expensive (it is not), but that gas is waaaaayyyyy too cheap. (In Germany you pay around 6.20 USD/gallon)

Re: The New Austrian Railways' Intercity and Nightjet Sleeper Train Interior Design

#213

Post by arien » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 9:53 AM UTC

rkangel wrote: post #187

arien wrote: post #20

Slightly off-topic, but couldn't help but notice on the Projects list a really cool version of the London tube. Unfortunately it seems it's from 2014 (there's even some quote from Boris as Mayor), so probably scrapped by now? Makes me wonder if these Austrian train designs are already set in stone or just a proposal that might or might not happen.

That design is extremely close to the new design of train in use on the circle line. The seating arrangement is a little different and they use monochrome LED signboards rather than LCD (for sensible reasons), but the continuous unobstructed design is there, along with actual aircon. It's an impressive sight to look from one end of the interior to the other when it's not full of people (and going straight).

Yeah, I've seen those, but they are slightly different and have been available for a few years already (I believe before 2014, the date of this project, but I could be wrong).

I'm glad to see on the other reply that the plan hasn't been scrapped. Some of the lines could really use new trains (with proper air ventilation/filtering, especially).

Re: The New Austrian Railways' Intercity and Nightjet Sleeper Train Interior Design

#214

Post by mikepurvis » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 1:57 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #166

mikepurvis wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Air travel is massively subsidized too (airport construction, airline and manufacturer bailouts); as is highway travel (automaker bailouts, free trade supply chain, environmental externalities, health costs associated with driving and sprawl, plus gas taxes which cover only a small proportion of actual construction and maintenance costs). It's difficult to do a true apples to apples comparison, especially when highwa…

>free trade supply chain free trade is hardly a subsidy.

That really depends on your perspective. A "conventional" subsidy can be understood as a reverse tax— instead of paying money into the general pot for the privilege of engaging in some harmful/productive/profitable activity, you are paid money out of the general pot as a benefit for engaging in some activity seen by the government as desirable or beneficial.

Cutting taxes in any form is a subsidy relative to what went before, whether or not the end state is above, at, or below the zero point.

More concretely, if an automaker previously bought widgets from a local supplier for $10, but now buys them from overseas for $8 because of free trade, that's effectively a $2-per-widget subsidy. You can argue that it's a market efficiency and that most of the benefits are passed to the end consumer anyway so whatever, but when you get far enough down that path, then there are no widgets being made locally any more, which is the real cost of having subsidized the import of them by cutting taxes to zero.

Re: The New Austrian Railways' Intercity and Nightjet Sleeper Train Interior Design

#215

Post by ekianjo » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 2:09 PM UTC

ianbooker wrote: post #136

ekianjo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The EU should force a carbon tax on plane fuel for intra-EU flights and subsidize rail with the money. You are aware that most of Europe produces electricity by burning fossil fuel right? So by all logic we should apply a strict carbon tax on rail as well.

Speaking of logic: Trains are way more energy efficient than planes. So even with the same "strict carbon tax", it would be cheaper to go by train and better for the environment alas.

Except that train ticket prices are artificially set in the first place since Rail is heavily subsidized in most of Europe.