Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trains are really slow actually.
200 or 300 km/h I wouldn't call that slow. Not as fast as a plane but it's not slow at all.
It is slow when it's directly competing with planes.
More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights
81–90 of 207 posts
Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights
#82Glad that they’re working on it, right now flying is just cheaper on many cases. Need to go from Zurich to Paris? The TGV Train will cost you almost twice as much as a short direct flight. Berlin to Munich? Also cheaper by plane. Being a student with a limited budget, this very much affects my decision.
Also cheaper by plane. Being a student with a limited budget, this very much affects my decision. My tips would be: * Book at least a week in advance. * Buy a Bahn Card 25. * Get up early. If you do this Berlin -> Munich is €44.90 next Saturday on the 4 hour fast train. Also don't forget, it costs around €11 to go from Munich airport to the city.
> Buy a Bahn Card 25
Why does buying an affordable train ticket always involve a treasure hunt of weird ticketing combinations and cards like this?
Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends on what distances you are travelling I suppose; the prices for longer travel are, imho, very high and sure it is comfy but compared to a plane? Planes are cheaper and much faster. At the same price I think many would still take the plane. If trains were vastly cheaper, then maybe it would change a lot. But only inside the Netherlands, I only know a few commuters in my circles who go by train; the rest drive a…
Also, trains in the Netherlands are highly unreliable with regular unplanned shutdowns (due to natural factors like heavy rain or human factors like high suicide rates by jumping infront of trains). Also, commuters tend to be too comfortable (taking off their shoes, talking loudly on the phone or messy eating).
In the one or two decades after privatizing the formerly state-owned passenger service things were bad.
Nowadays, the backlog in maintenance seems to be sorted out and things run generally well again. Although I still plan a half hour safety margin when traveling to schiphol airport by train.
Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights
#84We should mandate that aviation fuel is 10% carbon neutral. And then steadily up that fraction yearly. How they satisfy that is up to them - synthetic fuels generated using solar/wind, biofuels, or whatever. The point is that we're not going to be able to replace liquid fuels for long-haul aviation, so we both need to factor in the increased cost of carbon-neutral fuels and at the same time provide a market that stimulates investment.
For many routes, if we did this, aircraft would perhaps not be price-competitive with rail. So be it.
Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights
#85If trains can be as cheap as flights then there will be no need to coerce people to choose flying over train through carbon footprint arguments.
Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a 187 I hate pretty much every piece of transport (even most cars miss my femur length)... I used to travel Southampton to London a lot (that's like 150km or so). IIRC renting a car used to be cheaper.
At 200cm, I will choose trains whenever possible. Aeroplanes are a nightmare for me.
I'm 196cm and airplanes are actually not as bad as fellow tall people always complain. I think I might have relatively short legs for my height.
Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights
#87This is an easy promise to make but remains empty without mentioning the difficulties of such undertaking. Europe has the most splintered incompatible mess of a railway system in the world. They barely managed to run high speed trains between fairly local and established big cities (Paris to Amsterdam). Then there's the problem of routing and adding stops. With a plane you can almost always get a direct flight or a single transfer inbetween. With trains you end up stopping several times wasting energy and time at stations completely irrelivant to you. I applaud the effort and hope it comes to fruition but i'm sceptical wether this is going to be a terrible political undertaking or a well thought out plan for inter European travel.
Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights
#88Glad that they’re working on it, right now flying is just cheaper on many cases. Need to go from Zurich to Paris? The TGV Train will cost you almost twice as much as a short direct flight. Berlin to Munich? Also cheaper by plane. Being a student with a limited budget, this very much affects my decision.
Thing is, not only it is cheaper, it is much more effective regarding use of time. Zurich to Paris just takes too long by train, and doing night trains isn't always an option.
> Zurich to Paris just takes too long by train, and doing night trains isn't always an option.
It's a nudge over 4 hours by TGV from Zurich center to Paris center. That is almost certainly comparable to getting from city center to airport, checking in, waiting before flight, flying, waiting for bags, and getting to city center at the other end. Of course, if your source and destination are closer to the airport and you have no bags/minimize waiting time that might tip the flight in your balance but I doubt it'd be very far off in many cases. Personally I'd much rather take the train here -- I find it more comfortable and convenient than flying and for me the overall time taken is comparable.
It can also be cheap. I've had several €29 fares on that route.
Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights
#89Last weekend, I took the night train from Briancon to Paris, step in at ~21:00, step out at 07:00 the next morning. My first time in a night train, pretty surreal but pleasant experience. I had to take a semi connecting train from Paris to the Netherlands (where I live), so it would be so awesome just to wake up on destination. I'm considering if it's a good idea to tax air travel inside the EU to help the trains mov…
While I like the idea of traveling by train, and I even took a night train from Munich to Budapest in the past, but on that specific route I had to share my cabin with a guy who just got released from jail a day earlier so I was not pleasantly relaxed. The fact that the cabin only had 2 bunk beds and I was pretty much isolated from other passengers and I had no way to keep my money and other important things in a saf…
> While I like the idea of traveling by train, and I even took a night train from Munich to Budapest in the past, but on that specific route I had to share my cabin with a guy who just got released from jail a day earlier so I was not pleasantly relaxed. The fact that the cabin only had 2 bunk beds and I was pretty much isolated from other passengers and I had no way to keep my money and other important things in a safe, made me worried a lot.
>The big advantage of air travel is exactly this, you don't need to spend much time in the actual plane. And the passengers are by definition under full-time supervision by other passengers, so stealing or attacks are not so easy to get away with.
There are also drawbacks to air travel that you're not mentioning. I was in a sleeping segment with 5 other people and felt more safe than in an airplane. The important thing though is: we need to cut down on carbon, and travel by train is an important way to do it.
Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights
#90I really don't get why trains can be so expensive and what we need to do to fix that. To an extent, flying is just way too cheap. I mean, I was looking at a roundtrip london/barcelona just last week, it was $25. By train I'm looking at at least 10 hours, likely more like 15, and $300. Both the $25 and the $300 just seem wrong. Flying is way too cheap, but I also don't get how $300 per person is competitive against so…
I flew from Amsterdam to Dublin for €19. I then took the train from Dublin to Cork for ... €60. The distance from Amsterdam to Dublin is about 750km, three times as long as Dublin-Cork
(you can also take the bus for €15 or some such, but last time I did that I got rather carsick, so I figured I'd take the train, not knowing how expensive it was!)