Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

back-on-track.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 207 posts

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#91

Post by cranekam »

pjmlp wrote: post #39
input_sh wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially when you account boarding, navigating the airport, having to show up at least half an hour before the flight, security checkups... All time-consuming tasks related to boarding the actual aircraft that you don't have to go through to hop on a train.

No, you have to run like crazy hoping not to lose the connection train, being stopped in the middle of nowhere without any information, stuffed into wagons without air conditioning and possibility to open the windows, cramped with more passengers than available seats, without any place to stuff luggage, out of order toilets,....

The train from Zurich to Paris is a TGV with included (mandatory?) seat reservations, air conditioning and plenty of bag space.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#92

Post by Darmody »

LunaSea wrote: post #66
Darmody wrote: post #5

As a European I love this. Not only because it's better for the environment but I really like trains. They are confy, fast and cheap. There's no need to pay extra for your baggage, you just hop in with your stuff, take a seat, read, watch a movie, listen to a podcast or sleep for a while and you're already at your destination.

They are absolutely not cheap and mostly slow rather than fast.

Well, that depends.

2 adults from Valencia to Madrid and with return for 70€ at a max speed of 300km/h.

We should also take in consideration that planes are cheap because they have become the main mean of transport for long distances for the last decades.

I can't see why we couldn't do this with trains. Invest in infrastructure and use it as much as we can.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#93

Post by neoeldex »

mhandley wrote: post #84

We 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 stim…

We should mandate taxes are paid on fuel, they dump fuel before landing. Which has a worse impact on the greenhouse effect.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#94

Post by IkmoIkmo »

chrisseaton wrote: post #21

I think an issue for trains is a lack of an international unified system for routing, timetabling, booking, ticketing, labelling and so on. Planes are the same everywhere. Flight number, gate number, time, and destination, everything available in English. Easy. I can catch a plane in Japan no problem. When I fly into a foreign city and try to take the train into the city it’s always a whole big mess. Inconsistent sys…

This so much. My biggest gripe with trains is that I am never able to actually get the logistics right.

I can hop on google flights and book a multi-city trip, I get a single price, and it's basically going to steer me towards roughly the cheapest option, within a set of parameters (e.g. trip time) that I can set.

With trains? Just nearly impossible. You get directed to different websites for price/departure/arrival/amenities information. It becomes a logistical nightmare to plan anything. When booking flights you sometimes get directed as well to multiple sites, but only for final booking, not the search stage.

And then indeed, the websites are not in English.

Or they have pricing which requires a national discount card which you don't have and can't get online, and makes the trip otherwise extremely expensive.

Or you can book your train ticket, but you have to pick up the tickets at the station, which gives anxiety because googling half of these options gets you to forums which say the ticket service is closed until 10AM, while your train arrives at the station with the service at 8AM, and the next train (for which you need to pick up the ticket) leaves at 9AM. And the only reason you know this, is because of some underground travel forum with 3 posts in the past 5 years about this train station.

Or you can only look up train tables online, but you can't even reserve tickets online, you have to buy at the station, but they can get sold out, and you're looking to buy tickets for a summer trip in 4 months, so there's literally just no way to plan any other trips or hotel reservations because you have no clue if you can be on that train, until in 4 months.

And then you have to go to a travel company which literally sends employees to buy a hundred tickets in bulk, then resells them online to you at a huge markup. But these are just 3-man companies that come and go, lots of scams, lots of markup, and they may sell only some tickets, but not others, meaning to plan a long vacation by train, you're depending on lots of these little companies.

At that point I just think, screw that, I'm just going to browse on google flights and be done with planning in 1 hour, it's cheaper, no anxiety, no stress, no dependencies, no scams, lots of insurance and assurance, all in English, mostly through reputable companies with normal UI/UX design.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#95

Post by notahacker »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #65

I 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…

Airlines do one hop, and revenue optimise by having the aircraft near-full on that hop, which entails an aggressive pricing model especially since there's usually direct competitors showing up in the same flight search. They also make a lot of ancillary revenue from charging you another $30 for your luggage.

Long distance trains usually have several intermediate stages they can sell tickets on, often with no public transport competition, and there's really no incentive for them to price-cut on a London-Barcelona route involving several other companies and very little customer interest.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#96

Post by postingawayonhn »

chrisseaton wrote: post #76
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #65

I 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 really don't get why trains can be so expensive They’re more expensive because they’re better.

No, they're more expensive because they have higher infrastructure costs. Building and maintaining hundreds of kilometers of track costs a lot.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#97

Post by iso1210 »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #40
yulaow wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know which trains you took but here in europe even the less costly trains (regional trains) are far far far more comfy than any ryanair airplane (saying this as a 193cm man), especially if you want to stand up often or just want to have more than two bathroom every 150 people. If you take a fast train the experience is not even remotely comparable, they are more spacious, cleaner and offer more optionals. Yea…

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.

Southampton to London is £41 return for 160 mile round trip. Petrol alone will set you back half that. If there's a company willing to rent a car for 300 miles for £20, they're making a loss, and that's before you get onto parking charges.

Either way the train is far faster.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#98

Post by captainbland »

input_sh wrote: post #28
dbmueller wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4 hours isn't that long, is it? plane cannot beat that by much

Especially when you account boarding, navigating the airport, having to show up at least half an hour before the flight, security checkups... All time-consuming tasks related to boarding the actual aircraft that you don't have to go through to hop on a train.

Agreed. I'd definitely say if you're only travelling across one or two European countries, between major cities, rail is definitely the way to go. It's more comfortable, safer, you're infinitely less likely to get touched up by an overzealous security person, usually takes you right to the city centre that you're interested in, you don't have to worry about Ryanair trying to extort something out of you. You also don't have to worry about airplane mode and many railways provide free (if shockingly bad) WiFi, and many routes have reasonable 3/4G coverage.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#99

Post by Jaxan »

bnt wrote: post #52
tluyben2 wrote: post #45

Earlier 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).

I recently moved to Germany. And I really miss the Dutch trains. They are so much more in time than here in Germany.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#100

Post by sfifs »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #65

I 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…

Coming from Asia, I have always been shocked at how expensive trains are in Europe vs. here and how flights are cheaper. I would suspect someone is profiteering in the value chain... probably the construction and maintenance industries which tend to be the usual means of political graft... And that cost gets charged to passengers.

It's a lose lose situation... Bad for environment, bad for people, bad for economic efficiency. The whole point of a rail network in a nation's economy is to be an economic force multiplier, not to be a profiteering entity

Post reply on HN