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More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

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Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#121

Post by 4d617832 »

neoeldex wrote: post #105
Out_of_Characte wrote: post #87

This 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 s…

It's also the only place with such amount of trains. It is quite involved of making the infrastructure, and still it's managed. From april onwards you can travel from Amsterdam to London for 40 euro in 3 hours. There's a lot to align. Doesn't take away from the things that could be improved. Trains from Amsterdam to Germany stopping in small towns doesn't help.

Do you mean Utrecht and Arnhem or those on the German side? Or are you talking about using regional trains? I feel like the worst thing about the route is the lack of High Speed Lines but on the other hand these regions are densly populated so it does make sense to stop at some places.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#122

Post by notahacker »

Hamuko wrote: post #119
notahacker wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so much when the train leaves direct from the city centre and you can arrive 10 mins before your departure.

1h 30min + whatever time I spend at the airport vs. 12 hours + 10 minutes at the train station. That's a pretty hard sell.

Most train journeys covering 1hr 30 min flights aren't 12 hours.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#123

Post by chrisseaton »

MaulingMonkey wrote: post #116
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 and what we need to do to fix that. I recently watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwjwePe-HmA which covered much of the cost breakdowns - especially for American passenger rail. TL;DR: * Labor is expensive. That 10 hour train ride is 10 hours you're paying every employee on the train. The faster speed of an equivalent plane ride means you're not paying pilots f…

> That 10 hour train ride is 10 hours you're paying every employee on the train.

A driver, a ticket inspector, and someone to run the café? Three people? Shared amongst a few hundred passengers? Is that really a significant cost?

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#124

Post by Hamuko »

notahacker wrote: post #122
Hamuko wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1h 30min + whatever time I spend at the airport vs. 12 hours + 10 minutes at the train station. That's a pretty hard sell.

Most train journeys covering 1hr 30 min flights aren't 12 hours.

Well, the domestic flight that I have taken the most in the recent years is. The train is at its fastest 8 hours and some.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#125

Post by radicalbyte »

Shivetya wrote: post #117
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…

Because politics. Trains are very national in the EU and even after this many years that still gets in the way of effective train based transportation. Plus heavy rail is flat out expensive to put down and maintain and the cars are and engines themselves all contribute the initial cost of establishing a line as well as maintenance. Then the kicker compared to airline travel, you cannot simply reroute a train. It is s…

Privatized trains are worse, in the UK they've just given the go ahead for a $140 billion high speed rail project, HS2.

A decade ago we build HS1, a 67 mile track between London and the Channel Tunnel, for a total of $7.6 billion ($112m / mile).

HS2 is longer but its 330 miles of tracks will cost $400m / mile.

The project costs make absolutely no sense: London is a special weird place in the UK where everything you build is twice as expensive as in the rest of the country. Considering most of HS1 was in London and most of HS2 is outside of London, this budget makes absolutely no sense.

What makes the whole thing even more insane is that the endpoints are not connected to the rest of the infrastructure. You have a 30 minute trip between HS1 and HS2. So if you're travelling from Birmingham to Paris you'll have to switch trains in London. For the money they're spending on this it's crazy that you're not getting it.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#126

Post by truculent »

mateo1 wrote: post #22

Trains can't replace flights. You can't get from Munich to London in 2 hours with a train. Trains are often much more expensive than flights too.

a) Most people don't need to get there that fast

b) Plane takes longer than 2 hours when you factor getting to/from the airport and passing through security. Plane is obviously still faster to Munich, but to Paris, Amsterdam, even Bordeaux? I am not so sure.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#127

Post by cantexplain »

postingawayonhn wrote: post #12

Aviation only makes up about 2% of total global C02 emissions. Hardly even worth worrying about. Results will be much better if resources are focused on the big emitters (road transport, electricity/heating, and manufacturing).

I have read such arguments probably hundreds of times by now. Stuff like "Australia is only 1% of global emissions, why should we suffer the cost of going green?", "China and India produce way more CO2 than the US, the problem is not the US".

It's getting ridiculous; everybody is shifting blame to something or someone else because we all think small chunks and, obviously, each one of those chunks, individually, doesn't contribute much in terms of percentages. If you think this way, nobody will ever get anything done.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#128

Post by AsyncAwait »

Shivetya wrote: post #117
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…

Because politics. Trains are very national in the EU and even after this many years that still gets in the way of effective train based transportation. Plus heavy rail is flat out expensive to put down and maintain and the cars are and engines themselves all contribute the initial cost of establishing a line as well as maintenance. Then the kicker compared to airline travel, you cannot simply reroute a train. It is s…

> Because politics. Trains are very national in the EU

Ah, of course, it's the 'free market' that's the solution. I mean it's complete shit in the UK, where I live, but am sure that's just an outlier. The U.S. healthcare industry is a strong proof that the private model for essential services works flawlessly and now there's Reds again running in the election campaigning for 'Medicare for All'. Outrageous.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#129

Post by postingawayonhn »

morsch wrote: post #118
postingawayonhn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point, though I don't see any major problem even if air travel was to increase by 2 or 3 times, so long as we make significant reductions in other areas. I took 6 flights (~3,000km each). I would start with the immediate implementation of a tax (10%?, 20%?) on all new ICE vehicle sales. Revenue from this tax would be used to subsidize the purchase of EVs.

At approximately 1000 kg COeq per 3000 km trip[1]. Your budget for the whole year was 2300 kg. [1] https://www.atmosfair.de/en/offset/flight

Where is 1,000kg coming from?

I looked up one of my flights (actually only about 2,400km) using that calculator and only got 230kg (83kg of C02 and 173kg of "contrails, ozone formations, etc."). This flight was on a A321neo.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#130

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

Shivetya wrote: post #117
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…

Because politics. Trains are very national in the EU and even after this many years that still gets in the way of effective train based transportation. Plus heavy rail is flat out expensive to put down and maintain and the cars are and engines themselves all contribute the initial cost of establishing a line as well as maintenance. Then the kicker compared to airline travel, you cannot simply reroute a train. It is s…

Light rail may be more expensive than a bus, but it also tends to provides a higher comfort level (in terms of vibration/acceleration).
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