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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

#151

Post by Carpetsmoker »

vanderZwan wrote: post #137
radicalbyte wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can go from one side of The Netherlands from the other for about €20 on the train and you can have unlimited train travel for €350 a month (and considerably less for a given route).

Yes, but we're kind of unique in our standardized national public transport system. Undoubtedly our small size as a country helps there.

Well, Ireland is just 6.5 million people, not exactly a large country, and I think Germany's DB is more or less similar to the Dutch NS?

I lived in the UK for a while, and things are really complex there with a patchwork of private companies. Either way, I stopped complaining about the Dutch trains very shortly after moving there :-)

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#152

Post by captainbland »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #43
captainbland wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't run electric buses at >100mph for one thing.

But you can operate them 2-5x cheaper.

Even if so, you'd want electric buses to replace the kinds of routes currently served by regular buses - they'd hardly be a replacement for inter-city trains.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#153

Post by chrisseaton »

WilliamEdward wrote: post #143
chrisseaton wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Public transportation is eventually going to have to replace both cars and planes. ...but commercial airline planes are public transportation.

No, public means public owned and operated by government, ie: not private.

No, in the UK, for example, the busses and trains are owned and operated by private companies, not the government. But no reasonable person would call them anything but public transport.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#154

Post by rdsubhas »

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…

It's not just the cost. Coming from India, I'm used to sleeping my way in any 6+ hour journey. In fact, for business travel, we prefer overnight trains or sleeper buses (yes, sleeper buses) because you don't need to book an unnecessary stay. I'm not going to compare INR vs EUR, but this mode of travel is pretty affordable and common to the mass market here.

European trains are way more expensive AND I have to sit my way through long hours with not even pushback. Ouch my back hurts even thinking about it. Sleeper berths are extremely rare and even more expensive.

I just don't get how my fellow european humans consider this mode of travel plausible.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#155

Post by morsch »

postingawayonhn wrote: post #129
morsch wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I took a random 7000 km flight and extrapolated. Sorry if that ended up off by such a large martin.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#156

Post by vanderZwan »

Carpetsmoker wrote: post #151
vanderZwan wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but we're kind of unique in our standardized national public transport system. Undoubtedly our small size as a country helps there.

Well, Ireland is just 6.5 million people, not exactly a large country, and I think Germany's DB is more or less similar to the Dutch NS? I lived in the UK for a while, and things are really complex there with a patchwork of private companies. Either way, I stopped complaining about the Dutch trains very shortly after moving there :-)

We have one transport card that works for all public transport providers. You cannot book trains in advance - all distances have a fixed price (not counting international trains). In many other countries there are regional commuter trains like that, but with national trains the prices vary on how early you book, like with planes.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#157

Post by thu2111 »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #128
Shivetya wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Trains in the UK got a lot better after privatisation, and of course we're discussing how they're not competitive against the airline industry which is significantly more free market again. So your point isn't landing. Yes. Globalised and freer markets are a solution to this. In fact it's what the article advocates, more or less.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#158

Post by captainbland »

Sharlin wrote: post #63
dzhiurgis wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can operate them 2-5x cheaper.

Source for that? You need ten buses to replace a single medium-length train. To my understanding trains trade higher up-front costs (infrastructure!) to lower per-passenger-km operating costs.

I mean just based on UK ticket costs I'd say they're not too far off the mark. If you catch a coach rather than the train it's often half the price, but the trade-off is you get stuck in traffic, they're infrequent, if they're oversubscribed there's no standing room (although coach operators rarely face this issue) and they're usually just not as fast as trains. I commuted to work by intercity coach for a couple of weeks and believe me it was no picnic - 5:30am wake time to catch a 6am coach and I often didn't get back until 8pm. Admittedly I was at the end of a route with a number of stops in several small villages nearby which exacerbated things a lot, but still! Some people do this on a long term basis and it blows my mind.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#159

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

deugtniet wrote: post #89
fogetti wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

> travel by train is an important way to do it.

Traveling less is even more effective.

With all the debate about transport modes, it still boils down to distance - the emissions per passenger kilometer of all powered modes of transport are within one order of magnitude.

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