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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

#171

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

LatteLazy wrote: post #162
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 used to work in rail engineering. Our projects were all reliant on explicit government subsidiary. We as a company basically watched the national transport budget for the next 12 months to predict whether we'd make a profit in the coming year. There are a few factors to rail that make it unsuitable for long distance. First, there is 10s of 1000s of miles of track, all of which has to be laid, maintained, controlled…

200 miles is way too short for the break-even point.

If you take into account the time overhead for airplanes, the break-even point is about 4 hours. For modern high-speed rail (speeds of over 200 mph), that's about 800 miles (NYC to Chicago, or Paris to Vienna). Most European high-speed rail lines outside France and Spain don't operate at that speed yet, but it's not uncommon for newly-built high-speed lines (which is why it's common in China).

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#172

Post by eesmith »

thu2111 wrote: post #163
fiblye wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But once a track is built, it doesn’t take much maintenance to keep it running for decades or even a century. There are places in this world that can’t even manage to repair streets, but have trains operating daily with little trouble. It seems like costs would come down at some point in first world nations, or it’d be worthwhile to subsidize the creation of railways more significantly. I know governments do try to t…

It takes quite a lot of maintenance unfortunately. Rails need constant work to keep them in good condition. So does the ballast. Signalling involves miles of cables, lights, radio towers and motors that also degrade. The stations need staff, gates, ticket kiosks, displays. A frequent need is to add capacity. Adding capacity to the sky is easy because it's empty. It's essentially just about scaling air traffic control…

> Adding capacity to the sky is easy because it's empty

Adding capacity to airports, however, is much harder. Heathrow is at 98% capacity, for example, and it's difficult to add a new airport, or even new runway, for London. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansion_of_Heathrow_Airport , which discusses the major earthworks, etc. involved.

> Roads are easier to maintain and pay for themselves without subsidies just via fuel tax.

In the US fuel taxes only cover about 25% of "State/Local Road Spending", says https://taxfoundation.org/statelocal-road-spending-covered-u... .

> Finally of the few people needed to maintain and run the roads, many are private sector and un-unionized e.g. gas station employees

That's in the US, right? Fuel-tanker drivers in Portugal went on strike last year - https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-portugal-strike-fuel/portu... .

Fuel-tanker drivers in France went on strike 3 years ago - https://www.thelocal.fr/20170531/french-petrol-stations-begi... .

> It's got nothing to do with greenness which is at any rate a very ambiguous case to make when you consider all the factors. Trains can be less green than planes in many ordinary situations.

Care to elaborate?

For many ordinary situations, train CO2 production is 1/2 or even less than planes, on a per-passenger basis. Quoting https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49349566 "Train virtually always comes out better than plane, often by a lot. A journey from London to Madrid would emit 43kg (95lb) of CO2 per passenger by train, but 118kg by plane (or 265kg if the non-CO2 emissions are included), according to EcoPassenger."

Of course, London-Madrid by train is about 24 hours, or 2.5 hours by flight.

And of course, London-NYC isn't a train trip away, and there are unusual situations like Bergen, Norway—Aberdeen, United Kingdom where there are direct flights while Google Maps just laughs at me for asking for a train routing.

But I'm curious about the ordinary cases where flights are more green than train - that is, where both are reasonable options to consider.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#173

Post by mmcnl »

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).

Your statement is false. The Dutch railway system is of extremely high quality and is very punctional.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#174

Post by brnt »

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…

Last I looked into this: maintenance of rail >> maintenance of runways. There's a lot of manpower in rail maintenance, which is costly in Europe.

But subsidies also play a role. France subsidizes rail as much as air travel is subsidized, and there rail is much more affordable.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#175

Post by vanderZwan »

thu2111 wrote: post #161
vanderZwan wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU intervention. It worked for getting rid of roaming prices for mobile phone carriers in Europe, and that also requires cooperation between different carriers. Why wouldn't something like that be possible for rail?

EU intervention solves nothing. Forcing roaming prices down just pushed up other tariffs, which didn't matter to the Commission because their ideological goal is to unify Europe into a single country, not get people the best mobile deals. It was only possible at all because the phone industry already built all the infrastructure for roaming on it's own. The problem is lack of demand. The article posits there is huge…

> Forcing roaming prices down just pushed up other tariffs

I pay less than twenty euros a month for 10 GiB of data throughout all of Europe. What are you talking about?

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#176

Post by Hamuko »

eesmith wrote: post #172
thu2111 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes quite a lot of maintenance unfortunately. Rails need constant work to keep them in good condition. So does the ballast. Signalling involves miles of cables, lights, radio towers and motors that also degrade. The stations need staff, gates, ticket kiosks, displays. A frequent need is to add capacity. Adding capacity to the sky is easy because it's empty. It's essentially just about scaling air traffic control…

> Adding capacity to the sky is easy because it's empty Adding capacity to airports, however, is much harder. Heathrow is at 98% capacity, for example, and it's difficult to add a new airport, or even new runway, for London. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansion_of_Heathrow_Airport , which discusses the major earthworks, etc. involved. > Roads are easier to maintain and pay for themselves without subsidies just…

>Adding capacity to airports, however, is much harder.

Is that somehow different for train stations?

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#177

Post by inferiorhuman »

Carpetsmoker wrote: post #77
bnt wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Internationally speaking, trains in Netherlands are pretty good IMO. Dutch people love to complain about it because we're sticklers for being on time, but if you compare internationally Dutch trains really aren't so bad.

Internationally speaking, trains in Netherlands are pretty good IMO. Dutch people love to complain about it because we're sticklers for being on time, but if you compare internationally Dutch trains really aren't so bad.

Are you suggesting that Germans and French don't enjoy a good complaint?

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#178

Post by inferiorhuman »

presto8 wrote: post #169
Darmody wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

200 or 300 km/h I wouldn't call that slow. Not as fast as a plane but it's not slow at all.

The most well-executed high-speed train system I can think of is in Japan, e.g. shinkansen from Kyoto to Tokyo, which Google Maps is reporting as 2h11m. Distance by road for that city pair is showing as 464 km, for an average speed of 212 km/h. So I think around 200 km/h can be considered the highest possible currently practical average speed of a high speed train network over a reasonable distance. I tried to find s…

I tried to find something equivalent in Europe to compare, maybe Frankfurt to Berlin? Google Maps is showing that as 4h16 by ICE over 549 km, for an average speed of 128 km/h.

Ah, I took the ICE from Frankfurt to Berlin last year on a last minute ticket. A bunch of things come to mind. In no particular order:

- Tokyo - Kyoto is pretty much the premier Shinkansen line. Is Frankfurt - Berlin considered the same?

- I was pretty underwhelmed with the overall comfort on the ICE trip (slightly less than Amtrak's Acela). The Shinkansen (well, at least Tokyo - Kansai Region) is really on a whole other level.

- A last minute ICE ticket Frankfurt - Berlin was fairly expensive (> $100 if memory serves), I didn't price advance tickets. Berlin - Amsterdam tho got dramatically cheaper the further out you booked your ticket.

- Spain's Barcelona - Madrid train has regularly raised its peak speed (now at 310 kph) and if my calculations from the Wikipedia page are correct RENFE completes the 621 km trip in 2.5 hours (about 250 kph average).

- Amsterdam Centraal is perhaps one of the most obnoxious stations I've had to navigate. Every Dutch resident I've talked with has complained about the punctuality followed by complaining about how unnecessarily unintuitive the fares are.

Germany still has a fair amount of diesel service and a ton of legacy infrastructure. Spain is basically converting all of their non-standard gauge rail to a more common gauge and rolling out a ton of high speed service. I've only done relatively short trips (Madrid - Toledo) versus a variety of longer distance trips in Germany.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#179

Post by LatteLazy »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #171
LatteLazy wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work in rail engineering. Our projects were all reliant on explicit government subsidiary. We as a company basically watched the national transport budget for the next 12 months to predict whether we'd make a profit in the coming year. There are a few factors to rail that make it unsuitable for long distance. First, there is 10s of 1000s of miles of track, all of which has to be laid, maintained, controlled…

200 miles is way too short for the break-even point. If you take into account the time overhead for airplanes, the break-even point is about 4 hours. For modern high-speed rail (speeds of over 200 mph), that's about 800 miles (NYC to Chicago, or Paris to Vienna). Most European high-speed rail lines outside France and Spain don't operate at that speed yet, but it's not uncommon for newly-built high-speed lines (which…

4 hours at 200mph is 800 miles. But no train does that over distance. Even the Japanese, with dedicated infrastructure for bullet trains and minimal political issues stop every few hundred km because they're at a city people want to get on or off at...

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#180

Post by prennert »

45ure wrote: post #168
prennert wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand HS2 was planned to become very similar to the tube with 18 trains per hour. This is more that one every 4 minutes. The trains would also run very fast. This allows for caring lots of passengers, but it also is very complex to achieve and accounts for a lot of the costs (as well as buying property). Also inflation had to be taken into account when comparing projects that are decades apart. So wi…

>From what I understand HS2 was planned to become very similar to the tube with 18 trains per hour. The comparison of HS2 with 18 paths per hour in each direction, on an overground rail system stretching over 320 miles, running at high speed (theoretical uppper speed limit of 250mph), with the London Underground, is laughable. I could not find any references to your claim in the official documents. The project was ne…

I meant to compare mainly from a user perspective. If a train runs every 4 mins and takes a bit more than an hour to get to it's destination that's very similar to the tube experience. Very different to a typical train experience where you have to turn up exactly in time or wait another 30 mins for the next train.

The point I was trying to make was that a comparison to HS1 without accounting for the train frequency is probably not fair.

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