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Europe is investing heavily in trains

nytimes.com

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Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#71

Post by foepys »

ParksNet wrote: post #48

It doesn't make sense to emphasize passenger travel over goods transport for rail. Rail's strength is efficient transport of heavy loads at slow speeds. People are light and often want to go at high speeds. Europe should reorient its rail network for rail transport, and passengers can travel by bus or plane. But - Europe's rail network is completely reliant on subsidies, and its easier to get them when you're transpo…

No, just no. You obviously don't have experience with European infrastructure. Rush hour traffic on any German Autobahn will quickly tell you that adding more busses and cars is the worst idea here.

European roads are also impossible to build and maintain without subsidies but somehow nobody or at least very few people talk about that.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#72

Post by avianlyric »

noahtallen wrote: post #61
skrbjc wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your perspective from someone close to the situation there. I believe many Americans have a picture of a perfect system in Europe, but the truth is likely different. Can you elaborate on the negative aspects of the train system, as you see it?

I’m an American who recently took a train in Europe from Paris to Brussels. Some brief thoughts: - It was so fast! Under 90 minutes for a journey which would have taken a few hours by car. Clearly much faster than a plane on this particular route, due to extra waiting and security in airports. - It was also a very comfortable mode. If you’re traveling with friends, it’d be very easy to socialize around a table. Quiet…

On this specific example

> Amsterdam to London

Eurostar runs a direct route, with passport control in Amsterdam. But looking at any link from Europe to London that isn’t directly served by Eurostar (i.e. any city except Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels) is going to suck.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#73

Post by saddlerustle »

Sharlin wrote: post #56
encryptluks2 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trains are incredibly expensive to maintain. The US still relies a lot on manual operations when running trains. I wonder if they will ever be able to fully automate their travel.

Not so. The whole point of trains is that expenses are largely one-off. Building the infrastructure is expensive. Recurring costs are much lower than other modes of land transport, ceteris paribus.

Land transport yes, but the operational cost of long distance trains is quite a bit higher per passenger-mile than planes

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#75

Post by isaacimagine »

agumonkey wrote: post #46
lqet wrote: post #26

Here in Germany, for as long as I can remember, the government praises itself every year for investing as much in rail as never before. I have not noticed the service quality to change for the better over the last 15 years. The ever-rising investments seem to be only enough to keep the status quo of the crumbling infrastructure.

A youtuber explained that Italy overlayed high speed rail routes now and that it's pretty brilliant. Things are moving.

I live in Italy and can attest that the high-speed rail running along the backbone of the Italian peninsula is really nice: it's clean, faster than a regional flight (no need for security, etc.), quiet, and it's fun to watch the hills roll by out the window.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#76

Post by sschueller »

mywittyname wrote: post #17

Time is money, so I don't think trains can ever compete with flying for long-distance travel (>1000miles). They could do like the USA does and make flying such a time-consuming pain in the ass that it's rarely worth it for trips under 5 hours.

I can hop in a train at Zürich main station in Switzerland and be in Paris in 4 hours or I can get in another one and be in Milan in 3 and half hours. On my trip I can use the internet, go to the restaurant or relax in the quiet carriage. No turbolance, no weather delays and the ride is very quiet.

How much work can you really get done going via airplane? How much time do you waste going through security and how well can you work crammed into a tiny seat?

Sometimes taking it a bit slower is also good for your health.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#77

Post by scyzoryk_xyz »

ithinkso wrote: post #54
lqet wrote: post #26

Here in Germany, for as long as I can remember, the government praises itself every year for investing as much in rail as never before. I have not noticed the service quality to change for the better over the last 15 years. The ever-rising investments seem to be only enough to keep the status quo of the crumbling infrastructure.

It's different in Poland. Here, everyone always complains about the rail and it was shit like you wouldn't believe only like 15 years ago. I've been using trains only sporadically but the improvements are absolutely immense, I couldn't believe my eyes. Not perfect of course but holy shit did it improve, especially regional rails Of course we had to improve from much lower standards than Germany, I guess, so I have no…

I use trains here in Poland and although there have been big improvements, a lot of them are only a facade.

Long distance PKP trains are still late everyday. The regional trains in my city tend to be over-packed, and from a technical pov they’re more like larger diesel buses than trains.

However, in response to the earlier comment and this one as well, I would have to say that investment doesn’t always mean immediate visible effects. The biggest investment to make in rail is in the infrastructure. You don’t feel as a passenger which parts of the track are old and which are new, and they are pretty expensive to build and maintain.

I also would wonder how much freight rail is in that investment, because that we don’t see or feel at all.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#78

Post by cinntaile »

simonsarris wrote: post #10
Fargren wrote: post #2

Living in Spain, I love trains and take them over airplane when it's an option. However, trains are often around twice as expensive as flying for may routes. I know nothing about trains, but intuitively I would expect the opposite, and I really wish it was more affordable, specially high speed rail.

This is mentioned near the end of the article but the reason those short domestic flights are so cheap in Europe is that commercial kerosene is currently tax exempt in every single EU member state. Jet fuel is cheaper per gallon in the EU than it is in the USA! (or was, before the current war) In typically tax-happy Europe this always struck me as odd, agree it is sad when you find out an airplane ticket is cheaper t…

I bet this keeps a lot of national airlines afloat and they're already barely afloat, if they start taxing kerosene they'll require even more subsidies from their governments.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#80

Post by pg_bot »

ape4 wrote: post #12

More feasible than planes to electrify or switch to hydrogen (hydrogenify?)

Batteries are still too heavy and take too long to recharge for most commercial travel by plane. If we had better batteries, planes would become electric.

Hydrogen has an infrastructure problem. Planes aren't designed for holding hydrogen and they would need to be redesigned entirely to accommodate for using it as a fuel. Hydrogen is hard to store and transfer as it tends to embrittle a wide variety of metals. There are also no hydrogen refueling stations near airports, you would have to build all of that infrastructure as well. You might be able to generate hydrogen on demand via a chemical reaction with something like NaOH and Silicon or Aluminum, but I haven't run the numbers to see if that would be technically possible, economically feasible, or safe for passenger travel. Theoretically you could use hydrogen, but it would cost trillions of dollars to get everything up and running without some sort of breakthrough.

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