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Europe is investing heavily in trains

nytimes.com

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Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#131

Post by prennert »

avianlyric wrote: post #72
noahtallen wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Depends what you optimize for. I used to travel from Germany to London and had to change in Brussels. Yes you have to wait a bit, but not like at an airport. The walking distances and wait times are very small and the trains connect timewise so it is fairly stress free.

If you want to play it super save, you can stop for a good meal in Brussels as you are taking a break in the middle of a city, rather than hanging around in an airport.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#132

Post by julienb_sea »

occz wrote: post #103
Leherenn wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rail infrastructure is very expensive compared to planes. An airport is expensive, but once you've built it you're pretty much immediately connected to half the world. With a train station, you need a track to each surrounding stations, maintain them, and so on. Also, train doesn't scale down as well, it quickly becomes inefficient for the less dense routes. People are talking about subsidies (by not taxing fuel for…

>but trains are also directly subsidised to the tune of billions each year. The rail network just costs a ton to build and maintain. Just wait until you hear about how subsidised the infrastructure for cars and trucks are.

Construction of road infrastructure can be compared to construction of tracks and stations, and it's fair to say taxpayers foot the bill in full for both.

The difference is that trains operate at a loss even with high ticket prices and operational subsidies are necessary for market viability. That is not the case with car and truck usage.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#134

Post by cheschire »

novembermike wrote: post #91
AnonCoward4 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in addition to that they also removed a lot of rail lines, especially goods traffic. It would've been a boon to have fewer trucks on the motorway and probably better for the environment.

European trains don't really do that much freight though. They tend to be optimized to carry people. America is actually way ahead of Europe in terms of rail freight, something like 10x depending on the measurement.

Having commuted with both american and german rail systems before, my educated guess it's likely due to who owns the rails. American rail freight companies have far more control over prioritization than european freight companies.

DB Netz owns the vast majority of german rail and therefore prioritizes what makes them the most money. Historically that's been carrying people due to all the government and company subsidies they get for supporting commuters and students. During COVID times the rail freight increased dramatically because the personen trains were offline. I suspect that will have generated some inertia towards freight, but it will take years to see and only if the right folks at DB crunch the right numbers.

On the american side, I've sat for 20 or 30 minutes regularly (up to an hour on the worst days) while our commuter train had to wait for the rail owner's freight train to roll through. And that's a regularly scheduled commuter!!

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#135

Post by tester756 »

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…

Here (southern Poland)

I do believe that trains are really good in compare to what we had like decade or so ago

Quiet, looking modern, clean, reasonable seats and their "placement" strategy

For comparison: monthly ticket price is like 10% of minimal wage (or 50% of that for students) for distance around 100km/day

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#136

Post by scyzoryk_xyz »

emteycz wrote: post #104
scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Even a diesel bus on rails is much more efficient than a diesel bus on roads. It's also much easier to electrify than a fleet of buses, an much more ecological when you do (because no significant battery). Thus, anything on rails is a win.

Agreed - especially in the context of how unbelievably clumsy the US is at doing trains.

Here in western Poland however it was a bit easier - lots of tracks remained since 19th century. And with these diesel buses popping up, an opportunity presented itself to go relatively low investment and lots of political bang. Those trains are usually way too packed in my personal experience.

Similarly, Pendolino high speed rail was developed and implemented to huge fanfare. Only the tickets ended up being so expensive that basically only the upper-upper-middle class wants to take them. Why take the high-speed train at double the price to get you there twice as fast, when all you need is to get there?

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#137

Post by gigatexal »

That’s going to be tough: the bit about competing with low cost flights. We flew Ryan air to Italy for 50 bucks a person each way. By train would have been much more expensive and taken a ton longer.

But let’s see how they build this out. I do love living in a Berlin. The public transit system is amazing. It’s not perfect. But it’s reliable enough that I do not miss my car.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#138

Post by chrisbolt »

thebean11 wrote: post #63
monksy wrote: post #27

As someone who just rode in a sleeper car for the second time. I like amtrak when I can do this. It's completely unreasonable for a round trip, but I did Chicago->Seattle and Chicago to Boston (Where I"m currently here.. and will be flying back tomorrow). It's a mostly great experience... all due to the scenery you're watching, not so much everything else. What worries me if it becomes more privatized: You'll see the…

I can't wrap my head around how expensive Amtrak is, given that it's so heavily subsidized by the government.

Part of the reason that Amtrak is expensive is that it's so slow. For a flight from Chicago to Seattle you only need to pay pilots/flight attendants/etc for around 5 hours of work, whereas for Amtrak it's 46 hours or more.

Wendover Productions goes into detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwjwePe-HmA

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#139

Post by moonchrome »

NoLinkToMe wrote: post #95
agumonkey wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Absolutely loved taking the train in Italy, fast, convenient, cheap, good amenities. Of course the country very much lends itself for rail (more or less an elongated territory that can run a very fast high-capacity north/south backbone, with slower but more ubiquitous horizontal offshoot rail to the various smaller cities and villages), but it was still very well done. Especially considering how much tunnelling was r…

Just solving urban transport with train would be a huge thing here in Croatia. Rails are so shit that if you need to commute it's faster to travel through peak rush hour with a car than ride a train. It's depressing really because good rails would really connect less developed places near the capital and offload the pressure on city.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#140

Post by phendrenad2 »

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.

In the US, trains are seen as ancient cowboy technology. Trying to build more train infrastructure is surely an uphill battle.
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