Europe is investing heavily in trains • Hacker News Board

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#161

Post by lorenzfx » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 9:45 PM UTC

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.

> 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.

Unfortunately, that's not true (the investment part). In preparation for the IPO (that never happened because of the crash) Deutsche Bahn was heavily tuned for profit since the mid 90s which led to a massive decrease in investment. As rail infrastructure has a rather long service life, a lot of those cost-cutting measures have only beginning to be felt rather recently. Now not only do the investments that have not been made have to be made up for, but the funding gap has caused the infrastructure to decay even further.

Also, a lot of money has been spent on vanity projects like Stuttgart 21, instead of much-needed extension of freight lines like the one in the upper Rhine valley.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#162

Post by andbberger » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 9:45 PM UTC

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.

high speed night trains can compete at longer distances but capital costs become problematic. they would be more cost competitive if rail received the same amount of subsidy that air does

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#163

Post by gbear605 » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 9:46 PM UTC

recuter wrote: post #105

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…

Eurostar runs direct trains from London to Rotterdam & Amsterdam, 3.5 and 4 hours respectively. You can't really compare to a similar route in the US because there are hardly any and hardly anybody uses them. The train routes in EU are busy and frequently full , just like planes. Obviously booking ahead is cheaper, how else could you do it? Top tip, plan a head and read up a little bit on seat61: https://www.seat61.c…

Long distance trains in the US are frequently full, they just don’t run as often. And the US does the same thing where it’s cheaper in advance.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#164

Post by gpvos » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 9:47 PM UTC

namdnay wrote: post #43

ape4 wrote: post #12

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

You still have diesel trains ?!

Depends on the country. Most of the UK away from London and apart from a handful of main lines is diesel. Elsewhere in Europe, most rural lines still are. It's likely many of these will switch to either hydrogen or battery trains, the latter possibly with shorter stretches of overhead wire to recharge.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#165

Post by wolverine876 » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 9:47 PM UTC

mynameisash wrote: post #83

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…

> I mean, compared to the US, it’s a delight! For a similar city-to-city distance (Portland to Seattle), I’d love a 90min transit mode, especially if it was relatively cheap. Fully agree. Years ago, I took Amtrak from Minnesota to Seattle, and it was 36 hours. I enjoyed most everything about it except that it took. So. Long. I rarely drive down to Portland, but if we had a ~1.5hr train, I'd probably do it several tim…

> It'll never happen, but I can dream.

Sorry, but people give up too easily. This isn't a fusion power plant. We only have to vote for it.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#166

Post by cromka » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 9:47 PM UTC

mszcz wrote: post #130

ithinkso wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, around that time I was still in college and used trains a lot. I remember we had a running joke about everything inside the trains we traveled in had some sort of sticky, yucky film. When you grabbed something and then let go you could kind of feel the train clinging to you. The heating in the winter was always either broken or turned to 11. My friend once, by accident, melted a big chunk of his shoe on the rad…

> My friend once, by accident, melted a big chunk of his shoe on the radiator under his seat.

This happened to me while on a train to Warsaw 20 years ago, as a high-school student. Ironically I travelled to the Parliament where Buzek, the at-the-time PM, came back from Athens having signed the EU Treaty of Accession to give an impromptu press release. Crazy how much progres we had seen since, and how many set backs.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#167

Post by ATsch » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 9:48 PM UTC

andbberger wrote: post #157

emn13 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that if you travel from The Netherlands to Spain you might be traversing 6 different railway electrification systems that vary in critical stuff like voltages (and by more than a factor 10!) and possibly Hz, and some are AC and some are DC (not kidding). Also there will be at least 2 incompatible track gauges involved. And I bet other stuff like communications and routing systems are incompatible and safety crit…

incredible almost everything you said is wrong! > Note that if you travel from The Netherlands to Spain you might be traversing 6 different railway electrification systems that vary in critical stuff like voltages (and by more than a factor 10!) and possibly Hz, and some are AC and some are DC (not kidding). Also there will be at least 2 incompatible track gauges involved. And I bet other stuff like communications an…

> modern powertrains traverse various electrification schemes without difficulty.

Indeed, however the majority of currently existing stock is only fitted for operation in at most one or two countries

> signaling systems are trending towards ETCS

"trending towards" is doing a lot of work here, ETCS rollout has been stalling for ages. New train sets are still being delivered today that do not really support it. Most countries have somewhat understandably not been in a hurry to make the huge investments required to replace their current, working systems with ETCS.

> trains that traverse incompatible signaling systems (eg the eurostar) simply carry a set of onboard signaling equipment for each standard.

Yes, which is extremely expensive and also requires full re-certification for every country, which means that in practice most trains are only certified for one or two countries at most.

None of these would be unsolvable with some more willpower of course, but they are still absolutely an issue today.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#168

Post by smcl » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 9:48 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #125

lrem wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It _really_ depends on the distances and sizes of the cities you're going to. Paris-London train is about 3 hours, which is likely less than you'll spend on getting to+from an airport. Paris-Berlin on the other hand is miserable, unless you love trains.

This is exactly my point, trains can't compete with point-to-point travel at 500mph. So injecting a bunch of padding on either side of flights is the best way of making train travel more appealing.

Those points are usually fairly far outside of their respective cities though, to be fair. Planes are always going to be preferable for long journeys, London-Istanbul is a trip only big train fans would plan to take by rail. But I can take some really nice direct train journeys where I am - Budapest, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Belgrade and more. And since I end up in the city centre it's usually a quick tram or subway to where I'm staying, or hopping another train onwards to a smaller town. And travelling on the train with friends and a beer is really pleasant :-)

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#169

Post by ghaff » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 9:49 PM UTC

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.

Well, it's not really. It makes money on the Northeast Corridor and loses it on (most of)the rest of the country. A profitable Amtrak would basically service Boston to DC.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#170

Post by DominikPeters » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 9:50 PM UTC

elthor89 wrote: post #11

It is there but I wish there was a more comprehensive network of high speed rail in Europe. Going from Amsterdam to Spain the plane seems to win on price and travel time. One thing that isn’t infrastructure but could easily be improved is buying international train tickets. So often I see that one needs to call or you can only book one month ahead. Surely we could have solved that by now..

I agree that ticketing is terrible. But note that you can take the train from Amsterdam to Barcelona or even Madrid or Sevilla using essentially only high-speed lines (the only segments that aren't high-speed are Amsterdam to Lille and Avignon to Perpignan). So at least on those routes, one can't really complain about the comprehensiveness of European HSR. Amsterdam to Barcelona can be done in 12h17 with two changes, giving an average speed of 100km/h (measuring straight-line distance!).