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Europe is investing heavily in trains

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Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#241

Post by ascar »

noirbot wrote: post #234
twelvechairs wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I take Amtrak more in the US than the average German citizen takes DB Its more than ICE trains not more than the whole of DB. Its 100m ICE trips per year but 2600m DB trips per year in 2019 (c. 31 per capita per year) https://www.statista.com/statistics/936254/deutsche-bahn-pas...

Sure, but then the better US comparison includes things like the Chicago/NYC/Boston/DC/Atlanta train systems, which I'd imagine a decent number of folks in those cities take more than 31 times a year. Heck, I think I've taken more than 31 MTA rides per year and I don't even live in NYC.

City train systems are not offered by Deutsche Bahn AG, but by local city carriers, so they are not part of that statistic. E.g. Munich is mostly run by MVG and had 596 million passengers in 2018 [1], which aren't included in the numbers above. DB only runs the S-Bahn in Munich.

But yes, the 2600m DB passengers probably mixes long distance and short distance service to some degree.

https://dewiki.de/Lexikon/M%C3%BCnchner_Verkehrsgesellschaft

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#242

Post by beaconstudios »

noirbot wrote: post #238
ascar wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm a little surprised to learn that I take Amtrak more in the US than the average German citizen takes DB Amtrak had 31.3 million passengers in 2016 [1]. That's 0.095 passengers per capita. And that's on all Amtrak trains, while the German number is just for the ICE high-speed trains. Amtrak's high-speed Acela trains only had 3.5 million passengers in 2019 or 0.01 per capita. [2] Per capita is just not a useful nu…

Sure, but Amtrak is a weird comparison since its "real" service area isn't anywhere close to the full population of the US. There's plenty of whole states that don't have an Amtrak station in them. Most EU countries have a much lower median distance to a train station than the US does. I'm not expecting to have them be similar numbers. My original point was purely anecdotal - I usually take 1-3 Amtrak rides a year an…

You probably just travel more than most people. Also, America is much bigger than any given European country and that leads to greater travel distances.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#243

Post by hilbert42 »

scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #77
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…

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…

I can't help but feel much of this argument is relative. From my experience (I'm no longer a European resident) almost all of the European rail network that I've traveled on (and that's quite a lot) beats much of the infrastructure in Anglophone countries—and I'm referring to both track and rolling-stock).

(...Perhaps my view has been formed by the fact that I've come from a low base in Anglophone countries, so everything seems much better in Europe.)

___

Edit: I must be fair, there was one European route that I traveled on that was truly substandard and that was the single-track Kaiser Franz Josephs Bahn (Emperor Franz Joseph Railway) from Vienna (Wien Nordbahnhof) to Prague via Gmünd — not the good two track route that goes via Břeclav and Brno (which I've also traveled on).

The railway track of the Kaiser Franz Josephs Bahn was in dire—most desperate—need of maintenance when I traveled on it and that was a few years before the Iron Curtain fell and Czechoslovakia was still communist.

There's no doubt that's the worst track I've ever traveled on (it's one of those experience one never forgets). The train traveled so slowly that we passengers thought we could get out and walk faster, moreover the carriages rocked wildly from side to side and we had a constant feeling that the train was going to derail at any moment (had it gone any faster then I reckon it certainly would have derailed). I have no idea whether that track is still in such poor condition today or not (at the time I was on the understanding that the track had deliberately not been maintained since the War because of Iron Curtain politics).

Nevertheless, it was by far the exception in my experience.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#244

Post by lillecarl »

luciusdomitius wrote: post #196
scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rai…

Well. In Germany the middle class flies or drives, the lower class takes the bus and the upper-upper-middle class drives teslas or takes ICEs

So who takes the train?

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#245

Post by pilsetnieks »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #106

As an American who doesn't drive, the experience of trains in the EU compared to the US is just delightful. Yes, there are super cheap flights and I used them often for longer haul trips but the trains were always amazing- I've done trips including Mariupol to Lviv, Budapest to Berlin, and Berlin to Munich and always had a great experience. The Romania-Chisinau line is quite old but part of its charm. I see a lot of…

> I hope there will be more investment, especially in the Baltics.

There is an ongoing development, Rail Baltica, European gauge, being built to join Helsinki through the Baltic states, to Poland, which will link up with Germany. The end date has slipped (it was supposed to be in 2024, now it's pushed to 2026) but construction is already ongoing, and it looks quite promising.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#246

Post by gtirloni »

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.

I've used trains many times in Germany and they are far far from crumbling.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#247

Post by pilsetnieks »

emn13 wrote: post #112
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..

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…

> Baltic states still use a soviet-derived system

Rail Baltica [1] (already being constructed) is using European gauge.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_Baltica

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#248

Post by pantalaimon »

TeeMassive wrote: post #239
xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: post #231

It seems likely that hydrogen will replace diesel in trains. Companies like Alstom[1], PESA[2] and Talgo[3] are developing hydrogen trains. Germany has already started deploying them on a small scale[4], while Poland is planning to[5]. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alstom_Coradia_LINT#iLint [2] - https://fuelcellsworks.com/news/poland-pesa-presented-a-hydr... [3] - https://www.railwaypro.com/wp/talgo-to-launch-…

I'm not against using Hydrogen but the problem is always what are they producing Hydrogen with and how is it more efficient energetically and emission wise?

Most Hydrogen is produced from Methane by steam reforming

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#249

Post by ascar »

noirbot wrote: post #238
ascar wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm a little surprised to learn that I take Amtrak more in the US than the average German citizen takes DB Amtrak had 31.3 million passengers in 2016 [1]. That's 0.095 passengers per capita. And that's on all Amtrak trains, while the German number is just for the ICE high-speed trains. Amtrak's high-speed Acela trains only had 3.5 million passengers in 2019 or 0.01 per capita. [2] Per capita is just not a useful nu…

Sure, but Amtrak is a weird comparison since its "real" service area isn't anywhere close to the full population of the US. There's plenty of whole states that don't have an Amtrak station in them. Most EU countries have a much lower median distance to a train station than the US does. I'm not expecting to have them be similar numbers. My original point was purely anecdotal - I usually take 1-3 Amtrak rides a year an…

My point wasn't to dismiss your anecdotal evidence, but just to highlight that the number per capita can be easily misleading. Yes Amtrak doesn't serve a lot of the US and IIRC has effectively only a single high-speed line. But the average German citizen is using high-speed railway 100 times more often than the average US citizen (for the obvious reasons we both mentioned). You're just not the average citizen.

I'm pretty sure many Germans don't use the ICE at all. While service is a lot better, the way to and from the high-speed train station often makes it inefficient, especially because the German autobahn is also world-class and doesn't suffer from a "last miles" problem.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#250

Post by ChildOfChaos »

Certainly not in the UK, our ticket prices keep going up massively and the service is getting worse and worse, putting on smaller and smaller trains and more delays and cancellations than ever, with most train stations badly run down.

It's a complete joke. The trains are far worse and largely more expensive than they were ten years ago.

In the past eight months, I have gotten a same day return journey on average once a month and I have experienced:

Twice - Stranded missing my last train home due to delayed connecting trains. One of which I was advised to go to a different station and speak to them there to arrange a taxi, got there station was unmanned and ended up having to sort via customer service on twitter at 11pm.

Had a train that I couldn't move on, standing in the isle, when i had reserved seats that i couldn't even get too due to the amount of people on it, later stops they couldn't even let anymore people on it. This was a train they decided to cut the size by more than half without warning therefore I am not even sure if my reserved seats existed!

2x train home that I wanted cancelled, lucky I had checked the app due to constant issues so I Could change plans and get an earlier train home.

Had a train terminate several stops early and thrown off the train without explanation.

3x had delays (not the ones mentioned on others) of over 15 minutes. Most recently, left at the station late at night for over an hour as train was delayed, with constantly changing information on screens including saying the train was coming in the next 5 minutes for around half an hour and then various different platform changes only for it to turn up at the original platform, unstaffed station, no staff to help and many annoyed/confused people. I was desperate for the toilet, but due to it being later they were all locked, leaving for an uncomfortable and uncertain wait.

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