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Europe is investing heavily in trains

nytimes.com

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Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#271

Post by Karrot_Kream »

erosenbe0 wrote: post #194
phendrenad2 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Trains kill lots of people and the noise is excruciating. They also impede other traffic when at grade, and require massively expensive carbon guzzling infrastructure when not at grade. The stations are often designed or located more optimally for getting freight to and from, rather than people. The bathrooms are less claustrophobic though.

> require massively expensive carbon guzzling infrastructure when not at grade

If you think that building rail viaducts and rail grade separations are carbon expensive, wait till you learn about the carbon used for roadway viaducts and roadway grade separations.

You can argue that rails usually run on much more consistent of a grade than roadways but that's only to decrease the amount of acceleration that's required by train cars and to increase top speeds. Freight rail is a special case because freight companies try to avoid as much wear-and-tear on their train cars as feasible within their delivery windows, unlike passenger rail which necessarily cares more about speed and less about wear-and-tear.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#272

Post by lotsofpulp »

gumby wrote: post #267

> Last year, SNCF relaunched overnight services between Paris and Nice, with tickets starting as low as 19 euros, about $21, for a midweek low-season ticket. That compares with 31 euros, not including baggage fees or the cost of airport transfers, for a short flight on EasyJet These prices are inconceivable in the US, where competition in air travel has essentially been eliminated.

And yet US airlines (United/American/Delta/Southwest/Alaska/JetBlue) are barely profitable, if not losing money many years.

The most hated airline, Spirit, has the most consistent profit margin 10%+, but all the others are near 0% most years.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#273

Post by Aachen »

SergeAx wrote: post #129

Typical distance between European capitals is ~500km. It is less than an hour net time by plane, but adding travel from city center to the airport, check in, security check, waiting time, waiting for luggage, travel from destination airport to city center - all those are compounding into 4-5 hours door to door depending on road traffic. High speed train is about the same or even better, and you have internet connecti…

Maybe I'm reading too much into your comment, correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like an "as opposed to the sprawling USA".

Just did some doodling in OsmAnd, connecting a few cities big enough that I've heard the name (at least I'm presuming that's why I know their name).

https://snipboard.io/0aunhF.jpg

You can do Sacramento–San Francisco–San Jose–Los Angeles–Las Vegas–Salty Lake City–Reno–Sacramento (round trip) in 2500km as the crow flies, with as longest stretch 700km (SLS–Reno) and an average of 300km (of course you can then branch off and make lower-speed connections to towns in between). Checking inhabitants on Wikipedia for a few real quick, it seems they're bigger in my imagination (or in movies perhaps) than in reality, e.g. Reno is only like 200k inhabitants, but at least to/from, say, Los Angeles, which is a small country in itself from my Beneluxian perspective, there has to be travel demand. Or between SF and SJ, they're so close and there's other stops you can make in between. Hard to retrofit into a city if there's no existing train or metro that can at least pave the way to the edge of town, but otherwise it's hard to imagine it wouldn't earn itself back in a handful of years if it doesn't exist yet.

Across a continent east-to-west is obviously less practical, same with any other continent, but it looks to me like connecting big cities that are similarly nearby as European big cities isn't the problem. It's probably more about everyone needing a car anyway, extremely low fuel prices, public transport is deemed for peasants, no good walking/cycling/bus options to/from stations, that sort of issues (it's a thing here as well, a rich German has a lot of trouble getting into a bus when they can drive something fancy instead—of course I'm generalizing and this doesn't apply to every German with money).

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#274

Post by cogman10 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #201
erosenbe0 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trains kill lots of people and the noise is excruciating. They also impede other traffic when at grade, and require massively expensive carbon guzzling infrastructure when not at grade. The stations are often designed or located more optimally for getting freight to and from, rather than people. The bathrooms are less claustrophobic though.

> Trains kill lots of people Vastly fewer, per passenger mile, then passenger cars, comparable to busses, less than scheduled airline flights.

Yeah, this seems like a weird argument against trains. Every mode of transport will kill some people. Trains just happen to be one of the safest there is. Heck, if you think about heart attacks, walking likely kills more people than trains do.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#275

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

buttercraft wrote: post #226
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK, Network Rail spends about £150k per track kilometer per year on maintenance and renewal. Track needs constant maintenance through ballast redistribution and compaction to maintain track geometry; the rail itself needs to be ground regularly to maintain its shape; points systems need to be maintained, as well as signaling systems, earthworks and embankments, even vegetation. Maintenance costs for major road…

You need to factor in the cost of moving goods for each.

I really don't, if my point is to rebut the statement "the whole point of trains is that expenses are largely one-off."

I love trains. I used them all the time when I lived in the U.K. and in Japan. I've ridden Amtrak from New York to San Francisco, and the Orient Express. They are, however, very much not a one-and-done investment as is being suggested elsewhere in this thread.

People are largely familiar with road maintenance, but most of them have no idea at all about maintenance of the railway.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#276

Post by ncmncm »

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?

Hydrogen can be produced electrically from water. A positively stupendous amount of electrolysis equipment will need to be built out, but there will be demand for as much as can be produced. Burning hydrogen produces mainly water. Burned in an engine, it also produces nitrous oxides, so probably some ammonia would be dissolved in to scavenge that.

Liquid hydrogen takes up a lot more room than kerosene. The insulated liquid-hydrogen tank is quite a lot bigger than the kerosene tank -- maybe it is a whole other car -- but so what? Room on a train is cheap. What matters is weight. The tank is light, and the weight of LH2 needed to go the same distance is much less. The difference is weight that doesn't itself need to be transported.

Furthermore, the LH2 can be produced and banked on-site at the railyard, and during peak-production hours, so cheaply.

So, a win all around. Not as big a win as LH2-powered aircraft, but better, and much easier to retrofit.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#277

Post by inter_netuser »

gumby wrote: post #267

> Last year, SNCF relaunched overnight services between Paris and Nice, with tickets starting as low as 19 euros, about $21, for a midweek low-season ticket. That compares with 31 euros, not including baggage fees or the cost of airport transfers, for a short flight on EasyJet These prices are inconceivable in the US, where competition in air travel has essentially been eliminated.

Paris to Nice is 900km car ride.

The 31 euro air travel “price” doesn’t include a fuel surcharge, airport fees, baggage fees, then a nice fat 20% VAT tax on top, etc, all of which can often exceed the “price” itself. Maybe you should start an airline and report back.

If air travel in the US was such a profitable biz as you say, airlines wouldn’t be constantly on the brink of insolvency.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#278

Post by __d »

sien wrote: post #220
novembermike wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's really worth looking at freight modal share by transport type. The US does do really well. As does Australia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usag...

In the Australian case, that percentage is heavily skewed by bulk freight of coal, iron ore, wheat, etc. That's often using dedicated tracks, direct from mines to ports, and not connected to the general freight network.

The mix of road and rail for more general freight has been heavily in favour of road for a long time, and only getting worse as Internet shopping, etc, increases the role of last-mile home delivery.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#279

Post by ncmncm »

pantalaimon wrote: post #248
TeeMassive wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That will change, obviously.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#280

Post by drpancake »

gunfighthacksaw wrote: post #24
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.

The train feels more civilized. You can afford to have a bit more space to sit, wider aisles to walk and can fit a much nicer kitchen. Bigger tables too so you can spread out your work/shopping/food. If you haven’t tried train food before I highly recommend it. It’s stereotypically good in the same way plane food is stereotypically bad.

I suspect that you haven't been exposed to the wonders of British train food. Imagine our usual delightful cuisine but significantly worse.
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