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Europe is investing heavily in trains

nytimes.com

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Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#421

Post by jseban »

mrtksn wrote: post #404
missedthecue wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Boeing 737 consumes 2.28 L/100 km per seat. Fuel prices would have to go parabolic before airline tickets approached rail ticket prices (nevermind the time rail takes, even on the fastest routes)

I checked it out and the number seems about right(like up to 2x but not too much). So, to beat an airplane on fuel efficiency you need to be at least 2 persons on an extremely fuel efficient small car. Surely, the actual costs calculations will need to include the infra and operational costs however if you check the energy consumption per passenger per distance[0], rail transport is always on the more efficient side…

> Is the rail infrastructure that much expensive?

Building and maintaining one runway at point A and one at point B is obviously much easier than building and maintaining a railroad between them.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#422

Post by 411111111111111 »

mrtksn wrote: post #404
missedthecue wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Boeing 737 consumes 2.28 L/100 km per seat. Fuel prices would have to go parabolic before airline tickets approached rail ticket prices (nevermind the time rail takes, even on the fastest routes)

I checked it out and the number seems about right(like up to 2x but not too much). So, to beat an airplane on fuel efficiency you need to be at least 2 persons on an extremely fuel efficient small car. Surely, the actual costs calculations will need to include the infra and operational costs however if you check the energy consumption per passenger per distance[0], rail transport is always on the more efficient side…

Trains are more efficient, but flights only do the most traveled routes generally, which is why they're usually booked out afaik. The same can't be said about trains usually, as they're also doing the outlying routes

It makes flying seem more competitive then it actually is, as trains usually aren't booked relative how much your transportation cost and instead the overall cost to also enable these almost empty routine runs

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#423

Post by black_puppydog »

im3w1l wrote: post #385
jrockway wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure that's really true. Look at the low cost high speed carriers like Ouigo.

With rail, the physical rail becomes an economic chokepoint. Who controls the rail came name his price. Now you might think that the same goes for airports, but often there are multiple viable choices. E.g. in the bay area you could use SF, Oakland or San Jose.

Except "who controls the rail" is often a (private or national) entity (DB Netz / SNCF réseaux) who will have to offer access to the infrastructure to pretty heavily regulated and uniform conditions.

Much like the idea of separating ISPs from the last mile infrastructure by the way.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#424

Post by hgomersall »

xyzzyz wrote: post #397
stephen_g wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nordhaus's work is absolutely panned as being basically literally insane by actual scientists. He based a large parts of his analysis on ideas like "well x% (something like 75%+) of GDP happens indoors so that won't be affected by any way by climate change".

Why didn't those actual scientists bring this up when he, you know, got a Nobel Prize for that? Or are you arguing here that Nobel Prize is a joke, and people who give it are total idiots?

The "Nobel Prize" in economics is very much a joke.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#425

Post by retube »

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.

I suspect one reason is that with trains there's a huge amount of infrastructure to maintain - the tracks between destinations, but with planes you don't have that.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#426

Post by locallost »

After reading some of the comments on the price of train tickets, and while it's true trains are on paper more expensive, there are some things to consider:

* prices and conditions vary between countries. For example, in Germany your children can travel for free until 14, but apparently this is not universal and it can be a big difference for families

* in a lot of countries you can pay for discount cards and get 25/50 percent off. Even in places like Switzerland where the prices are notoriously high, the discount card is comparatively cheap and to my understanding it's valid on pretty much all public transportation (e.g. city trams). If you travel even slightly frequently, it pays for itself quickly.

* similar to planes, trains in some countries offer discounted prices if you book in advance, and for a specific train. E.g. on my last trip to Switzerland, the price was around 160, but I paid 40 for one leg (even first class!) and going back it was 120 because I had the 25% off card. The card itself cost around 60 so it basically was worth it for one trip. When I was a student 10 years ago, I would travel to e.g. Budapest on a German train with their "Europe Special" ticket for 40 (30 with 25% off). You had to book in advance, but this is true for planes as well if you want something really cheap.

* others have commented on this, but there are a ton of external costs for planes and cars. Usually a taxi to the airport, or parking or whatnot. Trains in comparison put you mostly in the city centre and quite often bundle a city ticket so you can hop on a bus, tram or subway to your final destination.

* planes in Europe don't (always?) pay VAT on international travel. that is quite a big difference in the total price

* trains even if not always punctual often come with a guarantee, meaning you can get money back for a delay. In Germany it's 25% if you are more than an hour late, and 50% for two hours. My family spent over two hours a couple days ago sitting on a cramped plane because they could not take off from Berlin, the only thing they can do about it is cry.

There are things that are quite infuriating about trains and train companies, but IMHO their prices are not all that unreasonable. The comfort and speed for short and intermediate trips also has its price im general.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#427

Post by black_puppydog »

flavius29663 wrote: post #388
lostlogin wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many airlines are subsidised, and their pollution (sound, air, sea, land) is effectively a subsidy as the airlines don't pay.

Trains are also noisy, at least as much as planes. As for pollution, consider how much land is taken from nature for tracks...there is almost none for airplanes, in comparison.

When you stand next to a train track yes à train is noisy. But a plane will cover literally a whole town with its noise. Very different.

I was just in Frankfurt yesterday and the noise is substantial, in the residential neighbourhood I visited it was the main source of noise during the day.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#428

Post by 6510 »

petesergeant wrote: post #396
im3w1l wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With rail, the physical rail becomes an economic chokepoint. Who controls the rail came name his price. Now you might think that the same goes for airports, but often there are multiple viable choices. E.g. in the bay area you could use SF, Oakland or San Jose.

I think this is probably the most accurate answer in this particular thread. There's essentially unlimited capacity in airspace, and while some airports are massively oversubscribed (LHR!) most are not. You can just keep putting planes up in the air in 3 dimensions where increasing the number of trains needs laying more excessively expensive physical infrastructure in 2 dimensions

just 2 directions, beyond that you can (like with airlines) go bigger and more frequent. After that the proverbial landing strips become the bottle neck.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#429

Post by xyzzyz »

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…

Okay, let's do the math. Consider a 2 hour flight, say Madrid -> Paris. A round trip is something like 140 eur. Boeing 737-800 burns something like 3000 liters of jet fuel/hour, and will typically carry something like 150 passengers. That's 40 liters per person. Jet fuel is really pricey now, something like 80 cents/liter. This means that fuel costs something like 30 eur per flight per passenger, so 60 eur in a round trip.

Now imagine we slap a tax on jet fuel similar to the one on vehicle gasoline. This would mean that the price of jet fuel would go up by 50%. The round trip ticket Madrid - Paris now costs 170 eur instead of 140 eur. Would it make Madrid - Paris train route competitive? No, not at all.

Truth is, you can make anything competitive with anything else if you put heavy enough finger on the scale, but the reason flights are much cheaper than trains, despite being faster, is not because of lack of jet fuel taxes.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#430

Post by SergeAx »

Aachen wrote: post #273
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)…

I didn't write my comment with "as opposed" sentiment in mind, but can't help to wonder what is the typical distance between US capitals. So, wow, thanks for that piece of data!

I also think there's a hen and egg problem. To build a rail road you need to buy the land strip between two stations, and in today's US you can't just do it because someone knowing about your venture and how you cannot succeed without having all the land - will just ask any enormous price knowing you won't have a choice. I think the whole idea of hyperloop was born on that restriction - because buying places for support pillars and making the whole system more or less silent making it at least viable.

In EU railroads are there for 100+ years, all the land under them is belong to government or railroad companies.

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