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Europe is investing heavily in trains

nytimes.com

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Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#471

Post by DocTomoe »

pg314 wrote: post #468
DocTomoe wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would it make Madrid - Paris train route competitive? No, not at all. Just to provide some data points: Madrid-Paris by train takes about 17-20 hours and costs between 261 and 350 Euros. By plane, it takes about two and a half hours and costs (in your example) around 170 Euros. Also take into account that for many international travellers, the time saved aspect is more relevant than the money saved aspect, as lifet…

You can find a ticket from Madrid to Paris taking 10.5 hours for 226 EUR.

Can you? Seems that connection does not run regularly either when it comes to time (I checked Trainline and on another date there actually was a connection much like that) or for that pricepoint.

10.5 hours is still longer than 2.5 (or maybe - if you include security checkpoint time - 3.5 hours) by plane.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#472

Post by tasuki »

fredoliveira wrote: post #9
uuyi wrote: post #3

Good on you Europe. Here in the UK we are heavily investing in rail replacement busses at the moment.

The UK is a European country. Not in the EU anymore, but you folks didn't move continents ;-)

When an English person says "Europe", they mean the continental part.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#473

Post by mcv »

sva_ wrote: post #465
peristalique wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you come to this conclusion? All high speed lines in Germany (ICE) are powered by overhead wires.

Okay I was wrong. I thought it meant something different. > All high speed lines in Germany (ICE) I suppose almost all: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICE_TD

Interesting. That one diesel HST wasn't very successful. It's been taken out of service again and the line is now operated by a slower train again. This seems to suggest that electric trains are more suitable for high-speed lines, although it's not clear why exactly this diesel train didn't perform the way it should.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#474

Post by pg314 »

jseban wrote: post #457
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…

Yeah the only use case where trains make sense to me, is really heavy cargo, where the lower friction of the wheels make it more efficient. That's a use case where both flying and trucks will be at a disadvantage. Transporting people in trains doesn't really make sense to me. You can fly if you need to go fast, take a bus if you have time, or drive a car if you want flexibility.

According to the Brussels Institute of Statistics and Analysis [1], in 2017, 34% of all commuters in Brussels commuted by train versus 36.2% by car. It might not make sense to you, but it does to other people.

[1] page 30 of https://bisa.brussels/sites/default/files/publication/docume...

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#475

Post by jollybean »

jseban wrote: post #457
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…

Yeah the only use case where trains make sense to me, is really heavy cargo, where the lower friction of the wheels make it more efficient. That's a use case where both flying and trucks will be at a disadvantage. Transporting people in trains doesn't really make sense to me. You can fly if you need to go fast, take a bus if you have time, or drive a car if you want flexibility.

Where there is enough population density and 'right of way' for trains, trains almost always make sense.

Flying is better for NYC -> Colorado - LA but trains are better for NY -> DC corridor, and frankly, probably all the way down to Florida.

There is the issue of 'downtown' and 'walkable cities'. If you arrive in Baltimore near an airport, you have to rent a car. In European cities, you hop on the Subway to the Hotel, that makes a big difference as well.

But Boston->DC is ripe for train transformation.

And 'established circuits' SF->LA->Vegas should be high speed - that California can't sort that out is really sad, it's a matter of organizational/systematic incompetence.

There needs to be kind of a 'civic buy in' for it to work

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#476

Post by Ma8ee »

zdragnar wrote: post #367
Ma8ee wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument that lower taxes isn't a subsidy is just stupid. It makes absolutely no meaningful difference if someone pays the same taxes as everyone else but then the government pay them some money, or if someone pays correspondingly lower taxes. In the end the recipient ends up with exactly the same amount of more money, and the government ends up with exactly the same amount of less money.

> and the government ends up with exactly the same amount of less money. Minus overhead

What overhead? Do you really think it makes any significant difference versus recalculating the taxes?

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#477

Post by aembleton »

wolverine876 wrote: post #165
mynameisash wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You also have to persuade everyone else to vote for it

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#478

Post by midasuni »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #407
zenogantner wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree: Travel time from Berlin to Munich went down from 6 hours to about 4 hours. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verkehrsprojekt_Deutsche_Einhe... That is a massive change. Subjectively, how a train trip feels on that route went from "quite exhausting in the end" to "oh I just opened my laptop, couldn't even finish what I had started".

Note that it's still four hours compared to one for a flight - and flights are still cheaper. Even if we assume two hours for arrival, boarding and an hour for local transportation in Berlin, flight would still win on price. (I just checked for "Munich to Berlin next monday": 120€ cheapest for trains unless I want to sleep in them, 105€ for a flight, with more choice of time.)

With a train you get 4 hours of laptop time. on a plane you get two stints of about 20-30 minutes each.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#479

Post by jseban »

pg314 wrote: post #474
jseban wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the only use case where trains make sense to me, is really heavy cargo, where the lower friction of the wheels make it more efficient. That's a use case where both flying and trucks will be at a disadvantage. Transporting people in trains doesn't really make sense to me. You can fly if you need to go fast, take a bus if you have time, or drive a car if you want flexibility.

According to the Brussels Institute of Statistics and Analysis [1], in 2017, 34% of all commuters in Brussels commuted by train versus 36.2% by car. It might not make sense to you, but it does to other people. [1] page 30 of https://bisa.brussels/sites/default/files/publication/docume...

The train itself has to be heavier than the load just to stay on the tracks. It would only make sense if you already have an established cargo route, and you can in addition also reuse a large part of that track for people transport.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#480

Post by jaclaz »

hilbert42 wrote: post #380
cryptoz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same in the US. I would love to take the train from Seattle to SF, but, it costs so much more than a flight would, and takes a very long time compared. Sleeper cars make the price nearly double, and for such a long trip, train seats without a sleeper are somehow worse than plane seats. I have taken many Amtrak short trips, like 1h, and 50% of the time the train leaves more than 1h late (and 100% it leaves late, some…

"Belgrade to find 0 hotel rooms due to a football match." Once, I had the same problem due to a football match in Rome. In hindsight, how I got a bed for the night was hilarious but it wasn't at the time as I was dead tired (I'll spare you the details—I learned quickly that very strange things can happen in Rome). A day or so later I was on a train from Rome to Vienna, the trouble was that by then many of those footb…

> even Italy (if you're forewarned what to expect).

Out of curiosity, any example of the terrible things that may happen in Italy and that travelers should be forewarned about?

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