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Europe is investing heavily in trains

nytimes.com

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Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#501

Post by simonh »

tijl wrote: post #462
aembleton wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised that the EU hasn't passed a directive to set a tax rate for aviation fuel for flights between EU countries. I guess planes might just fill up their tanks in non EU countries and then carry the extra load around and be more polluting.

But that's exactly what hguant explains. Flights between EU countries are international flights and are therefore tax exempt under the Chicago Convention.

hguant also pointed out:

>barring a specific agreement between those to nations

An EU wide agreement would be an agreement between nations.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#502

Post by Tepix »

I love night trains. Europe has the right size to make them work well, i.e. i can get on a train in the evening in the middle of Germany and wake up at the Mediterranean coast of Croatia. Trains starting in the late evening in the north or south of Germany could arrive at the other end (a distance of 900km) the next morning.

You produce less CO2, stay one night less in the hotel at your destination, everything is less stressful and you arrive well-rested.

Unfortunately, Germany got rid of all of their night trains in 2016 so we have to rely on other countries' trains. I'm not aware of any plans to get night trains back. I hope this will change!

Without national night trains, flights within Germany will remain attractive.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#503

Post by jseban »

pg314 wrote: post #484
jseban wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The train itself has to be heavier than the load just to stay on the tracks. Why would that be? A typical 110 ton capacity freight train car weighs 33 tons unloaded. It has no problems staying on the tracks. Besides both buses and planes typically weigh much more than their freight (and planes need to lift all that weight 10km vertically), so I fail to see how that is an argument against trains.

> Why would that be? A typical 110 ton capacity freight train car weighs 33 tons unloaded. It has no problems staying on the tracks.

I'm guessing at the numbers here but just to illustrate my point:

If an empty bus weights let's say 10 tonnes, and an empty train 33 tons. And the load of the passengers around 7 tonnes. So in total you'd transport 40 tonnes of train as opposed to 17 tonnes of bus.

Then obviously for that load rubber tires would be more efficient, and rail would be a bad fit.

There's a minimum load per cubic inch for trains to make sense, you have to have really dense cargo.

Like I said in another comment, subways in Paris run on rubber tires, it becomes especially inefficient with rail when there are frequent stops.

It would make so much more sense, especially in the US, to develop premium Tesla buses that could use the existing freeway infrastructure, than to expand rail.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#504

Post by bakuninsbart »

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.)

Realistically, it takes an extra hour door to door for the train, and around 3 hours for the plane. In my experience you do save a bit of time with the plane for Berlin-Munich.

> Even if we assume two hours for arrival, boarding and an hour for local transportation in Berlin, flight would still win on price.

It is 50€ if you look for the Monday in 2 weeks. For quite a bit of my travel, I am booking 2-3 months in advance, and it is usually around ~30-40€, first class, for a 600km trip. (This site is quite helpful: https://bahn.guru/) Some other things to consider: Trains (ICE) are substantially more comfortable and "freer"; you can walk around, don't have to pretend to listen to a safety choreography, keep your data on the whole time etc.

Trains also don't restrict the amount of luggage you can take with you. In fact when my grandma died, I transported a ~2x4m persian rug by ICE, and while I got some comments on it, and switching trains was a pain, it was a very cheap option for a poor student with a big rug.

On another note, there will be a 9€ Ticket for summer in Germany that allows you to use all non-high speed trains within Germany, which will be a really interesting experiment.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#505

Post by ZeroGravitas »

I wonder if there's a master list of "things China and the EU are doing but the USA isn't". Would be interesting, and if you had the data you could do it for things EU isn't doing or China isn't doing.

I'm always surprised by how parochial political debates are "X wouldn't work" when everyone else around the world thinks X is vital.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#506

Post by locallost »

reacharavindh wrote: post #493
locallost wrote: post #426

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/…

I love the experience of travelling in Europe by train, but it certainly is cumbersome and expensive. I took a car train from Hamburg to Vienna last year. Drive the car into the train, and get a sleeping coach for the 14 hour journey - as comfortable a journey I could ask for. Except it cost about €1000 if I remember correctly for my family. I still preferred it because it negated the need to rent a car in Austria, a…

I'm not arguing that it's cheap, just that it's not that expensive compared to other means of transportation. If it's more expensive at all.

But I will argue to death that it's not cumbersome :-). I guess it depends on the country, but the only cumbersome thing are the many different options and fares where it's usually difficult to figure out what the cheapest one is. Changing trains... don't know, it's rare for me to use only one train, and I've never had issues with it other than the train being late and missing a connection. Otherwise it's easy and I even like it, since it feels faster. My record is 7 trains :-).

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#507

Post by gpvos »

lrem wrote: post #392
gpvos wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or unless you take a night train. Get in in the evening, sleep most of the way and wake up at your destination. That can actually save you time compared to a flight, or be a lot more comfortable than, e.g., getting up at 4 AM to take a flight to a meeting in the morning somewhere.

When I looked at what map finds, there were only connections with two or three transfers. That doesn't sound like a comfortable night.

I was speaking more generally, sorry; there is currently no daily Paris-Berlin night train (and I guess the weekly Russian train is suspended). The most reasonable connection seems to be: Paris 19.04 (ICE 9557) 22.17 Mannheim 23.47 (Nightjet 470) 07.38 Berlin, with some time to drink a nightcap in Mannheim, but I can see how that won't work for everyone. You can also leave Paris at 17.55 and change more comfortably in Karlsruhe with maybe a late dinner. In the reverse direction you'll have an unpleasant change in the early morning though.

In daytime, there are a few options with only one change, but you'll sit in a train for 8 hours or so, which may not be your thing.

In general, https://seat61.com/ has good tips.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#508

Post by Retric »

bytehowl wrote: post #494
mpol wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One other thing that is easily forgotten, trains are much safer and feel safer. In road traffic there are maybe 50 deaths per year per million people (wild guess, but not that far off). With trains in Europe, it's not even 1 per year per million. I don't have to think about all the "almost-accidents" that are part of road traffic. This does come with a price, but buying a newer and safer car also comes with a price.

A better metric is deaths per unit of distance travelled. I don't have the numbers, though.

I disagree, a car with 4 passengers is going to have far more deaths per billion miles than a car with 1 passenger, but the risks per passenger is about the same.

That’s why people use deaths per passenger mile to compare things.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#509

Post by dzhiurgis »

lorenzfx wrote: post #454
hoseja wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... are miniscule but public-facing, thus suffering from the paper straw problem.

Sure, if you consider 3.5% of all green house gases miniscule. https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation

I suspect railway maintenance isn’t that great environmentally

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#510

Post by dx034 »

sokoloff wrote: post #291
lillecarl wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet layover flights are decreasing since the 2 engine restriction was "lifted". A 787 can fly non stop for as long as would be comfortable for someone to be on a plane. According to Wendover Productions.

But there’s still a connection/hub-and-spoke system. You could fill a 787 with enough fuel to fly from Columbus, OH to Venice, but you couldn’t fill it with enough people to make it make sense.

And airlines usually charge more for direct flights (price discrimination), so for leasure long-haul travel it's fairly common for Europeans to have a flight with stopover, even if there's a direct connection available.
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