Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Europe is investing heavily in trains

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 654 posts

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#511

Post by dx034 »

lorenzfx wrote: post #161
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.

> 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. Unfortunately, that's not true (the investment part). In preparation for the IPO (that never happened because of the crash) Deutsche Bahn was heavily tuned for profit since the mid 90s which led to a massive decrease in investment. As rail infrastructure has a rather long service l…

Also, construction prices have gone up a lot. Rail investment depends heavily on steel and concrete, both have skyrocketed over past years. And as you said, undoing a decade or more of underinvestment is extremely costly and leads to more delays in the short term.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#512

Post by FeepingCreature »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #504
FeepingCreature wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 adva…

Agree with all of that. Though with flights, you can also optimize a lot if you have enough lead time: I recommend https://skyscanner.com/

Trains are nice if you need to transport anything of volume, especially bikes, if you stay longer than a day or two so you can amortize the travel time, if you have lots of run-up time, and probably cheaper if you travel a lot. They're definitely competitive, it's just not a slamdunk, and planes do straight win sometimes depending on requirements.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#513

Post by dx034 »

einpoklum wrote: post #203
cheschire wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having commuted with both american and german rail systems before, my educated guess it's likely due to who owns the rails. American rail freight companies have far more control over prioritization than european freight companies. DB Netz owns the vast majority of german rail and therefore prioritizes what makes them the most money. Historically that's been carrying people due to all the government and company subsid…

But why couldn't DB Netz do both people and freight, if both are profitable (after subsidies for passenger traffic)? i.e. why does it have to be a choice?

On high speed lines, you often can only run either one of those. Not only that freight trains are slower, but they often aren't allowed to use tunnels at the same time as high speed passengers trains. So on some of the most direct and modern tracks, freight can only be run at night.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#514

Post by arethuza »

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.

I live 600m from a fairly busy train line and ~14km from Edinburgh airport - the latter is much noisier.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#515

Post by TMWNN »

occz wrote: post #103
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…

>but trains are also directly subsidised to the tune of billions each year. The rail network just costs a ton to build and maintain. Just wait until you hear about how subsidised the infrastructure for cars and trucks are.

>Just wait until you hear about how subsidised the infrastructure for cars and trucks are.

As others have told you, you are wrong.

US highways do pay for themselves (https://web.archive.org/web/20130515013017/http://www.rita.d...>) (non-PDF version: https://web.archive.org/web/20170712175437/http://www.rita.d...>), and help pay for other modes of transportation. Transit receives the biggest subsidy per passenger-mile, with rail and airlines in between.

(For those wishing more detail: From the executive summary (https://web.archive.org/web/20170628114204/http://www.rita.d...>):

>*Highways*

>Users of the highway passenger transportation system paid significantly greater amounts of money to the federal government than their allocated costs in 1994-2000. This was a result of the increase in the deficit reduction motor fuel tax rates between October 1993 and September 1997, and the increase in Highway Trust Fund fuel tax rates starting in October 1997.

>School and transit buses received positive net federal subsidies over the 1990-2002 period, but autos, motorcycles, pickups and vans, and intercity buses paid more than their allocated cost to the federal government.

>On average, highway users paid $1.91 per thousand passenger-miles to the federal government over their highway allocated cost during 1990-2002.)

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#516

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

12baad4db82 wrote: post #79
golemotron wrote: post #15

Do they run on renewables?

In Germany 100% of the ICE and IC trains are run on renewable energy. https://www.bahn.de/service/ueber-uns/umwelt You can even buy green energy from the Deutsche Bahn https://www.dbstrom.de/

O RLY?

https://www.uniper.energy/de/datteln-4

> Bahnstromleistung 413MW 16.7Hz

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#517

Post by dgellow »

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’m quite familiar with both Germany and Switzerland trains, an interesting difference is that in Switzerland the default is a flexible ticket, you buy it for the day and can use it an any time, and using any train you want that goes in the correct direction. And since a few years SBB/CFF let’s you get a reduction if you get instead a non-flexible tickets (so with a strict time and train, called “dégriffé” in French).

In Germany the default is a non-flexible ticket, and you can pay for a more expensive flexible one.

As a result the default train experience in Switzerland feels more expensive but with a way to get a discount, while Germany is the opposite. And people in Germany plan their train trips waaaaaay earlier in advance to be sure they have the cheapest prices (the earlier you book the cheaper it is) and flexible tickets are mostly used for business trips.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#518

Post by nicoburns »

hilbert42 wrote: post #325
nicoburns wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a UK resident, I can't help but wonder which group you're including the UK in. We're both a European and an anglophone country!

Sorry, Brexit is clouding my judgment. I should have said Continental Europe! ;-) That said, to be fair I found the UK track maintenance pretty good although trains weren't as punctual as they were in most of Europe. Likewise, the carriages/comfort was somewhat primitive compared to most of what I've experienced on the Continent. I have to say it's quite some years since I've traveled on British Rail and I understand…

My subjective view is that punctuality and comfort have improved in recent years (especially the new rolling stock on the London-Bristol and London-Cornwall and London-Edinburgh lines is excellent), but the food is as bad as ever, and the prices are getting worse. If you want food on the UK railways then buy it at a station not on the train if you can!

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#519

Post by bytehowl »

Retric wrote: post #508
bytehowl wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

...That's what I have said? The only thing that could be unclear about my comment is that I have meant distance traveled per passenger, not per vehicle.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#520

Post by nicoburns »

hedora wrote: post #377
nicoburns wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the vast majority of trains will go electric. This is already a mainstream technology (unlike electric cars). Overhead wires or 3rd rails in most places, with batteries where that's not possible or economic. Perhaps hydrogen will have it's niche though (perhaps on low-use railways?).

Hydrogen fuel cells and batteries are roughly comparable technologies. The main difference is that you can use the power grid to "charge" the fuel cell while it's in motion. You simply generate hydrogen at its destination, then rapidly pump the hydrogen into tanks when it stops. So, the higher the duty cycle of the vehicle, the more sense hydrogen makes. Also, hydrogen has higher energy density (volume and weight per…

Hydrogen also requires quite a bit of infrastructure that hasn't been built out, whereas railways generally have an electrical supply already. I suspect that will make batteries a lot more competitive in the short term. Hydrogen could make sense if it can overcome those hurdles. But with improvements in battery technology (solid state lithium batteries seem to be coming soon) I wonder if it will ever be better enough to gain adoption.
Post reply on HN