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

521–530 of 654 posts

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#521

Post by Schnurpel »

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…

All EU high-speed rail (except Finland and Russia) uses standard gauge (1435mm) Denmark to Austria definitely is all standard gauge.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#522

Post by ZeroGravitas »

zdragnar wrote: post #365
TulliusCicero wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that subsidy look per trip, though?

Amtrack moves just shy of 17 million passengers in a year. Airlines in the US do that in 8 days. That's works out to roughly 45x as many passengers, with only what, 6x the subsidies?

American rail is apparently heavily biased towards moving freight. This may even be a good thing, but it'll throw out the numbers if you compare train to car or plane and don't include it.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#523

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

NoLinkToMe wrote: post #95
agumonkey wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A youtuber explained that Italy overlayed high speed rail routes now and that it's pretty brilliant. Things are moving.

Absolutely loved taking the train in Italy, fast, convenient, cheap, good amenities. Of course the country very much lends itself for rail (more or less an elongated territory that can run a very fast high-capacity north/south backbone, with slower but more ubiquitous horizontal offshoot rail to the various smaller cities and villages), but it was still very well done. Especially considering how much tunnelling was r…

In my experience, at least neighboring countries tend to be pretty good at selling you international tickets, and most people aren't interested in 17 hours journeys that could be replaced by a 2 hour flight.

bahn.de will sell me (through an international website to which they redirect) a ticket from Frankfurt to London via Paris, an 8h40m trip costing 182 EUR one way for a date ~2 weeks out.

The real issue is that I'm very unlikely to choose this option, no matter how convenient the booking, when I can get a round trip plane ticket for the same date for 156 EUR including luggage that will take 4-5 hours (including transit to/from the airport, security, boarding, waiting etc.) and gets advertised as 1h45m, 133 EUR.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#524

Post by afiori »

m2fkxy wrote: post #298
lobochrome wrote: post #288

Observations from a frequent train traveller in Germany and Japan: - Train Travel works when the frequency of trains is so high that you do not need to think about "a" connection, but instead just choose the "next" connection. - Any significant number of delayed trains are a problem when one has important appointments. Morning meetings require an overnight trip, even if an early morning connection would usually work.…

> Electrification of lines is just not happening anymore in Germany. It's politically more sexy to do something with Hydrogen. Very odd. "Odd" is a fine euphemism to describe Germany's energy strategy. > By trying to remodel stations cheaply for commerce, most stations in Germany have become unpleasant to navigate. Signage is particularly bad (compared to Japan) Yes... Parisian train stations are also becoming gigant…

I once spent more than 40 minutes in a Parisian train station trying to find a platform; had to ask for help multiple times, all the signs pointed to a general direction across a hall.

A couple weeks later I was in the London underground, felt like I could not get lost there if I tried.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#525

Post by PoignardAzur »

mrtksn wrote: post #437
jseban wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Is it? It's not that obvious to me at least. I suspect that it's more like function of distance, speed, landscape. Airports also tend to be at the middle of nowhere, IMHO you need to incorporate the cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure needed to get somewhere from that nowhere.

Well, there are lots of other factors, but the general reasoning holds.

If you have ten airports, you have 10 * (10 + 1) / 2 = 55 airlines. If you have 10 train stations, you have only as many rail lines as you're willing to build, which means countries end up spending most of the effort and money on lines connecting major city centers.

Also, if you have an international airport, you're connected to every capital city of the world.

The logistic advantages of air travel are huge. Kerosene will need to get a lot more expensive before these advantages lose out.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#526

Post by ricardobayes »

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 wish we had better connectivity between Spanish cities. Between Murcia and Alicante/Valencia there is no good option currently, just driving.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#527

Post by inkblotuniverse »

kergonath wrote: post #419
systemvoltage wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was expecting you to take a stance - either trains or planes, but your response was even better and painted a comprehensive high level picture. Thanks for taking the time. I agree with all these points, perhaps though I would challenge us about carbon-emissions with the following: If we want to progress as a civilization, is the idea to regress in and save energy expenditure in the short term; and/or in the long te…

> It would be amazing to see humans build a large scale fusion reactors and Dyson spheres around the sun and never have to think about energy consumption :). A Dyson sphère around the sun would make life on Earth rather miserable. > Successful governments should be responsible for running sequestrators on tax funding. “Sequestrators” don’t exist. There is some noise every now and then about a fancy new technology, an…

Just leave a gap in the swarm for the light the earth needs (or have mirrors in the greater swarm rotate to do the same, if cheaper).

You can make hydrocarbons from c02 and water. Make digging up carbon illegal, so that only legal way to get your jet fuel is to buy it from a machine that makes it from the air (e.g. carbon-neutral fuels).

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#528

Post by mszcz »

cromka wrote: post #166
mszcz wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, around that time I was still in college and used trains a lot. I remember we had a running joke about everything inside the trains we traveled in had some sort of sticky, yucky film. When you grabbed something and then let go you could kind of feel the train clinging to you. The heating in the winter was always either broken or turned to 11. My friend once, by accident, melted a big chunk of his shoe on the rad…

> My friend once, by accident, melted a big chunk of his shoe on the radiator under his seat. This happened to me while on a train to Warsaw 20 years ago, as a high-school student. Ironically I travelled to the Parliament where Buzek, the at-the-time PM, came back from Athens having signed the EU Treaty of Accession to give an impromptu press release. Crazy how much progres we had seen since, and how many set backs.

Yeah. On the flip side I've traveled to Warsaw some time ago on the Pendolino (?) train. I splurged on a first class ticket (~$35) and it was real nice. No "film", separate seats, great service, clean, real fast. Of course, the bubble burst when we approached Warsaw - the train slowed to a crawl just as we were entering the city and I was late like an hour :P Baby steps I guess ;)

edit: Damn spelling again

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#529

Post by Gravityloss »

DocTomoe wrote: post #463
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.

All that does is neuter domestic airline hubs and give more money to the Gulf (Emirates, Etihad, ...) or America-based airlines, which is neither good for the economy nor for the environment.

Yeah. A global tax would solve it.

What about a really complicated solution, since a global solution is not going to happen:

1. Tax local fuel in EU. Everyone who fuels in European airports, must pay more

2. Tax European airliners fueling abroad - in countries that are not in the EU airline fuel tax agreement.

3. Tax inbound airliners according to the amount of fuel onboard

This would probably violate all sorts of treaties, would be hard to enforce and would have lots of all kinds of leaks... but food for thought anyway.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#530

Post by Shadonototra »

Aperocky wrote: post #237
Shadonototra wrote: post #50

i love trains, it's cozy too bad they are trying to make them insanely fast and silent af life is meant to feel your surroundings

Maybe when you get off at the station then, train as an utility should aim for the lowest common denominator.

it's a future with a low birth rate, so you gotta be careful with the sanitized civilization we are building
Post reply on HN