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Europe is investing heavily in trains

nytimes.com

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Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#531

Post by egman_ekki »

DocTomoe wrote: post #471
pg314 wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you're underestimating the travel to/from the airport. Madrid city centre to airport takes 45 minutes, you should be at the airport at least 2 hours prior to the departure, Paris airport to city centre takes another hour. Even if you're a seasoned traveller who pushes it and come to the airport just one hour prior to departure, you should still count with at least 3h overhead.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#532

Post by evandijk70 »

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

I think it is actually the other way around and also not what GP said. Trains need more scale than planes.

Example: From Amsterdam Airport to Palermo, there are 2 flights per week (Friday and Monday). That is 300 passengers per week. It is a profitable to fly planes between these two cities, but a direct rail route including maintenance of the railway system would be far to expensive. This is partly resolved by stops along the way, but definitely not completely. The busiest direct railway routes (AMS-PARIS, AMS-LONDON, PARIS LONDON) in Europe are far from full, with one train an hour.

So the problem is not insufficient capacity, but rather that the scale is to small. I see electric buses playing a big role in the future to allow for better point-to-point connections.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#533

Post by isolli »

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.

I have had only trouble traveling by train in Germany. It happened so many times that I believe it becomes statistically significant. In comparison, I can't remember the last time a train trip in France was anything but smooth.

A few examples, all of which have in common that we arrived 3 to 9 hours late to our destination:

- The train leaves earlier than planned (!), but they tell you by email at 7:00 in the morning for a train leaving at 9.

- The AC on the train is not running perfectly. They offload everyone at a random train station, and you spend four hours sitting on the stairs of an overcrowded commuter train with kids and luggage, instead of one hour on a mildly hot train.

- Stoerung auf der Strecke: twice (!) the train stopped for hours in the middle of the tracks. Once the train had stopped in the middle of a bend, and we spent hours tilted to the side. The other time we missed a flight even though we were on the regular shuttle from city center to the airport.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#534

Post by meerita »

Trains are great for no more than 600km range trips. I live in Spain, and it's great to get into the train without doing all the procedures you do with a plane. I arrive to the station 10 mins before departure and I never had troubles. With airplanes I need to be there 1 hour before. Then you spend another 30 mins getting into the plane, following the instructions for just only 1h trip. The same trip Barcelona -> Madrid can be done without all the hasle and even faster than in airplanes, in addition, you arrive in the center of the city, much better connected than the airport, where you spend another half an hour to reach the city center.

In my experience, airplanes are worth once you talk about trips over 800km. Trips that you cannot do in less than 2 hours of train.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#535

Post by krab »

meerita wrote: post #534

Trains are great for no more than 600km range trips. I live in Spain, and it's great to get into the train without doing all the procedures you do with a plane. I arrive to the station 10 mins before departure and I never had troubles. With airplanes I need to be there 1 hour before. Then you spend another 30 mins getting into the plane, following the instructions for just only 1h trip. The same trip Barcelona -> Mad…

Exactly. Arriving to the city center and skipping all the airport hassle is huge.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#536

Post by baud147258 »

I've traveled a lot by train in France, but one issue when comparing with travel by car is that, when traveling with three or more people, it'd be cheaper to take the car (and then you even avoid all the hassle of going to and from the station)

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#537

Post by doix »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #148
recuter wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eurostar runs direct trains from London to Rotterdam & Amsterdam, 3.5 and 4 hours respectively. You can't really compare to a similar route in the US because there are hardly any and hardly anybody uses them. The train routes in EU are busy and frequently full , just like planes. Obviously booking ahead is cheaper, how else could you do it? Top tip, plan a head and read up a little bit on seat61: https://www.seat61.c…

We have the same buses as you these days. Megabus exists to connect many larger metropolitan areas. More or less the same vehicles as you'd find for similar services in Europe. Sadly, none of the "sleeper bus" variety that have existed (from time to time) in Europe.

I took a Megabus from Houston to Austin one time, it was honestly the worst bus journey I have ever taken in my life. A man sat down next to me, talking to himself, rocking back and forth holding a screw driver. There were a lot of other "interesting" characters on the bus as well.

When I arrived in Austin and told the story, my colleagues told me that the different cities would buy bus tickets for homeless people to move them from city to city. I don't know if that was the case here or not, but my guess would be that at least a large portion of the passengers had mental health issues.

At the time, I was concerned with my personal safety, but afterwards I was wondering if there was something I could have done to help :(.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#538

Post by aurizon »

ncmncm wrote: post #345
aurizon wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tanker that holds 80,000 pounds of kerosine will hold about 8000 pounds of LH2 in the same dimensionality. 0.07 = density of LH2, Density of water 1.0, kerosine 0.7 +/- varies with grade. So it take 10 times the cubeage plus Dewar grade insulation. At a permeant depot they will have a super refrigerator to condense boil off into LH2. They are trying to get a viable clathrate hydrate to hold a higher density form of…

The measure of fuel you need to carry is not weight, but energy content. It takes a much smaller weight of LH2 to match the energy content of diesel. So, correspondingly less than 10x volume. It is this better "gravimetric energy density" that makes LH2 an attractive fuel in many cases. You end up needing only about 2-3x tankage space, including the insulation. Better gravimetric energy density doesn't make so much d…

There is truth in that energy density. but it is still cheaper energetically to chill boil off to liquid back to the tank that to make new hot hydrogen you then chill to liquid back to the tank. The end game of clathrate storage will solve many of these problems.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#539

Post by ant6n »

meerita wrote: post #534

Trains are great for no more than 600km range trips. I live in Spain, and it's great to get into the train without doing all the procedures you do with a plane. I arrive to the station 10 mins before departure and I never had troubles. With airplanes I need to be there 1 hour before. Then you spend another 30 mins getting into the plane, following the instructions for just only 1h trip. The same trip Barcelona -> Mad…

Im French rail planning, rail is considered competitive with air travel up to 3h. In German planning, up to 4h. With 250km/h average, that would allow up to 1000km.

Plus, one could try to revive night trains. Arriving at 9am in the morning in some far away city, we’ll rested, would be useful both for vacations and business trips. And could easily allow distances of 1500km even without having high speed rail lines everywhere, or somewhat longer distances with.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#540

Post by ant6n »

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.

How would that work? Would people fly from Paris to Berlin via Dubai rather than take the train?
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