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Europe is investing heavily in trains

nytimes.com

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Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#551

Post by joking »

PoignardAzur wrote: post #525
mrtksn wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cit…

a plane also can make 4 round trips in the time the train takes to make 1, but on the other side, a train can move 500-600 people while the plane moves 160.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#552

Post by adrianN »

xyzzyz wrote: post #398
adrianN wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have pretty high estimates of what CO2 costs. Depending on how you discount future damage CO2 should cost at least 300€/ton.

We have some pretty high estimates. We also have some low estimates too. Average of the estimates we have is not "at least 300 eur/ton".

195€-680€/ton is what the German government believes[0]. Who is advocating for significantly lower estimates?

[0] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/14...

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#553

Post by ulfw »

ant6n wrote: post #539
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 eve…

German trains rarely go 250kmph, let alone averaging that. Between Cologne and Frankfurt, sure. But most of the country, no.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#554

Post by Symbiote »

jseban wrote: post #503
pg314 wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

The rolling resistance of steel wheels on steel rails is much, much lower than rubber tyres on an asphalt road.

From [1], the only comparable figures are the American train and the American bus. The bus is about half as efficient as the train.

There are similar figures further down the page ("German environmental costs") -- 0.25MJ/passenger-km for long distance rail, 0.85MJ/pkm for regional rail, 1.14MJ/pkm for bus service.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport...

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#555

Post by tici_88 »

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…

I completely agree, except I think trains have a much higher competitive range, possibly up to 1,000 km .

With a plane 1,000 km trip including all things you mention like arriving at the airport in advance, boarding, finding your way back to the city center, etc. would come easily to 4-5 hours when you calculate it door-to-door. This could be comparable to a train at 200-250 km/h.

Also, trains tend to be more punctual and less prone to delays compared to planes. And arriving in the city center as opposed to 40-50 kms out is a big advantage indeed.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#556

Post by rsynnott »

sva_ wrote: post #409
mcv wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overhead wires are most definitely a solution on a large scale, and are used as such all over the world. And especially in Europe.

0% chance that Germans would tolerate these in their landscapes. Also, how do you think this would work with a train going 400kmh+?

Better inform the Germans. A little over half of the German rail network is electrified.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#557

Post by criddell »

nextos wrote: post #382
KennyBlanken wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US airline industry is massively subsidized. Every country heavily subsidizes air travel. The federal government spends $2BN/year on Amtrak and people lose their damn minds. Meanwhile, at the FAA, nearly $12BN/year...and that doesn't account for all the local and state funds used to subsidize airports. Or Department of Transportation spending...

Airlines seem to be a bad business in the long run. I recall a figure from MIT's microeconomics textbook (Pindyck et al.) where they showed the aggregate profits of all industry since its inception were negative. In EU, subsidies to airlines are an indirect subsidy to the tourism industry.

In the US I think airlines are really in the business of selling air miles and credit cards.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#558

Post by WHA8m »

sva_ wrote: post #409
mcv wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overhead wires are most definitely a solution on a large scale, and are used as such all over the world. And especially in Europe.

0% chance that Germans would tolerate these in their landscapes. Also, how do you think this would work with a train going 400kmh+?

Oh dude, I'm all ears. What else do you think we (germans) think? I'm genuinely interested.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#559

Post by Symbiote »

robocat wrote: post #354
pc86 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are if other industries consuming the same product pay different tax rates. In this example, an airline purchasing 1L of kerosene pays a different rate than a train purchasing the same 1L of the same kerosene. That's the textbook definition of a subsidy.

Can you find any information showing that most European trains pay tax on diesel? Plenty are electric, so any tax would be indirect. This report seems to show that trains mostly pay for infrastructure and the network: https://cedelft.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/03/CE_Del... I think British trains pay for “red” taxed diesel?

Good find!

The "Diesel tax levels" charts (p28, p81) show the UK charges the same (0.7€/L) for both road and rail use, and most EU countries charge a tax, although more than half have less tax for rail than road use.

Electricity is taxed in a few countries.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#560

Post by einpoklum »

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…

> it's great to get into the train without doing all the procedures you do with a plane.

Well, if they just let go of the security theater and phobias, we could theoretically have a situation where you just board with no procedures, like on a train: Ride a local train/metro/bus up to the larger train station, flash your card or pass or what-not, maybe flash your passport, put your suitcase on the baggage cart or beltway going up to the cargo hold, and get on the plane. No queues, no checks and no nothing - basically like a train.

I realize it's not that trivial to switch to that way of thinking of air travel, but again - not impossible.

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