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Europe is investing heavily in trains

nytimes.com

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Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#581

Post by jseban »

lost_soul wrote: post #39
cryptoz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same in the US. I would love to take the train from Seattle to SF, but, it costs so much more than a flight would, and takes a very long time compared. Sleeper cars make the price nearly double, and for such a long trip, train seats without a sleeper are somehow worse than plane seats. I have taken many Amtrak short trips, like 1h, and 50% of the time the train leaves more than 1h late (and 100% it leaves late, some…

If I had to apply an "aggravation factor", air travel is worse. The train just doesn't seem to bug me as much. One difference is that when the train arrives I'm in the city center. When the plane arrives I'm at the airport.

When you travel by train you are treated like an adult, air travel treats you like a child and herd you around like cattle.

Getting a 100 dollar fine because you didn't click a button on a website, being commanded by uniformed people to "show your papers" over and over, standing in line waiting to stand in another line. Being forced to stand in crowded "designated areas". It's super creepy, gives me the heebie jeebies, like I'm being shipped off somewhere..

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#582

Post by jseban »

DocTomoe wrote: post #570
egman_ekki wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Point is: You don't often need to travel to the city center, and choosing that as fictional final destination is giving trains an unfair advantage. Often you need to somewhere NEAR Paris. Also, and this may be related to the airports I fly out of, but I have hardly ever had planned more than an hour of time from entering an airport terminal to the gate. In TXL (sadly closed now for the much inferior BER), I averaged…

> Also, and this may be related to the airports I fly out of, but I have hardly ever had planned more than an hour of time from entering an airport terminal to the gate. In TXL (sadly closed now for the much inferior BER), I averaged 25 minutes. At Stuttgart, I once managed to get there in 20.

This is the saddest part of flying, that it really can take only 20 minutes, and instead of making it as efficient as possible, there's the opposite development, where the recommended time has gone from 1 hour to now at least two hours.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#583

Post by thebean11 »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #285
thebean11 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't wrap my head around how expensive Amtrak is, given that it's so heavily subsidized by the government.

> given that it's so heavily subsidized by the government It's not. Until the recent infrastructure bill, Amtrak didn't even have a dedicated yearly budget. Every year they would beg Congress for some money, get some amount less than that, then prioritize what they could given the funding. Moreover roads in the US never pay for themselves, they're just written off as an "economic driver" rather than expected to pay f…

Doesn't the government build and maintain the rails?

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#584

Post by nmfisher »

pinche_gazpacho wrote: post #576
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…

Have you been in a "Mediterranean corridor" train? It can take 6-4h to get from Valencia to Barcelona. Maybe the AVE is an outlier. And it isn't available everywhere exactly. Curious that the 2nd and 3rd biggest cities are so badly connected. The fuel it took driving alone in a car was cheaper (2018) than those trains also.

I was in Spain recently and while the trains were as pleasant/convenient as I expected, I was definitely surprised by how expensive it was. Even more so, given how (relatively) cheap the rest of the trip was.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#585

Post by flavius29663 »

ornornor wrote: post #466
lorenzfx wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's not only GHG emissions, but also noise, resource use (all these single use plastic everything they give you on planes), land use...

I am pretty sure land use for all those tracks, elevated rail beds, tunnels and bridges, stations is FAR higher than what the planes use.

Single plastic usage is such a red herring...every time you load up your car with gas, you put in 15 gallons, that is ~50 kilograms. A plastic straw is 0.4 grams, 125,000 plastic straws to amount to the same hydrocarbon footprint. This is a very rough math, but you get the idea. You can compensate for all your life consumption of straws and forks by not filling up once. Plates are heavier, but still marginal compared to everything else.

Another one: plastic grocery bags are 5 grams, that means one tank of gas is like 12000 grocery bags.

You could say: but at least use less single use plastic! Have you considered the alternatives? Would stainless plates weigh much more on a plane, and induce a higher CO2? Would food non-wrapped in plastic spoil more? (We throw away about 50% of all fruits and vegetables anyway).

GHG is a tough problem. Focusing on some token issues like plastic straws and plane travel for ordinary people does not solve it, it only makes it harder for people to accept it.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#586

Post by flavius29663 »

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

3.5% is a very small price for what is one of the greatest human achievements: freedom to travel anywhere, on a layman's salary. Up until the modern age, world travel was reserved for the elites. Travel means freedom, and I strongly believe our freedom should come first when talking about GHG emissions.

Let's cut out the 96.5% first, then reduce travel.

The same with cars. Automobiles amount for a small portion of total gas emissions. All in all, passenger cars+ passenger aviation is about 10% of total emissions. Yet we heard complaints about these more than anything else. And not only complaints, but policies that want to fix this problem.

Why not focus on the 90%? Industry lobbyists love this state of affairs, we auto-flagellate for 10% and nobody says a peep about the elephant in the room.

https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-transport

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#587

Post by flavius29663 »

arethuza wrote: post #514
flavius29663 wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe you are under the flight path?

My point was that train lines are millions of miles/km and run through the center of settlements, by design. Almost everywhere in the world, unless you live in a suburb or village, you have a high chance that you will hear trains multiple times a day.

I think there are less people under flight plaths than near trains.

I guess it depends on luck how noisy they can be. I used to get woken every night at 2am by one fucker.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#588

Post by ornornor »

flavius29663 wrote: post #585
ornornor wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not only GHG emissions, but also noise, resource use (all these single use plastic everything they give you on planes), land use...

I am pretty sure land use for all those tracks, elevated rail beds, tunnels and bridges, stations is FAR higher than what the planes use. Single plastic usage is such a red herring...every time you load up your car with gas, you put in 15 gallons, that is ~50 kilograms. A plastic straw is 0.4 grams, 125,000 plastic straws to amount to the same hydrocarbon footprint. This is a very rough math, but you get the idea. Yo…

It might be a token problem but I think it's important to put this on the map for people to even realize it's a problem.

Also, trains (in large parts of Europe anyway) run on electricity only of which a significant chunk is from nuclear power, which doesn't emit anywhere near as much CO2 to move as many people as a plane would.

And the noise. trains are so quiet compared to planes.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#589

Post by arethuza »

flavius29663 wrote: post #587
arethuza wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Maybe you are under the flight path? My point was that train lines are millions of miles/km and run through the center of settlements, by design. Almost everywhere in the world, unless you live in a suburb or village, you have a high chance that you will hear trains multiple times a day. I think there are less people under flight plaths than near trains. I guess it depends on luck how noisy they can be. I used to get…

From what I can tell it is take offs - aircraft coming in to land, even though they are much closer, tend to be inaudible.

It might be because we are relatively high up (about 100m) and most of the distance between us and the airport is over the sea.

Edit: Just checked on a map and when most aircraft take off from Edinburgh's runway into the prevailing wind they are pointing pretty much directly away from us which might make it more noticeable.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#590

Post by znowflakez »

bluepoint wrote: post #567
Tainnor wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem at least in parts of Europe is that trains are not always competitive in terms of pricing, especially when it comes to fast connections. Airplane tickets are sometimes just stupidly cheap. Also, in Germany trains are very often late or have other issues. Nevertheless, I agree that it's more relaxed to go by train most of the time (unless it's super crowded) and I'll sometimes pay extra for that comfort.

> Also, in Germany trains are very often late or have other issues. Wait, what? I am really surprised to read this.

Yeah, small delays are happening constantly, bigger delays very often, you will always see a few ICEs running 120+ min late. Many malfunctions and building sites. Some tickets are horribly expensive or straight up overpriced and then knowing the arcane system behind pricing is required to pick the right ticket for the right price.

It's also a dense network with lots of passengers and I do manage to get around so there's that? But you were probably thinking of Switzerland, not Germany :o)

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