I have taken the car train from Hamburg to Vienna as a family. Pure luxury and comfort! We drive from Denmark to Hamburg(with a 2 year old), and load the fully packed car(stroller, luggages gifts for the in-laws etc) into the train at a special entrance, and walk into the coaches. We booked a private cabin/room for more privacy and also because we have a two year old. There were quite comfortable bunk booths as well…
Austria rail operator OeBB unveils new night trains
191–200 of 267 posts
Re: Austria rail operator OeBB unveils new night trains
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
Get rid of half of it. Especially the liquid limits, unnecessary pat downs, shoe removal, etc.
The shoes and belts thing is ridiculous, I agree. But there's a legitimate reason for the liquid ban to which I'm not sure there's much of a solution, is there?
Re: Austria rail operator OeBB unveils new night trains
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a legitimate reason for the liquid ban? AFAIK it was a response to a failed terrorist attempt similar to the shoe bomber, but it's likely that the ban has little to no effect on overall safety. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/03/tsa_admits_li...
That article you linked is just one big causal fallacy. It claims that the TSA admitted that the liquid ban was bullshit, citing a Slate article which does not itself even quote the TSA lol. I'm not a chemist, but I'm under the impression that the liquid explosives in the 2006 plot are a much more feasible approach to explosives than what the shoe bomber attempted. I'm also not going to pretend like I have any idea h…
Re: Austria rail operator OeBB unveils new night trains
#194train travel is almost always the most expensive option compared to car, bus or plane alternatives. from a sustainability perspective an insanely lobsided state of affairs, the result of a century long of distorted incentives and policies. what could be more pleasant than being able to criss-cross Europe in night trains that are affordable, comfortable and sustainable? makes sense both for business and tourism. you c…
Re: Austria rail operator OeBB unveils new night trains
#195I have taken the car train from Hamburg to Vienna as a family. Pure luxury and comfort! We drive from Denmark to Hamburg(with a 2 year old), and load the fully packed car(stroller, luggages gifts for the in-laws etc) into the train at a special entrance, and walk into the coaches. We booked a private cabin/room for more privacy and also because we have a two year old. There were quite comfortable bunk booths as well…
This, like many other ideas combining cars and public transport, sounds like something that doesn't scale. The exact numbers vary, but the passenger capacity of a car train is usually something like 1/2 of a normal night train or 1/3 of a normal day train, assuming that the train is fully dedicated to carrying people with cars. You also need special facilities and longer stops, because cars can't just dismount at nor…
It’s not a choice between 1 car-train or 1 normal night train - you can have both if there is line capacity.
And you probably aren’t running sleeper carriages during peak hours.
Re: Austria rail operator OeBB unveils new night trains
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, a big fat scam. No thanks.
>> carbon tax > big fat scam Care to elaborate?
I am all for taxing pollution but focusing on carbon alone makes me extremely dubious of the actual intent behind such proposals.
These things appear to be weapons disguised as legitimate efforts to improve things.
Re: Austria rail operator OeBB unveils new night trains
#197One thing that I am missing for all (well, I have booked with 4 in the last years) european night train operators is bed size. Why is this so hard? Sometimes beds are 180cm (6 foot) at best, sometimes (Vy night train to north of sweden) even my friend who is over 2m has plenty of space. Are these web sites & texts written exclusively by and for small women?
Re: Austria rail operator OeBB unveils new night trains
#198I travelled from Germany to Croatia and had to book a 2 person sleeping cabin (100€ more expensive). When we entered, the sleeping wagon was a seating wagon. We (2) were stuffed with 2 other people into a cabin. No one told us what was going on. Well we travelled for 13h without getting any sleep. I created a support ticket on the same day from inside the train. Only generic response. 2 weeks later I created another…
> I'm guessing they receive a high volume of support requests and are understaffed. No, the reason is that there's no penalty for the behavior you just witnessed, so it's more profitable to stonewall victims in hopes they go away, and only refund when the authority actually forces them to, which only happens in a small percentage of cases where the fraud victim actually escalates their complaint to the relevant autho…
Re: Austria rail operator OeBB unveils new night trains
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
Canada's current carbon tax is at 65 CAD per ton of CO2, working out to roughly 15 cents per liter (typical gas price right now is 1.75ish per liter). The degree of tax is just too small right now to realistically expect major impact on behavior. We'll see what happens as tax continues to ramp.
The big issue I think with the tax is that its ultimately paid for by consumers and not capital, as a result behavior won't shift, people will just get poorer in need of more subsidy and wealth will be more concentrated. Rather than a carbon tax, we should tax wealth for carbon used to generate such wealth in the American economic system. We could do this by taxing the holdings directly, or having a progressive tax r…
Re: Austria rail operator OeBB unveils new night trains
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
This, like many other ideas combining cars and public transport, sounds like something that doesn't scale. The exact numbers vary, but the passenger capacity of a car train is usually something like 1/2 of a normal night train or 1/3 of a normal day train, assuming that the train is fully dedicated to carrying people with cars. You also need special facilities and longer stops, because cars can't just dismount at nor…
This implies that rail is running at capacity during the night, which I suspect isn’t true. It’s not a choice between 1 car-train or 1 normal night train - you can have both if there is line capacity. And you probably aren’t running sleeper carriages during peak hours.
cry-laughs in German Oh hell yes we do run at nominal capacity, actually often enough above. The transit routes are fully booked all times of the year, the demand for freight transit is insane, and every bordering country is complaining that we can't get our shit together (to no one's surprise after 30 years of perpetual budget cuts).
The problem is: virtually all trans-European routes run through Germany. You can't avoid running through here.