81–90 of 428 posts
I jest a little, but it's so bad here we've started to call it "bus replacement service" when the train is not cancelled, rather than "rail replacement service" when the train is cancelled.
[1]: https://www.nrk.no/norge/full-togstans-i-hele-norge-grunnet-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if your train leaves at 0700 you can’t plan to get there at 06:59 True, but 6:50 is plenty early enough depending on if you know the station and the size. Getting to and from the stations are a wash because it's not like the airport drops you at the door either. Though, many EU cities have the train station near the city center which makes it easier for people to get to than the airport.
Unless you don't happen to live within the city center. Train stations frequently have zero long term parking, while airport frequently have cheap or even free long term parking. If you need to take the train where I live, then you're better of driving to the airport and park there. Then take a train or bus to the city center and the train station. I did like to take the train more often, but travel times are just to…
In Denmark specifically the border policy causes some slowdown. Other than that it probably has the same issue as the Netherlands where the trains that go across the border are infrequent and don't connect to major hubs. This creates a lot of friction in the entire network which makes the entire proposition fall apart. If you have to cross more than one border you really get into some hellish territory, speaking from experience.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if your train leaves at 0700 you can’t plan to get there at 06:59 True, but 6:50 is plenty early enough depending on if you know the station and the size. Getting to and from the stations are a wash because it's not like the airport drops you at the door either. Though, many EU cities have the train station near the city center which makes it easier for people to get to than the airport.
Unless you don't happen to live within the city center. Train stations frequently have zero long term parking, while airport frequently have cheap or even free long term parking. If you need to take the train where I live, then you're better of driving to the airport and park there. Then take a train or bus to the city center and the train station. I did like to take the train more often, but travel times are just to…
Airport parking in Europe is pretty expensive. It could quite possibly be more than the flights for all passengers combined. A week at Brandenburg is about €150 Euros and at Heathrow is roughly the same (and needs a shuttle bus to the terminal, or it is over £250 plus for the short stay).
That is, however, still likely cheaper than a train to the airport in the UK and substantially less likely to have a cancellation cause you to miss a flight.
In Germany not so far because the train will be 2+ hours late
Literally happened to me yesterday on the way back to Berlin. I arrived 2 hours late. In fairness there was what was labelled "a personal accident" on the track, which is a euphemism for somebody jumping in front of a train. Which unfortunately happens and needs to be dealt with properly and is not really something anybody can do much about. But delays are fairly common on that particular route (Berlin-Amsterdam). Th…
Sure, you get a little bit of money back, but at that point, I understand why so many people prefer to fly or go by car.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If there’s a train every 30 mins then sure it’s worth optimising, missing a train isn’t like missing a flight most of the time.
That is only true in the simplest scenario of taking a train on a flexible ticket and without any transfers. As soon as you have transfers in the mix (as you often would if travelling longer distances) or stricter tickets, not making it to the train is usually a really bad option.
IMO booking strict tickets (e.g. booking a seat) makes sense on only a small handful of routes in the UK, for example, and may even result in you being offered fewer possible options.
There are some quite infrequent routes in rural areas where missing a connection is a bigger problem, but on those journeys I tend to consider my arrival time at that connection to be the starting point.
For the train journeys I take it’s pretty normal to have two or three changes, often including a trip across London. I rarely get into a situation where missing a train is a problem, because of the nature of the train timings. The last time I was delayed significantly was due to catastrophic flooding.
The fundamental difference between air travel and train travel is that missed flights have to be rescheduled. Missed train journeys, not so much. In the UK if you miss the train you had booked a seat on, you can usually still travel on another one if it's a travel period covered by your ticket (e.g. only travelling at peak with a peak ticket). You just don't get a seat guarantee.
---
An aside:
Train travel is a flow state/mindset thing. Get one train earlier than you strictly need, find something to do while you're on the train (bonus points for something you can still do while standing). And then try to remember your journey is no more important than anyone else's, maybe a lot less, and you have no more right to timeliness or expedience than anyone else... maybe a lot less. As long as your journey is progressing, things are fine.
The other week I was on a train and there was a thirty-something woman and her parents, taking up a lot of space around me and chatting incessantly and being silly, and I was just about to performatively put my headphones on (the rudest you're allowed to get when people are crossing the threshold of appropriate levels of noise) when it dawned on me that they were being silly because this thirtysomething woman was going to a hospital to find out whether her tumour had returned. And then it dawned on me from their route-planning discussion which hospital it likely was, and what that likely meant for her, and I hugged myself and read my book.
I was on a train about 15 years ago, on a local journey, that was held outside a station about three quarters of a mile from where I worked. Stuck for three hours on a cold train in winter with no working toilet.
About an hour and a half in, people were getting very angry, until a member of the rail staff walked the line back to the train, boarded, and went through the carriage explaining carefully but respectfully exactly why the train couldn't get into the station and why we couldn't all walk along the track. Once they knew why, the angry people started chatting and sharing snacks and talking to strangers like they were old friends for whom life had suddenly become too short to be angry.
Meanwhile in Canada https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/via-rain-passengers-...
Nowhere[1], if you're in Norway. I jest a little, but it's so bad here we've started to call it "bus replacement service" when the train is not cancelled, rather than "rail replacement service" when the train is cancelled. [1]: https://www.nrk.no/norge/full-togstans-i-hele-norge-grunnet-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Literally happened to me yesterday on the way back to Berlin. I arrived 2 hours late. In fairness there was what was labelled "a personal accident" on the track, which is a euphemism for somebody jumping in front of a train. Which unfortunately happens and needs to be dealt with properly and is not really something anybody can do much about. But delays are fairly common on that particular route (Berlin-Amsterdam). Th…
There are things that can be done about people jumping in front of trains. Making sure the rails are not accessible with fences around them. Putting camera's at spots where people can get past the fences. In high risk stations you can put walls and gates in that only open when a train can be boarded. It's all just a lack of investment. If the budget for rail and other infrastructure matched the budget for car infrast…
CW: suicide
Coming from someone who has spent considerable time thinking about and planning suicide by train: lol no
Unless you put up walls higher than the highest ladders available (so at least 5m I guess) or completely enlose every train track with a roof and everything, people will climb over things. There's either no space for large fenced areas around tracks (pretty much everywhere near civilization) or you're too far out for somebody to respond before a determined person can reach the track. And of course, nobody will permit the construction of the necessary infrastructure (call them NIMBYs if you want).
Every escape door can be used to enter tracks. Make them as secure as you want them - keys are easier to get then you think.
Rebuilding train stations to completely secure access to the tracks would involve standardizing all trains in every country in all of Europe.
And (not applicable for high-speed trains) unless you want to spend billions and years to rebuild every train crossing to bridges, it will be impossible to completely secure the tracks.
Most train suicides are impulsive decisions and can be prevented with better infrastructure. But if suicide by train is too difficult, I'll just jump on front of a car instead, or from a bridge, etc. "It's all just a lack of investment" so is terra forming Mars. But spend a fraction of this for better mental health and you can prevent many more suicides.
About 20 years ago, I visited most of Europe’s major cities over the course of a two-month trip, traveling primarily by night train. Each overnight ride saved me the cost of a hostel or guesthouse, and I’d arrive in a new city each morning feeling refreshed because of the train’s sleeping accommodations. There used to be a similar service between Toronto and Montreal (both directions), where the train would pause for…
Since Europe has a liberalized market in the rail sector, some startups are trying to fill the gap.
European sleeper operates a night train on the route Brussel-Amsterdam-Berlin-Prague, using old rented rolling stock.
I’m involved with Luna Rail (in Berlin), which is trying a more technical approach around rolling stock design to improve unit economics to make Night trains profitable.
There’s also a startup in the US, dreamstar, whose primary effort appears to be about getting track rights for now (something that’s not such a big concern in Europe - here the barrier is rolling stock).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whenever I checked, trains from north Germany to Austria and back were always significantly cheaper on the ÖBB site. It was bizarre.
It's just price differentiation in action. A Polish ticket for the same train can be a third of the price of an Austrian ticket. People are rightfully pissed when this happens to them online, yet they seem to accept it for trains. I don't understand it.