121–130 of 229 posts
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Distances on a square are shorter on average for the same area of land.
Network topology is independent of euclidian distance.
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Aren't plane just as often late ? My hypothesis is that planes are just as often late but people complain less because : 1. They have already taken the whole day because getting to the airport, booking, security... so they don't care as much about a two hours delay. 2. They have some respect for the fact that we are allow to fly and see that as big technical challenge depending on weather and good security practices.…
Not if you are comparing to Deutsche Bahn. Where in the last months only 52% of long distance trains were on time: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-november-train-punctuality-wor...
Trains are pretty awesome, especially in small Europe. Flying always comes with security hassle. A train is just: get in/get out. If Europe would just spent more money on infrastructure. We have trains in Germany that can do 350km/h but I've yet to ride one that goes faster than 200, probably because the rails aren't what they're used to be. Then we have the Germany Ticket. A 50€/month subscription to all regional tr…
> Flying always comes with security hassle Unfortunately that is not the case, the security theater seems to be slowly contaminating rail too. The Barcelona->Paris connection has some bullshit security on the Barcelona side (luggage x-ray & plastic trays for laptops), and I think the Eurostar had some of this on the London side too.
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In December I could not even buy tickets online to a train from Berlin to Warsaw because DB website is terrible. Had to cancel my trip — this is really a shame, that EU cannot fix cross-border connectivity.
I think everyone complaining about DB should be forced to live in the UK for a short while first. My 15 yo daughter has just come back from her first trip to Koln to stay with friends. She was wide eyed with how well everything worked, and how nice the trains were. It was interesting to me to see that she saw it too and it’s not just jaded politics that makes me think the UK is going to the dogs.
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Yep, it's misleading. The America is big argument fails to hold water once you actually take a look at a map. Take Columbus for example where we're within just a couple hours by train (could be less if we had any sort of seriousness about our country) away from: Chicago Detroit Cleveland Cincinnati Indianapolis Pittsburgh and maybe just a few hours away from other cities like Toronto, Buffalo, Louisville, and more.
The US has the largest rail network in the world (for now). It’s hugely dominated by freight. It’s not for lack of rail lines we don’t have good passenger service it’s a priority and preference issue. If you got a fast train between Indianapolis and Cleveland what would you do with it? Neither has reasonable public transit and aren’t dense cities that are good for walking. They also are only 4.5 hours away from each…
Example: I am not the biggest soccer fan in the world, but I might take a train down to Cincinnati and get dinner, stay the night, and watch Columbus play Cincinnati. I'm not doing that with a car because of parking and it being a big hassle. If I can take a train down there, I'm way more likely to go. Once I get there the very first time I'll just arrive in the downtown area, plenty to walk around to see and do. The same is true for the reverse trip. Someone coming from Cincinnati can arrive in the Short North in Columbus and walk anywhere they want from German Village to Downtown to Ohio State's campus.
I'm not entirely sure about Cleveland (haven't been in a while) or Indianapolis (haven't been maybe ever?) w.r.t to walking around, but in the example I gave you can see there is plenty to do with a train that gets you from one of the example cities to another and it only improves as more and more people use the service.
Funny actually. What you were saying kind of applies to cars too. You'd just drive through or around Indianapolis. After all once you park there's nothing to do and nowhere to go.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...
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Yep, it's misleading. The America is big argument fails to hold water once you actually take a look at a map. Take Columbus for example where we're within just a couple hours by train (could be less if we had any sort of seriousness about our country) away from: Chicago Detroit Cleveland Cincinnati Indianapolis Pittsburgh and maybe just a few hours away from other cities like Toronto, Buffalo, Louisville, and more.
The US has the largest rail network in the world (for now). It’s hugely dominated by freight. It’s not for lack of rail lines we don’t have good passenger service it’s a priority and preference issue. If you got a fast train between Indianapolis and Cleveland what would you do with it? Neither has reasonable public transit and aren’t dense cities that are good for walking. They also are only 4.5 hours away from each…
Trains are pretty awesome, especially in small Europe. Flying always comes with security hassle. A train is just: get in/get out. If Europe would just spent more money on infrastructure. We have trains in Germany that can do 350km/h but I've yet to ride one that goes faster than 200, probably because the rails aren't what they're used to be. Then we have the Germany Ticket. A 50€/month subscription to all regional tr…
Personally my main gripe is not so much the speed as going to higher speed is probably less efficient hence more expensive. My main gripe is the price (I am poor by european standards). For example going from Paris to Napoli only by train is currently above 300 euros whereas you can find a flight for 40 euros. I am ready to pay around 100 euros for that. Recently there was sleeper car train from Paris to Milano which…
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Couldn't you book with another ticket seller? Like trainline.eu?
I tried Omio and one more, but this specific direction was not available there via train. DB website was simply showing an error at the last step. A month later, by the moment error was gone all tickets appeared sold.
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> Flying always comes with security hassle Unfortunately that is not the case, the security theater seems to be slowly contaminating rail too. The Barcelona->Paris connection has some bullshit security on the Barcelona side (luggage x-ray & plastic trays for laptops), and I think the Eurostar had some of this on the London side too.
Eurostar has had airport-style security for long time (maybe always?). Definitely 10+ years anyway.
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Boston to minneapolis could pass through: MA: Springfield NY: Albany, Buffalo,Rochester Oh: Sandusky, Cleavland, Toledo, IN: Fort wayne IL: Chicago, Rockford, WI: Madison, LaCrosse, Eu Claire, Milwaukee With some fairly minor deviations on the path. (Assuming a fairly straight path that stays in the US, going south of the lakes). Depending on your tolerance for minor deviations from the straightest possible path it c…
I don't know why we're still stuck on the Berlin Madrid topic, but I'll bite :-) I added up the population of all those cities: 6.13 million. The population of Berlin and Madrid alone is 6.86 million, and our theoretical journey would take us through several cities of 1m+ along the way: Cologne, Brussels, Paris... The dense parts of Europe have 500k+ cities basically overlapping. As someone who grew up in the Midwest…
I agree that Europe is more densly populated than US, so there would be longer stretches without a stop in the US. But that's OK - the long-distance trains in the EU don't stop at every station along the way anyway, it would just be a different structure of "locals" and "through trains" to service the poulations.
I disagree however that population density is even all that relevant. All the cities in the US that I've mentioned have rail through them already. It's used profitably for freight all the time. I think the US doesn't have good passenger rail service because of a heck of a lot of other factors - subsidies favoring cars and planes over rail for transit, infrastructure having been created around getting everyone an automobile, a huge amount of FUD from various lobbies against rail (including arguments about population density), and a dozen others probably have more actual impact than "people per square mile is different on average".