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In Europe, trains are full, and more are on the way

nytimes.com

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Re: In Europe, trains are full, and more are on the way

#131

Post by Yujf »

dist-epoch wrote: post #113

In UK a train from London to Edinburgh (North of UK, Scotland) costs more than a plane. I just don't understand how that makes any sense, how can a train be more expensive than a plane.

A plane flies faster so you can amortize the cost over more flights. A plane only requires 2 airports, which can be used as a starting point to connect with any other airport again amortizing the cost over many flights. For trains you need rail all the way, which is not flexible and costs a lot.

Then the planes don't pay their full cost as they emit a lot of CO2 but aviation fuel is not taxed so you get planes that already have quite a lot of structural advantages getting even cheaper.

Budget airlines are probably also run a lot more efficiently than most train systems

Re: In Europe, trains are full, and more are on the way

#132

Post by adhesive_wombat »

wdb wrote: post #52

Just wished it didn't cost £140 to get from London to Edinburgh (4.5 hour train ride). It's stupidly expensive you can fly there for a lot less

Well it's not going to get better now that Euston's HS2 expansion has been functionally killed.

Re: In Europe, trains are full, and more are on the way

#133

Post by muspimerol »

Wytwwww wrote: post #111
muspimerol wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 added up the population of all those cities: 6.13 million. Well just Boston (where it would presumably start) is over 4 million (and whole Massachusetts is almost as dense as Belgium). Minneapolis is another ~3 million. Chicago is over 8 million. I didn't even look up the other cities... yeah it's lower but really not as much as you're implying.

Oh if we're talking about metro area population, then the EU route is also significantly higher (for example, Paris goes from 2 million to 13 million). I was just looking at city limits in both cases.

Honestly I agree with your sentiment. We should connect all these urban areas with passenger rail. But I don't think that this is the first step. Most American cities have atrocious public transit, which needs to be fixed first. No one will take a train from Chicago to Minneapolis if they just have to rent a car once they get there anyway. It would be a shame to invest billions in connecting cities with high speed rail, only to have low ridership because it still doesn't compete with flying/driving.

Re: In Europe, trains are full, and more are on the way

#134

Post by Freak_NL »

scott_w wrote: post #35
Freak_NL wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really. Crossing borders within the Schengen-zone is trivial and goes unnoticed for most travellers. You can even cross multiple borders in your sleep on the night trains.

It's so seamless that I was racing someone through Belgium and only realised I'd entered the Netherlands when I got a text telling me I was on a Dutch phone network!

By car you'd notice, but that's mostly because suddenly the car goes quiet upon crossing over onto the smooth asphalt of the Dutch snelwegen. (Despite being neighbouring countries, the contrasts are often interesting.)

Re: In Europe, trains are full, and more are on the way

#135

Post by kergonath »

Nextgrid wrote: post #78
k__ wrote: post #3

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.

I cannot say for Spain, but for the Eurostar it has been like that for quite a long time and it is related to the Schengen area border. The checks are made on boarding, so in Paris, Lille, London, Brussels, and Amsterdam before they started refurbishing the station (I am not sure about seasonal destinations but I can’t see how they could avoid checks at some point). It is not an example of increasing security theatre.

Re: In Europe, trains are full, and more are on the way

#136

Post by sgu999 »

thriftwy wrote: post #12
tmtvl wrote: post #10

As a Belgian I am very envious of Japanese rail. While it does have its own problems (overcrowding during rush hour in the major metropolises), I really miss various Quality of Life conveniences like being able to pay the difference if you need to go to a further station than you originally planned.

When in France, I could reschedule my rail ticket to a different time by using ticket machine and paying some extra cash. You don't have to be in Japan for QoL.

> You don't have to be in Japan for QoL.

SNCF is the absolute worst in term of customer service. They even consider that a train is on time if it's less than 15mn late on almost all TGV lines [1]. And if they provide a bus as an alternative to your cancelled TER (local train), they won't refund you at all whatever the time – that's from personal experience.

A Shinkansen is late from the first second behind schedule, and Japan Rail will apologise if a train leaves a couple seconds too early.

PS: A bit bitter I'll admit, reading any kind of praise for SNCF always triggers me.

[1] https://ressources.data.sncf.com/explore/dataset/regularite-...

Re: In Europe, trains are full, and more are on the way

#137

Post by hwbehrens »

landgenoot wrote: post #19
tmtvl wrote: post #10

As a Belgian I am very envious of Japanese rail. While it does have its own problems (overcrowding during rush hour in the major metropolises), I really miss various Quality of Life conveniences like being able to pay the difference if you need to go to a further station than you originally planned.

In the Netherlands, you can tap your credit card when entering the railway station, and tap again when you exit the destination station. The exact amount for the trip will be deducted. Works with all types of public transport and in the entire country. https://ovpay.nl/en/

This sounds incredible! Is this a private company, or a government program, or an open standard? I couldn't tell from the 'about' page on the linked site. I'd be interested in seeing how this could be adopted in other areas or modalities.

Re: In Europe, trains are full, and more are on the way

#138

Post by muspimerol »

sophacles wrote: post #130
muspimerol wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's a bit misleading to claim: "The dense parts of Europe have 500k+ cities basically overlapping.", while pretending that Chicago doesn't have 6M+ additional people in its immediate suburbs who would also be able to use this hypothetical train. The US and EU structure administrative units a bit differently, so using the Urban or Metro populations for both is a better metric for population served. I agree that Europ…

Sure, all mega cities have even larger metro areas. I'm not pretending Chicago doesn't have a huge metro area. But my point stands: the European route has much higher catchment than your proposed USA route, even if you include metro areas. Population density is not the only argument, although I think it's pretty clear why the US and EU are not comparable: https://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen/#4/38.51/-51.06 Most of the US looks more like Spain and less like Central Europe.

There needs to be local public transportation infrastructure. This is where the US should be focusing efforts, no long-distance high-speed trains. It works in Europe because there are huge catchment areas (see population density) that funnel riders to regional hubs that are then connected with high speed trains. I don't think the first step to making rail work in the US is connecting metropolises with high-speed trains. Until there's a better local public transportation story, it's expensive and impractical once you arrive at your destination.

Re: In Europe, trains are full, and more are on the way

#139

Post by vizzah »

k__ wrote: post #3

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…

"A train is just: get in/get out" - alas, not really. High-speed AVE trains in Spain are subject to security checks with you/your luggage going through the scanners. Fortunately, no need to take out laptops, throw water away, put liquids in a transparent bag and other nonsense.

Re: In Europe, trains are full, and more are on the way

#140

Post by TacticalCoder »

I have amazing memories, as a kid, of going on vacation with my parents, from Belgium to the french riviera... We'd load our car, a Lada (the Lada Riva, an horrible car btw), on the train and then, in the same train, we'd go to the passenger car. The trip was about 1100 km / 685 miles. The train would drive over night and we'd eat and sleep in the train and then arrived near destination next morning, we'd hop into our car.

We'd do that every year. There were both 2nd and 1st class cabins.

You'd save 1000 kilometers to the car (and in gasoline), times two.

I miss that a huge lot: apparently some european countries, including France, are planning to reintroduce these.

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