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Koralm Railway

infrastruktur.oebb.at

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Re: Koralm Railway

#151

Post by milch »

b0vinat-- wrote: post #111
contrarian1234 wrote: post #101

Austria is the only European country I've been to that doesn't have cheap affordable intercity buses. Seemingly none at all. It was kind of strange... Does anyone know why? The only options to get around was the expensive train system - and anyone I asked was bewildered why I would want to take a bus.. Maybe next time I should look in to carpooling or some other options. How do low income people get around typically?…

That part of Europe has historically loved its trains. The train is more than transportation there. It’s an institution and part of the culture. Have you been to a toy store and looked at the precision and cost of the train sets? They don’t just ride the train, the train is part of who they are and what they love, starting when they’re small children. The trains run on-time, they’re clean, and overall they tend to be…

Trains are also just more comfortable. More space, more comfortable seats, more space for luggage, you can walk around, better bathrooms, easier to work from especially in the 4 seat configuration, … Personally I would always prefer the train even if it is a bit slower. Once you account for traffic a bus that is scheduled to be faster ends up slower anyway, especially when you really needed it to be on time

Re: Koralm Railway

#152

Post by bluGill »

jeingham wrote: post #132
mattcantstop wrote: post #127

Interstate 70 in Colorado is very problematic. It is constantly backed up. Colorado needs to learn from this and get serious about rail for shipping and for human travel.

I feel you man. Problem is that would be a major dollar infrastructure problem that would need federal dollars. With a deficit over 40T dollars and political wind blowing against more federal spending generally and Colorado not being a favored state at the moment I'd say the chances are slim of it happening in the next three years. It would be boffo if some liberal corporate billionaire put his shoulder against the p…

IF Colorado did this all alone they could potentially avoid a lot of the high costs that result from getting federal dollars. Maybe - Federally funded projects tend to cost 4-7x would they would elsewhere in the world - but nobody really knows why and so it is questionable if Colorado could figure out how to build cheap. Still the potential is there. Colorado's costs would be a lot higher at 7x the cost with federal funding vs doing it all themselves for reasonable costs - but only if they solve all the issues the drive costs up.

Note that I have no confidence Colorado will tackle the issues driving costs up. Several of the known factors are places where politically powerful people (from all sides so don't bring in class warfare) are increasing costs and they let you cut them off. There are a lot of unkonwen issues left after factoring the above, and it is likely they also have politically powerful people increasing costs.

Re: Koralm Railway

#153

Post by lxgr »

jack_tripper wrote: post #118
lxgr wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flixbus definitely exists in Austria, but people generally take the train, which is much faster and more comfortable. There are various discount membership plans available that sometimes pay for themselves after just one round-trip or even one-way ride, and on the most popular connections there's now a private operator competing with the state-owned railway. A yearly flat-rate ticket for intercity trains is also rela…

>Flixbus definitely exists in Austria, but people generally take the train, which is much faster and more comfortable. Not always true. The Graz-Vienna(Airport) trip is often quicker by flixbus than by OBB train. Trains in Austria are quite slow , often travelling at the same speed as cars on the highway or often times even slower.

Doesn't Flixbus cap their fleet to 100 km/h? I'd be surprised if that's higher than the average speed of most intercity trains.

Graz–Vienna is admittedly a bit of a special case, since the railway tunnel there isn't finished yet, so I could see cars/buses being faster. (The train makes up for that in views, though ;)

Re: Koralm Railway

#154

Post by jack_tripper »

lxgr wrote: post #153
jack_tripper wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Flixbus definitely exists in Austria, but people generally take the train, which is much faster and more comfortable. Not always true. The Graz-Vienna(Airport) trip is often quicker by flixbus than by OBB train. Trains in Austria are quite slow , often travelling at the same speed as cars on the highway or often times even slower.

Doesn't Flixbus cap their fleet to 100 km/h? I'd be surprised if that's higher than the average speed of most intercity trains. Graz–Vienna is admittedly a bit of a special case, since the railway tunnel there isn't finished yet, so I could see cars/buses being faster. (The train makes up for that in views, though ;)

>Doesn't Flixbus cap their fleet to 100 km/h?

And the train is even slower than that. Let that sink in.

>Graz–Vienna is admittedly a bit of a special case

Special case at being ripped off when flights from London, Paris or Berlin across the continent are cheaper than trains from Graz to Vienna.

>The train makes up for that in views, though ;)

It really doesn't when you factor in the ticket prices. Some people who are not tourists use transportation out of necessity to get from A to B as quickly and cheaply as possible, not to do sightseeing and die of old age, so speed and value for money is more critical than what you see out the window. And a significant part of the trip is through tunnels anyway.

And there's only so many times you can see the same hills and houses before it gets repetitive and you go back to your phone. Not to mention if you travel second class, trains on that route are typically full of loud obnoxious people talking on their phone on speaker mode, who don't have courtesy for others so it ruins any enjoyment of sightseeing unless you have good noise cancelling headphones.

Re: Koralm Railway

#155

Post by Ensorceled »

jasona123 wrote: post #117
sandworm101 wrote: post #95

Lol. And in north american train news, canada's newest rail line in only 10km long, was way over budget, years late, and is slower than jogging. >> A CBC Toronto reporter rode the entire 10.3-kilometre line from east to west Monday morning, finding it took roughly 55 minutes to complete. As a reference point, over 400 runners ran this year's Toronto Marathon 10-kilometre event in under 55 minutes https://www.cbc.ca/n…

And yet the Eglinton Crosstown still isn't open... I'm so close to making a site that just lists every project that's started and finished in the entire time that thing has been "under construction".

A friend of mine works beside one of the Eglinton line sites and called me a few years ago to tell me they were taking down the hoardings... because the hoardings had rotted and needed new plywood and studs.

Re: Koralm Railway

#158

Post by MangoToupe »

georgefrowny wrote: post #135
MangoToupe wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Big Dig style clusterfuck. The big dig is probably the last major success of American infrastructure. Referring to it as a clusterfuck is representative of why we'll never get another one.

Even if the end result ends up being a net positive, even by a wide margin, I think any project that goes over budget by 100% and lands 10 years late does reasonably merit the clusterfuck tag. The Space Shuttle was one too and that was a marvel. A deathtrap politically-motivated pork-barrel hot-mess of a project, but also a shining black-and-white marvel of a glorious flying space Aga.

> The Space Shuttle was one too and that was a marvel. A deathtrap politically-motivated pork-barrel hot-mess of a project, but also a shining black-and-white marvel of a glorious flying space Aga.

https://archive.org/details/gil-scott-heron-whitey-on-the-mo...

The big dig directly benefits people producing value many, many, many times what the investment cost. Who gives a shit about the initial investment? Voters have proven time and time again that it's easier to lie to them than to get them to earnestly think.

Re: Koralm Railway

#159

Post by flowerthoughts »

alephnerd wrote: post #99
flowerthoughts wrote: post #30

Actually, the tunnel itself was only 17 years: 1998: Start of construction of the Koralm Railway 2008: Start of construction of the Koralm Tunnel 2018: Breakthrough Koralm Tunnel 2020: Final Koralm tunnel breakthrough 2025: This announcement ( https://orf.at/stories/3414173/ in German) https://infrastruktur.oebb.at/en/projects-for-austria/railwa...

Given the terrain and the amount of tunneling needed, completing such a project in 17 years isn't that bad. Seems software neckbeards on HN are equally as guilty of underestimating the difficulty of other people's work like the managers they complain about.

Yeah, and the last five years has not been drilling, but installing. The last year has been testing and tweaking (accordingt to the ORF article.)

Seems like a great project outcome. Mostly within budget, no political chaos due to delays (AFAICT) and allowing several months for testing before announcing it open.

Re: Koralm Railway

#160

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

spacechild1 wrote: post #75
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #3

I really waited for this since I was a child. It’s fascinating to see it actually be here.

Me too! But why did you need a quick connection between Klagenfurt and Graz as a child? I would have rather longed for a high speed train between Hermagor and Villach ;-)

At least I got to enjoy the highway connection between Noetsch and Villach when I was a child. Both of those things were big things due to local politics (hi Haider) when I grew up. Practically I did not care. But it was ubiquitous for a while in the news.
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