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Europe is investing heavily in trains

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Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#181

Post by Etheryte »

DominikPeters wrote: post #155
lqet wrote: post #26

Here in Germany, for as long as I can remember, the government praises itself every year for investing as much in rail as never before. I have not noticed the service quality to change for the better over the last 15 years. The ever-rising investments seem to be only enough to keep the status quo of the crumbling infrastructure.

That seems wrong. New high speed lines are being built and have recently opened (e.g. Berlin-Munich, soon Stuttgart-Ulm). The number of passengers using high speed trains (ICEs) is steadily increasing: from 75 million trips in 2009 to 99 million trips in 2019. To increase the number of trips like that, lots of investment in rolling stock / signalling / lines is needed. https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1…

The numbers seem large when they're in absolutes, but per capita it's moved from ~0.91 trips per person per year to ~1.19 trips per person per year. Not to say there is no progress, but rather that the number of trips is low to begin with. If you contrast the money spent with the end result of roughly one trip per person per year, things are not that rosy.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#182

Post by axiomsEnd »

scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #77
ithinkso wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's different in Poland. Here, everyone always complains about the rail and it was shit like you wouldn't believe only like 15 years ago. I've been using trains only sporadically but the improvements are absolutely immense, I couldn't believe my eyes. Not perfect of course but holy shit did it improve, especially regional rails Of course we had to improve from much lower standards than Germany, I guess, so I have no…

I use trains here in Poland and although there have been big improvements, a lot of them are only a facade. Long distance PKP trains are still late everyday. The regional trains in my city tend to be over-packed, and from a technical pov they’re more like larger diesel buses than trains. However, in response to the earlier comment and this one as well, I would have to say that investment doesn’t always mean immediate…

Poland made a huge step back when it comes to trains after 1990 - there is a good book by Karol Trammer "Ostre cięcie" about disastrous cuts.

On the other hand - Pendolino is a real step forward, and at least Cracow is trying to improve general quality and invest in intra-city trains, which maybe not the fastest, but still much better than buses or trams.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#183

Post by krsdcbl »

lqet wrote: post #26

Here in Germany, for as long as I can remember, the government praises itself every year for investing as much in rail as never before. I have not noticed the service quality to change for the better over the last 15 years. The ever-rising investments seem to be only enough to keep the status quo of the crumbling infrastructure.

I think there's two factors playing into this:

first, Germany has had a high level of sefvice quality with trains for the last 15 years, compared to much of the world, there's little to improve

and second, DB had become a HUGE holding company of many kinds of business endeavours and rail service is not in the states hand anymore, while the company "optimizes" for profit which makes travel aside of high traffic routes become worse and worse and coverage deteriorates.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#184

Post by ciupicri »

cryptoz wrote: post #8
Fargren wrote: post #2

Living in Spain, I love trains and take them over airplane when it's an option. However, trains are often around twice as expensive as flying for may routes. I know nothing about trains, but intuitively I would expect the opposite, and I really wish it was more affordable, specially high speed rail.

Same in the US. I would love to take the train from Seattle to SF, but, it costs so much more than a flight would, and takes a very long time compared. Sleeper cars make the price nearly double, and for such a long trip, train seats without a sleeper are somehow worse than plane seats. I have taken many Amtrak short trips, like 1h, and 50% of the time the train leaves more than 1h late (and 100% it leaves late, some…

I find it odd that the train ticket didn't get you to your final destination. If the train doesn't travel on some part of the route, the railway company usually gets you on a bus for that part and you don't have to do anything. Just get off the train and hop in the bus.

N.B. Hungary has been an EU member since 2004, but Serbia is still not.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#185

Post by vkou »

lqet wrote: post #26

Here in Germany, for as long as I can remember, the government praises itself every year for investing as much in rail as never before. I have not noticed the service quality to change for the better over the last 15 years. The ever-rising investments seem to be only enough to keep the status quo of the crumbling infrastructure.

Is it possible that the investments are targeted at improving rail service for regions that you don't live in?

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#186

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #172
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rail is much more expensive to maintain than roads on a per-kilometer basis - where are you getting your numbers from?

Do you have a source? I'd expect rail to be more expensive from a capital expenditure perspective (laying rail, ties, buying cars, etc) but much cheaper to operate (coefficient of friction is lower between train wheels and rails than with rubber tires and roads, optimal speeding and slowing causing less wear on tracks, less downtime as rail repairs are much simpler than road repairs, etc)

In the UK, Network Rail spends about £150k per track kilometer per year on maintenance and renewal. Track needs constant maintenance through ballast redistribution and compaction to maintain track geometry; the rail itself needs to be ground regularly to maintain its shape; points systems need to be maintained, as well as signaling systems, earthworks and embankments, even vegetation.

Maintenance costs for major roads in the UK (trunk motorways and A roads) is something about half that.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#187

Post by Goronmon »

Etheryte wrote: post #181
DominikPeters wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems wrong. New high speed lines are being built and have recently opened (e.g. Berlin-Munich, soon Stuttgart-Ulm). The number of passengers using high speed trains (ICEs) is steadily increasing: from 75 million trips in 2009 to 99 million trips in 2019. To increase the number of trips like that, lots of investment in rolling stock / signalling / lines is needed. https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1…

The numbers seem large when they're in absolutes, but per capita it's moved from ~0.91 trips per person per year to ~1.19 trips per person per year. Not to say there is no progress, but rather that the number of trips is low to begin with. If you contrast the money spent with the end result of roughly one trip per person per year, things are not that rosy.

The numbers seem large when they're in absolutes, but per capita it's moved from ~0.91 trips per person per year to ~1.19 trips per person per year.

I mean, if the goal is to make the smallest number, why stop at "per person per year"? If you instead reflected the number as "per person per second" then you would see that the improvement is barely measurable.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#188

Post by aarroyoc »

emn13 wrote: post #112
elthor89 wrote: post #11

It is there but I wish there was a more comprehensive network of high speed rail in Europe. Going from Amsterdam to Spain the plane seems to win on price and travel time. One thing that isn’t infrastructure but could easily be improved is buying international train tickets. So often I see that one needs to call or you can only book one month ahead. Surely we could have solved that by now..

Note that if you travel from The Netherlands to Spain you might be traversing 6 different railway electrification systems that vary in critical stuff like voltages (and by more than a factor 10!) and possibly Hz, and some are AC and some are DC (not kidding). Also there will be at least 2 incompatible track gauges involved. And I bet other stuff like communications and routing systems are incompatible and safety crit…

There's no gauge change. Spain high-speed tracks already use the international one (older tracks still use Iberian gauge). There are already high-speed trains that go to France without stopping at the border.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#189

Post by david927 »

People want to use trains and we want people to use trains -- which means whatever is left over is an irrelevant detail. We should subsidize it more and invest more.

I lived in the south of France for a while and it always struck me that instead of one huge, heavy engine pulling ten cars, arriving once an hour, along that stretch (from Cannes to Menton), it would be better served to have light, individual cars that ran every five minutes. (More like a large tram.)

We can do so much better. And it will happen the minute we get the greed of the oil/auto/airline industries from getting in our way.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#190

Post by ls15 »

jhgb wrote: post #154
lqet wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A short answer for Germany would be: the system is operating at its absolute limits. The results are employee burnout and bad reliability. An example: a few years ago, they introduced a new way to reduce delays caused by trains arriving so late at their destination that they cannot make their scheduled return trip. This is the so-called "Pofalla-Turn", named after the manager who supported it: if a train has a delay…

> the train will often just stop at some station and the passengers are told "the train ends here". They then have to figure out their journey using alternative trains. In the Czech Republic, what would happen in that case would be that the railway company would shuttle the passengers to their destination using buses. This doesn't happen in Germany?

The typical scenario is that passengers can just take another train. Depending on the ticket, the railway is responsible for refunding cost for alternative transportation (EU law), but there can be frustrating edge cases where people are left stranded, because there is no alternative, but a lot of bureaucracy. The railway may be responsible for refunding accommodation then, but I think this would not necessarily be the case for monthly tickets, student tickets and so on, when there is no explicit booking for a canceled train like with a regular ticket.
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