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More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

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Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#191

Post by thu2111 »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #164
thu2111 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trains in the UK got a lot better after privatisation, and of course we're discussing how they're not competitive against the airline industry which is significantly more free market again. So your point isn't landing. Yes. Globalised and freer markets are a solution to this. In fact it's what the article advocates, more or less.

> Trains in the UK got a lot better after privatisation, I don't expect my point to be landing with free market Regonomists, but seriously? I mean even trains in my native country, which is generally fairly undeveloped are a lot more dependable. Trains in the UK are regularly late, cancelled, broken due to the slightest change in weather that's fairly typical of the UK, overcrowded, slow etc. etc. Maybe it was even w…

Yes, rail in the UK was significantly worse before.

If you look at ridership graphs for the UK they were in decline for decades. There was no investment because governments thought the railways had no future. Once privatised, ridership turned around and started growing again. Now there's lots of investment again. Usage figures show the story. UK rail is btw no worse than Germany. Look at data, not anecdotes. Or if you must use anecdotes:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2018/...

Railways have trouble with reliability in most countries that aren't Switzerland (which has 2x large subsidies).

You seem to believe only ideological people could possibly believe rail is better privatised. It's the other way around. Look at the quote from the leader of one of the rail unions in the UK. He praised privatisation. It's ideology to deny the turnaround so clear in the data.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#192

Post by vanderZwan »

thu2111 wrote: post #190
vanderZwan wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Forcing roaming prices down just pushed up other tariffs I pay less than twenty euros a month for 10 GiB of data throughout all of Europe. What are you talking about?

The phone companies lost a lot of money when roaming tariffs were forced down and that was reflected in tariffs for the majority of people who never roam. There are studies about this. Did you think that in the relatively competitive mobile market price controls can be enforced with no impact at all? It was a form of wealth transfer from the poor to the rich.

> The phone companies lost a lot of money when roaming tariffs were forced down and that was reflected in tariffs for the majority of people who never roam. There are studies about this.

Then show those studies, because as I'm pointing out, my "tarifs" have not increased in the slightest.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#193

Post by Arnt »

Hamuko wrote: post #70
Arnt wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happily there's a world wide web that'll help you inform yourself. Or I can tell you: You have to take the train to St. Petersburg and change there. Going to someplace like Paris you'd have to change one more time, and of course the trip would be long.

Does that mean that if I want to get between two cities inside the Schengen area, I need to get a visa?

Probably, at least if you really want to go by train all the way.

You can find other weird routes if you try, too. Teheran to Bangkok by train is a weird one. You have to go west via Istanbul, then northeast to Moscow, then take the Transsiberian, then south through China, finally westwards to Bangkok. All possible but very convoluted and hardly something you'd do in order to reach the destination.

In one way it reminds me of some friends of mine who went on a trip around the world for two months — on one airline ticket. The ticket was to New Zealand and back, with quite a few longish stopovers. Not the itinerary one would choose just to get to New Zealand.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#194

Post by eesmith »

thu2111 wrote: post #189
eesmith wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that most people don't want to simply go to some arbitrary small airport or tiny airstrip. Again, thu2111's statement was: > "Adding capacity to the sky is easy because it's empty. It's essentially just about scaling air traffic control systems." ATC systems are not the only relevant part of infrastructure - airports are also important. You write "you need far less infrastructure". Sure. But airports are…

Heathrow is a rare case. Very few airports max out for such long periods whereas being at capacity is pretty journal for rail lines. That's why the argument for HS2 is capacity oriented.

My point though is that the capacity of the sky is rather irrelevant since most people are interested in the capacity across the entire trip, not just the air part.

All of the biggest airports have had extensive and expensive work done to increase capacity. SFO is about 90% of capacity, if I read https://www.faa.gov/airports/planning_capacity/profiles/medi... right. And it's worse if the weather is bad.

That's why I argue that you cannot ignore airport capacity in your estimates.

We can look at the inter-war period to see how capacity calculations had to consider more than just the sky. Pan-Am famously ran flying boats in their transoceanic lines. "Their advantage lay in using water instead of expensive land-based runways, making them the basis for international airlines in the interwar period." (Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_boat ).

Indeed, floatplanes are still important in bush flying for the same reason.

I don't know what "pretty journal" means. None of the dictionary definitions seem to make sense. I know the rail lines serving my city are not anywhere near capacity. The train between Santa Fe (my former home city) and ABQ is also nowhere near capacity (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexico_Rail_Runner_Express ). A couple of years ago I took the train from San Diego to ABQ. It was also not at capacity.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#195

Post by radicalbyte »

captainbland wrote: post #140
radicalbyte wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privatized trains are worse, in the UK they've just given the go ahead for a $140 billion high speed rail project, HS2. A decade ago we build HS1, a 67 mile track between London and the Channel Tunnel, for a total of $7.6 billion ($112m / mile). HS2 is longer but its 330 miles of tracks will cost $400m / mile. The project costs make absolutely no sense: London is a special weird place in the UK where everything you b…

My understanding is that basically HS2 is massively over-specced compared to HS1. It wants high throughput and extremely high speed (80-100mph faster than HS1). I guess you could probably shave a few tens of billions off just by slowing the line down a bit - using ballast rather than concrete slab and such. See: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51415590 The only other thing I'd add is that Euston is easily within…

The Euston - St Pancras thing is OK if you're commuting for work distance wise - it's just adding 15 mins to your journey when it should be 30 seconds.

For travellers who don't know London, who have to lug around baggage and small children it's a massive pain.

It's well worth the effort to connect it. It would already be way better even if you had to switch train in one station.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#196

Post by radicalbyte »

Camas wrote: post #148
radicalbyte wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privatized trains are worse, in the UK they've just given the go ahead for a $140 billion high speed rail project, HS2. A decade ago we build HS1, a 67 mile track between London and the Channel Tunnel, for a total of $7.6 billion ($112m / mile). HS2 is longer but its 330 miles of tracks will cost $400m / mile. The project costs make absolutely no sense: London is a special weird place in the UK where everything you b…

What does HS2 have to do with private rail?

Trains are privatized in the UK. Maybe this project is being built with public money but it will eventually be privatized.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#197

Post by thu2111 »

eesmith wrote: post #194
thu2111 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heathrow is a rare case. Very few airports max out for such long periods whereas being at capacity is pretty journal for rail lines. That's why the argument for HS2 is capacity oriented.

My point though is that the capacity of the sky is rather irrelevant since most people are interested in the capacity across the entire trip, not just the air part. All of the biggest airports have had extensive and expensive work done to increase capacity. SFO is about 90% of capacity, if I read https://www.faa.gov/airports/planning_capacity/profiles/medi... right. And it's worse if the weather is bad. That's why I…

Sorry, "pretty journal" was just a bad autocorrect I didn't spot. It was meant to say "pretty normal".

The problem with rail is the capacity issues affect the entire line. If one station has busy platforms and the rest are all quiet, you can't put additional trains on that line (unless it's a terminal station and there's a turning circle before that station and you are willing to run trains that don't go there). Also if one line shares fast and slow trains, that kills capacity.

One airport can share fast and slow planes, and capacity problems at one airport don't affect other airports.

I guess I'm writing mostly from the British perspective. My comment about fuel taxes paying for the roads is (or was) true for the UK.

Since privatisation at the start of the 1990s decades of decline in ridership turned around and now more people use the railways than ever. In the UK there are lines everywhere that are not only at capacity but drastically over-capacity, e.g. there's a train departing from Euston on a Friday night that carries more than 2x the number of people it was designed for. Despite that Crossrail - one of the biggest civil engineering projects in Europe - isn't even open yet, the country just committed to an even more eyewateringly expensive new rail line that won't be open for over a decade. Primarily justified on capacity grounds.

Heathrow expansion is also very expensive of course. But there's really only one airport in the entire country that has such severe capacity issues, and the expansion is difficult primarily because it's surrounded on all sides by urban development like motorways and villages that have to be demolished and relocated. In the case of the motorway, it's also carrying such large capacity that it can't actually be closed for extended periods, so it has to be moved whilst "live".

I think the USA has a different set of issues because the railways are used mostly for cargo rather than passengers. The large distances involved means air travel is the only feasible mode of transport for many routes, and Americans take internal flights all the time whereas for most Brits I know, internal travel is almost always car or train. Business people take internal flights, and even then only quite rarely. I've traveled Acela and indeed it also wasn't heavily used.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#198

Post by thu2111 »

vanderZwan wrote: post #192
thu2111 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phone companies lost a lot of money when roaming tariffs were forced down and that was reflected in tariffs for the majority of people who never roam. There are studies about this. Did you think that in the relatively competitive mobile market price controls can be enforced with no impact at all? It was a form of wealth transfer from the poor to the rich.

> The phone companies lost a lot of money when roaming tariffs were forced down and that was reflected in tariffs for the majority of people who never roam. There are studies about this. Then show those studies, because as I'm pointing out, my "tarifs" have not increased in the slightest.

There's some discussion on Wikipedia!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_roaming_regulat...

In Norway, prices increased by 66% when RLAH was introduced.[20] The same argument was being used by Danish operators. In Denmark several operators increased monthly subscription prices by 10–20 DKK.[21]

Swedish operator Comviq removed roaming services on its plan “Fastpris mini” 15 June 2017.[22] The operator Hallon is doing the same to its smallest plan “LITEN” starting 1 October 2017.[23] In Denmark, operator Telmore introduced "TELMORE Home" without roaming services, even when travelling to countries outside the EEA.[24] Vodafone UK introduced "UK-only plans" that disallow roaming altogether.[25] This is possible because, while the Regulation disallows operators from charging extra for roaming when available, it does not force them to make roaming available in the first place.

Of course, price rises are very unpopular. History gives us lots of experience of price controls to draw on. The effects of price controls are often subtle and hard to anticipate. For instance, unavailability of new services for which the investment can no longer be justified, cutting R&D budgets, elimination of services to some customer segments entirely and so on.

If you look at KPN in the Netherlands, the cost of the price controls is estimated at being 100M euros or more.

https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/nl/Documents/...

Their yearly net profit in 2018 was about 292M euro. So price controls aren't enough to cripple these businesses, they can absorb the hit. But obviously forcing people to spend money on something isn't free, even if the effects are obfuscated.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#199

Post by radicalbyte »

Carpetsmoker wrote: post #151
vanderZwan wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but we're kind of unique in our standardized national public transport system. Undoubtedly our small size as a country helps there.

Well, Ireland is just 6.5 million people, not exactly a large country, and I think Germany's DB is more or less similar to the Dutch NS? I lived in the UK for a while, and things are really complex there with a patchwork of private companies. Either way, I stopped complaining about the Dutch trains very shortly after moving there :-)

The thing is the UK trains used to be much better. Then the Tories privatized them and we ended up with this mess of private companies owning different regions of the country. Apparently that leads to competition because if taking a train from the City to Luton is too expensive they can just take a train from Leeds to Glasgow.

Re: More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

#200

Post by eesmith »

thu2111 wrote: post #197
eesmith wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point though is that the capacity of the sky is rather irrelevant since most people are interested in the capacity across the entire trip, not just the air part. All of the biggest airports have had extensive and expensive work done to increase capacity. SFO is about 90% of capacity, if I read https://www.faa.gov/airports/planning_capacity/profiles/medi... right. And it's worse if the weather is bad. That's why I…

Sorry, "pretty journal" was just a bad autocorrect I didn't spot. It was meant to say "pretty normal". The problem with rail is the capacity issues affect the entire line. If one station has busy platforms and the rest are all quiet, you can't put additional trains on that line (unless it's a terminal station and there's a turning circle before that station and you are willing to run trains that don't go there). Also…

Ahh. I was thinking that "journal" was either some new slang or a region term that I hadn't heard of. Thanks for the clarification.

Regarding "kills capacity", aren't passing loops meant to help that exact scenario? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passing_loop has many details. At the very least, it's not as dire as you describe.

I know little about the UK rail system -- or any country's rail system, for that matter. I do know your rail enthusiasts despise the Beeching Cuts, and that just saying that term is a hot button for some.

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