Live data from Hacker News

Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

swisscom.ch

201–210 of 362 posts

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#201
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about priorities. Swiss defense spending as a percentage of GDP is 0.675%. US defense spending as a percentage of GDP is 3.2%. I just picked a simple example, but you will find similar disparities across the board.

And part of US Defense spending helps defend countries like Switzerland. Maybe we still spend too much, but we also "defend" a lot more countries than ourselves, and a lot more territory than Switzerland.

I’m failing to see how this makes it an OK justification for the grift/corruption.

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheapest 4g flatrate subscription in CH is 25€/m. Average is 60-70€/m

I don't understand how the more expensive providers can still have customers. Same network, same conditions, different label on the box, 3x the price, at a price point where it should matter to most people...

It's not the same network. There are three providers in Switzerland. From my own experience the most expensive one (Swisscom, by whom this article is) has much better coverage in the mountaineous areas compared to the other two.

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#203
post #4

I would honestly pay significantly higher taxes if we could get Swiss-quality train service in parts of the US (and especially if they have good internet). When I traveled Boston to NY in the past, compare my flight experience vs Amtrak. Flight: - Take $25 Uber to airport and get there 1 hour early to go through security and wait. - Fly to JFK (1h 20m) - land, wait to get off, go through terminal again, then take $50…

My understanding is that in the US there's a combination of issues which make high speed train impossible. 1. Very high cost to build. 2. Major airlines make most of the profits from short flights and they lobby against the construction or expansion of trains. 3. Regulations, in a state like Ca is close to imposible ti build something without state government pulling a law of _ (you fill it) protected species. Imagine if Bay Area/NYC had a European/Japanese quality trains, the house prices wouldn't be that bad

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

£20 for a flight is so, so foreign as a Canadian. Domestic flights here are easily 10x that on a good day. In the before times, it was pretty much the same price to get a last minute VIA train ticket or a Porter flight between Ottawa and Toronto. If you’re lucky, early, or a student, you can get a train ticket quite a bit cheaper.

>so, so foreign as a Canadian Canada, as a whole, is an absolute rip-off. There is virtually nothing you can point to in the country and remark that it's a good deal when compared to the prices offered in America or most areas of Europe. High food costs, high booze costs, high communications costs, high transport costs, high taxes etc., combined with low salaries, is incredibly bleak.

And yet found to be the second-best country in the world after Switzerland:

* https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/overall-rankings

And consistently in the Top 10 for happiest:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#205
post #4

I would honestly pay significantly higher taxes if we could get Swiss-quality train service in parts of the US (and especially if they have good internet). When I traveled Boston to NY in the past, compare my flight experience vs Amtrak. Flight: - Take $25 Uber to airport and get there 1 hour early to go through security and wait. - Fly to JFK (1h 20m) - land, wait to get off, go through terminal again, then take $50…

The US is bigger, which explains why we don’t have good cross-country high speed rail, but there’s no excuse for the population centers on the coasts. No matter what you want to focus on, size, density, or geography, there’s another country out there with a worse situation and a better functioning high speed rail system.

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#206
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument goes that if nobody is willing to pay the price for something(passenger rail), and chooses another alternative(driving), then it means that the service is not worth having and subsiding it would just be a waste of taxpayer money. Of course its not that simple, because driving is subsidized(I would prefer every road to be a toll road and get rid of the general taxes that used to go to roads)...but you get…

> I would prefer every road to be a toll road and get rid of the general taxes that used to go to roads Off-topic I know, but I'd only like to see this if the tolls were reasonable with respect to the maintenance of the affected stretches of road. $0.50 per car per mile more than pays off a typical 4-lane interstate in a year, yet tolls are often an order of magnitude larger and drawn out for 20+ years.

A fair toll road system would basically ban semi trucks, since they’re the ones that do the overwhelming majority of the damage.

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#207
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. Here's the Amtrak network: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/Am... Here's the US freight rail network: https://i.imgur.com/4TYsU_d.webp?maxwidth=1024&fidelity=medi... You can't tell me we can't do better.

We could definitely have a beautiful, big, fast train network. But most people still wouldn't use it.

Evidence from Europe and Asia shows that this is probably wrong. People in those areas strongly prefer high speed rail for trips that are less than 3-4 hours long, and begin to switch over to airplanes beyond that.

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#208
post #4

I would honestly pay significantly higher taxes if we could get Swiss-quality train service in parts of the US (and especially if they have good internet). When I traveled Boston to NY in the past, compare my flight experience vs Amtrak. Flight: - Take $25 Uber to airport and get there 1 hour early to go through security and wait. - Fly to JFK (1h 20m) - land, wait to get off, go through terminal again, then take $50…

The main problem with the US interstate train system is that it's run on freight train lines. Amtrak and Acela do not actually own the railway they use and they can only go a certain speed due to the grade of the track. I don't think you would be willing to pay the amount of taxes you would need to, to completely redo the railways haha. Anyways Amtrak are barely turning a profit as it is and while it would be great t…

They own the Northeast corridor.

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amtrak has never turned a profit. Ever. They have never even broken even.

Is this the metric we should be grading everything on? My kid hasn’t either but I love her nonetheless.

I think it’s a pretty reasonable metric for a business whose stated goal is to be profitable. I don’t know what that has to do with your kid, but I’m glad you love her.

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#210
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The passenger modal share for rail in CH is 21%: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usag... For the US it is 0.3%. Given that CH is land-locked, it's not surprising that freight modal share is 46%, because it has to get inland from a port in some way: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usag... This is higher than the US, but give that 127M Americans (40%) live in counties…

Not everyone living along a coast has an appropriate coast to establish a harbor sufficient for shipping. If you live in big sur you still get your crap from china delivered inland from the port of Los Angeles.

Where did I say that it was necessary? In the US there are lots of major ports all along the coast, which is where most of the population is. For the Pacific:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Panamax_ports#Pacific_...

And from any of those it's probably not that far to any major population centre.

Compare to Switzerland, which has precisely zero ports, and so of course needs rail (and trucks) to get things delivered.

Post reply on HN