Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains • Hacker News Board

Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains

#211

Post by njepa » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 9:51 AM UTC

henrikschroder wrote: post #179

jeena wrote: post #177

I'm traveling from Gothenburg to Berlin basically on at least a monthly basis. Ever since I moved to Sweden 2005 I was looking for night trains to bring me to the continent but there weren't any. Early on I took day trains but they took so much time that I never had wiggle time and since the Deutsche Bahn got private they are notoriously late which meant that most of the time I wouldn't catch the last train from Cope…

I travelled Stockholm-Copenhagen biweekly for a couple of years, and flying was cheaper and faster door-to-door than the train pretty much 100% of the time. That includes getting through airport security and taking public transportation to/from the airports at either end. I mean, I would have preferred to take the train, but I'm not going to pay more to get there slower...

With the train you potentially lose a lot less productive time. Air travel can't be made much nicer since there are too many hard limits. The train however suffers from a lack of investment in fundamentals. A lot of people live in the suburbs today, where the train doesn't stop. Stockholm central station is despite the many renovations not very nice. The trains themselves are getting old. The infrastructure and service isn't what it could be either. And maybe most of all everything is just expensive in Sweden, and the Nordics, these days.

If you could have a slightly faster train with first class airline interior and a matching, not too expensive, hotel on top of the train station it would be a competitive proposal. But while I can appreciate that people like to talk about trains on hacker news the story really is that the future isn't happening in Sweden. Rather we seem to be on a seemingly predictable path following countries like the US and the UK were we are incapable of making long term investments and everything of value is getting expensive.

Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains

#212

Post by farrisbris » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 9:55 AM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #199

skrebbel wrote: post #181

My experience is that flying inside Europe tends to be cheaper than long-distance train. Does anyone here whether it's simply intrinsically cheaper, or whether it's all because of kerosine subsidies etc? In other words, if countries would subsidize long-distance train as much as they subsidize air flight, would the economics look different? Would train get substantially cheaper? I lack both the insight and the data t…

Train infrastructure is pretty expensive. Planes need much less infrastructure.

Do they really though? I don't know any numbers, but i would imagine that the airports at least make up some if not all of the cost of equivalent railroads? I get that the airport can service a lot more destinations than a trainstation( overseas etc ), but i'm not totally convinced that rail infrastructure is that much more expensive than for air.

The cost of airport security etc should probably also be thought of as infrastructure costs.

Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains

#213

Post by bogle » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 9:59 AM UTC

We've just upgraded our London to Scotland sleeper service recently. It's not cheap but's it's fun!

If you want to get into the Highlands it's a lot more convenient, too: Fort William is hours from a major airport.

Going from Edinburgh to London it's really useful as you end up right in the heart of the London.

https://www.sleeper.scot/

Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains

#214

Post by jaclaz » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 10:13 AM UTC

mherdeg wrote: post #155

avolcano wrote: post #12

Excited about this idea. I wanted to do an overnight train in a Europe trip I did last year, but the timing and quality never quite worked out. A lot of the time, trains between cities in western Europe are annoyingly long for a day trip, but slightly _too short_ for overnight trips - almost like an NYC->London red-eye, where you arrive just after you fall asleep. The couple of overnight trains I saw that seemed like…

> A lot of the time, trains between cities in western Europe are annoyingly long for a day trip, but slightly _too short_ for overnight trips - almost like an NYC->London red-eye, where you arrive just after you fall asleep. Yeah, the sweet spot is definitely 8+ hours en route. I took a fantastic service from Nice to Paris which ran about twelve hours, which was plenty of time to sleep. It was weirdly cheap at €87 fo…

Once upon a time there was a night train Florence-Paris.

It left Florence (Santa Maria Novella station, in the centre) around 19:00-20:00 and arrived in Paris (Gare de Lyon) if I recall correctly around 9:30 the morning after.

The plane required:

1) being at the Pisa airport (which is a 1:30 hour train/bus away from the center of Florence) 1:30 before departure

2) roughly 1:30 boarding and flight

3) 15-30 minutes to collect luggage (if any)

4) 40-60 minutes from the Charles De Gaulle Airport to the centre of Paris

All in all 5-6 hours total.

Choosing the train (which - depending on the arrangement could also be cheaper, including the dinner, than the plane) was a no brainer for me.

Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains

#215

Post by joelhaasnoot » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 10:30 AM UTC

jbverschoor wrote: post #209

PaulHoule wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent a year in Germany circa 1999 and then overnight trains were all the rage. For instance, Dresden to Amsterdam was an easy and inexpensive trip. Going east you could get to Budapest, going south to Innsbruck, etc. At that point an American in Europe would ride the train as much as he could, but the Europeans I knew thought taking a plane was cooler and it was a good experience because the plane had competition…

Train tickets are simply too expensive compared to flights. Sometimes over 3-4 times.

Note also that kerosine and plane tickets are exempt from sales/value added tax, but train tickets aren't

Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains

#216

Post by 2T1Qka0rEiPr » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 10:45 AM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #181

My experience is that flying inside Europe tends to be cheaper than long-distance train. Does anyone here whether it's simply intrinsically cheaper, or whether it's all because of kerosine subsidies etc? In other words, if countries would subsidize long-distance train as much as they subsidize air flight, would the economics look different? Would train get substantially cheaper? I lack both the insight and the data t…

I'd also love to see some detailed information on this. I recently flew within Germany, probably saving a few hours over the train, but much more importantly it cost half the price. Seems that for the vast majority of people who are price conscious, this is simply too significant to outweigh the environmental consequences.

Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains

#217

Post by ThaJay » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 10:48 AM UTC

belorn wrote: post #127

Symbiote wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You write "_ferry_" like it's something weird, but it's a completely normal transport option for a huge number of Europeans -- usually for longer journeys, but sometimes to cover a short distance in 20-30 minutes. There are many ferry connections across the Irish, North, Baltic and Mediterranean seas. Ignoring the price, I'd choose an overnight ferry over an overnight train. The worst room on a ferry is probably as l…

I have been on a few overnight trains here in Sweden and they have all been quite old, noisy and shaky ones. This initiative might give enough incentives for companies to invest in better overnight trains, but so far what we are being promised are more lines rather than better experience. In contrast, overnight ferry has been mostly a delight. The room are smaller than hotel but much better than train, they don't sha…

You forget about the UK. There are ferries from the Netherlands, Belgium and france to different ports around the country

Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains

#218

Post by jayalpha » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 10:57 AM UTC

I love night trains. Trains a underrated in general.

I wish the EU would invest heavily in trains. There should be high speed and sleeper trains all over Europe. Single rail cars could have different destinations with automatic coupling/decoupling outside of cities. You can run trains easily on Thorium generated electricity, so the tech is future proof.

Cargo should also be moved to the tracks: https://www.cargobeamer.eu/

Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains

#219

Post by gpvos » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 10:57 AM UTC

iagovar wrote: post #80

guaka wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bahn.de used to be my go-to place (even for trains inside Italy) but these days https://www.thetrainline.com/ is the best for finding good train connections across Europe. https://www.rome2rio.com/ can come in handy as well.

Transfer times are a bit too much. Rail doesn't seem prepared to international travel.

For longer trips, I like having longer transfer times, just to have some kind of buffer in case of delay.

> Rail doesn't seem prepared to international travel.

There is some truth to that. You used to be able to buy a single ticket from Lisbon to Kiruna, and travel leisurely all the way, knowing you would arrive there even if you missed a train somewhere; you could just take the next one. Nowadays, you can't. You'll have to split up your trip into several tickets, and if your first train is delayed and you miss the train on your second ticket, you cannot just jump on the next train with it: each ticket is treated as a separate trip.

Also, if you buy your ticket online, you will probably have to visit multiple web sites to buy the separate parts of your trip. International ticket offices in most countries on the continent can book an entire trip for you, but will charge you extra booking costs for that.

Actually, for really long trips it's probably best to buy an Interrail/Eurail pass.

Re: Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains

#220

Post by jayalpha » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 10:58 AM UTC

detaro wrote: post #197

woodpanel wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you read something construed. It's an informal subsidy at best in that local policymakers create these regional Airports in the first place, then struggle to find Airlines without large numbers of existing traffic. So they reach out to the likes of EasyJet and Ryanair, which are happy to book slots if the price is cheap enough. Their added volumes of traffic alone can make up for other costs an airport incurs (o…

If an airline is using an airport cheaply and said airport continuously requires government money to not go bankrupt, that is a fairly clear subsidy. The "rent retail space and chance at attracting other carriers" doesn't work that reliably in practice, since those other carriers can play the same game of "we only come if we don't have to pay the actual costs", and can quickly shift to other airports if one stops pla…

"If an airline is using an airport cheaply and said airport continuously requires government money to not go bankrupt, that is a fairly clear subsidy."

Yes. But based on EU regulation this won't be allowed anymore in the near future. (2020? 2022?)