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.
All the Germans I've met like to complain about the quality of Deutsche Bahn. But it is important to keep in mind that from the perspective of an American, Deutsche Bahn is a miracle.
Based upon slight experience of both, I would say rail in a third-tier German city can compare favorably with the Metro in Washington DC.
Observations from a frequent train traveller in Germany and Japan: - Train Travel works when the frequency of trains is so high that you do not need to think about "a" connection, but instead just choose the "next" connection. - Any significant number of delayed trains are a problem when one has important appointments. Morning meetings require an overnight trip, even if an early morning connection would usually work.…
>- By trying to remodel stations cheaply for commerce, most stations in Germany have become unpleasant to navigate. Signage is particularly bad (compared to Japan). That's interesting. What are the worst examples of this? I had found some Japanese stations rather labyrinthine too, especially Tokyo ones with multiple public/private systems and above/underground malls cobbled together like Shinjuku, so I'm surprised th…
It's a little unfair to compare to Shinjuku, which is the busiest station in the world. Sure, some of the big Tokyo stations can be mazes, but the signage is always very clear. No German stations are really dealing with comparable density either.
Time is money, so I don't think trains can ever compete with flying for long-distance travel (>1000miles). They could do like the USA does and make flying such a time-consuming pain in the ass that it's rarely worth it for trips under 5 hours.
Trains could easily beat air travel if they could skip the ridiculous security theater. Having to get to the airport 2 hours early is a whole lot of slack to let trains catch up.
I view any mass transport as a security risk for me so I welcome airport "security theater". there is downside, but imo airports screen better than trains for bad actors
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 live in Berlin, but I am not from Germany, nor from Europe. I never understand the complains on the quality of trains (or the public transport in general) in Berlin at least. And I am from Buenos Aires, where we have great transport system (subway, buses, trains). Still, Berlins is much better.
Construction of road infrastructure can be compared to construction of tracks and stations, and it's fair to say taxpayers foot the bill in full for both. The difference is that trains operate at a loss even with high ticket prices and operational subsidies are necessary for market viability. That is not the case with car and truck usage.
At least in the US, local road networks in the suburbs and rural areas bleed money terribly, and as fuel taxes have not kept pace with inflation even the inner city streets and crowded highways can barely break even.
Local roads bleed money universally everywhere, because pretty much no place charges tolls for local road use. Gas taxes do not cover road costs, because gas taxes are not by the same entities that actually build the roads, so there is no reason to expect it to be the case. However, and fortunately, road construction and maintenance is universally a small part of municipality budgets in US, typically under 10%, and very rarely anywhere close to 20%, so there is not much reason to worry about affordability of local roads.
Overhead wires would involve a significant infrastructure investment. Not too much of an issue with more densely populated areas like Europe - and countries like France and Japan already do use overhead wires - but it is not cost competitive in sparse locations like much of North America. It's true that it's contingent on a carbon-free source of hydrogen. But if something like thermochemical hydrogen production throu…
> Overhead wires would involve a significant infrastructure investment. Yeah building dozens of large scale hydrogen plants, trenching and welding pipelines, building massive excess of necessary renewable energy, figuring distribution networks, deciding storage & container standards, house retrofits etc to run our society will be much easier than ...(checks notes)... Hanging wires
A hydrogen economy is likely going to be developed anyway, to decarbonize air transport and maritime shipping. Piggy backing on top of this maybe be cheaper than the ~$700 billion (probably closer to a trillion if we include Canadian rail) required to electrify North American rail transport.
As someone who just rode in a sleeper car for the second time. I like amtrak when I can do this. It's completely unreasonable for a round trip, but I did Chicago->Seattle and Chicago to Boston (Where I"m currently here.. and will be flying back tomorrow). It's a mostly great experience... all due to the scenery you're watching, not so much everything else. What worries me if it becomes more privatized: You'll see the…
I just looked at the Chicago to Boston train and it's 22 hours long? That seems...lengthy?
Caltrain in the Bay Area, the capital of world technology, is still a....diesel train. I can't help but chuckle whenever I see one.
Did you miss the wires strung above the tracks? They're working on it: https://www.caltrain.com/about/MediaRelations/news/Caltrain_...
It's 2022 today and they estimate to complete the project in 2024. Italy had electrified lines in the 1930s, for comparison. There is really no excuse however you look at it. I guess better later than never.
Even a diesel bus on rails is much more efficient than a diesel bus on roads. It's also much easier to electrify than a fleet of buses, an much more ecological when you do (because no significant battery). Thus, anything on rails is a win.
Agreed - especially in the context of how unbelievably clumsy the US is at doing trains. Here in western Poland however it was a bit easier - lots of tracks remained since 19th century. And with these diesel buses popping up, an opportunity presented itself to go relatively low investment and lots of political bang. Those trains are usually way too packed in my personal experience. Similarly, Pendolino high speed rai…
American rail is hyper optimized for freight, not people.
By definition, low taxes are not a subsidy. It is the trains that are heavily subsidized. The main reason behind the price difference is that there is plenty of competition between airlines for a given flight, eg Paris-Berlin, but no competition for the same train connection.
> By definition, low taxes are not a subsidy. The conspicuous lack of Pigouvian taxes on a fossil fuel for just one industry is definitely a subsidy. Someone else is paying for the externalities.
No, nobody is actually paying for CO2 emission externalities. At best, you can argue that maybe someone will be paying them some day in future, but it’s a big fat maybe. Because nobody is actually paying for these externalities, we don’t have any figures of how much those externalities cost — you can come up with some estimates, but as GOSPLAN experience shows, calculating prices outside of markets is a fool’s errand. Moreover, our best estimates of these costs is rather low, especially if you do time discounting. Planes would still be cheaper than trains even if they had to pay these. Finally, since most of electricity in Europe still comes from fossil fuels, emission externalities are just as much of a problem for them as they are for trains, especially if you consider that the GHG emissions per actual passenger kilometer between trains and planes are rather similar: trains tend to be really heavy, and usually run much more empty than planes.