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Europe is investing heavily in trains

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Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#631

Post by emn13 »

pilsetnieks wrote: post #247
emn13 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Baltic states still use a soviet-derived system Rail Baltica [1] (already being constructed) is using European gauge. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_Baltica

Yep; I'm sure all these issues are solvable, and not just that - there are obviously workarounds in place even today (after all, you can make such trips). But the need to work around such incompatibilities (whether technically by using more complex trains, or logistically by altering your routes) has downsides. Those downsides make trains less competitive overall compared to other means of transport.

When people ask how planes can be competitive with trains, part of that is surely due to aviation's... interesting... tax situation; but part of it is due to real technical shortcomings in the European rail network.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#632

Post by iggldiggl »

black_puppydog wrote: post #423
im3w1l wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With rail, the physical rail becomes an economic chokepoint. Who controls the rail came name his price. Now you might think that the same goes for airports, but often there are multiple viable choices. E.g. in the bay area you could use SF, Oakland or San Jose.

Except "who controls the rail" is often a (private or national) entity (DB Netz / SNCF réseaux) who will have to offer access to the infrastructure to pretty heavily regulated and uniform conditions. Much like the idea of separating ISPs from the last mile infrastructure by the way.

Even with the network controlled by a "neutral" entity limited capacity means you can pretty quickly reach a situation where additional competition can't happen without actively worsening the schedules of the existing operators.

Timetabled connections are likewise impossible to set up with too much uncoordinated competition, because without making the connection times unattractively long they cannot really be set up between more than one train per relation (maybe sometimes two at a stretch).

Plus connections that aren't ridiculously padded (and therefore result in absolutely uncompetitive journey times) really only work with some sort of through-ticketing so passengers aren't left stranded if they do miss a connection after all.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#633

Post by iggldiggl »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #523
NoLinkToMe wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely loved taking the train in Italy, fast, convenient, cheap, good amenities. Of course the country very much lends itself for rail (more or less an elongated territory that can run a very fast high-capacity north/south backbone, with slower but more ubiquitous horizontal offshoot rail to the various smaller cities and villages), but it was still very well done. Especially considering how much tunnelling was r…

In my experience, at least neighboring countries tend to be pretty good at selling you international tickets, and most people aren't interested in 17 hours journeys that could be replaced by a 2 hour flight. bahn.de will sell me (through an international website to which they redirect) a ticket from Frankfurt to London via Paris, an 8h40m trip costing 182 EUR one way for a date ~2 weeks out. The real issue is that I'…

Some yes, others not so much. E.g. regarding France, using its regular online services DB will only sell tickets on the through trains from Germany, but nothing involving a connection in France, whereas conversely SNCF won't sell online tickets to stations in Germany not served by the direct trains from France.

> bahn.de will sell me (through an international website to which they redirect)

The problem with international-bahn.de is that what it sells aren't real through tickets, so if you miss a connection, you're depending on the goodwill of the operators involved to let you continue your journey without having to buy a (potentially very expensive) new ticket, or pay you a taxi respectively hotel accommodation if you've missed the final train of the day.

The only way to get proper through tickets involving connections both on the French and the German side (e.g. I luckily live near the Paris – Strasbourg – Stuttgart service, but technically I still need a connecting regional train for a few stations) is by buying them from a ticket office, but then again due to some obscure technical issues this hasn't been possible since the end of February.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#634

Post by WHA8m »

sva_ wrote: post #624
WHA8m wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh dude, I'm all ears. What else do you think we (germans) think? I'm genuinely interested.

I am German. Most of us hate cables that aren't underground (hence the bad internet connectivity, because it's expensive to upgrade the network underground). Based on that I extrapolated. I presumed the same to be the case for these overhead cables, as I don't usually see them where I live. https://www.bahnausbau-nordostbayern.de/files/img/Bahnstrom/... It seems to be a lot more concentrated on the worse side of the…

I'm surprised I must say. I have never ever heard of anyone talking about 'Oberleitungen' being something that we should get rid of. It wouldn't have come to my mind to question them, so that's why I was so baffled (and maybe a bit harsh in my expression).

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#635

Post by dgellow »

locallost wrote: post #545
dgellow wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m quite familiar with both Germany and Switzerland trains, an interesting difference is that in Switzerland the default is a flexible ticket, you buy it for the day and can use it an any time, and using any train you want that goes in the correct direction. And since a few years SBB/CFF let’s you get a reduction if you get instead a non-flexible tickets (so with a strict time and train, called “dégriffé” in French)…

There is no default, until recently it always showed both the reduced and full price, but you always had to manually select what you want on the 2nd screen. Anyway, I'm neither German nor Swiss, but I think there are certain prejudices about both countries. Germans might look to save money, but realistically everybody needs to plan their trip somewhat in advance, unless it's a short weekend trip. I made the mistake r…

At least in Switzerland the discounted system for fixed-trips is relatively recent (admittedly I left the country a while ago so we may be talking about a different time frame).

I didn't mean to say one way or the other is bad (your use of "prejudices" has a negative connotation, which isn't what I wanted to highlight). I'm Swiss, lived there for ~25 years, and now live in Germany since a good amount of time. And it was funny to observe this difference in expectations and behaviours between the two countries.

I've never seen SBB/CFF complain about Deutsche Bahn so I'm not sure what you mean here. I personally like both groups, their services are really good IMHO.

> Germans might look to save money, but realistically everybody needs to plan their trip somewhat in advance, unless it's a short weekend trip

I mean, I can generally agree here, but the German approach to saving money is waaaay more extreme than what I've experiences living in other countries! People book their trips like 6 months in advance to have some reductions, and will use every single way to save a few cents!

(Note that I'm from the French speaking side of Switzerland, which is culturally quite different from the German speaking side)

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#636

Post by jhugo »

DocTomoe wrote: post #569
jhugo wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sleeper trains change the calculus a little, because you can sleep as you travel. While they're a foreign concept to many people, they are reasonably popular in Europe — not just among railfans — and in many parts of Asia are a very typical mode of transport. Going to sleep in one city centre and waking up in another is often far more convenient than the air travel alternative, especially for the many cities where th…

If we want the comparison to be completely fair, you need to take into account that hardly anyone lives in a major train station (or directly adjacent to one) and wants to travel to another major train station (or directly adjacent to one). More often than not, just getting to Paris is only a leg, then you need to get to Aix-en-Belle-Fountaine (fictional place, don't look it up), some 50 km away from Paris. Once you…

Most of your points are entirely fair, and my experience may have been unique (lived in the centre of a succession of European cities and used trains extensively throughout Europe for many years). Not every train is easy to work on, but with a minimum of planning I can usually design a long-distance journey such that the probability of being able to work during most of the trip is very high. My productivity doesn't depend on access to the Internet every minute of the day; for others the frequent loss of mobile connectivity e.g. on some routes in Germany would be a problem.

> Virtually any airline outside of the no-frills-Ryanair sector happily sells you flexible tickets (often for price).

This is not the same thing. I do not need to tell anyone that I have decided to take a later train using my open train ticket.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#637

Post by hilbert42 »

nicoburns wrote: post #518
hilbert42 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, Brexit is clouding my judgment. I should have said Continental Europe! ;-) That said, to be fair I found the UK track maintenance pretty good although trains weren't as punctual as they were in most of Europe. Likewise, the carriages/comfort was somewhat primitive compared to most of what I've experienced on the Continent. I have to say it's quite some years since I've traveled on British Rail and I understand…

My subjective view is that punctuality and comfort have improved in recent years (especially the new rolling stock on the London-Bristol and London-Cornwall and London-Edinburgh lines is excellent), but the food is as bad as ever, and the prices are getting worse. If you want food on the UK railways then buy it at a station not on the train if you can!

"...but the food is as bad as ever,"

Right, I suppose the quality of food has always been one significant differentiator between the UK and Continental railways. As mentioned, I haven't been to the UK for some years now but over the many times that I have (I'm actually a UK citizen), I've noticed a steady improvement in the food, especially so in London. Over the years, I've noticed lunchtime and takeaway meals improve out of sight and the number restaurants serving foreign food multiply manyfold (I've found London's Indian restaurants pretty much second to none—reckon Indian must be pretty much considered an endemic food by now).

This begs the question why hasn't the food on UK rail improved. Perhaps we should send the executives responsible not to the Continent but to Japan to see how it should be done: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/japan-train-food.

(I can attest firsthand at the accuracy of that article, the food on Japanese trains is truly excellent. There's only one drawback: if you're going to some obscure destination that you've not been to previously then don't let the food (or anything else) distract you. Whilst stations in big urban centres often have station names in both Japanese and Roman scripts outlying ones often don't. You either remember the hiragana or kanji scrips accurately for the station names or you count the number of stations accurately from where you embarked—or you do both. Luckily, I've never missed a stop but I've had a few narrow escapes.)

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#638

Post by elproxy »

DocTomoe wrote: post #471
pg314 wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can find a ticket from Madrid to Paris taking 10.5 hours for 226 EUR.

Can you? Seems that connection does not run regularly either when it comes to time (I checked Trainline and on another date there actually was a connection much like that) or for that pricepoint. 10.5 hours is still longer than 2.5 (or maybe - if you include security checkpoint time - 3.5 hours) by plane.

Paris-Madrid is a poor choice, provided the French and Spanish rail gauge are different, meaning one needs to change somewhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iberian-gauge_railways

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#639

Post by egman_ekki »

DocTomoe wrote: post #570
egman_ekki wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're underestimating the travel to/from the airport. Madrid city centre to airport takes 45 minutes, you should be at the airport at least 2 hours prior to the departure, Paris airport to city centre takes another hour. Even if you're a seasoned traveller who pushes it and come to the airport just one hour prior to departure, you should still count with at least 3h overhead.

Point is: You don't often need to travel to the city center, and choosing that as fictional final destination is giving trains an unfair advantage. Often you need to somewhere NEAR Paris. Also, and this may be related to the airports I fly out of, but I have hardly ever had planned more than an hour of time from entering an airport terminal to the gate. In TXL (sadly closed now for the much inferior BER), I averaged…

Very much depends on whether you need to check in luggage. My guess is that bag drop is closed 20 minutes prior to departure, but I might be wrong. Picking up luggage can easily add 15-30 minutes as well. Even on relatively small airports like Copenhagen, some gates are at least 10 min of brisk walking from the security, so 20 minutes is really pushing it without prior familiarity with the airport. But yes, it can be done.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#640

Post by kortilla »

bombcar wrote: post #215
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…

Amtrak does that sometimes (the train and/or crew die on the rails) but then they produce a bus from somewhere and get you to your destination. At least in the US, once a company has accepted you on your journey they have to eventually get you to your destination, or get you to agree to give up. One time the train even stopped and told people trying to make a connection to get out; they'd called taxis to meet the oth…

The crew dies on the rails!?
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