71–80 of 293 posts
For many years the Spanish state-owned company RENFE had a monopoly on Spain's huge high speed rail network. However their high prices, inconvenient schedules and poor customer service were often criticized, and so when, to the annoyance of RENFE and many spanish politicians, additional foreign operators entered the market on the key Madrid - Barcelona route, ridership doubled whilst ticket prices halved. So I would…
Unless there is evidence that the accident was caused by the Iryo train, I wouldn’t be so fast to blame the private companies on a decaying infrastructure. There are plenty of cases of lack of maintenance in the railway network.
I'd say the same about the railway network. We don't know what happened yet.
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Oh you silly duck! Semafor is a common word in a handful of other languages for things like traffic lights and such. I had to do a double take when I first saw it in a programming class. Also hope you’re doing well it’s been a minute since our paths crossed on gdnet.
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Regarding the former Minister (Ábalos), he's awaiting trial and not yet convicted (even though, IMHO he is probably guilty), and he hasn't been in the ministry since 2021[^2] so it makes no sense to bring it up when he has been out for nearly 4.5 years now.
[^1]: https://www.lavozdegalicia.es/noticia/espana/2026/01/18/osca... [^2]: https://www.elconfidencialdigital.com/articulo/otros/jose-lu...
Terrible and condolences to anybody affected. For a bit of context according to the OECD 2023 Spain had ~1800 on the road during the previous year, so that's about 5/day. There are more deaths on the road in Spain in a couple of weeks than this tragic accident. Either way it's too many deaths obviously but I want to highlight what a freak event this is compared to a more popular mode of transportation. Edit : Motivat…
The train in question is a Frecciarossa 1000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frecciarossa_1000 The Italians designed it but won't run it at more than 300km/h in Italy citing local infrastructure concerns. I guess that leaves other countries to find the edge cases. I'll be interested to find out how fast it was going during the crash.
Looks like a Frecciarossa 1000 derailed in 2020 but it was due to a manufacturer defect in a track switch replaced the night before. The defect was not caught by the manufacturer or the system operator. It was due to two crossed wires in an assembly. I know a lot more engineering goes into these trains due to the higher stakes. Japan’s high speed rail hasn’t had a fatal accident in 60 years. I’m wondering what the ca…
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Train crashes like this are _so_ rare. It's not as safe as flying but AFAICT in rich countries it's the same rough order of magnitude in terms of danger level. I don't have data but I would imagine crashes on these high speed lines (which always seem to be run at a higher level of professionalism than the general networks) are rarest of all. I don't think it's a good use of mental energy to plan for a crash like this…
Brain cycles aren’t a limited supply. Besides, you’ll get to feel a nice jolt of serotonin when you remember to sit backwards. > I would imagine crashes on these high speed lines (which always seem to be run at a higher level of professionalism than the general networks) are rarest of all If this crash is anything like the other ones, you might be surprised. Safety complacency tends to cause maintenance failures. Plu…
You're forgetting about the probability of a crash.
The vast majority of train crashes is due to an impact with a vehicle on a railway crossing.
However, high-speed rail is grade separated, so it doesn't have railway crossings, which means the main cause of crashes is fundamentally impossible.
In other words: Regular rail has a high rate of crashes (with a small number of fatalities each) due to car/truck drivers screwing up. High-speed rail has a low rate of crashes (with a large-ish number of fatalities each) due to catastrophic failure of track & train equipment.
For many years the Spanish state-owned company RENFE had a monopoly on Spain's huge high speed rail network. However their high prices, inconvenient schedules and poor customer service were often criticized, and so when, to the annoyance of RENFE and many spanish politicians, additional foreign operators entered the market on the key Madrid - Barcelona route, ridership doubled whilst ticket prices halved. So I would…
Foreign operators are mandated by the EU, they can't be banned. Spain has been one of the first countries to allow foreign high speed operators (unlike other European countries that did attempt to delay their entrance as much as possible
I'm in Spain currently. Very sad news.
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Copy pasting AI vomit is like leetspeak or all caps. Should not be used in online discussion.