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In Europe, trains are full, and more are on the way

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Re: In Europe, trains are full, and more are on the way

#81

Post by com »

MrDresden wrote: post #8
k__ wrote: post #3

Trains are pretty awesome, especially in small Europe. Flying always comes with security hassle. A train is just: get in/get out. If Europe would just spent more money on infrastructure. We have trains in Germany that can do 350km/h but I've yet to ride one that goes faster than 200, probably because the rails aren't what they're used to be. Then we have the Germany Ticket. A 50€/month subscription to all regional tr…

No need to get to Japans level. Just matching the Netherlands in punctuality and connections would be more than enough (using the word 'just' here does not do their rail network the justice it deserves).

Argh. I moved away but am back in NL regularly and the train service has degraded beyond all recognition for me done in comparison to 2021 or so.

Short trains, cancellation of 75% of scheduled services for random reasons, regular failures on key links (Amsterdam CS/Zuid-Schiphol, HSL-Zuid, Delft-Rotterdam etc etc) leading to widespread network disruptions.

NS wasn’t perfect before, but it sure seems that they and their evil twin, ProRail, aren’t even trying any more.

Re: In Europe, trains are full, and more are on the way

#82

Post by o_m »

Trains are full in my country because nothing have been expanded in the last 50 years, so with the population growing 50% it can't keep up. I commute with a train and when people say they want lower prices so more people will commute I roll my eyes.

Re: In Europe, trains are full, and more are on the way

#83

Post by sophacles »

muspimerol wrote: post #64
scott_w wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The EU has an average density of 112 people per square km compared to 36 in the USA. Isn't that a misleading statistic, though? It's not like the USA is an evenly spread wasteland in comparison to Continental Europe. It's more like pockets of high population density throughout, which trains can handle perfectly well. Russia and Ukraine are similar in that they're pockets of cities separated by miles of steppe. Both…

It's an average, so of course it says nothing about the distribution. I don't find that to be misleading, or at least I did not intend to insinuate that the USA is a perfectly distributed wasteland! It shows that while the EU and US kind of look similar in size, actually their population density on average is wildly different. Just look at a population density map of both continents side by side. It's fine to talk ab…

Boston to minneapolis could pass through:

MA: Springfield

NY: Albany, Buffalo,Rochester

Oh: Sandusky, Cleavland, Toledo,

IN: Fort wayne

IL: Chicago, Rockford,

WI: Madison, LaCrosse, Eu Claire, Milwaukee

With some fairly minor deviations on the path. (Assuming a fairly straight path that stays in the US, going south of the lakes). Depending on your tolerance for minor deviations from the straightest possible path it could be all or a subset, but not none of those. They are all medium sized or larger cities.

There are ton of small cities too, but the train doesnt have to stop in each one - there's lots of through trains in Europe to that skip towns/cities they pass.

Re: In Europe, trains are full, and more are on the way

#84

Post by jhoechtl »

rchaves wrote: post #30
k__ wrote: post #3

Trains are pretty awesome, especially in small Europe. Flying always comes with security hassle. A train is just: get in/get out. If Europe would just spent more money on infrastructure. We have trains in Germany that can do 350km/h but I've yet to ride one that goes faster than 200, probably because the rails aren't what they're used to be. Then we have the Germany Ticket. A 50€/month subscription to all regional tr…

Nope, the trains are not often late, this is just in Germany

Is there a pattern in Germany engineering? Airport Berlin, Stuttgart 21, constantly late running trains? Is Germany over-engineered and over-regulated, what's the issue?

Re: In Europe, trains are full, and more are on the way

#85

Post by WinstonSmith84 »

k__ wrote: post #3

Trains are pretty awesome, especially in small Europe. Flying always comes with security hassle. A train is just: get in/get out. If Europe would just spent more money on infrastructure. We have trains in Germany that can do 350km/h but I've yet to ride one that goes faster than 200, probably because the rails aren't what they're used to be. Then we have the Germany Ticket. A 50€/month subscription to all regional tr…

Not sure whether you're sarcastic or doing some PRs but trains in Germany are from my experience definitely not awesome. Flying is usually much more reliable in Germany as long as it doesn't snow (but trains are stopped too when it snows anyway). Trains in Germany are: 1- constantly delayed (ironically I already missed my flight because of that) 2- very expensive (unless you've hours to waste on regional trains) 3- slow in average (yes it can clock at 300kmh+ for 20 minutes just to get stuck behind a freight train using the same network..)

Re: In Europe, trains are full, and more are on the way

#86

Post by ericmay »

muspimerol wrote: post #77
ericmay wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, it's misleading. The America is big argument fails to hold water once you actually take a look at a map. Take Columbus for example where we're within just a couple hours by train (could be less if we had any sort of seriousness about our country) away from: Chicago Detroit Cleveland Cincinnati Indianapolis Pittsburgh and maybe just a few hours away from other cities like Toronto, Buffalo, Louisville, and more.

It's only misleading if you disregard the rest of my comment :-) You have identified a part of the USA with a decent density of cities - nice! That is exactly what I think. There are pockets where rail makes sense, and should be built up. But even this area is not nearly as dense as Germany, England, Belgium, Italy, etc, so I fail to see why it makes sense to compare this to the EU.

Right, but that's where the vast majority of the population is too. It's not that there are pockets where rail makes sense, rail just makes sense and should be built up.

> But even this area is not nearly as dense as Germany, England, Belgium, Italy, etc, so I fail to see why it makes sense to compare this to the EU.

Why would you compare America to the EU anyway then?

-edit-

Sorry I also wasn't trying to disregard your comment, I just thought it wasn't a great argument (you're a great person though I'm sure! :) )

Re: In Europe, trains are full, and more are on the way

#87

Post by muspimerol »

sophacles wrote: post #83
muspimerol wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an average, so of course it says nothing about the distribution. I don't find that to be misleading, or at least I did not intend to insinuate that the USA is a perfectly distributed wasteland! It shows that while the EU and US kind of look similar in size, actually their population density on average is wildly different. Just look at a population density map of both continents side by side. It's fine to talk ab…

Boston to minneapolis could pass through: MA: Springfield NY: Albany, Buffalo,Rochester Oh: Sandusky, Cleavland, Toledo, IN: Fort wayne IL: Chicago, Rockford, WI: Madison, LaCrosse, Eu Claire, Milwaukee With some fairly minor deviations on the path. (Assuming a fairly straight path that stays in the US, going south of the lakes). Depending on your tolerance for minor deviations from the straightest possible path it c…

I don't know why we're still stuck on the Berlin Madrid topic, but I'll bite :-)

I added up the population of all those cities: 6.13 million. The population of Berlin and Madrid alone is 6.86 million, and our theoretical journey would take us through several cities of 1m+ along the way: Cologne, Brussels, Paris... The dense parts of Europe have 500k+ cities basically overlapping.

As someone who grew up in the Midwest, I would absolutely love this theoretical train, but I'm not surprised it doesn't exist (yet)!

Re: In Europe, trains are full, and more are on the way

#88

Post by superjan »

bluGill wrote: post #17
kibwen wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> especially in small Europe What's small about the scale of Europe in this context? Even taking the extremely conservative measurement of Madrid to Berlin, that's 1200 miles/2000 km, which is comparable to the entire length of the Japanese isles, or the distance from Beijing to the South China Sea, or the distance from Boston to Minneapolis and/or Miami. Speaking as an American, I'd be over the moon if our passenger…

Europe mostly speaks a different language in every country, so the actual scale of Europe isn't the whole continent (or whole EU), but a single country. Sure you can travel to other countries, but there is a language barrier (though English is common enough to get by most places). Note that GP was talking about Germany with seeming no awareness that the situation is different in Switzerland, France, England and Spain…

It is a mixed bag, but definitely improving. Some experiences: From Holland, It was impossible to do an online booking a ticket to Italy. Only possible via phone, or as separate legs. For long journeys with changeovers watch out that you don’t get stuck halfway due to a missed connection. From NL, London, France, Germany is easily reachable, as well as Barcelona. I took a sleeper train to Stockholm last Christmas, we had delays, but made it in time. In general if you have a long distance leg, it’s best to have it at the start of your journey so you don’t miss it.

Railways do have single points of failure. A single disruption on a key piece of track can disrupt service for hours, even days. This is less of an issue with air travel, there’s usually other airlines, and alternative routes.

Re: In Europe, trains are full, and more are on the way

#89

Post by switch007 »

jbverschoor wrote: post #48

A train ride within the Netherlands is around twice the price of a flight to many countries. Trains here are full because cars are super expensive and parking here is more expensive than anywhere else.. >$8/hour, 24/7

Let’s not try to insinuate that trains are anything but extremely cheap in the Netherlands. You can go from one end of the country to the other in peak times without advance purchase for about 29 EUR (4 hour journey, Maastricht to Groningen)

Re: In Europe, trains are full, and more are on the way

#90

Post by Scoundreller »

Nextgrid wrote: post #78
k__ wrote: post #3

Trains are pretty awesome, especially in small Europe. Flying always comes with security hassle. A train is just: get in/get out. If Europe would just spent more money on infrastructure. We have trains in Germany that can do 350km/h but I've yet to ride one that goes faster than 200, probably because the rails aren't what they're used to be. Then we have the Germany Ticket. A 50€/month subscription to all regional tr…

> Flying always comes with security hassle Unfortunately that is not the case, the security theater seems to be slowly contaminating rail too. The Barcelona->Paris connection has some bullshit security on the Barcelona side (luggage x-ray & plastic trays for laptops), and I think the Eurostar had some of this on the London side too.

I went through that Barcelona one, and it must have been the weakest security I’ve ever seen.

Dude wasn’t even looking at the xray machine screen.

ICAO or whomever audits airport security would shit their pants if the Barcelona rail station had the same scrutiny.

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