Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 229 posts

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

#91

Post by The_Colonel »

enaaem wrote: post #15
eigenket wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion the main "low hanging fruit" Europe has with trains are international birders, especially if they're trying to compete with flying. Trains in Poland work great, trains in Germany work pretty well but every train I've taken between Poland and Germany has been delayed. The standard thing is that while you're in Poland they claim the delay is because of previous delays in Germany and while you're in German…

Just built a separate international network, with its own separate system and tracks. The way Japan handles complexity is through redundancy. Japan runs both really old trains, hyper modern high speed rail and everything in between. Each system runs on separate tracks, are from different companies, and are not interconnected. This can be a lesson on how to run complex systems in general.

Why not build parallel tracks, but with the same gauge?

> This can be a lesson on how to run complex systems in general.

This sounds like cargo culting. Japan has great train system, it has to be because of separate gauges!

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

#92

Post by egman_ekki »

cassepipe wrote: post #53
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…

Personally my main gripe is not so much the speed as going to higher speed is probably less efficient hence more expensive. My main gripe is the price (I am poor by european standards). For example going from Paris to Napoli only by train is currently above 300 euros whereas you can find a flight for 40 euros. I am ready to pay around 100 euros for that. Recently there was sleeper car train from Paris to Milano which…

So much this. We’re so spolied by low cost airlines in Europe.

I can either - go for a train trip to the 2nd largest city in Denmark (Copenhagen to Aarhus) for 230 eur (2 adults + a kid) and it takes almost 3 hours. - take a Ryanair flight to Alicante for 240 eur (2 adults + a kid), flight takes 3.5 hours

The weather will be much better, the food and accommodation cheaper by a long shot (not to mention Spanish cuisine). It’s not even comparable how much more value you get when flying.

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

#93

Post by bradley13 »

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…

German rail infrastructure is...in need of help. Here, in Switzerland, many trains come from Germany. Well, they did. They are so often late that some routes now stop at the border, so that the Swiss schedule isn't impacted by German problems.

Germany is also years behind on putting cargo onto trains for transit through the Alps. Even Italy was faster.

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

#94

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

jhoechtl wrote: post #79
LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also have Thalys in .de which is not just get in. The same goes for Eurostar. Maybe more, but I don't know about them. That aside, some could do 350kph in theory, but there are no tracks anywhere which are certified for more than 330kph in regular daily operations. With the additional constraint of limiting that to 280 kph max after several fuck ups, which I don't know about if that limit was lifted, or not. And…

> lichthupenden and warnblinkenden Nieten in Nadelstreifen trying to overtake the Normalos, Thank you, made my day. Austrian btw.

Ja das war halt so. Fette Karren, Audi, Benz oder BMW, Sakko wackelnd am Bügel auf'm Rücksitz hängend. Kannte ich bisher nur als Clichè, aber das war da so zu beobachten. Und wirklich alle immer lichthupend und drängelnd, und nicht linksblinkend, sondern warnblinkend.

Aber bei 330 war das als würde man an einem Diorama vorbeifahren.

Unvergesslich :-)

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

#95

Post by Scoundreller »

RHSman2 wrote: post #23
bluGill wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

French trains are fast if they aren’t striking.

French train speed is fast but velocity can be slow if you’re not going toward or away from Paris.

If you’re going from the northwest to the southwest, it can be faster to drive than the high speed train that will dogleg through Paris.

(It’s getting better though)

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

#96

Post by amadeuspagel »

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…

Yes, paying for things is a hassle, but it's also a great way of incentivizing companies to provide services that people actually need, and incentivizing people to use only those services that they actually need.

And yes, figuring out what exactly you have to pay for on public transit is an especially big hassle, but that's a problem that's solved technologically in many countries, where you just have to swipe a card at the entry and exit.

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

#97

Post by kasey_junk »

ericmay wrote: post #41
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…

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.

The US has the largest rail network in the world (for now). It’s hugely dominated by freight.

It’s not for lack of rail lines we don’t have good passenger service it’s a priority and preference issue.

If you got a fast train between Indianapolis and Cleveland what would you do with it? Neither has reasonable public transit and aren’t dense cities that are good for walking. They also are only 4.5 hours away from each other by car, something residents of both largely own.

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

#98

Post by throwup238 »

The_Colonel wrote: post #91
enaaem wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just built a separate international network, with its own separate system and tracks. The way Japan handles complexity is through redundancy. Japan runs both really old trains, hyper modern high speed rail and everything in between. Each system runs on separate tracks, are from different companies, and are not interconnected. This can be a lesson on how to run complex systems in general.

Why not build parallel tracks, but with the same gauge? > This can be a lesson on how to run complex systems in general. This sounds like cargo culting. Japan has great train system, it has to be because of separate gauges!

> Why not build parallel tracks, but with the same gauge?

Jevon's paradox [1] probably. The most profitable part of the rail system will grow to crowd out and interfere with the rest. By keeping it different gauges, they all operate independent of each other's incentives.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

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

#99

Post by static_motion »

com wrote: post #81
MrDresden wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

That's interesting to read. I recently visited the Netherlands on vacation and one of the things I was most impressed by was the train service. I came away from an excellent opinion of NS, but I'd probably chalk that down to my extensive experience with Portugal's own national train service which is an absolute clown show on rails.

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

#100

Post by Barrin92 »

jhoechtl wrote: post #84
rchaves wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not really. It's just heavily used and so the faults are very obvious, and we Germans are extremely quick to complain. Objectively there's not much of a difference and for almost all European countries it's complaint at a high level[1]

Of course Stuttgart 21 is objectively a mess but Germany is big, there's more than just a handful of engineering projects at any given time. We brought a pretty substantial amount of LNG capacity online in just two years but that never gets any press compared to the latest airport chaos.

[1]https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....

Post reply on HN