10 ms·

High Speed Trains Are Killing the European Railway Network (2013)

69 points by okket 8y ago

spodek 8y ago
One of my favorite sites online. I recommend spending time there on other articles to catch his view of the modern world, which I find refreshing and timely.
rb808 8y ago
I totally agree, high speed trains are glamorous and high profile but I think spoil the main goal. eg California high speed train was hugely expensive, would be much better to expand commuter trains and/or improve the existing Amtrak lines.
- shereadsthenews 8y ago
  Expanding commuter service and Amtrak does not solve the problems that CaHSR solves, namely meeting the long-haul travel needs of the next ten million Californians and complying with AB32’s carbon reduction requirements.
- Patrick_Devine 8y ago
  These are not mutually exclusive goals. An example is CaHSR is helping electrify Caltrain, which should have been done over 30 years ago and will finally give the Silicon Valley frequent service in SF. Building a strong rail backbone ties regional networks together (of Caltrain, ACE, Capitol Corridor, and Metrolink) and will increase the utility/usefulness of each of those systems.
devit 8y ago
The article doesn't really seem to address why, if there is demand for what the author wants (which is quite reasonable), the market (or even a monopolist train company) doesn't provide it.
- ramshorns 8y ago
  Maybe because it can make more money providing high-speed rail which a few people want for a high price. The article does address the difficulty of competition (either between companies or within a nationalised rail provider) because tracks are one-dimensional, so maybe the rail provider has to choose between low speed and high speed.
DennisP 8y ago
Well that's unfortunate. I lived in Germany in the '80s, and traveled by train all over the continent. Especially in Germany, France and northern countries there was no place I wanted to go that couldn't be conveniently reached by train, trolley, and bus; I don't think I often had to walk more than a mile or wait more than half an hour. And it didn't cost much either; the dollar was really strong at the time but I got six weeks of unlimited travel for a few hundred bucks.
burlesona 8y ago
This is an interesting article, but I think it could be summarized fairly succinctly: trains are amazing for intercity travel in the 100-300mi range, and beyond that they’re not really competitive against air travel. TLDR; The author basically explains that the old system of good regional (euro national) networks which happened to connect together was almost as fast as the high speed trains but much cheaper and more convenient. When high speed lines are added these international regional lines are typically shut down. Since the high speed trains are expensive this means that the new network basically only serves medium/short distance business travel, where the old network was affordable for anyone to take basically any distance.
- maelito 8y ago
  > not competitive against air travel Financially, maybe. In terms of the negative externalities impacting climate, high-speed trains are incomparable.
  - fetbaffe 8y ago
    Railway on the other hand have negative impact on wildlife when building it. Give it a decade or two and we will have electrical air travel. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19652363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19652363
    - 0xffff2 8y ago
      No, you absolutely will not. The article you linked is talking about 2/4 seat trainers. Electric simple does not scale to airliner sizes/speeds/distances. We're currently working towards hybrid-electric airliners that may offer some efficiency improvements, and even those are 3-4 decades from commercial operation. Fully electric requires a fundamental breakthrough in battery energy density.
- thatfrenchguy 8y ago
  > intercity travel in the 100-300mi range Paris-Marseille is 775km (481 miles), 3 hours by train, I don't think anyone actually takes airplanes to do this route if they don't have a connection afterwards.
t0mas88 8y ago
He is entirely right, and since 2013 is has become even more like he described. It now already applies from Amsterdam to Paris... It's a 1 hour flight, for 99 euros return on Air France / KLM and far less than that if you take easyJet or another low cost option (with the downside that you're going to an airport further from the city). The train takes 3 to 4 hours and costs more. Only on really short trips like Amsterdam - Brussels the train is the better option. And on those the normal train is only 15 minutes out of a total 2.5 hours slower than the expensive high speed train, while the high speed is more than twice as expensive.
- stingraycharles 8y ago
  That doesn’t account for airport taxes and boarding time. Real door-to-door durations are different, and I would take the Thalys over airplanes any day (the WiFi is great and you can get actual work done).
- Leszek 8y ago
  Comparing a 1 hour flight to a 3-4 hour train journey by those times alone is somewhat dishonest: it doesn't take into account the rest of the journey to/from the airport at either end (usually further out of the city than the main train station), nor the 1-2 hour early arrival at the airport for bag drop/security/killing time at the gate. Not to mention inconveniences like lack of liquids in hand luggage, expensive airport amenities (should you choose to use them), passing through the security theatre, and of course the actual cost of getting to the airport (in the UK, this can be more than the flight!).
  - jdietrich 8y ago
    The train probably has proper tables, power outlets and useable WiFi or 4G. For a business traveller, a 4 hour train journey can be 4 hours of very productive time, whereas a 1 hour flight can completely obliterate half a day.
  - harperlee 8y ago
    Absolutely. I travel between Paris and Frankfurt a lot; a couple of Thursdays ago the 19h-23h train to Paris was cancelled, and I had to go to Fraport with the S-Bahn (I work close to Hauptbahnhoff), wait a queue of 65’ just to pass security (Fraport security is absurdly inefficient, with e.g. about 10 workers per luggage scanner), take a 70’ flight and then a 30’ taxi ride from CDG. I arrived home at the standard time. With the train I go from city centre to city centre, I jump on the train upon arrival, and I have 4 hours of work/leisure; ample space, bug windows, a cafeteria and room to walk. The alternative is 4 hours of taxi queue security wait queue finger queue take off have a sandwich please close tray landing taxi, where you can get total 1h of work done if you get lucky (except if you have someone to call). And the train is half the price.
lispm 8y ago
Hamburg -> Munich. next thursday morning, >600km ICE, duration 5:40. Cost around 100€ With Bahncard 50: 76 € Same with slow train: duration 11:00, cheapest ticket 29€ Flight around 200 Euros, Lufthansa 300+€, Flighttime 1:15, Travel time: around 3.5 hours. Hamburg -> Frankfurt. 400km IC, duration 3:30, Cost starting at around 75€, with Bahncard 50: 53€ Business Trips: company pays. Many business trips in one year: get a Bahncard 100. Company pays. Costs 4400€. Unlimited travel with full flexibility within Germany. For example one trip Hamburg<->Frankfurt per week and the Bahncard 100 is easily more convenient.
- stingraycharles 8y ago
  This matches my experience as well. I take the Thalys from Amsterdam to Paris once or twice a month, and a round trip ticket is around 200 euros. I don’t think this is expensive at all. Surely the car would be much more expensive (fuel + maintenance), so I do not share the author’s point of view. I, for one, am incredibly happy for having a viable (much better, actually) alternative to the airplane.
  - discordance 8y ago
    I took the Thalys from Amsterdam to Paris last week for the first time. Pretty poor design. There's a horizontal section between two windows that prevents you from looking out of the window comfortably, and the whole experience is extremely cramped.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  With Eurowings or Ryanair that flight would be 100 €. Sadly I am yet to know a company that actually gets Bahncard for their employees. I have known a couple that expect people to use Bahncards. though.
  - lispm 8y ago
    > With Eurowings or Ryanair that flight would be 100 €. No way. Eurowings is more expensive and Ryanair does not fly that route. > yet to know a company that actually gets Bahncard That's an easy calculation. It's cheaper once there is a certain amount of travels. But the travel usually has do be on company purpose. Companies then order 'Business Bahncard's for employees, which allows relatively flexible travel.
ip26 8y ago
The funny thing is I rode the Lyon-Paris route, and the train was jam-packed with what I would consider ordinary people and families. Although, that was a sample size of one, and I think I read somewhere it was one of the few profitable high speed routes.
- unstructured 8y ago
  As far as I know its the only high-speed route that is profitable in France.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
thatfrenchguy 8y ago
What I'm getting from this is that we need to tax intra-EU flights.
- adrianN 8y ago
  What we need is a general carbon tax.
eternalban 8y ago
What a great website. Thank you for posting this.
tomelders 8y ago
We need to nationalise the railways EU wide. Privatised rail makes no sense anywhere in the world. Flights are cheap because competition drives down prices. But there's no real competition on the rail network. You can't have two trains leave the same station and arrive at the same destination as the same time. The train company that runs the train from Station A to Station Z at 13:00 get's all the passengers that need to travel that route at that time. Sure there are ways for one train to overtake another, but that capacity is severely limited because of the physical and safety constraints. Trains are also more expensive to run than planes because they need more infrastructure to operate, and that infrastructure is high maintenance. So we have almost no competition, high operating costs, and we've set it up so the people operating the trains are in opposition to each other and have no incentive or obligation to work together to lower prices or improve the service. Nationalise it. All of it. And let's just accept that there are some things that simply shouldn't be run by the private sector. And I realise that "Nationalisation" in the context of the EU is the wrong word. What I'm saying is the that EU should run the whole thing. Whatever that's called... Federalisation? I don't know.
- Tijdreiziger 8y ago
  > The train company that runs the train from Station A to Station Z at 13:00 get's all the passengers that need to travel that route at that time. False. (Factual) counterexample: On the Stockholm-Malmö route, there are three operators (SJ, MTR and Snälltåget). The number of passengers on each company's trains will depend heavily on their pricing strategies.
  - tomelders 8y ago
    All running the same route, at the same time? It doesn't look like it. https://www.omio.co.uk/search-frontend/results/1307902350/train?locale=en&abTestParameters=&adults=1&arrival_fk=406057&children=0&departure_date=14/04/2019&departure_fk=406028&infants=0&is_rebrand=true&travel_mode=train&user_currency=GBP&user_domain=co.uk&user_id=429ac382-a96c-41de-94dc-e9ffcfa20431&user_locale=en https://www.omio.co.uk/search-frontend/results/1307902350/tr...
Causality1 8y ago
"Hopping on a plane would be a hypocritical thing to do when you run a publication called Low-tech Magazine." Yes, using a form of travel invented in 1903 is far more high-tech than publishing articles to the global information network. Putz.
- adrianN 8y ago
  If you read a couple of articles on the site you'll see that it's about how we can use well-known, or recently forgotten technology to live in a much more sustainable way. It's a counterpoint to the "magical technology of the future will solve it" school of environmental politics.
the_mitsuhiko 8y ago
For a really long time I wanted high speed rail but now I just want better service and wifi. If the train takes some time it does not matter because i’m productive using it. I spend so little time at the train stations on either end and I can work the entire ride that I don’t feel like I wasted time. On the other hand almost any flight or car trip feels regretful.
- njepa 8y ago
  Agreed. I don't think trains are really good at speed yet relative to costs. They are however good at comfort if given the chance. There is less of a space and weight premium. Noise and vibration can be much lower. And a medium speed train they can still go twice as fast as car. I wish someone would take the idea of a business or first class flight, without the luxuries and inflated cost, and put that on a modern medium speed train. Something similar to this seat layout: https://liveandletsfly.boardingarea.com/2018/02/08/swiss-777-300er-first-class-review/ https://liveandletsfly.boardingarea.com/2018/02/08/swiss-777...
  - pintxo 8y ago
    Business class without luxuries and inflated costs is what? Economy class?
    - njepa 8y ago
      You want the comfort. The seats, privacy and trouble free ‘logistics’. You don’t need the luxuries. The three course meal, the champagne and maybe not even the personal service. Business class on airplanes are to some extent eat, sleep and drink class. Hauling drinks aren’t as expensive so no need to up-sell the service, just give me a snack station.
      - pintxo 8y ago
        I am no airline expert, but the seat, privacy and trouble free logistics is the expensive part, no? The rest: food and service is the cheap part. One row of 6 business class seats replaces what, 20-30 eco seats? That‘s where the cost comes from. So they need to be a factor of 3-5 more expensive because of space with everything else equal.
switch007 8y ago
I live on a route that had its local services replaced by new rolling stock to run new medium-distance services. That change led to higher ticket prices, reduction of local services, less desirable destinations, longer onward connections, and a year of abysmal service which resulted in some of the worst performance of the entire national network. Local communities have been badly affected. People had to move. We have timetables that don't work, especially for people with children and jobs. 1 train per hour down from 2. Morning services that get you in to the city at stupid times (0808 and 0908). The train to one city dumps you at the less useful terminus, eventually, after it crawls though a busier line. The franchise is not meeting its contractual obligation for peak service frequency. A lot to swallow just to get nicer new trains :/
lars_francke 8y ago
> For most people, the time gained by taking the high speed train is not worth the extra cost. Citation needed. I'm just a single data point but I'd gladly pay more to be home w/ family a few minutes/hour earlier and considering how jam packed the ICEs often are I would say others share a similar sentiment (maybe for other reasons). Most arguments in this article are based on price which to me is similar to people arguing over benchmarks in software/hardware products (i.e. performance of a product) while there are tens of other factors to consider, performance being just one of them. I for one don't consider price at all (within reason, for me that means when the difference between choices is ~200-300€) when travelling on business (and the older I get for private travel as well). I favor comfort, speed, reliability of connections etc. I basically disagree with almost everything in that article - but similar to his viewpoint mine is very subjective.
Patrick_Devine 8y ago
I just took the Barcelona-Paris train a few months ago and paid 119 Euros for a 1st Class ticket. I think it was 79 Euros for a 2nd class ticket. I was just looking at buying tickets for my entire family of four from Munich to Berlin for this summer, and the price is 95 euros for the entire family. That doesn't really jibe with what the author is complaining about. I get that there will be instances where the old system better serviced some parts of the network, but I believe for the vast majority of the people using the train, high speed lines have been an absolute boon.
- LeanderK 8y ago
  I think the Munich-Berlin route is the prime example where high-speed rail makes sense. It's long enough to really make a difference but not too long so that you would consider a plane. 95€ seems cheap for the DB, I have a bahncard 50 (so 50% off) and usually pay ~30€ for Karlsruhe-Munich (bit over 3 hours), but I usually buy them when I start my trip.
jayalpha 8y ago
European trains a great. I wish Europe would be more positive about the future and build more modern trains. Why no self coupling train cars that go to different destinations? Good news, recently on HN. I love night trains! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19557848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19557848 As always: http://seat61.com/ http://seat61.com/
hevi_jos 8y ago
Europe needs competition on the rail networks, just like air traffic. This will happen over time. In places like Spain it will start this year or next one. In Spain and other European countries, there was a State monopoly on rail. Extremely bad for the customer. No company could offer cheaper prices or be smarter. It is a bureaucracy used for political parties to place their(mostly incompetent) family members and friends.
bubblewrap 8y ago
Trains compete with planes, cars and bus lines. It seems likely that if it turns out to be necessary to be competitive, they'll reintroduce the cheaper trains. Here in Germany, cheaper trains seem to be available for many times I happened to check (IC vs ICE). I am also happy about the reduction of my travel time, although the costs may have been too large (years and years of building new tracks and tunnels).
dzhiurgis 8y ago
With advent of electric buses I believe railway is dead. For short to mid range trips - electric buses already are capable to cover them at nearly same comfort level but much lower cost. For long range we'll have to stick to planes.

69 points by okket 8y ago

One of my favorite sites online. I recommend spending time there on other articles to catch his view of the modern world, which I find refreshing and timely.

rb808 8y ago

I totally agree, high speed trains are glamorous and high profile but I think spoil the main goal. eg California high speed train was hugely expensive, would be much better to expand commuter trains and/or improve the existing Amtrak lines.

shereadsthenews 8y ago
Expanding commuter service and Amtrak does not solve the problems that CaHSR solves, namely meeting the long-haul travel needs of the next ten million Californians and complying with AB32’s carbon reduction requirements.
Patrick_Devine 8y ago
These are not mutually exclusive goals. An example is CaHSR is helping electrify Caltrain, which should have been done over 30 years ago and will finally give the Silicon Valley frequent service in SF. Building a strong rail backbone ties regional networks together (of Caltrain, ACE, Capitol Corridor, and Metrolink) and will increase the utility/usefulness of each of those systems.

devit 8y ago

The article doesn't really seem to address why, if there is demand for what the author wants (which is quite reasonable), the market (or even a monopolist train company) doesn't provide it.

ramshorns 8y ago
Maybe because it can make more money providing high-speed rail which a few people want for a high price. The article does address the difficulty of competition (either between companies or within a nationalised rail provider) because tracks are one-dimensional, so maybe the rail provider has to choose between low speed and high speed.

DennisP 8y ago

Well that's unfortunate. I lived in Germany in the '80s, and traveled by train all over the continent. Especially in Germany, France and northern countries there was no place I wanted to go that couldn't be conveniently reached by train, trolley, and bus; I don't think I often had to walk more than a mile or wait more than half an hour. And it didn't cost much either; the dollar was really strong at the time but I got six weeks of unlimited travel for a few hundred bucks.

burlesona 8y ago

This is an interesting article, but I think it could be summarized fairly succinctly: trains are amazing for intercity travel in the 100-300mi range, and beyond that they’re not really competitive against air travel. TLDR; The author basically explains that the old system of good regional (euro national) networks which happened to connect together was almost as fast as the high speed trains but much cheaper and more convenient. When high speed lines are added these international regional lines are typically shut down. Since the high speed trains are expensive this means that the new network basically only serves medium/short distance business travel, where the old network was affordable for anyone to take basically any distance.

maelito 8y ago
> not competitive against air travel Financially, maybe. In terms of the negative externalities impacting climate, high-speed trains are incomparable.
- fetbaffe 8y ago
  Railway on the other hand have negative impact on wildlife when building it. Give it a decade or two and we will have electrical air travel. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19652363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19652363
  - 0xffff2 8y ago
    No, you absolutely will not. The article you linked is talking about 2/4 seat trainers. Electric simple does not scale to airliner sizes/speeds/distances. We're currently working towards hybrid-electric airliners that may offer some efficiency improvements, and even those are 3-4 decades from commercial operation. Fully electric requires a fundamental breakthrough in battery energy density.
thatfrenchguy 8y ago
> intercity travel in the 100-300mi range Paris-Marseille is 775km (481 miles), 3 hours by train, I don't think anyone actually takes airplanes to do this route if they don't have a connection afterwards.

t0mas88 8y ago

He is entirely right, and since 2013 is has become even more like he described. It now already applies from Amsterdam to Paris... It's a 1 hour flight, for 99 euros return on Air France / KLM and far less than that if you take easyJet or another low cost option (with the downside that you're going to an airport further from the city). The train takes 3 to 4 hours and costs more. Only on really short trips like Amsterdam - Brussels the train is the better option. And on those the normal train is only 15 minutes out of a total 2.5 hours slower than the expensive high speed train, while the high speed is more than twice as expensive.

stingraycharles 8y ago
That doesn’t account for airport taxes and boarding time. Real door-to-door durations are different, and I would take the Thalys over airplanes any day (the WiFi is great and you can get actual work done).
Leszek 8y ago
Comparing a 1 hour flight to a 3-4 hour train journey by those times alone is somewhat dishonest: it doesn't take into account the rest of the journey to/from the airport at either end (usually further out of the city than the main train station), nor the 1-2 hour early arrival at the airport for bag drop/security/killing time at the gate. Not to mention inconveniences like lack of liquids in hand luggage, expensive airport amenities (should you choose to use them), passing through the security theatre, and of course the actual cost of getting to the airport (in the UK, this can be more than the flight!).
- jdietrich 8y ago
  The train probably has proper tables, power outlets and useable WiFi or 4G. For a business traveller, a 4 hour train journey can be 4 hours of very productive time, whereas a 1 hour flight can completely obliterate half a day.
- harperlee 8y ago
  Absolutely. I travel between Paris and Frankfurt a lot; a couple of Thursdays ago the 19h-23h train to Paris was cancelled, and I had to go to Fraport with the S-Bahn (I work close to Hauptbahnhoff), wait a queue of 65’ just to pass security (Fraport security is absurdly inefficient, with e.g. about 10 workers per luggage scanner), take a 70’ flight and then a 30’ taxi ride from CDG. I arrived home at the standard time. With the train I go from city centre to city centre, I jump on the train upon arrival, and I have 4 hours of work/leisure; ample space, bug windows, a cafeteria and room to walk. The alternative is 4 hours of taxi queue security wait queue finger queue take off have a sandwich please close tray landing taxi, where you can get total 1h of work done if you get lucky (except if you have someone to call). And the train is half the price.

lispm 8y ago

Hamburg -> Munich. next thursday morning, >600km ICE, duration 5:40. Cost around 100€ With Bahncard 50: 76 € Same with slow train: duration 11:00, cheapest ticket 29€ Flight around 200 Euros, Lufthansa 300+€, Flighttime 1:15, Travel time: around 3.5 hours. Hamburg -> Frankfurt. 400km IC, duration 3:30, Cost starting at around 75€, with Bahncard 50: 53€ Business Trips: company pays. Many business trips in one year: get a Bahncard 100. Company pays. Costs 4400€. Unlimited travel with full flexibility within Germany. For example one trip Hamburg<->Frankfurt per week and the Bahncard 100 is easily more convenient.

stingraycharles 8y ago
This matches my experience as well. I take the Thalys from Amsterdam to Paris once or twice a month, and a round trip ticket is around 200 euros. I don’t think this is expensive at all. Surely the car would be much more expensive (fuel + maintenance), so I do not share the author’s point of view. I, for one, am incredibly happy for having a viable (much better, actually) alternative to the airplane.
- discordance 8y ago
  I took the Thalys from Amsterdam to Paris last week for the first time. Pretty poor design. There's a horizontal section between two windows that prevents you from looking out of the window comfortably, and the whole experience is extremely cramped.
pjmlp 8y ago
With Eurowings or Ryanair that flight would be 100 €. Sadly I am yet to know a company that actually gets Bahncard for their employees. I have known a couple that expect people to use Bahncards. though.
- lispm 8y ago
  > With Eurowings or Ryanair that flight would be 100 €. No way. Eurowings is more expensive and Ryanair does not fly that route. > yet to know a company that actually gets Bahncard That's an easy calculation. It's cheaper once there is a certain amount of travels. But the travel usually has do be on company purpose. Companies then order 'Business Bahncard's for employees, which allows relatively flexible travel.

ip26 8y ago

The funny thing is I rode the Lyon-Paris route, and the train was jam-packed with what I would consider ordinary people and families. Although, that was a sample size of one, and I think I read somewhere it was one of the few profitable high speed routes.

unstructured 8y ago
As far as I know its the only high-speed route that is profitable in France.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

thatfrenchguy 8y ago

What I'm getting from this is that we need to tax intra-EU flights.

adrianN 8y ago
What we need is a general carbon tax.

eternalban 8y ago

What a great website. Thank you for posting this.

tomelders 8y ago

We need to nationalise the railways EU wide. Privatised rail makes no sense anywhere in the world. Flights are cheap because competition drives down prices. But there's no real competition on the rail network. You can't have two trains leave the same station and arrive at the same destination as the same time. The train company that runs the train from Station A to Station Z at 13:00 get's all the passengers that need to travel that route at that time. Sure there are ways for one train to overtake another, but that capacity is severely limited because of the physical and safety constraints. Trains are also more expensive to run than planes because they need more infrastructure to operate, and that infrastructure is high maintenance. So we have almost no competition, high operating costs, and we've set it up so the people operating the trains are in opposition to each other and have no incentive or obligation to work together to lower prices or improve the service. Nationalise it. All of it. And let's just accept that there are some things that simply shouldn't be run by the private sector. And I realise that "Nationalisation" in the context of the EU is the wrong word. What I'm saying is the that EU should run the whole thing. Whatever that's called... Federalisation? I don't know.

Tijdreiziger 8y ago
> The train company that runs the train from Station A to Station Z at 13:00 get's all the passengers that need to travel that route at that time. False. (Factual) counterexample: On the Stockholm-Malmö route, there are three operators (SJ, MTR and Snälltåget). The number of passengers on each company's trains will depend heavily on their pricing strategies.
- tomelders 8y ago
  All running the same route, at the same time? It doesn't look like it. https://www.omio.co.uk/search-frontend/results/1307902350/train?locale=en&abTestParameters=&adults=1&arrival_fk=406057&children=0&departure_date=14/04/2019&departure_fk=406028&infants=0&is_rebrand=true&travel_mode=train&user_currency=GBP&user_domain=co.uk&user_id=429ac382-a96c-41de-94dc-e9ffcfa20431&user_locale=en https://www.omio.co.uk/search-frontend/results/1307902350/tr...

Causality1 8y ago

"Hopping on a plane would be a hypocritical thing to do when you run a publication called Low-tech Magazine." Yes, using a form of travel invented in 1903 is far more high-tech than publishing articles to the global information network. Putz.

adrianN 8y ago
If you read a couple of articles on the site you'll see that it's about how we can use well-known, or recently forgotten technology to live in a much more sustainable way. It's a counterpoint to the "magical technology of the future will solve it" school of environmental politics.

the_mitsuhiko 8y ago

For a really long time I wanted high speed rail but now I just want better service and wifi. If the train takes some time it does not matter because i’m productive using it. I spend so little time at the train stations on either end and I can work the entire ride that I don’t feel like I wasted time. On the other hand almost any flight or car trip feels regretful.

njepa 8y ago
Agreed. I don't think trains are really good at speed yet relative to costs. They are however good at comfort if given the chance. There is less of a space and weight premium. Noise and vibration can be much lower. And a medium speed train they can still go twice as fast as car. I wish someone would take the idea of a business or first class flight, without the luxuries and inflated cost, and put that on a modern medium speed train. Something similar to this seat layout: https://liveandletsfly.boardingarea.com/2018/02/08/swiss-777-300er-first-class-review/ https://liveandletsfly.boardingarea.com/2018/02/08/swiss-777...
- pintxo 8y ago
  Business class without luxuries and inflated costs is what? Economy class?
  - njepa 8y ago
    You want the comfort. The seats, privacy and trouble free ‘logistics’. You don’t need the luxuries. The three course meal, the champagne and maybe not even the personal service. Business class on airplanes are to some extent eat, sleep and drink class. Hauling drinks aren’t as expensive so no need to up-sell the service, just give me a snack station.
    - pintxo 8y ago
      I am no airline expert, but the seat, privacy and trouble free logistics is the expensive part, no? The rest: food and service is the cheap part. One row of 6 business class seats replaces what, 20-30 eco seats? That‘s where the cost comes from. So they need to be a factor of 3-5 more expensive because of space with everything else equal.

switch007 8y ago

I live on a route that had its local services replaced by new rolling stock to run new medium-distance services. That change led to higher ticket prices, reduction of local services, less desirable destinations, longer onward connections, and a year of abysmal service which resulted in some of the worst performance of the entire national network. Local communities have been badly affected. People had to move. We have timetables that don't work, especially for people with children and jobs. 1 train per hour down from 2. Morning services that get you in to the city at stupid times (0808 and 0908). The train to one city dumps you at the less useful terminus, eventually, after it crawls though a busier line. The franchise is not meeting its contractual obligation for peak service frequency. A lot to swallow just to get nicer new trains :/

lars_francke 8y ago

> For most people, the time gained by taking the high speed train is not worth the extra cost. Citation needed. I'm just a single data point but I'd gladly pay more to be home w/ family a few minutes/hour earlier and considering how jam packed the ICEs often are I would say others share a similar sentiment (maybe for other reasons). Most arguments in this article are based on price which to me is similar to people arguing over benchmarks in software/hardware products (i.e. performance of a product) while there are tens of other factors to consider, performance being just one of them. I for one don't consider price at all (within reason, for me that means when the difference between choices is ~200-300€) when travelling on business (and the older I get for private travel as well). I favor comfort, speed, reliability of connections etc. I basically disagree with almost everything in that article - but similar to his viewpoint mine is very subjective.

Patrick_Devine 8y ago

I just took the Barcelona-Paris train a few months ago and paid 119 Euros for a 1st Class ticket. I think it was 79 Euros for a 2nd class ticket. I was just looking at buying tickets for my entire family of four from Munich to Berlin for this summer, and the price is 95 euros for the entire family. That doesn't really jibe with what the author is complaining about. I get that there will be instances where the old system better serviced some parts of the network, but I believe for the vast majority of the people using the train, high speed lines have been an absolute boon.

LeanderK 8y ago
I think the Munich-Berlin route is the prime example where high-speed rail makes sense. It's long enough to really make a difference but not too long so that you would consider a plane. 95€ seems cheap for the DB, I have a bahncard 50 (so 50% off) and usually pay ~30€ for Karlsruhe-Munich (bit over 3 hours), but I usually buy them when I start my trip.

jayalpha 8y ago

European trains a great. I wish Europe would be more positive about the future and build more modern trains. Why no self coupling train cars that go to different destinations? Good news, recently on HN. I love night trains! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19557848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19557848 As always: http://seat61.com/ http://seat61.com/

hevi_jos 8y ago

Europe needs competition on the rail networks, just like air traffic. This will happen over time. In places like Spain it will start this year or next one. In Spain and other European countries, there was a State monopoly on rail. Extremely bad for the customer. No company could offer cheaper prices or be smarter. It is a bureaucracy used for political parties to place their(mostly incompetent) family members and friends.

bubblewrap 8y ago

Trains compete with planes, cars and bus lines. It seems likely that if it turns out to be necessary to be competitive, they'll reintroduce the cheaper trains. Here in Germany, cheaper trains seem to be available for many times I happened to check (IC vs ICE). I am also happy about the reduction of my travel time, although the costs may have been too large (years and years of building new tracks and tunnels).

dzhiurgis 8y ago

With advent of electric buses I believe railway is dead. For short to mid range trips - electric buses already are capable to cover them at nearly same comfort level but much lower cost. For long range we'll have to stick to planes.