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Because politics. Trains are very national in the EU and even after this many years that still gets in the way of effective train based transportation. Plus hea

Because politics. Trains are very national in the EU and even after this many years that still gets in the way of effective train based transportation. Plus heavy rail is flat out expensive to put down and maintain and the cars are and engines themselves all contribute the initial cost of establishing a line as well as maintenance. Then the kicker compared to airline travel, you cannot simply reroute a train. It is stuck to its rail line, as in you cannot simply move a train to service a route that needs it now. You could tax the airline industry into the ground but it will not fix the reality that trains simply are not flexible, similar to how light rail in cities is not ideal for the majority of cities that employ it; for many city transportation systems light rail eats away a disproportionate amount of the budget impacting bus availability as well - it is a money pit A previous financial times article [0] explains some of the political problems but far too many still do not understand the logistical side of rail lines. [0]https://www.ft.com/content/e77dc48e-7894-11e8-8e67-1e1a0846c475 https://www.ft.com/content/e77dc48e-7894-11e8-8e67-1e1a0846c...

radicalbyte 7y ago
Privatized trains are worse, in the UK they've just given the go ahead for a $140 billion high speed rail project, HS2. A decade ago we build HS1, a 67 mile track between London and the Channel Tunnel, for a total of $7.6 billion ($112m / mile). HS2 is longer but its 330 miles of tracks will cost $400m / mile. The project costs make absolutely no sense: London is a special weird place in the UK where everything you build is twice as expensive as in the rest of the country. Considering most of HS1 was in London and most of HS2 is outside of London, this budget makes absolutely no sense. What makes the whole thing even more insane is that the endpoints are not connected to the rest of the infrastructure. You have a 30 minute trip between HS1 and HS2. So if you're travelling from Birmingham to Paris you'll have to switch trains in London. For the money they're spending on this it's crazy that you're not getting it.
- captainbland 7y ago
  My understanding is that basically HS2 is massively over-specced compared to HS1. It wants high throughput and extremely high speed (80-100mph faster than HS1). I guess you could probably shave a few tens of billions off just by slowing the line down a bit - using ballast rather than concrete slab and such. See: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51415590 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51415590 The only other thing I'd add is that Euston is easily within walking distance of St Pancras. But given all this already extraordinary cost it seems like you might as well connect St Pancras and Euston HS lines and have the odd Eurostar service run from Birmingham.
  - radicalbyte 7y ago
    The Euston - St Pancras thing is OK if you're commuting for work distance wise - it's just adding 15 mins to your journey when it should be 30 seconds. For travellers who don't know London, who have to lug around baggage and small children it's a massive pain. It's well worth the effort to connect it. It would already be way better even if you had to switch train in one station.
- prennert 7y ago
  From what I understand HS2 was planned to become very similar to the tube with 18 trains per hour. This is more that one every 4 minutes. The trains would also run very fast. This allows for caring lots of passengers, but it also is very complex to achieve and accounts for a lot of the costs (as well as buying property). Also inflation had to be taken into account when comparing projects that are decades apart. So without knowing much about the details, it might well be that the costs are plausible to what was proposed.
  - 45ure 7y ago
    >From what I understand HS2 was planned to become very similar to the tube with 18 trains per hour. The comparison of HS2 with 18 paths per hour in each direction, on an overground rail system stretching over 320 miles, running at high speed (theoretical uppper speed limit of 250mph), with the London Underground, is laughable. I could not find any references to your claim in the official documents. The project was never about speed, but rather about increasing capacity. It was packaged and sold to the voters as shaving off some time to get from A to B, largely due to politrickery. The aim is to free up commuter, regional and freight capacity on existing lines ─ which will also have an overall impact on roads and motorway nework used by freight carriers. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/480646/supplement-to-strategic-case.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
    - prennert 7y ago
      I meant to compare mainly from a user perspective. If a train runs every 4 mins and takes a bit more than an hour to get to it's destination that's very similar to the tube experience. Very different to a typical train experience where you have to turn up exactly in time or wait another 30 mins for the next train. The point I was trying to make was that a comparison to HS1 without accounting for the train frequency is probably not fair.
- Camas 7y ago
  What does HS2 have to do with private rail?
  - radicalbyte 7y ago
    Trains are privatized in the UK. Maybe this project is being built with public money but it will eventually be privatized.
    - Camas 7y ago
      Trains are privatised, not the tracks.
AsyncAwait 7y ago
> Because politics. Trains are very national in the EU Ah, of course, it's the 'free market' that's the solution. I mean it's complete shit in the UK, where I live, but am sure that's just an outlier. The U.S. healthcare industry is a strong proof that the private model for essential services works flawlessly and now there's Reds again running in the election campaigning for 'Medicare for All'. Outrageous.
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  Sarcasm can be a useful tool at times but it is very much over used these days. You'll likely find your point better received if you are just straightforward with it.
- thu2111 7y ago
  Trains in the UK got a lot better after privatisation, and of course we're discussing how they're not competitive against the airline industry which is significantly more free market again. So your point isn't landing. Yes. Globalised and freer markets are a solution to this. In fact it's what the article advocates, more or less.
  - AsyncAwait 7y ago
    > Trains in the UK got a lot better after privatisation, I don't expect my point to be landing with free market Regonomists, but seriously? I mean even trains in my native country, which is generally fairly undeveloped are a lot more dependable. Trains in the UK are regularly late, cancelled, broken due to the slightest change in weather that's fairly typical of the UK, overcrowded, slow etc. etc. Maybe it was even worse before, but if this is what 'a lot better' looks like, then the private industry has a long way to go. I think there's plenty of room for private industry, but am not sure essential public transportation is one of them. German trains are a lot better run, (have family there presently, so can speak to that) and while they're technically owned by a private company, the state is the single shareholder there. Perhaps the problem was that in the UK, like in the US, there's a strong desire to underfund and underpower public programs to be able to then point to them and say how they 'don't work' - the same has been the case for the NHS as well, which btw now has huge contracts with private companies like Virgin Health, who sue and waste public funds if they don't get a contract rather than conclude that their offering simply wasn't good enough in the 'free market'. That's besides the point that there's no such thing as a 'free market' for most people, because most of us aren't of means enough to simply pack up and leave if there's no good train/ISP... choices in our area for example, nor do most of us have the ability to start our own.
tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
Light rail may be more expensive than a bus, but it also tends to provides a higher comfort level (in terms of vibration/acceleration).

radicalbyte 7y ago

Privatized trains are worse, in the UK they've just given the go ahead for a $140 billion high speed rail project, HS2. A decade ago we build HS1, a 67 mile track between London and the Channel Tunnel, for a total of $7.6 billion ($112m / mile). HS2 is longer but its 330 miles of tracks will cost $400m / mile. The project costs make absolutely no sense: London is a special weird place in the UK where everything you build is twice as expensive as in the rest of the country. Considering most of HS1 was in London and most of HS2 is outside of London, this budget makes absolutely no sense. What makes the whole thing even more insane is that the endpoints are not connected to the rest of the infrastructure. You have a 30 minute trip between HS1 and HS2. So if you're travelling from Birmingham to Paris you'll have to switch trains in London. For the money they're spending on this it's crazy that you're not getting it.

captainbland 7y ago
My understanding is that basically HS2 is massively over-specced compared to HS1. It wants high throughput and extremely high speed (80-100mph faster than HS1). I guess you could probably shave a few tens of billions off just by slowing the line down a bit - using ballast rather than concrete slab and such. See: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51415590 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51415590 The only other thing I'd add is that Euston is easily within walking distance of St Pancras. But given all this already extraordinary cost it seems like you might as well connect St Pancras and Euston HS lines and have the odd Eurostar service run from Birmingham.
- radicalbyte 7y ago
  The Euston - St Pancras thing is OK if you're commuting for work distance wise - it's just adding 15 mins to your journey when it should be 30 seconds. For travellers who don't know London, who have to lug around baggage and small children it's a massive pain. It's well worth the effort to connect it. It would already be way better even if you had to switch train in one station.
prennert 7y ago
From what I understand HS2 was planned to become very similar to the tube with 18 trains per hour. This is more that one every 4 minutes. The trains would also run very fast. This allows for caring lots of passengers, but it also is very complex to achieve and accounts for a lot of the costs (as well as buying property). Also inflation had to be taken into account when comparing projects that are decades apart. So without knowing much about the details, it might well be that the costs are plausible to what was proposed.
- 45ure 7y ago
  >From what I understand HS2 was planned to become very similar to the tube with 18 trains per hour. The comparison of HS2 with 18 paths per hour in each direction, on an overground rail system stretching over 320 miles, running at high speed (theoretical uppper speed limit of 250mph), with the London Underground, is laughable. I could not find any references to your claim in the official documents. The project was never about speed, but rather about increasing capacity. It was packaged and sold to the voters as shaving off some time to get from A to B, largely due to politrickery. The aim is to free up commuter, regional and freight capacity on existing lines ─ which will also have an overall impact on roads and motorway nework used by freight carriers. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/480646/supplement-to-strategic-case.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
  - prennert 7y ago
    I meant to compare mainly from a user perspective. If a train runs every 4 mins and takes a bit more than an hour to get to it's destination that's very similar to the tube experience. Very different to a typical train experience where you have to turn up exactly in time or wait another 30 mins for the next train. The point I was trying to make was that a comparison to HS1 without accounting for the train frequency is probably not fair.
Camas 7y ago
What does HS2 have to do with private rail?
- radicalbyte 7y ago
  Trains are privatized in the UK. Maybe this project is being built with public money but it will eventually be privatized.
  - Camas 7y ago
    Trains are privatised, not the tracks.

AsyncAwait 7y ago

> Because politics. Trains are very national in the EU Ah, of course, it's the 'free market' that's the solution. I mean it's complete shit in the UK, where I live, but am sure that's just an outlier. The U.S. healthcare industry is a strong proof that the private model for essential services works flawlessly and now there's Reds again running in the election campaigning for 'Medicare for All'. Outrageous.

Mountain_Skies 7y ago
Sarcasm can be a useful tool at times but it is very much over used these days. You'll likely find your point better received if you are just straightforward with it.
thu2111 7y ago
Trains in the UK got a lot better after privatisation, and of course we're discussing how they're not competitive against the airline industry which is significantly more free market again. So your point isn't landing. Yes. Globalised and freer markets are a solution to this. In fact it's what the article advocates, more or less.
- AsyncAwait 7y ago
  > Trains in the UK got a lot better after privatisation, I don't expect my point to be landing with free market Regonomists, but seriously? I mean even trains in my native country, which is generally fairly undeveloped are a lot more dependable. Trains in the UK are regularly late, cancelled, broken due to the slightest change in weather that's fairly typical of the UK, overcrowded, slow etc. etc. Maybe it was even worse before, but if this is what 'a lot better' looks like, then the private industry has a long way to go. I think there's plenty of room for private industry, but am not sure essential public transportation is one of them. German trains are a lot better run, (have family there presently, so can speak to that) and while they're technically owned by a private company, the state is the single shareholder there. Perhaps the problem was that in the UK, like in the US, there's a strong desire to underfund and underpower public programs to be able to then point to them and say how they 'don't work' - the same has been the case for the NHS as well, which btw now has huge contracts with private companies like Virgin Health, who sue and waste public funds if they don't get a contract rather than conclude that their offering simply wasn't good enough in the 'free market'. That's besides the point that there's no such thing as a 'free market' for most people, because most of us aren't of means enough to simply pack up and leave if there's no good train/ISP... choices in our area for example, nor do most of us have the ability to start our own.

tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago

Light rail may be more expensive than a bus, but it also tends to provides a higher comfort level (in terms of vibration/acceleration).