30 ms·

How trains could replace planes in Europe

293 points by edward 5y ago

Robotbeat 5y ago
Rail is like twice as expensive as plane, even in Europe.
thehappypm 5y ago
Trains routes are great as individual entities. I shouldn’t need to fly from Boston to New York or Philly to DC. Individual pairs of cities might benefit from rail. Rail as a total societal solution seems crazy to me, like how is someone in Norway supposed to use a train to get to Greece?
poulsbohemian 5y ago
I must be missing the punch line here... it's only been the last decade or so that planes became cheap to travel across Europe, whereas train travel has been ubiquitous for decades, if not a century. Sure, they might not be as fast as planes, but they are part of the experience.
- oneplane 5y ago
  Sometimes I enjoy the experience, but sometimes I just want to not waste more than 40 minutes on travel time. I suppose that's just comfort/ease at the expense of emissions.
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    Five hours on a train between two cities are five hours of focused work on a laptop for me. With an enjoyable view and a lunch break. Compare it with flight where you spend half of the time not using your laptop or without connectivity. After COVID, how many people can do remote work? Don't underestimate the percentage of population that can use the time on a train in good ways.
    - elygre 5y ago
      Yes, that! On Monday, I will travel from Basel to Berlin. By train, that’s eight continuous hours of work or whatever. By trains it’s a bus, security controls, a somewhat stressful waiting period for birding, cramped seating, waiting for luggage, waiting for a train. The three hours saved are likely to not be all that useful, since I always have a somewhat higher stress level when I fly. So, train it is.
  - olah_1 5y ago
    How realistic is it that existing train lines get upgraded to super speed trains like they have in Japan?
    - isbvhodnvemrwvn 5y ago
      Not realistic.
    - baq 5y ago
      utter fantasy in the near term (10 years or so), a far fetched idea long term unless serious EU-wide legislation is introduced, which will surely be opposed by every single nation.
    - johnchristopher 5y ago
      With Brussels and Belgium in the middle of the grid? Unlikely. (belgian here)
      - bregma 5y ago
        Belgium, as much a wonderland for trains as it is for beer? Brussels, which is a stop on several bullet-train-equivalent high-speed lines (Thalys, Eurostar, ICE, TGV)? If anything, putting Brussels in the centre of the high speed rail net is a good reason for it to succeed.
        johnchristopher 5y ago
        > Brussels, which is a stop on several bullet-train-equivalent high-speed lines (Thalys, Eurostar, ICE, TGV)? Yep, that one with such tight schedules you have to systematically compensate for delays happening 3 out of 5 times by booking a train earlier than your planned connection. It cost me many hours and stress for three years when I was regularly going from East belgium to Paris/Lille. Getting to Brussels or going from Brussels should be okay but may god help you if you want to make a connection in Brussels. > If anything, putting Brussels in the centre of the high speed rail net is a good reason for it to succeed. I doubt it. It's often said of the Brussels railways hub that it is totally saturated: not enough lanes and it's impossible to add more. Among commuters it's said as a fact but I don't know if it could be improved and if it's an urban legend rehashed to ramble on late trains. My personal experience reflects that though.
  - poulsbohemian 5y ago
    Totally agree - this perspective that one replaces the other doesn't make sense as while they both provide "travel" they do so with different tradeoffs.
  - laumars 5y ago
    The boarding and departure adds a fair chunk of time to that too. Trains are a lot more convenient in that regard.
    - VBprogrammer 5y ago
      I agree that it's more convenient, generally less time wasted in security theater and enforced shopping experience. That said, at least when you get on an airplane and it leaves the gate you have a pretty decent chance of making it to your destination when you expect to. Certainly with British trains it feels like your chance of arriving on time (to 15 minutes or so) are about 50/50.
      - pmyteh 5y ago
        Actually >90% within 10 mins (long distance) or 5 mins (short). [0] Very dependent on what route you take, though. And far from Swiss or Japanese levels of punctuality. [0]: https://www.networkrail.co.uk/who-we-are/how-we-work/performance/railway-performance/public-performance-measure-and-delay-responsibility/ https://www.networkrail.co.uk/who-we-are/how-we-work/perform...
        VBprogrammer 5y ago
        Yeah, lies damn lies and statistics and all that. I'm sure the majority of journeys aren't long distance journeys you'd otherwise replace with flight. Certainly 50/50 was a bit of a exaggeration but when I regularly traveled between Glasgow/Edinburgh and London it wasn't far off. I received a lot of vouchers for free travel.
        pmyteh 5y ago
        It's a National Statistic (subject to auditing and rigorous oversight from the ONS) so 'lies' is way off the mark. What it may do is not match your experiences (it varies a lot by time of day etc.), or be perfectly defined for the replacing-flights question. Both LNER (east coast) and Avanti (west coast) are fairly ordinary in long-distance terms. If the question was, say, Exeter to Newcastle by Cross Country I'd expect more extensive delays. Anyway, you can explore the data (including breakdowns by quarter, by long distance vs commuter, and by operating company).[0] [0]: https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/statistics/performance/passenger-rail-performance/table-3114-public-performance-measure-by-operator-and-sector-periodic/ https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/statistics/performance/passeng...
  - Macha 5y ago
    So airlines generally recommend you get there 1 hour for a EU internal flight before your flight for security/etc. Pre-covid you could usually get away with less at a lot of airports, but even if that didn't eat up your time, I think for up to almost two hours of extra travel time I'd rather avoid the airport and all the hassle associated with modern air travel.
    - rad_gruchalski 5y ago
      If you travel often, it makes sense to invest in fast track. You skip all the security theatre. Also, for example TGV requires you to be at the check in 20 minutes before. You’re a bit late, you’re screwed. Even if the train hasn’t arrived yet.
      - progval 5y ago
        > Also, for example TGV requires you to be at the check in 20 minutes before. Where? For TGV Inoui (the main brand) you have to be in the train 2 minutes before (written on any ticket, also here: https://www.sncf.com/fr/offres-voyageurs/voyager-en-train/tgv-inoui/votre-voyage/votre-embarquement https://www.sncf.com/fr/offres-voyageurs/voyager-en-train/tg...), and that's all. People flow through the gate up to the last minute. It has been like this for at least a decade. For TGV Ouigo (low-cost brand), it seems to be 30 minutes according to https://www.ouigo.com/faq?question=ai-je-pense-a-tous-avant-partir https://www.ouigo.com/faq?question=ai-je-pense-a-tous-avant-... I never understood this constraint with Ouigo though; it's obviously possible to skip it as shown by Inoui trains... and both are operated by the same company from the same train stations.
        rad_gruchalski 5y ago
        > Where? In Brussels.
        kergonath 5y ago
        The only case I have seen like this is the Eurostar, but that is because of customs checks, border controls, etc, which don’t exist within the Schengen area. This is a very specific case and is not representative of how most people travel by train in Europe. You don’t have to come particularly early for the Thalys in Paris, for example.
  - pmyteh 5y ago
    Trains already beat planes in practice for city-to-city journeys with a train time of <3h, because of the time of getting to and from airports, checkin etc. London-Paris flights were decimated when the channel tunnel opened, for instance. And rail will have a decent share (on price, atmosphere, or ability to work while traveling) up to about 4.5h. Beyond that it's much harder to justify.
    - logifail 5y ago
      > Trains already beat planes in practice for city-to-city journeys with a train time of <3h, because of the time of getting to and from airports, checkin etc ...and then politicians such as Ursula von der Leyen hop in their jets. This summer the EU Commission President took a 19 minute(!) flight from Vienna to Bratislava (the two cities are ~60km apart) in a private yet, but still managed to be driven ~60km by road during the transfers from central Vienna out to VIE airport and from BTS airport back to central Bratislava. https://www.diepresse.com/6055894/kritik-an-19-minuten-flug-von-der-leyen-flog-von-wien-nach-bratislava https://www.diepresse.com/6055894/kritik-an-19-minuten-flug-...
      - mathverse 5y ago
        Did she continue her trip from BTS on plane?
        freeflight 5y ago
        > A spokesman for the EU Commission justified the flight to the "Bild" newspaper: "With departure and arrival in Belgium, the President's trip took seven countries in two days. Alternatives were examined, but there was no other logistical option." That same evening von der Leyen flew to Riga in a private plane.
      - oneplane 5y ago
        That's a weird one. I wonder what the details of that case were. Without any context it seems pretty dumb to drive 60Km and Fly 60Km when you could have just driven that 60Km of flying instead.
- josefx 5y ago
  > Sure, they might not be as fast as planes, but they are part of the experience. Recently had to plan a trip from Germany to Portugal. It would have been a full 48 hours by train. I think I would have stopped at almost every significant Spanish city on the way there. Going by the map in the article they are already working on some much needed additions to the rail network in that area.
  - briffle 5y ago
    Its the same problem with long haul trips in the US. Chicago to Seattle is something like 44 hours, with nearly 40 stops. each one of those stops the train has to slow down, stop, wait for a time, then accelerate. Most of those towns are TINY. These 5 in WI are within about 90 min of each other: Columbus, WI (CBS) Portage, WI (POG) Wisconsin Dells, WI (WDL) Tomah, WI (TOH) La Crosse, WI (LSE) There are 7 stops in ND. Can you name 7 cities in North Dakota? But for political reasons, they have to have stops in all those towns, to get congress to approve their funding.
    - curiousllama 5y ago
      Living in Chicago, it always surprised me how, despite being a rail hub, it was totally impractical to take a train to another city (except Milwaukee). Flying or driving was almost always faster, and often cheaper.
      - gautamdivgi 5y ago
        If you live in the burbs you're probably still better off driving to Milwaukee. Parking in Chicago itself would be more than the fuel charges and you're not reducing emissions since the track isn't electric anyway.
    - coryrc 5y ago
      I've ridden this route several times. The main riders of that line are to or from the small towns along that route to a big town a state or two over. People drive or get dropped off at the station from the whole region. Remove those and you aren't going to have many customers.
CrlNvl 5y ago
French here: I think the conclusion is flawed. Many operators won't simplify the life of the EU citizen, per the article itself: > Then there is ticketing. Because systems are incompatible, only a few agencies sell rail tickets across the entire continent. As for refunds, operators are responsible only for the portion of the trip on their own trains. So if your DB train to Frankfurt is late to your french TGV to Strasbourg, then your TGV won't be compensated. And you'll have to buy a new ticket. Some guys tried their hands to be a European train ticket reseller (Captain Train, now owned by Trainline and way less effective than it was before), but it is not an easy feat.
- Svip 5y ago
  That's a political issue, not a technical one. And one that can be solved with political will. A decade ago, I would not have been so optimistic, but these days, even politicians are talking about the necessity of transcontinental rail routes.
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  > Some guys tried their hands to be a European train ticket reseller (Captain Train, now owned by Trainline and way less effective than it was before), but it is not an easy feat. Jungan weird how I came across this tweet yesterday: https://twitter.com/Signez/status/1458054003795939332?t=FtMBl_dsDYPvS0nDpP7V8g&s=19 https://twitter.com/Signez/status/1458054003795939332?t=FtMB...
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 5y ago
  I've heard that there was some sort of a standard being developed on the EU level, but it basically drowns in bureaucracy, and the API calls are effectively free-for-all key-value objects where everyone can implement them as they see fit.
  - estebank 5y ago
    As much of a cynic I can be, I believe that if there's a supra-national organism capable of addressing such a problem as cross-country rail coordination, it's the EU. As many ills there are in the banking system in the EU, transferring money even across countries between individuals is a much more seamless experience than in other places, in large part, if not entirely, thanks to EU legislation. Things like abolition of roaming fees is another example. You can of course point at the fake "bendy bananas" UK tabloid bullshit pushed by the likes of their current PM for easy laughs, or at the cookie banners prevalent on every site that collects more than a service level log of visitors to be skeptical, but I still think improving the situation of rail in Europe can be done in reasonable ways.
mathverse 5y ago
Every year EU is becoming less and less livable for a middle class engineer. The writing has been on the wall for some time already but it is time to consider other options.
- sho_hn 5y ago
  Could you explain how this news relates to your point? I'm curious.
  - mathverse 5y ago
    Simply the fact that trains can replace planes is laughable. In EU? That’s just hilarious. There is an increasing amount of policies that decrease quality of life.
    - dewey 5y ago
      How exactly is improving train infrastructure decreasing the quality of life for you?
      - jhgb 5y ago
        Maybe he's an aerospace engineer...
      - mathverse 5y ago
        The message is literally about "replacing planes with trains". It's not about improving the infrastructure enough to go toe to toe against planes.
      - meragrin_ 5y ago
        Rail is not being improved for the sake of improving it. It is being improved because they eventually intend to make air travel too expensive for most people.
        dewey 5y ago
akamaka 5y ago
The article should have mentioned some of the mega-projects that are already underway, which will improve rail links between European countries. The Stuttgart 21 project will reconfigure the Stuttgart central station to create a direct line between Paris and Vienna. Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link will build a new undersea rail tunnel between Denmark and Germany, allowing Sweden to operate night trains to Brussels. In Switzerland, several new tunnels under the alps beginning operation this year will cut travel time to Italy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fehmarn_Belt_Fixed_Link https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fehmarn_Belt_Fixed_Link https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceneri_Base_Tunnel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceneri_Base_Tunnel
- lqet 5y ago
  Well, Stuttgart 21 is not exactly a project you want to dig up when you want to advertise train travel. The reason of course is that most people at least in Germany associate it with the highly controversial rebuilding of Stuttgart main station [0], although the rest of the project is pretty reasonable. What is also missing from your list is the fact that the main feeder line for the Gotthard base tunnel, and one of the most important railway lines in Europe, the Rhine valley railway [1], is extremely overloaded with over 300 trains per day, and the ongoing extension, which was planned in the 70ies and 80ies and for which construction work started in 1987 will not be finished before 2041 (!) [2]. It was originally planned to be finished in 2002. In 2016, the line was capped for days because the rail company (DB) chopped down some trees which were specifically planted in the 19th century to stabilize the ground (which DB was unaware of), resulting in a massive landslide [3]. In 2017, it was capped again for 2 months because of a collapse of a tunnel under construction by DB and crossing the existing line underground [4, 5]. In 2020, it was capped again because a bridge which DB planned to replace with a longer one crashed onto the rails and into a train, killing the driver [6] and nearly missing a high speed ICE train. If the embarrasing engineering failures continue at this rate, I doubt they will finish the extension in the 21rst century. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_Hauptbahnhof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_Hauptbahnhof [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannheim%E2%80%93Karlsruhe%E2%80%93Basel_railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannheim%E2%80%93Karlsruhe%E2%... [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ausbau-_und_Neubaustrecke_Karlsruhe%E2%80%93Basel https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ausbau-_und_Neubaustrecke_Karl... [3] https://ais.badische-zeitung.de/piece/07/36/42/b1/120996529-h-720.jpg https://ais.badische-zeitung.de/piece/07/36/42/b1/120996529-... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rastatt_Tunnel#August_2017_collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rastatt_Tunnel#August_2017_col... [5] https://bilder3.n-tv.de/img/incoming/origs19996186/8312795961-w0-h0/7df7eec7af8688f5a377b39f7d94bef5.jpg https://bilder3.n-tv.de/img/incoming/origs19996186/831279596... [6] https://www.schwaebische.de/cms_media/module_img/12646/6323334_1_tablet_Mit_einem_grossen_Autokran_wird_an_einer_Unfallstelle_eine_havarierte_Lokomotive_bei_Auggen_geborgen._Foto_Patrick_Seeger_dpa_Archivbild.jpg https://www.schwaebische.de/cms_media/module_img/12646/63233...
timwaagh 5y ago
I don't think they will be able to make it work. It's becoming ever more obvious that trains are monopolistic, require extensive infrastructure et cetera. On top of that they are slow, people just don't have the time to waste it on trains. I don't think we should be going backwards in time towards slow sleeper trains (where only perhaps an experienced Russian will catch a bit of shut eye). We should be moving forward towards high speed train moving at 500 or hyperloops that stand a chance versus a plane. Or just cleaning up the airplane space through more extensive use of biofuels, hydrogen and electric (for distances smaller than 300km).
- dash2 5y ago
  Don't worry. Europe is great at making monopoly, backwardness and technological regress "work"....
  - timwaagh 5y ago
    I know it's not so easy here policy wise. The general debate is a discussion on how to shoot ourselves in the foot with the most elan. But then you look at other places. And there maybe they are still growing and people have the right priorities. But that might be because these places are mostly just dirty and poor and everywhere is filled with cheaply built appartment blocks. At least there's something to look at here on your lazy Sunday afternoon.
- unethical_ban 5y ago
  Air travel also requires extensive infrastructure, only at airports. Are these train plans outlined not bullet trains?
  - timwaagh 5y ago
    As the article says it's too expensive to do much of that. Maybe a little will be done, but those will just be slightly faster trains running at 200 kph, not like a bullet train. The EU has little money and the nationals invest mostly in national infra.
sktrdie 5y ago
I still find it weird that planes are cheaper than trains even for quite small distances. London -> Berlin? Paris -> Madrid? Hell even Rome -> Milan is cheaper to fly. I would love to start contributing less to emissions and take trains even though they take more time but they gotta start taxing planes and making trains cheaper to make people start doing it.
- abyssin 5y ago
  What we need to do is make planes more expensive, instead of making trains cheaper. That would be relatively easy, but people wouldn’t like it because they want change that doesn’t affect their lifestyle. But if we’re to take climate change seriously, all lifestyles have to change radically.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    We should subsidize one and tax the other. Yes, flying needs to suck, but travel doesn't need to suck. Don't be too self-flagellist about this. If we really subsidize trains, we will induce enough demand to make investments look better in nominal terms and shift the culture/politics by normalizing way more rail travel. Easy victory. A problem is the Europeans are prudish about printing money with their bad ordoliberal EU Constitution.
    - HPsquared 5y ago
      Trains over long distances are always going to suck relative to planes, unless they're something like maglev or other ultra high speed design.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        "Suck" for certain dimensions. Travel is slower. Which can equate to cheaper (e.g. long distance buses) or can equate to roomier with more luxury--and more expensive. But there's not a lot of market these days for expensive, luxurious travel that takes a long time.
      - 5y ago
logifail 5y ago
How about the Brenner Base Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenner_Base_Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenner_Base_Tunnel We've been lucky enough to visit the tunnel system just south of Innsbruck, it's really impressive. We were taken in by bus(!) and allowed to explore on foot during an open day. Amazing stuff, the kids were blown away... :) On the positive side, the Austrians are pressing ahead with expanding the rail lines through Tyrol towards Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Lower_Inn_Valley_railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Lower_Inn_Valley_railway On the negative side, the Germans seem to have done nothing much to expand the railway on their side of the border. Once you cross over the border from Kufstein(AT) to Kiefersfelden(DE) heading north you're back down to a pair of tracks...
- RGamma 5y ago
  Die Bahn is an unmitigated clusterfuck[1]. The money comes and comes, gets wasted, yet no heads ever roll. I met someone who managed a local train station (network) for a few years. He told me a story of hilarious bureaucracy, metric gaming (mostly for evasion of sanctions for missed deadlines), people just not showing up while being covered by their union, construction firms delaying construction because it's just "Die Bahn". Then he quit and was paid for months despite expired contract. Later he got a legal threat for owing them wages... Although pay seems quite good and you get 40days vacation, well good for them I guess. [1] You might even call it a slow-motion trainwreck badumm-ts
  - elygre 5y ago
    Sure, let’s share stories. I’ll counter with the recently opened new BER airport. The construction process disaster even got its own podcast.
    - RGamma 5y ago
      There's tons of crap like that. Just now found there's yet another public transportation-related money sink in Berlin currently: https://www.schwarzbuch.de/aufgedeckt/steuergeldverschwendung-alle-faelle/details/zob-der-kleine-ber https://www.schwarzbuch.de/aufgedeckt/steuergeldverschwendun... It's a frustrating affair quite frankly and bad for my heart.
rjsw 5y ago
Another base tunnel is the Mont d'Ambin [1] one between France and Italy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_d%27Ambin_Base_Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_d%27Ambin_Base_Tunnel
lwn 5y ago
I'd love to see the Orient express being revived. I'd much rather take a train than plane. The trip itself is more like an adventure.
lobochrome 5y ago
I find it curious that one solution to improve these networks suggested is to unbundle infrastructure from operations. Sure on paper it makes sense, but neither Japan nor Switzerland went that way and those are the best rail systems in the world (at least as far as my personal experience goes).
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  and moreover, the UK did go that way, and by all accounts it has been a total disaster.
josephcsible 5y ago
I wish we'd spend more time trying to electrify planes, and less time trying to replace faster means of transportation with slower ones.
globalise83 5y ago
I think it would make a lot more technical, economic and environmental sense to make air travel greener and quieter through regulation and investment in Europe's world-class aerospace industry rather than attempt to build integrated high-speed rail across the continent at vast cost and over huge delays spent negotiating with different landowner every 200 meters.
f6v 5y ago
Well, yes. But actually, no. Unless someone can completely change the way train companies operate across Europe. Getting somewhere on time? You have a 50:50 chance when traveling with DeutscheBahn and the likes.
radu_floricica 5y ago
Wonder if all of this is about to become obsolete in 20 years. Consider the following: - Electric cars will very soon have a lower total cost of ownership, and dramatically lower cost per mile. - Self driving cars are coming. They may have restrictions at first, but they're coming. - The Boring Company is quietly working on fast tunneling. This doesn't get nearly enough press, but it's the last very important ingredient. Not for the whole way, but to solve congestion in and around cities. So when I picture the future I don't think we'll be taking trains. I think we'll take cheap, save and extremely convenient driverless ubers as far as a few hundred miles away. As for farther away? We'll take the same uber to an airport. Sure, you can fuel the planes with carbon neutral fuel, but we're still over 30 years away from replacing jets as main transportation for longer distances. Nor should we - it simply makes sense to fly that far.
- pornel 5y ago
  Trains like Shinkansen can run at 200mph while offering more space than a business class flight. They're already electric (and pretty much self-driving). I'd rather have that than a 50-70mph journey in a toilet-sized space. Rolling resistance of tires is a limitation here that won't go away with electric/self-driving cars.
  - radu_floricica 5y ago
    Most if the investment in trains is the terrain under the rails, which is already made. Converting all existing routes to high speed is a no brainer, which will be delayed beyond all reasonable duration just because they're all government organizations. Probably much longer than it'll take us to have driverless medium-distance ubers. I compared trains to airplanes recently - from Vienna to Swizerland by train because a plane was a bit too expensive. I like trains, but it was not a pleasant experience: - boarding was about as fussy as with airports, maybe a bit more so since I had to stow my own luggage. - I had to change trains 3 times, moving a 20 kg luggage and a 10 kg backpack with often as little as 8 minute leeway in an unknown train station - did not have significantly more room, surprising enough. A seat is a seat, and you can go to the bathroom just as easily in a plane - did I mention it took 8 hours? I don't think cars will be a contender for the long range, not soon. You're right with rolling distance, and also air drag. They don't go well over 100-150 mph. But if their range increases enough, they might just squeeze trains out of their niche. Trains lose hard to ubers on short trips, and to planes on longer ones. They're already subsidized by the government. With any less passengers, and a strong need of upgrading to very high speed, it may start to make sense to drop a lot of them and focus on the rest.
notjes 5y ago
Bikes could replace Trains. The world is literally devolving into the stone age.
iddan 5y ago
I wish there was peace in the region I live in and I could’ve taken a train to Europe instead of a plane.
dependsontheq 5y ago
In general it's mostly a behavioral thing, if you get used to train trips they become easier and the way you use your time becomes very efficient. Two weeks ago I traveled to Antwerpen from Nuremberg in Bavaria and back in three days. A plane might have saved me three hours in real time, but that is not worth the carbon emission or the lack of "place" for me. Of course I would't take a 40 hour train trip to Portugal, but I took a one day trip from our home to Bordeaux with two small kids and that worked quite brilliant. Next week I will go by sleeper train to Neapel, visit Pompeii stay for a night and go back by sleeper train. I don't know, it has it's problems and there are a lot of things that go wrong but it also has feeling of "place" of change. Even on business trips I don't have the feeling of somehow switching between arbitrary grey meeting rooms with a plane. I think there are a lot of things that can become better but the international lines have already become much better in the last years and one reason is just that you have Apps to navigate any kind of public transport.
paganel 5y ago
They won't, there's no train that can transport me from Bucharest (where I live) to Northern Italy (Bergamo, to be more precise) for just 15-20 euros, and this if we decide to ignore the big time differences between a plane flight and riding the train. I love trains and I'm still a little afraid of flying and I would love for this advent of train transport all over the continent to be true, but the reality of the matter is that the physics go against it. What will probably happen is that the lower-income people will be forced to travel way less while being promised (through articles like this one) that the incoming changes won't be qualitatively different from what we used to know before the pandemic came. The same goes for car transport, which will also start to become more and more a luxury.
- fock 5y ago
  last I knew (went the other way), there should be a night-train to Vienna (only seated, because not fashionable anymore) and then there is definitely a route you can book to Bergamo. Problem for the first part (no straight way): rail in yugoslavia is dead except for CCP construction. Problem for the second part the alps. Still, one could probably do Bucharest-Belgrad-Zagreb-Triest-Verona with a very cheap nighttrain (there are rails, so there's no insurmountable problems: https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/38581/train-from-belgrade-to-bucharest https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/38581/train-from-...). Should be fine for travelling, I think noone should need to commute such a distance anyway...
  - bserge 5y ago
    At which point you could just forget the train and take a bus. Bucharest has buses to practically anywhere in the EU.
  - paganel 5y ago
    I know that some part of it is doable, technically, it's only that increasing the prices of plane tickets until making them non-viable for most of the population will most probably kill the city break industry in Europe. I know it sounds like a first world problem, which in a way it is, but (very) cheap flights combined with no roaming charges were one of the few, concrete things that were actually helping make the European Union an actual distinct political entity. Almost no-one here in the EU actually cares about the European Parliament or about the European politicians and the like, but we greatly appreciate that we can go from Bucharest to Madrid or from Prague to Stockholm almost at a moment's notice and without paying an arm and a leg for it (or at least that was how things were before the pandemic), all this while using our phone in all those locations like we were on our couch at home. I'm afraid that taking that all away will greatly reduce the little European spirit cohesiveness that had managed to get built as a result of what I described above (cheap European flights, no roaming fees), and we certainly need the best and greatest European spirit cohesiveness in these interesting times.
whinvik 5y ago
This sounds great in theory. But rail services are very inefficient monopolies. Here in Germany, DB Services are routinely affected by strikes leaving no alternatives. So no trains cannot replace planes unless this situation is improved.
diebeforei485 5y ago
Night trains are a great idea for tourists. They are usually very comfortable and you can save on a hotel night if you can find a place to store your bags. And kids seem to tolerate them better than airplanes.
inglor_cz 5y ago
There are at least two tourist-y routes where planes cannot feasibly be replaced: Northern Europe to Greece and Northern Europe to Spanish resort regions (Andalucia and Canary Islands). Taking a train from Stockholm to Málaga or Athens won't be realistic for years, if not decades. Taking a train from Stockholm to Tenerife is out of question entirely. Without tourists, these places will become a very, very bad periphery of the EU. Already the nominal unemployment is high, but lots of locals are employed "under the table" in catering and accomodation.
neonate 5y ago
https://archive.md/va1aE https://archive.md/va1aE
donatj 5y ago
Article I read in 2014: > Trains are such an indispensable motif in Atlas Shrugged, that, when some of Rand’s acolytes produced a slavishly faithful film adaptation of her book set in the present day, they had to invent a convoluted rationale involving resource shortages and industrial disasters to explain how railroads had once again become the dominant form of long-distance transportation. Well… that aged… interestingly. https://harpers.org/2014/06/ayn-rands-rapture-of-the-rails/ https://harpers.org/2014/06/ayn-rands-rapture-of-the-rails/
whatever1 5y ago
They cannot scale to achieve the airplane QoS, stop this insanity. Planes not only are faster, but they require far less infrastructure, and we can stack vertically and spread horizontally their routes, having multiple parallel trips without sacrificing precious land. How many hours does it take to travel by train from Italy to the UK accounting all of the stops? A multiple of the 4 hours trip that a plane does. It’s like asking whether bicycles can replace airplanes for continental travel. Theoretically yes, practically no.
alexott 5y ago
As traveling a lot on trains in Germany - it’s a joke. Trains are are late so you miss connections, cancelled on short notice, etc. I never know if get to airport on time when I use train. You can easily half hour late on 1 hour trip…
holoduke 5y ago
From Amsterdam to London takes about 4 hours by train. More or the less the same with a plane. And you can actually sit comfortable with internet in a train.
11thEarlOfMar 5y ago
Certainly anecdotes abound, but I once took a German Wings flight from Cologne to London for US$18. The taxi from the airport to my hotel, less than 5 miles from the airport, was US$27.
spitfire 5y ago
What are people using to book/look up train travel? I just tried to find a London to Belgrade route and absolutely none of the planners I found via DDG were capable. They'd all gladly sell me a pass, but none told me what station to leave/arrive from what time the trains were, etc.
deleted 5y ago
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m0zg 5y ago
A few years ago I was visiting in Switzerland, and thought I'd go and spend a few days in Paris. I could not do so because SNCF (French rail, basically) was on strike and it wasn't clear whether I'd be able to get back in time for my flight. I was told by a friend of mine in Zurich this happens quite a bit with SNCF. Which is to say that if I were in Europe, I'd prefer to have several transportation options, which hopefully would not coordinate their labor strikes, rather than be stuck only with trains.
AtlasBarfed 5y ago
In the US, self-driving cars on highways can effectively replace a huge amount of short hop flights. Way cheaper (especially for EVs) Faster for flights under 300-400 miles (especially if you need to get a rental car on the other end). More cargo/luggage Leave when you want Have a car (your car) when you get there Once highway driving is sufficiently safe to sleep at night, look out. With convergent evolution of infrastructure, good AI, it will be pretty safe. And if you have a small RV so you don't even need a hotel on the other end? With Starlink and a fold-out solar array so you can charge without even being hooked up?
kerberos84 5y ago
In the article : "Yet only 8% of the distance travelled by land in the EU is by rail. Even in the most train-happy countries, Austria and the Netherlands, the figures are 13% and 11%. In those countries, more than 75% of land travel is done by car. " Yes, more than 75% of land travel is done by car because trains are incredibly expensive. yet I see in the discussions that we should make flying more expensive. Trains are not really competing with airplanes, but personal cars!
paulsmal 5y ago
Midnight Trains[0] plans "hotel style" sleeper trains radiating from Paris, first train launching in 2024. [0] https://www.midnight-trains.com/en/home https://www.midnight-trains.com/en/home
Proven 5y ago
Trains... Not good enough. Give them bicycles, please.

293 points by edward 5y ago

Rail is like twice as expensive as plane, even in Europe.

Trains routes are great as individual entities. I shouldn’t need to fly from Boston to New York or Philly to DC. Individual pairs of cities might benefit from rail. Rail as a total societal solution seems crazy to me, like how is someone in Norway supposed to use a train to get to Greece?

poulsbohemian 5y ago

I must be missing the punch line here... it's only been the last decade or so that planes became cheap to travel across Europe, whereas train travel has been ubiquitous for decades, if not a century. Sure, they might not be as fast as planes, but they are part of the experience.

oneplane 5y ago
Sometimes I enjoy the experience, but sometimes I just want to not waste more than 40 minutes on travel time. I suppose that's just comfort/ease at the expense of emissions.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  Five hours on a train between two cities are five hours of focused work on a laptop for me. With an enjoyable view and a lunch break. Compare it with flight where you spend half of the time not using your laptop or without connectivity. After COVID, how many people can do remote work? Don't underestimate the percentage of population that can use the time on a train in good ways.
  - elygre 5y ago
    Yes, that! On Monday, I will travel from Basel to Berlin. By train, that’s eight continuous hours of work or whatever. By trains it’s a bus, security controls, a somewhat stressful waiting period for birding, cramped seating, waiting for luggage, waiting for a train. The three hours saved are likely to not be all that useful, since I always have a somewhat higher stress level when I fly. So, train it is.
- olah_1 5y ago
  How realistic is it that existing train lines get upgraded to super speed trains like they have in Japan?
  - isbvhodnvemrwvn 5y ago
    Not realistic.
  - baq 5y ago
    utter fantasy in the near term (10 years or so), a far fetched idea long term unless serious EU-wide legislation is introduced, which will surely be opposed by every single nation.
  - johnchristopher 5y ago
    With Brussels and Belgium in the middle of the grid? Unlikely. (belgian here)
    - bregma 5y ago
      Belgium, as much a wonderland for trains as it is for beer? Brussels, which is a stop on several bullet-train-equivalent high-speed lines (Thalys, Eurostar, ICE, TGV)? If anything, putting Brussels in the centre of the high speed rail net is a good reason for it to succeed.
      - johnchristopher 5y ago
        > Brussels, which is a stop on several bullet-train-equivalent high-speed lines (Thalys, Eurostar, ICE, TGV)? Yep, that one with such tight schedules you have to systematically compensate for delays happening 3 out of 5 times by booking a train earlier than your planned connection. It cost me many hours and stress for three years when I was regularly going from East belgium to Paris/Lille. Getting to Brussels or going from Brussels should be okay but may god help you if you want to make a connection in Brussels. > If anything, putting Brussels in the centre of the high speed rail net is a good reason for it to succeed. I doubt it. It's often said of the Brussels railways hub that it is totally saturated: not enough lanes and it's impossible to add more. Among commuters it's said as a fact but I don't know if it could be improved and if it's an urban legend rehashed to ramble on late trains. My personal experience reflects that though.
- poulsbohemian 5y ago
  Totally agree - this perspective that one replaces the other doesn't make sense as while they both provide "travel" they do so with different tradeoffs.
- laumars 5y ago
  The boarding and departure adds a fair chunk of time to that too. Trains are a lot more convenient in that regard.
  - VBprogrammer 5y ago
    I agree that it's more convenient, generally less time wasted in security theater and enforced shopping experience. That said, at least when you get on an airplane and it leaves the gate you have a pretty decent chance of making it to your destination when you expect to. Certainly with British trains it feels like your chance of arriving on time (to 15 minutes or so) are about 50/50.
    - pmyteh 5y ago
      Actually >90% within 10 mins (long distance) or 5 mins (short). [0] Very dependent on what route you take, though. And far from Swiss or Japanese levels of punctuality. [0]: https://www.networkrail.co.uk/who-we-are/how-we-work/performance/railway-performance/public-performance-measure-and-delay-responsibility/ https://www.networkrail.co.uk/who-we-are/how-we-work/perform...
      - VBprogrammer 5y ago
        Yeah, lies damn lies and statistics and all that. I'm sure the majority of journeys aren't long distance journeys you'd otherwise replace with flight. Certainly 50/50 was a bit of a exaggeration but when I regularly traveled between Glasgow/Edinburgh and London it wasn't far off. I received a lot of vouchers for free travel.
        pmyteh 5y ago
        It's a National Statistic (subject to auditing and rigorous oversight from the ONS) so 'lies' is way off the mark. What it may do is not match your experiences (it varies a lot by time of day etc.), or be perfectly defined for the replacing-flights question. Both LNER (east coast) and Avanti (west coast) are fairly ordinary in long-distance terms. If the question was, say, Exeter to Newcastle by Cross Country I'd expect more extensive delays. Anyway, you can explore the data (including breakdowns by quarter, by long distance vs commuter, and by operating company).[0] [0]: https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/statistics/performance/passenger-rail-performance/table-3114-public-performance-measure-by-operator-and-sector-periodic/ https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/statistics/performance/passeng...
- Macha 5y ago
  So airlines generally recommend you get there 1 hour for a EU internal flight before your flight for security/etc. Pre-covid you could usually get away with less at a lot of airports, but even if that didn't eat up your time, I think for up to almost two hours of extra travel time I'd rather avoid the airport and all the hassle associated with modern air travel.
  - rad_gruchalski 5y ago
    If you travel often, it makes sense to invest in fast track. You skip all the security theatre. Also, for example TGV requires you to be at the check in 20 minutes before. You’re a bit late, you’re screwed. Even if the train hasn’t arrived yet.
    - progval 5y ago
      > Also, for example TGV requires you to be at the check in 20 minutes before. Where? For TGV Inoui (the main brand) you have to be in the train 2 minutes before (written on any ticket, also here: https://www.sncf.com/fr/offres-voyageurs/voyager-en-train/tgv-inoui/votre-voyage/votre-embarquement https://www.sncf.com/fr/offres-voyageurs/voyager-en-train/tg...), and that's all. People flow through the gate up to the last minute. It has been like this for at least a decade. For TGV Ouigo (low-cost brand), it seems to be 30 minutes according to https://www.ouigo.com/faq?question=ai-je-pense-a-tous-avant-partir https://www.ouigo.com/faq?question=ai-je-pense-a-tous-avant-... I never understood this constraint with Ouigo though; it's obviously possible to skip it as shown by Inoui trains... and both are operated by the same company from the same train stations.
      - rad_gruchalski 5y ago
        > Where? In Brussels.
        kergonath 5y ago
        The only case I have seen like this is the Eurostar, but that is because of customs checks, border controls, etc, which don’t exist within the Schengen area. This is a very specific case and is not representative of how most people travel by train in Europe. You don’t have to come particularly early for the Thalys in Paris, for example.
- pmyteh 5y ago
  Trains already beat planes in practice for city-to-city journeys with a train time of <3h, because of the time of getting to and from airports, checkin etc. London-Paris flights were decimated when the channel tunnel opened, for instance. And rail will have a decent share (on price, atmosphere, or ability to work while traveling) up to about 4.5h. Beyond that it's much harder to justify.
  - logifail 5y ago
    > Trains already beat planes in practice for city-to-city journeys with a train time of <3h, because of the time of getting to and from airports, checkin etc ...and then politicians such as Ursula von der Leyen hop in their jets. This summer the EU Commission President took a 19 minute(!) flight from Vienna to Bratislava (the two cities are ~60km apart) in a private yet, but still managed to be driven ~60km by road during the transfers from central Vienna out to VIE airport and from BTS airport back to central Bratislava. https://www.diepresse.com/6055894/kritik-an-19-minuten-flug-von-der-leyen-flog-von-wien-nach-bratislava https://www.diepresse.com/6055894/kritik-an-19-minuten-flug-...
    - mathverse 5y ago
      Did she continue her trip from BTS on plane?
      - freeflight 5y ago
        > A spokesman for the EU Commission justified the flight to the "Bild" newspaper: "With departure and arrival in Belgium, the President's trip took seven countries in two days. Alternatives were examined, but there was no other logistical option." That same evening von der Leyen flew to Riga in a private plane.
    - oneplane 5y ago
      That's a weird one. I wonder what the details of that case were. Without any context it seems pretty dumb to drive 60Km and Fly 60Km when you could have just driven that 60Km of flying instead.
josefx 5y ago
> Sure, they might not be as fast as planes, but they are part of the experience. Recently had to plan a trip from Germany to Portugal. It would have been a full 48 hours by train. I think I would have stopped at almost every significant Spanish city on the way there. Going by the map in the article they are already working on some much needed additions to the rail network in that area.
- briffle 5y ago
  Its the same problem with long haul trips in the US. Chicago to Seattle is something like 44 hours, with nearly 40 stops. each one of those stops the train has to slow down, stop, wait for a time, then accelerate. Most of those towns are TINY. These 5 in WI are within about 90 min of each other: Columbus, WI (CBS) Portage, WI (POG) Wisconsin Dells, WI (WDL) Tomah, WI (TOH) La Crosse, WI (LSE) There are 7 stops in ND. Can you name 7 cities in North Dakota? But for political reasons, they have to have stops in all those towns, to get congress to approve their funding.
  - curiousllama 5y ago
    Living in Chicago, it always surprised me how, despite being a rail hub, it was totally impractical to take a train to another city (except Milwaukee). Flying or driving was almost always faster, and often cheaper.
    - gautamdivgi 5y ago
      If you live in the burbs you're probably still better off driving to Milwaukee. Parking in Chicago itself would be more than the fuel charges and you're not reducing emissions since the track isn't electric anyway.
  - coryrc 5y ago
    I've ridden this route several times. The main riders of that line are to or from the small towns along that route to a big town a state or two over. People drive or get dropped off at the station from the whole region. Remove those and you aren't going to have many customers.

CrlNvl 5y ago

French here: I think the conclusion is flawed. Many operators won't simplify the life of the EU citizen, per the article itself: > Then there is ticketing. Because systems are incompatible, only a few agencies sell rail tickets across the entire continent. As for refunds, operators are responsible only for the portion of the trip on their own trains. So if your DB train to Frankfurt is late to your french TGV to Strasbourg, then your TGV won't be compensated. And you'll have to buy a new ticket. Some guys tried their hands to be a European train ticket reseller (Captain Train, now owned by Trainline and way less effective than it was before), but it is not an easy feat.

Svip 5y ago
That's a political issue, not a technical one. And one that can be solved with political will. A decade ago, I would not have been so optimistic, but these days, even politicians are talking about the necessity of transcontinental rail routes.
johnchristopher 5y ago
> Some guys tried their hands to be a European train ticket reseller (Captain Train, now owned by Trainline and way less effective than it was before), but it is not an easy feat. Jungan weird how I came across this tweet yesterday: https://twitter.com/Signez/status/1458054003795939332?t=FtMBl_dsDYPvS0nDpP7V8g&s=19 https://twitter.com/Signez/status/1458054003795939332?t=FtMB...
isbvhodnvemrwvn 5y ago
I've heard that there was some sort of a standard being developed on the EU level, but it basically drowns in bureaucracy, and the API calls are effectively free-for-all key-value objects where everyone can implement them as they see fit.
- estebank 5y ago
  As much of a cynic I can be, I believe that if there's a supra-national organism capable of addressing such a problem as cross-country rail coordination, it's the EU. As many ills there are in the banking system in the EU, transferring money even across countries between individuals is a much more seamless experience than in other places, in large part, if not entirely, thanks to EU legislation. Things like abolition of roaming fees is another example. You can of course point at the fake "bendy bananas" UK tabloid bullshit pushed by the likes of their current PM for easy laughs, or at the cookie banners prevalent on every site that collects more than a service level log of visitors to be skeptical, but I still think improving the situation of rail in Europe can be done in reasonable ways.

mathverse 5y ago

Every year EU is becoming less and less livable for a middle class engineer. The writing has been on the wall for some time already but it is time to consider other options.

sho_hn 5y ago
Could you explain how this news relates to your point? I'm curious.
- mathverse 5y ago
  Simply the fact that trains can replace planes is laughable. In EU? That’s just hilarious. There is an increasing amount of policies that decrease quality of life.
  - dewey 5y ago
    How exactly is improving train infrastructure decreasing the quality of life for you?
    - jhgb 5y ago
      Maybe he's an aerospace engineer...
    - mathverse 5y ago
      The message is literally about "replacing planes with trains". It's not about improving the infrastructure enough to go toe to toe against planes.
    - meragrin_ 5y ago
      Rail is not being improved for the sake of improving it. It is being improved because they eventually intend to make air travel too expensive for most people.
      - dewey 5y ago

akamaka 5y ago

The article should have mentioned some of the mega-projects that are already underway, which will improve rail links between European countries. The Stuttgart 21 project will reconfigure the Stuttgart central station to create a direct line between Paris and Vienna. Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link will build a new undersea rail tunnel between Denmark and Germany, allowing Sweden to operate night trains to Brussels. In Switzerland, several new tunnels under the alps beginning operation this year will cut travel time to Italy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fehmarn_Belt_Fixed_Link https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fehmarn_Belt_Fixed_Link https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceneri_Base_Tunnel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceneri_Base_Tunnel

lqet 5y ago
Well, Stuttgart 21 is not exactly a project you want to dig up when you want to advertise train travel. The reason of course is that most people at least in Germany associate it with the highly controversial rebuilding of Stuttgart main station [0], although the rest of the project is pretty reasonable. What is also missing from your list is the fact that the main feeder line for the Gotthard base tunnel, and one of the most important railway lines in Europe, the Rhine valley railway [1], is extremely overloaded with over 300 trains per day, and the ongoing extension, which was planned in the 70ies and 80ies and for which construction work started in 1987 will not be finished before 2041 (!) [2]. It was originally planned to be finished in 2002. In 2016, the line was capped for days because the rail company (DB) chopped down some trees which were specifically planted in the 19th century to stabilize the ground (which DB was unaware of), resulting in a massive landslide [3]. In 2017, it was capped again for 2 months because of a collapse of a tunnel under construction by DB and crossing the existing line underground [4, 5]. In 2020, it was capped again because a bridge which DB planned to replace with a longer one crashed onto the rails and into a train, killing the driver [6] and nearly missing a high speed ICE train. If the embarrasing engineering failures continue at this rate, I doubt they will finish the extension in the 21rst century. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_Hauptbahnhof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_Hauptbahnhof [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannheim%E2%80%93Karlsruhe%E2%80%93Basel_railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannheim%E2%80%93Karlsruhe%E2%... [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ausbau-_und_Neubaustrecke_Karlsruhe%E2%80%93Basel https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ausbau-_und_Neubaustrecke_Karl... [3] https://ais.badische-zeitung.de/piece/07/36/42/b1/120996529-h-720.jpg https://ais.badische-zeitung.de/piece/07/36/42/b1/120996529-... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rastatt_Tunnel#August_2017_collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rastatt_Tunnel#August_2017_col... [5] https://bilder3.n-tv.de/img/incoming/origs19996186/8312795961-w0-h0/7df7eec7af8688f5a377b39f7d94bef5.jpg https://bilder3.n-tv.de/img/incoming/origs19996186/831279596... [6] https://www.schwaebische.de/cms_media/module_img/12646/6323334_1_tablet_Mit_einem_grossen_Autokran_wird_an_einer_Unfallstelle_eine_havarierte_Lokomotive_bei_Auggen_geborgen._Foto_Patrick_Seeger_dpa_Archivbild.jpg https://www.schwaebische.de/cms_media/module_img/12646/63233...

timwaagh 5y ago

I don't think they will be able to make it work. It's becoming ever more obvious that trains are monopolistic, require extensive infrastructure et cetera. On top of that they are slow, people just don't have the time to waste it on trains. I don't think we should be going backwards in time towards slow sleeper trains (where only perhaps an experienced Russian will catch a bit of shut eye). We should be moving forward towards high speed train moving at 500 or hyperloops that stand a chance versus a plane. Or just cleaning up the airplane space through more extensive use of biofuels, hydrogen and electric (for distances smaller than 300km).

dash2 5y ago
Don't worry. Europe is great at making monopoly, backwardness and technological regress "work"....
- timwaagh 5y ago
  I know it's not so easy here policy wise. The general debate is a discussion on how to shoot ourselves in the foot with the most elan. But then you look at other places. And there maybe they are still growing and people have the right priorities. But that might be because these places are mostly just dirty and poor and everywhere is filled with cheaply built appartment blocks. At least there's something to look at here on your lazy Sunday afternoon.
unethical_ban 5y ago
Air travel also requires extensive infrastructure, only at airports. Are these train plans outlined not bullet trains?
- timwaagh 5y ago
  As the article says it's too expensive to do much of that. Maybe a little will be done, but those will just be slightly faster trains running at 200 kph, not like a bullet train. The EU has little money and the nationals invest mostly in national infra.

sktrdie 5y ago

I still find it weird that planes are cheaper than trains even for quite small distances. London -> Berlin? Paris -> Madrid? Hell even Rome -> Milan is cheaper to fly. I would love to start contributing less to emissions and take trains even though they take more time but they gotta start taxing planes and making trains cheaper to make people start doing it.

abyssin 5y ago
What we need to do is make planes more expensive, instead of making trains cheaper. That would be relatively easy, but people wouldn’t like it because they want change that doesn’t affect their lifestyle. But if we’re to take climate change seriously, all lifestyles have to change radically.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  We should subsidize one and tax the other. Yes, flying needs to suck, but travel doesn't need to suck. Don't be too self-flagellist about this. If we really subsidize trains, we will induce enough demand to make investments look better in nominal terms and shift the culture/politics by normalizing way more rail travel. Easy victory. A problem is the Europeans are prudish about printing money with their bad ordoliberal EU Constitution.
  - HPsquared 5y ago
    Trains over long distances are always going to suck relative to planes, unless they're something like maglev or other ultra high speed design.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      "Suck" for certain dimensions. Travel is slower. Which can equate to cheaper (e.g. long distance buses) or can equate to roomier with more luxury--and more expensive. But there's not a lot of market these days for expensive, luxurious travel that takes a long time.
    - 5y ago

logifail 5y ago

How about the Brenner Base Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenner_Base_Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenner_Base_Tunnel We've been lucky enough to visit the tunnel system just south of Innsbruck, it's really impressive. We were taken in by bus(!) and allowed to explore on foot during an open day. Amazing stuff, the kids were blown away... :) On the positive side, the Austrians are pressing ahead with expanding the rail lines through Tyrol towards Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Lower_Inn_Valley_railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Lower_Inn_Valley_railway On the negative side, the Germans seem to have done nothing much to expand the railway on their side of the border. Once you cross over the border from Kufstein(AT) to Kiefersfelden(DE) heading north you're back down to a pair of tracks...

RGamma 5y ago
Die Bahn is an unmitigated clusterfuck[1]. The money comes and comes, gets wasted, yet no heads ever roll. I met someone who managed a local train station (network) for a few years. He told me a story of hilarious bureaucracy, metric gaming (mostly for evasion of sanctions for missed deadlines), people just not showing up while being covered by their union, construction firms delaying construction because it's just "Die Bahn". Then he quit and was paid for months despite expired contract. Later he got a legal threat for owing them wages... Although pay seems quite good and you get 40days vacation, well good for them I guess. [1] You might even call it a slow-motion trainwreck badumm-ts
- elygre 5y ago
  Sure, let’s share stories. I’ll counter with the recently opened new BER airport. The construction process disaster even got its own podcast.
  - RGamma 5y ago
    There's tons of crap like that. Just now found there's yet another public transportation-related money sink in Berlin currently: https://www.schwarzbuch.de/aufgedeckt/steuergeldverschwendung-alle-faelle/details/zob-der-kleine-ber https://www.schwarzbuch.de/aufgedeckt/steuergeldverschwendun... It's a frustrating affair quite frankly and bad for my heart.

rjsw 5y ago

Another base tunnel is the Mont d'Ambin [1] one between France and Italy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_d%27Ambin_Base_Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_d%27Ambin_Base_Tunnel

lwn 5y ago

I'd love to see the Orient express being revived. I'd much rather take a train than plane. The trip itself is more like an adventure.

lobochrome 5y ago

I find it curious that one solution to improve these networks suggested is to unbundle infrastructure from operations. Sure on paper it makes sense, but neither Japan nor Switzerland went that way and those are the best rail systems in the world (at least as far as my personal experience goes).

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
and moreover, the UK did go that way, and by all accounts it has been a total disaster.

josephcsible 5y ago

I wish we'd spend more time trying to electrify planes, and less time trying to replace faster means of transportation with slower ones.

globalise83 5y ago

I think it would make a lot more technical, economic and environmental sense to make air travel greener and quieter through regulation and investment in Europe's world-class aerospace industry rather than attempt to build integrated high-speed rail across the continent at vast cost and over huge delays spent negotiating with different landowner every 200 meters.

f6v 5y ago

Well, yes. But actually, no. Unless someone can completely change the way train companies operate across Europe. Getting somewhere on time? You have a 50:50 chance when traveling with DeutscheBahn and the likes.

radu_floricica 5y ago

Wonder if all of this is about to become obsolete in 20 years. Consider the following: - Electric cars will very soon have a lower total cost of ownership, and dramatically lower cost per mile. - Self driving cars are coming. They may have restrictions at first, but they're coming. - The Boring Company is quietly working on fast tunneling. This doesn't get nearly enough press, but it's the last very important ingredient. Not for the whole way, but to solve congestion in and around cities. So when I picture the future I don't think we'll be taking trains. I think we'll take cheap, save and extremely convenient driverless ubers as far as a few hundred miles away. As for farther away? We'll take the same uber to an airport. Sure, you can fuel the planes with carbon neutral fuel, but we're still over 30 years away from replacing jets as main transportation for longer distances. Nor should we - it simply makes sense to fly that far.

pornel 5y ago
Trains like Shinkansen can run at 200mph while offering more space than a business class flight. They're already electric (and pretty much self-driving). I'd rather have that than a 50-70mph journey in a toilet-sized space. Rolling resistance of tires is a limitation here that won't go away with electric/self-driving cars.
- radu_floricica 5y ago
  Most if the investment in trains is the terrain under the rails, which is already made. Converting all existing routes to high speed is a no brainer, which will be delayed beyond all reasonable duration just because they're all government organizations. Probably much longer than it'll take us to have driverless medium-distance ubers. I compared trains to airplanes recently - from Vienna to Swizerland by train because a plane was a bit too expensive. I like trains, but it was not a pleasant experience: - boarding was about as fussy as with airports, maybe a bit more so since I had to stow my own luggage. - I had to change trains 3 times, moving a 20 kg luggage and a 10 kg backpack with often as little as 8 minute leeway in an unknown train station - did not have significantly more room, surprising enough. A seat is a seat, and you can go to the bathroom just as easily in a plane - did I mention it took 8 hours? I don't think cars will be a contender for the long range, not soon. You're right with rolling distance, and also air drag. They don't go well over 100-150 mph. But if their range increases enough, they might just squeeze trains out of their niche. Trains lose hard to ubers on short trips, and to planes on longer ones. They're already subsidized by the government. With any less passengers, and a strong need of upgrading to very high speed, it may start to make sense to drop a lot of them and focus on the rest.

notjes 5y ago

Bikes could replace Trains. The world is literally devolving into the stone age.

iddan 5y ago

I wish there was peace in the region I live in and I could’ve taken a train to Europe instead of a plane.

dependsontheq 5y ago

In general it's mostly a behavioral thing, if you get used to train trips they become easier and the way you use your time becomes very efficient. Two weeks ago I traveled to Antwerpen from Nuremberg in Bavaria and back in three days. A plane might have saved me three hours in real time, but that is not worth the carbon emission or the lack of "place" for me. Of course I would't take a 40 hour train trip to Portugal, but I took a one day trip from our home to Bordeaux with two small kids and that worked quite brilliant. Next week I will go by sleeper train to Neapel, visit Pompeii stay for a night and go back by sleeper train. I don't know, it has it's problems and there are a lot of things that go wrong but it also has feeling of "place" of change. Even on business trips I don't have the feeling of somehow switching between arbitrary grey meeting rooms with a plane. I think there are a lot of things that can become better but the international lines have already become much better in the last years and one reason is just that you have Apps to navigate any kind of public transport.

paganel 5y ago

They won't, there's no train that can transport me from Bucharest (where I live) to Northern Italy (Bergamo, to be more precise) for just 15-20 euros, and this if we decide to ignore the big time differences between a plane flight and riding the train. I love trains and I'm still a little afraid of flying and I would love for this advent of train transport all over the continent to be true, but the reality of the matter is that the physics go against it. What will probably happen is that the lower-income people will be forced to travel way less while being promised (through articles like this one) that the incoming changes won't be qualitatively different from what we used to know before the pandemic came. The same goes for car transport, which will also start to become more and more a luxury.

fock 5y ago
last I knew (went the other way), there should be a night-train to Vienna (only seated, because not fashionable anymore) and then there is definitely a route you can book to Bergamo. Problem for the first part (no straight way): rail in yugoslavia is dead except for CCP construction. Problem for the second part the alps. Still, one could probably do Bucharest-Belgrad-Zagreb-Triest-Verona with a very cheap nighttrain (there are rails, so there's no insurmountable problems: https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/38581/train-from-belgrade-to-bucharest https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/38581/train-from-...). Should be fine for travelling, I think noone should need to commute such a distance anyway...
- bserge 5y ago
  At which point you could just forget the train and take a bus. Bucharest has buses to practically anywhere in the EU.
- paganel 5y ago
  I know that some part of it is doable, technically, it's only that increasing the prices of plane tickets until making them non-viable for most of the population will most probably kill the city break industry in Europe. I know it sounds like a first world problem, which in a way it is, but (very) cheap flights combined with no roaming charges were one of the few, concrete things that were actually helping make the European Union an actual distinct political entity. Almost no-one here in the EU actually cares about the European Parliament or about the European politicians and the like, but we greatly appreciate that we can go from Bucharest to Madrid or from Prague to Stockholm almost at a moment's notice and without paying an arm and a leg for it (or at least that was how things were before the pandemic), all this while using our phone in all those locations like we were on our couch at home. I'm afraid that taking that all away will greatly reduce the little European spirit cohesiveness that had managed to get built as a result of what I described above (cheap European flights, no roaming fees), and we certainly need the best and greatest European spirit cohesiveness in these interesting times.

whinvik 5y ago

This sounds great in theory. But rail services are very inefficient monopolies. Here in Germany, DB Services are routinely affected by strikes leaving no alternatives. So no trains cannot replace planes unless this situation is improved.

diebeforei485 5y ago

Night trains are a great idea for tourists. They are usually very comfortable and you can save on a hotel night if you can find a place to store your bags. And kids seem to tolerate them better than airplanes.

inglor_cz 5y ago

There are at least two tourist-y routes where planes cannot feasibly be replaced: Northern Europe to Greece and Northern Europe to Spanish resort regions (Andalucia and Canary Islands). Taking a train from Stockholm to Málaga or Athens won't be realistic for years, if not decades. Taking a train from Stockholm to Tenerife is out of question entirely. Without tourists, these places will become a very, very bad periphery of the EU. Already the nominal unemployment is high, but lots of locals are employed "under the table" in catering and accomodation.

neonate 5y ago

https://archive.md/va1aE https://archive.md/va1aE

donatj 5y ago

Article I read in 2014: > Trains are such an indispensable motif in Atlas Shrugged, that, when some of Rand’s acolytes produced a slavishly faithful film adaptation of her book set in the present day, they had to invent a convoluted rationale involving resource shortages and industrial disasters to explain how railroads had once again become the dominant form of long-distance transportation. Well… that aged… interestingly. https://harpers.org/2014/06/ayn-rands-rapture-of-the-rails/ https://harpers.org/2014/06/ayn-rands-rapture-of-the-rails/

whatever1 5y ago

They cannot scale to achieve the airplane QoS, stop this insanity. Planes not only are faster, but they require far less infrastructure, and we can stack vertically and spread horizontally their routes, having multiple parallel trips without sacrificing precious land. How many hours does it take to travel by train from Italy to the UK accounting all of the stops? A multiple of the 4 hours trip that a plane does. It’s like asking whether bicycles can replace airplanes for continental travel. Theoretically yes, practically no.

alexott 5y ago

As traveling a lot on trains in Germany - it’s a joke. Trains are are late so you miss connections, cancelled on short notice, etc. I never know if get to airport on time when I use train. You can easily half hour late on 1 hour trip…

holoduke 5y ago

From Amsterdam to London takes about 4 hours by train. More or the less the same with a plane. And you can actually sit comfortable with internet in a train.

11thEarlOfMar 5y ago

Certainly anecdotes abound, but I once took a German Wings flight from Cologne to London for US$18. The taxi from the airport to my hotel, less than 5 miles from the airport, was US$27.

spitfire 5y ago

What are people using to book/look up train travel? I just tried to find a London to Belgrade route and absolutely none of the planners I found via DDG were capable. They'd all gladly sell me a pass, but none told me what station to leave/arrive from what time the trains were, etc.

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m0zg 5y ago

A few years ago I was visiting in Switzerland, and thought I'd go and spend a few days in Paris. I could not do so because SNCF (French rail, basically) was on strike and it wasn't clear whether I'd be able to get back in time for my flight. I was told by a friend of mine in Zurich this happens quite a bit with SNCF. Which is to say that if I were in Europe, I'd prefer to have several transportation options, which hopefully would not coordinate their labor strikes, rather than be stuck only with trains.

AtlasBarfed 5y ago

In the US, self-driving cars on highways can effectively replace a huge amount of short hop flights. Way cheaper (especially for EVs) Faster for flights under 300-400 miles (especially if you need to get a rental car on the other end). More cargo/luggage Leave when you want Have a car (your car) when you get there Once highway driving is sufficiently safe to sleep at night, look out. With convergent evolution of infrastructure, good AI, it will be pretty safe. And if you have a small RV so you don't even need a hotel on the other end? With Starlink and a fold-out solar array so you can charge without even being hooked up?

kerberos84 5y ago

In the article : "Yet only 8% of the distance travelled by land in the EU is by rail. Even in the most train-happy countries, Austria and the Netherlands, the figures are 13% and 11%. In those countries, more than 75% of land travel is done by car. " Yes, more than 75% of land travel is done by car because trains are incredibly expensive. yet I see in the discussions that we should make flying more expensive. Trains are not really competing with airplanes, but personal cars!

paulsmal 5y ago

Midnight Trains[0] plans "hotel style" sleeper trains radiating from Paris, first train launching in 2024. [0] https://www.midnight-trains.com/en/home https://www.midnight-trains.com/en/home

Proven 5y ago

Trains... Not good enough. Give them bicycles, please.