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Europe is investing heavily in trains

• hardwaresofton 5y ago
  Shameless plug for my friends substack all about public transit: https://lovetransit.substack.com https://lovetransit.substack.com It’s wonderful and bounces back and forth between japan, sweden, and greater europe
• Shadonototra 5y ago
  i love trains, it's cozy too bad they are trying to make them insanely fast and silent af life is meant to feel your surroundings
  • Aperocky 5y ago
    Maybe when you get off at the station then, train as an utility should aim for the lowest common denominator.
    • Shadonototra 5y ago
      it's a future with a low birth rate, so you gotta be careful with the sanitized civilization we are building
• mywittyname 5y ago
  Time is money, so I don't think trains can ever compete with flying for long-distance travel (>1000miles). They could do like the USA does and make flying such a time-consuming pain in the ass that it's rarely worth it for trips under 5 hours.
  • Gigachad 5y ago
    Trains could easily beat air travel if they could skip the ridiculous security theater. Having to get to the airport 2 hours early is a whole lot of slack to let trains catch up.
    • cocothem 5y ago
      I view any mass transport as a security risk for me so I welcome airport "security theater". there is downside, but imo airports screen better than trains for bad actors
    • JetAlone 5y ago
      This is why I prefer riding high speed rail over the half as expensive domestic flights. If they take that away, I want to buy a horse.
  • lrem 5y ago
    It _really_ depends on the distances and sizes of the cities you're going to. Paris-London train is about 3 hours, which is likely less than you'll spend on getting to+from an airport. Paris-Berlin on the other hand is miserable, unless you love trains.
    • room271 5y ago
      2hrs 16 min is the usual time for London to Paris. So much quicker and nicer than flying all round really.
    • mywittyname 5y ago
      This is exactly my point, trains can't compete with point-to-point travel at 500mph. So injecting a bunch of padding on either side of flights is the best way of making train travel more appealing.
      • smcl 5y ago
        Those points are usually fairly far outside of their respective cities though, to be fair. Planes are always going to be preferable for long journeys, London-Istanbul is a trip only big train fans would plan to take by rail. But I can take some really nice direct train journeys where I am - Budapest, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Belgrade and more. And since I end up in the city centre it's usually a quick tram or subway to where I'm staying, or hopping another train onwards to a smaller town. And travelling on the train with friends and a beer is really pleasant :-)
    • gpvos 5y ago
      Or unless you take a night train. Get in in the evening, sleep most of the way and wake up at your destination. That can actually save you time compared to a flight, or be a lot more comfortable than, e.g., getting up at 4 AM to take a flight to a meeting in the morning somewhere.
      • lrem 5y ago
        When I looked at what map finds, there were only connections with two or three transfers. That doesn't sound like a comfortable night.
  • oh_sigh 5y ago
    I don't think anyone is expecting people to start taking a train from London to Istanbul, unless they are doing it for the trip in itself. The sweet spot for trains is travel > 100 miles and < 500 miles, so say Paris-Nice like is highlighted in the article.
  • sschueller 5y ago
    I can hop in a train at Zürich main station in Switzerland and be in Paris in 4 hours or I can get in another one and be in Milan in 3 and half hours. On my trip I can use the internet, go to the restaurant or relax in the quiet carriage. No turbolance, no weather delays and the ride is very quiet. How much work can you really get done going via airplane? How much time do you waste going through security and how well can you work crammed into a tiny seat? Sometimes taking it a bit slower is also good for your health.
    • anamax 5y ago
      Zurich to Paris (489km) is shorter than San Francisco to Los Angeles (559km). Europeans think that 100km is a long way while Americans think that 100 years is a long time.
    • DrBazza 5y ago
      Yup. Door to door from south east England to the French Alps is nigh on identical if you take a plane and all then ceremony around that, or just jump on the Eurostar and travel mostly at 140mph or so.
  • inglor_cz 5y ago
    Taking a train from Hamburg to, say, Malaga, would be pretty uncomfortable. The distance is too big and you would have to switch trains several times, with a risk of one train running late and missing the next connection. But for distances up to 4-5 hours by train, especially if the connection is direct, it is better to take the train. While the flight time may be much shorter, the need to get to/from the airport (which tend to be far away from the city itself, if only because of noise issues) and to be at the airport 2 hours before departure will consume a lot of time. Train stations, OTOH, are usually located fairly close to the city center, if not squarely in it, for historical reasons (most important railway links were built prior to 1870, when the cities were much smaller than today).
  • occz 5y ago
    In around the 150-800 km span, high speed rail reigns supreme over all other modes of transport. Above that, airplanes start making more sense, but for any trips in that span HSR should really be the default.
  • andbberger 5y ago
    high speed night trains can compete at longer distances but capital costs become problematic. they would be more cost competitive if rail received the same amount of subsidy that air does
• Fargren 5y ago
  Living in Spain, I love trains and take them over airplane when it's an option. However, trains are often around twice as expensive as flying for may routes. I know nothing about trains, but intuitively I would expect the opposite, and I really wish it was more affordable, specially high speed rail.
  • retube 5y ago
    I suspect one reason is that with trains there's a huge amount of infrastructure to maintain - the tracks between destinations, but with planes you don't have that.
  • ews 5y ago
    RENFE (national railroad company) had no competitors until very recently, they opened the market just months ago. I am hopeful the new high speed companies (i.e Ouigo) makes the market much more competitive and lowers pricing in all tiers. Still, for same price and roughly same time, I always prefer using the train to the planes.
    • Ericson2314 5y ago
      Trains are a very, very natural monopoly. Competition doesn't make sense, especially if your service frequency is any good.
    • vladvasiliu 5y ago
      This is happening in France, too. I'm not too optimistic on how this will turn out. What we've seen here is TrenItalia starting to serve one line, Paris-Lyon (and then on to Milan). The issue is that this is, by far, the most profitable train line in France. If competitors only get in on the profitable lines and leave the others to the national company, it will probably not end well. Because it's my understanding that profitable lines used to somewhat compensate for the others, SNCF was able to provide a somewhat dense service. If this goes away, they'll either have to reduce (or even stop!) the less profitable service, or the State will have to step in with even more subsidies for those lines. There's a lot of talk in France around "public service" and I think that things like good rail service, especially in the era of "climate emergency" is important for a State to have. Instead, we're now getting new bus routes - yay diesel!
• uuyi 5y ago
  Good on you Europe. Here in the UK we are heavily investing in rail replacement busses at the moment.
  • fredoliveira 5y ago
    The UK is a European country. Not in the EU anymore, but you folks didn't move continents ;-)
    • namdnay 5y ago
      To be pedantic, they never were on the continent :) Apart from Gibraltar I guess
      • detritus 5y ago
        *stares at continental shelf depth map around the UK described on old European map on wall
        • IshKebab 5y ago
          Ha yes well... "the continent" refers to the European land mass. C.f. "continental breakfast". But the UK is part of the European continent in the continental shelf sense. The word "continent" is not really well defined. Here's a nice video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrsxRJdwfM0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrsxRJdwfM0
          • rootusrootus 5y ago
            It does seem poorly defined. If it were the land mass, I would expect that Europe extended all the way to the other end of Russia.
      • DrBazza 5y ago
        Never you say? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland
• elthor89 5y ago
  It is there but I wish there was a more comprehensive network of high speed rail in Europe. Going from Amsterdam to Spain the plane seems to win on price and travel time. One thing that isn’t infrastructure but could easily be improved is buying international train tickets. So often I see that one needs to call or you can only book one month ahead. Surely we could have solved that by now..
  • dmitriid 5y ago
    Flying from Stockholm to Copenhagen (or even Malmö or Gothenburg) is often a better alternative to trains. Thankfully there's now an express train to Gothenburg, but that's about it.
  • ATsch 5y ago
    It is absolutely possible, however government leaders have stubbornly blocked it: https://www.investigate-europe.eu/en/2021/european-governments-are-holding-back-on-railway-passenger-rights/ https://www.investigate-europe.eu/en/2021/european-governmen...
  • emn13 5y ago
    Note that if you travel from The Netherlands to Spain you might be traversing 6 different railway electrification systems that vary in critical stuff like voltages (and by more than a factor 10!) and possibly Hz, and some are AC and some are DC (not kidding). Also there will be at least 2 incompatible track gauges involved. And I bet other stuff like communications and routing systems are incompatible and safety critical too. As a result, such a trip would take a long time, even if high-speed rail is a possibility for part of the trip; it's not possible for a simple train to go even most of the way; you'll need to change trains multiple times not just due to logistical issues, but simply to be on a train that can even use the rail you need to traverse. If we can't fix that (and that's a really hard and expensive problem), we're never going to get a fast connection from the netherlands to spain. And I'm sure you can find even worse scenarios (say, tack on denmark and germany to that route for 2 more technologically incompatible systems!). Baltic states still use a soviet-derived system, and much of eastern Europe a yet different one.
• ape4 5y ago
  More feasible than planes to electrify or switch to hydrogen (hydrogenify?)
  • namdnay 5y ago
    You still have diesel trains ?!
    • paddez 5y ago
      Most of the intercity trains in Ireland are powered by diesel. I believe there's a long term electrification plan for the greater Dublin area, but I don't see a change from using DMU's for a while.
    • fosk 5y ago
      Caltrain in the Bay Area, the capital of world technology, is still a....diesel train. I can't help but chuckle whenever I see one.
      • ibiza 5y ago
        Did you miss the wires strung above the tracks? They're working on it: https://www.caltrain.com/about/MediaRelations/news/Caltrain_Electrification_Delayed_to_2024.html https://www.caltrain.com/about/MediaRelations/news/Caltrain_...
        • fosk 5y ago
          It's 2022 today and they estimate to complete the project in 2024. Italy had electrified lines in the 1930s, for comparison. There is really no excuse however you look at it. I guess better later than never.
      • jlmorton 5y ago
        However, it's moving to electric, with the first electric locomotive undergoing testing now, and the first electric fleet arriving this spring, with fully electric service expected to begin in two years.
• ATsch 5y ago
  I wish this was true. European leaders have been speaking a great deal about how much they are going to invest into trains and how they are the future of green transport, but then in reality they are unwilling to do the things that are needed to improve trains or even actively sabotage them. (see e.g. https://www.investigate-europe.eu/en/2021/derailed-europe-railway/ https://www.investigate-europe.eu/en/2021/derailed-europe-ra...) Austria is pretty much the only country in the EU that is actually making genuine strides in this area.
• golemotron 5y ago
  Do they run on renewables?
  • thriftwy 5y ago
    They run on overhead wires?
  • avianlyric 5y ago
    Like most developed countries, Europe has mostly electric trains for passenger transport.
  • 12baad4db82 5y ago
    In Germany 100% of the ICE and IC trains are run on renewable energy. https://www.bahn.de/service/ueber-uns/umwelt https://www.bahn.de/service/ueber-uns/umwelt You can even buy green energy from the Deutsche Bahn https://www.dbstrom.de/ https://www.dbstrom.de/
    • LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
      O RLY? https://www.uniper.energy/de/datteln-4 https://www.uniper.energy/de/datteln-4 > Bahnstromleistung 413MW 16.7Hz
      • 12baad4db82 5y ago
        There are more than just ICE and IC trains in Germany. These other trains are not powered by green energy. So yes it seems reasonable that there are some coal power plants that are providing power for trains.
  • occz 5y ago
    Depends on the country. In Sweden, mostly yes. Entirely fossil-free, with some nuclear in the mix.
• lqet 5y ago
  Here in Germany, for as long as I can remember, the government praises itself every year for investing as much in rail as never before. I have not noticed the service quality to change for the better over the last 15 years. The ever-rising investments seem to be only enough to keep the status quo of the crumbling infrastructure.
  • TsomArp 5y ago
    I live in Berlin, but I am not from Germany, nor from Europe. I never understand the complains on the quality of trains (or the public transport in general) in Berlin at least. And I am from Buenos Aires, where we have great transport system (subway, buses, trains). Still, Berlins is much better.
  • encryptluks2 5y ago
    Trains are incredibly expensive to maintain. The US still relies a lot on manual operations when running trains. I wonder if they will ever be able to fully automate their travel.
    • Sharlin 5y ago
      Not so. The whole point of trains is that expenses are largely one-off. Building the infrastructure is expensive. Recurring costs are much lower than other modes of land transport, ceteris paribus.
      • saddlerustle 5y ago
        Land transport yes, but the operational cost of long distance trains is quite a bit higher per passenger-mile than planes
        • arcticbull 5y ago
          Is it though? Or is it the fact that airlines are able to externalize their environmental costs, and are generally both under-taxed and subsidized. [edit] I'm not saying that rail isn't subsidized - it usually is, and often heavily, to be clear. It's the environmental impact that's the thrust of my claim.
• monksy 5y ago
  As someone who just rode in a sleeper car for the second time. I like amtrak when I can do this. It's completely unreasonable for a round trip, but I did Chicago->Seattle and Chicago to Boston (Where I"m currently here.. and will be flying back tomorrow). It's a mostly great experience... all due to the scenery you're watching, not so much everything else. What worries me if it becomes more privatized: You'll see the experience drop a lot more, features you need for long distance trips (big seat+power outlet) removed. You'll get a lot more stressed employees who will create conflicts etc. What I would like to see: - More prioritization on autonomous cars - More frequent routes - Infrastructure improvements for faster service (We could and should have a hub/spoke model for ICE like passenger rail) - Support with integration into the communities they connect into. (Build the town around it) Create a standard that local rental car companies are working with the passengers arriving and leaving. - General equipment refreshes (A lot of it is maintenance by schedule rather than reactory.. a lot of the experience is pretty dirty) Also there is an attitude with the coach passengers that the train is a trashcan because it's already pretty dirty. Being in coach is freaking brutal if you have to be on it more than 9 hours or overnight. Btw Their employees are a lot more helpful about being functionally helpful when something goes wrong. Airline employees just escalate and pull the "screw you, you won't get help" when something goes wrong in person. (Yea I'm looking at you IAH gate agent that just left the desk right before boarding.. the captain was playing secretary). No the empire builder doesn't have WIFI.. but how will dinner work.. they're more than helpful at explaining it, etc.
  • thebean11 5y ago
    I can't wrap my head around how expensive Amtrak is, given that it's so heavily subsidized by the government.
    • monksy 5y ago
      Yes/No. You can get a California zephyer ticket from Chicago->Seattle for 160 in coach one way. That's a really good deal for 2k+ miles, generous baggage allowance, etc (if you can tolerate that). Sleepers can go 1k+ for the 2.5d. In the winter (what I did) was 600$. I'm also not paying for the efficency. I'm paying for the experience of the hotel, meals, convenence of travel, and the ability to watch out the window.
• jbverschoor 5y ago
  You can invest all you want, but if you can't manage it properly, people will keep flying... Get better management and then invest
• TheMagicHorsey 5y ago
  I feel that when the total cost of rail is taken into account, there are only a few very high density areas or high traffic routes where they make sense. I was recently reading about how large stretches of China's bullet train system cost tens of billions of dollars, and ongoing expenditure of billions more, and have hardly enough traffic to justify their maintenance, let alone their construction costs. There are some routes that are well utilized, but it seems that when you empower the government to make such infrastructure, there is massive malinvestment ... and its hard to know what the alternative could have been without such centralized planning.
  • larschdk 5y ago
    Agree. Trains make perfect sense in metro areas like London, Berlin, Paris, Frankfurt, etc. Everywhere else, they are a complete waste of money, are difficult to run on a regular schedule, service only narrow corridors, are inconvenient to get to/from for daily commutes and increase total commute time 2+ times. To increase use of public transport, we need to increase convenience, not reduce cost.
    • fomine3 5y ago
      Train's bonus over driving a car is that I have no chance to kill/break anyone/anything. IMO people should think driving a car is a special operation that have high risk in daily basis.
  • tonmoy 5y ago
    You can’t just look at the income from fare and use that to justify the construction cost. The train may have brought development and investment into the area that wouldn’t have happened otherwise earning tax for the government in other ways. Highways/interstates in the US would have been an infinite percentage of loss with your original assumption since they don’t produce anything directly.
• ParksNet 5y ago
  It doesn't make sense to emphasize passenger travel over goods transport for rail. Rail's strength is efficient transport of heavy loads at slow speeds. People are light and often want to go at high speeds. Europe should reorient its rail network for rail transport, and passengers can travel by bus or plane. But - Europe's rail network is completely reliant on subsidies, and its easier to get them when you're transporting politicians instead of lumber, steel, milk.
  • sschueller 5y ago
    The not so long ago completed Alp transit Gotthard Basistunnel was primarily dug for cargo, yes passengers also go through it but the idea is for fast, clean cargo transit all the way from Amsterdam to Italy through the Swiss alps.
  • foepys 5y ago
    No, just no. You obviously don't have experience with European infrastructure. Rush hour traffic on any German Autobahn will quickly tell you that adding more busses and cars is the worst idea here. European roads are also impossible to build and maintain without subsidies but somehow nobody or at least very few people talk about that.
    • panick21_ 5y ago
      A general problem with all these debates is that rail and road have for so long been deeply interlinked with states strategy and subsidies that any real cost comparison is almost impossible. We are using tunnels all over Switzerland that are built many decades ago. How to you take stuff like that into account? Sure we could just say 'lets wipe all infrastructure of Europe and start fresh, what the most efficient combination of things?' but that is a pointless exercise. People very lives have been shaped around existing infrastructure as well. Everything is interlinked to a crazy degree that makes finding and comparing solution challenging.
  • fundatus 5y ago
    Not sure about other countries, but Germany's long distance trains are run for-profit. Only commuter trains are subsidized. Tracks are paid for by taxes - but so are streets.
• blamazon 5y ago
  One thing that's cool about intercity train travel is that, while high speed rail is an ~=obvious economic miracle, trains can be slow and still be commercially competitive. I would much rather take an overnight sleeper train than either an early morning flight or a night flight with hotel room. The sleeper train will arrive right to the city center and save a lot of hassle and I always sleep like a rock on sleeper trains. My impression is that Europeans are 'waking up' to this fundamental difference in value proposition vs aeroplanes and overnight trains are becoming more popular.
  • pm90 5y ago
    I think there’s a good value proposition for high speed rail when it comes to business travel, which is usually same day. But for non business travel, overnight does seem good. However, there is simply not a culture of overnight train in the US. In India, it is really common and many routes can be quite delightful.
  • gpvos 5y ago
    Also, train companies were (and RENFE still is) neglecting night trains because their marketing department and direction were more interested in snazzy high-speed trains, so they didn't upgrade old train stock and stopped night services that were still filled to the brim with passengers.
• atlasunshrugged 5y ago
  As an American who doesn't drive, the experience of trains in the EU compared to the US is just delightful. Yes, there are super cheap flights and I used them often for longer haul trips but the trains were always amazing- I've done trips including Mariupol to Lviv, Budapest to Berlin, and Berlin to Munich and always had a great experience. The Romania-Chisinau line is quite old but part of its charm. I see a lot of people talking about the expense compared to the cheap flights- those are solid and I've used them a lot but after you factor in the waiting time at airports, the unexpected fees in case your bag is a kilo too heavy, the uber to and from a far away airport, etc. it's really not that much of a difference. There is no comparison to trains in the U.S. (e.g. I took one for 3 days from DC to LA; while I enjoyed it, it was a slough with no real food facilities for the passengers not in sleeper cars, old chairs, etc.). I hope there will be more investment, especially in the Baltics.
  • hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
    I remember going to Crimea one summer some 20 years ago, it took almost 40 hours but boy it was something I'll never forget! Especially the babushkas with local produce, pelmeni and so on at every stop so you could buy them (so cheaply) just grabbing them from their hands through the window. Delicious food, great views and an excellent company. On the other side of the equations are superfast trains like the TGV, this one is expensive but in my humble opinion it is faster than plane on routes like Paris-Lyon and I'll take train over plane on any day at distances shorter than 500-700km.
    • atlasunshrugged 5y ago
      Ah that sounds amazing! On the trains in Ukraine they did still have the babushkas hawking produce and fish at the stops and I have had some lovely conversations on these trains but I would have loved to go to Crimea. A Siberian railway trip is still on the bucket list but I will wait until things are less contentious and so I'm not putting dollars into the hands of the Putin regime.
  • PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    Sadly, anyone noticeably younger than me missed the chance to ride the Hellas Express (Dortmund to Athens). 3 days, 2 nights. Rode it twice. Then Yugoslavia came apart, war broke out, and the Hellas Express was no more.
• riffic 5y ago
  Skate towards where the puck is going to be. This is a wise investment for the future of mobility.
• SergeAx 5y ago
  Typical distance between European capitals is ~500km. It is less than an hour net time by plane, but adding travel from city center to the airport, check in, security check, waiting time, waiting for luggage, travel from destination airport to city center - all those are compounding into 4-5 hours door to door depending on road traffic. High speed train is about the same or even better, and you have internet connection on board all the time.
  • Aachen 5y ago
    Maybe I'm reading too much into your comment, correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like an "as opposed to the sprawling USA". Just did some doodling in OsmAnd, connecting a few cities big enough that I've heard the name (at least I'm presuming that's why I know their name). https://snipboard.io/0aunhF.jpg https://snipboard.io/0aunhF.jpg You can do Sacramento–San Francisco–San Jose–Los Angeles–Las Vegas–Salty Lake City–Reno–Sacramento (round trip) in 2500km as the crow flies, with as longest stretch 700km (SLS–Reno) and an average of 300km (of course you can then branch off and make lower-speed connections to towns in between). Checking inhabitants on Wikipedia for a few real quick, it seems they're bigger in my imagination (or in movies perhaps) than in reality, e.g. Reno is only like 200k inhabitants, but at least to/from, say, Los Angeles, which is a small country in itself from my Beneluxian perspective, there has to be travel demand. Or between SF and SJ, they're so close and there's other stops you can make in between. Hard to retrofit into a city if there's no existing train or metro that can at least pave the way to the edge of town, but otherwise it's hard to imagine it wouldn't earn itself back in a handful of years if it doesn't exist yet. Across a continent east-to-west is obviously less practical, same with any other continent, but it looks to me like connecting big cities that are similarly nearby as European big cities isn't the problem. It's probably more about everyone needing a car anyway, extremely low fuel prices, public transport is deemed for peasants, no good walking/cycling/bus options to/from stations, that sort of issues (it's a thing here as well, a rich German has a lot of trouble getting into a bus when they can drive something fancy instead—of course I'm generalizing and this doesn't apply to every German with money).
    • SergeAx 5y ago
      I didn't write my comment with "as opposed" sentiment in mind, but can't help to wonder what is the typical distance between US capitals. So, wow, thanks for that piece of data! I also think there's a hen and egg problem. To build a rail road you need to buy the land strip between two stations, and in today's US you can't just do it because someone knowing about your venture and how you cannot succeed without having all the land - will just ask any enormous price knowing you won't have a choice. I think the whole idea of hyperloop was born on that restriction - because buying places for support pillars and making the whole system more or less silent making it at least viable. In EU railroads are there for 100+ years, all the land under them is belong to government or railroad companies.
• chernevik 5y ago
  The price comparison with air travel is why a serious carbon tax might make sense.
• gigatexal 5y ago
  That’s going to be tough: the bit about competing with low cost flights. We flew Ryan air to Italy for 50 bucks a person each way. By train would have been much more expensive and taken a ton longer. But let’s see how they build this out. I do love living in a Berlin. The public transit system is amazing. It’s not perfect. But it’s reliable enough that I do not miss my car.
• tistoon 5y ago
  ..and Canada is yet the only G7 country to not have a high-speed train. In fact, in Canada, trains are slow, expensive and not well-deserved that you are better-off using your car or plane ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Barcelona-Madrid | 503km | 2h30 by train | 46$CAD (33 euros) Toronto-Montreal | 541km | 5h by train | 93$CAD (68 euros)
  • reggieband 5y ago
    My dream is a high-speed train from Vancouver to Kelowna and Calgary, with an optional leg to Edmonton. Like a Rocky Mountain Express. I believe this would be a massive driver of economic growth for the West Coast of Canada. What hurts my soul is that Canada has the wealth to afford it, the engineering chops to build it but we lack the political will. Even more I feel we lack the belief and the vision.
• hilbert42 5y ago
  I used to travel frequently between Vienna and Paris (to visit relatives in Paris) and I quickly stopped flying between the two cities when I discovered the city-to-city train then called the 'Mozart' (it ceased service in 2007): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_(train) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_(train). I found that whilst the duration of the flying time was considerably shorter than the train trip the overall flying time was still quite long given all the rigmarole at the airports and getting to and from them. I found that traveling this intercity circuit on the Mozart much more enjoyable and relaxing than flying even though the trip took typically between 13 and 14 hours (Wiki says 13h10), the food was quite excellent (for a train) and the trips were in the daytime so there was much scenery to look at. When not doing that I could occupy myself with written/paperwork work or read a book and not be interrupted. What was really excellent about the Mozart was that it was not only an intercity train but also it took me directly to the very heart of both cities—there was no need to travel to the outskirts of the cities to their airports (I've always found traveling to and from airports a nuisance and pain so I've always considered train travel a great advantage over flying (except when flying exceptionally long distances, intercontinental, etc.). I've not done that circuit for quite some years now and I'm sorry to see the Mozart service terminated. After reading the article I did a check on its replacement service and it seems that now a section of the trip is by TGV and that there are now two changes between the cities. Despite the introduction of the TGV, the travel time between Paris and Vienna is 13h15 — which is all of 5 minutes longer than the nominal time taken by the Mozart. Shame really. Nevertheless, I cannot help but believe that Europe's investment in passenger train transport will pay off handsomely. When I was doing a lot of traveling around Europe by train I found most of the services quite excellent—much more so than in Anglophone countries—and I reckon that the main reason for this is that culturally the Europeans seem to be much more at home with and adapted to train travel. As such, it's very unlikely that that investment in trains will be wasted.
  • joshvm 5y ago
    You can also do this journey by Nightjet now, takes a bit longer (14 hours) but you can sleep through most of the time. There are also a few options for single change journeys (eg via Zürich) but they might not be the fastest. https://www.sncf.com/en/passenger-offer/travel-by-train/nightjet-overnight-trains-paris-vienna https://www.sncf.com/en/passenger-offer/travel-by-train/nigh...
• david927 5y ago
  People want to use trains and we want people to use trains -- which means whatever is left over is an irrelevant detail. We should subsidize it more and invest more. I lived in the south of France for a while and it always struck me that instead of one huge, heavy engine pulling ten cars, arriving once an hour, along that stretch (from Cannes to Menton), it would be better served to have light, individual cars that ran every five minutes. (More like a large tram.) We can do so much better. And it will happen the minute we get the greed of the oil/auto/airline industries from getting in our way.
• gandalfian 5y ago
  Here in the UK the train to London is five hours and £75. The coach is £15 and eight hours. Four people in a car perhaps £10 a head. Trains are nicer but there is something annoyingly mysterious about the ecomomcs of it all.
  • riazrizvi 5y ago
    It’s a question of economy of scale. The amount of road vehicle that has been built over the last 150 years vastly supersedes the amount of train over an even longer period. More train, means better train. Hopefully advances in computer aided design will allow some narrowing of that gap. EDIT: There is also an inherent feature in trains that greatly reduces the rate of progress. With toad vehicles there is very good decoupling between the track and the vehicle, from a design pov. With trains the chassis design is more coupled to the track design. And since you can’t really upgrade track easily, on both train and road, there are more constraints in new train design.
  • ascari 5y ago
    Train services are totally a joke in the UK.
  • locallost 5y ago
    You are severely underestimating the cost of the car ride. Fuel is not the only cost, but even this feels low. Five hours by train has to be at least 500km which will be depending on the car on average I guess 35 liters of gas, which at today's prices is more like 60 pounds. But a car costs a couple pounds every day for registration, insurance, regular maintenance, new parts (tires etc). If you go to London and spend 10 days there, this is easily 50-100 pounds even if it's just parked and doing nothing. Now also add possible parking costs and emergency costs for maintenance if the car breaks down -- a friend of mine went with his car to the seaside with kids a couple years ago, and the car broke down midway. It cost him 2.5k for his local shop to pick it up and repair. The shop on the spot even gave him a 4k quote. And of course you have the upfront investment for the actual car which is a few thousand for a used car or at least 15 thousand for a new car these days.
    • 5y ago
• xeeeeeeeeeeenu 5y ago
  It seems likely that hydrogen will replace diesel in trains. Companies like Alstom[1], PESA[2] and Talgo[3] are developing hydrogen trains. Germany has already started deploying them on a small scale[4], while Poland is planning to[5]. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alstom_Coradia_LINT#iLint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alstom_Coradia_LINT#iLint [2] - https://fuelcellsworks.com/news/poland-pesa-presented-a-hydrogen-locomotive-at-trako/ https://fuelcellsworks.com/news/poland-pesa-presented-a-hydr... [3] - https://www.railwaypro.com/wp/talgo-to-launch-hydrogen-train-trials/ https://www.railwaypro.com/wp/talgo-to-launch-hydrogen-train... [4] - https://constructionreviewonline.com/news/construction-of-hydrogen-train-fuelling-station-begins-germany/ https://constructionreviewonline.com/news/construction-of-hy... [5] - https://www.orlen.pl/en/about-the-company/sustainable-development/ORLEN-Group-Hydrogen-Strategy-2030/News-about-hydrogen/pkn-orlen-set-to-build-hydrogen-hub-in-wloclawek https://www.orlen.pl/en/about-the-company/sustainable-develo...
  • TeeMassive 5y ago
    I'm not against using Hydrogen but the problem is always what are they producing Hydrogen with and how is it more efficient energetically and emission wise?
    • pantalaimon 5y ago
      Most Hydrogen is produced from Methane by steam reforming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming
      • ncmncm 5y ago
        That will change, obviously.
    • gopalv 5y ago
      > what are they producing Hydrogen with and how is it more efficient energetically and emission wise? Even if it is just Blue hydrogen being burnt here, the splitter plants can have some carbon capture in it which would be impossible to install on a moving train (beats diesel and also direct LNG burning). That said, with trains there's no real argument against electrification. The wheels have been electrically driven for a few decades now. It's not like they need to come up with motors or work out batteries.
• efxhoy 5y ago
  Rail travel here in Sweden is unfortunately not reliable at all. In february only 75% of long distance and 90% of short distance trips were on time. Many departures were canceled due to a myriad of problems ranging from technical issues with the tracks caused by poor maintenance, to staffing problems caused by staff being off sick or failures of the new staff planning system to allocate staff. The problems aren’t uniform, some parts of the country are worse affected. The train is fantastic when it runs but it takes a heavy toll on quality of life for thousands of commuters when they unexpectedly have to spend several hours a day every week waiting for trains that don’t work. Today my partner spent 3 hours on what should be a 70 minute commute. Instead of spending much more on maintenance (which has been underfunded and mismanaged for years) to increase reliability the government is spending billions to build a new fancy high speed line between Stockholm and Gothenburg. I guess maintenance and reliability aren’t sexy enough for political campaigning. Stats in Swedish: https://www.sj.se/sv/om/om-sj/hallbarhet/punktlighet.html https://www.sj.se/sv/om/om-sj/hallbarhet/punktlighet.html
• ChildOfChaos 5y ago
  Certainly not in the UK, our ticket prices keep going up massively and the service is getting worse and worse, putting on smaller and smaller trains and more delays and cancellations than ever, with most train stations badly run down. It's a complete joke. The trains are far worse and largely more expensive than they were ten years ago. In the past eight months, I have gotten a same day return journey on average once a month and I have experienced: Twice - Stranded missing my last train home due to delayed connecting trains. One of which I was advised to go to a different station and speak to them there to arrange a taxi, got there station was unmanned and ended up having to sort via customer service on twitter at 11pm. Had a train that I couldn't move on, standing in the isle, when i had reserved seats that i couldn't even get too due to the amount of people on it, later stops they couldn't even let anymore people on it. This was a train they decided to cut the size by more than half without warning therefore I am not even sure if my reserved seats existed! 2x train home that I wanted cancelled, lucky I had checked the app due to constant issues so I Could change plans and get an earlier train home. Had a train terminate several stops early and thrown off the train without explanation. 3x had delays (not the ones mentioned on others) of over 15 minutes. Most recently, left at the station late at night for over an hour as train was delayed, with constantly changing information on screens including saying the train was coming in the next 5 minutes for around half an hour and then various different platform changes only for it to turn up at the original platform, unstaffed station, no staff to help and many annoyed/confused people. I was desperate for the toilet, but due to it being later they were all locked, leaving for an uncomfortable and uncertain wait.
  • beaconstudios 5y ago
    Well our train service is highly privatised, and in a way that does not engender competition.
• analog31 5y ago
  I'd like to see trains and planes integrated to a greater extent. Many of the "hub to spoke" connections could be replaced by trains, that could actually arrive quicker than a plane. And trains are less affected by weather. They could even check you into your flight while you're on the train.
• gumby 5y ago
  > Last year, SNCF relaunched overnight services between Paris and Nice, with tickets starting as low as 19 euros, about $21, for a midweek low-season ticket. That compares with 31 euros, not including baggage fees or the cost of airport transfers, for a short flight on EasyJet These prices are inconceivable in the US, where competition in air travel has essentially been eliminated.
  • lotsofpulp 5y ago
    And yet US airlines (United/American/Delta/Southwest/Alaska/JetBlue) are barely profitable, if not losing money many years. The most hated airline, Spirit, has the most consistent profit margin 10%+, but all the others are near 0% most years.
    • Karrot_Kream 5y ago
      Air travel is expensive. Airframe maintenance is expensive and labor intensive. Pilots are highly skilled professionals and need to be paid as such. Jet fuel is expensive. Handling baggage is a logistical challenge. Due to the nature of aircraft, they have low limits on passenger capacity. The government subsidizes air travel into rural areas through the Essential Air Services with about 1/6th the budget it puts into Amtrak. The US government frequently "bails out" airline companies and spends more money than they do on the yearly budget of Amtrak. This ignores the bevvy of subsidizes city governments offer airports to stay in business. Like most forms of infrastructure, American traveling preferences are driven mostly by a mixture of emotion and lobbying. Air travel doesn't make much economic sense and hasn't for years.
      • gumby 5y ago
        Why are airfares so much cheaper in Europe and Asia than they are in the US?
        • Karrot_Kream 5y ago
          Asia often doesn't have any infrastructure in place of air travel. The US and Europe have large roadways and rail networks for transportation which means airfare is more expensive in relation. Much of Asia has no road or rail network in place that can support the capacity that air travel offers and many governments in Asia cannot fund a road or rail project of sufficient magnitude to offer a compelling alternative. In Europe jet fuel is mostly untaxed and distances in Europe are shorter so less fuel is spent moving passengers from city-to-city.
• lobochrome 5y ago
  Observations from a frequent train traveller in Germany and Japan: - Train Travel works when the frequency of trains is so high that you do not need to think about "a" connection, but instead just choose the "next" connection. - Any significant number of delayed trains are a problem when one has important appointments. Morning meetings require an overnight trip, even if an early morning connection would usually work. - European Train companies produce shitty trains (compare to Japan), lead amongst them Siemens for Deutsche Bahn. Train restaurants are broken too often. A/C breaks down in summer. Alstom TGVs are an exception - if they are pre-Siemens-merger attempt period. - Electrification of lines is just not happening anymore in Germany. It's politically more sexy to do something with Hydrogen. Very odd. - Deutsche Bahn is the largest user of Round-Up (Glyphosat) in Germany. Still - vegetation along the tracks causes frequent delays (burning brush, fallen trees), because maintenance crews have been cut. - By trying to remodel stations cheaply for commerce, most stations in Germany have become unpleasant to navigate. Signage is particularly bad (compared to Japan). - The mood in the train system has become very aggressive. Drinking groups who ransack compartments, passengers who get angry because of delays and start shouting, conductors who react unprofessionally - it's all just about to blow up.
  • m2fkxy 5y ago
    > Electrification of lines is just not happening anymore in Germany. It's politically more sexy to do something with Hydrogen. Very odd. "Odd" is a fine euphemism to describe Germany's energy strategy. > By trying to remodel stations cheaply for commerce, most stations in Germany have become unpleasant to navigate. Signage is particularly bad (compared to Japan) Yes... Parisian train stations are also becoming gigantic shopping malls that happen to have train tracks in their premises... an infuriating experience.
    • xixixao 5y ago
      Every train station and every airport is a geographical monopoly. There needs to be government regulation that prevents them from forcing people through a huge shopping mall maze.
• singhrac 5y ago
  Mildly unrelated to the article at hand, but I wish Amtrak had better quality (faster and more consistent) wifi onboard for NE regional and other non-Acela trains. I think even the Acela doesn't have high speed wifi. If I could work during a 6+ hour journey it would really change the equation on traveling for me. The desks that are available on these trains is a huge change from the tiny lapdesks on flights. The thing people miss about trains, I think, is that you can have these comforts. You can have a cafe car with real coffee and snacks. Multiple outlets, etc. I don't really mind the journey taking a bit longer or being more expensive if it's not dead time and I can work.
  • seattle_spring 5y ago
    The service in the NW is similarly garbage. Was completely useless between Seattle and Portland.
  • panick21_ 5y ago
    Starlink could solve this reasonably cheaply. You basically need a few Starlink antennas per train and then a decent wifi hotspot in each car. Then and then when the train is in range of mobile connection you can use both.
• newsclues 5y ago
  Russian military is dependent upon rail and struggling with truck logistics. Just wanted to point out that Western European rail investments are dual use. Large scale military operations require massive logistics and rail is a big part of that.
• snorrah 5y ago
  I would like to reference the YouTube channels: Adam Something, and Not Just Bikes, if you would like further reading about car-free(*) society
• Ericson2314 5y ago
  > Booking in advance, just as you would for a flight, can also save travelers a lot of money, Mr. Smith said, adding that he advises people to reserve their long-distance train travel one to three months ahead to avoid last-minute price hikes. This is stupid. It's wasteful to fly an empty plain, but it should be cheaper to run an empty chain than mess with the schedule. There's no economic reason to shake down unplanned travel like this.
• locallost 5y ago
  After reading some of the comments on the price of train tickets, and while it's true trains are on paper more expensive, there are some things to consider: * prices and conditions vary between countries. For example, in Germany your children can travel for free until 14, but apparently this is not universal and it can be a big difference for families * in a lot of countries you can pay for discount cards and get 25/50 percent off. Even in places like Switzerland where the prices are notoriously high, the discount card is comparatively cheap and to my understanding it's valid on pretty much all public transportation (e.g. city trams). If you travel even slightly frequently, it pays for itself quickly. * similar to planes, trains in some countries offer discounted prices if you book in advance, and for a specific train. E.g. on my last trip to Switzerland, the price was around 160, but I paid 40 for one leg (even first class!) and going back it was 120 because I had the 25% off card. The card itself cost around 60 so it basically was worth it for one trip. When I was a student 10 years ago, I would travel to e.g. Budapest on a German train with their "Europe Special" ticket for 40 (30 with 25% off). You had to book in advance, but this is true for planes as well if you want something really cheap. * others have commented on this, but there are a ton of external costs for planes and cars. Usually a taxi to the airport, or parking or whatnot. Trains in comparison put you mostly in the city centre and quite often bundle a city ticket so you can hop on a bus, tram or subway to your final destination. * planes in Europe don't (always?) pay VAT on international travel. that is quite a big difference in the total price * trains even if not always punctual often come with a guarantee, meaning you can get money back for a delay. In Germany it's 25% if you are more than an hour late, and 50% for two hours. My family spent over two hours a couple days ago sitting on a cramped plane because they could not take off from Berlin, the only thing they can do about it is cry. There are things that are quite infuriating about trains and train companies, but IMHO their prices are not all that unreasonable. The comfort and speed for short and intermediate trips also has its price im general.
  • aembleton 5y ago
    You can apply for compensation for your delayed flight. https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/travel-guide/flight-delay-compensation/ https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/travel-guide/flight-delay-c...
• jillesvangurp 5y ago
  The economics of trains are wrong and only make sense when fuel is expensive and fuel savings are worth investing in. That's a broken assumption long term. Why is this important? Rail operates on the basis of an extremely high investment (rail) offset by the notion that you earn that back over decades / centuries via fuel savings. But rails has a high up front investment cost (many tons of steel, land disputes, decade+ of planning and construction), high maintenance cost (upkeep & maintenance). So, the fuel savings are really important. With the mass deployment of electrical vehicles (cars, buses, trucks, ships, and soon small airplanes) that stops being feasible. Electricity is cheap and dropping in price and generally trending towards dirty cheap in roughly the time it will take to build a meaningful amount of new rail. Also, a lot of these vehicles will eventually become autonomous which knocks out a secondary source of cost: the driver. That creates a formidable competitor to rail that can utilize roads, water ways, air ways, etc. and uses energy that is harvested at more or less constant cost from wind, geo thermal, solar, or nuclear. That knocks the whole premise away under mass transit solutions that amortize the extreme cost of fuel (and drivers) by just moving a lot of stuff with one enormous vehicle (an airbus 380, a train carrying many tonnes of cargo or thousands of passengers, huge ships, etc.). These huge vehicles are only economical when the fuel savings matter. They won't. What if you could route individual containers via light, self driving, battery electrical vehicles? Production cost of about 100-200K$ each, probably cheaper if you mass produce them. Good for a million mile+ operational life time. Can go anywhere you want it to go. Does about 1-2 miles per KWH at a cost of less than 0.005$/kwh depending on weight/size. The numbers are far better with people carriers because we are talking lighter, cheaper, and more efficient vehicles. That's our future. Rail does not make sense in that future. If you have a train that transports 100 containers, we're talking 5$/kwh worth of electricity every mile or so. Electrical trains would have similar or a bit better fuel cost of course but be very expensive to build and operate due to the need for rails and heavy duty machinery on the rails. But it would be meaningless because electricity is so cheap. The vehicle purchase cost of hundreds of electrical trucks would be negligible compared to that and maintaining and constructing roads is also a lot cheaper. The fuel cost difference would no longer justify spending many billions on both infrastructure, vehicles, and maintenance for rails. No chance in hell to earn any of that back with fuel savings when the price of that drops through the floor. Current prices for the most competitive solar bids are hovering around 0.012$/kwh. They are not going to stay there. 0.005 is only a very modest improvement. Long term we might be looking at 0.001 or even less. That's only 1 order of magnitude of improvement. It's the conservative scenario. Manufacturing cost is basically a function of how cheap it is to manufacture and install panels, storage, cables, etc. Ironically, a big factor in that cost are energy and labor. So, having cheaper ways to generate energy will make making cheap energy cheaper. Add robots to the mix and you drop the labor cost as well. Moving stuff around is going to be very cheap.
• trizuz 5y ago
• nmcela 5y ago
  I wish we invested in hyperloops and made them happen in the next decade. Those will change the world as we know it, and hopefully for the better.
• nephanth 5y ago
  In France, the train is just so much more convenient, provided one of your stops is Paris. Take Paris-Lyon for example - by train : 1. depart from Paris Gare de Lyon (inside the city), arrive at Lyon perrache (inside the city). 10€ to 30€ (ouigo), ~3h. 2. recommended arrival time : 30min early - by plane: 1. go from Paris to ORY (~40min, ~10€ in orlyval/orlybus or RER) 2. recommended arrival time : 2h early 3. 1h of flight, cheapest 50€, most prices are around 100€ 4. Get from Lyon airport to the city whith rhonexpress, 15€, 30min Result : even though the flight time is a bit shorter, the plane trip is actually way longer and way more expensive The only time when plane is more convenient than train is when you want to travel between two cities that are not linked by rail, and the correspondance in Paris is too much of a detour, such as bordeaux-nice
• jdrc 5y ago
  Incidentally are there train startups with novel ideas?
• Tepix 5y ago
  I love night trains. Europe has the right size to make them work well, i.e. i can get on a train in the evening in the middle of Germany and wake up at the Mediterranean coast of Croatia. Trains starting in the late evening in the north or south of Germany could arrive at the other end (a distance of 900km) the next morning. You produce less CO2, stay one night less in the hotel at your destination, everything is less stressful and you arrive well-rested. Unfortunately, Germany got rid of all of their night trains in 2016 so we have to rely on other countries' trains. I'm not aware of any plans to get night trains back. I hope this will change! Without national night trains, flights within Germany will remain attractive.
• ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  I wonder if there's a master list of "things China and the EU are doing but the USA isn't". Would be interesting, and if you had the data you could do it for things EU isn't doing or China isn't doing. I'm always surprised by how parochial political debates are "X wouldn't work" when everyone else around the world thinks X is vital.
• meerita 5y ago
  Trains are great for no more than 600km range trips. I live in Spain, and it's great to get into the train without doing all the procedures you do with a plane. I arrive to the station 10 mins before departure and I never had troubles. With airplanes I need to be there 1 hour before. Then you spend another 30 mins getting into the plane, following the instructions for just only 1h trip. The same trip Barcelona -> Madrid can be done without all the hasle and even faster than in airplanes, in addition, you arrive in the center of the city, much better connected than the airport, where you spend another half an hour to reach the city center. In my experience, airplanes are worth once you talk about trips over 800km. Trips that you cannot do in less than 2 hours of train.
  • krab 5y ago
    Exactly. Arriving to the city center and skipping all the airport hassle is huge.
  • ant6n 5y ago
    Im French rail planning, rail is considered competitive with air travel up to 3h. In German planning, up to 4h. With 250km/h average, that would allow up to 1000km. Plus, one could try to revive night trains. Arriving at 9am in the morning in some far away city, we’ll rested, would be useful both for vacations and business trips. And could easily allow distances of 1500km even without having high speed rail lines everywhere, or somewhat longer distances with.
    • atoav 5y ago
      > With 250km/h average, that would allow up to 1000km. Sadly going through the alps at that speed is not that simple. But I'd love to have interconnected cities.
      • fsflover 5y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31000124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31000124
      • 5y ago
• baud147258 5y ago
  I've traveled a lot by train in France, but one issue when comparing with travel by car is that, when traveling with three or more people, it'd be cheaper to take the car (and then you even avoid all the hassle of going to and from the station)
• panick21_ 5y ago
  When doing these calculations, we really need to think strongly about electric airplanes. By the time any major high speed rails are built, electric planes will exist. Given electric planes can be fueled with green energy in many European countries there is not really an environment argument anymore. Well one could argue that its less efficient and that true but the difference is certainty much closer. Electric planes will also make air-travel much cheaper, because the operational cost will be far, far lower just as with electric cars and the 'fuel' will be cheaper as well. The fuel is consider a major part of the cost right now and has the potential to be much lower. Electric planes also require little buildup of infrastructure. In fact, electric planes will allow us to fly many more routes to smaller airports that are often not utilized much right now. If we can get the absurd security restrictions removed and make air-travel within continents more like trains we can eliminate much of the wasted time as well. Because electric planes have the potential to be much more quite while on the ground and on landing, airports can be build closer to population centers. And there are additional innovations that could make propellers in general more quite as well. Planes allow for point to point transport rather then following a line of stations. Or rather you still might use stations but on much less granular scale. From where I live I can reach a local airport in something like 10min with the bus. If I could fly from there to places like Paris, Milan or Berlin it would be quite amazing. Even if those flights only happen once 1 week or so. Or you just connect to some larger airport and get on a second plane there. I feel like really major investment in high speed rail is misplaced. I much rather see more investment in local rail. And if you need to hope from city to city jumping into an electric plane would be better. Now the technology is not fully there yet, specially in battery cells (and how to package them into plane). No proposed electric plane can fly Zürich->Berlin. But I think major investment in that sector would yield amazing results. The current electric plane companies are minimally innovative because they want to just get electric plane of the ground (and they are right to do so). However once you really think threw all the implications of electric planes you could do so much more. Its like first generation EV were just traditional cars with batteries in them. When now in Tesla and BYD produce cars where the actual battery cells are a vital part of the cars structure. With battery electric supersonic overland flights are a real possibility because you would fly high enough that air density and distance would make the sonic boom much less of a problem. We could rethink vertical launch as well. In general a change in paradigm will force revising on many of the most basic assumptions of how traditional combustion planes look. I would not be surprised if we fly around with electric vertical starting, supersonic flying wing airplanes in 30 years.
• jeffnappi 5y ago
  Speaking of the EU and trains, I recently became aware of these incredible tunneling projects under the Alps[0]. Truly fascinating and impressive. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30foJiPUrBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30foJiPUrBA
• Securemove 5y ago
  [flagged]