5 ms·

Rail infrastructure is very expensive compared to planes. An airport is expensive, but once you've built it you're pretty much immediately connected to half the

Rail infrastructure is very expensive compared to planes. An airport is expensive, but once you've built it you're pretty much immediately connected to half the world. With a train station, you need a track to each surrounding stations, maintain them, and so on. Also, train doesn't scale down as well, it quickly becomes inefficient for the less dense routes. People are talking about subsidies (by not taxing fuel for instance) for planes, but trains are also directly subsidised to the tune of billions each year. The rail network just costs a ton to build and maintain.

namdnay 5y ago
The major subsidy to planes is that you don’t have to clean up the CO2 you spew out
- emn13 5y ago
  But even beyond that - fuel and other power sources have been taxed well before climate change was a political issue, and jet fuel is exempt from all of that. It smacks of regulatory capture.
emn13 5y ago
Sure, but so are airports and so are roads. And all forms of infrastructure are sometimes prestige projects, and all are sometimes subject to political choices that while legitimate, in retrospect turn out to have been questionable. It's possible that despite all that rail has higher costs - but it's also quite possible that the dominating factor is the unreasonably subsidized airline fuel. The tax-exempt status is absurd, especially given other fuel and power duties - not to mention that a reasonable accounting should be taxing fuel high enough to cover the costs of the climate-change externalities, which would result in an even higher price (as it happens, due to cloud formation, air travel causes even more warming than ground based fossil fuel consumption, though I'm unaware of whether that's a significant difference). If indeed an honest accounting were to reveal that flight is still cheaper: great! But I seriously doubt it; and in any case it's certainly time to stop subsidizing air travel like this. Let the sector succeed or fail on its own merits, not by virtue of tax shenanigans.
occz 5y ago
>but trains are also directly subsidised to the tune of billions each year. The rail network just costs a ton to build and maintain. Just wait until you hear about how subsidised the infrastructure for cars and trucks are.
- julienb_sea 5y ago
  Construction of road infrastructure can be compared to construction of tracks and stations, and it's fair to say taxpayers foot the bill in full for both. The difference is that trains operate at a loss even with high ticket prices and operational subsidies are necessary for market viability. That is not the case with car and truck usage.
  - burlesona 5y ago
    At least in the US, local road networks in the suburbs and rural areas bleed money terribly, and as fuel taxes have not kept pace with inflation even the inner city streets and crowded highways can barely break even.
    - diordiderot 5y ago
      Like a growth Ponzi scheme
    - xyzzyz 5y ago
      Local roads bleed money universally everywhere, because pretty much no place charges tolls for local road use. Gas taxes do not cover road costs, because gas taxes are not by the same entities that actually build the roads, so there is no reason to expect it to be the case. However, and fortunately, road construction and maintenance is universally a small part of municipality budgets in US, typically under 10%, and very rarely anywhere close to 20%, so there is not much reason to worry about affordability of local roads.
  - transportguy 5y ago
    In London, both roads and buses are subsidised from the income of the tube lines.
BurningFrog 5y ago
Yeah, rail infrastructure costs O(distance) while plane infrastructure costs O(trips).
- ant6n 5y ago
  Rail infrastructure forms networks.
bigDinosaur 5y ago
Rail can be used to make routes densify though. Air travel can never do this. The cost of rail has to be thought of in the context of an investment in a city or country (this doesn't mean 'go crazy building HSR' like some countries but then again many countries have no problems with approving road megaprojects that are terrible ideas so why not rail?). This is actually true of road infrastructure too, but there are a lot of negative externalities to roads that don't apply to rail.
lostlogin 5y ago
Many airlines are subsidised, and their pollution (sound, air, sea, land) is effectively a subsidy as the airlines don't pay.
- flavius29663 5y ago
  Trains are also noisy, at least as much as planes. As for pollution, consider how much land is taken from nature for tracks...there is almost none for airplanes, in comparison.
  - black_puppydog 5y ago
    When you stand next to a train track yes à train is noisy. But a plane will cover literally a whole town with its noise. Very different. I was just in Frankfurt yesterday and the noise is substantial, in the residential neighbourhood I visited it was the main source of noise during the day.
  - arethuza 5y ago
    I live 600m from a fairly busy train line and ~14km from Edinburgh airport - the latter is much noisier.
    - flavius29663 5y ago
      Maybe you are under the flight path? My point was that train lines are millions of miles/km and run through the center of settlements, by design. Almost everywhere in the world, unless you live in a suburb or village, you have a high chance that you will hear trains multiple times a day. I think there are less people under flight plaths than near trains. I guess it depends on luck how noisy they can be. I used to get woken every night at 2am by one fucker.
      - arethuza 5y ago
        From what I can tell it is take offs - aircraft coming in to land, even though they are much closer, tend to be inaudible. It might be because we are relatively high up (about 100m) and most of the distance between us and the airport is over the sea. Edit: Just checked on a map and when most aircraft take off from Edinburgh's runway into the prevailing wind they are pointing pretty much directly away from us which might make it more noticeable.
jseban 5y ago
Yeah the only use case where trains make sense to me, is really heavy cargo, where the lower friction of the wheels make it more efficient. That's a use case where both flying and trucks will be at a disadvantage. Transporting people in trains doesn't really make sense to me. You can fly if you need to go fast, take a bus if you have time, or drive a car if you want flexibility.
- pg314 5y ago
  According to the Brussels Institute of Statistics and Analysis [1], in 2017, 34% of all commuters in Brussels commuted by train versus 36.2% by car. It might not make sense to you, but it does to other people. [1] page 30 of https://bisa.brussels/sites/default/files/publication/documents/PerspectiveBrussels-Mini-Bru_2022-ENG.pdf https://bisa.brussels/sites/default/files/publication/docume...
  - jseban 5y ago
    The train itself has to be heavier than the load just to stay on the tracks. It would only make sense if you already have an established cargo route, and you can in addition also reuse a large part of that track for people transport.
    - pg314 5y ago
      > The train itself has to be heavier than the load just to stay on the tracks. Why would that be? A typical 110 ton capacity freight train car weighs 33 tons unloaded. It has no problems staying on the tracks. Besides both buses and planes typically weigh much more than their freight (and planes need to lift all that weight 10km vertically), so I fail to see how that is an argument against trains.
      - jseban 5y ago
        > Why would that be? A typical 110 ton capacity freight train car weighs 33 tons unloaded. It has no problems staying on the tracks. I'm guessing at the numbers here but just to illustrate my point: If an empty bus weights let's say 10 tonnes, and an empty train 33 tons. And the load of the passengers around 7 tonnes. So in total you'd transport 40 tonnes of train as opposed to 17 tonnes of bus. Then obviously for that load rubber tires would be more efficient, and rail would be a bad fit. There's a minimum load per cubic inch for trains to make sense, you have to have really dense cargo. Like I said in another comment, subways in Paris run on rubber tires, it becomes especially inefficient with rail when there are frequent stops. It would make so much more sense, especially in the US, to develop premium Tesla buses that could use the existing freeway infrastructure, than to expand rail.

namdnay 5y ago

The major subsidy to planes is that you don’t have to clean up the CO2 you spew out

emn13 5y ago
But even beyond that - fuel and other power sources have been taxed well before climate change was a political issue, and jet fuel is exempt from all of that. It smacks of regulatory capture.

emn13 5y ago

Sure, but so are airports and so are roads. And all forms of infrastructure are sometimes prestige projects, and all are sometimes subject to political choices that while legitimate, in retrospect turn out to have been questionable. It's possible that despite all that rail has higher costs - but it's also quite possible that the dominating factor is the unreasonably subsidized airline fuel. The tax-exempt status is absurd, especially given other fuel and power duties - not to mention that a reasonable accounting should be taxing fuel high enough to cover the costs of the climate-change externalities, which would result in an even higher price (as it happens, due to cloud formation, air travel causes even more warming than ground based fossil fuel consumption, though I'm unaware of whether that's a significant difference). If indeed an honest accounting were to reveal that flight is still cheaper: great! But I seriously doubt it; and in any case it's certainly time to stop subsidizing air travel like this. Let the sector succeed or fail on its own merits, not by virtue of tax shenanigans.

occz 5y ago

>but trains are also directly subsidised to the tune of billions each year. The rail network just costs a ton to build and maintain. Just wait until you hear about how subsidised the infrastructure for cars and trucks are.

julienb_sea 5y ago
Construction of road infrastructure can be compared to construction of tracks and stations, and it's fair to say taxpayers foot the bill in full for both. The difference is that trains operate at a loss even with high ticket prices and operational subsidies are necessary for market viability. That is not the case with car and truck usage.
- burlesona 5y ago
  At least in the US, local road networks in the suburbs and rural areas bleed money terribly, and as fuel taxes have not kept pace with inflation even the inner city streets and crowded highways can barely break even.
  - diordiderot 5y ago
    Like a growth Ponzi scheme
  - xyzzyz 5y ago
    Local roads bleed money universally everywhere, because pretty much no place charges tolls for local road use. Gas taxes do not cover road costs, because gas taxes are not by the same entities that actually build the roads, so there is no reason to expect it to be the case. However, and fortunately, road construction and maintenance is universally a small part of municipality budgets in US, typically under 10%, and very rarely anywhere close to 20%, so there is not much reason to worry about affordability of local roads.
- transportguy 5y ago
  In London, both roads and buses are subsidised from the income of the tube lines.

BurningFrog 5y ago

Yeah, rail infrastructure costs O(distance) while plane infrastructure costs O(trips).

ant6n 5y ago
Rail infrastructure forms networks.

bigDinosaur 5y ago

Rail can be used to make routes densify though. Air travel can never do this. The cost of rail has to be thought of in the context of an investment in a city or country (this doesn't mean 'go crazy building HSR' like some countries but then again many countries have no problems with approving road megaprojects that are terrible ideas so why not rail?). This is actually true of road infrastructure too, but there are a lot of negative externalities to roads that don't apply to rail.

lostlogin 5y ago

Many airlines are subsidised, and their pollution (sound, air, sea, land) is effectively a subsidy as the airlines don't pay.

flavius29663 5y ago
Trains are also noisy, at least as much as planes. As for pollution, consider how much land is taken from nature for tracks...there is almost none for airplanes, in comparison.
- black_puppydog 5y ago
  When you stand next to a train track yes à train is noisy. But a plane will cover literally a whole town with its noise. Very different. I was just in Frankfurt yesterday and the noise is substantial, in the residential neighbourhood I visited it was the main source of noise during the day.
- arethuza 5y ago
  I live 600m from a fairly busy train line and ~14km from Edinburgh airport - the latter is much noisier.
  - flavius29663 5y ago
    Maybe you are under the flight path? My point was that train lines are millions of miles/km and run through the center of settlements, by design. Almost everywhere in the world, unless you live in a suburb or village, you have a high chance that you will hear trains multiple times a day. I think there are less people under flight plaths than near trains. I guess it depends on luck how noisy they can be. I used to get woken every night at 2am by one fucker.
    - arethuza 5y ago
      From what I can tell it is take offs - aircraft coming in to land, even though they are much closer, tend to be inaudible. It might be because we are relatively high up (about 100m) and most of the distance between us and the airport is over the sea. Edit: Just checked on a map and when most aircraft take off from Edinburgh's runway into the prevailing wind they are pointing pretty much directly away from us which might make it more noticeable.

jseban 5y ago

Yeah the only use case where trains make sense to me, is really heavy cargo, where the lower friction of the wheels make it more efficient. That's a use case where both flying and trucks will be at a disadvantage. Transporting people in trains doesn't really make sense to me. You can fly if you need to go fast, take a bus if you have time, or drive a car if you want flexibility.

pg314 5y ago
According to the Brussels Institute of Statistics and Analysis [1], in 2017, 34% of all commuters in Brussels commuted by train versus 36.2% by car. It might not make sense to you, but it does to other people. [1] page 30 of https://bisa.brussels/sites/default/files/publication/documents/PerspectiveBrussels-Mini-Bru_2022-ENG.pdf https://bisa.brussels/sites/default/files/publication/docume...
- jseban 5y ago
  The train itself has to be heavier than the load just to stay on the tracks. It would only make sense if you already have an established cargo route, and you can in addition also reuse a large part of that track for people transport.
  - pg314 5y ago
    > The train itself has to be heavier than the load just to stay on the tracks. Why would that be? A typical 110 ton capacity freight train car weighs 33 tons unloaded. It has no problems staying on the tracks. Besides both buses and planes typically weigh much more than their freight (and planes need to lift all that weight 10km vertically), so I fail to see how that is an argument against trains.
    - jseban 5y ago
      > Why would that be? A typical 110 ton capacity freight train car weighs 33 tons unloaded. It has no problems staying on the tracks. I'm guessing at the numbers here but just to illustrate my point: If an empty bus weights let's say 10 tonnes, and an empty train 33 tons. And the load of the passengers around 7 tonnes. So in total you'd transport 40 tonnes of train as opposed to 17 tonnes of bus. Then obviously for that load rubber tires would be more efficient, and rail would be a bad fit. There's a minimum load per cubic inch for trains to make sense, you have to have really dense cargo. Like I said in another comment, subways in Paris run on rubber tires, it becomes especially inefficient with rail when there are frequent stops. It would make so much more sense, especially in the US, to develop premium Tesla buses that could use the existing freeway infrastructure, than to expand rail.