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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 s

• 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.
        • diordiderot 5y ago
          > externalize their environmental costs It's that + Every step of the aviation industry is subsidized by state actors. oil companies are also incentivised to support as airlines are a massive consumer of karosene that would otherwise be a cheap byproduct of oil refining
    • trainsarebetter 5y ago
      This. Rail lines don’t need much maintenance once installed. Compared to a hwy which starts to fall apart immediately. Trains are a relatively simple and robust transportation method. I wonder what the insurance costs look like between the different methods of transportation
    • NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
      Rail is much more expensive to maintain than roads on a per-kilometer basis - where are you getting your numbers from?
      • Karrot_Kream 5y ago
        Do you have a source? I'd expect rail to be more expensive from a capital expenditure perspective (laying rail, ties, buying cars, etc) but much cheaper to operate (coefficient of friction is lower between train wheels and rails than with rubber tires and roads, optimal speeding and slowing causing less wear on tracks, less downtime as rail repairs are much simpler than road repairs, etc)
        • NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
          In the UK, Network Rail spends about £150k per track kilometer per year on maintenance and renewal. Track needs constant maintenance through ballast redistribution and compaction to maintain track geometry; the rail itself needs to be ground regularly to maintain its shape; points systems need to be maintained, as well as signaling systems, earthworks and embankments, even vegetation. Maintenance costs for major roads in the UK (trunk motorways and A roads) is something about half that.
          • buttercraft 5y ago
            You need to factor in the cost of moving goods for each.
            • NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
              I really don't, if my point is to rebut the statement "the whole point of trains is that expenses are largely one-off." I love trains. I used them all the time when I lived in the U.K. and in Japan. I've ridden Amtrak from New York to San Francisco, and the Orient Express. They are, however, very much not a one-and-done investment as is being suggested elsewhere in this thread. People are largely familiar with road maintenance, but most of them have no idea at all about maintenance of the railway.
  • arcticbull 5y ago
    Rail infrastructure can be expensive (especially when done as inefficiently as in the US) but the actual economics of running trains are fantastic. They're the second-most efficient way of transporting goods and people - after marine shipping. A freight train can move 1 ton of cargo 480 miles using a single gallon of diesel. [1] Even city rail, Bart trains in SF average 249 miles per gallon equivalent. Not to mention you only need what - one or two people - manning a train carrying the average equivalent of 700 truckloads. Once you commit to putting it up, it's super cheap and efficient, which is why we do it. [1] https://www.aar.org/article/freight-rail-moving-miles-ahead-on-sustainability/ https://www.aar.org/article/freight-rail-moving-miles-ahead-... [2] https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/GreenSheet.pdf https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/GreenSheet.pdf
  • balaji1 5y ago
    Rail networks have a lot more potential for automation and electrification. It is way too underestimated. It would be cool to see when Amazon gets into Rail.
• AnonCoward4 5y ago
  And in addition to that they also removed a lot of rail lines, especially goods traffic. It would've been a boon to have fewer trucks on the motorway and probably better for the environment.
  • novembermike 5y ago
    European trains don't really do that much freight though. They tend to be optimized to carry people. America is actually way ahead of Europe in terms of rail freight, something like 10x depending on the measurement.
    • cheschire 5y ago
      Having commuted with both american and german rail systems before, my educated guess it's likely due to who owns the rails. American rail freight companies have far more control over prioritization than european freight companies. DB Netz owns the vast majority of german rail and therefore prioritizes what makes them the most money. Historically that's been carrying people due to all the government and company subsidies they get for supporting commuters and students. During COVID times the rail freight increased dramatically because the personen trains were offline. I suspect that will have generated some inertia towards freight, but it will take years to see and only if the right folks at DB crunch the right numbers. On the american side, I've sat for 20 or 30 minutes regularly (up to an hour on the worst days) while our commuter train had to wait for the rail owner's freight train to roll through. And that's a regularly scheduled commuter!!
      • einpoklum 5y ago
        But why couldn't DB Netz do both people and freight, if both are profitable (after subsidies for passenger traffic)? i.e. why does it have to be a choice?
        • barry-cotter 5y ago
          Because things which are designed to be good at one thing will not be as good at other things. There's only so much rail network and given a conflict either freight is a priority or passengers are. You can't have two number 1 priorities.
• skrbjc 5y ago
  Thanks for your perspective from someone close to the situation there. I believe many Americans have a picture of a perfect system in Europe, but the truth is likely different. Can you elaborate on the negative aspects of the train system, as you see it?
  • nfin 5y ago
    my short answer would be: bad at punctuality. Frequent delays bigger than 10min. France for example is better at punctuality IMO. But granted: smaller population density, therefore less stops needed in rural areas. And lower population density made it also a lot easier to build many complete own tracks for fast trains (TGV). Also more centralized way of thinking, so if you are around Paris: good, if you live far away of big cities, not so lucky.
    • melenaboija 5y ago
      > Frequent delays bigger than 10min Im an European having spent few years in US and also used to complain about this, until I learnt what delays mean in domestic US flights. Not unusual to be few hours and already spent a couple of nights at the airport.
    • kergonath 5y ago
      > smaller population density, therefore less stops needed in rural areas. I see this argument regularly, but I do not find it very convincing. There are places in the US about the same size as France with much lower population densities as well. France is about the same size as Texas. Surely there are Texas-sized bits of land with similar densities as France in the US. > Also more centralized way of thinking, so if you are around Paris: good, if you live far away of big cities, not so lucky. The network is still very centralised, but it is much better than it used to be. Thanks to the Paris south and east bypasses, as well as progress on the high speed line in the south made things like Lyon-Lille, Lyon-Toulouse, Strasbourg-Nantes, or Marseille-Bordeaux quite nice. Lyon-Bordeaux is still a pain in the backside because of the mountains in the middle.
    • jmcgough 5y ago
• agumonkey 5y ago
  A youtuber explained that Italy overlayed high speed rail routes now and that it's pretty brilliant. Things are moving.
  • isaacimagine 5y ago
    I live in Italy and can attest that the high-speed rail running along the backbone of the Italian peninsula is really nice: it's clean, faster than a regional flight (no need for security, etc.), quiet, and it's fun to watch the hills roll by out the window.
    • agumonkey 5y ago
      I only remembered the regional one which was so strange.
    • twic 5y ago
      I went from Rome to somewhere like Florence by train. Fast, easy, reasonably priced, and it was a short walk from my seat to a café car where a team of sharply uniformed gentlemen made me an excellent espresso!
  • NoLinkToMe 5y ago
    Absolutely loved taking the train in Italy, fast, convenient, cheap, good amenities. Of course the country very much lends itself for rail (more or less an elongated territory that can run a very fast high-capacity north/south backbone, with slower but more ubiquitous horizontal offshoot rail to the various smaller cities and villages), but it was still very well done. Especially considering how much tunnelling was required. My big concern is that we're not really moving towards a single european market nor a single european train infrastructure system. I'm not sure if it can thrive as a patchwork of different ticketing systems and different rail systems. Without it it can't compete for international travel. And without it it's hard to get the right economies of scale.
    • moonchrome 5y ago
      Just solving urban transport with train would be a huge thing here in Croatia. Rails are so shit that if you need to commute it's faster to travel through peak rush hour with a car than ride a train. It's depressing really because good rails would really connect less developed places near the capital and offload the pressure on city.
• ithinkso 5y ago
  It's different in Poland. Here, everyone always complains about the rail and it was shit like you wouldn't believe only like 15 years ago. I've been using trains only sporadically but the improvements are absolutely immense, I couldn't believe my eyes. Not perfect of course but holy shit did it improve, especially regional rails Of course we had to improve from much lower standards than Germany, I guess, so I have no idea if our expectations of good are the same but nevertheless
  • scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
    I use trains here in Poland and although there have been big improvements, a lot of them are only a facade. Long distance PKP trains are still late everyday. The regional trains in my city tend to be over-packed, and from a technical pov they’re more like larger diesel buses than trains. However, in response to the earlier comment and this one as well, I would have to say that investment doesn’t always mean immediate visible effects. The biggest investment to make in rail is in the infrastructure. You don’t feel as a passenger which parts of the track are old and which are new, and they are pretty expensive to build and maintain. I also would wonder how much freight rail is in that investment, because that we don’t see or feel at all.
    • emteycz 5y ago
      Even a diesel bus on rails is much more efficient than a diesel bus on roads. It's also much easier to electrify than a fleet of buses, an much more ecological when you do (because no significant battery). Thus, anything on rails is a win.
      • scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
        Agreed - especially in the context of how unbelievably clumsy the US is at doing trains. Here in western Poland however it was a bit easier - lots of tracks remained since 19th century. And with these diesel buses popping up, an opportunity presented itself to go relatively low investment and lots of political bang. Those trains are usually way too packed in my personal experience. Similarly, Pendolino high speed rail was developed and implemented to huge fanfare. Only the tickets ended up being so expensive that basically only the upper-upper-middle class wants to take them. Why take the high-speed train at double the price to get you there twice as fast, when all you need is to get there?
• sshagent 5y ago
  As someone who uses UK trains semi frequently, and German trains less so....I'd take your trains in a heart beat
• neoyagami 5y ago
  I went to germany a cuple of years ago, and my experience was delightful, here in chile in the years of the coup, the rail system was almost completely dismantled in favor of trucks and buses, I dream the day I could travel in train to the north of the country in a moderate modern train :)
• mikepurvis 5y ago
  At least they're speaking into a culture that wants to hear about investment in rail, regardless of whether the work being done feels like it's yielding tangible improvements or not. Here in Canada, it sometimes feels like they're almost ashamed of what little they're spending and even try to hide it away, or spread the big capital expenses over multiple years to make it look like even less.
• toshk 5y ago
  Deutsche Bahn is a disaster. Extreme delays up to 2 hours more often then not. Rude staff. Forcing moms with kids out of the train by police. Travelled for 3 summers through germany, now just take the plane.
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• phendrenad2 5y ago
  In the US, trains are seen as ancient cowboy technology. Trying to build more train infrastructure is surely an uphill battle.
  • Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    It's hard to say. Trains have been chronically underfunded in the US for so long that I don't think the US even knows what decent train infrastructure is like. Amtrak hasn't had a guaranteed budget until the recent infrastructure bill passed and was originally designed to just be a publicly-funded holding company to sell off its rolling stock and lines.
    • erosenbe0 5y ago
      We don't really want the trains (because of the way the US developed its cities). Let me give an example. In order to add a few more daily routes from Chicago to Milwaukee on Amtrak, a freight train would have to hold on a holding line for several hours in residential areas to let the Amtrak through. The increase in ridership, not just riders shifting their schedules, would have been at most a few hundred. So in order to get a few hundred cars off the road, Amtrak would have to build a holding track (carbon cost), add more rolling stock to the route, burn more diesel, and a residential neighborhood full of children would have had diesel trains idling for hours a day. The total economic and environmental value of the program was negative by most measures.
      • Karrot_Kream 5y ago
        This seems poorly argued to me. You're making a number of assumptions here which I don't see why they would hold: 1. Amtrak ridership will barely grow, at most by a few hundred riders per day. If you're this bearish on trains then naturally you'll think nobody wants to take the train and you don't think Amtrak should build more trains. You're coming into this assuming that nobody wants to ride the train. 2. Building dedicated track between Chicago and Milwaukee would be cost prohibitive for Amtrak or otherwise infeasible. The majority of the cost for building track comes from acquiring ROW (so purchasing the land), grade separations, and utility relocations needed for laying the track. Chicago to Milwaukee in particular is one of the cases where these costs are probably _lowest_ as much of the ROW is cheap to acquire (outside of the direct Chicagoland area), the land is fairly flat so grade separations are rarely needed and utility relocations are cheap to build. 3. The opportunity cost in carbon for added vehicles on the road would somehow be less than the opportunity cost for rolling stock to idle. Even if freight rail continues to refuse to electrify in perpetuity, the added carbon from private vehicle emissions will quickly dwarf extra carbon emissions from idling freight cars. I think you're coming at this from a "trains are stupid, here's why" perspective rather than an unbiased cost and carbon perspective. These arguments change in areas where ROW acquisition is expensive or grade separations and utility relocations are difficult, but Chicago to Milwaukee has very few of these problems. In particular the problem in this part of the US is that while rail works to move from city-to-city, most Midwestern cities (other than Chicago) have no actual transit to speak of. Once the Amtrak drops you into Milwaukee, if there's nowhere to go via train, then you're stuck, in which case you may as well drive the whole way. That goes back to the fact that rail/transit in the US has been historically and systematically underfunded, particularly so in the Midwest where Detroit had a lot of negotiation (read: money) leverage in the golden years for American auto companies.
• DominikPeters 5y ago
  That seems wrong. New high speed lines are being built and have recently opened (e.g. Berlin-Munich, soon Stuttgart-Ulm). The number of passengers using high speed trains (ICEs) is steadily increasing: from 75 million trips in 2009 to 99 million trips in 2019. To increase the number of trips like that, lots of investment in rolling stock / signalling / lines is needed. https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/162877/ https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/162877/
  • Etheryte 5y ago
    The numbers seem large when they're in absolutes, but per capita it's moved from ~0.91 trips per person per year to ~1.19 trips per person per year. Not to say there is no progress, but rather that the number of trips is low to begin with. If you contrast the money spent with the end result of roughly one trip per person per year, things are not that rosy.
    • Goronmon 5y ago
      The numbers seem large when they're in absolutes, but per capita it's moved from ~0.91 trips per person per year to ~1.19 trips per person per year. I mean, if the goal is to make the smallest number, why stop at "per person per year"? If you instead reflected the number as "per person per second" then you would see that the improvement is barely measurable.
      • Etheryte 5y ago
        Per capita is a standard way to contextualize things in statistics and since the original measure is per year, per capita per year. The point is not to "make the smallest number". 99 million trips per year alone doesn't tell us anything. If it was made by 1 million people, the scale is big, if it was made by 100 million people, not so much. That's why contextualizing per capita is important.
      • noirbot 5y ago
        But that seems like a reasonably understandable number? For all that everyone talks about how amazing trains are in other countries, I'm a little surprised to learn that I take Amtrak more in the US than the average German citizen takes DB, which is generally a much better system. That said, that seems like a pretty good improvement, percentage-wise, but a lot of folks talk about trains in Europe as if it's so amazing that everyone is taking it all the time. I'd be curious of that number relative to the number of flights taken per year per capita.
• lorenzfx 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. Unfortunately, that's not true (the investment part). In preparation for the IPO (that never happened because of the crash) Deutsche Bahn was heavily tuned for profit since the mid 90s which led to a massive decrease in investment. As rail infrastructure has a rather long service life, a lot of those cost-cutting measures have only beginning to be felt rather recently. Now not only do the investments that have not been made have to be made up for, but the funding gap has caused the infrastructure to decay even further. Also, a lot of money has been spent on vanity projects like Stuttgart 21, instead of much-needed extension of freight lines like the one in the upper Rhine valley.
  • dx034 5y ago
    Also, construction prices have gone up a lot. Rail investment depends heavily on steel and concrete, both have skyrocketed over past years. And as you said, undoing a decade or more of underinvestment is extremely costly and leads to more delays in the short term.
• ls15 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. And the ticket price inflation is twice as high as regular CPI.
• krsdcbl 5y ago
  I think there's two factors playing into this: first, Germany has had a high level of sefvice quality with trains for the last 15 years, compared to much of the world, there's little to improve and second, DB had become a HUGE holding company of many kinds of business endeavours and rail service is not in the states hand anymore, while the company "optimizes" for profit which makes travel aside of high traffic routes become worse and worse and coverage deteriorates.
  • diordiderot 5y ago
    > the company "optimizes" for profit Well, if my single unit of university economics taught me anything, its that you have produced the most efficient possible rail system and Germans are getting exactly what they want. Congratulations!
• vkou 5y ago
  Is it possible that the investments are targeted at improving rail service for regions that you don't live in?
• Lamad123 5y ago
  At least you have that option!! Sounds better than unmaintained "crumbling infrastructure."
• mickotron 5y ago
  At least your trains run on time, or at all. I guess your criticism is based on the level of service you have become accustomed to in your country, which is incredibly good by world standards.
• hilbert42 5y ago
  "The ever-rising investments seem to be only enough to keep the status quo of the crumbling infrastructure." It's quite a while since I've traveled by Deutsche Bahn but I found it very efficient and on time when I did. What do you reckon is the reason for the crumbling infrastructure? There was huge reinvestment after the war to renew war-damaged infrastructure and rail infrastructure usually has a very long life (many rail bridges and viaducts built in the mid 1800s are still in service today). Was that war reconstruction rushed/not well implemented or what?
• gtirloni 5y ago
  I've used trains many times in Germany and they are far far from crumbling.
• cowmoo728 5y ago
  All the Germans I've met like to complain about the quality of Deutsche Bahn. But it is important to keep in mind that from the perspective of an American, Deutsche Bahn is a miracle.
  • a9h74j 5y ago
    Based upon slight experience of both, I would say rail in a third-tier German city can compare favorably with the Metro in Washington DC.
    • TylerE 5y ago
      And for 90% of the US, the DC Metro is a marvel.
      • a9h74j 5y ago
        Exactly.
• zenogantner 5y ago
  I disagree: Travel time from Berlin to Munich went down from 6 hours to about 4 hours. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verkehrsprojekt_Deutsche_Einheit_Nr._8#Auswirkungen https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verkehrsprojekt_Deutsche_Einhe... That is a massive change. Subjectively, how a train trip feels on that route went from "quite exhausting in the end" to "oh I just opened my laptop, couldn't even finish what I had started".
  • FeepingCreature 5y ago
    Note that it's still four hours compared to one for a flight - and flights are still cheaper. Even if we assume two hours for arrival, boarding and an hour for local transportation in Berlin, flight would still win on price. (I just checked for "Munich to Berlin next monday": 120€ cheapest for trains unless I want to sleep in them, 105€ for a flight, with more choice of time.)
    • simongray 5y ago
      Aside from skipping the added bureaucracy of airports, the major advantage of trains is that you usually arrive in the centre of the city while air travel usually takes you to the outskirts.
    • trizuz 5y ago
    • midasuni 5y ago
      With a train you get 4 hours of laptop time. on a plane you get two stints of about 20-30 minutes each.
    • bakuninsbart 5y ago
      Realistically, it takes an extra hour door to door for the train, and around 3 hours for the plane. In my experience you do save a bit of time with the plane for Berlin-Munich. > Even if we assume two hours for arrival, boarding and an hour for local transportation in Berlin, flight would still win on price. It is 50€ if you look for the Monday in 2 weeks. For quite a bit of my travel, I am booking 2-3 months in advance, and it is usually around ~30-40€, first class, for a 600km trip. (This site is quite helpful: https://bahn.guru/ https://bahn.guru/) Some other things to consider: Trains (ICE) are substantially more comfortable and "freer"; you can walk around, don't have to pretend to listen to a safety choreography, keep your data on the whole time etc. Trains also don't restrict the amount of luggage you can take with you. In fact when my grandma died, I transported a ~2x4m persian rug by ICE, and while I got some comments on it, and switching trains was a pain, it was a very cheap option for a poor student with a big rug. On another note, there will be a 9€ Ticket for summer in Germany that allows you to use all non-high speed trains within Germany, which will be a really interesting experiment.
• isolli 5y ago
  I have had only trouble traveling by train in Germany. It happened so many times that I believe it becomes statistically significant. In comparison, I can't remember the last time a train trip in France was anything but smooth. A few examples, all of which have in common that we arrived 3 to 9 hours late to our destination: - The train leaves earlier than planned (!), but they tell you by email at 7:00 in the morning for a train leaving at 9. - The AC on the train is not running perfectly. They offload everyone at a random train station, and you spend four hours sitting on the stairs of an overcrowded commuter train with kids and luggage, instead of one hour on a mildly hot train. - Stoerung auf der Strecke: twice (!) the train stopped for hours in the middle of the tracks. Once the train had stopped in the middle of a bend, and we spent hours tilted to the side. The other time we missed a flight even though we were on the regular shuttle from city center to the airport.