7 ms·

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 l

by 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
  I haven't taken European trains, but Amtrak in the US is often atrociously late. They pay to rent tracks from freight companies and have to cede right-of-way to not block them.
Krasnol 5y ago
Deutsche Bahn is a weird construct. It's been separated into many subsidiaries in preparation for a privatisation. It never happened and while subsidiaries like Schenker work quite well and drive profits, others like those responsible for network or train maintenance create only costs and have been neglected. This results in delays in your daily experience with DB. DB's "punctuality" or the lack of it is actually a running gag here in Germany. tl;nr: mismanagement.
- kergonath 5y ago
  It was quite similar in France. It was a step before privatisation, true, but the final step would have been the re-nationalisation of the infrastructure and maintenance branch, in a usual “privatise the profits and socialise the losses” that the European Commission seems to so love. Because efficiencies, or something.
noahtallen 5y ago
I’m an American who recently took a train in Europe from Paris to Brussels. Some brief thoughts: - It was so fast! Under 90 minutes for a journey which would have taken a few hours by car. Clearly much faster than a plane on this particular route, due to extra waiting and security in airports. - It was also a very comfortable mode. If you’re traveling with friends, it’d be very easy to socialize around a table. Quieter than a car or plane as well. - Love being able to hop on/hop off without a huge ordeal or waiting in a long line. - Too expensive for the route. I would have to book much further in advance to think it was worth it. I think maybe 6x the cost of driving, if I compared to a similar route in the US. - Obviously this is a high speed route. That doesn’t exist between all cities. - Looking at other tickets, connecting between two routes can be tricky. For example, if I wanted to go from Amsterdam to London, I’d might transfer to a different train in Paris. That adds a huge amount of time. I mean, compared to the US, it’s a delight! For a similar city-to-city distance (Portland to Seattle), I’d love a 90min transit mode, especially if it was relatively cheap. Obviously there are still some route and cost drawbacks, but there just isn’t much comparable in the US. It’s a much better system, obviously, even if it’s not perfect. At least they have high speed rail!
- avianlyric 5y ago
  On this specific example > Amsterdam to London Eurostar runs a direct route, with passport control in Amsterdam. But looking at any link from Europe to London that isn’t directly served by Eurostar (i.e. any city except Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels) is going to suck.
  - laurencerowe 5y ago
    I've taken Eurostar from London and changed in Paris for Grenoble and Brussels for Amsterdam (before the direct train.) It was completely fine. No different from any other train journey with a change. I think it may have taken a while to get from Brussels to Amsterdam because that line hadn't yet been upgraded at the time but the journey time wasn't far off what it would have been getting to and flying from Heathrow/Gatwick/Stansted.
  - prennert 5y ago
lqet 5y ago
A short answer for Germany would be: the system is operating at its absolute limits. The results are employee burnout and bad reliability. An example: a few years ago, they introduced a new way to reduce delays caused by trains arriving so late at their destination that they cannot make their scheduled return trip. This is the so-called "Pofalla-Turn", named after the manager who supported it: if a train has a delay of over 30 minutes, the train will often just stop at some station and the passengers are told "the train ends here". They then have to figure out their journey using alternative trains. Just imagine this happening on a flight. I often witness completely helpless tourists lost at my local rail station who don't speak the language and cannot understand why the train they have an expensive ticket and reservation for just stopped, drove back, and left them stranded here. If you are meeting/visiting someone in a city more than 200 km away, and if you tell them that you plan to take the train, the usual response is: "Oh, good luck".
- zimpenfish 5y ago
  > if a train has a delay of over 30 minutes, the train will often just stop at some station I've seen that happen in London, sadly, although it's less of a problem given the general frequency and other alternatives (bus, etc.) Also the "if the train is going to be delayed enough to cause payouts, just take it out of service before the deadline" trick.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    In London it's often done to try to stop the "no bus for an hour then 3 come along at once" phenomena and even out the service. Personally I think it's a big improvement over the alternative.
- jhgb 5y ago
  > the train will often just stop at some station and the passengers are told "the train ends here". They then have to figure out their journey using alternative trains. In the Czech Republic, what would happen in that case would be that the railway company would shuttle the passengers to their destination using buses. This doesn't happen in Germany?
emn13 5y ago
One bit that might surprise people is how fragmented it was (probably still is?). I'll see if I can find more sources, but e.g. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.677.6055&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.67... illustrates some of the issues. Gauges vary. Voltages vary. Safety systems vary. Edit: here's a nice diagram from (of course) wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_electrification_system#/media/File:Europe_rail_electrification_en.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_electrification_system... Europe doesn't have a rail system, it has dozens of systems; and they're not all compatible - which given this all originated in pre-EU times, is hardly surprising. And that also means that it can take quite a long time to travel by rail, despite high-speed rail. If you need to cross rail-system borders - some of which are even intra-national like in France, you may need to change trains and/or take illogical routes. If, however, you're lucky and your route is on the happy path - then it can be quite competitive with short-haul flights both in hassle (if not quite speed) and cost. Then there's the fact that operators are fragmented too, so booking a ticket or finding the optimal route can be surprisingly tricky once you need to cross several borders. I'm not sure this is worse than navigating airline booking systems, mind you, but it sure isn't efficient either.
- gpvos 5y ago
  The thing is, you used to be able to buy a ticket from, say, Lisbon to Copenhagen, from any ticket booth, and just take any reasonable train on the (multi-day) route. But nowadays many national railway companies use yield management, so that original price is now the full price which is a lot higher, and actually you simply can't buy such tickets anymore, you must use booking systems that just cannot book all trains. In some countries such as France and Spain reservations are now obligatory for long-distance trains. At some international ticket booths you can still book complicated trips, but if you try to book them yourself over the internet, you will have to cut up the trip into separate parts which are treated as separate trips for the travel guarantee, so if you miss a connection due to a delay beyond your control you don't have the right to take the next train if it's not part of the same trip.
- zip1234 5y ago
  Learned about iberian gauge while taking a train in Portugal last month. The tracks were further apart than any that I have ever seen. Rail is much more complicated than people might think
Sharlin 5y ago
Nothing is perfect, but also remember that people always find things to complain about, particularly if they don't have personal experience of less well functioning systems.
- uoaei 5y ago
  By that logic, no one should complain about anything, because we don't live in literal hell. But that is of course preposterous.
  - laurencerowe 5y ago
    It's good to complain and improve things but having moved to the US I now miss even British trains!
  - dijit 5y ago
    Parent: people often complain because it’s the worst they’ve ever had, take it with a pinch of salt. You: well you can’t complain about anything then can you!? —— You can complain, but it’s good to have an understanding of what you’re complaining about, the parent is right. We are quick to complain about imperfection when a lot of what we have is truly quite good. Sometimes it’s legitimate criticism, sometimes it’s being spoiled. Any criticism that is not specific can (and probably should) be dismissed outright. Complaints and criticism should always be specific.
  - lelandbatey 5y ago
    They're not saying there's no reason to complain. They're pointing out a very valid phenomena. For those of us on the total outside, it helps us temper bad feedback. Otherwise, you can end up with a situation like the following: Person A from place without infrastructure X: wow, life with infrastructure X sure would be better. I wonder if we should invest in X? Person B from place with infrastructure X: There's lots of problems and it annoys me daily. Note that in this situation, the wrong conclusion is to say "well, then maybe infrastructure X is a bad idea". We want to avoid that line of thinking (since it's not an appropriate conclusion given the statements), so it's worth pointing out many tempering factors, such as those mentioned by the parent comment.

by skrbjc 5y ago

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
I haven't taken European trains, but Amtrak in the US is often atrociously late. They pay to rent tracks from freight companies and have to cede right-of-way to not block them.

Krasnol 5y ago

Deutsche Bahn is a weird construct. It's been separated into many subsidiaries in preparation for a privatisation. It never happened and while subsidiaries like Schenker work quite well and drive profits, others like those responsible for network or train maintenance create only costs and have been neglected. This results in delays in your daily experience with DB. DB's "punctuality" or the lack of it is actually a running gag here in Germany. tl;nr: mismanagement.

kergonath 5y ago
It was quite similar in France. It was a step before privatisation, true, but the final step would have been the re-nationalisation of the infrastructure and maintenance branch, in a usual “privatise the profits and socialise the losses” that the European Commission seems to so love. Because efficiencies, or something.

noahtallen 5y ago

I’m an American who recently took a train in Europe from Paris to Brussels. Some brief thoughts: - It was so fast! Under 90 minutes for a journey which would have taken a few hours by car. Clearly much faster than a plane on this particular route, due to extra waiting and security in airports. - It was also a very comfortable mode. If you’re traveling with friends, it’d be very easy to socialize around a table. Quieter than a car or plane as well. - Love being able to hop on/hop off without a huge ordeal or waiting in a long line. - Too expensive for the route. I would have to book much further in advance to think it was worth it. I think maybe 6x the cost of driving, if I compared to a similar route in the US. - Obviously this is a high speed route. That doesn’t exist between all cities. - Looking at other tickets, connecting between two routes can be tricky. For example, if I wanted to go from Amsterdam to London, I’d might transfer to a different train in Paris. That adds a huge amount of time. I mean, compared to the US, it’s a delight! For a similar city-to-city distance (Portland to Seattle), I’d love a 90min transit mode, especially if it was relatively cheap. Obviously there are still some route and cost drawbacks, but there just isn’t much comparable in the US. It’s a much better system, obviously, even if it’s not perfect. At least they have high speed rail!

avianlyric 5y ago
On this specific example > Amsterdam to London Eurostar runs a direct route, with passport control in Amsterdam. But looking at any link from Europe to London that isn’t directly served by Eurostar (i.e. any city except Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels) is going to suck.
- laurencerowe 5y ago
  I've taken Eurostar from London and changed in Paris for Grenoble and Brussels for Amsterdam (before the direct train.) It was completely fine. No different from any other train journey with a change. I think it may have taken a while to get from Brussels to Amsterdam because that line hadn't yet been upgraded at the time but the journey time wasn't far off what it would have been getting to and flying from Heathrow/Gatwick/Stansted.
- prennert 5y ago

lqet 5y ago

A short answer for Germany would be: the system is operating at its absolute limits. The results are employee burnout and bad reliability. An example: a few years ago, they introduced a new way to reduce delays caused by trains arriving so late at their destination that they cannot make their scheduled return trip. This is the so-called "Pofalla-Turn", named after the manager who supported it: if a train has a delay of over 30 minutes, the train will often just stop at some station and the passengers are told "the train ends here". They then have to figure out their journey using alternative trains. Just imagine this happening on a flight. I often witness completely helpless tourists lost at my local rail station who don't speak the language and cannot understand why the train they have an expensive ticket and reservation for just stopped, drove back, and left them stranded here. If you are meeting/visiting someone in a city more than 200 km away, and if you tell them that you plan to take the train, the usual response is: "Oh, good luck".

zimpenfish 5y ago
> if a train has a delay of over 30 minutes, the train will often just stop at some station I've seen that happen in London, sadly, although it's less of a problem given the general frequency and other alternatives (bus, etc.) Also the "if the train is going to be delayed enough to cause payouts, just take it out of service before the deadline" trick.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  In London it's often done to try to stop the "no bus for an hour then 3 come along at once" phenomena and even out the service. Personally I think it's a big improvement over the alternative.
jhgb 5y ago
> the train will often just stop at some station and the passengers are told "the train ends here". They then have to figure out their journey using alternative trains. In the Czech Republic, what would happen in that case would be that the railway company would shuttle the passengers to their destination using buses. This doesn't happen in Germany?

emn13 5y ago

One bit that might surprise people is how fragmented it was (probably still is?). I'll see if I can find more sources, but e.g. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.677.6055&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.67... illustrates some of the issues. Gauges vary. Voltages vary. Safety systems vary. Edit: here's a nice diagram from (of course) wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_electrification_system#/media/File:Europe_rail_electrification_en.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_electrification_system... Europe doesn't have a rail system, it has dozens of systems; and they're not all compatible - which given this all originated in pre-EU times, is hardly surprising. And that also means that it can take quite a long time to travel by rail, despite high-speed rail. If you need to cross rail-system borders - some of which are even intra-national like in France, you may need to change trains and/or take illogical routes. If, however, you're lucky and your route is on the happy path - then it can be quite competitive with short-haul flights both in hassle (if not quite speed) and cost. Then there's the fact that operators are fragmented too, so booking a ticket or finding the optimal route can be surprisingly tricky once you need to cross several borders. I'm not sure this is worse than navigating airline booking systems, mind you, but it sure isn't efficient either.

gpvos 5y ago
The thing is, you used to be able to buy a ticket from, say, Lisbon to Copenhagen, from any ticket booth, and just take any reasonable train on the (multi-day) route. But nowadays many national railway companies use yield management, so that original price is now the full price which is a lot higher, and actually you simply can't buy such tickets anymore, you must use booking systems that just cannot book all trains. In some countries such as France and Spain reservations are now obligatory for long-distance trains. At some international ticket booths you can still book complicated trips, but if you try to book them yourself over the internet, you will have to cut up the trip into separate parts which are treated as separate trips for the travel guarantee, so if you miss a connection due to a delay beyond your control you don't have the right to take the next train if it's not part of the same trip.
zip1234 5y ago
Learned about iberian gauge while taking a train in Portugal last month. The tracks were further apart than any that I have ever seen. Rail is much more complicated than people might think

Sharlin 5y ago

Nothing is perfect, but also remember that people always find things to complain about, particularly if they don't have personal experience of less well functioning systems.

uoaei 5y ago
By that logic, no one should complain about anything, because we don't live in literal hell. But that is of course preposterous.
- laurencerowe 5y ago
  It's good to complain and improve things but having moved to the US I now miss even British trains!
- dijit 5y ago
  Parent: people often complain because it’s the worst they’ve ever had, take it with a pinch of salt. You: well you can’t complain about anything then can you!? —— You can complain, but it’s good to have an understanding of what you’re complaining about, the parent is right. We are quick to complain about imperfection when a lot of what we have is truly quite good. Sometimes it’s legitimate criticism, sometimes it’s being spoiled. Any criticism that is not specific can (and probably should) be dismissed outright. Complaints and criticism should always be specific.
- lelandbatey 5y ago
  They're not saying there's no reason to complain. They're pointing out a very valid phenomena. For those of us on the total outside, it helps us temper bad feedback. Otherwise, you can end up with a situation like the following: Person A from place without infrastructure X: wow, life with infrastructure X sure would be better. I wonder if we should invest in X? Person B from place with infrastructure X: There's lots of problems and it annoys me daily. Note that in this situation, the wrong conclusion is to say "well, then maybe infrastructure X is a bad idea". We want to avoid that line of thinking (since it's not an appropriate conclusion given the statements), so it's worth pointing out many tempering factors, such as those mentioned by the parent comment.