14 ms·

High speed train between Paris and Berlin could start operating as soon as 2023

134 points by vanilla-almond 4y ago

schroeding 4y ago
> There are really people who are willing to spend five hours, six hours, seven hours on a train Yeah! I have no problem spending 6, 7 hours in a train if I have a comfy seat, Wifi and someplace where I can get a coffee and some food, like a dining car or a nice vending machine. A clean WC would also be a plus. There is no comfier way to travel, IMO, and you can be productive if you want to, too. As someone who used to use the Munich - Paris TGV regularly, I'm a bit sad that they will use German ICEs, as the french trains are a bit nicer food-wise :D
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y ago
  And you travel from city center to city center, no security bullshit.
  - newaccount2021 4y ago
    ...until the first "incident", after which rail will be subjected to the same measures as air travel
    - anticensor 4y ago
      You would get slightly more controls than airlines actually, due to the fact that trains are simply physically bound to rails.
    - Gare 4y ago
      Hard to hit two skyscrapers with a train. When it comes to railway terrorism, there are more effective infrastructure threats than some guy boarding a passenger train with an explosive.
    - schroeding 4y ago
      Trains were bombed to pieces in Madrid in 2004[1], and since then there were multiple cases of terrorism in european trains. There were incidents galore already, so let's be optimistic that travel by train will stay free of airport-like security. :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Madrid_train_bombings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Madrid_train_bombings
      - kzrdude 4y ago
        And in Spain you have to enter your ID card # and other personal info for the ticket, and occasional security checks, for all the long distance trains. So the difference to Germany is noticeable due to this history!
- kkfx 4y ago
  Personally I TOTALLY refuse. For many reasons: - if the purpose of traveling is the pleasure of traveling I need to travel slowly in nature, a short segment at a time, appreciating differences from a place to another; - if the purpose is just going from A to B than the fastest option is the better. More in general such megaprojects means very few earning big money, more concentration of humans, that ALREADY is a big issue alone and a general waste of resources that are already scarce. Public transport is sold to be environmentally friendly, it's the opposite. Big infra are sold as progress, while since they can evolve they aren't sustainable in a rapidly changing world, for what? Well "following the money" I can say some private party profit for building and maintain such monsters, for politicians that have caged people more and more making them unable to do pretty anything on their own. As a former big-city resident sometimes I state to some wannabe environmentalist as a matter of fact polluter: "you say you are eco-friendly because you do anything with a bike/public transport in a city. Yes, you are, needing only a hyper-polluting industry around to let you live that way, a hyper-polluted set of infra around etc. The real name it's hypocrisy like the old adage "I do not oppress others, that's the business of some stakeholder, I offload all such activities to be clean".
  - lucb1e 4y ago
    > [then] the fastest option is the better. In the short term at least, ignoring external effects of your doing so. And you're kind of ignoring costs as well, like you wouldn't hire a space shuttle if a 3-hour train ride will do, and airplanes fly so cheaply compared to other transportation because you can avoid most of the fuel taxes (what good/bad could that tax money do, for you or for others? Do you spend the difference on non-profits?). Anyway while this is a big discussion of itself, and includes philosophical/moral dilemmas and tax politics, just saying "go for pleasure or go fast" is definitely thinking too simplistically. > Public transport is sold to be environmentally friendly, it's the opposite. I'm sure you can find exceptions for some specific routes, but as a general rule that's just false. This is so backwards that I really wonder where you get your numbers or ideas from and if it might actually just be a desire to be contrarian or if you're explaining things to yourself in a way that you don't have to feel bad about e.g. a choice not to use public transport.
- mindvirus 4y ago
  For sure. Plus it is 2 hour flight from Paris to Berlin, factor in extra time to get to/from the airport and 2 hours to get through security and the train isn't far off. I wonder what the price difference will be.
  - mathverse 4y ago
    I am a frequent flier in Europe and I have never needed to wait 1 hour one way to get through security. This is not an issue anymore.
    - sdoering 4y ago
      Before Covid I regularly flew HAM - MUC (Hamburg - Munich). For me Taki g the train was not an option. For colleagues it really was. It massively depended on living location. I am 15 minutes by car north of Hamburg airport. I regularly made the trip to my client or into our Munich office in about 4.5 hours. By train some colleagues needed 6 hours into Munich office. Had I lived near the main Hamburg station I could have done the train trip also in 6 hours. But for the plane would habe added 30 - 45 minutes to the airport. I still would have been faster by plane, but would not have gotten as much work done as with going by train. In the end - for me - convenience won (and I would habe added 60 - 90 minutes to the train ride to get from where I live to the Hamburg main station) and I am glad that Covid hot and everybody learned about video meetings. This massively reduces on-site appearances. But trains and planes can reasonably compete on mid distance connections in central Europe imho. Will be testing using the train for the first time in years because the alternative would be driving 1600 km in 4 days and have a full day workshop within these 4 days. Being driven sounds better to me in that case. Let's wait how I feel after the upcoming week.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - sofixa 4y ago
      I spent 1h+ on CDG in November, both going out and in ( from outside of Schengen), for the whole security+ID process. It still happens, depending on the airport and load.
- paul_f 4y ago
  I took the train from Berlin to Paris in 2018. Was visiting Europe from the US with my son and we did it on a Sunday when nothing was open anyway. No problem with 7 hours on a train. Would have taken at least 5 hours to fly, getting to/from the airports, security, arriving early, etc. Cheaper and more enjoyable to take the train,
  - eastbound 4y ago
    Train is 200% more enjoyable… as long as prices remain high. TGV can be as cheap as 30€ offers for Paris-Lyon in first class, or even “board without fare, annoy people, and yet, get the understanding from the controller”, and that’s where problems start: Obnoxious people on board, theft, harassment… under the lenient eye of the controllers, who still give 450€ fine to grandmas who didn’t annoy anyone. I loved TGV and I became vegetarian for CO2 emissions, but I can’t stand this despicable show of class warfare, and I now take my car for travels up to 1000km.
    - ktpsns 4y ago
      Isn't this exactly why first/buisness class is made for? What is your experience with buisness class in TGV? In ICE trains, it makes a difference (i.e. more silence).
      - eastbound 4y ago
        My stories were about first class. The 2 problems are that SNCF has subsidies so that single mothers with 3 babies from different fathers can use the first class; and that agressive people can use it also, without a fare, and controllers only ask for their name (they obviously say “Jean Dupondt” instead “Mouloud Al’Fahir”, and the controller still doesn’t moves much). France thinks everyone deserves to use the first class from time to time.
        krageon 4y ago
        This is both racist and sexist within two sentences. I've definitely seen a higher density, but not very often. For the casual reader: I have used these trains a number of times and this is definitely not the norm.
- herbst 4y ago
  I often did 6 hour train trips between Switzerland and Austria and some other routes. I take my laptop some snacks and just enjoy the time.
- dzhiurgis 4y ago
  > There is no comfier way to travel Have you not been on business class flight?
  - ForHackernews 4y ago
    Still have airport security, that stale recycled airplane air, no dining car, and the crappy little airplane toilet. A nice train is still a better experience IMHO.
    - schroeding 4y ago
      That's pretty much it for me too, those things are there regardless of class. Also you have no turbulences in a train, also no safety announcements :D
      - dzhiurgis 4y ago
        FWIW Emirates have a bar and a shower, obvs not on intercity flights tho. Long range flights are so amazing you don’t really wanna leave at all.
    - mathverse 4y ago
      It's not about the journey but about how fast you can get from point A to point B.
      - samatman 4y ago
        If that were true, there would be no first class, because paying 3x as much to shave at most 2% of the journey time doesn't add up. Instead, some people who can afford it buy a nicer experience. By extension, people are also willing to add some time to a journey for a nicer experience. Taking the train from Brussels to London is neither cheaper nor faster, but I can't even imagine choosing the plane unless I was desperately skint or it was an emergency where two hours matters (somehow).
    - gruez 4y ago
- vaughan 4y ago
  TGV are much worse than ICE. The TGV double-decker sucks. Tiny overhead storage. Bad leg room. Too hot in summer. And toilets are not well maintained. ICE is a much better train configuration. Although the time I used them weekly a few years back they were incredibly unreliable with huge delays.
melling 4y ago
That appears to be about 650 miles (1050km). That’s around the point where many people will still prefer to fly. However, the train will likely make a few stops, making Berlin/Paris more accessible from other cities on the route. Where there are high-speed routes today, hopefully 300 mph maglevs will be running in 50 years.
- SemanticStrengh 4y ago
- madduci 4y ago
  I hope the price will be affordable and cheap compared to flight tickets. Unfortunately ICE is very expensive to date
  - lispm 4y ago
    With a Bahncard 50, one pays between 60 and 80 Euros for an ICE from Hamburg to Munich, one way. My Lufthansa flight next week is 300 Euros. There is also the Bahncard 100, which currently costs 4.144 Euros for mostly all trains and public transport for one year in all of Germany.
  - pimeys 4y ago
    The European air traffic is subsidized quite often, trains not that much. Just take all that government money out from flying and put it to trains, suddenly they become much cheaper.
- buro9 4y ago
  > That appears to be about 650 miles (1050km). That’s around the point where many people will still prefer to fly. Not sure that is true. When you have a high speed train, going from the centre of a city to the centre of another city... and can subtract time to get to airport, time in airport security, time to wait to board a plane, time to taxi, time to circle before landing, time to get to the city, time to safety margin most of the above... the train comes out at least comparable on time (not an order of magnitude off), cheaper, greener, and centre-to-centre. For me... European trains are so nice in comparison to flying that unless there is a time penalty of more than double to triple the real time spent flying (which in this case does not feel true)... then the train wins. It's also a very productive journey. I can't do meetings on a train, but 6-7 hours uninterrupted in a comfy chair with power and internet is still coding / making slides / etc.
radu_floricica 4y ago
I have a programmer friend who has a train pass and actually likes to take trains just to work. I also absolutely love reading for a few hours in trains, and at some point adjusted my lifestyle to switch town every 1-2 weeks.
- mysterydip 4y ago
  The one time I programmed on a train (central pennsylvania to new york city) was better than the times I've programmed on aircraft. Not sure if it was seat size, the consistency of altitude, smoothness, etc. But I'd love to do more work trips on a train.
  - lucb1e 4y ago
    Don't forget the constant very loud plane engine noise, and the number of people in line of sight to distract you (a train is more elongated so you're further away from most other passengers). And as you already mentioned, a major factor for me would be the space to actually use a 15" laptop conveniently. Programming on a train means 30 minutes of crunch time and tangible progress for me; on a plane I can't imagine it being nice though I never tried it (for me flying is a wonderful experience, probably because I almost never do it and I love the perspective you have out the window and I monitor my phone's sensors like pressure and gps and everything, enjoying the special experience).
    - KptMarchewa 4y ago
      Modern trains are way quieter than planes though.
      - lucb1e 4y ago
        Oh darn I see that an edit I did made it confusing and I didn't re-read it anymore (edited again for clarity just now). I meant that planes are very loud whereas trains usually just whizz away. There are indeed some old trains that were very loud, I remember the NL Mat'64 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Mat_%2764 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Mat_%2764) where my phone (uncalibrated, so it'll have been wrong but I don't know by how much) said the employees had to be offered hearing protection and my subjective experience would say the same. For the 8 minutes that I spent in those local trains, it was perfectly fine and also hearing-safe afaik (don't try to drown it out with music as I did, though :/). Since the retirement of this model a few years ago, all trains I've been on in NL/DE are much quieter.
ThePhysicist 4y ago
The connection Saarbrücken -> Paris (around 500 km) only takes 1:45h. Currently the problem is getting to Saarbrücken from Berlin, which takes up to 7 hours depending on the connection. So yeah, lots of room for improvement, mostly on the German side though. A big impediment is the federal structure of Germany, as high-speed trains need to have at least one stop in every federal state they cross for political reasons, which of course makes them slow. In France, on the other hand, you have trains going from Paris to Marseille without a single stop in between, and in just 3:04h (for a whooping 780 km).
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  >A big impediment is the federal structure of Germany, as high-speed trains need to have at least one stop in every federal state they cross for political reasons, which of course makes them slow. This is absolutely insane to hear. Feels like the whole "German efficiency" trope is mostly a meme or it doesn't apply to government/national services and is in line with all the other negative things I heard about the infamous archaic German bureocracy in general. I know even Ukrainian refugees were shocked at how archaic German paper based bureocracy was compared to their home country which moved to digital, as they expected Europe's richest country to have much more efficient bureocracy than Europe's poorest country. Boy were they in for a surprise. And let's not talk about Germany's infamously abysmal infrastructure and service coverage for fiber and mobile internet that's well behind Eastern Europe.
  - cedilla 4y ago
    It's not insane at all. Every additional stop takes about 20 minutes - but there are a lot of people who actually use the stations between, say, Berlin and Cologne. Germany is much less centralised than France. 20% of the population is in Paris. Only 2% of Germans live in Berlin. It would be insanity to mindlessly copy the French model when the circumstances are so different.
    - thriftwy 4y ago
      You can play with combinatorics where there are ten trains per day, of which 2 are direct with no stops, 2 only stop in Cologne, remaining 6 stop in Cologne and some other destination as well.
AdrianB1 4y ago
If time and cost are factored versus a low-cost flight, there is very little economic sense for this option. If you take in consideration the shit-show that is airport experience, then short trips by train become interesting, but only up to 3-4 hours. 7 hours for 1000km does not sound like high speed, 4 hours would be fine.
- fulafel 4y ago
  Lots of economic sense in being able travel while you work or sleep, and also lots ethical and economic sense in not bringing on the worse scenarios of global warming by unnecessary use of fossil fuels.
Proven 4y ago
iqkznnft 4y ago
I would if sleeper trains will ever take off in Europe. I took one in Russia a couple of years ago and loved it.
- johnwalkr 4y ago
  They were once popular but have all but disappeared since the advent of cheap flights. Same story for Japan, just 1-2 remaining.
  - thematrixturtle 4y ago
    Sleeper trains in Europe are having a renaissance at the moment, many services that were killed off are coming back https://www.cntraveler.com/story/europe-is-undergoing-a-sleeper-train-renaissance https://www.cntraveler.com/story/europe-is-undergoing-a-slee... Japan's night trains are, sadly, almost gone, but that's because the bullet train network now covers all the major islands. There are quite a few luxury tourist sleepers though if you're willing to fork out $1000/night or so.
    - johnwalkr 4y ago
      I didn’t know that, great news!
  - WJW 4y ago
    Making a major resurgence in the last few years though. We took a direct Amsterdam-to-Innsbruck sleeper train earlier this year and there are several companies operating sleeper trains to other parts as well. Somewhere next month the Brussels-Amsterdam-Prague line will start and several more are in planning. The biggest downside of sleeper trains IMO is that they are only really suitable for certain distances. It's not very nice to arrive somewhere at 02:00, so you really need a destination that is at least 8-10 hours away from your origin.
    - lucb1e 4y ago
      I had newly found and was exploring this concept of European night trains only last week so don't have concrete experience with planning this yet, but I did see notes in some places that you can disembark until 7am even if the train arrived at 5:something am already. If it drives only from 23:00--02:00 then I'd imagine you're out of luck indeed, but they do accommodate this problem in some cases.
kkfx 4y ago
Other big amount of resources wasted to speed up concentration... I suggest a classic comparison: http://carfree.fr/img/2015/06/sncf.jpg http://carfree.fr/img/2015/06/sncf.jpg between the past where rails was about connecting peoples vs the current present where rails are about connecting hubs. Oh, yep, hubs used just to push people in modern open-sky prisons totally dependent on available services since in such hubs all eat, as normal, all have normal humans needs but nearly anything to satisfy them have to come from outside. Try really to imaging such concentrated world in a projected future and imaging how obscene and vulnerable it is.
- cnlevy 4y ago
  Cars weren't an option in 1910. So for a 50km trip, you had to take the train. Today's fast passenger train needs are for 200km+ distances
  - kkfx 4y ago
    Rails in 1910 was used because they was cheap: - little entertainment - high load capacity the same reasons we have these days for COMMERCIAL rails, witch are meaningful for certain applications (one including run only when we have surplus from renewables, for non-perishable/non-urgent goods) instead of people fast trains who demand very leveled rails, much entertainment to a point that France TGV slow down year on year to reduce hyper-big maintenance costs...
stormdennis 4y ago
I flew from Ireland to France recently and then caught two trains to my ultimate destination about 100 km from the airport. The train fares worked out at double the cost of the flight despite being one fifteenth the distance.
- sdoering 4y ago
  Doesn't that strike you as silly given the externalities (like CO2) being way higher for the plane ride than for the train ride? I still can't get my head around the fact that we as a society allow air travel to dump that much environmental costs on all of us. If flying had to internalize the cost for externalities into the pricing your plane ticket would have probably cost way more than the price of the train ride.
  - stormdennis 4y ago
    Aviation fuel is taxed lightly but still train fares in france seem to be very expensive, the train in Ireland is far cheaper (even though most things in Ireland are more expensive).
gandalfian 4y ago
bahn.de now, Paris to Berlin eight hours one change TGV then ICE around 120 euros. They used to do £50 tickets from London to Germany that were actually quite competitive time and price rise to flying. And of course there is always the night bus from Berlin to London....
samstave 4y ago
550 miles between paris and berlin 630 miles between Portland and Sanfrancisco 500 miles between San Diego and San Francisco --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_California_High-Speed_Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_California_High-Spe... Too much Douche-Baggery in that project, take a look at the california money grab they joke of american high speed rail has over the decades...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jlelse 4y ago
That's great news! But there are already train routes with >6 hours in Germany. I sometimes take the train from Berlin to Basel (CH) from just a few stops away from Berlin and when there are no problems that's a 6 hour trip. With the car that would be >7 hours.
lizavp 4y ago
I plan to visit Paris and Berlin and was considering taking the train between both. It would be an over night which would save me one hotel night. I'm excited for this.
- keiferski 4y ago
  There are already overnight trains between Paris and Berlin. At least there were 4-5 years ago.

> There are really people who are willing to spend five hours, six hours, seven hours on a train Yeah! I have no problem spending 6, 7 hours in a train if I have a comfy seat, Wifi and someplace where I can get a coffee and some food, like a dining car or a nice vending machine. A clean WC would also be a plus. There is no comfier way to travel, IMO, and you can be productive if you want to, too. As someone who used to use the Munich - Paris TGV regularly, I'm a bit sad that they will use German ICEs, as the french trains are a bit nicer food-wise :D

isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y ago
And you travel from city center to city center, no security bullshit.
- newaccount2021 4y ago
  ...until the first "incident", after which rail will be subjected to the same measures as air travel
  - anticensor 4y ago
    You would get slightly more controls than airlines actually, due to the fact that trains are simply physically bound to rails.
  - Gare 4y ago
    Hard to hit two skyscrapers with a train. When it comes to railway terrorism, there are more effective infrastructure threats than some guy boarding a passenger train with an explosive.
  - schroeding 4y ago
    Trains were bombed to pieces in Madrid in 2004[1], and since then there were multiple cases of terrorism in european trains. There were incidents galore already, so let's be optimistic that travel by train will stay free of airport-like security. :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Madrid_train_bombings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Madrid_train_bombings
    - kzrdude 4y ago
      And in Spain you have to enter your ID card # and other personal info for the ticket, and occasional security checks, for all the long distance trains. So the difference to Germany is noticeable due to this history!
kkfx 4y ago
Personally I TOTALLY refuse. For many reasons: - if the purpose of traveling is the pleasure of traveling I need to travel slowly in nature, a short segment at a time, appreciating differences from a place to another; - if the purpose is just going from A to B than the fastest option is the better. More in general such megaprojects means very few earning big money, more concentration of humans, that ALREADY is a big issue alone and a general waste of resources that are already scarce. Public transport is sold to be environmentally friendly, it's the opposite. Big infra are sold as progress, while since they can evolve they aren't sustainable in a rapidly changing world, for what? Well "following the money" I can say some private party profit for building and maintain such monsters, for politicians that have caged people more and more making them unable to do pretty anything on their own. As a former big-city resident sometimes I state to some wannabe environmentalist as a matter of fact polluter: "you say you are eco-friendly because you do anything with a bike/public transport in a city. Yes, you are, needing only a hyper-polluting industry around to let you live that way, a hyper-polluted set of infra around etc. The real name it's hypocrisy like the old adage "I do not oppress others, that's the business of some stakeholder, I offload all such activities to be clean".
- lucb1e 4y ago
  > [then] the fastest option is the better. In the short term at least, ignoring external effects of your doing so. And you're kind of ignoring costs as well, like you wouldn't hire a space shuttle if a 3-hour train ride will do, and airplanes fly so cheaply compared to other transportation because you can avoid most of the fuel taxes (what good/bad could that tax money do, for you or for others? Do you spend the difference on non-profits?). Anyway while this is a big discussion of itself, and includes philosophical/moral dilemmas and tax politics, just saying "go for pleasure or go fast" is definitely thinking too simplistically. > Public transport is sold to be environmentally friendly, it's the opposite. I'm sure you can find exceptions for some specific routes, but as a general rule that's just false. This is so backwards that I really wonder where you get your numbers or ideas from and if it might actually just be a desire to be contrarian or if you're explaining things to yourself in a way that you don't have to feel bad about e.g. a choice not to use public transport.
mindvirus 4y ago
For sure. Plus it is 2 hour flight from Paris to Berlin, factor in extra time to get to/from the airport and 2 hours to get through security and the train isn't far off. I wonder what the price difference will be.
- mathverse 4y ago
  I am a frequent flier in Europe and I have never needed to wait 1 hour one way to get through security. This is not an issue anymore.
  - sdoering 4y ago
    Before Covid I regularly flew HAM - MUC (Hamburg - Munich). For me Taki g the train was not an option. For colleagues it really was. It massively depended on living location. I am 15 minutes by car north of Hamburg airport. I regularly made the trip to my client or into our Munich office in about 4.5 hours. By train some colleagues needed 6 hours into Munich office. Had I lived near the main Hamburg station I could have done the train trip also in 6 hours. But for the plane would habe added 30 - 45 minutes to the airport. I still would have been faster by plane, but would not have gotten as much work done as with going by train. In the end - for me - convenience won (and I would habe added 60 - 90 minutes to the train ride to get from where I live to the Hamburg main station) and I am glad that Covid hot and everybody learned about video meetings. This massively reduces on-site appearances. But trains and planes can reasonably compete on mid distance connections in central Europe imho. Will be testing using the train for the first time in years because the alternative would be driving 1600 km in 4 days and have a full day workshop within these 4 days. Being driven sounds better to me in that case. Let's wait how I feel after the upcoming week.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - sofixa 4y ago
    I spent 1h+ on CDG in November, both going out and in ( from outside of Schengen), for the whole security+ID process. It still happens, depending on the airport and load.
paul_f 4y ago
I took the train from Berlin to Paris in 2018. Was visiting Europe from the US with my son and we did it on a Sunday when nothing was open anyway. No problem with 7 hours on a train. Would have taken at least 5 hours to fly, getting to/from the airports, security, arriving early, etc. Cheaper and more enjoyable to take the train,
- eastbound 4y ago
  Train is 200% more enjoyable… as long as prices remain high. TGV can be as cheap as 30€ offers for Paris-Lyon in first class, or even “board without fare, annoy people, and yet, get the understanding from the controller”, and that’s where problems start: Obnoxious people on board, theft, harassment… under the lenient eye of the controllers, who still give 450€ fine to grandmas who didn’t annoy anyone. I loved TGV and I became vegetarian for CO2 emissions, but I can’t stand this despicable show of class warfare, and I now take my car for travels up to 1000km.
  - ktpsns 4y ago
    Isn't this exactly why first/buisness class is made for? What is your experience with buisness class in TGV? In ICE trains, it makes a difference (i.e. more silence).
    - eastbound 4y ago
      My stories were about first class. The 2 problems are that SNCF has subsidies so that single mothers with 3 babies from different fathers can use the first class; and that agressive people can use it also, without a fare, and controllers only ask for their name (they obviously say “Jean Dupondt” instead “Mouloud Al’Fahir”, and the controller still doesn’t moves much). France thinks everyone deserves to use the first class from time to time.
      - krageon 4y ago
        This is both racist and sexist within two sentences. I've definitely seen a higher density, but not very often. For the casual reader: I have used these trains a number of times and this is definitely not the norm.
herbst 4y ago
I often did 6 hour train trips between Switzerland and Austria and some other routes. I take my laptop some snacks and just enjoy the time.
dzhiurgis 4y ago
> There is no comfier way to travel Have you not been on business class flight?
- ForHackernews 4y ago
  Still have airport security, that stale recycled airplane air, no dining car, and the crappy little airplane toilet. A nice train is still a better experience IMHO.
  - schroeding 4y ago
    That's pretty much it for me too, those things are there regardless of class. Also you have no turbulences in a train, also no safety announcements :D
    - dzhiurgis 4y ago
      FWIW Emirates have a bar and a shower, obvs not on intercity flights tho. Long range flights are so amazing you don’t really wanna leave at all.
  - mathverse 4y ago
    It's not about the journey but about how fast you can get from point A to point B.
    - samatman 4y ago
      If that were true, there would be no first class, because paying 3x as much to shave at most 2% of the journey time doesn't add up. Instead, some people who can afford it buy a nicer experience. By extension, people are also willing to add some time to a journey for a nicer experience. Taking the train from Brussels to London is neither cheaper nor faster, but I can't even imagine choosing the plane unless I was desperately skint or it was an emergency where two hours matters (somehow).
  - gruez 4y ago
vaughan 4y ago
TGV are much worse than ICE. The TGV double-decker sucks. Tiny overhead storage. Bad leg room. Too hot in summer. And toilets are not well maintained. ICE is a much better train configuration. Although the time I used them weekly a few years back they were incredibly unreliable with huge delays.

melling 4y ago

That appears to be about 650 miles (1050km). That’s around the point where many people will still prefer to fly. However, the train will likely make a few stops, making Berlin/Paris more accessible from other cities on the route. Where there are high-speed routes today, hopefully 300 mph maglevs will be running in 50 years.

SemanticStrengh 4y ago
madduci 4y ago
I hope the price will be affordable and cheap compared to flight tickets. Unfortunately ICE is very expensive to date
- lispm 4y ago
  With a Bahncard 50, one pays between 60 and 80 Euros for an ICE from Hamburg to Munich, one way. My Lufthansa flight next week is 300 Euros. There is also the Bahncard 100, which currently costs 4.144 Euros for mostly all trains and public transport for one year in all of Germany.
- pimeys 4y ago
  The European air traffic is subsidized quite often, trains not that much. Just take all that government money out from flying and put it to trains, suddenly they become much cheaper.
buro9 4y ago
> That appears to be about 650 miles (1050km). That’s around the point where many people will still prefer to fly. Not sure that is true. When you have a high speed train, going from the centre of a city to the centre of another city... and can subtract time to get to airport, time in airport security, time to wait to board a plane, time to taxi, time to circle before landing, time to get to the city, time to safety margin most of the above... the train comes out at least comparable on time (not an order of magnitude off), cheaper, greener, and centre-to-centre. For me... European trains are so nice in comparison to flying that unless there is a time penalty of more than double to triple the real time spent flying (which in this case does not feel true)... then the train wins. It's also a very productive journey. I can't do meetings on a train, but 6-7 hours uninterrupted in a comfy chair with power and internet is still coding / making slides / etc.

radu_floricica 4y ago

I have a programmer friend who has a train pass and actually likes to take trains just to work. I also absolutely love reading for a few hours in trains, and at some point adjusted my lifestyle to switch town every 1-2 weeks.

mysterydip 4y ago
The one time I programmed on a train (central pennsylvania to new york city) was better than the times I've programmed on aircraft. Not sure if it was seat size, the consistency of altitude, smoothness, etc. But I'd love to do more work trips on a train.
- lucb1e 4y ago
  Don't forget the constant very loud plane engine noise, and the number of people in line of sight to distract you (a train is more elongated so you're further away from most other passengers). And as you already mentioned, a major factor for me would be the space to actually use a 15" laptop conveniently. Programming on a train means 30 minutes of crunch time and tangible progress for me; on a plane I can't imagine it being nice though I never tried it (for me flying is a wonderful experience, probably because I almost never do it and I love the perspective you have out the window and I monitor my phone's sensors like pressure and gps and everything, enjoying the special experience).
  - KptMarchewa 4y ago
    Modern trains are way quieter than planes though.
    - lucb1e 4y ago
      Oh darn I see that an edit I did made it confusing and I didn't re-read it anymore (edited again for clarity just now). I meant that planes are very loud whereas trains usually just whizz away. There are indeed some old trains that were very loud, I remember the NL Mat'64 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Mat_%2764 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Mat_%2764) where my phone (uncalibrated, so it'll have been wrong but I don't know by how much) said the employees had to be offered hearing protection and my subjective experience would say the same. For the 8 minutes that I spent in those local trains, it was perfectly fine and also hearing-safe afaik (don't try to drown it out with music as I did, though :/). Since the retirement of this model a few years ago, all trains I've been on in NL/DE are much quieter.

ThePhysicist 4y ago

The connection Saarbrücken -> Paris (around 500 km) only takes 1:45h. Currently the problem is getting to Saarbrücken from Berlin, which takes up to 7 hours depending on the connection. So yeah, lots of room for improvement, mostly on the German side though. A big impediment is the federal structure of Germany, as high-speed trains need to have at least one stop in every federal state they cross for political reasons, which of course makes them slow. In France, on the other hand, you have trains going from Paris to Marseille without a single stop in between, and in just 3:04h (for a whooping 780 km).

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>A big impediment is the federal structure of Germany, as high-speed trains need to have at least one stop in every federal state they cross for political reasons, which of course makes them slow. This is absolutely insane to hear. Feels like the whole "German efficiency" trope is mostly a meme or it doesn't apply to government/national services and is in line with all the other negative things I heard about the infamous archaic German bureocracy in general. I know even Ukrainian refugees were shocked at how archaic German paper based bureocracy was compared to their home country which moved to digital, as they expected Europe's richest country to have much more efficient bureocracy than Europe's poorest country. Boy were they in for a surprise. And let's not talk about Germany's infamously abysmal infrastructure and service coverage for fiber and mobile internet that's well behind Eastern Europe.
- cedilla 4y ago
  It's not insane at all. Every additional stop takes about 20 minutes - but there are a lot of people who actually use the stations between, say, Berlin and Cologne. Germany is much less centralised than France. 20% of the population is in Paris. Only 2% of Germans live in Berlin. It would be insanity to mindlessly copy the French model when the circumstances are so different.
  - thriftwy 4y ago
    You can play with combinatorics where there are ten trains per day, of which 2 are direct with no stops, 2 only stop in Cologne, remaining 6 stop in Cologne and some other destination as well.

AdrianB1 4y ago

If time and cost are factored versus a low-cost flight, there is very little economic sense for this option. If you take in consideration the shit-show that is airport experience, then short trips by train become interesting, but only up to 3-4 hours. 7 hours for 1000km does not sound like high speed, 4 hours would be fine.

fulafel 4y ago
Lots of economic sense in being able travel while you work or sleep, and also lots ethical and economic sense in not bringing on the worse scenarios of global warming by unnecessary use of fossil fuels.

Proven 4y ago

iqkznnft 4y ago

I would if sleeper trains will ever take off in Europe. I took one in Russia a couple of years ago and loved it.

johnwalkr 4y ago
They were once popular but have all but disappeared since the advent of cheap flights. Same story for Japan, just 1-2 remaining.
- thematrixturtle 4y ago
  Sleeper trains in Europe are having a renaissance at the moment, many services that were killed off are coming back https://www.cntraveler.com/story/europe-is-undergoing-a-sleeper-train-renaissance https://www.cntraveler.com/story/europe-is-undergoing-a-slee... Japan's night trains are, sadly, almost gone, but that's because the bullet train network now covers all the major islands. There are quite a few luxury tourist sleepers though if you're willing to fork out $1000/night or so.
  - johnwalkr 4y ago
    I didn’t know that, great news!
- WJW 4y ago
  Making a major resurgence in the last few years though. We took a direct Amsterdam-to-Innsbruck sleeper train earlier this year and there are several companies operating sleeper trains to other parts as well. Somewhere next month the Brussels-Amsterdam-Prague line will start and several more are in planning. The biggest downside of sleeper trains IMO is that they are only really suitable for certain distances. It's not very nice to arrive somewhere at 02:00, so you really need a destination that is at least 8-10 hours away from your origin.
  - lucb1e 4y ago
    I had newly found and was exploring this concept of European night trains only last week so don't have concrete experience with planning this yet, but I did see notes in some places that you can disembark until 7am even if the train arrived at 5:something am already. If it drives only from 23:00--02:00 then I'd imagine you're out of luck indeed, but they do accommodate this problem in some cases.

kkfx 4y ago

Other big amount of resources wasted to speed up concentration... I suggest a classic comparison: http://carfree.fr/img/2015/06/sncf.jpg http://carfree.fr/img/2015/06/sncf.jpg between the past where rails was about connecting peoples vs the current present where rails are about connecting hubs. Oh, yep, hubs used just to push people in modern open-sky prisons totally dependent on available services since in such hubs all eat, as normal, all have normal humans needs but nearly anything to satisfy them have to come from outside. Try really to imaging such concentrated world in a projected future and imaging how obscene and vulnerable it is.

cnlevy 4y ago
Cars weren't an option in 1910. So for a 50km trip, you had to take the train. Today's fast passenger train needs are for 200km+ distances
- kkfx 4y ago
  Rails in 1910 was used because they was cheap: - little entertainment - high load capacity the same reasons we have these days for COMMERCIAL rails, witch are meaningful for certain applications (one including run only when we have surplus from renewables, for non-perishable/non-urgent goods) instead of people fast trains who demand very leveled rails, much entertainment to a point that France TGV slow down year on year to reduce hyper-big maintenance costs...

stormdennis 4y ago

I flew from Ireland to France recently and then caught two trains to my ultimate destination about 100 km from the airport. The train fares worked out at double the cost of the flight despite being one fifteenth the distance.

sdoering 4y ago
Doesn't that strike you as silly given the externalities (like CO2) being way higher for the plane ride than for the train ride? I still can't get my head around the fact that we as a society allow air travel to dump that much environmental costs on all of us. If flying had to internalize the cost for externalities into the pricing your plane ticket would have probably cost way more than the price of the train ride.
- stormdennis 4y ago
  Aviation fuel is taxed lightly but still train fares in france seem to be very expensive, the train in Ireland is far cheaper (even though most things in Ireland are more expensive).

gandalfian 4y ago

bahn.de now, Paris to Berlin eight hours one change TGV then ICE around 120 euros. They used to do £50 tickets from London to Germany that were actually quite competitive time and price rise to flying. And of course there is always the night bus from Berlin to London....

samstave 4y ago

550 miles between paris and berlin 630 miles between Portland and Sanfrancisco 500 miles between San Diego and San Francisco --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_California_High-Speed_Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_California_High-Spe... Too much Douche-Baggery in that project, take a look at the california money grab they joke of american high speed rail has over the decades...

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jlelse 4y ago

That's great news! But there are already train routes with >6 hours in Germany. I sometimes take the train from Berlin to Basel (CH) from just a few stops away from Berlin and when there are no problems that's a 6 hour trip. With the car that would be >7 hours.

lizavp 4y ago

I plan to visit Paris and Berlin and was considering taking the train between both. It would be an over night which would save me one hotel night. I'm excited for this.

keiferski 4y ago
There are already overnight trains between Paris and Berlin. At least there were 4-5 years ago.