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I recently read that although the Spanish high speed lines don't have many passenger trains (the recent Perpignan-Figueres tunnel only has two per day, although
by gpvos 4y ago
I recently read that although the Spanish high speed lines don't have many passenger trains (the recent Perpignan-Figueres tunnel only has two per day, although that's partly because of corona), they also carry through freight traffic from France because there's no break-of-gauge. A bit unusual for a high speed line, but why not.
- ehnto 4y agoThat really interesting. I wonder how much that impacts maintenance if at all. They definitely couldn't do that if timing on passenger rail was increased, but while there's sufficient gaps then as you said, why not.
- ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago>(the recent Perpignan-Figueres tunnel only has two per day, although that's partly because of corona) It was four per day in each direction pre-Covid.
- martinald 4y agoYes I was shocked at this too. Even the flagship Madrid Barcelona line only has 1 train per hour. This seems ridiculously low given HS2 in the UK is planned to have 18tph on the core line (to various destinations, but still). To make matters worse the spainish high speed lines have mandatory reservations so once the train has sold out you are not allowed to board - unlike the UK where you can still board but may have to stand for some of the journey - which is not ideal but at least you don't have to stand around for another hour waiting for the next train anyway.
- elnatro 4y agoHS2 line is planned, Madrid-Barcelona is built (was completed in 2008).
- gpvos 4y ago1 train per hour is slightly more than I would expect on Madrid-Barcelona, I'm positively surprised. Spain is really sparsely populated.
- dmd 4y ago18 per HOUR!? Like… every 3 minutes? [cries in American] I thought Acela’s 20 trains a DAY was a lot.
- iasay 4y agoSpend a few minutes at Clapham Junction here at rush hour. Average over 24 hours (yes including night when there are no trains) is one departure every 43 seconds.
- seanp2k2 4y agoAmerica, where I’m free to drive anywhere at any time because public transit doesn’t effectively exist for most people :( I miss the trains in other countries so much. They’re reminders of what we could have had here had we not let NIMBYism win. https://www.quora.com/Why-wasnt-BART-built-initially-to-loop-around-the-entire-bay https://www.quora.com/Why-wasnt-BART-built-initially-to-loop... has some of the history, there’s probably a better article out there somewhere.
- jlarocco 4y agoIt had less to do with NIMBYism and more to do with car company profits. [1] Here in the Denver metro area, we used to have trains running all over the place, and 100 years ago, there were daily trains between Denver, Boulder, Golden, and Longmont. Then they ended service and tore up most of the tracks. Fast-forward to 2022, and now they're trying again to put rail between Boulder and Denver, but it's a $1+ billion boondoggle that hasn't gone anywhere in 15 years. [2] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-I8GDklsN4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-I8GDklsN4 [2] https://www.cpr.org/2022/03/01/rtd-fastracks-commuter-rail-buses/ https://www.cpr.org/2022/03/01/rtd-fastracks-commuter-rail-b...
- inferiorhuman 4y agoAlacatel/Thales promised Muni something like 48 trains per hour (across two tracks and five lines) with their new fangled train control system. For the most part that never happened. For the time being BART and Muni run 2–3 minute headways during peak hours (so somewhere around 25–30 tph). One of the big things BART remedied with the new cars was the lack of doors (which slows down boarding and increases dwell time).
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoi remember tryung to get a ticket for high soeed rail in spain and ticjet were sold out for a week ahead
- elnatro 4y agoI don’t see your point… sometimes there’s high demand of train travel.
- martinald 4y agoIn the UK/Germany (and probably others) you can stand if you want to and it is sold out. This is obviously preferable (though not ideal) to having a wait a week for a seat, or get a very slow coach/bus instead.
- elnatro 4y agoWe are talking about 2-4 hours of travel time standing up, almost nobody would like that. In Spain there are several railway companies: RENFE, Ouigo and (TBD) Irio. There are enough trains for the current demand. If they detect a surge (holidays for example) new trains are added to the timetable. Short-distance trains do indeed allow you to be standing up but the travel time is at most 1h.
- martinald 4y agoWell the point is it's an option to stand even if it's far from ideal. I personally would prefer to stand for an hour or two (trains tend to empty out en route) than stand at the station to wait for a seat. I've done it multiple times in the UK and Germany. There are not enough trains in Spain for the cost of the high speed infrastructure. Looking today both the 19.30 and 20.40 MAD BCN are sold out, which means you would have to wait until the next day to travel if you couldn't get to the station before 19.00 (which isn't uncommon).
- elnatro 4y ago
- manuelabeledo 4y ago> This seems ridiculously low given HS2 in the UK is planned to have 18tph on the core line (to various destinations, but still). Before COVID-19, there were more than 40 trains a day from Madrid to different destinations (Sevilla, Cordoba, Barcelona), and over 20 to many others, so the difference is not that large. But then also, London is around three times larger and has a bigger weight in its country economy, than Madrid. It just makes sense that more people commute or travel to London anyway.
- blibble 4y ago60 trains/day isn't many hours of 18 trains/hour
- manuelabeledo 4y agoNumbers are per route. There are around 15.
- elnatro 4y agoI’m not sure it’s legal to have standing passengers in high-speed trains. That’s why you have to buy your ticket before getting into the train, and showing the ticket to railway company personnel if requested. You have an assigned seat there. In the short-distance trains you can get into the train only by passing a card through a rfid reader. Maybe you should compare this trains to UK ones. Thus, Spain has less population than the UK, is less centralized than UK (where almost everything is in London) and Spain is much more mountainous. We can’t really compare these two countries.
- blibble 4y ago> I’m not sure it’s legal to have standing passengers in high-speed trains. why wouldn't it be?
- elnatro 4y agoSecurity concerns. I’m case of an accident you can sit and maybe survive. Edit: keep in mind that the Madrid-Barcelona high speed railway line reaches almost 250kph. That’s more than the double maximum speed of a car in Spain.
- ant6n 4y agoThat France-Spain connection is fairly special. Firstly, international connections tend to have much less traffic than intranational ones. Secondly, the line was built with a PPP project (long since failed), assuming it could be very profitable based on track access fees - and the track access fees for that stretch of railroad are basically the highest anywhere in Europe except for the channel tunnel. But unlike the channel tunnel (and thirdly), the connections across the line aren’t as useful as the channel tunnel, which connects a giant metropolis (London) with several other metropoli in 2-4 hours, a sweet spot for rail, whereas Barcelona and Paris/Marseille are more like 6h. Once the French side will update their Mediterranean rail lines to hsr standards, the time will go down and ridership will increase, despite the high costs. Lastly, there isn’t much freight on the line, because (besides the high track fees) there isn’t much of a standard gauge freight rail network in Spain. In some sense the Perpignan Figueras line was supposed to be like the channel tunnel, but it really isn’t. It’s not exactly comparable to the rest of the Spanish hsr network - which is arguably overbuilt for political reasons to get hsr into many even smaller cities, and perhaps under-utilised at this point, but it’s not as bad as that one line might suggest when picked as a representative.
- elnatro 4y agoThe Perpignan-Lyon has been postponed by the French government. When they complete it, the connection with Barcelona will see much more railway traffic.