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Yes 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
by martinald 4y ago
Yes 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).
- blibble 4y agothe victoria line on the London underground has 36 per hour in the peak the next train comes into the station as the previous one is leaving
- pooper 4y agoIs this local transit? It is England so practically everything feels like local transit, right? It is better than what we have, sure but it isn’t as impressive as long distance routes. > The schedule offers trains every 3 to 5 minutes on the most used sections during rush hours. During other traffic periods, intervals range usually from 4 to 12 minutes or up to 20 minutes on outer sections. During late nights, only selected express services are operated and all late-night services usually run every 20 minutes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_City_Subway_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_City_Subway_s...
- iso1631 4y agoYes, the core parts of most tube lines are 25tph+ in the peak. I believe that the 1, 2 and 3 lines in NY share the same tracks in the core and can hit about 30tph in the peak
- blibble 4y agonote this is stopping services on a 2 track railway (not total trains) if you're talking about total trains then somewhere like clapham junction is way, way higher (something like 180/hour) back to stopping services: thameslink core manages 24, and that entire route is several hundred miles long and crossrail core will do 24 on opening, designed upto 30 (the railway on either end is also several hundred miles long)
- astrange 4y agoYamanote Line frequency in Tokyo is about every 2 minutes.
- iso1631 4y agoThat's a short metro line with identical destinations and stopping patterns and slow top speed more akin to a subway service
- flemhans 4y agoI think 60 s is the lowest feasible headway for such subway services, assuming a single platform.
- iso1631 4y agoVictoria gets upto 36tph / 100 seconds headway with 133m length trains. Wikipedia suggests the Wenhu line in Taipai was testing upto 50tph, and a post from 2006 on District Dave's forum said Lille Line 2 was at 47tph [0] Both of those lines are short vehicles though - 52tph. The forum does post that many Moscow lines are 38tph (95 seconds) at long trains (140-160m) [0] https://districtdavesforum.co.uk/thread/5210/worlds-most-frequent-metro-systems https://districtdavesforum.co.uk/thread/5210/worlds-most-fre...
- Symbiote 4y ago17 says Wikipedia, but the information might be out of date. See [1]. The existing quad-track line carries 15 trains per hour [2], and is full, but this is because it carries trains of varying speed -- express passenger trains, commuter/regional trains and freight. (The Victoria Line is a metro line, pretty irrelevant comparison.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_2#Proposed_service_pattern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_2#Proposed_service_... [2] https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/how-many-trains-run-per-hour-between-milton-keynes-and-london-euston.140441/#post-2847202 https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/how-many-trains-run-per...
- iso1631 4y agoIf you maintain similar stopping patterns you can get higher than that on a two-track railway - metro services can do 25tph,30tph or even slightly more. From December the west coast mainline is bringing in a roughly pre-covid timetable. The railway is a 4 track railway, but looking at just the fast tracks leaving Euston, there will be 13 departures an hour on the fast lines 3tph Manchester 3tph Birmingham fast 2tph Liverpool 1tph Chester and North Wales 1tph Glasgow 1tph Crewe via Trent Valley stops 2tph Birmingham via Northampton (switch from the fast lines to the slow lines after about half an hour) None of these are high speed - I'm currently on a train to Manchester and my phone says we're doing about 125mph (200km/h). HS2 is a more reasonable 200mph. To be fair, Accela Washington-New York-Boston is more akin to the London-York-Edinburgh services which are only 2tph, or 31 trains per day (44 run as far as York, but only 31 continue to Edinburgh) The frequency on the WCML can't be higher as some of those trains are non-stop as far as places like Stoke, Crewe, or even Warrington (about 90-110 minutes out of Euston), where others do stop at places like Watford, Milton Keynes and Rugby. The full proposed timetable from Dec 2022 is here: https://railforums.co.uk/threads/december-2022-timetable-changes.231835/page-7#post-5702664 https://railforums.co.uk/threads/december-2022-timetable-cha... which might be at https://files.smallpdf.com/files/e54b2d4e9c7a08be02a4be30522b0902.pdf?name=December-2022-West-Coast-Mainline-timetable-Changes-by-Route-06-2227.pdf https://files.smallpdf.com/files/e54b2d4e9c7a08be02a4be30522... (In addition to the 5 trains per hour to Birmingham above, there is another one or two from a different London station - Marylebone, and there's a handful of additional trains from Euston to Edinburgh via Birmingham)
- CydeWeys 4y agoThis is not a like to like comparison. If you want to compare like to like, look at how many trains per hour leave from, e.g., Grand Central.
- Symbiote 4y agoI think it's fair: High Speed 2 will be two tracks leaving London Euston. On those tracks, 17-18 trains will run every hour in each direction.
- jcranmer 4y agoI suspect that's counting both the intercity trains and the regional trains. If so, the Northeast Corridor in New Jersey and southern Connecticut will be hitting roughly those numbers already--NJT and Metro North add a lot of traffic to the NEC.
- martinald 4y agoNo it's not. This is purely new high speed intercity services. If you include the WCML out of Euston ("legacy line" - can still do 125mph/200kmh - which will have increased regional services as space is freed up by moving the intercity ones to HS2), then you can at least double that number. Probably triple given it is a 4 track railway.
- dmd 4y agoOh for some reason I interpreted this as that many trains departing to the same place. Like as if there were a train from New York to Boston every few minutes.
- Symbiote 4y agoI already posted this, but I'll repeat it [1]. These are all intercity trains to cities north of London. There will be 6 trains per hour to Birmingham (120 miles from London), three of which continue beyond Birmingham. An additional 11 trains don't stop at Birmingham, but cities beyond it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_2#Proposed_service_pattern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_2#Proposed_service_... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_2#/media/File:HS2_vector_map.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_2#/media/File:HS2_v...
- IIAOPSW 4y agoThe thing that you're counting as "intercity" is roughly comparable to what is classified as regional service in the North East US. Destination | Operator | Distance from NYC Camden / Philly | NJT / Amtrak | 82 mi Montauk | LIRR / Amtrak | 110 mi New Haven | MNR / Amtrak | 67 mi Except for Montauk, these places are cities in their own right, but we don't really think of them as intercity trains because the primary reason someone would board is as a commuter not as a traveler.
- erispoe 4y agoLGV Sud-Est, France's first and Europe's most used HS line, sees 240 trains/day/direction, with a capacity of 13 trains/hr, to be improved to 16 tr/hr in 2030. It's a trunk line with many different service patterns though, mostly linking Paris to southern destinations.
- 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.