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It also shows how much the train networks focus on domestic travel. In nearly all bigger countries it is possible to reach most bigger cities within the 5h. Bu

It also shows how much the train networks focus on domestic travel. In nearly all bigger countries it is possible to reach most bigger cities within the 5h. But journeys in this time-frame seldomly go much beyond the border. There is still much optimization potential for transnational travel in Europe's train network.

black_puppydog 4y ago
It also shows an effect that the focus on high speed rail brings: rural areas are often very badly connected. Here in France they've even kept shutting down regional lines. That creates the train equivalent of "fly-over states": areas that you see from the train while going through, but that it would be impractical to go to.
- redtexture 4y ago
  This is the strong argument against high speed rail in the USA. We don't even have anything close to regional rail, and highspeed rail would consume all public capital that would be used to improve regional rail systems.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    Existing freight rails are so bad that passenger rail should get its own pairs of tracks in many cases (both to be higher speed and to serve the places people actually live, work and shop), and if you’re going to the expense of building new you may as well build it to support higher speeds.
  - awiesenhofer 4y ago
    > public capital that would be used to improve regional rail systems could be used, but we all know thats not how it works ...
    - redtexture 4y ago
      Commuter rail expansion and operations is the primary capital consumption area now, and there are more than a few such local / regional rail systems that could use several billion dollars each, on a continuing basis, for equipment, roadbed and station expansion.
- chrismartin 4y ago
  Has anyone considered the following? In a small town, you have a section of track running parallel to high speed rail. The track has a small and short "local" train (maybe just a couple of cars) that picks up passengers and accelerates to maybe 80 MPH, while the high-speed train slows to the same speed. The trains run next to each other for a couple of miles, some doors open between them, and people can step between the "local" train and the "long distance" train. This lets the high-speed train serve a lot more places without losing much speed. Maybe the local train serves several towns in the area.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    It has been considered and basically it’s not really reliable or practical or safe.
    - FVYPblNGl7R9ZAc 4y ago
      Is there any writings on this? It sounds interesting.
      - bobthepanda 4y ago
        My google fu is failing me but here are a few of the problems. --- Reliability For a connection like this to work the trains have to meet, consistently, every hour or however frequently they run. This is pretty difficult, most rail networks are highly complex and delays cascade across a network. With station transfers this is okay, you can drop off anyone who needs to transfer to wait and let everyone else continue, but in this sort of moving transfer either people just totally miss their connection because it wasn't there, or the train loops around somehow and delays everyone else continuing on. --- Practicality Let's say trains meet at 80 mph. Assuming you give people one minute to get their bags, walk to the door, take their seats in the other train (fairly aggressive for anyone who isn't a fit young adult) that means you spend 1.3 miles of distance traveling. That means 1.3 miles of parallel track where neither train can actually stop to serve local communities. Station transfers in comparison are fairly compact (the length of a train) and they can actually also let people on and off from the surrounding areas with appropriate exits, whereas that's not possible with moving trains. --- Safety We can't really guarantee two trains will move at the same speed parallel to each other. Trains are not automated to such a degree outside of self-contained metro networks, full automation is too complex to do in one shot and partial automation is still very complex and in its early days. Also whatever physical mechanism has to be tight enough to accommodate accessibility (wheelchairs can't go over large gaps) and reliable enough to work all the time; what happens if said mechanism breaks down while the trains are moving and conjoined? --- Finally there's the matter of actual need. If you need trains to not get slowed down, you can have some express services skip connecting to local regional services at all. It turns out demand for that kind of service is fairly limited; as an example, Amtrak has tried several times to introduce nonstop DC to NYC service, but it turns out that the additional passengers do not offset the loss of passengers from Baltimore, Wilmington and Philadelphia.
- mitchdoogle 4y ago
  Except "flyover" states are not just rural areas. There are tons of big cities in non-coastal areas of the US. I don't think people who use the term are maliciously doing it, but it does diminish the lives of millions of people as unimportant and inconsequential compared to the "important" areas on the coasts
  - ThunderSizzle 4y ago
    Well, yes. New Yorkers and Californians see the rest of the country as useless, and most don't bother to learn that entire cities exist outside of their coastal regions. It's also part of the current hyperpoliticalization we're seeing.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > New Yorkers and Californians see the rest of the country as useless, I've known lots of both (more of the latter), none of whom believe anything like that.
      - ThunderSizzle 4y ago
        I've knows lots of New Yorkers who think the middle of the country is just backwards uncivilized rednecks, since I'm from New York.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Except "flyover" states are not just rural areas Not just, no. But, looking at population density by states, you've got roughly: (1) the coastal states way at the top (except Alaska, Oregon, and Maine), (2) non-coastal Mississippi River states, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Arizona, and Vermont in the middle (3) Everything else. They are very different environments for things like passenger transport economics. > There are tons of big cities in non-coastal areas of the US. Define “big city”? There are three (out of 24 in the US) metropolitan areas with a population over 2.5 million where the principal city is located in a state without ocean, Gulf of Mexico, or Great Lakes coast; 0 out of 9 of your cutoff is 5 million.
- presentation 4y ago
  As a contrast Japan seems to have done a pretty good job of maintaining rail service in really rural areas.
henvic 4y ago
I think you are thinking about European countries. If you take the biggest countries worldwide, this doesn't apply.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  Well yes, the OP is a map of trains in European countries.
majewsky 4y ago
Wendover had a video on this topic just this week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9jirFqex6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9jirFqex6g For a short summary, the basic problem is that rail infrastructure is paid for by national funds, so there is a bigger incentive to connect two places within the same country than to connect one place within the country to another place within a neighboring country. Wendover theorizes that the decoupling of rail networks from rail service operators (as pushed by the EU-level government) can lead to new demand for international routes as budget operators spring up that are less tied to the demands of a particular national government.
- mnd999 4y ago
  I’m now looking at whether you can get to Paris and Brussels within 5 hours from the village of Wendover in the UK. And yes, you can.
- terramex 4y ago
  > For a short summary, the basic problem is that rail infrastructure is paid for by national funds EU co-founded projects can be forced to operate only domestically too. For example polish high speed railways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendolino#Poland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendolino#Poland > certification for international operation is not seen as a priority, as the trains are restricted to domestic services for an initial 10 years under the terms of a grant from the EU Cohesion Fund which covered 22% of the project cost.[31]
  - majewsky 4y ago
    > EU Cohesion Fund Oh, the irony.
- johannes1234321 4y ago
  Yes, funding is one thing. Other thing is that history of control systems and regulations is wild. For each border crossing you need different pantographs (some locomotives have four different pantographs for different countries), the engineer has to be able to identify different signalling systems, the train needs different computer systems for interpreting different control systems ... There are initiatives like ETCS which partially improve the control situation, but even that has lots of national variations and takes ages to rollout. Historic systems with little funding (relative to need) are fun.
adamjb 4y ago
Fascinating how clearly you can see this with the 5hr limit from Dusseldorf being pretty much exactly the French border from the Atlantic to Switzerland
Archelaos 4y ago
Nice observation. It is interesting that Bruxelles and Strasbourg are an exception.
inglor_cz 4y ago
Language barriers in Europe are still rather formidable. Plus, when it comes to daily "Pendlers" (people who cross the border regularly to work), often they cross the border in places where there is no extant railway connection. In Czechia, a lot of commuting people cross the German border using the D5/A6 highway, which has no nearby alternative. The closest potentially upgradeable railway is 40 km away in difficult mountain terrain, so even if it got upgraded to a reasonable standard, it would have to attract different customers going from different A to different B. By far the most common demographics to cross the borders in trains in my country are tourists, who like to go from one capital or important city (Berlin, Krakow) to another (Prague, Vienna).
vanderZwan 4y ago
The thing is that this used to be better. Groningen (north of the Netherlands) used to connect to Germany. I think there are new plans to restart that. Lots of international night trains also were abolished a decade ago. I wonder how much privatization has played a role in this.

black_puppydog 4y ago

It also shows an effect that the focus on high speed rail brings: rural areas are often very badly connected. Here in France they've even kept shutting down regional lines. That creates the train equivalent of "fly-over states": areas that you see from the train while going through, but that it would be impractical to go to.

redtexture 4y ago
This is the strong argument against high speed rail in the USA. We don't even have anything close to regional rail, and highspeed rail would consume all public capital that would be used to improve regional rail systems.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  Existing freight rails are so bad that passenger rail should get its own pairs of tracks in many cases (both to be higher speed and to serve the places people actually live, work and shop), and if you’re going to the expense of building new you may as well build it to support higher speeds.
- awiesenhofer 4y ago
  > public capital that would be used to improve regional rail systems could be used, but we all know thats not how it works ...
  - redtexture 4y ago
    Commuter rail expansion and operations is the primary capital consumption area now, and there are more than a few such local / regional rail systems that could use several billion dollars each, on a continuing basis, for equipment, roadbed and station expansion.
chrismartin 4y ago
Has anyone considered the following? In a small town, you have a section of track running parallel to high speed rail. The track has a small and short "local" train (maybe just a couple of cars) that picks up passengers and accelerates to maybe 80 MPH, while the high-speed train slows to the same speed. The trains run next to each other for a couple of miles, some doors open between them, and people can step between the "local" train and the "long distance" train. This lets the high-speed train serve a lot more places without losing much speed. Maybe the local train serves several towns in the area.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  It has been considered and basically it’s not really reliable or practical or safe.
  - FVYPblNGl7R9ZAc 4y ago
    Is there any writings on this? It sounds interesting.
    - bobthepanda 4y ago
      My google fu is failing me but here are a few of the problems. --- Reliability For a connection like this to work the trains have to meet, consistently, every hour or however frequently they run. This is pretty difficult, most rail networks are highly complex and delays cascade across a network. With station transfers this is okay, you can drop off anyone who needs to transfer to wait and let everyone else continue, but in this sort of moving transfer either people just totally miss their connection because it wasn't there, or the train loops around somehow and delays everyone else continuing on. --- Practicality Let's say trains meet at 80 mph. Assuming you give people one minute to get their bags, walk to the door, take their seats in the other train (fairly aggressive for anyone who isn't a fit young adult) that means you spend 1.3 miles of distance traveling. That means 1.3 miles of parallel track where neither train can actually stop to serve local communities. Station transfers in comparison are fairly compact (the length of a train) and they can actually also let people on and off from the surrounding areas with appropriate exits, whereas that's not possible with moving trains. --- Safety We can't really guarantee two trains will move at the same speed parallel to each other. Trains are not automated to such a degree outside of self-contained metro networks, full automation is too complex to do in one shot and partial automation is still very complex and in its early days. Also whatever physical mechanism has to be tight enough to accommodate accessibility (wheelchairs can't go over large gaps) and reliable enough to work all the time; what happens if said mechanism breaks down while the trains are moving and conjoined? --- Finally there's the matter of actual need. If you need trains to not get slowed down, you can have some express services skip connecting to local regional services at all. It turns out demand for that kind of service is fairly limited; as an example, Amtrak has tried several times to introduce nonstop DC to NYC service, but it turns out that the additional passengers do not offset the loss of passengers from Baltimore, Wilmington and Philadelphia.
mitchdoogle 4y ago
Except "flyover" states are not just rural areas. There are tons of big cities in non-coastal areas of the US. I don't think people who use the term are maliciously doing it, but it does diminish the lives of millions of people as unimportant and inconsequential compared to the "important" areas on the coasts
- ThunderSizzle 4y ago
  Well, yes. New Yorkers and Californians see the rest of the country as useless, and most don't bother to learn that entire cities exist outside of their coastal regions. It's also part of the current hyperpoliticalization we're seeing.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > New Yorkers and Californians see the rest of the country as useless, I've known lots of both (more of the latter), none of whom believe anything like that.
    - ThunderSizzle 4y ago
      I've knows lots of New Yorkers who think the middle of the country is just backwards uncivilized rednecks, since I'm from New York.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Except "flyover" states are not just rural areas Not just, no. But, looking at population density by states, you've got roughly: (1) the coastal states way at the top (except Alaska, Oregon, and Maine), (2) non-coastal Mississippi River states, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Arizona, and Vermont in the middle (3) Everything else. They are very different environments for things like passenger transport economics. > There are tons of big cities in non-coastal areas of the US. Define “big city”? There are three (out of 24 in the US) metropolitan areas with a population over 2.5 million where the principal city is located in a state without ocean, Gulf of Mexico, or Great Lakes coast; 0 out of 9 of your cutoff is 5 million.
presentation 4y ago
As a contrast Japan seems to have done a pretty good job of maintaining rail service in really rural areas.

henvic 4y ago

I think you are thinking about European countries. If you take the biggest countries worldwide, this doesn't apply.

nicoburns 4y ago
Well yes, the OP is a map of trains in European countries.

majewsky 4y ago

Wendover had a video on this topic just this week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9jirFqex6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9jirFqex6g For a short summary, the basic problem is that rail infrastructure is paid for by national funds, so there is a bigger incentive to connect two places within the same country than to connect one place within the country to another place within a neighboring country. Wendover theorizes that the decoupling of rail networks from rail service operators (as pushed by the EU-level government) can lead to new demand for international routes as budget operators spring up that are less tied to the demands of a particular national government.

mnd999 4y ago
I’m now looking at whether you can get to Paris and Brussels within 5 hours from the village of Wendover in the UK. And yes, you can.
terramex 4y ago
> For a short summary, the basic problem is that rail infrastructure is paid for by national funds EU co-founded projects can be forced to operate only domestically too. For example polish high speed railways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendolino#Poland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendolino#Poland > certification for international operation is not seen as a priority, as the trains are restricted to domestic services for an initial 10 years under the terms of a grant from the EU Cohesion Fund which covered 22% of the project cost.[31]
- majewsky 4y ago
  > EU Cohesion Fund Oh, the irony.
johannes1234321 4y ago
Yes, funding is one thing. Other thing is that history of control systems and regulations is wild. For each border crossing you need different pantographs (some locomotives have four different pantographs for different countries), the engineer has to be able to identify different signalling systems, the train needs different computer systems for interpreting different control systems ... There are initiatives like ETCS which partially improve the control situation, but even that has lots of national variations and takes ages to rollout. Historic systems with little funding (relative to need) are fun.

adamjb 4y ago

Fascinating how clearly you can see this with the 5hr limit from Dusseldorf being pretty much exactly the French border from the Atlantic to Switzerland

Archelaos 4y ago

Nice observation. It is interesting that Bruxelles and Strasbourg are an exception.

inglor_cz 4y ago

Language barriers in Europe are still rather formidable. Plus, when it comes to daily "Pendlers" (people who cross the border regularly to work), often they cross the border in places where there is no extant railway connection. In Czechia, a lot of commuting people cross the German border using the D5/A6 highway, which has no nearby alternative. The closest potentially upgradeable railway is 40 km away in difficult mountain terrain, so even if it got upgraded to a reasonable standard, it would have to attract different customers going from different A to different B. By far the most common demographics to cross the borders in trains in my country are tourists, who like to go from one capital or important city (Berlin, Krakow) to another (Prague, Vienna).

vanderZwan 4y ago

The thing is that this used to be better. Groningen (north of the Netherlands) used to connect to Germany. I think there are new plans to restart that. Lots of international night trains also were abolished a decade ago. I wonder how much privatization has played a role in this.