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> it took us close to 6hrs That's just the regional trains, though. The Intercity Express from Düsseldorf Hbf to Frankfurt Airport is 1h 15 mins (for more than

by FabHK 4y ago

> it took us close to 6hrs That's just the regional trains, though. The Intercity Express from Düsseldorf Hbf to Frankfurt Airport is 1h 15 mins (for more than 200 km). China has nearly the area (9.6m km^2) of the US (9.8m km^2), and has plenty of railroad.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
danrl 4y ago
China’s population density map is very different from the US’ . One can hardly compare these countries when it comes to transportation infrastructure for people.
- adrianN 4y ago
  The US has pretty terrible public transport even in dense areas.
bierjunge 4y ago
Karlsruhe - Hamburg (~600km) -> 5 hours with ICE (the Basel - Hamburg connection) or 6 hours with an IC. Karlsruhe - Paris (~550km) -> 2.5 hours with TGV (and it's mostly cheaper than traveling with DB).
- 4ggr0 4y ago
  Out of curiosity I checked it a bit deeper - The ICE has 6 stops, while the TGV only stops once. Spiegel also has an article about these exact two trains[0]. To summarize, in Germany the trains have a couple dozen kilometers where they're allowed to go faster than 160kp/h, in France the TGV travels at around 320kp/h for quite some time. Considering all this it's not that surprising that the TGV is that much faster. Apparently the problem is that the fast trains in Germany have to share the tracks with the slower trains, in France and Japan as an example they apparently have their own tracks. [0] https://www.spiegel.de/reise/deutschland/ice-versus-tgv-warum-deutsche-schnellzuege-deutlich-langsamer-sind-a-1259209.html https://www.spiegel.de/reise/deutschland/ice-versus-tgv-waru...
  - iggldiggl 4y ago
    France operates on a "periphery-to-Paris-and-back" model, so the goal is quite clear – you build a radial line towards Paris and voilà, you've sped up that relation. "periphery-to-periphery" traffic is mostly ignored, so you get the somewhat curious situation where the geographically direct connection between two cities might be slower (or only marginally faster) than going all the way into Paris and back out again. Germany on the other hand doesn't have a single city that's as extremely dominant as Paris, so to capture a similar amount of traffic on your high speed network you need something more like a mesh, where any single route might only capture a smaller fraction of the total traffic, rather than the simply radial star you can get by in France. Of course that's not the only reason for the differing evolution of high speed rail between France and Germany, but it definitively is one of the reasons behind that difference.
- kmlx 4y ago
  tokyo - osaka 500km -> nozomi shinkansen 2.5hrs, hikari shinkansen 3hrs, ~EUR 100-150 one-way

by FabHK 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

danrl 4y ago

China’s population density map is very different from the US’ . One can hardly compare these countries when it comes to transportation infrastructure for people.

adrianN 4y ago
The US has pretty terrible public transport even in dense areas.

bierjunge 4y ago

Karlsruhe - Hamburg (~600km) -> 5 hours with ICE (the Basel - Hamburg connection) or 6 hours with an IC. Karlsruhe - Paris (~550km) -> 2.5 hours with TGV (and it's mostly cheaper than traveling with DB).

4ggr0 4y ago
Out of curiosity I checked it a bit deeper - The ICE has 6 stops, while the TGV only stops once. Spiegel also has an article about these exact two trains[0]. To summarize, in Germany the trains have a couple dozen kilometers where they're allowed to go faster than 160kp/h, in France the TGV travels at around 320kp/h for quite some time. Considering all this it's not that surprising that the TGV is that much faster. Apparently the problem is that the fast trains in Germany have to share the tracks with the slower trains, in France and Japan as an example they apparently have their own tracks. [0] https://www.spiegel.de/reise/deutschland/ice-versus-tgv-warum-deutsche-schnellzuege-deutlich-langsamer-sind-a-1259209.html https://www.spiegel.de/reise/deutschland/ice-versus-tgv-waru...
- iggldiggl 4y ago
  France operates on a "periphery-to-Paris-and-back" model, so the goal is quite clear – you build a radial line towards Paris and voilà, you've sped up that relation. "periphery-to-periphery" traffic is mostly ignored, so you get the somewhat curious situation where the geographically direct connection between two cities might be slower (or only marginally faster) than going all the way into Paris and back out again. Germany on the other hand doesn't have a single city that's as extremely dominant as Paris, so to capture a similar amount of traffic on your high speed network you need something more like a mesh, where any single route might only capture a smaller fraction of the total traffic, rather than the simply radial star you can get by in France. Of course that's not the only reason for the differing evolution of high speed rail between France and Germany, but it definitively is one of the reasons behind that difference.
kmlx 4y ago
tokyo - osaka 500km -> nozomi shinkansen 2.5hrs, hikari shinkansen 3hrs, ~EUR 100-150 one-way