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Having more than one railway terminals for a city as big as Paris is not unreasonable. There are technical difficulty with connecting the stations as it's not e

Having more than one railway terminals for a city as big as Paris is not unreasonable. There are technical difficulty with connecting the stations as it's not easy to build lines through/beneath the city. A single reasonably sized station also may not have the capacity to handle all the passengers. In China, most long range railway services are centrally planned (this is not necessary a bad thing here.), but Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, etc. all end up with more than one terminal.

em-bee 3y ago
all the terminals are historical. you really want trains to go through the city. in china apart from the historical stations there is usually only one new station for high speed trains. the problem in china is that the cities are huge and their high speed tracks are new and independent from the historical infrastructure so they are usually not upgrading old stations but build a new one often outside the city. the shanghai station terminates at one of the airports, which is quite reasonable. beijing seems a bit more complicated because it looks like they actually upgraded existing stations for high speed railway, but they also built a new high speed rail station is in the south, which at first seems odd given that the airport is far away to the north and there is no direct connection (unlike some other cities), but then they built the new airport also in the south and now the placement makes a lot more sense. (still no direct connection to the airport though) in germany at least every larger city is trying to convert terminals into through running stations. vienna just merged its two major stations into one main station in the last decade.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > in germany at least every larger city is trying to convert terminals into through running stations. Which is a multi billion dollar effort for very questionable gain. Stuttgart 21 is an unmitigated clusterfuck. Munich is probably never going to switch - the cost alone for the two-track S-Bahn tunnel exploded to well over a dozen billion euros and will take way over a decade to complete. Should the Bahn ever think it would be desirable to convert Munich Central to a through station (if they ever find the place to do so), they'll probably need to spend over a hundred billion euros relocating everything. Frankfurt is similarly bad. The key thing is, if railways would hire enough conductors they could reduce turnaround times in terminal stations to well under a minute - driver in the old front hops off, new driver hops on at the old end, starts up the control unit and off the train goes. But that would require them to hire and invest into staff on their own dime, while the cost for reconstruction or new construction is almost exclusively paid for with tax money. That is why terminal stations fell out of favor. > vienna just merged its two major stations into one main station in the last decade. It's not a complete merger, only the ÖBB moved their long-distance trains - Wien West still serves the Westbahn and regional trains.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    if railways would hire enough conductors they could reduce turnaround times in terminal stations to well under a minute but that's not the only problem. the speed at which the train can enter the station is much lower, and the distance it must travel when coming from the "wrong" direction is also longer, and outgoing and incoming trains get in each others way. these factors all increase the travel time and reduce the capacity a station can handle. the new vienna hauptbahnhof is capable of handling more trains a day on much less space than its predecessors. the rebuilding freed up a lot of real estate space too. of course the location already had the benefit of tracks going in multiple directions that could simply be reused, whereas most other terminal stations probably would have to build new tracks in the other direction or pick a different location. It's not a complete merger, only the ÖBB moved their long-distance trains but that is the point. there is now a single station for long distance transfers, where it matters. regional trains leaving from westbahnhof will only be used by people starting or ending in vienna. those coming from other directions will mostly be able to take a through train or transfer in maybe st. pölten or linz instead of vienna. the westbahnhof is no longer a transfer station except for destinations in vienna itself. the same for the franz-josephs-bahnhof. if you come from the south or east you transfer at hauptbahnhof and then somewhere outside vienna.
- qwezxcrty 3y ago
  In Beijing the situation may be slightly better as all the major stations are not terminal stations (after 2015). >>> I should had used stations instead of terminals in my original post, sorry for not native English. I also don't think transiting between stations is particularly difficult, as in most situations there are massive transport lines (S-Bahn and U-Bahn, RER, metro...) connecting them.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    for long distance travellers the mode switch is a massive hindrance. transferring from one train to another at the same station is a lot easier than having to leave the train station to enter local transport, and then transfer back to a train. that's two transfers in an unfamiliar city. it's just not practical. in beijing getting from a long distance train on one station to one on another could easily take an hour, whereas a direct transfer if both trains are at the same station would take minutes. but that's an academic example because the chinese long distance rail system is not designed for transfers anyways. you would almost always get a direct train between major cities, unless you are going extremly far, like guangzhou to harbin. i don't remember ever having to transfer trains when traveling in china.
pif 3y ago
> Having more than one railway terminals for a city as big as Paris is not unreasonable. > There are technical difficulty with connecting the stations Both points of yours are right, but something is missing in the picture. Several non-connected terminals are the right solution is you only consider the service to the people living in the city, but if such city also acts as a transportation hub for a greater region, then you must ensure that travelling via the hub be possible without having to load your luggage on a crowded bus.

em-bee 3y ago

all the terminals are historical. you really want trains to go through the city. in china apart from the historical stations there is usually only one new station for high speed trains. the problem in china is that the cities are huge and their high speed tracks are new and independent from the historical infrastructure so they are usually not upgrading old stations but build a new one often outside the city. the shanghai station terminates at one of the airports, which is quite reasonable. beijing seems a bit more complicated because it looks like they actually upgraded existing stations for high speed railway, but they also built a new high speed rail station is in the south, which at first seems odd given that the airport is far away to the north and there is no direct connection (unlike some other cities), but then they built the new airport also in the south and now the placement makes a lot more sense. (still no direct connection to the airport though) in germany at least every larger city is trying to convert terminals into through running stations. vienna just merged its two major stations into one main station in the last decade.

mschuster91 3y ago
> in germany at least every larger city is trying to convert terminals into through running stations. Which is a multi billion dollar effort for very questionable gain. Stuttgart 21 is an unmitigated clusterfuck. Munich is probably never going to switch - the cost alone for the two-track S-Bahn tunnel exploded to well over a dozen billion euros and will take way over a decade to complete. Should the Bahn ever think it would be desirable to convert Munich Central to a through station (if they ever find the place to do so), they'll probably need to spend over a hundred billion euros relocating everything. Frankfurt is similarly bad. The key thing is, if railways would hire enough conductors they could reduce turnaround times in terminal stations to well under a minute - driver in the old front hops off, new driver hops on at the old end, starts up the control unit and off the train goes. But that would require them to hire and invest into staff on their own dime, while the cost for reconstruction or new construction is almost exclusively paid for with tax money. That is why terminal stations fell out of favor. > vienna just merged its two major stations into one main station in the last decade. It's not a complete merger, only the ÖBB moved their long-distance trains - Wien West still serves the Westbahn and regional trains.
- em-bee 3y ago
  if railways would hire enough conductors they could reduce turnaround times in terminal stations to well under a minute but that's not the only problem. the speed at which the train can enter the station is much lower, and the distance it must travel when coming from the "wrong" direction is also longer, and outgoing and incoming trains get in each others way. these factors all increase the travel time and reduce the capacity a station can handle. the new vienna hauptbahnhof is capable of handling more trains a day on much less space than its predecessors. the rebuilding freed up a lot of real estate space too. of course the location already had the benefit of tracks going in multiple directions that could simply be reused, whereas most other terminal stations probably would have to build new tracks in the other direction or pick a different location. It's not a complete merger, only the ÖBB moved their long-distance trains but that is the point. there is now a single station for long distance transfers, where it matters. regional trains leaving from westbahnhof will only be used by people starting or ending in vienna. those coming from other directions will mostly be able to take a through train or transfer in maybe st. pölten or linz instead of vienna. the westbahnhof is no longer a transfer station except for destinations in vienna itself. the same for the franz-josephs-bahnhof. if you come from the south or east you transfer at hauptbahnhof and then somewhere outside vienna.
qwezxcrty 3y ago
In Beijing the situation may be slightly better as all the major stations are not terminal stations (after 2015). >>> I should had used stations instead of terminals in my original post, sorry for not native English. I also don't think transiting between stations is particularly difficult, as in most situations there are massive transport lines (S-Bahn and U-Bahn, RER, metro...) connecting them.
- em-bee 3y ago
  for long distance travellers the mode switch is a massive hindrance. transferring from one train to another at the same station is a lot easier than having to leave the train station to enter local transport, and then transfer back to a train. that's two transfers in an unfamiliar city. it's just not practical. in beijing getting from a long distance train on one station to one on another could easily take an hour, whereas a direct transfer if both trains are at the same station would take minutes. but that's an academic example because the chinese long distance rail system is not designed for transfers anyways. you would almost always get a direct train between major cities, unless you are going extremly far, like guangzhou to harbin. i don't remember ever having to transfer trains when traveling in china.

pif 3y ago

> Having more than one railway terminals for a city as big as Paris is not unreasonable. > There are technical difficulty with connecting the stations Both points of yours are right, but something is missing in the picture. Several non-connected terminals are the right solution is you only consider the service to the people living in the city, but if such city also acts as a transportation hub for a greater region, then you must ensure that travelling via the hub be possible without having to load your luggage on a crowded bus.