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 s

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.