4 ms·

They will need to invest in more rail if that is going to be sustainable. My limited experience with German trains is positive, but going Hamburg to Berlin has

They will need to invest in more rail if that is going to be sustainable. My limited experience with German trains is positive, but going Hamburg to Berlin has always been fully booked.

maweki 3y ago
The Deutschland Ticket is only for local and regional transport. You can't use it with anything "bookable". But your point still stands. Germany needs to invest a lot. Most of the money goes to the Autobahn.
- ck45 3y ago
  According to https://www.bundestag.de/presse/hib/831740-831740 https://www.bundestag.de/presse/hib/831740-831740, the planned investments for this year are 9.08 billion Euro for long distance railways and 8.4 billion Euro for highways.
  - qwertfisch 3y ago
    Interesting. But of course there is a lot of investment bottleneck (or whatever the translation for „Investitionsstau“ is). For example take the „Neue Alpentransversale“ [1][2] which was a 40 year project for modernizing the tracks through Swiss with connections to all neighbouring countries. The Swiss are finished. Germany did not even start and will be ready around 2040, for just 190km of tracks. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neue_Eisenbahn-Alpentransversale https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neue_Eisenbahn-Alpentransversa... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRLA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRLA
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
qwertfisch 3y ago
If the German government would have sticked to the plan of building a Transrapid track between Hamburg and Berlin instead of upgrading the current tracks being able to support an ICE with only 250km/h (which took as many years as building the Transrapid track would have), then there would be much more capacity of transporting people and a functioning an future-proof track for high speed transport with over 500 km/h. Take into account the very short entrance times, compared to flying, and you save even more time. Air routes between Hamburg and Berlin would have been pointless for many years. There were a lot of political changes at the end of the 90s, some spurious arguments were made, also saying „it would be too expensive“, despite having a huge history of building train stations and airports for much much more then the planned costs … this was just an excuse to not build it because they did not want it. They said the passenger estimations were too high and it would not be profitable. Today this route is the most used one in Germany with 17000 passengers per day and a capacity of 8.7 million per year[1]. Transrapid (already the model TR08) would have been able to reach the destination in way under 60 minutes, including two intermediate stops. The ICE was able to do this in 90 minutes (when the reconstructed track was finished in 2004), but today the scheduled duration is 104–110 minutes. Also the track is shared with local trains. [1]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnstrecke_Berlin%E2%80%93Hamburg https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnstrecke_Berlin%E2%80%93Ham...
- ShellfishMeme 3y ago
  As much as I'd love to have the Transrapid, I think for this specific case the ~100 minutes are already pretty much making Hamburg - Berlin flights obsolete, especially with the airports not being super central. You'd need around 40 minutes just to get to Berlin HBF from BER. I don't even think there are any direct flights between Hamburg and Berlin since it's really not worth it.
  - pastage 3y ago
    It has had effects on other projects; it would make more sense to build high speed in the Fehmarn Belt tunnel and you could be in Copenhagen and Sweden in two to three hours. Would be nice for us Swedes at least. My point is that everything over an hour is quite a long time.

They will need to invest in more rail if that is going to be sustainable. My limited experience with German trains is positive, but going Hamburg to Berlin has always been fully booked.

maweki 3y ago

The Deutschland Ticket is only for local and regional transport. You can't use it with anything "bookable". But your point still stands. Germany needs to invest a lot. Most of the money goes to the Autobahn.

ck45 3y ago
According to https://www.bundestag.de/presse/hib/831740-831740 https://www.bundestag.de/presse/hib/831740-831740, the planned investments for this year are 9.08 billion Euro for long distance railways and 8.4 billion Euro for highways.
- qwertfisch 3y ago
  Interesting. But of course there is a lot of investment bottleneck (or whatever the translation for „Investitionsstau“ is). For example take the „Neue Alpentransversale“ [1][2] which was a 40 year project for modernizing the tracks through Swiss with connections to all neighbouring countries. The Swiss are finished. Germany did not even start and will be ready around 2040, for just 190km of tracks. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neue_Eisenbahn-Alpentransversale https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neue_Eisenbahn-Alpentransversa... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRLA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRLA

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

qwertfisch 3y ago

If the German government would have sticked to the plan of building a Transrapid track between Hamburg and Berlin instead of upgrading the current tracks being able to support an ICE with only 250km/h (which took as many years as building the Transrapid track would have), then there would be much more capacity of transporting people and a functioning an future-proof track for high speed transport with over 500 km/h. Take into account the very short entrance times, compared to flying, and you save even more time. Air routes between Hamburg and Berlin would have been pointless for many years. There were a lot of political changes at the end of the 90s, some spurious arguments were made, also saying „it would be too expensive“, despite having a huge history of building train stations and airports for much much more then the planned costs … this was just an excuse to not build it because they did not want it. They said the passenger estimations were too high and it would not be profitable. Today this route is the most used one in Germany with 17000 passengers per day and a capacity of 8.7 million per year[1]. Transrapid (already the model TR08) would have been able to reach the destination in way under 60 minutes, including two intermediate stops. The ICE was able to do this in 90 minutes (when the reconstructed track was finished in 2004), but today the scheduled duration is 104–110 minutes. Also the track is shared with local trains. [1]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnstrecke_Berlin%E2%80%93Hamburg https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnstrecke_Berlin%E2%80%93Ham...

ShellfishMeme 3y ago
As much as I'd love to have the Transrapid, I think for this specific case the ~100 minutes are already pretty much making Hamburg - Berlin flights obsolete, especially with the airports not being super central. You'd need around 40 minutes just to get to Berlin HBF from BER. I don't even think there are any direct flights between Hamburg and Berlin since it's really not worth it.
- pastage 3y ago
  It has had effects on other projects; it would make more sense to build high speed in the Fehmarn Belt tunnel and you could be in Copenhagen and Sweden in two to three hours. Would be nice for us Swedes at least. My point is that everything over an hour is quite a long time.