5 ms·

> I live in Europe and I also ask "why can't we have that". Which country are you in? Because the answer for "we" greatly depends on local environments and po

> I live in Europe and I also ask "why can't we have that". Which country are you in? Because the answer for "we" greatly depends on local environments and politics. For Austria the answer for instance is "the alps" and urban sprawl. Trains stop everywhere and people want to keep this, there is just not enough distance to have high speed rails be effective and there is not enough space for dedicated lines. The answer is a very different one than for instance why Germany has so little.

mrweasel 2y ago
That's a good point. The two endpoint of the main Danish railway line are both airports. Flight time between the two is around 30 minutes, maybe a little less, price, as little as €25. Take the train between the two, travel time is 6 hours, and it costs €70, if you're lucky you can buy something overpriced to eat, but don't count on it, so pack a lunch and drinks. So why would you ever take the train? The problem is that Denmark is shaped like a big L and there's no way to connect the ends without building an insanely long bridge.
FirmwareBurner 2y ago
>For Austria the answer for instance is "the alps" and urban sprawl. There are no Alps between Vienna and Graz, the second largest city yet it takes 2.5 hours to get to Vienna from Graz, while the same ~200km journey is faster by car on the highway and that's accounting for traffic and you sticking to the 100-130kmph highway speed limit which plenty of drivers do not to shorten their journey. My ex-CEO would floor it to get home much quicker than the train and have his secretary pay the speed-cam fines on his company's dime. When you monitor the trains' speed on the internal screens, you can see the average speed on the straights is somewhere around 100kmph, slower than cars on the adjacent highway. What's the excuse there for such slow ass trains? And Austrian train tickets aren't cheap either.
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  Not an Austrian, but your talking about "excuses for such slow ass trains" seems to be missing the fact that the Austrians are building two large rail tunnels: The Semmering base tunnel - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmering_Base_Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmering_Base_Tunnel which will shorten travel between Vienna and Graz, and the Koralmbahn tunnel - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koralm_Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koralm_Tunnel Also, no Alps between Vienna and Graz? Have you looked out of the window? If you haven't, here is the map. The heights of the peaks are in meters, so 3x for feet: https://mapy.cz/s/bokococuza https://mapy.cz/s/bokococuza That is a bona fide mountainous terrain.
  - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
    I answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43647104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43647104
- windward 2y ago
  I checked this route, it's very wiggly. Would there really be much to gain, even if the top speed was doubled? It's a train, so: - Accelerating takes a lot of time and space - Braking takes a lot of time and space - Allowing overtaking takes a lot of infrastructure and good timetabling.
  - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
    Sure, but as a traveler, why would you care about the details when a car ride is faster (and sometimes cheaper) than the train? The whole point of rail is that you get to the destination faster and cheaper than with a car.
    - PlunderBunny 2y ago
      For me, the whole point of rail is that I get to my destination more comfortably, and am able to do something else during the journey (e.g. work on my laptop). I don't mind if that's a bit slower, or takes longer, than in a car.
      - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
        For those who travel for work and business, time matters a lot, especially when you start to add the times to and from the train station at the source and destination. If rail ads 2+ hours more versus car, that's 2+ hours less you can be with your family that day. If you're travelling for vacation, those 2+ hours means you might miss out on a flight that's only once per day. And so on.
    - windward 2y ago
      That's a different question to "why can't we have that"
- Topfi 2y ago
  > There are no Alps between Vienna and Graz [...] You what? Please don't take this the wrong way, but the things I read about European countries on HN sometimes are asinine and part of why, despite desperately wanting to sometimes, I'll do my best to never comment on US centric topics where I have little to know personal knowledge or experience. Not only is the Südbahn between Vienna and Graz going through the Alps[0], it is the railways that goes through the alps. It is world famous for that fact. It was the first regular mountain railway in the world and is a UNESCO heritage because of it. > [...] 130kmph highway speed limit which plenty of drivers do not to shorten their journey. I'm certain the Railjet could also gain a few minutes (at most considering the Autobahn between Vienna and Graz) if their drivers ignored both laws and safety. > My ex-CEO would floor it to get home much quicker than the train and have his secretary pay the speed-cam fines on his company's dime. And people wonder why the government saw the need to introduce the ability to confiscate the vehicles [1] of such responsible individuals. As a motorcycle rider, the wanna be speed demons who have such important reasons for speeding are amongst the most dangerous, next to people unwilling to put their phone away. Also, a great statement on equality in our society. For some, a speeding fine can be devastating, for others, it's something their secretary handles. Maybe your ex-CEO should spend a bit of their precious time to calculate how much they are really saving by speeding on that particular stretch of the Autobahn compared to sticking to the 100-130km/h speed limits. > [...] average speed on the straights is somewhere around 100kmph [...] On the straights, which on this route are limited to the area between Gloggnitz and Vienna Meidling, the Railjet averages roughly 150km/h. I got off one, only a few hours ago, so can attest to that. Look, the fact that the Semmering base tunnel hasn't already been built is a failure of local government, not least because the Westbahn (between Salzburg and Vienna) is already far faster than the car [2] and we could have had the same. Interested whether your ex-CEO at least uses the train between Vienna and Salzburg, considering it's only about the speed for them? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmering_Pass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmering_Pass [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-19/austria-aims-to-curb-crashes-with-crackdown-on-super-speeders https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-19/austria-a... [2] 2h 18m vs 3h 15m
riffraff 2y ago
In Hungary, and I'm pretty sure the answer is "corruption" here, but it was more of a rethorical device than an actual question :)
- rickdeckard 2y ago
  Just a gut-feeling, but in country with high level of corruption I wouldn't feel comfortable to ride a train that accelerates >240km/h. Chances are, robust process-structures and engineering capabilities didn't rank that high as decision-factors for supplier and operations companies...
tpm 2y ago
The Alps is not the answer when you look at all the tunnels that are already there (both in Austria and Switzerland). Rather, for Austria the answer would be 'because it's a small country with one big city', so purely from the local perspective it doesn't make sense to build up high speed rail. And for that to change we would need an earnest EU-wide effort, possibly even a crossborder rail company, that would build the missing links and possibly even operate the crossborder trains. Because currently the infrastructure owners and big train operators are state owned and have little incentive to build and operate fast crossborder trains.
BobaFloutist 2y ago
Ok I have this pet idea for solving the tricky balance between "express" lines and having enough stops: With electric trains it's pretty trivial to give each car it's own motor, so what if every time you approach a stop the front car detaches from the train and shifts to the stop and a car at the station accelerates and attaches to the front of the train (or vice versa), all without the train ever stopping? Maybe it would have to slow a bit to make the attachment/detachment smoother, but you'd still skip the boarding wait and if it was going from like 600-300kph that would still be vastly better than starting and stopping. You would board the train and get on the car that detaches at your intended destination. In the case that they want to run fewer cars than there are stops, either they could alternate which car detaches so that a core car makes it from start to end, or people wanting to make the whole trip would have to change cars sometimes. Is this impossible? Would it be implausibly expensive? Is it "just an engineering challenge" like hydrogen fuel-cell cars (I.E. we'll figure it out just as soon as we have a better alternative)? I have no idea, but it sure sounds cool to me, and it doesn't feel like it's in the realm of fantasy.
- prh21 2y ago
  I have thought about this as well. There are at least two issues: 1) The number of trains on the track would increase significantly making section control even harder. (In Germany this is one of the limiting factors for the overall capacity) 2) In order to attach/detach the front and back of the trains would have to be straight and vertical. At higher speeds this would lead to aerodynamic problems. You can see this issue when comparing local commuter trains which are vertical and often can be linked this way and high-speed trains which tend to have special aerodynamically shaped noses. The higher the speed the more elongated the nose.
  - card_zero 2y ago
    Some precedence in the mail hook. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catcher_pouch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catcher_pouch
- M95D 2y ago
  You want to switch tracks while the trains passes over them? Imagine what would happen if the switch fails!

mrweasel 2y ago

That's a good point. The two endpoint of the main Danish railway line are both airports. Flight time between the two is around 30 minutes, maybe a little less, price, as little as €25. Take the train between the two, travel time is 6 hours, and it costs €70, if you're lucky you can buy something overpriced to eat, but don't count on it, so pack a lunch and drinks. So why would you ever take the train? The problem is that Denmark is shaped like a big L and there's no way to connect the ends without building an insanely long bridge.

FirmwareBurner 2y ago

>For Austria the answer for instance is "the alps" and urban sprawl. There are no Alps between Vienna and Graz, the second largest city yet it takes 2.5 hours to get to Vienna from Graz, while the same ~200km journey is faster by car on the highway and that's accounting for traffic and you sticking to the 100-130kmph highway speed limit which plenty of drivers do not to shorten their journey. My ex-CEO would floor it to get home much quicker than the train and have his secretary pay the speed-cam fines on his company's dime. When you monitor the trains' speed on the internal screens, you can see the average speed on the straights is somewhere around 100kmph, slower than cars on the adjacent highway. What's the excuse there for such slow ass trains? And Austrian train tickets aren't cheap either.

inglor_cz 2y ago
Not an Austrian, but your talking about "excuses for such slow ass trains" seems to be missing the fact that the Austrians are building two large rail tunnels: The Semmering base tunnel - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmering_Base_Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmering_Base_Tunnel which will shorten travel between Vienna and Graz, and the Koralmbahn tunnel - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koralm_Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koralm_Tunnel Also, no Alps between Vienna and Graz? Have you looked out of the window? If you haven't, here is the map. The heights of the peaks are in meters, so 3x for feet: https://mapy.cz/s/bokococuza https://mapy.cz/s/bokococuza That is a bona fide mountainous terrain.
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  I answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43647104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43647104
windward 2y ago
I checked this route, it's very wiggly. Would there really be much to gain, even if the top speed was doubled? It's a train, so: - Accelerating takes a lot of time and space - Braking takes a lot of time and space - Allowing overtaking takes a lot of infrastructure and good timetabling.
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  Sure, but as a traveler, why would you care about the details when a car ride is faster (and sometimes cheaper) than the train? The whole point of rail is that you get to the destination faster and cheaper than with a car.
  - PlunderBunny 2y ago
    For me, the whole point of rail is that I get to my destination more comfortably, and am able to do something else during the journey (e.g. work on my laptop). I don't mind if that's a bit slower, or takes longer, than in a car.
    - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
      For those who travel for work and business, time matters a lot, especially when you start to add the times to and from the train station at the source and destination. If rail ads 2+ hours more versus car, that's 2+ hours less you can be with your family that day. If you're travelling for vacation, those 2+ hours means you might miss out on a flight that's only once per day. And so on.
  - windward 2y ago
    That's a different question to "why can't we have that"
Topfi 2y ago
> There are no Alps between Vienna and Graz [...] You what? Please don't take this the wrong way, but the things I read about European countries on HN sometimes are asinine and part of why, despite desperately wanting to sometimes, I'll do my best to never comment on US centric topics where I have little to know personal knowledge or experience. Not only is the Südbahn between Vienna and Graz going through the Alps[0], it is the railways that goes through the alps. It is world famous for that fact. It was the first regular mountain railway in the world and is a UNESCO heritage because of it. > [...] 130kmph highway speed limit which plenty of drivers do not to shorten their journey. I'm certain the Railjet could also gain a few minutes (at most considering the Autobahn between Vienna and Graz) if their drivers ignored both laws and safety. > My ex-CEO would floor it to get home much quicker than the train and have his secretary pay the speed-cam fines on his company's dime. And people wonder why the government saw the need to introduce the ability to confiscate the vehicles [1] of such responsible individuals. As a motorcycle rider, the wanna be speed demons who have such important reasons for speeding are amongst the most dangerous, next to people unwilling to put their phone away. Also, a great statement on equality in our society. For some, a speeding fine can be devastating, for others, it's something their secretary handles. Maybe your ex-CEO should spend a bit of their precious time to calculate how much they are really saving by speeding on that particular stretch of the Autobahn compared to sticking to the 100-130km/h speed limits. > [...] average speed on the straights is somewhere around 100kmph [...] On the straights, which on this route are limited to the area between Gloggnitz and Vienna Meidling, the Railjet averages roughly 150km/h. I got off one, only a few hours ago, so can attest to that. Look, the fact that the Semmering base tunnel hasn't already been built is a failure of local government, not least because the Westbahn (between Salzburg and Vienna) is already far faster than the car [2] and we could have had the same. Interested whether your ex-CEO at least uses the train between Vienna and Salzburg, considering it's only about the speed for them? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmering_Pass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmering_Pass [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-19/austria-aims-to-curb-crashes-with-crackdown-on-super-speeders https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-19/austria-a... [2] 2h 18m vs 3h 15m

riffraff 2y ago

In Hungary, and I'm pretty sure the answer is "corruption" here, but it was more of a rethorical device than an actual question :)

rickdeckard 2y ago
Just a gut-feeling, but in country with high level of corruption I wouldn't feel comfortable to ride a train that accelerates >240km/h. Chances are, robust process-structures and engineering capabilities didn't rank that high as decision-factors for supplier and operations companies...

tpm 2y ago

The Alps is not the answer when you look at all the tunnels that are already there (both in Austria and Switzerland). Rather, for Austria the answer would be 'because it's a small country with one big city', so purely from the local perspective it doesn't make sense to build up high speed rail. And for that to change we would need an earnest EU-wide effort, possibly even a crossborder rail company, that would build the missing links and possibly even operate the crossborder trains. Because currently the infrastructure owners and big train operators are state owned and have little incentive to build and operate fast crossborder trains.

BobaFloutist 2y ago

Ok I have this pet idea for solving the tricky balance between "express" lines and having enough stops: With electric trains it's pretty trivial to give each car it's own motor, so what if every time you approach a stop the front car detaches from the train and shifts to the stop and a car at the station accelerates and attaches to the front of the train (or vice versa), all without the train ever stopping? Maybe it would have to slow a bit to make the attachment/detachment smoother, but you'd still skip the boarding wait and if it was going from like 600-300kph that would still be vastly better than starting and stopping. You would board the train and get on the car that detaches at your intended destination. In the case that they want to run fewer cars than there are stops, either they could alternate which car detaches so that a core car makes it from start to end, or people wanting to make the whole trip would have to change cars sometimes. Is this impossible? Would it be implausibly expensive? Is it "just an engineering challenge" like hydrogen fuel-cell cars (I.E. we'll figure it out just as soon as we have a better alternative)? I have no idea, but it sure sounds cool to me, and it doesn't feel like it's in the realm of fantasy.

prh21 2y ago
I have thought about this as well. There are at least two issues: 1) The number of trains on the track would increase significantly making section control even harder. (In Germany this is one of the limiting factors for the overall capacity) 2) In order to attach/detach the front and back of the trains would have to be straight and vertical. At higher speeds this would lead to aerodynamic problems. You can see this issue when comparing local commuter trains which are vertical and often can be linked this way and high-speed trains which tend to have special aerodynamically shaped noses. The higher the speed the more elongated the nose.
- card_zero 2y ago
  Some precedence in the mail hook. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catcher_pouch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catcher_pouch
M95D 2y ago
You want to switch tracks while the trains passes over them? Imagine what would happen if the switch fails!