4 ms·

Rail is the future, for passenger travel too. No better way to travel than sitting in a train's comfortable dining car, watching the world flash by and getting

Rail is the future, for passenger travel too. No better way to travel than sitting in a train's comfortable dining car, watching the world flash by and getting where you're going.

jajko 1y ago
One way to travel, between certain destinations. Not so much in other cases. Case point - Switzerland, the place of trains - coverage, precision, cleanness, small dense place. I live here. If you take a family of 4 they are roughly 4x more expensive than taking a car, even with their half-card (which for a family of four would be maybe 600 annually). Highways are still chock full of cars and its growing every year steadily. Unless you travel between train stations (or sometimes from city A to city B), but rather from/to rural areas (which are anyway connected via Post buses, having trains everywhere would ruin this country) they are much slower (ie 1h vs 3h to get to/from some mountain hiking spot). God forbid you want to travel further, cross sea or even big lake. Don't look for salvation of personal transport there, that's a very definition of pipe dream currently.
- ViscountPenguin 1y ago
  One nice thing is that trains niches can expand slowly overtime, and the marginal expense of running a train is much lower than the fixed cost of laying rail. As long as your government isn't dumb enough to rip up preexisting rail (here in Australia we got hit really badly by this in the 60s), the amortised cost of rail should only decrease. The positive externalities of rail also make it cost effective to subsidize. Here in Queensland, all public transport now only costs 50c a trip (about 30 eurocents), making travel between our two largest cities (a trip of about 71km) super fast and cheap.
  - ViscountPenguin 1y ago
    Side note: I ran the numbers, and a trip from the gold coast to Gympie is now one of the cheapest per km train trips on earth. Only beaten by free train zones, and lower class seats on the trans Siberian.
  - robocat 1y ago
    > One nice thing is that trains niches can expand slowly overtime Trains have been around long enough to fill their niches. There's a reason if they haven't. Some of the headwinds are bad reasons (like status games of showing off your expensive car). However some of the reasons are because trains suck. There's a train I love to take from my city on holiday, but it's rather inconvenient and costly.
- brnt 1y ago
  People don't realize is that public transport works if it's a network. The denser the network, both in time and space, the better the options is. Here in the Netherlands there's actually fewer routes than a 100 years ago (country was full of local 'intertown' trams then). Housing stock has expanded a few times over since the war, but rail routes (light of heavy) stayed put. It's ridiculous to build a 5000 home neighborhood and not plunk down some steel bars! Or at least reserve the space. Meanwhile, bus services are down YoY in frequency, reach. They now basically only serve as a last resort for those that really have no other options and thus can be forced to deal with incredible transit durations. Even cycling, which in denser cities can absorb some of the commuter traffic, is not encouraged as part of mixed transport. Tax law is such that one modality can be compensated. The Netherlands has none of the geology to deal with that Switzerland has, so I don't know what excuse there is. All energy went into cycling I suppose. Not bad, but it's about the network, and never about the one modality.
  - sokoloff 1y ago
    Isn’t the new bike parking facility next to Centraal in Amsterdam a massive counterexample? That clearly supports mixed-mode commuting, right?
    - withinboredom 1y ago
      You can do it because it’s easy, but when you file your taxes, you have to choose one to count as a tax break. In 2024, driving gave you the biggest tax break.
      - sokoloff 1y ago
        If government funds were used to build or finance the parking facility, I’d argue that’s taxes supporting/encouraging mixed mode commuting. (I have no idea if that was 100.00% private or not.)
      - TimTheTinker 1y ago
        It's insane to me that some countries have such high taxes that tax breaks become the most important variable when deciding which mode of transportation to use.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  Most travel is either in-city or intercity. Trains obviously cannot and should not cover every use case.
chgs 1y ago
A “dining car” means very few passengers per vehicle. That’s not how real rail tends to work, just tourist jollies (there are exceptions, but even then the vast majority of passengers do not use the facilities)
- eigenspace 1y ago
  Here in Germany we very much have 'real rail', and every high speed long distance train has a dining car. Our trains have very high passenger counts too. I think the standard ICE-4 carries around 800-900 passengers depending on the number of carriages. The dining car takes up just one carriage and is a very nice addition to the train experience. The hot food is usually not the best, but it's better than nothing, and it's very nice to go grab a beer, coffee, or pastry and stretch your legs in the middle of a journey. This is normal pretty much throughout europe on long distance trains. I know at the very least it's standard in Germany, France, Austria, and Italy. Maybe you're thinking of regional commuter trains that don't have dining cars?
  - dfxm12 1y ago
    every high speed long distance train has a dining car That you're using multiple qualifiers here suggests that these could still be exceptions.
    - eigenspace 1y ago
      In Germany with Deutsche Bahn there are three classes of trains: Regional, Intercity, and Intercity Express. Intercity Express is the high speed long distance train, and are the most common long distance trains by a long shot. They're the ones that have the dining cars. Regular Intercity trains usually don't have dining cars, but they're rather rare. I've still never actually ridden one because they're almost never used (since Intercity Express is so sucessful, and the Regional trains are fast enough for journeys of around 200km)
  - chgs 1y ago
    And how many of those 800-900 actually eat in such a car, rather than collect something from the buffet and return to their seat. 95% of passengers are not sitting in a dining car watching the world go by in an Amtrak style experience.
6stringmerc 1y ago
Contingent of community planning and political atmosphere is a serious caveat. North Texas is doing its best it seems with light rail but it’s an uphill battle on these flatlands. High speed rail is a political nightmare though the use case is extremely strong. The future is actually some kind of teleportation, which is equally feasible in places like where I live when rail is dead on arrival.
hnthrow90348765 1y ago
I think we'll need more time off for workers if we want them to take vacations via railway

Rail is the future, for passenger travel too. No better way to travel than sitting in a train's comfortable dining car, watching the world flash by and getting where you're going.

jajko 1y ago

One way to travel, between certain destinations. Not so much in other cases. Case point - Switzerland, the place of trains - coverage, precision, cleanness, small dense place. I live here. If you take a family of 4 they are roughly 4x more expensive than taking a car, even with their half-card (which for a family of four would be maybe 600 annually). Highways are still chock full of cars and its growing every year steadily. Unless you travel between train stations (or sometimes from city A to city B), but rather from/to rural areas (which are anyway connected via Post buses, having trains everywhere would ruin this country) they are much slower (ie 1h vs 3h to get to/from some mountain hiking spot). God forbid you want to travel further, cross sea or even big lake. Don't look for salvation of personal transport there, that's a very definition of pipe dream currently.

ViscountPenguin 1y ago
One nice thing is that trains niches can expand slowly overtime, and the marginal expense of running a train is much lower than the fixed cost of laying rail. As long as your government isn't dumb enough to rip up preexisting rail (here in Australia we got hit really badly by this in the 60s), the amortised cost of rail should only decrease. The positive externalities of rail also make it cost effective to subsidize. Here in Queensland, all public transport now only costs 50c a trip (about 30 eurocents), making travel between our two largest cities (a trip of about 71km) super fast and cheap.
- ViscountPenguin 1y ago
  Side note: I ran the numbers, and a trip from the gold coast to Gympie is now one of the cheapest per km train trips on earth. Only beaten by free train zones, and lower class seats on the trans Siberian.
- robocat 1y ago
  > One nice thing is that trains niches can expand slowly overtime Trains have been around long enough to fill their niches. There's a reason if they haven't. Some of the headwinds are bad reasons (like status games of showing off your expensive car). However some of the reasons are because trains suck. There's a train I love to take from my city on holiday, but it's rather inconvenient and costly.
brnt 1y ago
People don't realize is that public transport works if it's a network. The denser the network, both in time and space, the better the options is. Here in the Netherlands there's actually fewer routes than a 100 years ago (country was full of local 'intertown' trams then). Housing stock has expanded a few times over since the war, but rail routes (light of heavy) stayed put. It's ridiculous to build a 5000 home neighborhood and not plunk down some steel bars! Or at least reserve the space. Meanwhile, bus services are down YoY in frequency, reach. They now basically only serve as a last resort for those that really have no other options and thus can be forced to deal with incredible transit durations. Even cycling, which in denser cities can absorb some of the commuter traffic, is not encouraged as part of mixed transport. Tax law is such that one modality can be compensated. The Netherlands has none of the geology to deal with that Switzerland has, so I don't know what excuse there is. All energy went into cycling I suppose. Not bad, but it's about the network, and never about the one modality.
- sokoloff 1y ago
  Isn’t the new bike parking facility next to Centraal in Amsterdam a massive counterexample? That clearly supports mixed-mode commuting, right?
  - withinboredom 1y ago
    You can do it because it’s easy, but when you file your taxes, you have to choose one to count as a tax break. In 2024, driving gave you the biggest tax break.
    - sokoloff 1y ago
      If government funds were used to build or finance the parking facility, I’d argue that’s taxes supporting/encouraging mixed mode commuting. (I have no idea if that was 100.00% private or not.)
    - TimTheTinker 1y ago
      It's insane to me that some countries have such high taxes that tax breaks become the most important variable when deciding which mode of transportation to use.
rsynnott 1y ago
Most travel is either in-city or intercity. Trains obviously cannot and should not cover every use case.

chgs 1y ago

A “dining car” means very few passengers per vehicle. That’s not how real rail tends to work, just tourist jollies (there are exceptions, but even then the vast majority of passengers do not use the facilities)

eigenspace 1y ago
Here in Germany we very much have 'real rail', and every high speed long distance train has a dining car. Our trains have very high passenger counts too. I think the standard ICE-4 carries around 800-900 passengers depending on the number of carriages. The dining car takes up just one carriage and is a very nice addition to the train experience. The hot food is usually not the best, but it's better than nothing, and it's very nice to go grab a beer, coffee, or pastry and stretch your legs in the middle of a journey. This is normal pretty much throughout europe on long distance trains. I know at the very least it's standard in Germany, France, Austria, and Italy. Maybe you're thinking of regional commuter trains that don't have dining cars?
- dfxm12 1y ago
  every high speed long distance train has a dining car That you're using multiple qualifiers here suggests that these could still be exceptions.
  - eigenspace 1y ago
    In Germany with Deutsche Bahn there are three classes of trains: Regional, Intercity, and Intercity Express. Intercity Express is the high speed long distance train, and are the most common long distance trains by a long shot. They're the ones that have the dining cars. Regular Intercity trains usually don't have dining cars, but they're rather rare. I've still never actually ridden one because they're almost never used (since Intercity Express is so sucessful, and the Regional trains are fast enough for journeys of around 200km)
- chgs 1y ago
  And how many of those 800-900 actually eat in such a car, rather than collect something from the buffet and return to their seat. 95% of passengers are not sitting in a dining car watching the world go by in an Amtrak style experience.

6stringmerc 1y ago

Contingent of community planning and political atmosphere is a serious caveat. North Texas is doing its best it seems with light rail but it’s an uphill battle on these flatlands. High speed rail is a political nightmare though the use case is extremely strong. The future is actually some kind of teleportation, which is equally feasible in places like where I live when rail is dead on arrival.

hnthrow90348765 1y ago

I think we'll need more time off for workers if we want them to take vacations via railway