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The issue is that we are enabling people to travel long distances too cheaply.
by elil17 2mo ago
The issue is that we are enabling people to travel long distances too cheaply.
- 9cb14c1ec0 2mo agoYes, let's make things more expensive, cause we experts know best. That poor guy that needs to attend a family funeral, he's a loser that should stay home. Inflation for the Win!
- bestouff 2mo agoDoes he really "need" it though ? For thousands of years people didn't travel shi fast to attend funerals (they only did it locally), where they less happy about it ?
- elil17 2mo agoIdeally making polluting activities more expensive would go hand in hand with reducing inequality - so people could still afford needs like going to a funeral. A great example of this is Canada's Carbon Fee & Dividend system.
- dudefeliciano 2mo agoWhat about short distances? Why is it cheaper to fly Berlin-Stuttgart than to take a train? it makes absoutely no sense.
- londons_explore 2mo agoTrains are expensive because the track is 99.9% empty. If you could fill a train track as much as a road is filled, it would be very cheap
- dredmorbius 2mo agoTrack utilisation is limited by a number of factors, including headways, much of which is governed by stopping distance. I believe a general minimum practical headway allows about 10--12 trainsets per hour on a given track. At 400 passengers/trainset, that's roughly 4,000 to 4,800 passengers/hour, per track. That compares with about 1,500 vehicles/hour per highway lane, or about 2,550 passengers/hour at the U.S. average of 1.7 passengers/vehicle. I've seen some suggestion that headways could be reduced to 3--4 minutes, or 15--20 trainsets/hour. I know that some urban rapid transit systems (e.g., BART in San Francisco) achieve this, but only on a small section of the system (Colma to Oakland, transiting downtown SF, IIRC). Train speeds there peak at 70 MPH, and I believe are much slower for most of this portion of track.
- londons_explore 2mo agoSome urban subways have 30 second headways.
- dredmorbius 2mo agoAnd, I suspect, low speeds, as braking distance increases with the square of speed. The New York subway has a top speed of 55 mph (88 kmh), but an average speed of 17.8 mph (28 kmh). I'm not sure what downtown intra-station peaks are, but suspect they're low on shorter sections. The London Underground is similar, with an average of 33 kmh (20 mph), max ~100 kmh (60 mph). This varies considerably by lines, the Bakerloo stock peaks at 45 mph; the Circle line averages just 24 kmh (15 mph). Chicago's 'L' is similar to NYC: max 55 mph, average ~20--25 mph.[3] Note that averages include acceleration, deceleration, and dwell times (standing still at stations). But central portions of subways probably achieve low headways with relatively low peak speeds for congested track segments. Notes: ________________________________ 1. <https://parkingday.org/how-fast-do-new-york-subway-trains-travel/ https://parkingday.org/how-fast-do-new-york-subway-trains-tr...> 2. <https://tubenotifications.co.uk/insights/how-fast-is-the-tube https://tubenotifications.co.uk/insights/how-fast-is-the-tub...> 3. <https://parkingday.org/how-fast-does-the-subway-go-in-chicago/ https://parkingday.org/how-fast-does-the-subway-go-in-chicag...>
- elil17 2mo agoThe costs are pretty evenly split between: 1) Maintaining track 2) Buying/leasing/maintaining trains 3) Staff The single best thing you can do to drive down train cost is to put more people on each train. Based on these sources: https://www.statista.com/chart/20169/gb-rail-fare-spending-breakdown/?srsltid=AfmBOorwmz_TStNJqvm7KTAVfKdGXBG7BdsGvpgy2uRBcDDW2I2TqVC4 https://www.statista.com/chart/20169/gb-rail-fare-spending-b... https://transport.ec.europa.eu/document/download/f5c82d86-2351-4e16-a082-727f419e1bc7_en?filename=2015-09-study-on-the-cost-and-contribution-of-the-rail-sector-exec-summary_en.pdf https://transport.ec.europa.eu/document/download/f5c82d86-23...
- dudefeliciano 2mo agoI understand where the costs come from, but how trains are more expensive to operate than airplanes is still baffling to me.
- bluebarbet 2mo agoAnd above all too quickly. Per kilometer, flying is roughly as polluting as driving, but nobody would think to drive across a continent to go to the beach.