[HN Gopher] How trains could replace planes in Europe
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How trains could replace planes in Europe
Author : edward
Score : 181 points
Date : 2021-11-11 17:23 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.md/va1aE
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Night trains are a great idea for tourists. They are usually very
| comfortable and you can save on a hotel night if you can find a
| place to store your bags. And kids seem to tolerate them better
| than airplanes.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| There are at least two tourist-y routes where planes cannot
| feasibly be replaced: Northern Europe to Greece and Northern
| Europe to Spanish resort regions (Andalucia and Canary Islands).
|
| Taking a train from Stockholm to Malaga or Athens won't be
| realistic for years, if not decades. Taking a train from
| Stockholm to Tenerife is out of question entirely.
|
| Without tourists, these places will become a very, very bad
| periphery of the EU. Already the nominal unemployment is high,
| but lots of locals are employed "under the table" in catering and
| accomodation.
| akamaka wrote:
| The article should have mentioned some of the mega-projects that
| are already underway, which will improve rail links between
| European countries.
|
| The Stuttgart 21 project will reconfigure the Stuttgart central
| station to create a direct line between Paris and Vienna.
|
| Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link will build a new undersea rail tunnel
| between Denmark and Germany, allowing Sweden to operate night
| trains to Brussels.
|
| In Switzerland, several new tunnels under the alps beginning
| operation this year will cut travel time to Italy.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fehmarn_Belt_Fixed_Link
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceneri_Base_Tunnel
| lqet wrote:
| Well, Stuttgart 21 is not exactly a project you want to dig up
| when you want to advertise train travel. The reason of course
| is that most people at least in Germany associate it with the
| highly controversial rebuilding of Stuttgart main station [0],
| although the rest of the project is pretty reasonable.
|
| What is also missing from your list is the fact that the main
| feeder line for the Gotthard base tunnel, and one of the most
| important railway lines in Europe, the Rhine valley railway
| [1], is extremely overloaded with over 300 trains per day, and
| the ongoing extension, which was planned in the 70ies and 80ies
| and for which construction work started in _1987_ will not be
| finished before 2041 (!) [2]. It was originally planned to be
| finished in 2002. In 2016, the line was capped for days because
| the rail company (DB) chopped down some trees which were
| specifically planted in the 19th century to stabilize the
| ground (which DB was unaware of), resulting in a massive
| landslide [3]. In 2017, it was capped again for 2 months
| because of a collapse of a tunnel under construction by DB and
| crossing the existing line underground [4, 5]. In 2020, it was
| capped again because a bridge which DB planned to replace with
| a longer one crashed onto the rails and into a train, killing
| the driver [6] and nearly missing a high speed ICE train.
|
| If the embarrasing engineering failures continue at this rate,
| I doubt they will finish the extension in the 21rst century.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_Hauptbahnhof
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannheim%E2%80%93Karlsruhe%E2%...
|
| [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ausbau-
| _und_Neubaustrecke_Karl...
|
| [3] https://ais.badische-
| zeitung.de/piece/07/36/42/b1/120996529-...
|
| [4]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rastatt_Tunnel#August_2017_col...
|
| [5]
| https://bilder3.n-tv.de/img/incoming/origs19996186/831279596...
|
| [6]
| https://www.schwaebische.de/cms_media/module_img/12646/63233...
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| I briefly browsed the Stuttgart 21 article but didn't quite
| get why people are opposing it. Would you mind to elaborate?
| edynoid wrote:
| Living in the area at the height of the protests, so I can
| fill in.
|
| Some of the reasons: many people (including experts) argued
| that the project could have been done for half the price
| with almost the same effect by upgrading the existing
| station above ground instead of building an entirely new
| underground station, for example. Costs kept increasing -
| nothing new for big public infra projects, of course. But
| when a multi-billion euro project slowly triples its
| budget, people start asking questions.
|
| That way it also took away funding from other smaller
| necessary projects. One should consider here that DB
| (railway operator) has been shutting down smaller, rural
| lines for decades making it harder and harder to rely on
| them, when you don't live on the main intercity network.
|
| There were ecological concerns about the planned changes to
| Stuttgart's inner city layout and how it affects the
| already bad micro climate.
|
| Plus there was a general sense of the project being pushed
| through by stubborn DB officials and state government as a
| kind of vanity project despite the aforementioned concerns.
| They acted completely tone-deaf to the protests and in one
| instance used excessive police force to crush a peaceful
| assembly. Just altogether bad topics, which did not make
| the project more popular.
| redprince wrote:
| > Plus there was a general sense of the project being
| pushed through by stubborn DB officials and state
| government as a kind of vanity project despite the
| aforementioned concerns.
|
| A public referendum was held in 2011. 58.9% voted for the
| project to be continued.
| lqet wrote:
| A state-wide referendum was held _on the entire project_
| , including the hundreds of kilometers of new tracks,
| tunnels, and bridges, a long-distance station for the
| Stuttgart airport, and a new station on the Swabian alb.
| There was never a referendum only on the new main
| station.
| chad_oliver wrote:
| Here is one angle: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/
| 08/31/stuttgart-21s-...
|
| In short, it's very expensive and it will quickly reach
| peak capacity and need expansion.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| Rail is great for freight but what surprised me was that while
| I was in Europe flights were faster and cheaper. I don't think
| the right reaction is to tax planes so that people don't use
| them, as time has value.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Argument is the externalities of carbon emissions have
| (negative) value, so a tax would bring those two things in
| line and encourage that only people who really need to fly do
| so.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| All other things equal you need to make a very strong case
| for externalities as the market is efficient. So far it's
| just people saying "planes are bad."
|
| It's entirely possible the externalities of having people
| (and goods) unproductive for longer periods of time is
| worse than simply getting them where they need to be.
| philips wrote:
| Without putting a price on the carbon externality the
| market can't figure it out though. Idle time of workers
| is a pretty well understood market problem so I don't
| think that is an externality.
|
| Am I misunderstanding your position?
| gautamcgoel wrote:
| I'm a bit confused by what you mean by "strong case".
| Flying emits substantially more carbon dioxide (by more
| than a factor of 100, IIRC). The deleterious effects of
| increasing CO2 in the atmosphere are well-documented.
| Isn't that a strong enough case?
| NoGravitas wrote:
| The Efficient Market Hypothesis has been effectively
| disproven; it was proven that it's equivalent to P=NP,
| and it's very unlikely that P=NP. In other words, if
| markets were efficient, we could just use simulated
| markets to solve NP-hard problems in polynomial time. Not
| surprisingly, that doesn't work.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > The Efficient Market Hypothesis has been effectively
| disproven
|
| No, the opposite of "effectively". That's like saying you
| can't plan an effective route because CSP, or you can't
| use SAT solvers to design things.
|
| Markets aren't _perfect_ , and that's all that proof
| manages to show. They _could_ still be 99.99% accurate
| based on that logic. It 's a cute thought experiment, not
| something practical.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| I mean, have you ever heard of tragedy of the commons?
|
| 1) All people share one atmosphere 2) Well-reviewed
| science shows that individual decisions like taking a
| flight make the atmosphere less hospitable for all.
|
| That type of problem is literally the reason the term
| externality was coined.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Externalities are basically by definition the things that
| can't be determined by a free market.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| > you need to make a very strong case for externalities
| as the market is efficient
|
| Markets are not efficient at considering externalities at
| all.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| By definition yes, but you need to prove the externality
| is there and actually worse than your proposed tax.
| [deleted]
| hhaha88 wrote:
| What makes you believe gaps in productivity can't be
| accounted for by caching, converting to making goods
| closer to the source as much as possible?
|
| Maybe we could train more experts to avoid them needing
| to fly all over; buy and serve local.
|
| A lot of efficiency options are left off the table
| sticking with the status quo.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| The fact that negative externalities can warp markets or
| cause them to fail entirely is Econ 101.
|
| Air travel is blamed for up to 3.5% of climate impacts;
| it's not an insignificant contributor...
| foolfoolz wrote:
| i love this philosophy. we can just tax and regulate away
| all the nice things in life
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Ah yes, it is so nice to breathe noxious chemicals
| exhausted from jet engines.
|
| And CO2 is good for plant growth, right?
| kaybe wrote:
| CO2 being good for plant growth can mean it's bad for
| forest CO2 sequestration, since the wrong plants take
| over.
|
| https://e360.yale.edu/features/the-strange-case-of-the-
| liana...
| RC_ITR wrote:
| I love your philosophy. Just embrace entropy, what could
| go wrong?
| Djrhfbfnsks wrote:
| I'm as libertarian as they come, but if you're doing $x
| of damage to the environment, it seems totally fair to
| charge $x in taxes to cover that damage. That wouldn't
| stop you from enjoying an activity -- it's just making
| the price more accurately reflect the true costs.
| evilos wrote:
| Flying has a hidden cost that wasn't being charged to the
| flyer. It was being charged to everyone that will suffer
| from climate change. Charging to offset the damage that
| flying does is basically just closing a loop hole.
| (Assuming that the extra money taken is used to actually
| offset the carbon impact and not just pocketed by
| industry/government.)
| CameronNemo wrote:
| then the (really poor quality, high pollution, not just co2
| that jets exhaust) airplane fuel should be taxed, not the
| flights themselves. the price will get adjusted
| accordingly.
| adamlett wrote:
| That would be ideal. As I understand it, it has been
| tried, but without reaching an international consensus,
| and leads to airlines filling the tanks of their planes
| in countries that don't tax the fuel, and flying with
| more fuel than needed (and therefore having to burn more
| fuel) so they don't need to refuel in countries that do
| tax the fuel, thus defeating the purpose of the tax.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I don't know if it was widely reported, but in the days
| before the COP meeting in Glasgow, Britain _removed_ the
| tax they had on internal flights.
| [deleted]
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Then do electric aircraft. We can do 500-1000 mile electric
| air travel. Longer term, >3000 mile. Plus multiple hops.
| Still faster and cheaper than rail.
| yongjik wrote:
| That's... not really an argument? Electric aircraft are
| not economically viable until we account for
| externalities, so we're moving in the right direction.
|
| Even after carbon tax, electric aircraft is still a
| technology in its infancy, compared to electric trains.
| Are you proposing that the government should spend
| billions of $$$ on an experimental technology when a
| proven alternative exists?
| RC_ITR wrote:
| We 100% cannot do those things with current technology.
|
| I'm 'commenting too fast' to reply, but show me any of
| your examples in flight please.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| We absolutely can.
| https://twitter.com/GovInslee/status/1440442441920774146
|
| 500+ miles range. Building it right now. Plus Wright
| Electric, Bye Aerospace's eflyer 800, etc.
|
| Why do people so easily and confidently claim something
| can't be done?
| burkaman wrote:
| That carries 9 passengers, at ~half the speed of a
| standard airliner. It's exciting and I want to fly in
| one, but I don't think it will be faster and cheaper than
| trains in most cases, yet. But we're almost there.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| The technology is independent of scale. If it works for a
| nine Seater it also works for a 100 Seater.
|
| EDIT: and YES this is true. Battery specific energy is
| 200-400Wh/kg. That is PER kilogram. And larger planes are
| NOT less efficient per passenger than smaller ones. Small
| and large jets or propeller aircraft have a out the same
| life to drag ratio. If anything, larger tend to be better
| due to Reynolds Number effects.
|
| There is maybe not one misconception about electric
| flight that I've seen repeated most often by Internet
| skeptics than this false idea that "bigger is
| disproportionately harder for electric planes." It is
| simply. Not. True.
| burkaman wrote:
| That's not true unfortunately, batteries are too heavy to
| make bigger planes workable right now. We need denser
| batteries and more powerful electric motors, and there
| are companies working on both those problems, but they
| aren't solved yet.
|
| Look at the specific energy of jet fuel compared to
| batteries on this page:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Specific energy is independent of scale! It's right in
| the units: energy divided by mass. Watt-hours per kg.
| Where are you getting the claim from that larger planes
| can't technically be made electric even if smaller ones
| can?
|
| And no, don't switch topic to range. That is a known
| constraint. Focus on SCALE. It is scale-independent to
| zeroth and first order at least!
|
| This comes up every single time, and I feel like I'm
| taking crazy pills. :D
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Airplanes are sadly not infinitely scalable in this way.
| If you attempt to naively scale up an airplane you need
| stiffer materials, eventually you run into the issue of
| the weight of the structure increasing more rapidly than
| the area, and this is exacerbated by heavy batteries. We
| sadly cannot make large battery powered airplanes with a
| usable range and speed unless we get up the gravimetric
| density.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| I don't think battery airplanes are going to be a big
| thing, but I think hydrogen powered airplanes could well
| be a big thing. It's certainly something I'd invest a lot
| of R&D into.
|
| Also, the airplane manufacturer business is ripe for
| disruption. You have an extremely bureaucratic and
| dysfunctional Airbus battling an even more dysfunctional
| and mismanaged Boeing. Surely there is room for a
| hydrogen startup to come in and devastate these two
| monopolies. Often I wonder how much the world would be
| different if we had 100 Elon Musks instead of just one.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I agree that hydrogen in airplanes has some potential,
| though there are certainly issues - you need cryogenic
| cooling to avoid super heavy pressure vessels, and if it
| fails..., but there are similar fuels that could work.
|
| As far as disruption, the issue is that there is no
| opportunity for competition. Countries are rabidly
| protectionist about their airplane industries, and any
| newcomer even with a completely superior product (See:
| Bombardier C-Series) will get absolutely destroyed by
| sanctions, tarrifs, or even secondary export controls
| (Gripen, Avro Arrow, etc...). You cannot succeed unless
| you are American, and even in America Boeing has massive
| undue influence.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| All true. I do think there is a window to succeed in the
| U.S. In Europe it's just much harder to innovate more
| generally.
|
| Also the SAFs are looking pretty good. Point is, I don't
| think we should decide that planes are bad of all sudden,
| that doesn't seem like a very wise thing to do given the
| massive benefits of air travel. Rail is _also great_ but
| rail shines for cargo and large volume traffic between
| urban cores
| burkaman wrote:
| I mean I'm not really qualified to have this debate, but
| I'll do my best. Intuitively, if you double the weight of
| the plane, now you need twice as much battery to fly it.
| But now you've added a bunch of battery weight, so you
| need even more batteries to lift those batteries. You
| also will need more or bigger motors, which adds even
| more weight. At some point, your plane isn't gonna get
| off the ground.
|
| I am only a lowly software engineer so I don't know that
| much about planes or batteries. If I'm wrong then I'm
| wrong, and I hope I am.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| No, that IS how it scales for range to some extent (where
| if you just add fuel/battery, you now need to add more
| power, etc), but it's NOT how it scales for size. To
| first order, everything scales linearly. If you doubled
| the size of the aircraft, you already increased
| everything to compensate. This works for everything with
| two caveats: 1) Reynolds number means you get more
| efficient as you scale up in size. The effect is slight
| and there is nuance with respect to laminar vs turbulent
| flow, but it is true. 2) larger size means at some point
| you need truss braced wings. But this is only at pretty
| large sizes and only usually if you're also shooting for
| high aspect ratio wings. NASA/Boeing/etc have researched
| truss braced wings, and it is most certainly doable.
|
| But both of these are second order effects. And they
| mostly cancel out.
|
| I am a materials scientist with a background in physics
| and I have also developed electric motors for electric
| aircraft. I have a good understanding of how the systems
| scale. You were mixing up the exponential range equation
| with simple size scaling. if it were true, then large
| aircraft of any type would be much less efficient than
| smaller aircraft of the same type. This is most certainly
| not true. In fact, usually the efficiency increases with
| scale. A 777x is much more efficient than a Gulfstream or
| some smaller regional jet per passenger mile.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| You're describing something like the rocket equation, but
| that's for increasing final speed, not increasing mass.
|
| If you double the weight of "the plane", that includes
| the batteries and motors.
|
| If you start with doubling just the structure, then you
| might need to add 50% more batteries, not "twice as
| much". Then to lift those batteries it takes another 30%.
| Then you add bigger motors which adds even more weight,
| etc. etc. By the time you finish, the _total_ weight will
| be about 2x your initial weight.
|
| There is difficulty in scaling planes, but it's not
| because more mass requires more fuel. A fixed percentage
| devoted to fuel works fine, if you're assuming the same
| route for both planes.
| peterdn wrote:
| This doesn't seem right to me as it goes against my
| intuitive sense of how other factors generally scale with
| size/weight/volume (e.g. rocket equation), but I admit
| I'm definitely not an expert. However Wikipedia claims
| [1] that 250-300 Wh/kg is sufficient for small aircraft
| but something the size of an Airbus 320 would need 2
| kWh/kg. A random recent paper about scaling electric
| aircraft [2] seems to imply that there are challenges to
| scaling size as well:
|
| > All-electric designs have been demonstrated for small
| air vehicles. However, such prototypes have not been
| scaled up to more than ten passengers due to the specific
| energy (E*) limitations of current battery technology.
| [...] A significant proportion of the energy expenditure
| would be used to transport the mass of the batteries;
| this mass would not decrease during a flight as would
| that of conventional fuel.
|
| Are these sources wrong, or too simplistic in their
| analysis, or am I misinterpreting what they're saying?
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_aircraft#Batteries
|
| [2]: Structural Power Performance Targets for Future
| Electric Aircraft -
| https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/19/6006
| deepnotderp wrote:
| The rocket equation, or its airplane cousin the Breguet
| range equation talk about ratios of mass, not absolute
| mass. These larger airplanes (eg an A320) often fly much
| faster and longer distances
| Nitrolo wrote:
| Not to diminish the accomplishments shown there, but that
| plane seats maybe a dozen people? Most airliners can seat
| 100+, and their range is sometimes an order of magnitude
| higher than that. The problem is that batteries are
| significantly less energy dense than jet fuel, both by
| weight and by volume. To reach capacities and ranges of
| modern airliners you'd need batteries that are much more
| dense, compact, and light, and afaik there's nothing even
| close to the improvements needed right now.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Wrong about capacity but correct about range.
|
| I have no idea why people keep thinking that batteries
| would work worse for 100 seats rather than nine seats.
| The technology is independent of scale except in the
| trivial sense that you need proportionally more battery
| and cost since you're 10 times larger. True the range is
| less, but we have built jets that can go 40,000km. We
| don't need that much range to do short flights,
| comparable in length to the California HSR project.
| Existing battery technology is more than sufficient for
| that.
| golemiprague wrote:
| I agree regarding battery based aircraft, but what about
| hydrogen?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Argument is the externalities of carbon emissions have
| (negative) value, so a tax would bring those two things in
| line and encourage that only people who really need to fly
| do so.
|
| If we charged $100-200 per ton of CO2, which is supposedly
| more than recapture would cost, that would only be about
| $1-2 per 50 miles. From the numbers being quoted here, it
| sounds like that would do very little to bring prices in
| line.
| rbanffy wrote:
| They are not replacements - they are complementary. I think
| trains should be cheaper than they are now to be more
| appealing than airplanes (I prefer the view from the
| airplane, but the cabin pressure and silence of the train is
| a plus), but it's not an either/or situation.
|
| When we count externalities such as the carbon footprint,
| trains easily beat planes.
|
| Finally, TGV and Ryanair are not comparable experiences.
| brnt wrote:
| Air travel is severely under taxed compared to other
| modalities. Its right to start taxing air travel normally,
| because otherwise trains can't expect to compete on a level
| playing field.
| jokoon wrote:
| The main culprit is tax on kerosene. Electricity is also
| taxed in france.
|
| Kerosene must be taxed because it emits a lot of CO2 per
| flight.
| thow-01187 wrote:
| Planes are actually surprisingly fuel efficient. The
| short haul flights in Europe are often served by Airbus
| A320 or A321 Neo, with fuel consumption per seat at 2.19
| L/100 km. A mid-sized petrol-powered car consumes three
| times as much. And that figure ignores that planes take a
| straight route - taking that into account, the emissions
| are close to a single-occupant electric car
| rbanffy wrote:
| > the emissions are close to a single-occupant electric
| car
|
| I'd imagine the emissions would be infinitely greater
| than an electric car. For an ICE car with two people,
| you'd be closer.
| hollerith wrote:
| >the emissions would be infinitely greater than an
| electric car.
|
| Not if you include the emissions caused by generating the
| electricity.
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| I think they mean the emissions from generating all that
| electricity, which isn't always clean. You'll get a lot
| of hydro and renewables in some countries at some times
| but then also coal and gas at other times.
| jstsch wrote:
| That figure excludes take off and landing, which adds
| quite a bit on short haul flights.
| maigret wrote:
| The thing is that the chemical effects involved at the
| altitude airline planes fly is way more greenhouse
| impactful that the same consumption for a car, so you
| can't compare that way. Also, trains are way better than
| this. French trains drive you around on nuclear energy.
| usrusr wrote:
| But that increased impact is a short term difference,
| right? The changes to air composition we cause by digging
| up in a few decades what had been sequestered off in
| millions of years are forever changes.
| xtracto wrote:
| I was unpleasantly surprised about the train price when I
| decided to take a train to go from Liverpool to London around
| 2008. I think at that time the rail ticket was around PS200
| while the flight would have cost me around PS50 (and MegaBus
| was I think PS6) ... That gave me the impression that train
| in the UK was for rich people.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| While unreserved peak-time travel is absurdly expensive in
| the UK if you travel off-peak or book far enough in advance
| it's much less. I used to regularly travel between
| Manchester and London (about the same distance as
| Liverpool) and it was PS200 peak / PS60 off peak for walk
| up return fares. That was 10 years ago. Looking now it's
| gone up to PS370 peak (!) / PS95 off peak return.
|
| While I did meet one person who regularly flew
| Manchester/London he lived very close to the airport so it
| wasn't too much extra hassle for him. It's only 200 miles /
| 2 hours on the train so the flights were mostly for
| connecting at Heathrow to international flights. Flights
| tended to be more popular London/Scotland where you're
| looking at 4 hours on the train.
| baby wrote:
| Lived in London for a year and a half and almost never took
| the train because of that... it was soooo expensive.
| cnorthwood wrote:
| At present, a walk-up (no advance booking) peak-time first
| class ticket from Liverpool to London is PS255. Standard
| class is PS171. A walk-up off-peak standard class ticket is
| PS66.10, and you can get it cheaper if you book a day in
| advance. At peak times, or for longer distances (think
| Scotland to London), planes can be cheaper, but not often.
| Coaches can generally be cheaper though.
| toyg wrote:
| The UK is a basket case when it comes to rail. The country
| that effectively invented the bloody thing, completely lost
| its mind in the 70s and started scrapping its extensive
| network. Then the Tories got in power, and at that point
| heavily-unionised public service like rail simply "had" to
| be eviscerated. Now it's an embarrassment, when compared to
| most European countries: expensive tickets, poor
| reliability, obsolete and polluting trains, continuous
| inability to pay for itself... I could go on.
|
| I'm Italian, I thought "our" trains were bad, but in the UK
| it's much worse. Barely 40% of the network is even
| electrified, in 2021!
| Symbiote wrote:
| Frequency of trains is generally higher in Britain.
| mbanzi wrote:
| UK trains are even more expensive than Switzerland and this
| says a lot. Look at the rest of europe... you can take an
| Italian fast train and travel to major cities in the
| country very quickly, with wifi, arriving comfortably in
| the centre for a reasonable price.
| phatfish wrote:
| Privatisation destroyed rail as a cost effective means of
| rail travel in the UK. In fact it all fell apart during the
| pandemic when the government had to take control of a
| number of franchised routes and temporarily re-nationalize
| them.
|
| Rail should not be a for-profit business, it is a public
| service and a natural monopoly. 100% of the money the
| public pay to make a journey should go back into
| maintaining the network and running the trains.
|
| I'm happy for a few execs to get their 100k+ salaries and
| for it to be justified by all the "hard work" and "value"
| they bring. But taking money from ticket sales, calling it
| profit and handing it to shareholders has to stop, it means
| the public get a dysfunctional rail service because there
| is no investment. Or it works, but the ticket prices are
| stratospheric.
|
| The Transport for London corporation is a good example of
| how it should be done.
| andrewseanryan wrote:
| While flights are often cheaper than rail in Europe they are
| not always faster when you include travel time to/from
| airport/train station (airports tend to be outside of town
| and train stations are typically center of city) and that you
| have to be at the airport earlier. I lived in Munich and a
| number of times it was faster to take the train. Me and my GF
| both went to Paris; she flew and I took rail from Munich and
| my train was slightly faster or at least break even. Also,
| traveling by rail in Europe is a nicer experience in my
| opinion.
| baby wrote:
| Even if the train adds a few hours, I'll choose that option
| over flying any time. With a train you just go to the train
| station, board and sit in your comfortable chair with a
| nice desk to work on. Everything is stable, and so quiet
| you can even sleep. If you take a plane it's just maximum
| stress and discomfort. Waiting in line to check in, waiting
| in line to go through the security gates, waiting in line
| to board, waiting for the plane to take off, waiting for
| the plane to dock, waiting for luggage, etc.
| ozim wrote:
| That is nice if you travel between big cities having direct
| connection via rail and big airports.
|
| Not to disregard your example but from my perspective it is
| not representative to most of travelers in the Europe.
|
| While taking train for me was more comfortable, most of the
| times it is not feasible and definitely a lot longer than
| taking an airplane.
|
| Especially if you live in smaller city where you don't have
| a major train station couple bus stations away.
| toyg wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow - if you are in a smaller city,
| chances are you live far from an airport, but still very
| close to a train station. Unless, of course, you fly
| private charters to minuscule landings.
| ozim wrote:
| International trains don't stop just anywhere so you
| still have to go to a big city to get such train.
|
| If you want to go with train from east Germany to
| Amsterdam you still have to go to Berlin. It still takes
| ~6.5hr of train ride from Berlin to Amsterdam. Where
| flight is ~1.5hr - of course getting through security and
| all it is at least 2.5hr and then depending on which side
| of Berlin you live transfer from your place to the
| airport. Which I would say does not matter because for
| train you still have to get to Berlin HbF. You might have
| direct connection to Berlin HbF but as well some people
| might have direct connection by bus or train to the
| airport.
| pelasaco wrote:
| Where East Germany? From Erfurt, Dresden, Leipzig, the
| train is either over Magdeburg/Hannover or over Frankfurt
| am Main.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I live in such smallish city (Geneva, 500k folks in
| central part). Yes its nice to get to Paris in say 3.5h
| by direct TGV, faster than plane if you count center-
| center, although more expensive.
|
| Well, and that's about it. I don't care for Paris that
| much, there are about thousand other places I prefer
| visiting. Its not that exotic to Europeans compared to
| Americans, and Paris' painful and obvious drawbacks (its
| a mega tourist trap, rampant crime, french are often rude
| if you don't speak perfect parisian french etc.) remove a
| lot of its allure.
|
| Currently we travel to nearby islands with small kids
| (balearic, canarias, sardinia, corsica, greek ones etc.).
| We travel home which is 1500km away (1:30 flight to
| +-nearby airport, or 15h+ multi-train galore), we travel
| exotic (0 options for trains).
|
| Heck, being Swiss, we use practically 0 Swiss trains.
| They are super expensive even for us since we don't
| commute by them to work every day, and Geneva being
| border town literally at the edge of confederation
| surrounded by France has little use of rails for us.
| France has pretty bad rail situation in comparison - our
| usual way to Chamonix takes 45mins by car, and 2+h by
| train. Family of 4 with 2 tiny kids? Never, ever, with
| all necessary luggage, even for free.
|
| You can't have cheap good reliable railway network even
| in dense Europe, unless its heavily subsidized. Its a
| pipe dream, nice one but unless they tax flights into
| oblivion they will remain as easier and cheaper option
| for most. Options will be different for rural living and
| different family settings obviously.
| hiq wrote:
| > we use practically 0 Swiss trains. They are super
| expensive
|
| I guess you know that, but if you live in Switzerland
| you're supposed to have the discount card ("demi-tarif")
| which makes the train way more affordable. It's still not
| cheap, especially if you compare with a car trip not
| taking the price of the car and maintenance into account
| (which is reasonable if you need the car for other
| reasons anyway). But in my case at least, without kids,
| it's really worth being able to use my time to do
| something productive rather than driving.
|
| Also curious about the Chamonix example: I've never lived
| in Geneva, but aren't there a ton of other options in
| Switzerland that are way more connected than the French
| side? Why choose this example over Swiss resorts?
| freeflight wrote:
| _> Especially if you live in smaller city where you don
| 't have a major train station couple bus stations away._
|
| So these small cities don't have train stations, yet they
| have airports?
| temp8964 wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if there are more airline
| connections among cities than train connections.
| ozim wrote:
| No international trains don't stop in the smaller cities.
|
| To get from Poland to Germany or from Netherlands to UK
| you have to go to major city. Some towns have luck being
| on the way of such train and you could benefit from it
| but it is rather exception than rule.
|
| Which in the end makes it basically the same as getting
| to the airport for most of the people.
| skinkestek wrote:
| At least in Norway there might easily be 5 hours drive to
| the nearest train station. In the northern parts I guess
| there might be 8 or more unless (and maybe even if) you
| drive into Sweden or Finland.
|
| I remember my wife (who I'd just met back then) being
| somewhat surprised when I told her there were no train
| stops nearby.
|
| I had two airports within an hour drive though, so we
| managed.
| _carbyau_ wrote:
| The best use of trains for me is as overnight sleeper.
| Combines the cost of an overnight stay with the travel
| ticket.
|
| The few times I have done it - lowest class with an actual
| bed - it was pretty minimal as a hotel experience but great
| to be able to wake up, step off the train and go to town!
| ratsforhorses wrote:
| Also of note, not sure about the cost or availability of
| wifi/internet on planes but it can/could/should be included
| into the equation, in fact I'm sure there's a place/market
| for groups working traveling...and besides it does seem
| reasonable to tax plane travel more, their ?lead filled fuel
| is ?tax free ? and in a world which global warming is an
| (ignored)issue carbon tax shouldis be mandatory...
| foolfoolz wrote:
| this has been the case for years and the convenience gap is
| only growing bigger for air travel. this is a huge reason why
| rail is not going to be such a huge development in america.
| we have air infrastructure that already surpasses what the
| not even built rail would be
| jokteur wrote:
| Both tunnels in Switzerland have already been operational. The
| Gotthard basis tunnel since 2016, and the Ceneri tunnel since
| 2020.
| rjsw wrote:
| Another base tunnel is the Mont d'Ambin [1] one between France
| and Italy.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_d%27Ambin_Base_Tunnel
| radu_floricica wrote:
| Wonder if all of this is about to become obsolete in 20 years.
| Consider the following:
|
| - Electric cars will very soon have a lower total cost of
| ownership, and dramatically lower cost per mile.
|
| - Self driving cars are coming. They may have restrictions at
| first, but they're coming.
|
| - The Boring Company is quietly working on fast tunneling. This
| doesn't get nearly enough press, but it's the last very important
| ingredient. Not for the whole way, but to solve congestion in and
| around cities.
|
| So when I picture the future I don't think we'll be taking
| trains. I think we'll take cheap, save and extremely convenient
| driverless ubers as far as a few hundred miles away. As for
| farther away? We'll take the same uber to an airport. Sure, you
| can fuel the planes with carbon neutral fuel, but we're still
| over 30 years away from replacing jets as main transportation for
| longer distances. Nor should we - it simply makes sense to fly
| that far.
| qnsi wrote:
| but how is uber more convenient than train?
|
| I can walk, go to toilet, buy something to eat on a train.
| Can't do in in an uber
| HPsquared wrote:
| It actually picks you up from your starting point, and drops
| you at your destination.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _but how is uber more convenient than train?_
|
| Different things are good for different people. I can get in
| an Uber and take a nap or take phone calls and know that I'll
| arrive at my destination, eventually. No need to keep track
| of connections or transportation to and from a station or
| anything else.
|
| Having all options presented robustly grants everyone the
| best of both worlds.
| njarboe wrote:
| An uber drops you and your stuff off where you want to go?
| freeflight wrote:
| Kinda like those taxis waiting outside of central stations
| and airports?
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| > - The Boring Company is quietly working on fast tunneling.
| This doesn't get nearly enough press, but it's the last very
| important ingredient. Not for the whole way, but to solve
| congestion in and around cities.
|
| Tunnels already exist around most cities in the EU, it's
| nothing new. The ground is already swiss cheese from 20+
| rail/metro/tunnels there, a small tunnel isn't going to help in
| any way.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Electric VTOL craft for short- and medium-distance are another
| nail in the coffin for regional rail.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| I certainly hope not. Can you imagine how loud it would be
| hearing a few thousand of those things buzzing overhead?
| pornel wrote:
| Trains like Shinkansen can run at 200mph while offering more
| space than a business class flight. They're already electric
| (and pretty much self-driving).
|
| I'd rather have that than a 50-70mph journey in a toilet-sized
| space. Rolling resistance of tires is a limitation here that
| won't go away with electric/self-driving cars.
| phartenfeller wrote:
| What do you say to this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACXaFyB_-8s ?
|
| Trains are and will be the most efficient way to transport lots
| of people. There is not enough space in big european cities for
| everyone to use their own vehicle. (And in my opinion that is
| good).
| notjes wrote:
| Bikes could replace Trains. The world is literally devolving into
| the stone age.
| iddan wrote:
| I wish there was peace in the region I live in and I could've
| taken a train to Europe instead of a plane.
| donatj wrote:
| Article I read in 2014:
|
| > Trains are such an indispensable motif in Atlas Shrugged, that,
| when some of Rand's acolytes produced a slavishly faithful film
| adaptation of her book set in the present day, they had to invent
| a convoluted rationale involving resource shortages and
| industrial disasters to explain how railroads had once again
| become the dominant form of long-distance transportation.
|
| Well... that aged... interestingly.
|
| https://harpers.org/2014/06/ayn-rands-rapture-of-the-rails/
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| I must be missing the punch line here... it's only been the last
| decade or so that planes became cheap to travel across Europe,
| whereas train travel has been ubiquitous for decades, if not a
| century. Sure, they might not be as fast as planes, but they are
| part of the experience.
| oneplane wrote:
| Sometimes I enjoy the experience, but sometimes I just want to
| not waste more than 40 minutes on travel time. I suppose that's
| just comfort/ease at the expense of emissions.
| laumars wrote:
| The boarding and departure adds a fair chunk of time to that
| too.
|
| Trains are a lot more convenient in that regard.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| I agree that it's more convenient, generally less time
| wasted in security theater and enforced shopping
| experience.
|
| That said, at least when you get on an airplane and it
| leaves the gate you have a pretty decent chance of making
| it to your destination when you expect to.
|
| Certainly with British trains it feels like your chance of
| arriving on time (to 15 minutes or so) are about 50/50.
| elygre wrote:
| Remember to add time waiting for luggage. In Frankfurt
| today, it took 45 minutes from touch down until luggage
| arrived.
| ghaff wrote:
| Big luggage that would be checked on planes is often a
| pain to handle on trains though. Especially if they're
| busy and there's really nowhere to put them. I'd actually
| be inclined to argue that dealing with larger luggage,
| whatever delays in baggage pickup there is, is easier on
| planes than most trains.
| sdoering wrote:
| There was this really great talk on the Chaos
| Communication Congress some time back on the punctuality
| of German trains. I searched for it and even found the
| English voice over translation [1].
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGCmPLWZKd8
| pmyteh wrote:
| Actually >90% within 10 mins (long distance) or 5 mins
| (short). [0]
|
| _Very_ dependent on what route you take, though. And far
| from Swiss or Japanese levels of punctuality.
|
| [0]: https://www.networkrail.co.uk/who-we-are/how-we-
| work/perform...
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Yeah, lies damn lies and statistics and all that. I'm
| sure the majority of journeys aren't long distance
| journeys you'd otherwise replace with flight. Certainly
| 50/50 was a bit of a exaggeration but when I regularly
| traveled between Glasgow/Edinburgh and London it wasn't
| far off. I received a lot of vouchers for free travel.
| pmyteh wrote:
| It's a National Statistic (subject to auditing and
| rigorous oversight from the ONS) so 'lies' is way off the
| mark.
|
| What it may do is not match your experiences (it varies a
| lot by time of day etc.), or be perfectly defined for the
| replacing-flights question. Both LNER (east coast) and
| Avanti (west coast) are fairly ordinary in long-distance
| terms. If the question was, say, Exeter to Newcastle by
| Cross Country I'd expect more extensive delays.
|
| Anyway, you can explore the data (including breakdowns by
| quarter, by long distance vs commuter, and by operating
| company).[0]
|
| [0]: https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/statistics/performance
| /passeng...
| goodpoint wrote:
| Five hours on a train between two cities are five hours of
| focused work on a laptop for me. With an enjoyable view and a
| lunch break.
|
| Compare it with flight where you spend half of the time not
| using your laptop or without connectivity.
|
| After COVID, how many people can do remote work? Don't
| underestimate the percentage of population that can use the
| time on a train in good ways.
| elygre wrote:
| Yes, that! On Monday, I will travel from Basel to Berlin.
| By train, that's eight continuous hours of work or
| whatever. By trains it's a bus, security controls, a
| somewhat stressful waiting period for birding, cramped
| seating, waiting for luggage, waiting for a train. The
| three hours saved are likely to not be all that useful,
| since I always have a somewhat higher stress level when I
| fly. So, train it is.
| Macha wrote:
| So airlines generally recommend you get there 1 hour for a EU
| internal flight before your flight for security/etc. Pre-
| covid you could usually get away with less at a lot of
| airports, but even if that didn't eat up your time, I think
| for up to almost two hours of extra travel time I'd rather
| avoid the airport and all the hassle associated with modern
| air travel.
| reillyse wrote:
| Airports are often an hour outside the city center and
| approx 30 euro (by cab) to get to where you need to go.
| lstodd wrote:
| Not everyone lives in a city center.
|
| For me, the are two international airports ~20 euro by
| cab away, while the rail stations are like ~30-40 euro
| away through unpredictable traffic.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| If you travel often, it makes sense to invest in fast
| track. You skip all the security theatre. Also, for example
| TGV requires you to be at the check in 20 minutes before.
| You're a bit late, you're screwed. Even if the train hasn't
| arrived yet.
| progval wrote:
| > Also, for example TGV requires you to be at the check
| in 20 minutes before.
|
| Where?
|
| For TGV Inoui (the main brand) you have to be in the
| train 2 minutes before (written on any ticket, also here:
| https://www.sncf.com/fr/offres-voyageurs/voyager-en-
| train/tg...), and that's all. People flow through the
| gate up to the last minute. It has been like this for at
| least a decade.
|
| For TGV Ouigo (low-cost brand), it seems to be 30 minutes
| according to https://www.ouigo.com/faq?question=ai-je-
| pense-a-tous-avant-...
|
| I never understood this constraint with Ouigo though;
| it's obviously possible to skip it as shown by Inoui
| trains... and both are operated by the same company from
| the same train stations.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| > Where?
|
| In Brussels.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| Totally agree - this perspective that one replaces the other
| doesn't make sense as while they both provide "travel" they
| do so with different tradeoffs.
| olah_1 wrote:
| How realistic is it that existing train lines get upgraded to
| super speed trains like they have in Japan?
| goodpoint wrote:
| Not necessary.
| pmyteh wrote:
| It's hard to upgrade existing routes that far - the normal
| maximum for upgraded 'classic' railways will be <225kph,
| while new high-speed railways (like the Japanese
| shinkansen) can go over 300kph.
|
| That said, Europe already has quite an extensive high-speed
| network - especially in its Western parts. The French TGV,
| for instance, has comparable speeds to the Japanese high
| speed services, and there are similar (if less complete)
| networks in Spain, Germany, and other countries. So a high-
| speed network between major centres is entirely feasible
| and, in fact, currently being built.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I thought Japan's bullet trains were built from the ground
| up as high speed passenger rail on dedicated lines. Not
| really "upgrading".
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| Not realistic.
| baq wrote:
| utter fantasy in the near term (10 years or so), a far
| fetched idea long term unless serious EU-wide legislation
| is introduced, which will surely be opposed by every single
| nation.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| With Brussels and Belgium in the middle of the grid?
| Unlikely. (belgian here)
| bregma wrote:
| Belgium, as much a wonderland for trains as it is for
| beer? Brussels, which is a stop on several bullet-train-
| equivalent high-speed lines (Thalys, Eurostar, ICE, TGV)?
|
| If anything, putting Brussels in the centre of the high
| speed rail net is a good reason for it to succeed.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > Brussels, which is a stop on several bullet-train-
| equivalent high-speed lines (Thalys, Eurostar, ICE, TGV)?
|
| Yep, that one with such tight schedules you have to
| systematically compensate for delays happening 3 out of 5
| times by booking a train earlier than your planned
| connection. It cost me many hours and stress for three
| years when I was regularly going from East belgium to
| Paris/Lille.
|
| Getting to Brussels or going from Brussels should be okay
| but may god help you if you want to make a connection in
| Brussels.
|
| > If anything, putting Brussels in the centre of the high
| speed rail net is a good reason for it to succeed.
|
| I doubt it. It's often said of the Brussels railways hub
| that it is totally saturated: not enough lanes and it's
| impossible to add more. Among commuters it's said as a
| fact but I don't know if it could be improved and if it's
| an urban legend rehashed to ramble on late trains. My
| personal experience reflects that though.
| pmyteh wrote:
| Trains already beat planes in practice for city-to-city
| journeys with a train time of <3h, because of the time of
| getting to and from airports, checkin etc. London-Paris
| flights were decimated when the channel tunnel opened, for
| instance. And rail will have a decent share (on price,
| atmosphere, or ability to work while traveling) up to about
| 4.5h. Beyond that it's much harder to justify.
| logifail wrote:
| > Trains already beat planes in practice for city-to-city
| journeys with a train time of <3h, because of the time of
| getting to and from airports, checkin etc
|
| ...and then politicians such as Ursula von der Leyen hop in
| their jets. This summer the EU Commission President took a
| 19 minute(!) flight from Vienna to Bratislava (the two
| cities are ~60km apart) in a private yet, but still managed
| to be driven ~60km by road during the transfers from
| central Vienna out to VIE airport and from BTS airport back
| to central Bratislava.
|
| https://www.diepresse.com/6055894/kritik-an-19-minuten-
| flug-...
| oneplane wrote:
| That's a weird one. I wonder what the details of that
| case were. Without any context it seems pretty dumb to
| drive 60Km and Fly 60Km when you could have just driven
| that 60Km of flying instead.
| bangkoksbest wrote:
| Who could possibly care about that? She's attending
| meetings and events in professional and political
| capacity as the Commission President, it's not personal
| holiday time. The climate cannot possibly suffer some
| meaningfully negatively impact from her transportation
| means between events, whereas there could be meaningfully
| positive impacts from her maximizing presence in certain
| events.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| It's difficult to convince people to change their habits
| when the person delivering the message is doing the
| complete opposite.
| bangkoksbest wrote:
| But she's the Commission President--an executive position
| for a very complex and powerful international
| institution. If she were an MEP, then fine, I could
| accept that an MEP does not have anywhere the
| representative power such that their time could be so
| important as to need chartered flights... But I do not
| accept that for major executive operating in that
| capacity should be beholden to mere messaging politics.
| You cannot predict the traffic situation ahead of time,
| whereas you know to the very minute what any flight times
| are, which makes them vital for planning at that level.
|
| Why would you want the Executive leader of the EU risking
| event and meeting timings when she's representing almost
| the entire continent all in order to "deliver a message"?
| Should the US president take a taxi when going from DC to
| New York?
|
| In any case the message is clearly not dependent on this
| since basically only the AfD and British tabloids are
| feigning outrage over this.
| bserge wrote:
| Ideally, they're servants of the public/people. Not
| modern kings/queens, which is what most people see them
| as (even if temporary ones). So yes, they should be
| setting examples.
| [deleted]
| mathverse wrote:
| Did she continue her trip from BTS on plane?
| freeflight wrote:
| _> A spokesman for the EU Commission justified the flight
| to the "Bild" newspaper: "With departure and arrival in
| Belgium, the President's trip took seven countries in two
| days. Alternatives were examined, but there was no other
| logistical option." That same evening von der Leyen flew
| to Riga in a private plane._
| josefx wrote:
| > Sure, they might not be as fast as planes, but they are part
| of the experience.
|
| Recently had to plan a trip from Germany to Portugal. It would
| have been a full 48 hours by train. I think I would have
| stopped at almost every significant Spanish city on the way
| there.
|
| Going by the map in the article they are already working on
| some much needed additions to the rail network in that area.
| briffle wrote:
| Its the same problem with long haul trips in the US. Chicago
| to Seattle is something like 44 hours, with nearly 40 stops.
| each one of those stops the train has to slow down, stop,
| wait for a time, then accelerate. Most of those towns are
| TINY. These 5 in WI are within about 90 min of each other:
| Columbus, WI (CBS) Portage, WI (POG)
| Wisconsin Dells, WI (WDL) Tomah, WI (TOH) La
| Crosse, WI (LSE)
|
| There are 7 stops in ND. Can you name 7 cities in North
| Dakota? But for political reasons, they have to have stops in
| all those towns, to get congress to approve their funding.
| coryrc wrote:
| I've ridden this route several times. The main riders of
| that line are to or from the small towns along that route
| to a big town a state or two over. People drive or get
| dropped off at the station from the whole region. Remove
| those and you aren't going to have many customers.
| curiousllama wrote:
| Living in Chicago, it always surprised me how, despite
| being a rail hub, it was totally impractical to take a
| train to another city (except Milwaukee). Flying or driving
| was almost always faster, and often cheaper.
| gautamdivgi wrote:
| If you live in the burbs you're probably still better off
| driving to Milwaukee. Parking in Chicago itself would be
| more than the fuel charges and you're not reducing
| emissions since the track isn't electric anyway.
| lwn wrote:
| I'd love to see the Orient express being revived. I'd much rather
| take a train than plane. The trip itself is more like an
| adventure.
| alexott wrote:
| As traveling a lot on trains in Germany - it's a joke. Trains are
| are late so you miss connections, cancelled on short notice, etc.
| I never know if get to airport on time when I use train. You can
| easily half hour late on 1 hour trip...
| lobochrome wrote:
| I find it curious that one solution to improve these networks
| suggested is to unbundle infrastructure from operations.
|
| Sure on paper it makes sense, but neither Japan nor Switzerland
| went that way and those are the best rail systems in the world
| (at least as far as my personal experience goes).
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| and moreover, the UK _did_ go that way, and by all accounts it
| has been a total disaster.
| holoduke wrote:
| From Amsterdam to London takes about 4 hours by train. More or
| the less the same with a plane. And you can actually sit
| comfortable with internet in a train.
| josephcsible wrote:
| I wish we'd spend more time trying to electrify planes, and less
| time trying to replace faster means of transportation with slower
| ones.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Rail is like twice as expensive as plane, even in Europe.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| Certainly anecdotes abound, but I once took a German Wings flight
| from Cologne to London for US$18.
|
| The taxi from the airport to my hotel, less than 5 miles from the
| airport, was US$27.
| CrlNvl wrote:
| French here: I think the conclusion is flawed. Many operators
| won't simplify the life of the EU citizen, per the article
| itself:
|
| > Then there is ticketing. Because systems are incompatible, only
| a few agencies sell rail tickets across the entire continent. As
| for refunds, operators are responsible only for the portion of
| the trip on their own trains.
|
| So if your DB train to Frankfurt is late to your french TGV to
| Strasbourg, then your TGV won't be compensated. And you'll have
| to buy a new ticket.
|
| Some guys tried their hands to be a European train ticket
| reseller (Captain Train, now owned by Trainline and way less
| effective than it was before), but it is not an easy feat.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > Some guys tried their hands to be a European train ticket
| reseller (Captain Train, now owned by Trainline and way less
| effective than it was before), but it is not an easy feat.
|
| Jungan weird how I came across this tweet yesterday:
| https://twitter.com/Signez/status/1458054003795939332?t=FtMB...
| freeflight wrote:
| https://www.eurail.com/en/eurail-passes
| Svip wrote:
| That's a political issue, not a technical one. And one that can
| be solved with political will. A decade ago, I would not have
| been so optimistic, but these days, even politicians are
| talking about the necessity of transcontinental rail routes.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| I've heard that there was some sort of a standard being
| developed on the EU level, but it basically drowns in
| bureaucracy, and the API calls are effectively free-for-all
| key-value objects where everyone can implement them as they see
| fit.
| estebank wrote:
| As much of a cynic I can be, I believe that if there's a
| supra-national organism capable of addressing such a problem
| as cross-country rail coordination, it's the EU. As many ills
| there are in the banking system in the EU, transferring money
| even across countries between individuals is a much more
| seamless experience than in other places, in large part, if
| not entirely, thanks to EU legislation. Things like abolition
| of roaming fees is another example.
|
| You can of course point at the fake "bendy bananas" UK
| tabloid bullshit pushed by the likes of their current PM for
| easy laughs, or at the cookie banners prevalent on every site
| that collects more than a service level log of visitors to be
| skeptical, but I still think improving the situation of rail
| in Europe _can_ be done in reasonable ways.
| paganel wrote:
| They won't, there's no train that can transport me from Bucharest
| (where I live) to Northern Italy (Bergamo, to be more precise)
| for just 15-20 euros, and this if we decide to ignore the big
| time differences between a plane flight and riding the train.
|
| I love trains and I'm still a little afraid of flying and I would
| love for this advent of train transport all over the continent to
| be true, but the reality of the matter is that the physics go
| against it. What will probably happen is that the lower-income
| people will be forced to travel way less while being promised
| (through articles like this one) that the incoming changes won't
| be qualitatively different from what we used to know before the
| pandemic came. The same goes for car transport, which will also
| start to become more and more a luxury.
| fock wrote:
| last I knew (went the other way), there should be a night-train
| to Vienna (only seated, because not fashionable anymore) and
| then there is definitely a route you can book to Bergamo.
|
| Problem for the first part (no straight way): rail in
| yugoslavia is dead except for CCP construction. Problem for the
| second part the alps.
|
| Still, one could probably do Bucharest-Belgrad-Zagreb-Triest-
| Verona with a very cheap nighttrain (there are rails, so
| there's no insurmountable problems:
| https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/38581/train-
| from-...). Should be fine for travelling, I think noone should
| need to commute such a distance anyway...
| paganel wrote:
| I know that some part of it is doable, technically, it's only
| that increasing the prices of plane tickets until making them
| non-viable for most of the population will most probably kill
| the city break industry in Europe.
|
| I know it sounds like a first world problem, which in a way
| it is, but (very) cheap flights combined with no roaming
| charges were one of the few, concrete things that were
| actually helping make the European Union an actual distinct
| political entity. Almost no-one here in the EU actually cares
| about the European Parliament or about the European
| politicians and the like, but we greatly appreciate that we
| can go from Bucharest to Madrid or from Prague to Stockholm
| almost at a moment's notice and without paying an arm and a
| leg for it (or at least that was how things were before the
| pandemic), all this while using our phone in all those
| locations like we were on our couch at home.
|
| I'm afraid that taking that all away will greatly reduce the
| little European spirit cohesiveness that had managed to get
| built as a result of what I described above (cheap European
| flights, no roaming fees), and we certainly need the best and
| greatest European spirit cohesiveness in these interesting
| times.
| bserge wrote:
| At which point you could just forget the train and take a
| bus. Bucharest has buses to practically anywhere in the EU.
| whinvik wrote:
| This sounds great in theory. But rail services are very
| inefficient monopolies. Here in Germany, DB Services are
| routinely affected by strikes leaving no alternatives. So no
| trains cannot replace planes unless this situation is improved.
| globalise83 wrote:
| I think it would make a lot more technical, economic and
| environmental sense to make air travel greener and quieter
| through regulation and investment in Europe's world-class
| aerospace industry rather than attempt to build integrated high-
| speed rail across the continent at vast cost and over huge delays
| spent negotiating with different landowner every 200 meters.
| timwaagh wrote:
| I don't think they will be able to make it work. It's becoming
| ever more obvious that trains are monopolistic, require extensive
| infrastructure et cetera. On top of that they are slow, people
| just don't have the time to waste it on trains. I don't think we
| should be going backwards in time towards slow sleeper trains
| (where only perhaps an experienced Russian will catch a bit of
| shut eye). We should be moving forward towards high speed train
| moving at 500 or hyperloops that stand a chance versus a plane.
| Or just cleaning up the airplane space through more extensive use
| of biofuels, hydrogen and electric (for distances smaller than
| 300km).
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Air travel also requires extensive infrastructure, only at
| airports.
|
| Are these train plans outlined not bullet trains?
| timwaagh wrote:
| As the article says it's too expensive to do much of that.
| Maybe a little will be done, but those will just be slightly
| faster trains running at 200 kph, not like a bullet train.
| The EU has little money and the nationals invest mostly in
| national infra.
| tobylane wrote:
| Often more than 200kph. This website has a speed option in
| the menu, on the currently operating lines. HS2 for
| instance will have initial-use/design speeds of 3/400kph.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Conventional HSR is generally feasible up to about 1000km
| distance. The largest city in EU + UK/Switzerland (Paris) is
| within about 1000km of 13 of the next 19 largest cities (and
| connects 16 of the next 20 largest!), with Budapest, Katowice,
| Warsaw, Athens, Naples, and Lisbon all much further than
| 1000km. And Paris isn't exactly centrally situated.
|
| HSR routes that connect all of the major cities in Europe
| together is a completely feasible proposition, although
| obviously the extremities of that route aren't going to be
| viable for thru traffic. Most of the population of Europe
| happens to live in a relatively compact region, and so most of
| the intercity traffic could easily be captured by a
| conventional HSR.
| timwaagh wrote:
| 1000 kilometer in a 100km/h average German ICE (average on
| the trip I took including stops in between) is ten hours.
| Plane flying 900 can do it in one and a half. Even if it's
| the ideal center center trip and allowing for two hours of
| boarding and an hour to and from the airport, flying is
| nearly twice as fast. Now if it were to be the much faster
| French Thalys they can average 150 (including stops) on the
| route I did but it's still an hour difference. I'd say French
| Thalys is competitive up to 700km for direct center center
| trips. German style HSR is interesting only as an alternative
| to a car.
| dash2 wrote:
| Don't worry. Europe is great at making monopoly, backwardness
| and technological regress "work"....
| timwaagh wrote:
| I know it's not so easy here policy wise. The general debate
| is a discussion on how to shoot ourselves in the foot with
| the most elan. But then you look at other places. And there
| maybe they are still growing and people have the right
| priorities. But that might be because these places are mostly
| just dirty and poor and everywhere is filled with cheaply
| built appartment blocks. At least there's something to look
| at here on your lazy Sunday afternoon.
| f6v wrote:
| Well, yes. But actually, no. Unless someone can completely change
| the way train companies operate across Europe. Getting somewhere
| on time? You have a 50:50 chance when traveling with DeutscheBahn
| and the likes.
| whatever1 wrote:
| They cannot scale to achieve the airplane QoS, stop this
| insanity.
|
| Planes not only are faster, but they require far less
| infrastructure, and we can stack vertically and spread
| horizontally their routes, having multiple parallel trips without
| sacrificing precious land.
|
| How many hours does it take to travel by train from Italy to the
| UK accounting all of the stops? A multiple of the 4 hours trip
| that a plane does.
|
| It's like asking whether bicycles can replace airplanes for
| continental travel. Theoretically yes, practically no.
| dependsontheq wrote:
| In general it's mostly a behavioral thing, if you get used to
| train trips they become easier and the way you use your time
| becomes very efficient.
|
| Two weeks ago I traveled to Antwerpen from Nuremberg in Bavaria
| and back in three days. A plane might have saved me three hours
| in real time, but that is not worth the carbon emission or the
| lack of "place" for me.
|
| Of course I would't take a 40 hour train trip to Portugal, but I
| took a one day trip from our home to Bordeaux with two small kids
| and that worked quite brilliant.
|
| Next week I will go by sleeper train to Neapel, visit Pompeii
| stay for a night and go back by sleeper train.
|
| I don't know, it has it's problems and there are a lot of things
| that go wrong but it also has feeling of "place" of change. Even
| on business trips I don't have the feeling of somehow switching
| between arbitrary grey meeting rooms with a plane.
|
| I think there are a lot of things that can become better but the
| international lines have already become much better in the last
| years and one reason is just that you have Apps to navigate any
| kind of public transport.
| sktrdie wrote:
| I still find it weird that planes are cheaper than trains even
| for quite small distances. London -> Berlin? Paris -> Madrid?
| Hell even Rome -> Milan is cheaper to fly.
|
| I would love to start contributing less to emissions and take
| trains even though they take more time but they gotta start
| taxing planes and making trains cheaper to make people start
| doing it.
| cmdli wrote:
| Trains require a lot more infrastructure, which is why they are
| at a cost disadvantage. The miles of constructed track, power
| lines, bridges, etc cost a lot of money to build and maintain,
| while planes just use the air, which is basically free.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if, for very short flights, we still
| used planes once they convert to electric (which is relatively
| viable for short flights now).
| anpago wrote:
| Heathrow have plans for a air taxi service by 202
|
| "Vertical and Heathrow Airport partner on air taxi services"
| https://www.airport-technology.com/news/vertical-heathrow-
| ai...
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| Time has value. Trains make a lot of sense for freight. I don't
| think taxing planes to make people not use them is the
| solution.
| jaywalk wrote:
| More taxes seems to be the go-to solution for people of a
| certain mindset. I understand where they're coming from, to a
| point. But I certainly don't agree.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The taxes are not to encourage people not to use them.
| They're to make sure that the _full cost_ of the flight is
| paid by the people taking the flight, rather than them just
| freeloading because the externalities are unaccounted for.
|
| If that happens to discourage people from flying, well,
| that's just a side effect of having a properly functioning
| marketplace, where there are no externalities and the
| participants all have full information.
| jaywalk wrote:
| >The taxes are not to encourage people not to use them.
|
| The grandparent comment of the one I replied to
| specifically mentioned taxing planes to get people to
| take trains instead.
| bettysdiagnose wrote:
| The mindset is simply that the market fails to price in the
| negative externalities associated with CO2 emissions. So
| taxes in some form make up for that. I'm not sure what
| there is to disagree with there. All such people are
| advocating is that flights are priced at their true cost,
| not the "lol let the next generations/people in the third
| world pay the difference" cost.
| hartator wrote:
| Competition.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| London-Berlin flying takes 1h50m. The train takes ~14h. (edit:
| replies say 9h can be done)
|
| You tie up the machine and staff for 7X longer, and need safely
| maintained local infrastructure every meter of the journey.
| It's tough to make that cheaper.
|
| And then the service is less valuable since it's so damn long.
| I _love_ train rides, but 14 hours costs a whole day, and 2h
| costs an early-rise morning.
| Mochsner wrote:
| I think there's a difference been taxing, and banning. Surely
| you should still take a plane in this case, and 99% of folks
| still will, no?
| marto1 wrote:
| While that looks correct at first glance I'm not sure if the
| calculation is so simple.
|
| You have exactly 1 destination with a plane flight, right ? A
| to B. But with a train you have A + all stops along the way +
| B so if done correctly you could potentially serve a lot more
| passengers with a single trip than you can with a flight. It
| could be that monetarily doesn't work out still, but it could
| be because of an inefficient market.
|
| And you should also think in terms outside of just
| transportation. I imagine plane flights have a centralization
| effect on where people choose to live while trains allow them
| to be more spread out.
| lqet wrote:
| 14 hours? A quick search on bahn.de gives several connections
| from London St. Pancras to Berlin Hbf that take 9 hours.
| josefx wrote:
| > The train takes ~14h.
|
| You probably hit over night travel. If you leave early enough
| the time goes down to ~9 hours.
|
| > You tie up the machine and staff for 7X longer,
|
| You also cover over a dozen stops in one trip instead of two.
|
| > and need safely maintained local infrastructure every meter
| of the journey.
|
| The German rail infrastructure is so outdated that it
| probably is at least partly responsible for the last big
| train crash (no automatic lockout).
|
| The last big airplane crashes on the other hand were caused
| by much needed efficiency upgrades that forced Boeing into
| using engines that were way too large for the half a century
| old frame they needed to remain compatible with on paper.
| pgeorgi wrote:
| > The German rail infrastructure is so outdated ...
|
| If DB updates infrastructure, that's on their budget (and
| while 100% publicly held and lots of politicians involved,
| it's nominally private). If it breaks down so much that it
| needs to be repeated, that's coming from federal funds. We
| have some perverse incentives in infrastructure
| maintenance.
| mcv wrote:
| A couple of years ago, there was someone who went from
| somewhere in south England to London by of Berlin because
| that was cheaper than taking a train directly to London. Took
| way longer, but planes are somehow ridiculously cheap.
|
| We should stop subsidizing fossil fuels, and start taxing
| them by how much they pollute.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "You tie up the machine and staff for 7X longer"
|
| The train is several times cheaper than a plane, seats 10x
| more people and some of machines used in UK were built in the
| 70's. How many airplanes keep flying that long?
|
| Infrastructure? Hs2 is the first track of rail in UK in over
| a century! Most track is 200 years old, so it has paid for
| itself a hundred times over.
| lstodd wrote:
| > How many airplanes keep flying that long?
|
| Many.
|
| > Most track is 200 years old
|
| And have been relaid about 30-40 times since then.
|
| About the only thing that dates to 19th century are the
| rights-of-way.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| It's a little disingenuous to suggest that rail is a one-
| and-done affair.
|
| The UK does have plenty of track: 20,000 miles worth, along
| with 6,000 level crossings, 30,000 bridges and viaducts,
| 2,500 stations...
|
| Track needs constant maintenance through ballast
| redistribution and compaction to maintain track geometry;
| the rail itself needs to be ground regularly to maintain
| its shape; points systems need to be maintained, as well as
| signaling systems, earthworks and embankments, even
| vegetation.
|
| Network Rail spends billions of GBP every year maintaining
| the railways.
| rytis wrote:
| I don't think 2h is exactly accurate - you have to get to the
| airport ahead of departure time to allow for security
| check/etc. Then there's transfer to/from airport on both
| sides, whereas train stations are usually in convenient spots
| to continue the journey (office/home/whatever). Nonetheless,
| the base argument holds true - flying is cheaper and
| quicker...
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Sure. But for anyone who isn't already in the city center
| it's probably close to a wash, since getting from home into
| the city has to happen. And airport to city is likely to be
| pretty optimized.
|
| You can get a coach (bus) direct to Heathrow from almost
| any town in England. Getting to Waterloo [1] (London's
| international) station from outside London could easily be
| more time consuming and tough with luggage.
|
| But of course UK is gonna be an outlier in European train
| value discussions. It's an island on the periphery with a
| single rail connection. The mainland capitals are more
| competitive.
|
| [1] edit: now St. Pancras, which is closer to other London
| rail stations so likely better on balance. Thanks user
| sbuk.
| iddan wrote:
| In most European capitals there are great public
| transportation options to get to the central train
| stations and they are almost always better than to get to
| the airport as it is more far from residential areas
| maigret wrote:
| Exact, because the local residents drive to the local
| train station way more often than to the local airport. I
| think that's a factor 10 difference approximately.
| Probably different figure for big airports hubs that
| serve mostly connections of course.
| sbuk wrote:
| London's international station is now St Pancras, which
| is much easier than Waterloo. It's closer to Euston and
| Paddington, while Kings Cross is literally over the road.
| [deleted]
| rp1 wrote:
| I can't tell you how many times I've done the Berlin-London
| trip early Monday morning before work. 2h might be an
| underestimate, but it really is quite fast.
| ghaff wrote:
| In the US, Acela--which is as good as it gets in the US--
| is still a full day trip from Boston to Washington DC
| while a flight is less than two hours. It's not as just-
| roll-up-to-the-airport as it was pre-9/11 but it's still
| something you can do to catch a mid-morning meeting.
|
| The train is pretty much a full day. I've done it when
| schedule allowed but going down the day before, working
| on the train, and spending the night in a hotel as
| opposed to doing an out and back in a day doesn't work
| for a lot of people.
|
| Of course, shorter segments of the Northeast Corridor
| work pretty well by train. I pretty much never fly Boston
| to NYC unless I'm under unusual constraints.
| ProZsolt wrote:
| That distance would be perfect for sleeper train. Hop on
| in the evening, sleep while you traveling and arrive in
| the morning well rested. You have the entire day for
| work, and hop on the train back on the evening.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I don't think the 14h is correct either. I've done that
| journey a couple of times and I'm sure it wasn't that long.
| [deleted]
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > I don't think 2h is exactly accurate - you have to get to
| the airport ahead of departure time to allow for security
| check/etc.
|
| We could honestly skip these checks for no-risk travelers.
|
| And it also assumes that you are headed downtown and not to
| an adjacent town.
|
| > flying is cheaper and quicker...
|
| In Europe, notice how it's a bunch of private businesses
| competing with one another vs state ran rail monopolies?
| freeflight wrote:
| _> We could honestly skip these checks for no-risk
| travelers._
|
| How to decide who is a "no-risk traveler" and how do you
| identify them?
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I'm not sure about Europe, but certainly in Canada, even
| the very best of our train service (Toronto <-> Montreal)
| struggles to compete on convenience. Flight time for that
| route is 80 mins vs just under 5hrs for the "express" train
| that still makes 5 intermediate stops.
|
| And those are on twinned, dedicated passenger tracks where
| you never have to wait on a siding for a freight train to
| go by in the other direction, like you do with the Toronto
| -> Vancouver train that takes multiple _days_ end to end.
|
| Anyway, they keep studying HSR for the route, so much so
| that a prominent Canadian comedian made a joke video about
| it almost a decade ago:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W32klYkTxCQ
|
| But it's definitely a chicken and egg thing; it'll never
| gain significant market share under current conditions, but
| no politician can justify the money required to properly
| build HSR with current ridership numbers. But of course
| billions [1] for a new toll highway directly through
| protected greenbelt farmland (Hwy 413)? Ram it all through!
| Will it lose money and eventually be sold off to a foreign
| interest for pennies on the dollar similar to how Hwy 407
| was twenty years ago? Probably!
|
| [1]: Even without accounting for a likely sell-off, the
| gov't of Ontario has been super cagey about the planned
| costs of 413:
| https://www.thestar.com/business/2021/10/08/the-hugely-
| contr...
| bregma wrote:
| The tracks between Toronto and Montreal are owned by CN
| and freight has priority over VIA. VIA trains are often
| delayed having to wait for freight trains to clear and
| can only be scheduled for times and speed that do not
| interfere with freight.
|
| It takes 3 days to travel the 4500 km of rail from
| Toronto to Vancouver because the first 1500 km are
| through muskeg and around lakes where building straight,
| flat, protected 200 km/h high-speed tracks is just not an
| attainable option. Even if you managed 200 km/h the
| entire way, it's still 2 days travelling.
|
| Planes travel about 800 km/h and can go in a relatively
| straight line without fear of a moose or a washout. It's
| 5 hours Toronto to Vancouver and 4.5 hours the other way
| because of tail winds.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I used to somewhat regularly take Toronto <-> Kingston,
| and I don't believe I was ever delayed by freight on that
| leg. Maybe the CN ownership prevents them from doing
| other kinds of upgrades on them, but they seem to get
| pretty decent priority during the day, particularly
| compared with the Toronto -> Vancouver route where you
| can sit on a siding for 4 hours. And it's not even really
| a matter of priority; the issue is that the siding is
| only long enough to accommodate the passenger train-- the
| freight train going the other way is way, way longer.
|
| In any case, I don't think anyone has ever seriously
| suggested HSR for the train out west. VIA has simply
| embraced that it will always be slow and impractical, and
| they market and price it accordingly-- it's supposed to
| be an _experience_ , like going on a cruise, not a
| practical means of getting to a destination.
| laurent92 wrote:
| I don't take TGV in France anymore because of trouble in each
| journey, even in first class. It's a bit like flying United:
| The cheaper it is, the less classy people are...
|
| And agents onboard do absolutely nothing upon them. Last time
| after my complaint for noise, he asked them if they had a
| fare, they said no, and the controller didn't even give them
| a fine (on a 2hrs Paris-Lyon).
|
| I'm over with train and I'll ride my diesel as long as they
| mix us with them.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| London city center to Paris city center is 2h15m by train.
| The same trip by plane will take you twice that time at
| least.
| [deleted]
| Robotbeat wrote:
| We should do electric planes. Perfect for these shorter routes.
| trutannus wrote:
| Do batteries that can power a plane for routes like this
| exist yet? I know nothing about aviation, but I always
| thought the energy needed to spin up a turbine, or prop, is
| immense.
| HPsquared wrote:
| There are a lot of aircraft designs in the pipeline at the
| moment, using current tech as far as I know.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EVTOL
| Robotbeat wrote:
| We're building such planes now.
| https://twitter.com/GovInslee/status/1440442441920774146
|
| The batteries are plenty powerful. We're limited in energy
| to about 500-1000 miles unless we use better aerodynamics,
| etc.
| tremon wrote:
| I wonder if we should focus more on gliders with electric
| auxiliary engines only, and use a launch system that stays on
| the airport of departure. Kinetic aviation, if you will.
|
| It certainly reduces the weight of the plane if it doesn't
| need to carry its initial propulsion system for the entire
| flight.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| There's a kernel of a good idea there, particularly for
| cargo. I've had similar thoughts.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| A linear motor the length of the runway? I wonder what the
| 0-300mph time could get down to.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| They do something like that for aircraft carriers. But
| sailplanes use winches, which are a lot cheaper.
| TravelPiglet wrote:
| Infrastructure is ridiculously expensive today and train is the
| most expensive form of static infrastructure. Roads aren't as
| expensive as railways and you can always take another route in
| case of maintenance.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| In UK we privatised rail to get free market to run it more
| efficiently. Now the rail is back to being government run and
| it's some of the worst it's ever been.
|
| Except it is now foreign governments that bought our rail on
| the market and are now creaming it.
|
| https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/70-of-uk-rail-routes-now-
| owned-b....
| freeflight wrote:
| Afaik that went both ways, some private UK companies now run
| rails in Germany.
| abyssin wrote:
| What we need to do is make planes more expensive, instead of
| making trains cheaper. That would be relatively easy, but
| people wouldn't like it because they want change that doesn't
| affect their lifestyle. But if we're to take climate change
| seriously, all lifestyles have to change radically.
| [deleted]
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| We should subsidize one and tax the other. Yes, flying needs
| to suck, but _travel_ doesn 't need to suck. Don't be too
| self-flagellist about this.
|
| If we really subsidize trains, we will induce enough demand
| to make investments look better in nominal terms and shift
| the culture/politics by normalizing way more rail travel.
| Easy victory.
|
| A problem is the Europeans are prudish about printing money
| with their bad ordoliberal EU Constitution.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Trains over long distances are always going to suck
| relative to planes, unless they're something like maglev or
| other ultra high speed design.
| ghaff wrote:
| "Suck" for certain dimensions. Travel is slower. Which
| can equate to cheaper (e.g. long distance buses) or can
| equate to roomier with more luxury--and more expensive.
| But there's not a lot of market these days for expensive,
| luxurious travel that takes a long time.
| lostgame wrote:
| But planes _are_ cheaper.
|
| The infrastructure alone for trains is insane. We don't need
| rails in the sky.
|
| Not only that - but we're talking about staff for half a day
| instead of a couple hours.
|
| What we could use are electric planes, for short distances.
| Plane usage isn't going to stop. Only the select few with the
| luxury of time to kill are going to pick a 12hr train over a
| 2-3hr flight for the same distance, even at half the price.
|
| Business travel alone makes the idea of increasing flights
| costs a serious no-go.
| bionade24 wrote:
| Planes don't have to pay any fuel taxes in Germany and other
| things. The government-owned train company "Deutsche Bahn"
| increased the prices shortly after government lowered taxes on
| train tickets. For fuel and electric, trains still have to pay
| full taxes. So not suprising that planes a cheaper with better
| tax conditions.
| goodpoint wrote:
| Also, the environmental impact of planes is not accounted in
| the cost.
|
| Not to mention the ethical implications around sourcing oil-
| derived fuel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_war
| jhgb wrote:
| And with a six-fold difference in carbon footprint of
| traveling between flying and taking a train, that's
| borderline criminal.
| runj__ wrote:
| I know you really don't mean it but... Criminal?
|
| As lover of flying I might have my feathers ruffled but
| there's certainly other pros to flying (the view, the
| feeling of takeoff).
|
| Maybe I'm just trying to justify my love of flying, still
| though.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Well, maybe the criminality isn't obvious in your own
| life (or mine). But to a person who lives on, say,
| Tuvalu, I'd imagine it's a lot more obvious, even if it
| is "death by a billion small cuts".
| jhgb wrote:
| So "lovers of flying" should just push environmental
| costs onto other people not just by not paying carbon
| taxes, but even by paying no fuel taxes whatsoever?
|
| And why don't I "mean it"? As far as I know, there are
| already some investigations in progress against major oil
| companies.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| > Planes don't have to pay any fuel taxes in Germany and
| other things
|
| > For fuel and electric, trains still have to pay full taxes.
| So not suprising that planes a cheaper with better tax
| conditions.
|
| Aviation is heavily taxed in Europe and Rail is heavily
| subsidized. One fact taken out of context shouldn't be used
| to paint a picture that is the opposite of this basic
| reality.
|
| The problem with taxing aviation fuel is that EU directives
| make it hard for a country to tax fuel on cross border
| flights[1] (you can tax domestic flights, but almost all
| flights in the EU are cross border).
|
| Therefore what European nations do instead is apply exit
| charges to flights as a special aviation tax. _They still
| collect the money, but as a departure tax, not as a tax on
| aviation fuel_. Those exit charges were just increased in
| 2019. It 's just a lot easier to add a departure tax than go
| through all the bilateral tax-agreements with other EU
| nations to impose a tax on aviation fuel for all flights out
| of Germany, so this is really an issue of minimizing
| paperwork rather than not taxing aviation. And Aviation exit
| charges are higher in Germany than in any other EU nation -
| each passenger pays an average of 33 euros per flight leaving
| Germany[5], from 13 euros for short-haul to 60 euros for
| long-haul. (Britain has higher exit charges, and because it's
| not in the EU, it _is_ able to tax aviation fuel pumped in
| its own borders).
|
| And of course there are already taxes on carbon in the EU, so
| not sure why there should be a special singling out of one
| particular use, just because it gets some people riled up.
| Those taxes have to be paid by aviation fuel producers, so
| they still go into the cost.
|
| Deutsche Ban, on the other hand, is heavily subsidized --
| they are getting a special covid subsidy 6 Billion euros[3]
| atop regular subsidies over 11 billion[4] and an extra 50
| billion euro subsidy for long term capex[2].
|
| [1] https://www.transportenvironment.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2021...
|
| [2] https://www.dw.com/en/germany-to-inject-extra-50-billion-
| int...
|
| [3] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-deutsche-bahn-
| bailout/ger...
|
| [4] https://economics21.org/html/europes-flawed-addiction-to-
| rai...
|
| [5] https://www.fccaviation.com/regulation/germany/aviation-
| tax
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The subsidies reflect the belief/position/ideology that the
| train brings a net benefit to _all_ of society, and so
| should be paid for by everyone, not just those who ride.
| This is intended to be in contrast to flying, which brings
| more costs than benefits.
|
| You can certainly argue that these beliefs are incorrect if
| you feel like it, and it's not as if there isn't a case to
| be made. But it's not just a simple matter of "we tax this,
| and subsidize that".
| rsj_hn wrote:
| The parent post I was responding to was saying that the
| reason trains cost more is that that aviation was being
| subsidized at the expense of trains. That's just wildly
| incorrect. They supported that position by taking one out
| of context fact. I remedied that by providing the overall
| context.
|
| I was not making a judgement as to whether trains
| _should_ be subsidized or not. That 's a whole separate
| discussion. But since you bring it up, I'd say that in
| general, transportation of _all kinds_ provides such
| massive positive externalities that it should probably be
| subsidized. Then we can debate how much _more_ trains
| should be subsidized over airplanes, but both create
| massive net positive externalities, IMO.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I think it's really hard to argue that for planes. In
| saying that I don't mean that I think it's clearly not
| true. I mean that the case for net positive externalities
| for air travel is dependent on things like (a) the
| geographic scope you consider (b) the temporal scope you
| include (c) value judgements about time-efficient travel
| and much more. One could legitimately take quite opposite
| positions on all these aspects (and more), and would end
| up reaching very different conclusions.
|
| Something like this applies to trains also, but much less
| so because their inherent geographic scope, environmental
| impact, sociological impact and effects on reducing
| travel time are much less than flying.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| So you are correct that externalities is something that
| is really ill-defined, which is why all claims to impose
| externality-based taxes should meet a high bar of rigor.
|
| In most cases, that's just impossible and the taxes end
| up being applied for political or emotional reasons
| rather than objectively taking all costs and benefits
| into account.
|
| But when it comes to a few areas, we know that there are
| massive positive externalities in anything involving
| transportation or communication. Anything that makes the
| world smaller generally has big positive effects.
|
| Even if you never buy a foreign good, the fact that a
| good was brought in will lower the price and raise the
| quality of the domestic good you do buy. That generates
| employment and income. Anything that lowers the price of
| bringing in that good will have a huge positive effect on
| the economy.
|
| With planes, the fact that they make transportation easy
| and affordable generates massive revenue for tourism,
| trade, employment. European Airports alone generate about
| 675 Billion in GDP -- 4% of the EU's GDP when both
| passenger and freight is taken into account[1]. And
| that's just airports.
|
| An older FAA study concludes that civil aviation
| generates 5.4% of US GDP[2] and that's a fairly
| conservative study not even trying to measure too many
| spillovers.
|
| Then there is a third effect, which is the superiority of
| point to point designs. Miami Beach was developed in the
| 30s and 40s because some developers saw its potential as
| a great beach destination. But it was only with plane
| flight that the rest of the nation had a chance to enjoy
| it. Or Las Vegas, another center that sprang out of
| nowhere.
|
| The fact that I can fly from pretty much anywhere in the
| country to Miami for $100 massively increases the tourism
| trade to Miami Beach. To do that with rail, you'd have to
| overcome n^2 problem. That alone would require laying
| down ~50,000 miles of track, requiring God knows how many
| tons of steel, trainyards, and workers. And it would take
| days to travel there with connections, stopovers, etc.
| Those are all frictions.
|
| And once you laid it all down, suppose you didn't want to
| go to Miami, but to Corpus Christi. Thus air travel
| allows places to spring up in response to market demand,
| whereas in the old days, cities along the track became
| the important centers -- e.g. development was
| infrastructure constrained rather than allowing the
| infrastructure to meet the needs of development flexibly
| and quickly. That increased flexibility and convenience,
| together with the reduced frictions of point to point
| travel provides trillions of dollars in positive
| externalities.
|
| [1] https://medium.com/geophy-hq/airports-as-a-positive-
| external...
|
| [2] https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/media/20
| 14-econ...
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Then there is a third effect, which is the superiority
| of point to point designs. Miami Beach was developed in
| the 30s and 40s because some developers saw its potential
| as a great beach destination. But it was only with plane
| flight that the rest of the nation had a chance to enjoy
| it. Or Las Vegas, another center that sprang out of
| nowhere.
|
| I don't think that these are particularly good examples
| for you to cite. Neither Vegas nor MB developed under the
| wing (so to speak) of air travel, but rather the
| interstate system. Air travel made them more accessible
| and accelerated their growth, but it was not responsible
| for their development, and the many folks who visited
| either of them in the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s without
| flying would likely not say that they could not enjoy
| them without planes.
|
| In addition, although it's clear that Miami Beach and
| Vegas have benefitted from cheap flights, that doesn't
| mean that the net result for the country (let alone
| world) as a whole is positive.
|
| > Even if you never buy a foreign good, the fact that a
| good was brought in will lower the price and raise the
| quality of the domestic good you do buy.
|
| This sounds like an incredibly hand-wavy claim, and also
| easily refuted as a general rule. The easy (flight-based)
| import of foreign goods has, in many cases, led the
| complete decimation of various US manufacturing sectors.
| If you hadn't noticed there are essentially no mass-
| market US electronics companies any more, very few
| clothes manufacturing companies, and in many
| manufacturing sectors that do still nominally exist as US
| companies, their factories are no longer US based. It's
| false to lay this all at the feet of relatively cheap air
| freight, but it certainly plays a role, and refutes your
| overly broad claim that "Anything that lowers the price
| of bringing in that good will have a huge positive effect
| on the economy."
|
| > Anything that makes the world smaller generally has big
| positive effects.
|
| Yes, the positive effects are well known and oft-
| discussed. The negative effects are less well known, less
| researched and rarely discussed. This means that it's
| hard to have a well-informed discussion about the balance
| between the two.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| > In addition, although it's clear that Miami Beach and
| Vegas have benefitted from cheap flights,
|
| Yes, I am not saying that air travel _created_ Miami
| Beach, but that Miami Beach _benefits_ from it. This is
| the definition of an economic externality. We are
| counting the _financial_ benefit or spillover of some
| technology, meaning the extra value-add created beyond
| the purchase of the plane ticket itself. For flight, it
| 's _huge_.
|
| Then there is a switch to a different argument:
|
| > that doesn't mean that the net result for the country
| (let alone world) as a whole is positive.
|
| This is not an economic argument. Perhaps a moral
| argument - it's not clear, as no details were provided.
| But speculating as to whether some value-add spillovers
| _should_ or _should not_ be present is not how we count
| externalities in a pigovian tax. It seems what you want
| is a _sin tax_ for flight, which is not a pigovian tax.
|
| In fact most people, when they use words like
| "externalities", actually want sin taxes. They are not
| trying to come up with some objective measure of economic
| value-add spillover effects. And that's fine -- we have
| lots of sin taxes in the world, but then advocacy for
| them should be honestly labelled as such.
|
| > This sounds like an incredibly hand-wavy claim, and
| also easily refuted as a general rule. The easy (flight-
| based) import of foreign goods has, in many cases, led
| the complete decimation of various US manufacturing
| sectors.
|
| Now is not the time to get into a debate about trade
| theory, but suffice it to say that I disagree. Trade is
| great. Deficits are not great. You can have lots of trade
| without trade deficits, and trade is welfare improving.
| If you want to stop trade deficits, then add a tax to net
| foreign _capital flows_ , not cross border flows of goods
| and services. But on this point we just have to agree to
| disagree.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > > that doesn't mean that the net result for the country
| (let alone world) as a whole is positive.
|
| > This is not an economic argument. Perhaps a moral
| argument - it's not clear, as no details were provided.
| But speculating as to whether some value-add spillovers
| should or should not be present is not how we count
| externalities in a pigovian tax. It seems what you want
| is a sin tax for flight, which is not a pigovian tax.
|
| It's not necessarily a moral or an economic argument
| alone, though it could be. For example, perhaps the
| massive shift in summer vacation travel from all points
| of the US towards FL was (while very good economically
| good for FL) both bad economically for the rest of the
| country and created substantial externalities within FL
| itself (environmental, social etc.)
|
| Comparing these costs and benefits can't be done in a
| value-free way, which means that establishing the overall
| cost/benefit is not likely to be a task that will lead to
| a consensus outcome.
| logifail wrote:
| How about the Brenner Base Tunnel
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenner_Base_Tunnel
|
| We've been lucky enough to visit the tunnel system just south of
| Innsbruck, it's really impressive. We were taken in by bus(!) and
| allowed to explore on foot during an open day. Amazing stuff, the
| kids were blown away... :)
|
| On the positive side, the Austrians are pressing ahead with
| expanding the rail lines through Tyrol towards Germany:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Lower_Inn_Valley_railway
|
| On the negative side, the Germans seem to have done nothing much
| to expand the railway on their side of the border. Once you cross
| over the border from Kufstein(AT) to Kiefersfelden(DE) heading
| north you're back down to a pair of tracks...
| RGamma wrote:
| Die Bahn is an unmitigated clusterfuck[1]. The money comes and
| comes, gets wasted, yet no heads ever roll.
|
| I met someone who managed a local train station (network) for a
| few years. He told me a story of hilarious bureaucracy, metric
| gaming (mostly for evasion of sanctions for missed deadlines),
| people just not showing up while being covered by their union,
| construction firms delaying construction because it's just "Die
| Bahn".
|
| Then he quit and was paid for months despite expired contract.
| Later he got a legal threat for owing them wages...
|
| Although pay seems quite good and you get 40days vacation, well
| good for them I guess.
|
| [1] You might even call it a slow-motion trainwreck _badumm-ts_
| elygre wrote:
| Sure, let's share stories. I'll counter with the recently
| opened new BER airport. The construction process disaster
| even got its own podcast.
| mathverse wrote:
| Every year EU is becoming less and less livable for a middle
| class engineer.
|
| The writing has been on the wall for some time already but it is
| time to consider other options.
| sho_hn wrote:
| Could you explain how this news relates to your point? I'm
| curious.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| They don't really defend their point, they just restate it.
| [deleted]
| mathverse wrote:
| Simply the fact that trains can replace planes is laughable.
| In EU? That's just hilarious.
|
| There is an increasing amount of policies that decrease
| quality of life.
| dewey wrote:
| How exactly is improving train infrastructure decreasing
| the quality of life for you?
| meragrin_ wrote:
| Rail is not being improved for the sake of improving it.
| It is being improved because they eventually intend to
| make air travel too expensive for most people.
| dewey wrote:
| Nobody is going to suddenly outlaw planes if a trip by
| train would be 5 times as slow. Of course the intention
| is to replace them with high speed trains that are
| providing a similar level of comfort and efficiency.
| mathverse wrote:
| In Europe? In EU where most of the countries are
| blatantly discriminating against each other?
| jhgb wrote:
| Maybe he's an aerospace engineer...
| mathverse wrote:
| The message is literally about "replacing planes with
| trains". It's not about improving the infrastructure
| enough to go toe to toe against planes.
| elzbardico wrote:
| It will replace only for us the peons. Rest assured our
| leaders will keep on flying.
| sho_hn wrote:
| Most of my European dev colleagues prefer train rides
| because they can hack on the train.
| mathverse wrote:
| Most of my european dev colleagues prefer cars.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| So what do planes or trains have to do with the subset of
| the euro dev demographic that you're familiar with?
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