Why Europe’s Trains Are So Much Better Than America's | Hacker News Reader

Why Europe’s Trains Are So Much Better Than America's

theatlantic.com

33 pointsjseliger73 comments

I dont think american trains have any incentive to get better. it works sort of good enough and people pay, why care about speed or comfort?

in "europe" and really they mean germany and france, switzerland in particular, not actual "all of europe" - there is a minimum coverage the company has to achieve ands it cant "get out of it".

Same thing for cellphone coverage and internet coverage. Heck, France is starting to get a lot of FTTH everywhere (free install, less than 30e/mo for 100mit) because of these requirements. The bay area can keep dreaming on getting something else than comcast at 30mbit coaxial cable for 60 bucks/mo + have to buy modem and tech if not wired.

Basically, capitalism-all-the-things don't work very well with monopolies and corrupted organizations/cities/countries.

socio-capitalism isnt the greatest but it works a little better.

Its also got to do with culture.

Americans have a deep love for car culture - and look at public transportation as social welfare [1].

American capitalism is also responsible for america having the most profitable multinationals in the world. Its just that it doesn't work very good for society but does allow money to multiply really well.

[1] http://www.vox.com/2015/6/12/8764819/why-american-trains-are...

"Also, the Milbrae and Burbank station locations will be in less accessible areas"

Millbrae isn't a "less accessible area". You've got both BART and Caltrain. Do a little research author? Millbrae is actually the best place IMO in the Bay Area to stop, especially if they ever expand BART.

Not if everyone would only live in densely populated, walkable cities created by the wave of a magic wand because that's what the author would clearly prefer.

Well, it's what we can afford / are capable of making work, given the constraints in California: limited land area (particularly coastal land area with nice weather), large increases in population, an inability to scale freeways to move as many people as necessary, etc.

My point is that doesn't describe the reality of California for all sorts of historical reasons so assuming that's the reality isn't very useful. Perhaps SF and the South Bay should encourage higher density and mixed use communities, but that takes a long time even in the best case. The bottom line is that not everyone can necessarily live in the specific locale they'd prefer. And just making things denser isn't the answer. Marin County isn't Marin County if you make it NYC.

Land area is only a constraint in CA because they have rejected density as a solution to the constraint. The city of San Jose could be home to 13M people at Manhattan levels of density, or 7M people at Brooklyn levels of density. Instead, it is home to 1M people, with freeways that are relatively overbuilt in relative comparison.

I don't think you understood the article. It claims that, for speed purposes, train stops should only be in major cities and not on the urban periphery. Millbrae is hardly a major city. Nor is Millbrae particularly accessible: there is poor parking near the bart station, few options for public transport, and I doubt even 2k people live within walking distance of the bart station.

Millbrae is also obviously not the best location in the bay area to stop. Millbrae population: 22k. sf population: 837k.

You want to draw a high-speed train line into SF proper? You'd be looking at clearing tens of miles of housing or digging a comparable amount of tunnel, which would be either politically difficult or $EXPENSIVE.

What's your plan?

They are building the HSR into SF proper, and they're doing the obvious thing: using the existing Caltrain alignment from Millbrae into the city, terminating at the Transbay Transit Center (already under construction and build with this in mind).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/67/California_to...

Which is also the sensible thing--leaving aside other pro/con HSR arguments in general. It also doesn't seem to be what the article is arguing for.

That said, you start having lots of connections and the value of transit systems goes down. I was just looking last night and I'm told that the time to get from SFO to the Santa Clara Convention Center/Great America/Stadium is still about 2 hours which, while theoretically doable, isn't something I'm going to do.

Well, ignoring the fact that it's being done, my plan would be to serve the bulk of the population (that would be not in Millbrae), for two reasons in particular: 1 - they're going to pay for it, 2 - political support of the aforementioned populace.

However, it is across the street from a major international airport.

I think the purpose of both the Millbrae and Burbank stops is to connect to airports.

And Burbank will eventually be connected to L.A.'s Metro system. Probably by dedicated busway, an extension of the existing Orange Line. Possibly by subway, a Red Line extension. Maybe.

It's already sorta-kinda connected to Union Station by MetroLink (regional commuter rail).

Milbrae is a nexus point for various transportation options in the bay area. BART, Caltrain Bullet, SFO Airport & the 101 highway all meet there. It's also close to the san mateo bridge.

I would suggest putting the high speed train station in the same station that BART & Caltrain share. If I lived in SF and wanted to go to LA, I would just hop onto a BART for 20m and then catch the high speed train. I would also expand the BART parking tower to several more floors if possible.

every system switch introduces friction and is pretty well known afaik in the transport literature to reduce usage.

Bart is already oversubscribed for many times of the day and shitty. Further, it's more like 35 minutes (San Bruno to Montgomery is 27 minutes; I know that bec it's my commute.) Bart also is hostile to people with luggage for much of the day, and with high-speed long distance transport you need to assume people will be bringing more than a backpack. Hostility: lack of space on the train, lack of good elevators, lack of clear directions to navigate the stations. Bart also lacks clear signage or directions, particularly for people from out of town or who don't speak or read english. And finally, bart is just flaky and shit. There are weekly 10-20 minute system delays, monthly 30+ minute delays, and quarterly system shutdown for hours. All of which is annoying for commuters, but a deal-breaker when attempting to connect to long distance transport which presumably is relatively infrequent and hence requires you to be on time.

There are successful examples of both models when building out high-speed rail. The Japanese system often puts the new stations on the outskirts of cities and lets people do the last-mile transfer via the local metro system. Many cities have both a station with the city's name, which is in the urban center and serves the old line, and a station named Shin-Cityname ("New-Cityname"), which is on the urban periphery and serves the Shinkansen line. In other cities they do roll all the way to the old station (e.g. Tokyo Station), but switching onto low-speed track for the final connection.

Europe mainly decided to route trains through city centers, sometimes by also taking the strategy of using older, low-speed track for the urban portion of the trip, and accelerating to high-speed once the train switches onto the new tracks. However even there sometimes the outskirts option was taken when geography makes it more convenient; examples include Gare de Saint-Pierre-des-Corps (outside Tours, France) and Köln Messe/Deutz station (outside Cologne, Germany).

Millbrae resident here.

Millbrae is the largest 'intermodal' station west of the Mississippi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millbrae_Intermodal_Terminal). It is the closest station to the largest airport in the Bay Area (SFO). If you're flying into SFO and want to connect to the high-speed rail, Millbrae is the _most_ accessible station, and one of the few (only?) stations in the region which allows you connect to most of the Bay Area.

'Poor parking near the bart station' - BART says there are 2900 spaces available. I don't know what would be expected, but I wouldn't describe that as 'poor parking'.

Also, perhaps less relevant, Millbrae is the last stop on the existing rail corridor still allowing relatively flat (and straight) tracks. North of that, tunneling or large bends around hills may be required.

Parking: 5+ month waiting list. That indicates there obviously is more demand than availability right now, even without any proposed service additions (data: my experience waiting for a parking pass late 2014/early 2015). But please do lecture me on the abundant parking.

It is not the closest station to sfo; that's San Bruno, or at least that's how the trains go the majority of the day.

As someone from Germany I find the description in the first chapter a bit idealized.

The truth is: Trains in Germany are also notoriously late. And the Wifi quite often doesn't work as another commenter already mentioned.

(that doesn't change the fact that of course the German rail system is much better than the one in the US - but one shouldn't overidealize it, it has lots of problems itself)

I don't have data on this, but I am willing to bet your German definition of "notoriously late" is much more stringent than an American's. (Not that you're wrong to think that: we've just gotten used to extremely low standards in America because all of our public projects are run incompetently.)

Utopic intercity train travel in Europe is a myth. In Germany it is good, but expensive and most under 30 are trying to find an affordable alternative, e.g., BlahBlah car or a bus. France is just prohibitively expensive: I had a group trip cancelled because people balked once they saw what the TGV costs were. In Czech republic inter city is cheap, but there is no AC in the cabins and dodgy heat, infrequent high speed corridors, no WiFi, and often it is standing room only (keep in mind this might be for a 2-3 hour trip). Intracity transport is much better than the us almost all over Europe, but don't by the hype otherwise.

Hmm European train rides tend to be quite bit more expensive than in the US, even if you take the craziness of the UK train system which is much costlier than mainland Europe (London to Newcastle costs more than London to Brussels), yearly train tickets in the Netherlands, Germany and France are also quite expensive...

Pareto optimally, perhaps the European train experience is superior to the American one.

However, Bill Maher begs to differ on his recent train trip experience from Stockholm to Oslo which he equates to Amtrak [1]

[1] Lewis Black and Bill Maher: Why we're bachelors

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8osINepuw8&t=2m43s

Scandinavia is not really where you want to go in Europe for good intercity trains (its commuter rail is another story). The connection between Sweden and Norway is especially notorious for being ancient and slow, with plans to upgrade it being discussed for many years. The modern lines are the Great Belt route east-to-west across Denmark, and the triangle in southern Sweden connecting Malmö, Gothenburg, and Stockholm. And even those are not up to French, Spanish, or German standards.

Some maps: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sweden_railways.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Danmark_maks._hastig...

> even if you take the craziness of the UK train system which is much costlier than mainland Europe (London to Newcastle costs more than London to Brussels)

Not if you book in advance; a single journey London -> Newcastle in 3 months will cost £29.10, vs. traveling today which would cost £121.00.

For regular trips that is true, and great. For more urgent trips or trips where the date may be flexible you are kind of stuck paying that huge cost most the time.

I used to live in Cambridge and had a similar problem on my frequent visits to Newcastle which I couldn't pin a date down for.

> And on German trains, the wi-fi actually works.

That is a lie. Source: I'm German.

I'd heard rumors, so I was excited to get some work done on a bus from Hamburg to Berlin a couple months ago. Was disappointed when the wifi cut out after 10 minutes.

Because Europe is older, smaller and more population dense.

New York metro is very dense and all the commuter rail systems are pretty bad, or worse. Bumpy rides, delays, uncomfortable interiors, etc. I can't really work on anything on the LIRR or NJT because it's so wobbly. I got on a commuter rain in Geneva and it was so incredibly smooth and the whole experience comfortable.

To harp on the American rail system: I could literally not type on portions of the ride from Palatka to D.C. The tracks were so wobbly and bouncy that my hands would jump all over the keyboard.

All because we're reduced to freight lines, as the lines built expressly for commuters (with their welded rails and better maintenance) are long gone.

As a german: This.

Europe can afford to have better trains and public transit systems across the board because it's easier for us to have a consistent level of quality, since we simply have much less area to service and trains are a viable alternative for a massive portion of the populace.

Not true, not true at all. The Boston-Washington Megalopolis is about the size and population of West Germany. But West Germany had proper rail service, and in the US it was always awful.

A big problem with the DC to Boston Amtrak run is that it subsidizes the entire rest of the Amtrak network, which loses money hand over fist. The DC/Boston line is profitable. But it's neglected and starved.

If instead that money could used to revitalize that stretch, it could be much more useful. America rail went through each small town as it already existed and the track is too twisty to go very fast over a lot of the stretch.

And it's all so we can have trains that go from DC to Chicago in like 12 hours + 0-3 hours of delays. That route is unnecessary. A DC to Chicago flight is 1:45 hours and is cheap as fuck. Plus we have buses that use the highways.

Our rail sucks because we propping up useless routes.

Maybe I should take the Empire Builder and/or the California Zephyr while there's still time. To be sure, there are a lot of subsidies built into a lot of transportation options and, if you eliminate Amtrak outside of the Northeast, a lot of those passengers need to get from A to B somehow (which may well be sub-segments of the long haul routes).

But, yeah, from a utilitarian perspective I've never found inter-city Amtrak travel to make a lot of sense in the US outside of the Northeast (nor, in many cases, Europe for that matter).

If you ever take one of the long Amtrak routes, be sure you have an extra 48 hour buffer in your schedule to allow for delays. I'm not kidding at all.

To be clear, these trains aren't empty. The Lake Shore Limited (Chicago <-> New York) goes sold out for days when winter storms take a shit on the Northeast air corridor and everyone's trying to get home from Christmas break. It's also $100 regardless of season.

Boston has hilarious amounts of single-family-building suburbia:

https://www.google.de/maps/place/Boston,+MA,+USA/@42.2970681...

Germany simply doesn't have that. The infrastructural implications are massive.

That's not true. France has a lower population density and is more centralized to fewer cities. This is an advantage for their high speed train network because they have fewer stops.

As far as i know France doesn't have any 3000 mile train lines, so it's not even comparable.

* older: the railroad was invented in the 19th century, and I think the US railroad network circa 1900 was superior to Europe...

* smaller: not really... depends where you count.

* more population dense: nobody is expecting good rail transit in Wyoming or Montana (although, Scandinavia seems to do okay with low density). The Northeast, Midwest, and California are all very dense and still have much worse rail transit.

The Northeast really isn't that bad for trains but it does suffer from the fact that there was a multi-decade exodus from many cities by both residents and companies for a variety of reasons. That didn't exactly encourage investment in rail infrastructure.

To pick just one example from the article, there's the argument that successful high-speed rail has to go from dense city core to dense city core while simply passing through ex-urban locations. The ex-urban stops are one of the whole appeals of Acela in the Northeast Corridor in the US as they allow travel to New York City without going to downtown Boston.

The article sort of went off the, um, rails when it basically suggested that if only US cities were bulldozed and re-engineered to the priorities of less land-rich continent then rail would make a lot more sense.

I even like taking the train in general but it's hard to make the numbers work in much of the US.

The continent of Europe (10.18 million km²) is slightly larger than the area of the United States (9.857 million km²).

Yes, the EU is quite a bit smaller than the US - but there is an awful lot of Europe that isn't in the EU.

Personally, I think it's about the distribution of population in Europe - where most population centers are reasonably close together and with the peripheries less populous whereas the US has populations towards the peripheries and a relatively sparsely populated center (roughly).

Europe is more than twice the size of the US in population, so even as a whole it is much more densely packed.

Population density of whole countries tells us nothing.

China: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Populati...

USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_populat...

People concentrate regardless of land size. Feel free to quote population density when you are a russian farmer in Siberia brewing vodka, but chances are the argument falls utterly flat.

I'm not sure what you're even arguing. It seems pretty clear that population density has a strong correlation to efficiency of public transit. If nobody lives there, don't run rail to it.

You could take a bunch of regions where it would be reasonable to build trains, and then you add a bunch of regions where it would not be reasonable to build trains, and count them together. The population density of that combined area tells you very little about whether it is reasonable to build trains somewhere in that area.

The combined density will be lower than any of the cities you might reasonably build trains. I don't see how this isn't meaningful.

I mean, if you had some Californias and some Antarcticas, your decision about whether to build a train between LA and SF within each California should not depend on the number of Antarcticas.

A nice map

http://static.persquaremile.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/u...

Wyoming, in particular, has a lower population density than Siberia!

But that just shows how difficult these comparison are - Siberia has an extremely uneven distribution of population. If you chose one part of Siberia - Krasnoyarsk Krai, it is nearly ten times the area of Wyoming and has a much lower population density 1.21/km2 rather than 2.26/km2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasnoyarsk_Krai

[NB And there appears to be an even bigger and emptier bit of Siberia next door but I haven't worked out what it is yet!]

Precise comparisons are aside the point, which is simply that the middle of the United States is incredibly population-sparse, in the same ballpark as Siberia. Which, coincidentally, is not exactly known for its convenient commuter rail network.

I'd take that map with a huge grain of salt. Saying that Norway has High Speed Rail for example is a bit of a stretch considering that the only high speed rail line in all of Norway is a short stretch between Oslo and the main airport.

Saying Norway has high speed rail is like saying that the US has a monorail system.

I'm just going to copy and paste my notes here. This is sort of an FAQ that is incorrectly brought up. I need to add population for the U.S. cities but it's obvious that you're wrong?

Los Angeles to San Francisco 400 miles

Los Angeles to San Diego 150 miles

NYC to Philadelphia 92 miles

NYC to Boston 220 miles

NYC to Washington DC 226 miles

Chicago to St Louis 260 miles

Dallas to Houston 240 miles

Dallas to Austin 200 miles

Austin to Houston 170 miles

Tampa to Orlando 85 miles

Miami to Orlando 235 miles

---

Population of Rome: 2.7m

Population of Milan: 1.3m

Rome to Milan: 355 miles

Cherry-picking a few cities is not helpful

Without having read the article: because we prioritize freight (CSX, etc.) over passengers. Freight liners own a lot of the rails; Amtrak merely leases time on them.

There's a LOT of trains going through Denver these days--mostly laden with coal and petroleum. Who needs pipes when you've got rails?

"We" is who? Europe or USA?

CSX is an American railroad. Amtrak is the national passenger agency in the US. Denver is in the US, not in Europe.

Denver and the Am in Amtrak suggest USA.

The difference is because in America, there's 2(3) countries. In Europe, you travel between ~10 countries. The budget/mentality is different since you operate in international level with international import/exports.

"in America there's 2(3) countries" - I'm curious what you are referring to here - Canada, US, and Mexico or "regions of the United States". The article appears to be merely talking about the United States.

Wouldn't the hassle in coordinating things across multiple countries be much higher?

Not sure why anyone would make excuses for the US on trains. There are some great opportunities to get it right. Or ignore it and wait for automated bus services.

Yes, and international trains are not where the European network shines. It's getting better, but it has historically been hard to even figure out how to buy a ticket involving multiple countries. Deutsche Bahn is one of the better ones. If you originate or terminate in Germany, their booking engine can figure out how to get you to a neighboring country (and they actually have these countries' timetables in their system, too). But if you want to go through Germany, say from France to Poland, good luck getting that booked, unless you split it into two tickets, each terminating in Germany.

Specific through services make it easier a few routes, such as the CityNightLine sleeper services, since there is one train and one operator for the whole route.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV Might be worth a read. While it may not be up to par to your standard, it's one of the train system the most complex and speedy in the entire world.

Oh, TGV is great in France, or if you travel on a TGV-operated train to a neighboring country. I'm just complaining about timetable engines and ticketing for international trips across Europe, when they involve more than one operator. For example if you want to buy a ticket from Paris to Copenhagen, there isn't an integrated timetable/booking system. For this, bahn.de is better than most national train companies, because their search engine at least includes other operators' timetables (though they aren't always able to actually sell you a ticket).

Not excuses, just maths. I'm not a US citizen. But I'm canadian. And my province has tried to get high speed train through the border, but the economics never added up.

That's the problem with N. America, airplanes are cheaper for our geographic situation. Because routes are not set in stone, they can be changed as the demand adjusts itself.

When you lay out train track, you can't change your mind in 20 years or you need to change your infrastructure.

> Wouldn't the hassle in coordinating things across multiple countries be much higher?

Not much more than across US states. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Agreement

(although as someone else commented, it's not easy to get trains going through more than one border).

> Or ignore it and wait for automated bus services.

Buses won't reach 330 km/h (210 mph, speed of trains made in my country, Spain).

The Spanish new High Speed train infrastructure is, except for the line that connects Madrid and Barcelona, a massive nonsense that has been build only for political reasons. Spain has more km of high speed lines that Japan, but some of the lines have only tens of passengers per day!

It is an economical calamity, for a country already in a deep crisis, that the taxpayers will have to pay during decades.

The AVE is an example of how infrastructures should never be planned and deployed.

I agree. There were slower but cheaper lines that were just eliminated, and now it's too expensive (for some people living there) to go to some places by train.

My point, though, was about the trains that are made in my country, not how they make use of them.

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