Comment by Johnny555 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Johnny555 | Hacker News Reader

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The other advantage of rail is that rail is generally less affected by weather. (which anyone that's sat at SFO or waited in the air or elsewhere on the ground for an SFO fog delay will appreciate)

Last time I was in Japan, a typhoon hit, and was working its way up the islands. My flight up to Tokyo was already cancelled due to high winds, but I was able to get a Shinkansen ticket and arrive in time to catch my flight before Narita was affected by the Typhoon.

The flight would have been 90 minutes (not including travel time to the airport), and the train was 5 hours, but still, it was a comfortable journey and I'd do it again. If I were traveling from downtown to downtown, the airplane time would be more like 4 hours (60 minutes to get to airport with padding to get to gate on time, 90 minute flight (scheduled time is over 2 hours, but usually the flight is around 90 minutes gate to gate), then at least 90 minutes to get off the plan and catch an express bus to Tokyo.

> The other advantage of rail is that rail is generally less affected by weather

That one does certainly depend on the amount of money the rail operator(s) invest in maintenance and upkeep, as well as how much area on the sides of the track they bought. In Germany, rail has three major issues with weather:

- during cold times, railroad switches freeze because they lack heatings and so they become stuck, and special maintenance teams have to be at standby across the country (source: was part of such a team for one season, well paid but shit that was cold)

- during storms, stuff gets blown onto the rail. Mostly dead trees, the problem is when the area next to the rails didn't get cleaned up (trees so high that they could fall into the rails are cut to a safe height or removed altogether). This can be caused either by a lack of upkeep - or because the surrounding area is not owned by the train operator

- during hot periods, the running gag in Germany is "how many trains will fuck up today?". The trains are either not properly maintained (due to a lack of funds) or simply have not been ordered with strong enough air conditioners.

tl;dr: getting rail immune from weather-related influences takes serious money. The Swiss and Japanese railroads did the proper investments and thus have next to zero weather related problems, the German railroads are seen as a cash cow ready to be milked by the politicians, consequences be damned.

Hey your problems are too serious, in France, each autumn, we'll get delays because of tree leaves on the tracks! (in addition to the cold/storm/hot problems) From what I understood, the leaves increase braking distances, so the trains have to be slowed.

> in France, each autumn, we'll get delays because of tree leaves on the tracks!

Yeah we get these too, but that's just delays, not the complete shutdown of the entire country's railroad system for sometimes days like last autumn after storm Xavier.

Quite true.

I think I was lucky since I avoided the worst of the latest storm. I just had a lot of delays on my first day of work this year: they had a tree fallen on the tracks, but they had managed to keep a few trains rolling.

That's a yearly issue in the Netherlands as well. They even have special sweeper cars.

As you say, rail systems aren't immune to weather.

But the German experience is that lack of funding is usually exaggerated as a reason. It's caused by many things, but mostly underappreciated is zoning, eminent domain (or lack thereof) as well as just basic technology.

The three main reasons for delays in Germany are:

1) suicides (up to two per day in the whole of Germany)

2) trees/branches falling on cables/tracks

3) train system overheating

Also rail is affected by

4) catastrophes that are happening next to the tracks: As rail tracks usually are next to industrial areas a burning industrial plant usually brings all train traffic to halt.

5) Germany being densely populated: Cars get stuck on crossings and trucks get stuck under rail bridges constantly.

6) forced interruptions, e.g. by people who steal power lines.

(4), (5) and (6) have nothing to do with rail funding. (1) Suicides are not caused by a lack of funding. (3) System collapses are caused by money restraints, but those trains were designed decades ago and the Bahn usually manages heating issues pretty well by shutting off single wagons.

On 2 (wood interrupting trains): A problem that would disappear if the Bahn could enforce a buffer zone around its tracks, where trees are to be cut off. But due to environmentalists, noise and zoning restrictions, the Bahn has to play gardener and spend millions on cutting trees each day.

> (4), (5) and (6) have nothing to do with rail funding.

Oh yes they do. There is a total lack of redundancy in the German network, which was only recently shown when that Rheintalbahn tunnel caved in during construction and took out the major traffic artery above for months.

1) Suicides: they can be prevented by walling off the tracks, which is thankfully done for the new high speed routes and as rework to existing routes. In addition to preventing suicides these also prevent wildlife accidents (a herd of sheep, for example, caused an ICE to derail in a tunnel once).

Ad 5) this could be solved by removing at-level crossings (and remotely supervising those which cannot be removed) and by reworking those bridges that get often hit by cars. This is a lack of funding.

Ad 6) walling off the tracks would help there too. Or providing enough rail service even at nighttimes...

Rail is also more environmentally efficient, once the initial infrastructure is put in place. Airplanes burn tons of fossil fuels, trains can run on renewables.

All the trains I have been on in California burn diesel fuel, including the one I commute on every day. Caltrain down the peninsula burns 10 million dollars in fossil fuels a year. I would hope we could convert already heavily used rail corridors to electric sometime in my lifetime.

http://www.caltrain.com/Assets/__Agendas+and+Minutes/JPB/Boa...

It's in progress:

http://www.caltrain.com/projectsplans/CaltrainModernization/...

As long as you're still alive in 2022 (and there are no more funding issues caused by the tie-in to HSR), it will happen within your lifetime.

Should have happened a decade or more ago, but Caltrain is the underfunded stepchild with the bulk of transit dollars going to BART.

Of course, BARTs eBART expansion is diesel, not electric.

At least it's standard gauge rail, so that's a plus.

Caltrain is being electrified right now and due to be done in six years, and of course CA High Speed Rail is going to be electric.

Caltrain is currently in a project to convert to electric, as others have noted.

It's not particularly feasible in the US to convert freight-dominated lines to electric. Modern freight generally uses the double-stacked container as its loading gauge, and electric catenaries would sit several feet below the top of the double-stack container--the standard height for a bilevel in the US is 14.5 ft, but the double-stacked container runs to 20 ft.

Could they use a third rail system? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_rail

Not really. Freight lines are usually built at-grade and occasionally intersect city streets. Caltrain tracks included. Some of the Caltrain stations doesn't even have elevated platforms.

It would be... unpopular... to have an electrified third rail, at ground level, that you have to step directly over at a station or running directly through a city street. Somebody would surely trip on it or it could get touched by a little kid.

Third rail systems are usually only used when the tracks are physically inaccessible to passengers or other pedestrians.

Plenty of third rail in the south of England, they just stop the rail before level crossings and start it again afterwards.

If you think longer-term, electric trains are realistic. If batteries are cheaper than Diesel, you could just put 2x20ft container at the front with batteries. They can be swapped en-route and used as battery storage when not in use. As far as I know, most newer freight trains are diesel-electric anyway so not sure if you couldn't just feed the electric engine directly from a battery without buying new engines.

Currently not feasible because of high battery prices but realistic in 1-2 decades. And losses are lower than for electrified rail.

Busy routes are still better electrified but the huge US freight rail network would likely be cheaper to convert that way.

This picture shows a double stack container under electric catenary, so it's possible. The cost would be high for the length of tank involved. Electrification's non-green advantage is faster acceleration, which is easy to justify on busy passenger lines as you get faster journeys and potentially more trains, but not important for freight.

http://testplant.blogspot.dk/2013/09/electrification-clearan...

Generally yes, weather is less of an impact on rail, but occasionally you can get <cue ominous music> the Wrong Type of Snow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_wrong_type_of_snow)

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