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Comment by nrki | Hacker News Reader

In my experience, it definitely can't compete on price.

London to Paris by Eurostar are routinely advertised as "from £29", but are usually £300+ return for a weekend.

Whereas flights are often sub-£100.

Eurostar has no competition except the airlines. Businesses will fork out for the tickets as you can't beat the time savings on the Paris route.

It will be interesting when Deutsche Bahn start using the line.

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Although DB doesn't run their own trains on the line, if you buy enough in advance, you can buy a "Sparpreis Europa London" ticket from bahn.de, good between any station in Germany and London, for typically in the range of €59-109 each way. That includes both the Germany-to-Brussels (or Paris) and the Eurostar portions of the trip. Can be a pretty good deal depending on the time/date and where in Germany you're going to/from.

In the US, Acela is more competitive with air travel between its major stops. But it's definitely priced for business travel. It's about 2x the price of the regular regional train but is usually less than an hour faster and, while the cars are nicer, they aren't that much nicer. When I'm traveling on my own dime, I usually find it hard to justify spending $100 to save an hour or less.

I generally trend towards flights because US trains are pre-emptible by commercial traffic. My experience has been delays are de jure versus the exception.

I think Acela is an exception to this, but I may be wrong.

Legally it's supposed to be the other way around, but not all railroads give way. Many just take the fine that Amtrak levies on them and shrug.

I don't think that's right. For most intercity service, the tracks are owned by a freight line and freight has priority. There are some routes where Amtrak owns the track or at least has priority rights agreements but they are the minority.

The way it works is that the freight railroads are supposed to clear a slot for Amtrak's timetable. If Amtrak misses that slot, then the freight trains get priority. The end result is that trains are either on time or substantially delayed (6+ hrs) with no "slightly" late performance.

The Northeast Corridor isn't without its delays but it works pretty well in my experience. Long haul Amtrak trains, on the other hand, I'm led to understand can be a real horror show with delays largely because of pre-emption by freight as you say.

I'm not sure the current status, but there's presumably a lot of upgrades happening on the Northeast Corridor, in part just to update old infrastructure and in part because it's near capacity at certain times. It's also the region that makes all the money that's then lost in pretty much the whole rest of the country.

If I have to get to New York from the western suburbs of Boston it is fastest to drive to New Haven and take commuter rail from the terminus in New Haven to Grand Central. Factor in a discount hotel room and an evening drive to New Haven paired with an early train is optimal. Metro North has the scale and frequency that few if any other rail system in the US can match.

Yeah. I've done that. I still generally prefer to drive to Route 128 and take Amtrak from there just to minimize my driving time. But the nice thing about parking in New Haven is that you have more flexibility over your return time that you don't have if you book Amtrak. Especially for business trips, I tend to book a worst case return and end up hanging around.

If you're willing to take in advance and not at the best time, I usually pay around 150GBP for London <-> Lyon. It's way more pleasant/practical than the plane so I'm willing to pay more, but I really wish it would be cheaper in general.

That makes me feel sick :(

Here in south eastern Canada to fly less than 100km from my town to the largest city (Halifax) costs about $500. Passenger trains are not common and any available are old and slow.

I wish we could have a fast rail service here but it would be very expensive to build.

Basically, you need more population density.

We are at 800 people per sq. km now that's quite a bit.

Who flies 100km? It wouldn't cost that much to rent a car and drive it 100km, and also wouldn't take as long as a flight plus airport time.

100km straight line, as the crow flies.

The driving route is 400km across a strait taking a toll bridge or ferry. The ferry is the shorter route but it shuts down in the winter.

Haha ok that makes more sense. For any route for which there isn't enough demand to build a road, there certainly also isn't enough demand to build a fast rail service. This is why rich people who enjoy island and other remote locations have private planes, or in some situations fast boats.

I rarely pay more than £100 return even booking late, usyally pay a little nore for premium economy.

I paid a similar price recently also booked at last minute. I've just returned to Australia from a holiday in Europe. On my travel agents advice I decided to leave UK by taking Eurostar from London to Paris. Incidentally I arrived in London via Amsterdam.

The Eurostar trip itself was pretty pleasant booking it on the otherhand not so much.

I should have purchased the tickets well in advance before leaving Australia instead I left it until the last minute - I blame bad advice from my agent who basically told me. "Oh you can just rock up to train station on the day purchase a ticket to Paris, no big deal".

In Amsterdam I was advised that I may not be allowed into the UK unless I could show them I had a departure booked. So I had to buy the Eurostar ticket in a rush. Eurostar website did something weird with my credit card tripped up some sort of Fraud detection or something Triggered 2FA check with my Australian bank. Bank's text message went to my Australian SIM which of course was inaccessible from Amsterdam. I'd used this credit card all over Europe for 5 weeks up until this point with 0 issues I have no idea what it was about Eurostar site that triped their fraud detection. I had a backup prepaid Visa debit card which the Eurostar site also refused to accept. I ended up ringing friend of mine who lives in Rome in a panic and he was able to order tickets for me.

Border Control did ask how I was planing on leaving the UK I told them Eurostar and they waved me through without asking to see the physical ticket.

Not going to defend Eurostar because I think their pricing is a joke but if you book some time in advance (I'd say at least 2 weeks beforehand), it would be between 140-180£ for a return trip. That's for a peak time trip, leaving London on a Friday at 6pm and coming back from Paris on a Sunday at 6pm.

The £29 one way tickets do go really quickly yes.

With a train what is limiting the number of tickets. I mean adding another passenger cartridge can't be that expensive..

Is it security and border control that slows things down?

Yeah, you can’t just couple more carriages on to a train. The e320 trains are already sixteen cars; extending this means that platforms and signalling systems have to be modified to deal with longer trains, which can be phenomenally expensive. And more traction power needs to be available, which means you will required a motored car.

It’s more complex than sticking carriages together!

Why are the flights so cheap? Do they actually turn a profit at these rates?

Probably not. This article [1] discusses a lot of the factors involved but doesn't really offer any definitive conclusions about how intra-Europe airfares can be so cheap. I'm also a bit skeptical because it lumps JetBlue in with low-cost carriers in the US even though, while it has low-cost specials, is actually one of the nicer airlines to fly if you don't have status.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/10/12...

Plus the trains are pretty unreliable. At leat with planes you're properly reimbursed.

My experience is really bad.

Does the Eurostar not reimburse you for delays? I know from experience that the Thalys does, and I thought the ICE did too.

Yes, they reimburse for delays over 1 hour. 1-2 hours is a 25% refund, 2-3 hours is a 50% refund, and 3+ hours is either a 50% refund (still) if you take it in cash, or a 75% refund in vouchers.

Links: https://faq.eurostar.com/faq/uk-en/question/What-is-Eurostar..., https://faq.eurostar.com/faq/uk-en/question/Can-I-get-a-refu...

Last minute tickets are always expensive.

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