In Denmark's Train Dream, the Next Big City Is Only an Hour Away
citylab.com
citylab.com
Arriving at a hub you know you'll catch your connection to the next hub without even consulting a schedule. Feeder trains are also synced up so you get little layover in general. If you're sitting at a hub station, it's easy to tell time by the ebb and flow of passengers.
Now what they should do is just run everything 50 percent faster at high speed to get the cycles down to 20 minutes. Have everybody walk 50% faster at hubs too. What could go wrong?
But sometimes you would like to buy something at the railway station or there are older people or families with small children or you need to find out where to walk to first. Then you are out of luck. Mostly you just wait 30 minutes for the next train, but there are lines with one hour cadence and very rarely with two-hour cadence.
In fact, past a certain point it becomes pointless; if trains come every, say, ten minutes, then average wait time is five minutes and no one waits more than ten minutes, and holding a train will mostly just cause cascading delays.
I'm not sure the math works out that way.
Arguably there are no big cities in Denmark at all. Looking for lists of populations of "big cities" across the world I can't even find one that includes Copenhagen to make a comparison of just how far down the list it is.
In any case this is all just silly nonsense. The reason people don't prefer the train vs. almost every other mode of transportation is because its extremely expensive. Making it faster isn't going to solve the root problem. But of cause just like everything else in government, the main aim of the future is to build up huge infrastructure projects with individual companies who stand to gain billions... and just so happen to have some senior exec positions open for the politicians running the sham.
If they'd taken the money they would have spent on this large project and instead just lowered fares, that would be an overall much better reality, but then no individual company is making billions and there's no promise of that sweet executive position.
It's a new government, and I am hopeful that they actual intend to deliver some real improvements to the infrastructure. Considering where I am planing to move in the foreseeable future, I will need it. That being said, even as it is now, I would still prefer the train over car.
Many companies choose the faster transportation method over the cheaper one for business trips. Fast train connections to Hamburg, Germany or Stockholm, Sweden could make Copenhagen a more attractive city for business implementation. It isn't only about personal travel.
Differential pricing in itself becomes problem when it comes to something were the value is partly external. Countries that want to maximize utility will have to reconcile with the idea that some of the value won't be captured by the train company. Most countries don't charge different rates for roads, but try to make the best roads and then collect taxes.
(There is also other benefits, like that trains don't generally go away. There are many places in Europe that are relatively hard or expensive to fly to).
This. Same for many other countries in Europe. Which borders on criminal from an environmental point of view, because the rail network is built & maintained with public money.
Also, it's not unusual for Europe to get to a place faster by car than by train - like, the whole of Germany.
That's due to the inflexibility of the train network, I guess. It's fast & easy to get from Hamburg's main station to Berlin's, but if your starting point is 45 minutes from Hamburg's and your goal isn't at Berlin central station, the car is likely just as fast. And that only gets worse if you're traveling to some small town where you need to switch trains.
Exactly. Why did they ever bothered building highways, ports and airports. That's just silly nonsense. They should have just taken the money and lowered the horse feed prices.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Europe#/med...
Sure they do if it's more pleasant. In the US, the train on the Northeast Corridor takes maybe a bit longer depending upon the specifics than flying and costs in the same ballpark (depending on whether Acela or regular coach, parking, etc.) And it's at capacity at peak times.
When you're not talking big money in the scheme of things, many will take whatever mode of transportation is most convenient and comfortable--especially for business travel.
If you really are very price sensitive, you're probably taking Megabus or something similar.
A fast train is always a healthier and more pleasant experience than an airplane. Hint: trains have windows.
Disclosure: I'm a private pilot and have lifetime status on two major carriers. I still hate air travel.
Citation please. This strike me as being very NA centric.
Right now, even buying tickets or just getting information can be hard, and let's not start with all the local discount cards that you need to use to make it worthwhile.
Right now you can't take a morning train from Aalborg and be in Copenhagen for a morning meeting, you can drive, or fly and it's cheaper. By train you need to leave the day before... It's 400km and you can't get a morning train for a meeting at 9:00AM.
One hour between the largest cities isn't close to being fast enough. 30 minutes between them isn't fast enough.
Most of the country is barely serviced by train at all, so maybe a better idea would be to move local, shorter distance journeys from the roads to trains, or even just busses. I can't use public transport, I would spend 1 hour and 45 minutes getting to work... It's a 25 minute drive, in rush hour.
Most of the long-distance trains are of model IC4, the delivery of these trains took ages and one of the missing trains was found in Libya, Italy’s former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi had given it as a gift to the Libyan dictator Muammar Gadaffi (http://cphpost.dk/news/international/ic4-train-a-gift-from-b...).
It's a worse decision in retrospect. Fortunately, though, both the former and the current government agree that the tracks need to be electrified along all major routes, and that we should purchase electric locomotives that are already rolling in other European countries.
(Yes I have a MetroCard, which already has the worst form factor among all transit cards in the world, and why I can't pay for LIRR, Metro-North or NJ Transit with it is beyond me)
You can also travel to Malmö in Sweden using it.
Go figure, the MTA in NYC is doing just that:
My thoughts exactly. After having lived there for a short while, it's just mind blowing how well this works, and yet nobody else seems to be doing it (with some exceptions like Denmark or certain German cities etc.).
I do think it's ridiculous, however, than driving somewhere by car is cheaper than going the same distance by train once you're 2+ people in the car. I don't understand it. How can't trains be more economical? Is it just that the roads are more expensive to build and maintain than the tax we pay for it (via fuel taxes and road taxes and the likes).
The fact that I can consider moving to Rotterdam or Den Haag and continue working at my job in Amsterdam is really something.
EDIT: sometimes traveling by car is cheaper even with _one_ person in the car, if you don't have the 40% discount. I guess that's the biggest downside.
A prerequisite for this is often already owning the car and not incorporating the ownership costs into the cost analysis, I think. (Which does in practice means it's cheaper for practically everyone. That said, I think for many people hiring a car when needed and using public transport most of the time would actually be the cheaper option. For some value of "many".)
Which itself is also not really the issue, but for the last 20+ years or so, is just a symptom of US cities being openly hostile against most people (whether due to high costs, monopolized land, lack of housing, lack of reasonable transportation infrastructure, lack of education infrastructure, etc).
The Dutch per capita also outspend the rest of the world on roads, because that's what the other half of the country uses. I live for instance 35km from my work in Amsterdam: public transport is just under two hours and by car 25minutes, up to an hour in heavy traffic.
A country of about 5.5 million people. About half all live near one particular city.
2.7 million people have a job.
Most of those live near the place they work. Tourists aren't going to these places
No indication that the inter city links are operating anywhere near capacity, or there is a real need to do this. Are politicians tired of having to go back and forth from the capital to their region perhaps?
A good proportion of that traffic is by car, and by reducing train travel times, it becomes more desirable to take the train and leave the car at home.
Trains are faster, safer, more spacious, more comfortable and much less affected by congestion.
Was it really necessary to try to make a clever comment based on the headline alone? Did that advance the discussion and make us all smarter, better people in some way?
I lived in Brussels, Belgium for almost eight years, and they have many of the same issues with regards to scale.
There isn't much you can do other than spend tens of billions building a bridge or tunnel. Cars often get the ferry to make that journey.
A train has to travel in the opposite direction, across several islands and then back up. 4 hours is pretty good considering that. Even then there is so little demand for this journey it is infrequent.
There is a precedent for taking a train on the ferry [0]. Sure, a tunnel is preferable and it would've been constructed but the German authorities were dragging their feet for years[1].
[0]https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Copenhagen/Aarhus,+Denmark/@...
[1]https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Copenhagen/Aarhus,+Denmark/@...