Hacker News Reader

Comment by Darmody | Hacker News Reader

As a European I love this.

Not only because it's better for the environment but I really like trains. They are confy, fast and cheap. There's no need to pay extra for your baggage, you just hop in with your stuff, take a seat, read, watch a movie, listen to a podcast or sleep for a while and you're already at your destination.

View on HN

Depends on what distances you are travelling I suppose; the prices for longer travel are, imho, very high and sure it is comfy but compared to a plane? Planes are cheaper and much faster. At the same price I think many would still take the plane. If trains were vastly cheaper, then maybe it would change a lot.

But only inside the Netherlands, I only know a few commuters in my circles who go by train; the rest drive a car, noting inconvenience (train then tram instead of door to door) and, more so, high prices as reason.

Also, trains in the Netherlands are highly unreliable with regular unplanned shutdowns (due to natural factors like heavy rain or human factors like high suicide rates by jumping infront of trains). Also, commuters tend to be too comfortable (taking off their shoes, talking loudly on the phone or messy eating).

Man, I come from Italy and I have been living in Amsterdam for ten years now and I can assure you that the "unreliability" of Dutch trains is nothing compared to the constant huge delays and cancellations of Italian railways.

Sure, there might be room for improvement in some areas, but Dutch trains are the third most punctual in the world, after Japan and Switzerland: https://www.railtech.com/policy/2019/01/03/dutch-passenger-t...

Internationally speaking, trains in Netherlands are pretty good IMO. Dutch people love to complain about it because we're sticklers for being on time, but if you compare internationally Dutch trains really aren't so bad.

Are you suggesting that Germans and French don't enjoy a good complaint?

Dutch trains are actually highly punctual, especially when you consider how many people they are transporting.

In the one or two decades after privatizing the formerly state-owned passenger service things were bad.

Nowadays, the backlog in maintenance seems to be sorted out and things run generally well again. Although I still plan a half hour safety margin when traveling to schiphol airport by train.

I recently moved to Germany. And I really miss the Dutch trains. They are so much more in time than here in Germany.

Your statement is false. The Dutch railway system is of extremely high quality and is very punctional.

The Netherlands had the highest ticket price in the EU. When I lived in France I'd take a TGV on a regular basis but in NL train are not fast, don't go far (connections abroad are bad except to or through Brussels) and very expensive.

Dutch rail infra was designed as a commuter network, and it shows.

So we are doing anecdotals or is that real data? UK as worst example I have seen but with many countries in Asia having by the second average times, NL is, for such an organised tiny shithole (I am dutch, born and raised and dutch genes going back to at least 1560 if that makes a difference) it is quite horrible really; you would expect much better for such bit mouths. I take and took the utrecht amsterdam train daily and it is delayed or cancelled a lot. I would expect 99.9999999999999999999 uptime for a country the size as my shoe. And it ain’t.

> sure it is comfy but compared to a plane

A large part of the comfort factor is that a direct train takes me from city center to city center, while a "direct" flight requires me to first get to the airport, then navigate the airport, then get from the destination airport to the city. That not only easily adds at least 2 hours to the trip (30 min x 2 spent getting to/from the airport, 30 minutes to get through the airport/security in the best case, 30 minutes to be there at the boarding time), you also spend at least half of the time actively having to do something.

A 4 hour train vs. a 1 hour flight? The flight shaves off one hour of wall-clock time at best, at the cost of being a lot more hassle. But you don't think about this when booking, nor about the luggage surcharge etc. You see "4:00" vs. "1:07" and "$99" vs. "$29".

I travel enough to not be confused when booking :) And sure for 3-4 hrs I would (and do) take the train, but when the hours go up (over 5 hr say), trains are not so good. When you are a frequent business traveler, you pack differently as well; no luggage surcharge, no waiting in line (priority because of points), free food/drink in lounges. For frequent larger distance travel, trains are a very poor alternative at the moment. Still, I would take them (usually, if not in a hurry which is usually not the case) if they were much cheaper (they are almost always more expensive at 5+ hr distance on the routes I frequent), but that's also not the case...

Comfort etc won’t last for long. In the UK new trains seem to mimic planes with their hard upright seats. Eg the LNER Azuma trains are horrible to travel on. They constantly cut corners on speccing trains. Ask anyone how the ride is on the new Caledonian Sleeper service...!

They are absolutely not cheap and mostly slow rather than fast.

Well, that depends.

2 adults from Valencia to Madrid and with return for 70€ at a max speed of 300km/h.

We should also take in consideration that planes are cheap because they have become the main mean of transport for long distances for the last decades.

I can't see why we couldn't do this with trains. Invest in infrastructure and use it as much as we can.

Trains are really slow actually.

200 or 300 km/h

I wouldn't call that slow. Not as fast as a plane but it's not slow at all.

It is slow when it's directly competing with planes.

Planes being faster doesn't mean trains are slow.

Not so much when the train leaves direct from the city centre and you can arrive 10 mins before your departure.

1h 30min + whatever time I spend at the airport vs. 12 hours + 10 minutes at the train station. That's a pretty hard sell.

Most train journeys covering 1hr 30 min flights aren't 12 hours.

Well, the domestic flight that I have taken the most in the recent years is. The train is at its fastest 8 hours and some.

The most well-executed high-speed train system I can think of is in Japan, e.g. shinkansen from Kyoto to Tokyo, which Google Maps is reporting as 2h11m. Distance by road for that city pair is showing as 464 km, for an average speed of 212 km/h. So I think around 200 km/h can be considered the highest possible currently practical average speed of a high speed train network over a reasonable distance.

I tried to find something equivalent in Europe to compare, maybe Frankfurt to Berlin? Google Maps is showing that as 4h16 by ICE over 549 km, for an average speed of 128 km/h.

Maybe the inefficiencies can be eliminated and the European trains can get closer to 200 km/h average speed?

I tried to find something equivalent in Europe to compare, maybe Frankfurt to Berlin? Google Maps is showing that as 4h16 by ICE over 549 km, for an average speed of 128 km/h.

Ah, I took the ICE from Frankfurt to Berlin last year on a last minute ticket. A bunch of things come to mind. In no particular order:

- Tokyo - Kyoto is pretty much the premier Shinkansen line. Is Frankfurt - Berlin considered the same?

- I was pretty underwhelmed with the overall comfort on the ICE trip (slightly less than Amtrak's Acela). The Shinkansen (well, at least Tokyo - Kansai Region) is really on a whole other level.

- A last minute ICE ticket Frankfurt - Berlin was fairly expensive (> $100 if memory serves), I didn't price advance tickets. Berlin - Amsterdam tho got dramatically cheaper the further out you booked your ticket.

- Spain's Barcelona - Madrid train has regularly raised its peak speed (now at 310 kph) and if my calculations from the Wikipedia page are correct RENFE completes the 621 km trip in 2.5 hours (about 250 kph average).

- Amsterdam Centraal is perhaps one of the most obnoxious stations I've had to navigate. Every Dutch resident I've talked with has complained about the punctuality followed by complaining about how unnecessarily unintuitive the fares are.

Germany still has a fair amount of diesel service and a ton of legacy infrastructure. Spain is basically converting all of their non-standard gauge rail to a more common gauge and rolling out a ton of high speed service. I've only done relatively short trips (Madrid - Toledo) versus a variety of longer distance trips in Germany.

A premier ICE route that had a lot of impact is probably the new Berlin-Munich route. 623 km, the "sprinter" trains with the least stops do it in 3:55 - 160km/h average.

Stop counts are always a difficult balance for longer routes: They slow the trains down, increasing end-to-end travel time, but provide connections to more people and regions.

Trains aren't cheap. Where is that coming from? Anytime I travelled in Europe, either plane or bus were the better/cheaper options.

They are not that comfortable. Sure you've got slightly more leg space than Ryanair, but difference is minimal. The only train I've really ever liked was Amtrak, but unsure whether I was somehow upgraded to their premium seats. Taking Canadian train after that was a torture.

Also they are much more expensive. Which makes sense as tech itself is legacy. The cost of maintaining, lack of competition (especially with buses) is killing them.

Honestly I don't see how we can't replace trains with electric buses...

Ok, seems like you didn't ride European trains yet.

They are on a vast spectrum. Going from Frankfurt to Cologne second class in a train of soccer fans is very different from taking a first class ride in Switzerland.

Or riding in Ukraine or Eastern Hungary. (Europe isn't just Western Europe...)

Sure, and flying up front on Cathay is a bit different from flying on, say, RyanAir.

https://www.express.co.uk/travel/articles/816431/Ryanair-fli...

I haven't done sleeper trains or really long trips. I did spend quite some time in NL and UK and took trains (2-3 hrs) in Sweden, Belgium, France, Germany and Switzerland. Probably some other countries (and many more outside of Europe). Sure it's slightly nicer than pack of sardines in an airplane, but also I'd rather negotiate armrest for 1 hour than 5.

Trains go at 400km/h

I don't know which trains you took but here in europe even the less costly trains (regional trains) are far far far more comfy than any ryanair airplane (saying this as a 193cm man), especially if you want to stand up often or just want to have more than two bathroom every 150 people. If you take a fast train the experience is not even remotely comparable, they are more spacious, cleaner and offer more optionals. Yeah they cost more but not really a lot more. If you have to put some extrabaggage the ryanair airplane is gonna be the loser even in the cost side.

Also, personally, I prefer trains even just for the fact I have not to lose 2 extra uncomfortable hours between checkin and security checks.

As a 187 I hate pretty much every piece of transport (even most cars miss my femur length)...

I used to travel Southampton to London a lot (that's like 150km or so). IIRC renting a car used to be cheaper.

At 200cm, I will choose trains whenever possible. Aeroplanes are a nightmare for me.

I'm 196cm and airplanes are actually not as bad as fellow tall people always complain. I think I might have relatively short legs for my height.

Southampton to London is £41 return for 160 mile round trip. Petrol alone will set you back half that. If there's a company willing to rent a car for 300 miles for £20, they're making a loss, and that's before you get onto parking charges.

Either way the train is far faster.

Plus, train stations are often in the city centers, while airports are on the outskirts and are often not easy to reach.

You can't run electric buses at >100mph for one thing.

But you can operate them 2-5x cheaper.

Source for that? You need ten buses to replace a single medium-length train. To my understanding trains trade higher up-front costs (infrastructure!) to lower per-passenger-km operating costs.

I mean just based on UK ticket costs I'd say they're not too far off the mark. If you catch a coach rather than the train it's often half the price, but the trade-off is you get stuck in traffic, they're infrequent, if they're oversubscribed there's no standing room (although coach operators rarely face this issue) and they're usually just not as fast as trains. I commuted to work by intercity coach for a couple of weeks and believe me it was no picnic - 5:30am wake time to catch a 6am coach and I often didn't get back until 8pm. Admittedly I was at the end of a route with a number of stops in several small villages nearby which exacerbated things a lot, but still! Some people do this on a long term basis and it blows my mind.

Consumer ticket prices seem like a poor proxy for operating expenses per passenger km. For one, as you said, the quality of service is better.

Even if so, you'd want electric buses to replace the kinds of routes currently served by regular buses - they'd hardly be a replacement for inter-city trains.

I've never been on a train and wished that I'd taken the bus instead (or that the line was replaced by buses). The ride is much smoother, I have more space for myself and my baggage and I can more or less comfortably use the toilet.

Nor did I. But many times I've looked at train prices and bus boy did I consider.

I've once missed my train in UK. Next one was something like 120 pounds vs 8 pounds for bus. I think it's the last time I've ever took bus.

IMHO difference in price should start to increase as electric bus TCO is already lower than diesel. The difference in XP should increase as less noise and pollution is added. Plus adding premium seats, air suspension would make a massive difference.

Also besides more leg space you get to walk around and go to the cafeteria. And a better view i would say, thought that's debatable, view from the plane is pretty tripy the first few times.

> Honestly I don't see how we can't replace trains with electric buses...

Oh geez. Even with our pretty crappy trains in Australia, I'd still take a train every time. Trains are faster, offer much smoother rides and are much more efficient than busses.

> Honestly I don't see how we can't replace trains with electric buses...

I suspect you've never taken a train, or a bus.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com