Europe is investing heavily in trains
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
What we've seen here is TrenItalia starting to serve one line, Paris-Lyon (and then on to Milan). The issue is that this is, by far, the most profitable train line in France.
If competitors only get in on the profitable lines and leave the others to the national company, it will probably not end well. Because it's my understanding that profitable lines used to somewhat compensate for the others, SNCF was able to provide a somewhat dense service. If this goes away, they'll either have to reduce (or even stop!) the less profitable service, or the State will have to step in with even more subsidies for those lines.
There's a lot of talk in France around "public service" and I think that things like good rail service, especially in the era of "climate emergency" is important for a State to have. Instead, we're now getting new bus routes - yay diesel!
https://ec.europa.eu/competition/general/liberalisation_en.h...
> The fact remains that, despite the European Union’s support for rail, the bloc’s governments continue to grant enormous subsidies to airlines — in the form of bailout packages as well as low taxes on jet fuel — although that could change soon.
The conspicuous lack of Pigouvian taxes on a fossil fuel for just one industry is definitely a subsidy. Someone else is paying for the externalities.
And others are benefitting from positive externalities of warmer weather, reducing need for heating, increases yields due to increased CO2 concentration etc. Thing is, it’s incredibly hard to put a number on net costs on climate change. The most serious recent attempt to do that had its author, William Nordhaus, a Nobel Prize in Economics. The estimated figure, by the way, is very low compared to the zeal of the activists.
Now, of course, the carbon tax proponents are not really interested in the actual costs. They either ideologically hate emissions, and their desire to institute carbon tax is vindictive in its nature, and all talk about “externalities” is for them just a distraction, or they are politicians who use carbon tax as an excuse to increase their political power and tax revenues. Nobody is motivated by actual economic efficiency, and calling them Pigouvian taxes is a distraction.
William's Nordhaus models for which he has received the Nobel prize predate the millennium, and have been superceded since then by much better models. His models are highly problematic, now that we know that you cannot extrapolate the average temperature on GDP due to increased amplitude, and for many other reasons. That is why the Nobel committee awarded it not for the current relevance of the results, but for the pioneering nature of the research.
[0] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/14...
Once you fix energy production, vehicles transport and heating most of those things are gone.
If we looked air air-travel in isolation it would be a lot lower.
This report seems to show that trains mostly pay for infrastructure and the network: https://cedelft.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/03/CE_Del...
I think British trains pay for “red” taxed diesel?
The "Diesel tax levels" charts (p28, p81) show the UK charges the same (0.7€/L) for both road and rail use, and most EU countries charge a tax, although more than half have less tax for rail than road use.
Electricity is taxed in a few countries.
Minus overhead
Superficially, flying has relatively lower infrastructure costs because it only needs the two endpoints (no road, no track, no bridges, no tunnels -- all expensive items). That impacts both the initial capital cost, and the ongoing investment in maintenance.
Similarly, planes are fast: above a fairly short distance, it's much quicker to fly (by jet plane) than to travel by train or road vehicle.
But airports are difficult to access, being unwelcome in the middle of cities, and so there's a need to get to the airport as part of your journey. That part of the trip likely requires road or rail transport, and it's the most capital-intensive bits of the road/rail (ie. through urban areas).
The fuel cost of planes is also higher per passenger-distance. And beyond just simply purchasing the fuel, it's much easier (for instance) to electrify a train or car than a passenger plane. So how you account for the carbon cost will make a big difference to your result.
For the last 20 years or so, short-trip flights have been superficially cheap. The most obvious missing cost is the impact of using fossil fuel (and potentially that's even worse at high altitude), but there are other factors like the (ab)use of precarious labour, government subsidies for both fuel and facilities, noise impact, etc.
Whether it's ultimately sustainable or not all depends on what costs you choose to factor in.
It would be amazing to see humans build a large scale fusion reactors and Dyson spheres around the sun and never have to think about energy consumption :).
At the same time, I think we all should be disappointed in our approach towards energy production. We shouldn't have to ration it. Successful governments should be responsible for running sequestrators on tax funding.
There are lot of IFs in your statement. Sure, it's theoretically possible to harvest so much energy that we can regard it as freely abundant without any real external costs. But this is not the case today, and probably won't be the case for hundreds of years - if ever.
* > Successful governments should be responsible for running sequestrators on tax funding. *
There's no such thing as large scale carbon sequestrations. It's unclear if this is a sensible solution to climate change in general. It makes much more sense to switch to renewables as quickly as possible and to limit emissions as much as possible. THAT's what a successful government should be responsible for, not for investing in false promises.
A Dyson sphère around the sun would make life on Earth rather miserable.
> Successful governments should be responsible for running sequestrators on tax funding.
“Sequestrators” don’t exist. There is some noise every now and then about a fancy new technology, and it gets accepted in pop science media as something that works, but we don’t really have anything practical. Besides, this would be a terrible idea, because it means we lower the cost of operations for the industry, generating profits for their private owners, whilst straining public budgets already stretched thin. This would need a radical change of how most governments operate.
You can make hydrocarbons from c02 and water. Make digging up carbon illegal, so that only legal way to get your jet fuel is to buy it from a machine that makes it from the air (e.g. carbon-neutral fuels).
Under high temperature and pressure conditions, with expensive catalysts (I’ve had a grant to work on one of these processes a couple of years ago). It is completely uneconomical unless most government tax emissions very heavily one way or another.
Besides, this does not solve the capture bit, which is also a significant challenge, in similar ways (we have ideas about technologies, thermodynamics do not work in our favour, it would still require radical policies for it to work).
Nobody is going to wave their magic wand and make fossil fuels illegal anytime soon. It is a common techno-euphoria trap: technology is the easy bit, and we’re not there yet on that front. Policy is the struggle after that, and it is much more difficult.
And with electric planes you can go closer to cities, elimintation much infrastructure there and the externailty goes away for the most part.
So this seems just like an argument that we should make planes electric and invest a lot into that.
I have taken many Amtrak short trips, like 1h, and 50% of the time the train leaves more than 1h late (and 100% it leaves late, some amount). So I leave my departure location after I was meant to arrive at my arrival location.
In 2005 I took a night train from Budapest to Belgrade, but not really - the ticket I paid for, the platform sign, the ticket agent, all told me that. But once on the train passing the border, the passport checker told me that the route hadn't gone to Belgrade in some time, and that I would be dumped at 2am in Novi Sad, where I was meant to buy a bus ticket. Tickets closed and Euros not accepted. Was a difficult time to resolve, but I bought overpriced Dinars from some travellers with my Euros and got a last minute ticket. Arrived in Belgrade to find 0 hotel rooms due to a football match.
I love trains. But the process needs improvement, just like airplanes. Long-distance travel without a car is honestly quite difficult in Europe and USA imo.
Planes will sell you tickets that don't exist and then pretend like a night in a hotel makes up for it. They abuse you at security. They treat you like trash and everybody deals with it.
Please make trains better, Amtrak, and EU. Please.
Getting a 100 dollar fine because you didn't click a button on a website, being commanded by uniformed people to "show your papers" over and over, standing in line waiting to stand in another line. Being forced to stand in crowded "designated areas". It's super creepy, gives me the heebie jeebies, like I'm being shipped off somewhere..
N.B. Hungary has been an EU member since 2004, but Serbia is still not.
Once, I had the same problem due to a football match in Rome. In hindsight, how I got a bed for the night was hilarious but it wasn't at the time as I was dead tired (I'll spare you the details—I learned quickly that very strange things can happen in Rome).
A day or so later I was on a train from Rome to Vienna, the trouble was that by then many of those football fans were returning home so we all ended up together on the same train. To make matters worse, many of them were drunk. Suffice to say, Austrian Customs and border police were not amused, the train was delayed many hours.
See, you're not alone, we all have days like that when traveling in strange places especially so when crossing country borders.
"I love trains. But the process needs improvement, just like airplanes. Long-distance travel without a car is honestly quite difficult in Europe and USA imo."
I agree with you about the US and Eastern Europe, however you really shouldn't have any trouble in Western Europe—France, Belgium, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, and Germany—even Italy (if you're forewarned what to expect). Of course, here I'm referring to major towns or ones that receive a reasonable number of foreign tourists. As always, small villages and places that are way off the beaten track will be difficult no matter where you are (so are one and two star hotels problematic in such places as they are much less likely to speak English).
In particular, I found such travel by train in the US much more difficult than in Western Europe. It seems to me that since WWII all the once excellent (and traditional) railway infrastructure (such as railroad-owned hotels at or near railroad stations, etc.) has either been dismantled and or sold off, so one ends up at one's destination—even in large towns or cities—without any or minimal local support. Right, all this once infrastructure has been transferred, or relocated or rebuilt around airports.
I reckon the US will have a huge job in reversing the process (or duplicating the infrastructure as it once was around rail terminals), that is if it wishes to make rail truly relevant again.
Generally, Europe is miles ahead of the US in this area of public transport infrastructure.
Out of curiosity, any example of the terrible things that may happen in Italy and that travelers should be forewarned about?
Apologies for laboring the (mostly) bleeding obvious in some of these points especially item 5, but it's only because I've seen people not bother to observe them and suffer the consequences (including this once-neophyte traveler—yours truly). :-)
Note: this post is too long for a single comment, so I'll post it in parts.
I suppose the definition of 'terrible' is important here. Anyway, here's some bits of advice gained from a few incidents that I've experienced in Italy, you be the judge of whether they're terrible or not. Whilst I've singled out Italian instances here of course most of what I've to say is pretty much common knowledge and general travel advice. It's just from my experience my comments are somewhat more applicable to Italy than to other Western European countries—although it's wise to consider other notable/problematic places, Amsterdam's main train terminus for instance. Better still, always consider any major train terminus where tourists gather as potentially hostile.
First, I must say I love Italy, its people and their culture, its cities and beautiful countryside not to mention its historical heritage—the Roman Empire, et al.
Anyway, here goes:
1. Always plan your trip to an Italian city when there's no major football match taking place (that's unless you are planning to attend the match). This is especially important if the match is between an Italian team and a foreign one (Europe's obsession with football is legendary, fans are passionate about their teams and are easily excited—'tis likely some wars have started over less drama). Visiting fans can be found all over parts of the city that you're likely to want to visit, and they can get very rowdy.
2. If You have to visit an Italian city when there's a football match on then make sure that you arrange your accommodation well beforehand as you can almost guarantee that every hotel will be fully booked out and you'll have nowhere to stay (again, this is very important if the opposing team is from another country as there will be many fans from that country visiting to see the match). I've learned this from hard experience. Moreover, sleeping overnight at railway stations is not only unpleasant but it's also dangerous.
3. If perchance you do arrive by train (or any other form of transport) and have not booked accommodation in advance when there's a football match about to take place then make sure you arrive early in the day. This is an absolute must, here's why:
My first trip to Rome was done on the spur of the moment and I had no idea that any football match was about to take place let alone that it would be relevant to my visit—nor (given the circumstances of the match) did I have the vaguest notion that one must arrive early in the day to be of paramount importance (if there's any chance at all of getting accommodation then one must be early).
As it happened my time of arrival in Rome couldn't have been worse, not only did I arrive just before a key football match was scheduled to kick-off but also I arrived very late in the day, around about 21h00. After phoning many hotels (all those with outlet facilities on the station as well as others listed on signboards), it was pretty clear that there was no remaining accommodation whatsoever left in Rome—or so I thought!
After the phoning exercise, which achieving nothing of note, I was standing around on the station's concourse and perplexed as to what to do next when I began to be approached by numbers of guys all of whom were offering accommodation. As I later found out they were lone operators and they spoke just sufficient English to get across the point that they were offering me accommodation. Their demonstrable (or apparent) lack of English was such that I was unable to determine exactly what type of accommodation they were offering (suffice to say their 'limited' English was to their benefit, not mine). It's clear these opportunists were well aware of the shortage of accommodation throughout Rome during football times not to mention the arrival of unsuspecting visitors such as me and they took full advantage of the situation.
Eventually after weighing up the situation and being somewhat desperate, I selected the most seemingly respectable offer. In fact, at no time was I ever told the actual nature of the accommodation although it wasn't for the want of trying (again, the language barrier was such that it was easier to give up—and I was damn tired into the bargain, by then I believed I'd accept any any accommodation—or so I thought). It was what happened after this that made me mention my earlier caveat 'if you're forewarned what to expect'. (I can elaborate further details if you wish.)
4. If traveling by train anywhere in Europe, especially so in Italy, then avoid any train that's traveling to a football match which is likely to be carrying football fans. Moreover, it's especially important not to do so on trains that are returning home from the match as the fans are noisy, boisterous and often very drunk. As mentioned elsewhere, not long after the match was over I took an overnight train from Rome to Vienna and it was full of fans who were returning home after the match (the match was between Italian and Austrian teams). It was a horrible experience to say the least. Returning fans misbehaved so badly that Austrian Customs and border police were not amused, they delayed the train for hours not to mention that they searched every inch of the train from one end to the other with Alsatian dogs at the ready (I've experienced such searches on many other occasions but this one was the worst).
<continued>
5. If you're visiting Rome or any other Italian city no doubt you'll want to visit its historical sites (as you know, they're everywhere and hard to avoid). First, here's a warning to be careful to avoid pickpockets. On multiple occasions I've had swarms of very persistent kids swarm around me on the pretext of selling some grotty postcards or such and during the process they do everything possible to distract one and it's hard to keep track of what each one is doing. They're often in groups of six or more in number (and they're very common in and around Rome's main ruins). Moreover, some kids are very young and look harmless and genteel, but don't be fooled, they're not—they're all part of a well orchestrated team and you'll be done over if you're the slightest bit gullible and or not very careful. BTW, in this regard Rome was the worst of all the Italian cites I've visited.
Never leave your wallet, your smartphone and or your passport in the back or side pockets of your pants (or side pockets of your jacket). If you are wearing jeans then place valuables deep down in your front pockets, better still put them in a money belt that's under your shirt. Also, be very careful about looking after anything else that you're carrying, a camera for instance (it's also best not to go alone as members of one's group can keep an eye on each other).
Clearly, there's little point putting one's phone in an 'inaccessible' money belt, my solution for storing it safely but still within ready reach is to store it in the front pocket one's shirt. Warning however: as everyone knows, in recent years shirt pockets have atrophied in size to now being little more than a totally useless decoration. There are nevertheless several solutions: shirts from military disposals often have suitably large pockets, trouble is they either have no button or only a single button that almost everyone never bothers to button up. In either case when you lean over everything falls out including one's smartphone—crash, there's goes another screen, and that's the last thing you need on your trip. The best solution I've arrived at is to purchase several shirts of a suitable style well before one travels. Safari, trail/outdoor or nautical-type shirts that have both decent sized top front pockets complete with easy-close zippers—which you learn to zip closed by automatic reflex every time you put your phone back in your pocket—are, in my opinion, the best option. This extra effort might seem a nuisance but I can assure you it's well worth it.
6. The horrors (perhaps terrors) of diving in Italy. You'll get quite a shock when you first drive in Italy—that's unless you come from France, Germany or other country where maniacal drivers are commonplace—even then Italy has a special place on the maniacal drivers register.
First, there are only two speeds in Italy—stop and flat out. Second, don't expect Italian drivers to obey the road rules in quite the same way that you'd expect that drivers do in anglophone countries, US, UK, Australia, etc. Yes, they actually obey road rules (sometimes) but what they'd deem as obeying the rules is very different, and it can take some experience and time to get used to the differences (eventually, you'll get the gist and be OK—that's if you're not killed first).
There are three memorable instances in my life where I actually thought I'd die before reaching my destination: the first was on the autobahn from Stuttgart to Freiberg when one of my work colleagues—a German who'd migrated but who was back in Germany with me—was driving a small car that'd often get 'airborne' whenever he'd overtake trucks and that was as often as he possibly could (nothing in front of him was too much of a challenge). As the car was small and under-powered, overtaking was slow and dangerous (yet behind the wheel he still drove like a 'Fangio Mark-II', fortunately for me, like the real Juan Fangio, he had nine lives (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Manuel_Fangio). Incidentally, my colleague once used to race Minis.
The second was a local incident I'll not mention further, and the third was my first experience on the Autostrada A1—the motorway from Milan to Naples (that first time I was on my way from Milan to Rome): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostrada_A1_(Italy). The small rental car I was in could hardly make 100 mph (≈160km/h) on a gentle downhill and just about every car and trucks would pass and overtake me at such speed that the vortex they created buffeted the car with such intensity that they made steering extremely sloppy. Moreover, if one were to travel slower than about 160 km/h then one would likely be rear-ended especially so in foggy conditions (and at the time there was fog on some sections of the motorway). 'Fog—what's that, only sissies would slow down for fog?†' I'm not a timid driver, nor do I scare easily when others are driving but as a novice whose first introduction to driving Italian style was on the Autostrada A1 was certainly a memorable experience to say the least. As they say, it was like being unexpectedly dropped in at the deep end without warning.
Here's another instance of the Italian motorists' driving style (I've already mentioned this previously some while ago). I observed this incident in the residential area of Florence. Here's the scene: the River Arno flows through Florence essentially cutting it in half, busy roads with large amounts of traffic follow along the Arno's banks for most of its length through the city. Whilst over a dozen bridges interconnect these roads on either side of the River there are many roads that run perpendicular to it but which do not intersect at points where the bridges are—that is, these perpendicular roads terminate in a 'T' intersection with the roads that follow the River.
Now picture this, I've left my hotel and I'm walking along the sidewalk of one of the roads that's following the Arno's banks and I come across one of these busy 'T' intersections and its traffic lights are indicating red in the direction I'm walking. An impatient driver—impatience is a common characteristic of Italian drivers—in one of the 'stopped' vehicles intends to turn left into the intersecting right-angled street but the lights are against him (a pedestrian 'walk' sign is green on that road so he has a red left-arrow light indicating that he must stop). He hardly stops—then just before the traffic lights and intersection he immediately veers left to bypass both the roadway and the lights. That is, he turns hard left and mounts the sidewalk not that far in front of me then he disappears down the intersecting side street whilst now still traveling on its sidewalk (technically, he's avoided going through a red light and thus he's not broken that law but no doubt he's broken others). This is what I mean when I say Italian drivers (anyway, a significant number of them) interpret the road rules in ways that we'd not normally expect.
However, that's not the end of the story: the moment after he disappeared driving down the intersecting street's sidewalk I heard a large crash. Upon arriving at the intersection and looking left I saw that he'd driven straight into a huge excavation hole in the sidewalk that was part of street maintenance work. What's more amazing is that when I'd gotten a little closer I could see that he wasn't alone as there were several other cars already in the ditch. That's not the only instance where I've seen Italian drivers bypass red lights in such a manner, however on those occasions there were no ditches around to catch them.
7. (This I've also mentioned previously.) I recall that when I visited the Colosseum in Rome, which incidentally is a fabulous place to visit (I could wax lyrically about it for hours), I came across something rather unexpected, that was the large number of discarded hypodermic syringes in and around the sidewalk that surrounds this monumental edifice. It seems the building wasn't only a huge tourist attraction but also it was a shoot-up gallery for local druggies (keep in mind, I've not been there for quite some time, so things may have been cleaned up since then). The lesson is that it's probably not a good idea to travel hippy-like in bare feet around any of these attractions (on my next visit I reckon I'll wear shoes with rather substantial soles).
There's more but that'll have to do for now.
__
† Not slowing down for fog is also a trait of Austrian and German drivers but from my experience they're marginally less gung-ho about it than Italians (they're more consistent drivers at high speed). I recall once being driven by an Austrian driver from Salzburg to Vienna on the motorway in not only fog but also sleet and rain at speeds in excess of 160 km/h (≈100 mph), it was another white-knuckle experience which would rate next down the list of those already mentioned. Incidentally, the trip was during the winter. When I suggested he slow down he retorted to the effect that 'I must be joking and that he'd be rear-ended in a second if he did that'. Seems these motorists' main aim is to keep constant speed, breaking not only results in rear-enders but one would almost certainly spin out of control on the icy road surface. Such driving isn't for the fainthearted.
1) to find no place to sleep if not booked in advance the day of a major sport event
2) no really, do not try going in a city when there is a major football match without having booked some accomodation
3) if you really insist on going to a city when there is a football match arrive early
4) do not travel (in the event of a football match) by train
5) beware of picpockets
6) Italians drive fast and somehow impredictably
7) you shouldn't go bare footed
#1 to #5 and #7 are (IMHO) little more than common sense and apply to most if not all countries.
Maybe #6 is the only one actually related to Italy, though it probably applies to a number of other not-perfect countries, like Austria and Germany.
No it isn't. As I said Italy's a lovely place. It's just that more can go wrong there than in other Western European countries unless one's adequately forewarned.
"1) to find no place to sleep if not booked in advance the day of a major sport event"
In any city there can be problems with accommodation during any major event (sporting or otherwise) but from my experience things are more intense and or more complicated in Italy. I've been in other cities during major sporting events, Paris and Munich for example, and had no trouble getting accommodation at the last moment - but I've experienced the problem twice in Italy (albeit the conditions of each instance being somewhat different to each other).
"2) no really, do not try going in a city when there is a major football match without having booked some accomodation"
That's probably good advice anywhere. However, having lived in Europe, I've stayed in other non-Italian cities during football matches not having realized that a match was taking place until late into the event. Accommodation was easily available.
"3) if you really insist on going to a city when there is a football match arrive early"
That makes sense whether there's a match on or not. I don't know how much traveling you've done, but my experience is that it's often not possible to arrive early, same goes for being unable to book in advance (especially so if one's does a lot of city hopping, which has been my situation for work). Often things just don't go to plan for many reasons.
That said, I've never been caught out without any accommodation regardless of circumstance. Even that instance mentioned above in Rome I finally sorted out and managed to get accommodation (you'll note, I didn't say what eventually transpired (what actually did is much more likely to happen in Italy than elsewhere in Western Europe)).
The only other time I've come really close to having difficulty with last-minute accommodation was in Vienna (one time I arrived there unexpectedly several hours later than I did in Rome (around midnight) without any prebooked accommodation, that too was also solved after some effort.
"4) do not travel (in the event of a football match) by train"
Makes sense anywhere but generally Italy is somewhat less organized than say Germany is.
"5) beware of picpockets"
The only country/place where I've experienced overt trouble of this kind in Western Europe is in Italy and in Amsterdam railway terminus (no other place in the Netherlands has ever been a problem). Clearly, there are other places that I could mention where I reckon one could easily get into trouble if one wasn't careful but I never have (as always, I follow the rules I've mentioned). Even in Rome I was OK (and I was well aware of what was happening at the time they tried to scam me).
The only time I've had trouble was in Vienna (normally an extremely safe city, I know, I lived there for quite some time) and what happened was my fault (this wasn't the time when I was living there). What happened was that I arrived after traveling half way around the world and was really dead tired. I got into my hotel room, shut the door put my stuff down everywhere and had a quick rest. Trouble was I fell asleep and I'd not locked the hotel door (it didn't have a door that locked automatically).
While I was asleep someone entered my room and stole my wallet but nothing else was taken (they could have just as easily stolen my laptop and camera but they didn't). The loss was highly inconvenient as my credit cards were now gone and I'd not yet even had time to have an imprint from one registered at the front desk (as I said, Vienna is a trusting place, the comment from the desk was 'do all that stuff after you get settled'). Not having a credit card nor any cash, paying the hotel bill was then a potential problem.
What happened next was that I immediately cancelled all credit cards. Two days later the desk contacted me and handed me my wallet back. When I asked how they came by it, they said that several minutes earlier another guest found it just by the entrance of the hotel's front door and handed it in. All my now-defunct cards were still there so was everything else, driver's license etc, all except the cash—that being some $60 or so USD and about the equivalent $20 USD in Austrian Schillings (it was in the days before the Euro). There's about 13 to 14 Schillings to a Euro, so luckily my loss was pretty trivial.
"7) you shouldn't go bare footed"
Surprising many do! Especially so anglophone tourists on holiday. (Same goes for dress sense, once I was in Harrods in London with a group of friends, one decided to wear his skimpy beach shorts (which he also wore everywhere else across the UK) and he was promptly chucked out of the store at very great speed (he wouldn't take our advice to the contrary and that included his Mrs who'd told him earlier that he wouldn't get past the front door looking like that).
"#1 to #5 and #7 are (IMHO) little more than common sense and apply to most if not all countries."
True, but from my expedience Italy is significantly different to other countries in Western Europe, Eastern Europe is a different matter altogether, some countries there make Italy look like a model citizen.
"<...> though it probably applies to a number of other not-perfect countries, like Austria and Germany."
You're skating on thin ice here, what gives to the idea that Austria and Germany are 'not-perfect'? No country is perfect but those two are an absolute model when compared to some others I could name (which I won't do out of deference).
Rest assured that - notwithstanding the single episode you witnessed in Florence - it is not like every day tens or hundreds of cars do evasive maneuvers to avoid red lights and/or senselessly enter construction sites in Florence (or in Italy in general).
Traveling impromptu, particularly if you do not speak functionally the local language is asking for trouble almost anywhere, and as well pickpockets are common in many large cities all over Europe (those with the largest number of tourists).
If we go by anecdata:
1) some relatives of mine have been pickpocketed BOTH in London and in Barcelona
2) I have been refused accomodation (duly booked in advance, BTW) in Munich in the Oktoberfest period (due to some sort of overbooking, or mismanagement of cancellations, not really an issue as I was traveling by car and I managed to find a hotel only a few km outside Munich)
3) in three different occasions someone managed to throw up on me (yikes!), once on a bus in Berlin, once in a train in the UK and once on a Qantas flight to Australia
4) I once eyewitnessed a car entering the highway from the wrong side in France, making a front collision with a truck that was travelling in the right sense, and another time I saw the same happening (luckily with no accidents) in Switzerland
Hence:
1) beware of pickpockets in the UK and Spain
2) double and triple check bookings in Germany
3) be prepared to find in Germany, the UK and Australia (drunk) people that will throw up on you
4) be warned that drivers in France and Switzerland often enter the highway the wrong side
The world is a dangerous place, you'd better stay at home.
Your comment made me think that perhaps I was overcritical so I did a quick search. Other than for some info about what tourists need to drive in Italy, this was the first hit in the list to my query: https://www.thelocal.it/20150326/why-are-italians-such-crazy.... Seems that just a few others agree with me (Italians included).
"Traveling impromptu, particularly if you do not speak functionally the local language is asking for trouble…"
In total agreement, one often experiences language difficulties especially so outside major tourist centers and larger cities. Even native speakers can get out of their depth the moment they cross their border (as I show below).
Avoiding two-star rated hotels/pensions and lower is also to be avoided (often I'd arrive at these hotels and be greeted by someone who spoke perfect English only to find that when that person finished his/her shift then there was no one else who could (I've some funny anecdotes about such encounters for another time). Any arrangements made with the English-speaker were often lost and confusion often ensued. Such confusion isn't necessarily confined to countries where one doesn't speak the local lingo, it can also occur when the natives speak English‡ by default!
Trouble is that for the average tourist Europe has too many languages for comfort (reckon percentage-wise not that many are linguists sporting six or more languages). I've some French and German, and they're very useful at times but of very little help outside Western Europe—Hungary and Serbia for instance (despite the fact that quite a few Hungarians speak German).
What's more the difficulties with language can be very localized. I recall one instance in Alsace when a group of us were in a restaurant and we tried to order meals in German only to be greeted with something gruff to the effect 'no comprehend', this was despite the fact that we had a native German speaker among us who eventually tried to help—Alsace being Alsace, we only brought him out as the big guns when all else failed, however it was to no useful effect (as we eventually ate elsewhere). Moments later when they thought we were out of listening range we could hear their conversions in German. Very strange, presumably if we'd initially tried to order in French then everything would have been OK.
Another striking instance was when I was in Menton in the south of France (Menton† is a border town between France and Italy with the Italian town Ventimiglia† immediately on the other side of the border). I was with my French aunt who normally resides in Paris and who not only spoke perfect French but who also always enunciated her words clearly. She had absolutely no problem with language when visiting the local markets in Menton, nor with conducting any another business in the town however she was totally flummoxed when in Ventimiglia's markets—essentially gestures were her only effective means of communication. Incidentally, Menton and Ventimiglia are so close to each other that one can easily walk between the two as is common practice; moreover, crossing the border which, essentially, is the only thing that separates the two towns, was so simple that to do was a non-event:
† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventimiglia,_Italy
Sometimes, unexpectedly, the opposite happens. In the early days of when I was living in Vienna a Greenpeace volunteer knocked at my apartment and asked for a donation. He rattled off his request so quickly that I requested him to repeat a part of it. Without so much as even a pregnant pause he instantly switched mid sentence into English and did so with absolute fluency (how I envy people like that).
"...almost anywhere, and as well pickpockets are common in many large cities all over <...>some relatives of mine have been pickpocketed BOTH in London and in Barcelona"
I'm not disagreeing, the reason I picked out those two instances was that the pickpockets in question were so overt about their aim that even the most novice traveler couldn't mistake their intentions (they worked on the principle that it didn't matter if you knew their intentions or not as, given their numbers, they'd have no trouble getting away). As mentioned, I found other places to be OK, in fact very safe, for instance, I traveled to work every day on Vienna's crowded U-Bahn and I never gave a second's thought about being pick-pocketed (and I never was).
"I have been refused accomodation (duly booked in advance, BTW) in Munich in the Oktoberfest period (due to some sort of overbooking, or mismanagement of cancellations, not really an issue as I was traveling by car and I managed to find a hotel only a few km outside Munich)"
Stuff-ups happen, and I'm not surprised it happened during Oktoberfest (you must have masochist tendencies to have been in Munich at that time). ;-)
"...in three different occasions someone managed to throw up on me (yikes!), once on a bus in Berlin, once in a train in the UK and once on a Qantas flight to Australia."
The most polite thing I can say to that is that with incidents one and two, luck wasn't on your side. Incident three, you have only yourself to blame for traveling on that airline.
My only experience that's vaguely similar happened to me in Manhattan when I was on my way to an important meeting. Whilst waiting at a pedestrian crossing for the lights to change at the intersection of one of the avenues and a cross street (forgotten which ones) a pigeon flying overhead shat on my head and shoulders.
An inconvenient bomb out of the blue to say the least.
P.S.: I really don't like traveling much, I avoid it if I can.
___
‡ At a certain hotel in London's Russell Square that will rename nameless, I made definite arrangements the night before I was to book out to collect an important fax that I was expecting to arrive overnight (I had a very early flight to NY and time was tight). Morning duly arrived and the area around the checkout counter was beginning to fill. When it was my turn to check out I asked checkout clerk serving me (one of three on duty if I recall) for my fax which I knew had arrived as I could see that it was still on the fax machine behind the checkout counter (its printout was of the roll type and my fax was still attached to the roll).
The clerk immediately responded that "the fax operator won't be in until 10AM and I'd have to wait until then", I politely responded that the fax was already on the machine behind him and that I'd already made arrangements the previous evening to collect it first thing the morning but it was to no avail, he simply repeated the exact same mantra again. A heated argument ensued much to the amusement and chagrin of others waiting (I was holding up the checkout line) but the clerk still wouldn't budge. I then immediately jumped over the counter tore the fax off the machine and jumped back again. Clerk: "I'm calling the police", "OK, best of luck—and I'll then accuse you of stealing my goods and I'll charge the hotel for me missing my flight." Cheers and applause from the 'audience' ensued. Yeah, there are some right bastards in this world.
In typically tax-happy Europe this always struck me as odd, agree it is sad when you find out an airplane ticket is cheaper than a corresponding train.
Another consideration may be the consequences of possibly diverging tax rates for kerosene: if it's much cheaper to fill up in, say, Spain, than it is in France, it might become cheaper to carry the fuel for the return leg, even if the increased weight increases fuel consumption.
I'm not saying that any of this justifies the state of affairs. But it's possible to arrive at it even with mostly good intentions.
not so relevant for the shorter trips intra-EU, but still a factor
I'm Swiss and at least in Switzerland such a rule would automatically apply unless the population would do a referendum. And that would lead to a public vote that would almost certainty lose.
They aren’t going to russia for the Paris London flight.
There would be rules around a fuel flight vs a legit passenger/cargo service, assuming they don't want to tax the extra fuel left in a plane at the end of a flight.
But that seem like a pretty straightforward problem to solve.
I think your new point is optimistic at best. You would have to switch trains quite often and the time it takes would probably weigh heavier than the price. Especially between EU countries, within country flying is not really that big in EU.
> I love trains and take them over airplane when it's an option. However, trains are often around twice as expensive as flying for may routes.
But I agree that switching trains is also an issue.
The federal government spends $2BN/year on Amtrak and people lose their damn minds.
Meanwhile, at the FAA, nearly $12BN/year...and that doesn't account for all the local and state funds used to subsidize airports. Or Department of Transportation spending...
probably this counts for at least a few billions
I recall a figure from MIT's microeconomics textbook (Pindyck et al.) where they showed the aggregate profits of all industry since its inception were negative.
In EU, subsidies to airlines are an indirect subsidy to the tourism industry.
Example: From Amsterdam Airport to Palermo, there are 2 flights per week (Friday and Monday). That is 300 passengers per week. It is a profitable to fly planes between these two cities, but a direct rail route including maintenance of the railway system would be far to expensive. This is partly resolved by stops along the way, but definitely not completely. The busiest direct railway routes (AMS-PARIS, AMS-LONDON, PARIS LONDON) in Europe are far from full, with one train an hour.
So the problem is not insufficient capacity, but rather that the scale is to small. I see electric buses playing a big role in the future to allow for better point-to-point connections.
Much like the idea of separating ISPs from the last mile infrastructure by the way.
In Europe. But not in the US.
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/railroad/us-and-european-f...
http://www.mapattacks.com/2015/01/who-owns-americas-rail-inf...
Timetabled connections are likewise impossible to set up with too much uncoordinated competition, because without making the connection times unattractively long they cannot really be set up between more than one train per relation (maybe sometimes two at a stretch).
Plus connections that aren't ridiculously padded (and therefore result in absolutely uncompetitive journey times) really only work with some sort of through-ticketing so passengers aren't left stranded if they do miss a connection after all.
Domestic use is taxed, and at rather steep rates (look at the US!); however, because most flights in the EU are international, it would require both nations ok'ing a tax on flights between them. No one has gone through with this, and it's doubtful any one ever will, for a variety of reasons.
I guess planes might just fill up their tanks in non EU countries and then carry the extra load around and be more polluting.
If every country in the EU agreed that every other country in the EU could impose tariffs on flights between them, then this should work.
>barring a specific agreement between those to nations
An EU wide agreement would be an agreement between nations.
What about a really complicated solution, since a global solution is not going to happen:
1. Tax local fuel in EU. Everyone who fuels in European airports, must pay more
2. Tax European airliners fueling abroad - in countries that are not in the EU airline fuel tax agreement.
3. Tax inbound airliners according to the amount of fuel onboard
This would probably violate all sorts of treaties, would be hard to enforce and would have lots of all kinds of leaks... but food for thought anyway.
Single plastic usage is such a red herring...every time you load up your car with gas, you put in 15 gallons, that is ~50 kilograms. A plastic straw is 0.4 grams, 125,000 plastic straws to amount to the same hydrocarbon footprint. This is a very rough math, but you get the idea. You can compensate for all your life consumption of straws and forks by not filling up once. Plates are heavier, but still marginal compared to everything else.
Another one: plastic grocery bags are 5 grams, that means one tank of gas is like 12000 grocery bags.
You could say: but at least use less single use plastic! Have you considered the alternatives? Would stainless plates weigh much more on a plane, and induce a higher CO2? Would food non-wrapped in plastic spoil more? (We throw away about 50% of all fruits and vegetables anyway).
GHG is a tough problem. Focusing on some token issues like plastic straws and plane travel for ordinary people does not solve it, it only makes it harder for people to accept it.
Also, trains (in large parts of Europe anyway) run on electricity only of which a significant chunk is from nuclear power, which doesn't emit anywhere near as much CO2 to move as many people as a plane would.
And the noise. trains are so quiet compared to planes.
Then when it come to bigger hitters, like industry, building insulation, agriculture etc. you will get exhausted and poorer people that just can't take it anymore. And then you end up with people thinking this is all so futile and so scared of the future that they don't want to even have kids anymore.
Let's cut out the 96.5% first, then reduce travel.
The same with cars. Automobiles amount for a small portion of total gas emissions. All in all, passenger cars+ passenger aviation is about 10% of total emissions. Yet we heard complaints about these more than anything else. And not only complaints, but policies that want to fix this problem.
Why not focus on the 90%? Industry lobbyists love this state of affairs, we auto-flagellate for 10% and nobody says a peep about the elephant in the room.
I think one of the reasons that aviation is so often in the spotlight in discussions about climate change is the existence of greener alternatives. Of course, those can't replace all flights, but they don't have to. Add to that the fact that air travel has exploded in recent years before Corona, and you certainly have to ask yourself whether taking five weekend trips a year from Zurich to Hamburg really improves our standard of living so much that we should put up with the downsides of it.
Personally, of course, I also like to travel and I think flying is a great invention that brings countries and people closer. Nevertheless, you have to be a bit critical about whether every flight is really necessary.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200218-climate-change-h...
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraftstoffverbrauch?wprov=sfti...
Surely, the actual costs calculations will need to include the infra and operational costs however if you check the energy consumption per passenger per distance[0], rail transport is always on the more efficient side of things.
Unless the infrastructure and operational costs of trains are higher than airplanes, I don't see how airplanes can be more competitive. Is the rail infrastructure that much expensive?
Maybe the argument can be made about convenience but on efficiency, trains look more efficient.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport
The usual tracks either connect big cities or they run between urban centers and less populated areas. IOW run between every seat taken and almost empty.
Building and maintaining one runway at point A and one at point B is obviously much easier than building and maintaining a railroad between them.
Airports also tend to be at the middle of nowhere, IMHO you need to incorporate the cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure needed to get somewhere from that nowhere.
If you have ten airports, you have 10 * (10 + 1) / 2 = 55 airlines. If you have 10 train stations, you have only as many rail lines as you're willing to build, which means countries end up spending most of the effort and money on lines connecting major city centers.
Also, if you have an international airport, you're connected to every capital city of the world.
The logistic advantages of air travel are huge. Kerosene will need to get a lot more expensive before these advantages lose out.
Also, trains can switch lines, disconnect, run on the same line back to back etc.
Just look at the Europe railways map: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:High_Speed_Railroad_...
I suspect, with some standardisation and automation, you can end up having very good point-to-point travel options by train. Even better than airlines maybe. The current inefficiencies could be due to poor management and weak integrations. Can you imagine how great could be to have Europe and Asia wide rail network where automated carriages and rail switching systems coordinate to achieve travel from any train station to any train station?
It makes flying seem more competitive then it actually is, as trains usually aren't booked relative how much your transportation cost and instead the overall cost to also enable these almost empty routine runs
The people with only outlying routes nearby would be stuck without public transport, which is unacceptable. Commercial train companies only get contracts for the busy intercity routes if they also provide service on the outlying routes.
Now imagine we slap a tax on jet fuel similar to the one on vehicle gasoline. This would mean that the price of jet fuel would go up by 50%. The round trip ticket Madrid - Paris now costs 170 eur instead of 140 eur. Would it make Madrid - Paris train route competitive? No, not at all.
Truth is, you can make anything competitive with anything else if you put heavy enough finger on the scale, but the reason flights are much cheaper than trains, despite being faster, is not because of lack of jet fuel taxes.
If you buy a train ticket in advance, you definitely are in that price scale. I looked up train rides one month in advance [2] and a ride from Madrid to Spain is now 175€ to 210€, right in the range of the train ride.
But hopefully, Europe-wide CO2 taxes will start to price in externalities and remove the finger from the scale in favor of flights.
[1] https://taxfoundation.org/gas-taxes-in-europe/ [2] https://www.raileurope.com/en/journey/madrid-paris-14skjpm
How is this a good thing?
And don't tell me it's important for planning loads: The schedules are mostly fixed anyway, and the usage doesn't fluctuate that wildly. In some countries, like the Netherlands, this is not a thing, and the national train (NS) behaves just like a city metro: You wave your pass walking on to the platform, and wave it again on the way out.
Just to provide some data points:
Madrid-Paris by train takes about 17-20 hours and costs between 261 and 350 Euros. By plane, it takes about two and a half hours and costs (in your example) around 170 Euros.
Also take into account that for many international travellers, the time saved aspect is more relevant than the money saved aspect, as lifetime is a very limited and non-regenerating resource, and planes will win pretty much always. The idea of Europeans going from Madrid to Paris by train happily is a green pipe dream outside train enthusiast circles (for our American friends: How often would you say you take Amtrak from Chicago to New York, roughly the same distance, before you get bored of it?)
10.5 hours is still longer than 2.5 (or maybe - if you include security checkpoint time - 3.5 hours) by plane.
Also, and this may be related to the airports I fly out of, but I have hardly ever had planned more than an hour of time from entering an airport terminal to the gate. In TXL (sadly closed now for the much inferior BER), I averaged 25 minutes. At Stuttgart, I once managed to get there in 20. It all comes down to being prepared for security, knowing which security controls are often underused and picking up the right departure times. rel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnNyUGhXTsw
This is the saddest part of flying, that it really can take only 20 minutes, and instead of making it as efficient as possible, there's the opposite development, where the recommended time has gone from 1 hour to now at least two hours.
This also ignores the speed: if the prices were the other way around, with airfare twice as expensive as rail, I expect most people would still take the plane.
Airlines also typically charge for luggage, RyanAir charge extra for anything they can think of, including choosing a seat, and people booking at shorter notice subsidise those who book in advance. The cost difference for most passengers is probably smaller.
Furthermore, to make a fair comparison you need to:
- Include all the costs of the air ticket in the price comparison, in particular transport to and from the airports. Public transport is sometimes not available, or may not be convenient (e.g. with luggage or small children), and due to the large distance to many airports taxis can be very expensive
- Include all of the time involved in the flight — depending on the cities involved, your two and half hour flight could easily be 5+ hours city-centre-to-city-centre once local transport, check-in deadline, time padding for uncertainties etc is considered.
- Compare to a rail ticket for a specific train at a specific time, which is usually cheaper. The more expensive rail tickets often give you the option of multiple trains on a given day, which is a level of flexibility no air ticket gives you.
If we want to really make it a fair comparison you should also probably compare the price to the business class flight ticket, considering that even the lowest class of train ticket gives you a comparable level of comfort to a typical intra-Europe business class airplane seat.
If you need to get there as quickly as possible, the airplane is going to win on most (but not all) routes. But for many people, having fewer steps in the journey and being able to comfortably work during the journey can actually make the longer train option more convenient.
> - Compare to a rail ticket for a specific train at a specific time, which is usually cheaper. The more expensive rail tickets often give you the option of multiple trains on a given day, which is a level of flexibility no air ticket gives you.
Virtually any airline outside of the no-frills-Ryanair sector happily sells you flexible tickets (often for price).
> If we want to really make it a fair comparison you should also probably compare the price to the business class flight ticket, considering that even the lowest class of train ticket gives you a comparable level of comfort to a typical intra-Europe business class airplane seat.
You must not have had the DB ICE4 experience. I'd rather jump off an office building than to sit in one of their second-class cars ever again. They are extremely space-constrained, and now they build the window walls slightly round (and rounder so than e.g. mid-range aircraft cabins), so you sit in there with an arm folded to the inside, like Ötzi. On my ride back, I shredded the already-paid ticket and bought a new one for First Class, which was only slightly better. No European airline even comes close to that awfulness (and yes, I've had non-Business Ryanair experiences).
Planes may be more uncomfortable, but at least they don't make you sit down for half a day.
> But for many people, having fewer steps in the journey
Are you aware how often you have to switch trains if you are doing point-to-point travel? Even within Germany, I have 4 switchovers between where I live and Berlin (that is, if I am lucky). With the plane? Sit down, stand up, Berlin.
> being able to comfortably work
Unless you travel First Class AND get a seat with a table AND somehow are able to work without internet, I don't see how that argument (which comes up every once in a while) works out for you. YMMV, depending on which country you are in.
Yeah and the amount of space is not really anything specific to the train. You can vary the amount of space in planes, buses and cars as well, and the price will follow, just as in trains.
There is no reason why space is "cheaper" in a train really, it's only the scheduling of few trips that make more space available, if you have more trips on the tracks, similar to a road, space becomes constrained, like you see in subway trains.
> Virtually any airline outside of the no-frills-Ryanair sector happily sells you flexible tickets (often for price).
This is not the same thing. I do not need to tell anyone that I have decided to take a later train using my open train ticket.
Also, CDG-MAD flight isn't really between Paris and Madrid but between CDG and MAD, which have some additional costs associated with transfers (assuming you are actually going beteween the city centers). So to be competitive a train ride might not need to have the flight price exactly, but can be a bot more expensive.
But a sensible policy would be that when trains are more expensive, taxes should be put on flying until they aren't (taxes directed to trains through subsidies, infrastructure investment and so on).
The track tax is just what governments choose to do - especially since cargo trucks barely pay any road access tax.
You leave your house and you either jump on an electric bike or a self driving car of some kind. A 1-person 3-wheeled pod car would be very efficient if you are alone.
You get to a local mini-airport where electric helicopters transport you to the airport. Or maybe you just take the car to the local airport. Depends on where you live.
You jump into a electric plan and fly the city center you want to go to, or you land and jump in a second electric plane (this will happen less often as technology improves).
And then you do that same thing backwards to get the your destination.
People are talking about subsidies (by not taxing fuel for instance) for planes, but trains are also directly subsidised to the tune of billions each year. The rail network just costs a ton to build and maintain.
It's possible that despite all that rail has higher costs - but it's also quite possible that the dominating factor is the unreasonably subsidized airline fuel. The tax-exempt status is absurd, especially given other fuel and power duties - not to mention that a reasonable accounting should be taxing fuel high enough to cover the costs of the climate-change externalities, which would result in an even higher price (as it happens, due to cloud formation, air travel causes even more warming than ground based fossil fuel consumption, though I'm unaware of whether that's a significant difference).
If indeed an honest accounting were to reveal that flight is still cheaper: great! But I seriously doubt it; and in any case it's certainly time to stop subsidizing air travel like this. Let the sector succeed or fail on its own merits, not by virtue of tax shenanigans.
Just wait until you hear about how subsidised the infrastructure for cars and trucks are.
The difference is that trains operate at a loss even with high ticket prices and operational subsidies are necessary for market viability. That is not the case with car and truck usage.
I felt like private cars (the ones that are not taxi/commercial) just stay in one place the majority of its lifetime.
Pre-covid, I had a 45 minute commute. The other 22.5 hours my car just stayed in one place. Engine off. Road trips unfortunately don't happen often for me.
Trains, trucks, planes, and even taxis are probably running/flying more than it's staying still.
As others have told you, you are wrong.
US highways do pay for themselves (<https://web.archive.org/web/20130515013017/http://www.rita.d...>) (non-PDF version: <https://web.archive.org/web/20170712175437/http://www.rita.d...>), and help pay for other modes of transportation. Transit receives the biggest subsidy per passenger-mile, with rail and airlines in between.
(For those wishing more detail: From the executive summary (<https://web.archive.org/web/20170628114204/http://www.rita.d...>):
>*Highways*
>Users of the highway passenger transportation system paid significantly greater amounts of money to the federal government than their allocated costs in 1994-2000. This was a result of the increase in the deficit reduction motor fuel tax rates between October 1993 and September 1997, and the increase in Highway Trust Fund fuel tax rates starting in October 1997.
>School and transit buses received positive net federal subsidies over the 1990-2002 period, but autos, motorcycles, pickups and vans, and intercity buses paid more than their allocated cost to the federal government.
>On average, highway users paid $1.91 per thousand passenger-miles to the federal government over their highway allocated cost during 1990-2002.)
I was just in Frankfurt yesterday and the noise is substantial, in the residential neighbourhood I visited it was the main source of noise during the day.
My point was that train lines are millions of miles/km and run through the center of settlements, by design. Almost everywhere in the world, unless you live in a suburb or village, you have a high chance that you will hear trains multiple times a day.
I think there are less people under flight plaths than near trains.
I guess it depends on luck how noisy they can be. I used to get woken every night at 2am by one fucker.
It might be because we are relatively high up (about 100m) and most of the distance between us and the airport is over the sea.
Edit: Just checked on a map and when most aircraft take off from Edinburgh's runway into the prevailing wind they are pointing pretty much directly away from us which might make it more noticeable.
Sometimes it's not possible to avoid climbing over cities because the city ended up engulfing the airport (e.g. Heathrow) - so they will alternate directions to give various towns a break.
[1] page 30 of https://bisa.brussels/sites/default/files/publication/docume...
Why would that be? A typical 110 ton capacity freight train car weighs 33 tons unloaded. It has no problems staying on the tracks.
Besides both buses and planes typically weigh much more than their freight (and planes need to lift all that weight 10km vertically), so I fail to see how that is an argument against trains.
I'm guessing at the numbers here but just to illustrate my point:
If an empty bus weights let's say 10 tonnes, and an empty train 33 tons. And the load of the passengers around 7 tonnes. So in total you'd transport 40 tonnes of train as opposed to 17 tonnes of bus.
Then obviously for that load rubber tires would be more efficient, and rail would be a bad fit.
There's a minimum load per cubic inch for trains to make sense, you have to have really dense cargo.
Like I said in another comment, subways in Paris run on rubber tires, it becomes especially inefficient with rail when there are frequent stops.
It would make so much more sense, especially in the US, to develop premium Tesla buses that could use the existing freeway infrastructure, than to expand rail.
From [1], the only comparable figures are the American train and the American bus. The bus is about half as efficient as the train.
There are similar figures further down the page ("German environmental costs") -- 0.25MJ/passenger-km for long distance rail, 0.85MJ/pkm for regional rail, 1.14MJ/pkm for bus service.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport...
Exactly, and you need rolling resistance for traction. The heavier the load, the lower resistance you need, and vice versa, because the weight of the load increases resistance. Which is why you don't ship hay on trains, and don't ship iron on trucks.
No, you don’t. Look at e.g. gears: almost no friction, perfect traction.
> Which is why you don't ship hay on trains
No. You don’t ship it on trains because that is uneconomic. You keep your cattle close to your hay producing fields, where they can also graze.
Also, by your reasoning, an empty train would not be able to move?
Flying is better for NYC -> Colorado - LA but trains are better for NY -> DC corridor, and frankly, probably all the way down to Florida.
There is the issue of 'downtown' and 'walkable cities'. If you arrive in Baltimore near an airport, you have to rent a car. In European cities, you hop on the Subway to the Hotel, that makes a big difference as well.
But Boston->DC is ripe for train transformation.
And 'established circuits' SF->LA->Vegas should be high speed - that California can't sort that out is really sad, it's a matter of organizational/systematic incompetence.
There needs to be kind of a 'civic buy in' for it to work
You will come really close to that if you build a road that has the same level of right of way, and drive buses. The benefit of (expensive) bridges and tunnels are not unique for trains. Some of the subway trains in Paris run on rubber tires.
You can afford to have a bit more space to sit, wider aisles to walk and can fit a much nicer kitchen.
Bigger tables too so you can spread out your work/shopping/food.
If you haven’t tried train food before I highly recommend it. It’s stereotypically good in the same way plane food is stereotypically bad.
The fact that the equipment and the crews are absolutely cheaper doesn’t help ticket prices as much as you’d think. Time is money.
Partly because airports in Berlin are shit.
If you go at the right times you get a lot of space, you can put your feet up and have a nice table as well.
It is more expensive then flying however.
[edit] I'm not saying that rail isn't subsidized - it usually is, and often heavily, to be clear. It's the environmental impact that's the thrust of my claim.
It's that + Every step of the aviation industry is subsidized by state actors. oil companies are also incentivised to support as airlines are a massive consumer of karosene that would otherwise be a cheap byproduct of oil refining
Maintenance costs for major roads in the UK (trunk motorways and A roads) is something about half that.
I love trains. I used them all the time when I lived in the U.K. and in Japan. I've ridden Amtrak from New York to San Francisco, and the Orient Express. They are, however, very much not a one-and-done investment as is being suggested elsewhere in this thread.
People are largely familiar with road maintenance, but most of them have no idea at all about maintenance of the railway.
Strategic Road Network: £700M / 4,436 miles = £98000/km
Not included: cost of pollution, injuries and deaths on the roads.
Not considered: potential and actual capacity of the roads vs the railways, potential for historic underinvestment meaning higher current costs, whether these statistics mean a single track/road lane or all the tracks/lanes, usage costs for passengers and freight.
A breakdown of the railways costs would be useful for a better comparison, i.e. major lines only.
https://www.networkrail.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Ann...
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
The comparison for a freight railway vs. an equivalent road is obvious: private companies who need the entire capacity, like mines, build railways.
(I will leave it to someone else to find figures for high speed rail vs. an equivalent motorway.)
A freight train can move 1 ton of cargo 480 miles using a single gallon of diesel. [1]
Even city rail, Bart trains in SF average 249 miles per gallon equivalent.
Not to mention you only need what - one or two people - manning a train carrying the average equivalent of 700 truckloads. Once you commit to putting it up, it's super cheap and efficient, which is why we do it.
[1] https://www.aar.org/article/freight-rail-moving-miles-ahead-...
[2] https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/GreenSheet.pdf
It would be cool to see when Amazon gets into Rail.
DB Netz owns the vast majority of german rail and therefore prioritizes what makes them the most money. Historically that's been carrying people due to all the government and company subsidies they get for supporting commuters and students. During COVID times the rail freight increased dramatically because the personen trains were offline. I suspect that will have generated some inertia towards freight, but it will take years to see and only if the right folks at DB crunch the right numbers.
On the american side, I've sat for 20 or 30 minutes regularly (up to an hour on the worst days) while our commuter train had to wait for the rail owner's freight train to roll through. And that's a regularly scheduled commuter!!
Germans, in my experience, tend to be pretty rational folks. As much as the public likes to ream the decision makers for poor choices while armed with the perfect clarity of hindsight, my guess is they've gotten to this point because all the other choices seemed worse at the time they considered them.
However, other comments suggest that freight needs _slow_ speed and must avoid tunnels. Maybe that's the reason?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usag...
The mix of road and rail for more general freight has been heavily in favour of road for a long time, and only getting worse as Internet shopping, etc, increases the role of last-mile home delivery.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRLA
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlsruhe%E2%80%93Basel_high-s...
[·] https://goo.gl/maps/gnrqGEdz3H7vz8V99
Context:
France for example is better at punctuality IMO. But granted: smaller population density, therefore less stops needed in rural areas. And lower population density made it also a lot easier to build many complete own tracks for fast trains (TGV). Also more centralized way of thinking, so if you are around Paris: good, if you live far away of big cities, not so lucky.
Im an European having spent few years in US and also used to complain about this, until I learnt what delays mean in domestic US flights.
Not unusual to be few hours and already spent a couple of nights at the airport.
I see this argument regularly, but I do not find it very convincing. There are places in the US about the same size as France with much lower population densities as well. France is about the same size as Texas. Surely there are Texas-sized bits of land with similar densities as France in the US.
> Also more centralized way of thinking, so if you are around Paris: good, if you live far away of big cities, not so lucky.
The network is still very centralised, but it is much better than it used to be. Thanks to the Paris south and east bypasses, as well as progress on the high speed line in the south made things like Lyon-Lille, Lyon-Toulouse, Strasbourg-Nantes, or Marseille-Bordeaux quite nice. Lyon-Bordeaux is still a pain in the backside because of the mountains in the middle.
It's been separated into many subsidiaries in preparation for a privatisation. It never happened and while subsidiaries like Schenker work quite well and drive profits, others like those responsible for network or train maintenance create only costs and have been neglected. This results in delays in your daily experience with DB. DB's "punctuality" or the lack of it is actually a running gag here in Germany.
tl;nr: mismanagement.
Some brief thoughts:
- It was so fast! Under 90 minutes for a journey which would have taken a few hours by car. Clearly much faster than a plane on this particular route, due to extra waiting and security in airports.
- It was also a very comfortable mode. If you’re traveling with friends, it’d be very easy to socialize around a table. Quieter than a car or plane as well.
- Love being able to hop on/hop off without a huge ordeal or waiting in a long line.
- Too expensive for the route. I would have to book much further in advance to think it was worth it. I think maybe 6x the cost of driving, if I compared to a similar route in the US.
- Obviously this is a high speed route. That doesn’t exist between all cities.
- Looking at other tickets, connecting between two routes can be tricky. For example, if I wanted to go from Amsterdam to London, I’d might transfer to a different train in Paris. That adds a huge amount of time.
I mean, compared to the US, it’s a delight! For a similar city-to-city distance (Portland to Seattle), I’d love a 90min transit mode, especially if it was relatively cheap.
Obviously there are still some route and cost drawbacks, but there just isn’t much comparable in the US. It’s a much better system, obviously, even if it’s not perfect. At least they have high speed rail!
> Amsterdam to London
Eurostar runs a direct route, with passport control in Amsterdam. But looking at any link from Europe to London that isn’t directly served by Eurostar (i.e. any city except Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels) is going to suck.
I think it may have taken a while to get from Brussels to Amsterdam because that line hadn't yet been upgraded at the time but the journey time wasn't far off what it would have been getting to and flying from Heathrow/Gatwick/Stansted.
If you want to play it super save, you can stop for a good meal in Brussels as you are taking a break in the middle of a city, rather than hanging around in an airport.
Fully agree. Years ago, I took Amtrak from Minnesota to Seattle, and it was 36 hours. I enjoyed most everything about it except that it took. So. Long. I rarely drive down to Portland, but if we had a ~1.5hr train, I'd probably do it several times a year. Same for Seattle to BC.
I may have a rose-colored perspective of Europe's rail, but I also really enjoy Paris <-> Caen or <-> Versailles. My kids loved the night train from Paris to Venice, too. And having just flown from the Midwest to Seattle with a layover, I would GLADLY trade that ~11 hour travel day (from arrival at the airport to getting picked up at SeaTac) for an ~18 hour cross-country TGV. It'll never happen, but I can dream.
Sorry, but people give up too easily. This isn't a fusion power plant. We only have to vote for it.
That's the one that surprised me the most. I shouldn't have been surprised, I suppose, given that even Amtrak is quite expensive compared to air travel, but I was a little shocked at just how expensive trains in Europe can be. Especially the good ones.
Prices are pretty high by and large especially if you haven't booked well in advance.
As someone else mentioned, very fragmented in Europe generally. I actually try to take trains in Europe but not always a great option especially when traversing multiple countries.
You can't really compare to a similar route in the US because there are hardly any and hardly anybody uses them. The train routes in EU are busy and frequently full, just like planes. Obviously booking ahead is cheaper, how else could you do it?
Top tip, plan a head and read up a little bit on seat61:
https://www.seat61.com/trains-and-routes/london-to-amsterdam...
Top tip 2:
Overnight trains is one of the best ways to see Europe as a backpacker on the cheap. The routes are often scenic and the cost is frequently cheaper than anything else since you don't have to pay for accommodations.
Buses are a thing too. And they are not greyhound bad, but definitely not as good as trains.
When I arrived in Austin and told the story, my colleagues told me that the different cities would buy bus tickets for homeless people to move them from city to city. I don't know if that was the case here or not, but my guess would be that at least a large portion of the passengers had mental health issues.
At the time, I was concerned with my personal safety, but afterwards I was wondering if there was something I could have done to help :(.
An example: a few years ago, they introduced a new way to reduce delays caused by trains arriving so late at their destination that they cannot make their scheduled return trip. This is the so-called "Pofalla-Turn", named after the manager who supported it: if a train has a delay of over 30 minutes, the train will often just stop at some station and the passengers are told "the train ends here". They then have to figure out their journey using alternative trains.
Just imagine this happening on a flight. I often witness completely helpless tourists lost at my local rail station who don't speak the language and cannot understand why the train they have an expensive ticket and reservation for just stopped, drove back, and left them stranded here.
If you are meeting/visiting someone in a city more than 200 km away, and if you tell them that you plan to take the train, the usual response is: "Oh, good luck".
I've seen that happen in London, sadly, although it's less of a problem given the general frequency and other alternatives (bus, etc.) Also the "if the train is going to be delayed enough to cause payouts, just take it out of service before the deadline" trick.
In the Czech Republic, what would happen in that case would be that the railway company would shuttle the passengers to their destination using buses. This doesn't happen in Germany?
At least in the US, once a company has accepted you on your journey they have to eventually get you to your destination, or get you to agree to give up. One time the train even stopped and told people trying to make a connection to get out; they'd called taxis to meet the other train.
Europe doesn't have a rail system, it has dozens of systems; and they're not all compatible - which given this all originated in pre-EU times, is hardly surprising.
And that also means that it can take quite a long time to travel by rail, despite high-speed rail. If you need to cross rail-system borders - some of which are even intra-national like in France, you may need to change trains and/or take illogical routes. If, however, you're lucky and your route is on the happy path - then it can be quite competitive with short-haul flights both in hassle (if not quite speed) and cost.
Then there's the fact that operators are fragmented too, so booking a ticket or finding the optimal route can be surprisingly tricky once you need to cross several borders. I'm not sure this is worse than navigating airline booking systems, mind you, but it sure isn't efficient either.
At some international ticket booths you can still book complicated trips, but if you try to book them yourself over the internet, you will have to cut up the trip into separate parts which are treated as separate trips for the travel guarantee, so if you miss a connection due to a delay beyond your control you don't have the right to take the next train if it's not part of the same trip.
You: well you can’t complain about anything then can you!?
——
You can complain, but it’s good to have an understanding of what you’re complaining about, the parent is right. We are quick to complain about imperfection when a lot of what we have is truly quite good.
Sometimes it’s legitimate criticism, sometimes it’s being spoiled.
Any criticism that is not specific can (and probably should) be dismissed outright. Complaints and criticism should always be specific.
Person A from place without infrastructure X: wow, life with infrastructure X sure would be better. I wonder if we should invest in X?
Person B from place with infrastructure X: There's lots of problems and it annoys me daily.
Note that in this situation, the wrong conclusion is to say "well, then maybe infrastructure X is a bad idea". We want to avoid that line of thinking (since it's not an appropriate conclusion given the statements), so it's worth pointing out many tempering factors, such as those mentioned by the parent comment.
My big concern is that we're not really moving towards a single european market nor a single european train infrastructure system. I'm not sure if it can thrive as a patchwork of different ticketing systems and different rail systems. Without it it can't compete for international travel. And without it it's hard to get the right economies of scale.
Anyway, some computer figured out the transfers for us, and the itineraries were fine.
The only real problem was that we had to book weeks ahead. They physically mailed the tickets the US. I can't imagine it works like that now.
Either way, it's proof the patchwork of national operators can work well together.
bahn.de will sell me (through an international website to which they redirect) a ticket from Frankfurt to London via Paris, an 8h40m trip costing 182 EUR one way for a date ~2 weeks out.
The real issue is that I'm very unlikely to choose this option, no matter how convenient the booking, when I can get a round trip plane ticket for the same date for 156 EUR including luggage that will take 4-5 hours (including transit to/from the airport, security, boarding, waiting etc.) and gets advertised as 1h45m, 133 EUR.
It's broader than just convenient booking, it's also integrated servicing, scheduling and infrastructure. With integrated scheduling you can get better connecting trains.
> > bahn.de will sell me (through an international website to which they redirect) a ticket from Frankfurt to London via Paris, an 8h40m trip costing 182 EUR one way for a date ~2 weeks out.
Frankfurt to Brussels is 3 hours, Brussels to London is 2 hours. It could be a 5 hour trip if the trains connected, very competitive to the 4-5 hours you mentioned. (And with existing technology the durations could be cut down by 30%). But if there's no connecting trains between the German-Belgian track, and the Belgian-UK track, then it will indeed take 8-9 hours.
I'd definitely rather sit on a train. Relative to airplanes you typically get: - quiet - cheap/available wifi - spacious (leg room, work space) - large windows - easy access to your luggage (for work, food and recreation) - boarding experience that's less frustrating - boarding in a city centre as opposed to a peripheral airport
Price remains an issue, but it's also an issue of scale and value proposition. The Italian trains I've been on were simply vastly superior experiences to whatever flight I ever took and quite cost-competitive. Take Bologna to Napels, it's a 600km route that is 3h 20m by train for just 38 euros, central station to central station. Flights certainly don't win out here. By comparison, Frankfurt to London is 640km as the bird flies. It seems once things start crossing borders and you get into disconnected international tracks, scheduling, ticketing, infrastructure, prices and connections start to suck. But that's in part a solvable issue that can be largely mitigated. If Italy can do a 600km track for 30 euros in 3.3 hours, that should be a attainable across Europe with the proper strategy and investments within 20 years.
There's also the point of pricing in externalities for air flight, not doing so makes them unduly competitive. That's unlikely to last. Some countries are adding 10-20 euros to flight prices this year alone as a start, making 1-2 hour flights less interesting vs trains. Although I've read reports both ways (how flights are undertaxed, as well as how trains are already very subsidised) so I'm not sure on this point.
> bahn.de will sell me (through an international website to which they redirect)
The problem with international-bahn.de is that what it sells aren't real through tickets, so if you miss a connection, you're depending on the goodwill of the operators involved to let you continue your journey without having to buy a (potentially very expensive) new ticket, or pay you a taxi respectively hotel accommodation if you've missed the final train of the day.
The only way to get proper through tickets involving connections both on the French and the German side (e.g. I luckily live near the Paris – Strasbourg – Stuttgart service, but technically I still need a connecting regional train for a few stations) is by buying them from a ticket office, but then again due to some obscure technical issues this hasn't been possible since the end of February.
Of course we had to improve from much lower standards than Germany, I guess, so I have no idea if our expectations of good are the same but nevertheless
Long distance PKP trains are still late everyday. The regional trains in my city tend to be over-packed, and from a technical pov they’re more like larger diesel buses than trains.
However, in response to the earlier comment and this one as well, I would have to say that investment doesn’t always mean immediate visible effects. The biggest investment to make in rail is in the infrastructure. You don’t feel as a passenger which parts of the track are old and which are new, and they are pretty expensive to build and maintain.
I also would wonder how much freight rail is in that investment, because that we don’t see or feel at all.
Here in western Poland however it was a bit easier - lots of tracks remained since 19th century. And with these diesel buses popping up, an opportunity presented itself to go relatively low investment and lots of political bang. Those trains are usually way too packed in my personal experience.
Similarly, Pendolino high speed rail was developed and implemented to huge fanfare. Only the tickets ended up being so expensive that basically only the upper-upper-middle class wants to take them. Why take the high-speed train at double the price to get you there twice as fast, when all you need is to get there?
Then again, our fastest train does 200 kph, so we only have "old shitcans". I reckon this is because we're 12% the population of Germany on 126% the area. It's not worth the investment with high speed rail.
Then again these numbers are a bit exaggerated, you could essentially cut Sweden in into 2 pieces just above Stockholm and you'd end up with one relatively densely populated area and something that would more or less resemble Alaska in population.
What's great about the north is it is our own little Alaska in the sense that we have a metric shitload of iron ore so pure you can put it straight to the furnace, keeps us southerners afloat for sure.
On the other hand - Pendolino is a real step forward, and at least Cracow is trying to improve general quality and invest in intra-city trains, which maybe not the fastest, but still much better than buses or trams.
That’s my rant on that subject. On the other hand I do think the one great thing we got out of the previous system is a well developed train network. Even with all of it’s faults and issues, trains remain a great way to get around Poland. And that is something to be grateful for. I’ll check out that book, thanks!
Amusingly enough, most of this is something we got from the systems before that, or simply other countries :-) Just look at this map: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_kolejowy_w_Polsce#/m...
See how the rail network is much denser in the western regions? Now compare it to this map: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziemie_Rzeczypospolitej_pod_za...
(...Perhaps my view has been formed by the fact that I've come from a low base in Anglophone countries, so everything seems much better in Europe.)
___
Edit: I must be fair, there was one European route that I traveled on that was truly substandard and that was the single-track Kaiser Franz Josephs Bahn (Emperor Franz Joseph Railway) from Vienna (Wien Nordbahnhof) to Prague via Gmünd — not the good two track route that goes via Břeclav and Brno (which I've also traveled on).
The railway track of the Kaiser Franz Josephs Bahn was in dire—most desperate—need of maintenance when I traveled on it and that was a few years before the Iron Curtain fell and Czechoslovakia was still communist.
There's no doubt that's the worst track I've ever traveled on (it's one of those experience one never forgets). The train traveled so slowly that we passengers thought we could get out and walk faster, moreover the carriages rocked wildly from side to side and we had a constant feeling that the train was going to derail at any moment (had it gone any faster then I reckon it certainly would have derailed). I have no idea whether that track is still in such poor condition today or not (at the time I was on the understanding that the track had deliberately not been maintained since the War because of Iron Curtain politics).
Nevertheless, it was by far the exception in my experience.
That said, to be fair I found the UK track maintenance pretty good although trains weren't as punctual as they were in most of Europe. Likewise, the carriages/comfort was somewhat primitive compared to most of what I've experienced on the Continent.
I have to say it's quite some years since I've traveled on British Rail and I understand things have improved considerably in recent years (one only has to watch Portillo speaking to camera from a UK train carriage to realize that).
My worst (and repeated) experience on UK Rail was the horrible Gatwick Express which was often notoriously late (especially the time when it broke down midway to the airport and I missed a flight to New York and lost a whole day in the process).
Perhaps my most memorable experience—it's what always first comes to mind whenever I think of rail travel in the UK—it's the horrible apology for a cheese sandwich that I was offered (and at an enormous ripoff price) on an 'overnighter' from London to Edinburgh (I've witnesses, they suffered the same fate). I can't say I've ever eaten a worse one.
Presumably, the latest food offerings have also improved somewhat since then.
Right, I suppose the quality of food has always been one significant differentiator between the UK and Continental railways. As mentioned, I haven't been to the UK for some years now but over the many times that I have (I'm actually a UK citizen), I've noticed a steady improvement in the food, especially so in London. Over the years, I've noticed lunchtime and takeaway meals improve out of sight and the number restaurants serving foreign food multiply manyfold (I've found London's Indian restaurants pretty much second to none—reckon Indian must be pretty much considered an endemic food by now).
This begs the question why hasn't the food on UK rail improved. Perhaps we should send the executives responsible not to the Continent but to Japan to see how it should be done: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/japan-train-food.
(I can attest firsthand at the accuracy of that article, the food on Japanese trains is truly excellent. There's only one drawback: if you're going to some obscure destination that you've not been to previously then don't let the food (or anything else) distract you. Whilst stations in big urban centres often have station names in both Japanese and Roman scripts outlying ones often don't. You either remember the hiragana or kanji scrips accurately for the station names or you count the number of stations accurately from where you embarked—or you do both. Luckily, I've never missed a stop but I've had a few narrow escapes.)
Good experience: Virgin first class from London to Manchester. That said, it would have been prohibitively expensive if we hadn't booked the tickets well in advance. Pre-booked and restricted to a specific train they were around 50 quid each. If we would have bought the tickets before boarding the train they weould have been well over 200£ each.
Bad experience: The company that makes my blood boil even thinking about them is Northern. Whenever I have to use them I seriously consider travelling by couch. They are just such an appalling experience and a real sorry excuse for a train company.
Overall I don't think privatization of the railways were a good idea. Not when specific lines are dished out to specific companies and don't allow competition on them.
I've recently traveled by that same line. The train has changed a bit, the film seems to be gone but the ~100km trip takes 5 minutes longer than it used to, averaging <50km/h... So still ways to go.
edit: spelling
This happened to me while on a train to Warsaw 20 years ago, as a high-school student. Ironically I travelled to the Parliament where Buzek, the at-the-time PM, came back from Athens having signed the EU Treaty of Accession to give an impromptu press release. Crazy how much progres we had seen since, and how many set backs.
edit: Damn spelling again
I do believe that trains are really good in compare to what we had like decade or so ago
Quiet, looking modern, clean, reasonable seats and their "placement" strategy
For comparison: monthly ticket price is like 10% of minimal wage (or 50% of that for students) for distance around 100km/day
Some cities, like Łomża, lost access to rail entirely (although IIRC it's going to be restored after an over six year hiatus).
I still drive between Wrocław and Warsaw, even though I would rather travel by train, but there's no dedicated track between these cities, so it has to take a long detour, ultimately making the trip take 6h vs 4h point-to-point by train and car respectively.
Here in Canada, it sometimes feels like they're almost ashamed of what little they're spending and even try to hide it away, or spread the big capital expenses over multiple years to make it look like even less.
So in order to get a few hundred cars off the road, Amtrak would have to build a holding track (carbon cost), add more rolling stock to the route, burn more diesel, and a residential neighborhood full of children would have had diesel trains idling for hours a day.
The total economic and environmental value of the program was negative by most measures.
1. Amtrak ridership will barely grow, at most by a few hundred riders per day. If you're this bearish on trains then naturally you'll think nobody wants to take the train and you don't think Amtrak should build more trains. You're coming into this assuming that nobody wants to ride the train.
2. Building dedicated track between Chicago and Milwaukee would be cost prohibitive for Amtrak or otherwise infeasible. The majority of the cost for building track comes from acquiring ROW (so purchasing the land), grade separations, and utility relocations needed for laying the track. Chicago to Milwaukee in particular is one of the cases where these costs are probably _lowest_ as much of the ROW is cheap to acquire (outside of the direct Chicagoland area), the land is fairly flat so grade separations are rarely needed and utility relocations are cheap to build.
3. The opportunity cost in carbon for added vehicles on the road would somehow be less than the opportunity cost for rolling stock to idle. Even if freight rail continues to refuse to electrify in perpetuity, the added carbon from private vehicle emissions will quickly dwarf extra carbon emissions from idling freight cars.
I think you're coming at this from a "trains are stupid, here's why" perspective rather than an unbiased cost and carbon perspective. These arguments change in areas where ROW acquisition is expensive or grade separations and utility relocations are difficult, but Chicago to Milwaukee has very few of these problems. In particular the problem in this part of the US is that while rail works to move from city-to-city, most Midwestern cities (other than Chicago) have no actual transit to speak of. Once the Amtrak drops you into Milwaukee, if there's nowhere to go via train, then you're stuck, in which case you may as well drive the whole way. That goes back to the fact that rail/transit in the US has been historically and systematically underfunded, particularly so in the Midwest where Detroit had a lot of negotiation (read: money) leverage in the golden years for American auto companies.
Especially if we are talking about installing high speed lines anyways, doesn't make sense to turn a freight line into a high speed line and then share it (other than the fact that you wouldn't need to eminent domain as much).
The bathrooms are less claustrophobic though.
Vastly fewer, per passenger mile, then passenger cars, comparable to busses, less than scheduled airline flights.
If you think that building rail viaducts and rail grade separations are carbon expensive, wait till you learn about the carbon used for roadway viaducts and roadway grade separations.
You can argue that rails usually run on much more consistent of a grade than roadways but that's only to decrease the amount of acceleration that's required by train cars and to increase top speeds. Freight rail is a special case because freight companies try to avoid as much wear-and-tear on their train cars as feasible within their delivery windows, unlike passenger rail which necessarily cares more about speed and less about wear-and-tear.
I mean, if the goal is to make the smallest number, why stop at "per person per year"? If you instead reflected the number as "per person per second" then you would see that the improvement is barely measurable.
That said, that seems like a pretty good improvement, percentage-wise, but a lot of folks talk about trains in Europe as if it's so amazing that everyone is taking it all the time. I'd be curious of that number relative to the number of flights taken per year per capita.
In my mind, the optimal realistic situation is to have rail for longer distances (1-8 hours), but not trans-oceanic obviously, and then either ICE or local light rail for smaller trips
I guess the more specific question would be how many Germans fly to elsewhere in Germany or Central Europe vs. taking a train. I generally have to either do a long car trip or a flight to get around in the US outside of some specific corridors. Presumably most of Europe has the option to take the train instead, but are they?
According to Wendover Productions.
Its more than ICE trains not more than the whole of DB. Its 100m ICE trips per year but 2600m DB trips per year in 2019 (c. 31 per capita per year)
https://www.statista.com/statistics/936254/deutsche-bahn-pas...
But yes, the 2600m DB passengers probably mixes long distance and short distance service to some degree.
https://dewiki.de/Lexikon/M%C3%BCnchner_Verkehrsgesellschaft
Amtrak had 31.3 million passengers in 2016 [1]. That's 0.095 passengers per capita. And that's on all Amtrak trains, while the German number is just for the ICE high-speed trains. Amtrak's high-speed Acela trains only had 3.5 million passengers in 2019 or 0.01 per capita. [2]
Per capita is just not a useful number for this discussion.
[1] https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1155658/acela-high-speed...
I'm not expecting to have them be similar numbers. My original point was purely anecdotal - I usually take 1-3 Amtrak rides a year and I don't even live in a part of the country that has good Amtrak service. It's odd to me that folks in a country with much better service use it less than I feel like I would use Amtrak if I could.
As a general example, the Midwest is roughly the same size and population as France, so if we made the investment we could reasonably have a regional high speed network centered on Chicago. We’ll never have coast to coast high speed rail, but having a few regional networks is certainly doable.
I'm pretty sure many Germans don't use the ICE at all. While service is a lot better, the way to and from the high-speed train station often makes it inefficient, especially because the German autobahn is also world-class and doesn't suffer from a "last miles" problem.
Which is still an absolute number. Just in another context.
It's a relative improvement of 32% which is approximately 3% per year. Not ground breaking, but a nice steady improvement.
ICE usage is also much higher (~6x ) than in-country plane usage to give another point of context. [1](percentage of domestic flights) [2](total air passengers)
I think trips per capita is misleading as a high percentage of the population isn't doing much in-country long distance travel to begin with.
[1] https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2021/06...
[2] https://knoema-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/knoema.com/atlas/G...
More meaningful numbers would be how many use it 5 times or more in a year, and how many miles they traveled. Anybody who doesn't use the train at all doesn't really count, unless there was a likelihood of enticing them aboard.
Unfortunately, that's not true (the investment part). In preparation for the IPO (that never happened because of the crash) Deutsche Bahn was heavily tuned for profit since the mid 90s which led to a massive decrease in investment. As rail infrastructure has a rather long service life, a lot of those cost-cutting measures have only beginning to be felt rather recently. Now not only do the investments that have not been made have to be made up for, but the funding gap has caused the infrastructure to decay even further.
Also, a lot of money has been spent on vanity projects like Stuttgart 21, instead of much-needed extension of freight lines like the one in the upper Rhine valley.
And the ticket price inflation is twice as high as regular CPI.
first, Germany has had a high level of sefvice quality with trains for the last 15 years, compared to much of the world, there's little to improve
and second, DB had become a HUGE holding company of many kinds of business endeavours and rail service is not in the states hand anymore, while the company "optimizes" for profit which makes travel aside of high traffic routes become worse and worse and coverage deteriorates.
Well, if my single unit of university economics taught me anything, its that you have produced the most efficient possible rail system and Germans are getting exactly what they want. Congratulations!
It's quite a while since I've traveled by Deutsche Bahn but I found it very efficient and on time when I did. What do you reckon is the reason for the crumbling infrastructure? There was huge reinvestment after the war to renew war-damaged infrastructure and rail infrastructure usually has a very long life (many rail bridges and viaducts built in the mid 1800s are still in service today).
Was that war reconstruction rushed/not well implemented or what?
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verkehrsprojekt_Deutsche_Einhe...
That is a massive change. Subjectively, how a train trip feels on that route went from "quite exhausting in the end" to "oh I just opened my laptop, couldn't even finish what I had started".
(I just checked for "Munich to Berlin next monday": 120€ cheapest for trains unless I want to sleep in them, 105€ for a flight, with more choice of time.)
> Even if we assume two hours for arrival, boarding and an hour for local transportation in Berlin, flight would still win on price.
It is 50€ if you look for the Monday in 2 weeks. For quite a bit of my travel, I am booking 2-3 months in advance, and it is usually around ~30-40€, first class, for a 600km trip. (This site is quite helpful: https://bahn.guru/) Some other things to consider: Trains (ICE) are substantially more comfortable and "freer"; you can walk around, don't have to pretend to listen to a safety choreography, keep your data on the whole time etc.
Trains also don't restrict the amount of luggage you can take with you. In fact when my grandma died, I transported a ~2x4m persian rug by ICE, and while I got some comments on it, and switching trains was a pain, it was a very cheap option for a poor student with a big rug.
On another note, there will be a 9€ Ticket for summer in Germany that allows you to use all non-high speed trains within Germany, which will be a really interesting experiment.
Trains are nice if you need to transport anything of volume, especially bikes, if you stay longer than a day or two so you can amortize the travel time, if you have lots of run-up time, and probably cheaper if you travel a lot. They're definitely competitive, it's just not a slamdunk, and planes do straight win sometimes depending on requirements.
A few examples, all of which have in common that we arrived 3 to 9 hours late to our destination:
- The train leaves earlier than planned (!), but they tell you by email at 7:00 in the morning for a train leaving at 9.
- The AC on the train is not running perfectly. They offload everyone at a random train station, and you spend four hours sitting on the stairs of an overcrowded commuter train with kids and luggage, instead of one hour on a mildly hot train.
- Stoerung auf der Strecke: twice (!) the train stopped for hours in the middle of the tracks. Once the train had stopped in the middle of a bend, and we spent hours tilted to the side. The other time we missed a flight even though we were on the regular shuttle from city center to the airport.
On the other side of the equations are superfast trains like the TGV, this one is expensive but in my humble opinion it is faster than plane on routes like Paris-Lyon and I'll take train over plane on any day at distances shorter than 500-700km.
There is an ongoing development, Rail Baltica, European gauge, being built to join Helsinki through the Baltic states, to Poland, which will link up with Germany. The end date has slipped (it was supposed to be in 2024, now it's pushed to 2026) but construction is already ongoing, and it looks quite promising.
As a tourist when you have all the time in the world, I would agree it's part of the charm. When the development of your economy depends on such a neglected and terrible line, it's an unbelievable nightmare for people living in either country (Personal anecdotes support this).
In my experience, airplanes are worth once you talk about trips over 800km. Trips that you cannot do in less than 2 hours of train.
Plus, one could try to revive night trains. Arriving at 9am in the morning in some far away city, we’ll rested, would be useful both for vacations and business trips. And could easily allow distances of 1500km even without having high speed rail lines everywhere, or somewhat longer distances with.
Sadly going through the alps at that speed is not that simple. But I'd love to have interconnected cities.
The linked article talks about this:
>New sleeper train connections are cropping up across Europe. The Austrian operator ÖBB Nightjet has overnight services to cities like Rome, Milan, Brussels and Amsterdam, and recently initiated a Vienna-Paris overnight link.
In central Europe, commuting by train is also pretty common. You might get packed pretty tightly at the most busy commuting times, but you avoid the huge traffic jams in and out of major cities which can waste hours of your day.
With a plane 1,000 km trip including all things you mention like arriving at the airport in advance, boarding, finding your way back to the city center, etc. would come easily to 4-5 hours when you calculate it door-to-door. This could be comparable to a train at 200-250 km/h.
Also, trains tend to be more punctual and less prone to delays compared to planes. And arriving in the city center as opposed to 40-50 kms out is a big advantage indeed.
Plus airports have this pesky habit of losing all your luggage, even on fairly trivial flights. Recently my journey was Geneva -> Barcelona -> Seville, and they lost my big luggage with complete paraglider (4000+ euro) and other stuff (cca 1000 euro). For a week, they couldn't even locate it, had to buy tons of stuff and rent basic paraglider from school and I started saying goodbye to all equipment. No real compensation for anything. Then it just showed up in place I told them to deliver to, not even apology (vueling airlines, but I blame airports for this more than airline).
That's just one sample out of quite a few on how to ruin your dream vacation by flying.
Well, if they just let go of the security theater and phobias, we could theoretically have a situation where you just board with no procedures, like on a train: Ride a local train/metro/bus up to the larger train station, flash your card or pass or what-not, maybe flash your passport, put your suitcase on the baggage cart or beltway going up to the cargo hold, and get on the plane. No queues, no checks and no nothing - basically like a train.
I realize it's not that trivial to switch to that way of thinking of air travel, but again - not impossible.
Also, in Germany trains are very often late or have other issues.
Nevertheless, I agree that it's more relaxed to go by train most of the time (unless it's super crowded) and I'll sometimes pay extra for that comfort.
Wait, what? I am really surprised to read this.
It's also a dense network with lots of passengers and I do manage to get around so there's that? But you were probably thinking of Switzerland, not Germany :o)
Yeah, try to travel by train in Germany during any of the christian holidays, and you'd think you're in india by how overcrowded and chaotic it is.
And that's given the current shitty track system. The only bit of genuine high-sped rail on that connection is Frankfurt-Cologne, maybe a quarter of the trip. Top speed is around 300 km/h on that bit; otherwise around 200, sometimes less. One point of comparison: The fully modernized Berlin-Munich track is about the same length; some trains take less than 4 h and that's with stops along the way.
This is a trip that I'm very familiar with, but it's very typical [0]. Note that some countries have chosen different tradeoffs - e.g., France and Spain with their ultra-fast point-to-point connections, eschewing a more dense high-speed net.
The point of all this being: Trains already work great, and can still get quite a bit better with investment - certainly quite some ways above 600 km trips.
I wouldn't look at trip time alone, but uninterrupted time during which you can do work. On most brief flights there barely is any. By contrast, for a business traveler, a long high-speed rail trip can simply be the first part of the day.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/High_Spe...
* prices and conditions vary between countries. For example, in Germany your children can travel for free until 14, but apparently this is not universal and it can be a big difference for families
* in a lot of countries you can pay for discount cards and get 25/50 percent off. Even in places like Switzerland where the prices are notoriously high, the discount card is comparatively cheap and to my understanding it's valid on pretty much all public transportation (e.g. city trams). If you travel even slightly frequently, it pays for itself quickly.
* similar to planes, trains in some countries offer discounted prices if you book in advance, and for a specific train. E.g. on my last trip to Switzerland, the price was around 160, but I paid 40 for one leg (even first class!) and going back it was 120 because I had the 25% off card. The card itself cost around 60 so it basically was worth it for one trip. When I was a student 10 years ago, I would travel to e.g. Budapest on a German train with their "Europe Special" ticket for 40 (30 with 25% off). You had to book in advance, but this is true for planes as well if you want something really cheap.
* others have commented on this, but there are a ton of external costs for planes and cars. Usually a taxi to the airport, or parking or whatnot. Trains in comparison put you mostly in the city centre and quite often bundle a city ticket so you can hop on a bus, tram or subway to your final destination.
* planes in Europe don't (always?) pay VAT on international travel. that is quite a big difference in the total price
* trains even if not always punctual often come with a guarantee, meaning you can get money back for a delay. In Germany it's 25% if you are more than an hour late, and 50% for two hours. My family spent over two hours a couple days ago sitting on a cramped plane because they could not take off from Berlin, the only thing they can do about it is cry.
There are things that are quite infuriating about trains and train companies, but IMHO their prices are not all that unreasonable. The comfort and speed for short and intermediate trips also has its price im general.
Unfortunately, there’s no compensation for this flight.
Also I think from experience of other people it's generally a hassle to the point that most people outsource it to some kind of a company for a fee. On (german) trains you ask for a form, fill it out and get the money back, hassle free.
In road traffic there are maybe 50 deaths per year per million people (wild guess, but not that far off). With trains in Europe, it's not even 1 per year per million. I don't have to think about all the "almost-accidents" that are part of road traffic. This does come with a price, but buying a newer and safer car also comes with a price.
That’s why people use deaths per passenger mile to compare things.
I took a car train from Hamburg to Vienna last year. Drive the car into the train, and get a sleeping coach for the 14 hour journey - as comfortable a journey I could ask for. Except it cost about €1000 if I remember correctly for my family. I still preferred it because it negated the need to rent a car in Austria, and also saved in baggage costs on a flight. However, if trains could be scaled up, the costs would come down and become competitive even for people who aren’t needing those perks like baggage and car transport.
The train (and tracks) are not as compatible across Europe as I thought. You can travel from Denmark to Austria by train, but be ready to change from Danish train to German, to Austrian train because of different track or signaling systems. Now, the anxiety is on the passenger to not miss a connection at each of those countries (sometimes at the middle of the night).
If EU regulated the train system as a continent, and brought in a whole “European rail system” and not just a ticketing system that works with individual country systems, that would be the beginning of rail as a great transport option. I still have hopes that it’d happen. I just wish it will happen sooner and in my life time.
Th gauge is the same in many countries, but signalling and power is not. Some train engines are ok with it, others are not, train cars are usually fine. They change engines on multi-country trips, but this only takes a few minutes and can be safely ignored. It's still the same train.
But I will argue to death that it's not cumbersome :-). I guess it depends on the country, but the only cumbersome thing are the many different options and fares where it's usually difficult to figure out what the cheapest one is. Changing trains... don't know, it's rare for me to use only one train, and I've never had issues with it other than the train being late and missing a connection. Otherwise it's easy and I even like it, since it feels faster. My record is 7 trains :-).
In Germany the default is a non-flexible ticket, and you can pay for a more expensive flexible one.
As a result the default train experience in Switzerland feels more expensive but with a way to get a discount, while Germany is the opposite. And people in Germany plan their train trips waaaaaay earlier in advance to be sure they have the cheapest prices (the earlier you book the cheaper it is) and flexible tickets are mostly used for business trips.
Anyway, I'm neither German nor Swiss, but I think there are certain prejudices about both countries. Germans might look to save money, but realistically everybody needs to plan their trip somewhat in advance, unless it's a short weekend trip. I made the mistake recently of not booking my train from Switzerland in advance because I didn't know when I exactly need to go and figured what the hell, I'll just buy it when I figure it out. Big mistake, almost everything was booked out, and I barely made it home.
Also, SBB likes to complain about DB, and there might be truth to some criticism, but realistically the two companies don't solve the same problems, in terms of passenger count, distances traveled and overall complexity.
I didn't mean to say one way or the other is bad (your use of "prejudices" has a negative connotation, which isn't what I wanted to highlight). I'm Swiss, lived there for ~25 years, and now live in Germany since a good amount of time. And it was funny to observe this difference in expectations and behaviours between the two countries.
I've never seen SBB/CFF complain about Deutsche Bahn so I'm not sure what you mean here. I personally like both groups, their services are really good IMHO.
> Germans might look to save money, but realistically everybody needs to plan their trip somewhat in advance, unless it's a short weekend trip
I mean, I can generally agree here, but the German approach to saving money is waaaay more extreme than what I've experiences living in other countries! People book their trips like 6 months in advance to have some reductions, and will use every single way to save a few cents!
(Note that I'm from the French speaking side of Switzerland, which is culturally quite different from the German speaking side)
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alstom_Coradia_LINT#iLint
[2] - https://fuelcellsworks.com/news/poland-pesa-presented-a-hydr...
[3] - https://www.railwaypro.com/wp/talgo-to-launch-hydrogen-train...
[4] - https://constructionreviewonline.com/news/construction-of-hy...
[5] - https://www.orlen.pl/en/about-the-company/sustainable-develo...
Even if it is just Blue hydrogen being burnt here, the splitter plants can have some carbon capture in it which would be impossible to install on a moving train (beats diesel and also direct LNG burning).
That said, with trains there's no real argument against electrification. The wheels have been electrically driven for a few decades now. It's not like they need to come up with motors or work out batteries.
Liquid hydrogen takes up a lot more room than kerosene. The insulated liquid-hydrogen tank is quite a lot bigger than the kerosene tank -- maybe it is a whole other car -- but so what? Room on a train is cheap. What matters is weight. The tank is light, and the weight of LH2 needed to go the same distance is much less. The difference is weight that doesn't itself need to be transported.
Furthermore, the LH2 can be produced and banked on-site at the railyard, and during peak-production hours, so cheaply.
So, a win all around. Not as big a win as LH2-powered aircraft, but better, and much easier to retrofit.
Better gravimetric energy density doesn't make so much difference for a train, so its other advantages -- production on-site, zero emissions, carbon-neutral -- are more important.
At the trainyard, the LH2 would be banked in an underground tank where insulation is easy. It is not necessary to refrigerate it after it is liquified. It will gradually boil off, so you just make more anytime the level goes down, whether from boil-off or pumping out to a locomotive tank.
My expectation was that native electrical energy will be cheap enough that wasting some is better than complicating your system. Each tradeoff will be an engineering analysis. In this case it will all depend on how good your insulation is, which is of course better in an underground tank. Many old conventions will be overturned as the marginal cost of electrical power at peak times gets cheaper.
Both will be tried, so we will see.
Which adds three energy transformation steps (Electricity for H2O to H2 + compression, H2 + 02 to water and heat, water and heat to mechanical movement) as opposed to electricity to motor.
Hydrogen is a meme.
But hydrogen is not best compressed, but liquified. There might be some value in compressing it on the way to liquifaction. Liquifying hydrogen consumes some energy too.
How about looking at the facts first?
> All high speed lines in Germany (ICE)
I suppose almost all:
https://www.bahnausbau-nordostbayern.de/files/img/Bahnstrom/...
It seems to be a lot more concentrated on the worse side of the rhine river. ;)
It's true that it's contingent on a carbon-free source of hydrogen. But if something like thermochemical hydrogen production through nuclear [1] or solar takes off, hydrogen fuel represents an energy-dense fuel that could be used in lieu of fossil fuels in many applications.
1. https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/gc/gc57inf-2-att1_e...
Don't most countries already use these? World wide, a third of all rails is electrified in some way, and for long-distance rail, that's bound to be overhead.
Most European rail is electrified. So hydrogen or any other diesel replacement is only relevant for very rural, very sparsely used lines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_tran... claims to include both passenger and non-passenger networks.
In the US, the east coast line is electrified from Boston to DC (possibly further? Can't remember.)
Europe's lines are economical to electrify because of greater density. Electrifying a rail line costs the same regardless of how many trains use it, so it breaks even in dense and frequently traveled routes but not on sparse lines. Guess which is more common in a less densely populated continent like North America?
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_electrification_in_th....
Especially if hydrogen becomes very cheap through something like generation through waste-heat from nuclear power plants, hydrogen propulsion may make more sense.
1. https://www.freightwaves.com/news/is-electrifying-the-freigh...
The study you quote is for southern california so that probably is on the high end of an estimate. Probably a different budget for West Virginia.
In other news, one of the maintenance roads for the Golden Gate Bridge was recently completed. Adjusted for inflation, it cost more and took
longer than the bridge itself. If I remember right, one of the bus stops in SF also cost more than the Golden Gate Bridge.
Yeah building dozens of large scale hydrogen plants, trenching and welding pipelines, building massive excess of necessary renewable energy, figuring distribution networks, deciding storage & container standards, house retrofits etc to run our society will be much easier than ...(checks notes)... Hanging wires
That addresses all your concerns, except maybe that people will want to produce hydrogen at home from their own solar arrays. That's expensive, but arguably unnecessary, since the hydrogen would mostly just be used to power cars.
The main difference is that you can use the power grid to "charge" the fuel cell while it's in motion. You simply generate hydrogen at its destination, then rapidly pump the hydrogen into tanks when it stops.
So, the higher the duty cycle of the vehicle, the more sense hydrogen makes. Also, hydrogen has higher energy density (volume and weight per unit energy are both lower).
For those two reasons, I'd guess long haul, heavy use lines would be the first use case for hydrogen, and that batteries won't ever be particularly competitive for those use cases.
The existence of r&d initiatives is a signal but doesn't seem sufficient to make the case.
Just make they hydrogen into methanol or whatever and use mostly existing tech instead.
- Train Travel works when the frequency of trains is so high that you do not need to think about "a" connection, but instead just choose the "next" connection.
- Any significant number of delayed trains are a problem when one has important appointments. Morning meetings require an overnight trip, even if an early morning connection would usually work.
- European Train companies produce shitty trains (compare to Japan), lead amongst them Siemens for Deutsche Bahn. Train restaurants are broken too often. A/C breaks down in summer. Alstom TGVs are an exception - if they are pre-Siemens-merger attempt period.
- Electrification of lines is just not happening anymore in Germany. It's politically more sexy to do something with Hydrogen. Very odd.
- Deutsche Bahn is the largest user of Round-Up (Glyphosat) in Germany. Still - vegetation along the tracks causes frequent delays (burning brush, fallen trees), because maintenance crews have been cut.
- By trying to remodel stations cheaply for commerce, most stations in Germany have become unpleasant to navigate. Signage is particularly bad (compared to Japan).
- The mood in the train system has become very aggressive. Drinking groups who ransack compartments, passengers who get angry because of delays and start shouting, conductors who react unprofessionally - it's all just about to blow up.
"Odd" is a fine euphemism to describe Germany's energy strategy.
> By trying to remodel stations cheaply for commerce, most stations in Germany have become unpleasant to navigate. Signage is particularly bad (compared to Japan)
Yes... Parisian train stations are also becoming gigantic shopping malls that happen to have train tracks in their premises... an infuriating experience.
A couple weeks later I was in the London underground, felt like I could not get lost there if I tried.
Also they are not accessible. Strollers are inconvenient to bring - wheelchairs are a nightmare.
That's interesting. What are the worst examples of this? I had found some Japanese stations rather labyrinthine too, especially Tokyo ones with multiple public/private systems and above/underground malls cobbled together like Shinjuku, so I'm surprised that the European experience is worse.
I found that whilst the duration of the flying time was considerably shorter than the train trip the overall flying time was still quite long given all the rigmarole at the airports and getting to and from them.
I found that traveling this intercity circuit on the Mozart much more enjoyable and relaxing than flying even though the trip took typically between 13 and 14 hours (Wiki says 13h10), the food was quite excellent (for a train) and the trips were in the daytime so there was much scenery to look at. When not doing that I could occupy myself with written/paperwork work or read a book and not be interrupted. What was really excellent about the Mozart was that it was not only an intercity train but also it took me directly to the very heart of both cities—there was no need to travel to the outskirts of the cities to their airports (I've always found traveling to and from airports a nuisance and pain so I've always considered train travel a great advantage over flying (except when flying exceptionally long distances, intercontinental, etc.).
I've not done that circuit for quite some years now and I'm sorry to see the Mozart service terminated. After reading the article I did a check on its replacement service and it seems that now a section of the trip is by TGV and that there are now two changes between the cities. Despite the introduction of the TGV, the travel time between Paris and Vienna is 13h15 — which is all of 5 minutes longer than the nominal time taken by the Mozart. Shame really.
Nevertheless, I cannot help but believe that Europe's investment in passenger train transport will pay off handsomely. When I was doing a lot of traveling around Europe by train I found most of the services quite excellent—much more so than in Anglophone countries—and I reckon that the main reason for this is that culturally the Europeans seem to be much more at home with and adapted to train travel. As such, it's very unlikely that that investment in trains will be wasted.
https://www.sncf.com/en/passenger-offer/travel-by-train/nigh...
Moreover, I thought the couchette prices to be very competitive to what I've experience in the past. (Again, my memory may not be correct but I base that comparison on my recollection on what I thought I paid for my last couchette which was from Paris to Bordeaux.)
Also, the option to go via Zürich is certainly most welcome, one of which I'd gladly take advantage.
This all reminds me that I must return to Vienna again soon (I lived there long enough to consider it my second home). :(
These prices are inconceivable in the US, where competition in air travel has essentially been eliminated.
The most hated airline, Spirit, has the most consistent profit margin 10%+, but all the others are near 0% most years.
Like most forms of infrastructure, American traveling preferences are driven mostly by a mixture of emotion and lobbying. Air travel doesn't make much economic sense and hasn't for years.
And as you say europe also has a dense road network. The fuel tax is interesting, definitely, but in my US/EU comparison price delta is often a factor of five or more.
As far as taxes are concerned, it would be interesting to do a cost breakdown of fuel to see how much of the delta comes from taxes.
You have a weird definition of "barely profitable" given the average corporate profit margin in the US is 9% and your claim "others are near 0% most years" is an outright fabrication.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/UAL/united-airline...
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAL/american-airli...
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/JBLU/jetblue-airwa...
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ALK/alaska-air/pro...
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/LUV/southwest-airl...
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DAL/delta-air-line...
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SAVE/spirit-airlin...
The 31 euro air travel “price” doesn’t include a fuel surcharge, airport fees, baggage fees, then a nice fat 20% VAT tax on top, etc, all of which can often exceed the “price” itself. Maybe you should start an airline and report back.
If air travel in the US was such a profitable biz as you say, airlines wouldn’t be constantly on the brink of insolvency.
[1] https://www.lafinancepourtous.com/2021/06/28/salaire-median-...
It's a mostly great experience... all due to the scenery you're watching, not so much everything else.
What worries me if it becomes more privatized: You'll see the experience drop a lot more, features you need for long distance trips (big seat+power outlet) removed. You'll get a lot more stressed employees who will create conflicts etc.
What I would like to see:
- More prioritization on autonomous cars
- More frequent routes
- Infrastructure improvements for faster service (We could and should have a hub/spoke model for ICE like passenger rail)
- Support with integration into the communities they connect into. (Build the town around it) Create a standard that local rental car companies are working with the passengers arriving and leaving.
- General equipment refreshes (A lot of it is maintenance by schedule rather than reactory.. a lot of the experience is pretty dirty) Also there is an attitude with the coach passengers that the train is a trashcan because it's already pretty dirty. Being in coach is freaking brutal if you have to be on it more than 9 hours or overnight.
Btw Their employees are a lot more helpful about being functionally helpful when something goes wrong. Airline employees just escalate and pull the "screw you, you won't get help" when something goes wrong in person. (Yea I'm looking at you IAH gate agent that just left the desk right before boarding.. the captain was playing secretary). No the empire builder doesn't have WIFI.. but how will dinner work.. they're more than helpful at explaining it, etc.
You can get a California zephyer ticket from Chicago->Seattle for 160 in coach one way. That's a really good deal for 2k+ miles, generous baggage allowance, etc (if you can tolerate that).
Sleepers can go 1k+ for the 2.5d. In the winter (what I did) was 600$. I'm also not paying for the efficency. I'm paying for the experience of the hotel, meals, convenence of travel, and the ability to watch out the window.
Buses will still beat the cost, but they’re slower and less comfortable.
Wendover Productions goes into detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwjwePe-HmA
It's not. Until the recent infrastructure bill, Amtrak didn't even have a dedicated yearly budget. Every year they would beg Congress for some money, get some amount less than that, then prioritize what they could given the funding. Moreover roads in the US never pay for themselves, they're just written off as an "economic driver" rather than expected to pay for themselves. Very few roads in the US are toll roads and much of the US is vehemently against toll roads. Fundamentally, public infrastructure is public infrastructure. The public pays for public infrastructure. If we expect Amtrak to be able to fund some non-trivial percentage of its infrastructure costs then we're placing an expectation on Amtrak that the US road and highway system does not have.
Going from Amsterdam to Spain the plane seems to win on price and travel time.
One thing that isn’t infrastructure but could easily be improved is buying international train tickets. So often I see that one needs to call or you can only book one month ahead.
Surely we could have solved that by now..
As a result, such a trip would take a long time, even if high-speed rail is a possibility for part of the trip; it's not possible for a simple train to go even most of the way; you'll need to change trains multiple times not just due to logistical issues, but simply to be on a train that can even use the rail you need to traverse.
If we can't fix that (and that's a really hard and expensive problem), we're never going to get a fast connection from the netherlands to spain.
And I'm sure you can find even worse scenarios (say, tack on denmark and germany to that route for 2 more technologically incompatible systems!). Baltic states still use a soviet-derived system, and much of eastern Europe a yet different one.
> Note that if you travel from The Netherlands to Spain you might be traversing 6 different railway electrification systems that vary in critical stuff like voltages (and by more than a factor 10!) and possibly Hz, and some are AC and some are DC (not kidding). Also there will be at least 2 incompatible track gauges involved. And I bet other stuff like communications and routing systems are incompatible and safety critical too.
none of this is nearly as problematic as you seem to think it is. modern powertrains traverse various electrification schemes without difficulty. signaling systems are trending towards ETCS, trains that traverse incompatible signaling systems (eg the eurostar) simply carry a set of onboard signaling equipment for each standard. gauge changes are the most challenging technical limitation in your list, but are a solved problem. spanish talgo's regularly change gauges at speed [1]
Indeed, however the majority of currently existing stock is only fitted for operation in at most one or two countries
> signaling systems are trending towards ETCS
"trending towards" is doing a lot of work here, ETCS rollout has been stalling for ages. New train sets are still being delivered today that do not really support it. Most countries have somewhat understandably not been in a hurry to make the huge investments required to replace their current, working systems with ETCS.
> trains that traverse incompatible signaling systems (eg the eurostar) simply carry a set of onboard signaling equipment for each standard.
Yes, which is extremely expensive and also requires full re-certification for every country, which means that in practice most trains are only certified for one or two countries at most.
None of these would be unsolvable with some more willpower of course, but they are still absolutely an issue today.
All those factors reduce the overall efficiency of the network, and they help explain why it's so slow and costly to travel large distances by train - much more so than you'd naively expect given modern train speeds.
For instance, I just tried looking for a connection between Groningen,NL and Murcia, ES. The train connection takes 29-30 hours. Adding busses into the mix reduces that time to 23-24 hours. Avoiding high-speed rail entirely and using a car would take ~21h - despite the trains going much, much faster for long stretches of the trip. By contrast, if you take long trips within e.g. France or Germany countries, it's pretty common for the train to be the fastest option.
The interconnections just aren't great, and I bet part of that poor connectivity is due to the fragmentation in the standards involved.
When you assert that these hurdles aren't impossible to take you're of course correct - but that doesn't mean the hurdles are irrelevant either.
The point isn't only that there aren't perfectly reasonable routes - there are, and that's great! It's that the overall network is pretty fragmented, and that that does cause issues. If you live in Amsterdam and want to travel to Paris - you're in luck. If you live in Murcia and want to travel to Groningen, you're out of luck. And if you live in the countryside... well, don't even bother.
Rail Baltica [1] (already being constructed) is using European gauge.
When people ask how planes can be competitive with trains, part of that is surely due to aviation's... interesting... tax situation; but part of it is due to real technical shortcomings in the European rail network.
Austria is pretty much the only country in the EU that is actually making genuine strides in this area.
I would much rather take an overnight sleeper train than either an early morning flight or a night flight with hotel room. The sleeper train will arrive right to the city center and save a lot of hassle and I always sleep like a rock on sleeper trains.
My impression is that Europeans are 'waking up' to this fundamental difference in value proposition vs aeroplanes and overnight trains are becoming more popular.
I'm always surprised by how parochial political debates are "X wouldn't work" when everyone else around the world thinks X is vital.
In fact, in Canada, trains are slow, expensive and not well-deserved that you are better-off using your car or plane ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Barcelona-Madrid | 503km | 2h30 by train | 46$CAD (33 euros)
Toronto-Montreal | 541km | 5h by train | 93$CAD (68 euros)
What hurts my soul is that Canada has the wealth to afford it, the engineering chops to build it but we lack the political will. Even more I feel we lack the belief and the vision.
EDIT: There is also an inherent feature in trains that greatly reduces the rate of progress. With toad vehicles there is very good decoupling between the track and the vehicle, from a design pov. With trains the chassis design is more coupled to the track design. And since you can’t really upgrade track easily, on both train and road, there are more constraints in new train design.
But a car costs a couple pounds every day for registration, insurance, regular maintenance, new parts (tires etc). If you go to London and spend 10 days there, this is easily 50-100 pounds even if it's just parked and doing nothing. Now also add possible parking costs and emergency costs for maintenance if the car breaks down -- a friend of mine went with his car to the seaside with kids a couple years ago, and the car broke down midway. It cost him 2.5k for his local shop to pick it up and repair. The shop on the spot even gave him a 4k quote.
And of course you have the upfront investment for the actual car which is a few thousand for a used car or at least 15 thousand for a new car these days.
Apart from Gibraltar I guess
But the definition of Europe will change depending on who you’re talking to and what your talking about.
Bus networks can work over small high density areas. Johannesburg has been building a bus network with exclusive lanes for years, but it’s designed to work in conjunction with its part complete metro. Cambridge, UK, has limited “busways” which connect the local villages. However, over large distances, I fail to see how buses can be more efficient. A single train can move hundreds of people over hundreds of kilometres, at much higher speeds than a bus, and with very little pollution.
I'd say it can work if there's no existing railway and/or there's not a lot of people traveling this way. Or maybe for short duration, like one or two months a year
A lot of the rail replacement currently is due to staff sickness ... Covid has hit a lot of things very badly.
Positively, the government has heavily supported rail through the pandemic. (estimated 22 billion pounds in 2020-21, up from 11 billion in 2019-20) (1)
Mostly to make up for loss of passenger ticket income.
Investment in High Speed 2 is also continuing despite the current situation, which I'm relatively hopeful about.
On the other hand the government has demanded cutbacks on operations to possibly 80% or less of pre-covid, and there seems to be a lot of overcrowding in some areas where the demand has rebounded faster. There is also a fairly widespread withdrawal of much of the onboard catering :-(
(1) https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
You produce less CO2, stay one night less in the hotel at your destination, everything is less stressful and you arrive well-rested.
Unfortunately, Germany got rid of all of their night trains in 2016 so we have to rely on other countries' trains. I'm not aware of any plans to get night trains back. I hope this will change!
Without national night trains, flights within Germany will remain attractive.
I lived in the south of France for a while and it always struck me that instead of one huge, heavy engine pulling ten cars, arriving once an hour, along that stretch (from Cannes to Menton), it would be better served to have light, individual cars that ran every five minutes. (More like a large tram.)
We can do so much better. And it will happen the minute we get the greed of the oil/auto/airline industries from getting in our way.
The train is fantastic when it runs but it takes a heavy toll on quality of life for thousands of commuters when they unexpectedly have to spend several hours a day every week waiting for trains that don’t work. Today my partner spent 3 hours on what should be a 70 minute commute.
Instead of spending much more on maintenance (which has been underfunded and mismanaged for years) to increase reliability the government is spending billions to build a new fancy high speed line between Stockholm and Gothenburg. I guess maintenance and reliability aren’t sexy enough for political campaigning.
Stats in Swedish: https://www.sj.se/sv/om/om-sj/hallbarhet/punktlighet.html
Just did some doodling in OsmAnd, connecting a few cities big enough that I've heard the name (at least I'm presuming that's why I know their name).
https://snipboard.io/0aunhF.jpg
You can do Sacramento–San Francisco–San Jose–Los Angeles–Las Vegas–Salty Lake City–Reno–Sacramento (round trip) in 2500km as the crow flies, with as longest stretch 700km (SLS–Reno) and an average of 300km (of course you can then branch off and make lower-speed connections to towns in between). Checking inhabitants on Wikipedia for a few real quick, it seems they're bigger in my imagination (or in movies perhaps) than in reality, e.g. Reno is only like 200k inhabitants, but at least to/from, say, Los Angeles, which is a small country in itself from my Beneluxian perspective, there has to be travel demand. Or between SF and SJ, they're so close and there's other stops you can make in between. Hard to retrofit into a city if there's no existing train or metro that can at least pave the way to the edge of town, but otherwise it's hard to imagine it wouldn't earn itself back in a handful of years if it doesn't exist yet.
Across a continent east-to-west is obviously less practical, same with any other continent, but it looks to me like connecting big cities that are similarly nearby as European big cities isn't the problem. It's probably more about everyone needing a car anyway, extremely low fuel prices, public transport is deemed for peasants, no good walking/cycling/bus options to/from stations, that sort of issues (it's a thing here as well, a rich German has a lot of trouble getting into a bus when they can drive something fancy instead—of course I'm generalizing and this doesn't apply to every German with money).
I also think there's a hen and egg problem. To build a rail road you need to buy the land strip between two stations, and in today's US you can't just do it because someone knowing about your venture and how you cannot succeed without having all the land - will just ask any enormous price knowing you won't have a choice. I think the whole idea of hyperloop was born on that restriction - because buying places for support pillars and making the whole system more or less silent making it at least viable.
In EU railroads are there for 100+ years, all the land under them is belong to government or railroad companies.
But let’s see how they build this out. I do love living in a Berlin. The public transit system is amazing. It’s not perfect. But it’s reliable enough that I do not miss my car.
It's a complete joke. The trains are far worse and largely more expensive than they were ten years ago.
In the past eight months, I have gotten a same day return journey on average once a month and I have experienced:
Twice - Stranded missing my last train home due to delayed connecting trains. One of which I was advised to go to a different station and speak to them there to arrange a taxi, got there station was unmanned and ended up having to sort via customer service on twitter at 11pm.
Had a train that I couldn't move on, standing in the isle, when i had reserved seats that i couldn't even get too due to the amount of people on it, later stops they couldn't even let anymore people on it. This was a train they decided to cut the size by more than half without warning therefore I am not even sure if my reserved seats existed!
2x train home that I wanted cancelled, lucky I had checked the app due to constant issues so I Could change plans and get an earlier train home.
Had a train terminate several stops early and thrown off the train without explanation.
3x had delays (not the ones mentioned on others) of over 15 minutes. Most recently, left at the station late at night for over an hour as train was delayed, with constantly changing information on screens including saying the train was coming in the next 5 minutes for around half an hour and then various different platform changes only for it to turn up at the original platform, unstaffed station, no staff to help and many annoyed/confused people. I was desperate for the toilet, but due to it being later they were all locked, leaving for an uncomfortable and uncertain wait.
Take Paris-Lyon for example - by train : 1. depart from Paris Gare de Lyon (inside the city), arrive at Lyon perrache (inside the city). 10€ to 30€ (ouigo), ~3h. 2. recommended arrival time : 30min early
- by plane: 1. go from Paris to ORY (~40min, ~10€ in orlyval/orlybus or RER) 2. recommended arrival time : 2h early 3. 1h of flight, cheapest 50€, most prices are around 100€ 4. Get from Lyon airport to the city whith rhonexpress, 15€, 30min
Result : even though the flight time is a bit shorter, the plane trip is actually way longer and way more expensive
The only time when plane is more convenient than train is when you want to travel between two cities that are not linked by rail, and the correspondance in Paris is too much of a detour, such as bordeaux-nice
If I could work during a 6+ hour journey it would really change the equation on traveling for me. The desks that are available on these trains is a huge change from the tiny lapdesks on flights. The thing people miss about trains, I think, is that you can have these comforts. You can have a cafe car with real coffee and snacks. Multiple outlets, etc. I don't really mind the journey taking a bit longer or being more expensive if it's not dead time and I can work.
They could do like the USA does and make flying such a time-consuming pain in the ass that it's rarely worth it for trips under 5 hours.
In daytime, there are a few options with only one change, but you'll sit in a train for 8 hours or so, which may not be your thing.
In general, https://seat61.com/ has good tips.
How much work can you really get done going via airplane? How much time do you waste going through security and how well can you work crammed into a tiny seat?
Sometimes taking it a bit slower is also good for your health.
Europeans think that 100km is a long way while Americans think that 100 years is a long time.
But for distances up to 4-5 hours by train, especially if the connection is direct, it is better to take the train. While the flight time may be much shorter, the need to get to/from the airport (which tend to be far away from the city itself, if only because of noise issues) and to be at the airport 2 hours before departure will consume a lot of time.
Train stations, OTOH, are usually located fairly close to the city center, if not squarely in it, for historical reasons (most important railway links were built prior to 1870, when the cities were much smaller than today).
https://lovetransit.substack.com
It’s wonderful and bounces back and forth between japan, sweden, and greater europe
This is stupid. It's wasteful to fly an empty plain, but it should be cheaper to run an empty chain than mess with the schedule.
There's no economic reason to shake down unplanned travel like this.
They could even check you into your flight while you're on the train.
Just wanted to point out that Western European rail investments are dual use. Large scale military operations require massive logistics and rail is a big part of that.
I believe there's a long term electrification plan for the greater Dublin area, but I don't see a change from using DMU's for a while.
https://www.caltrain.com/about/MediaRelations/news/Caltrain_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_tran...
Hydrogen has an infrastructure problem. Planes aren't designed for holding hydrogen and they would need to be redesigned entirely to accommodate for using it as a fuel. Hydrogen is hard to store and transfer as it tends to embrittle a wide variety of metals. There are also no hydrogen refueling stations near airports, you would have to build all of that infrastructure as well. You might be able to generate hydrogen on demand via a chemical reaction with something like NaOH and Silicon or Aluminum, but I haven't run the numbers to see if that would be technically possible, economically feasible, or safe for passenger travel. Theoretically you could use hydrogen, but it would cost trillions of dollars to get everything up and running without some sort of breakthrough.
Current companies are targeting something like 400km. And that is with pretty conservative design choices along every dimension.
With some real investment that would allow companies to embrace more ambitious designs we could do much more then that.
Batteries can be a structural part of the plane. You can use the airflow to cool them potentially. There are lots of opportunity to do much, much better.
I think the connection between most major capital is around 500km. So an 20-30 seat plane that can go 600+ km is really not that far away as people think.
And this is with batteries that are not really optimized for flight. You can push the charge speed up considerably if you are willing to have less cycles. And it very well might be worth to do that. Even so your total investment in electricity and batteries combined is still gone beat fossil fuel by a wide margin.
If we are talking about investing billion into something, it should be electric planes!
China has 100,000 km electrified which is 66% of their rail while the US has only 2,025 km electrified which is 0.92%
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_tr...
too bad they are trying to make them insanely fast and silent af
life is meant to feel your surroundings
By the time any major high speed rails are built, electric planes will exist.
Given electric planes can be fueled with green energy in many European countries there is not really an environment argument anymore. Well one could argue that its less efficient and that true but the difference is certainty much closer.
Electric planes will also make air-travel much cheaper, because the operational cost will be far, far lower just as with electric cars and the 'fuel' will be cheaper as well. The fuel is consider a major part of the cost right now and has the potential to be much lower.
Electric planes also require little buildup of infrastructure. In fact, electric planes will allow us to fly many more routes to smaller airports that are often not utilized much right now.
If we can get the absurd security restrictions removed and make air-travel within continents more like trains we can eliminate much of the wasted time as well.
Because electric planes have the potential to be much more quite while on the ground and on landing, airports can be build closer to population centers. And there are additional innovations that could make propellers in general more quite as well.
Planes allow for point to point transport rather then following a line of stations. Or rather you still might use stations but on much less granular scale.
From where I live I can reach a local airport in something like 10min with the bus. If I could fly from there to places like Paris, Milan or Berlin it would be quite amazing. Even if those flights only happen once 1 week or so. Or you just connect to some larger airport and get on a second plane there.
I feel like really major investment in high speed rail is misplaced. I much rather see more investment in local rail. And if you need to hope from city to city jumping into an electric plane would be better.
Now the technology is not fully there yet, specially in battery cells (and how to package them into plane). No proposed electric plane can fly Zürich->Berlin. But I think major investment in that sector would yield amazing results. The current electric plane companies are minimally innovative because they want to just get electric plane of the ground (and they are right to do so).
However once you really think threw all the implications of electric planes you could do so much more. Its like first generation EV were just traditional cars with batteries in them. When now in Tesla and BYD produce cars where the actual battery cells are a vital part of the cars structure.
With battery electric supersonic overland flights are a real possibility because you would fly high enough that air density and distance would make the sonic boom much less of a problem. We could rethink vertical launch as well.
In general a change in paradigm will force revising on many of the most basic assumptions of how traditional combustion planes look.
I would not be surprised if we fly around with electric vertical starting, supersonic flying wing airplanes in 30 years.
https://www.bahn.de/service/ueber-uns/umwelt
You can even buy green energy from the Deutsche Bahn
https://www.uniper.energy/de/datteln-4
> Bahnstromleistung 413MW 16.7Hz
Why is this important? Rail operates on the basis of an extremely high investment (rail) offset by the notion that you earn that back over decades / centuries via fuel savings. But rails has a high up front investment cost (many tons of steel, land disputes, decade+ of planning and construction), high maintenance cost (upkeep & maintenance). So, the fuel savings are really important.
With the mass deployment of electrical vehicles (cars, buses, trucks, ships, and soon small airplanes) that stops being feasible. Electricity is cheap and dropping in price and generally trending towards dirty cheap in roughly the time it will take to build a meaningful amount of new rail. Also, a lot of these vehicles will eventually become autonomous which knocks out a secondary source of cost: the driver.
That creates a formidable competitor to rail that can utilize roads, water ways, air ways, etc. and uses energy that is harvested at more or less constant cost from wind, geo thermal, solar, or nuclear.
That knocks the whole premise away under mass transit solutions that amortize the extreme cost of fuel (and drivers) by just moving a lot of stuff with one enormous vehicle (an airbus 380, a train carrying many tonnes of cargo or thousands of passengers, huge ships, etc.). These huge vehicles are only economical when the fuel savings matter. They won't.
What if you could route individual containers via light, self driving, battery electrical vehicles? Production cost of about 100-200K$ each, probably cheaper if you mass produce them. Good for a million mile+ operational life time. Can go anywhere you want it to go. Does about 1-2 miles per KWH at a cost of less than 0.005$/kwh depending on weight/size. The numbers are far better with people carriers because we are talking lighter, cheaper, and more efficient vehicles.
That's our future. Rail does not make sense in that future. If you have a train that transports 100 containers, we're talking 5$/kwh worth of electricity every mile or so. Electrical trains would have similar or a bit better fuel cost of course but be very expensive to build and operate due to the need for rails and heavy duty machinery on the rails. But it would be meaningless because electricity is so cheap. The vehicle purchase cost of hundreds of electrical trucks would be negligible compared to that and maintaining and constructing roads is also a lot cheaper. The fuel cost difference would no longer justify spending many billions on both infrastructure, vehicles, and maintenance for rails. No chance in hell to earn any of that back with fuel savings when the price of that drops through the floor.
Current prices for the most competitive solar bids are hovering around 0.012$/kwh. They are not going to stay there. 0.005 is only a very modest improvement. Long term we might be looking at 0.001 or even less. That's only 1 order of magnitude of improvement. It's the conservative scenario. Manufacturing cost is basically a function of how cheap it is to manufacture and install panels, storage, cables, etc. Ironically, a big factor in that cost are energy and labor. So, having cheaper ways to generate energy will make making cheap energy cheaper. Add robots to the mix and you drop the labor cost as well. Moving stuff around is going to be very cheap.
People are light and often want to go at high speeds.
Europe should reorient its rail network for rail transport, and passengers can travel by bus or plane.
But - Europe's rail network is completely reliant on subsidies, and its easier to get them when you're transporting politicians instead of lumber, steel, milk.
European roads are also impossible to build and maintain without subsidies but somehow nobody or at least very few people talk about that.
We are using tunnels all over Switzerland that are built many decades ago. How to you take stuff like that into account?
Sure we could just say 'lets wipe all infrastructure of Europe and start fresh, what the most efficient combination of things?' but that is a pointless exercise.
People very lives have been shaped around existing infrastructure as well.
Everything is interlinked to a crazy degree that makes finding and comparing solution challenging.
The reason is surprisingly obvious in hindsight. You bring 1000 people into a city centre train station and then they deliver themselves to their final destination. But goods either have to be sent to single purpose custom built lines and depots (eg power stations) or else transferred to road and taken onwards in a multitude of vehicles.
I am personally very good at delivering myself autonomously on foot for several miles, and I will even transfer myself to another train in minutes without external equipment. Coal is generally less cooperative.
Worse, if you decide to keep people in cars, you have to build parking spaces absolutely everywhere they might possibly want to go, whereas most goods just need to be dropped off.
People on trains, goods on lorries.
Meanwhile in America people drive a 2 ton vehicle to deliver themselves to the parking lot next block (guilty as charged).