Europe wants a high-speed rail network to replace airplanes | Hacker News Reader

Europe wants a high-speed rail network to replace airplanes

cnn.com

This is going to be tough.

Rail is absolutely fantastic for commuting and short haul city to city, but air still reigns for medium to longer distances. The key advantage flight has is you don't need to maintain much infrastructure between the termini apart from radars, ATC and other such stuff. Trains need rail, signalling, bridges, tunnels, power, fences, flora control, flood management, etc. Flights are also quicker, which means fewer pilots, less crew, fewer planes, less maintenance, etc.

That makes long distance rail quite expensive by comparison, if left to the free market. The only way this works is huge government subsidies, but my gut feeling is that'd be better spent on developing zero emissions flying, as I don't think flying is going anywhere. I'm guessing biofuels, synthetic fuels or maybe hydrogen will replace fossil fuels in flight.

That being said, I love travelling around by rail and I'm generally a train nerd, so more investment in the rail would make me personally happy.

Subsidies like the tax exemption for kerosene?

High speed rail is faster door to door than flights until around 1000 km / 600 miles, which gets you an awfully long way. Add in the renaissance of night train service in central europe and suddenly you're covering a ton of travel under 2000-3000 km with rail.

I agree carbon neutral aviation fuel is likely going to need to part of future transportation plans, but it's likely going to be really expensive per passenger km, so would be better saved for truly necessary cases like crossing oceans. I'm not sure there is a sustainable way to continue our current level of short and medium haul flight usage.

It will definitely be tough, but the Shinkansen at least proves its possible. Taking the Shinkansen is almost disorienting with how fast it is. Not so much its raw speed while in motion, but rather the fact that you hop in in a very normal-looking train station and a few hours later are so, so far away from where you started. I remember opening Google Maps and thinking there was something wrong with my GPS.

I’d take such train rides even if just for relaxing. There’s something therapeutic in staring in the distance through the windows of a train or sleeping with the repetitive sound made by its wheels. Assuming they would provide private sleeping cabins.

I believe that this is a key part of a sustainable future in terms of climate impact but I really don't know if we have what it takes to pull off a project of this size. It's interesting that it seems like these type of large infrastructure projects were more on schedule and feasible a century ago.

I think scale of this is a bit bigger than most of what we actually did in Europe a century ago, as the who-pays-for-cross-border question was even harder then. The closest fit anywhere would probably be the USA interstate network.

Paris Munich by train is 300€

for 400€ I can do Paris Beijing…

Looking myself for all month the prices seem to range from 60-120€ between Paris and Munich by train. Besides, wouldn't one expect the prices to eventually drop as the service is improved and sped up?

OTOH, I have a €9 ticket for all public transit nationwide this month except the long distance routes, and my cheapest flight was one way from Berlin to London Gatwick for either £9.99 or €9.99 (I can't remember which).

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