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Comment by veave | Hacker News Reader

Interesting how we are going backwards, from planes to trains.

Back to the old days of having quick boarding without a crotch scan, having plenty of legroom, normal-size restrooms, and a restaurant car.

And you travel from city center to city center, rather than middle-of-nowheres named after a city.

Crotch scan doesn't happen in the EU, and the rest doesn't matter if you can get there much faster.

>And you travel from city center to city center, rather than middle-of-nowheres named after a city.

When you land you can rent a car... when you arrive on a train you are forced to either pay for a taxi or take pub... pu... public transportation

I for one appreciate bar cars.

Also it's not always much faster. Italy's high speed network eventually won with their national airline. And no wonder - a trip going halfway across the peninsula takes roughly as much time, but is generally more pleasant.

Public transportation in most Western European capital cities is excellent.

Do you think the Barcelona metro is only for plebs who are below you in the pecking order?

In my experience across the US and the EU, most of the time they're late so there's a lot of idle waiting.

meh apart from the Deutsche Bahn, I never had to wait around in Europe and I lived there for a year.

In a lot of ways, I understand why Deutsche Bahn sucks, a lot of politics ruined the company.

Assuming you actually don't miss the connection and are left in the middle of nowhere, if lucky to be able to travel wihout changing trains that it doesn't get one hour delay, or enjoying standing up three hours in a high speed train, because it is overbooked, or getting additional passegers from another high speed one that broke down.

like that can't happen with planes?

i missed a connection because a plane was late by half an hour. (it departed an hour late but caught up some time). the connecting flight was by the same airline. we absolutely could have made the connection, but the airline decided to reroute us anyways which added 6 hours and an additional transfer to our trip which meant that i was awake for 48 hours by the time we finally reached our accomodation and i got sick and had to rest some days from the exhaustion.

i absolutely would have preferred a multi-day train trip over that experience.

Except in most European countries, unless you went with the more expensive train ticket option there is no reroute done by the train company, you get to buy new tickets for everyone.

i do not believe that is true. do you have an example where this happened? at least in germany if you miss a connection you can take any other train that follows with the same ticket.

what doesn't work is, if you have a regional pass, and you buy a ticket from outside that region, but you are late for the first leg of that ticket, then your ticket may no longer be valid. it would be the same for flights.

Portugal, Spain, Greece for example, when talking about fast trains.

Germany it used to also be like that until around a decade ago.

I definitely remember time lost in Reisezentrum arguing for new tickets and how I wasn't to blame for an ICE to be parked 1h outside Frankfurt.

I travel by train in Europe since late 1980's, while interesting alternative, let's not forget the not so nice parts.

well, this will hopefully change or has changed already. the EU has laws on this which these countries should implement:

https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right...

It’s not backwards, high speed rail was invented in the 60s with the shinkansen, about the same time as the modern airliner.

Nah trains >>> planes, not even a comparison.

Especially since the cheaper plane flights in Europe are absolutely painful, dropping you off 2 hours away from the city centre into some minor airport.

Taking the TGV from Paris to Zuerich in comparison is such a relief.

Trains are far more energy efficient than planes, so we’re going forwards. If we actually do get more better cheaper trains.

This seems like an impossible claim to me. Surely it depends on many factors, off the top of my head:

- the occupancy of the trip

- the distance

- the number of stops

- the form of “last mile” transportation required

- the age and model of the vehicle

- the specific fuel source

I mean, I believe the statistic is true in aggregate. It’s like saying “vegan food has lower carbon emissions” which is true in aggregate. But wild game is often astronomically lower emissions (not to mention lower cruelty) than typical vegan food.

So these aggregate statistics are interesting points to ponder, but we don’t live in aggregate. We eat specific foods and we travel specific routes.

And at the individual level these statistics become... well not “mostly false” but certainly “frequently false”.

To me, the base statistic is a great starting point but the next questions we need to ask is: when are flights lower emission? When is hunting more humane? Etc. That’s how we can really drive better individual decisions. “Just ride the train and eat vegan” won’t get us to a globally sufficient decision framework.

High speed Trains in Europe generally win on most of these since they’re usually electric trains with minimal stops between city centers.

Except the tiny detail they don't travel everywhere, mostly connections are needed, some countries don't impose reservations so travelling standing up is to be expected, and they don't always hit connection time slots.

When there are lines between places they generally work very well. The last time I used HSR in Europe it was within Italy and they let you pick seats and the trains were very direct, I had 1 connection but that was because I started at a small town that only had a local train line and not a major hub and the connection was quick.

My last train travel in Italy, a month ago, I had the pleasure of a 30m delay on local train, and then running like a fool across Milan main station, alongside 15 train platforms, to still catch my connection.

Contrary to airport connections, if one looses it, it is lost. There aren't last calls, or help to get another one. Unless one has bought the more expensive ticket with flexible trains.

I mean, an electric train that goes to the middle of the city or town you are going to and then a walk or a bus or taxi at the other end, it's no comparison really.

If you don't have a car you choose where to live based on this, when I used to commute I always lived never more than 7 minutes walk from a station.

> and then a walk

What are you, European?

Look at bullet train network in China, which is probably inspiring EU now. Today it’s about 40,000 km. Total amount of time spent traveling is about same as with airplanes (less time waiting on airport but more time on vehicle) but price is cheaper, ride much more comfortable.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/china-high-speed-rail-cmd...

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