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Comment by casenmgreen | Hacker News Reader

I began experimenting with long distance (cross-Europe, and long distances, not just one country to the neighbouring country) train travel, as I no longer wanted to fly due to the pollution from flying.

I rapidly concluded long distance train travel is not viable.

On one occasion I had two days of travel booked, and the very first train was an hour late, which led to a missed connection, and that was it - there was no way I could make my next train, and I lost some hundreds of euros of booked tickets and accommodation, and the compensation offered - if I had the will power to fight through the incredibly hostile claims mechanism on-line - was 30 euro. I was also stuck, as I had left my origin (a long-term AirBnB) and the next place I would live was at my destination. Fortunately, I was in Paris, so I travel to de Gaulle and booked a flight to my destination (where it was then necessary to book a hotel for an night, as I was a day early); I paid some hundreds more euros to complete my journey.

Essentially the problem is that the longer a train journey, the more late it will be, and if you miss a connection, you can lose everything afterwards; but you have to book everything in advance, because the main train routes are fully booked if you try to buy a ticket on the day.

So it just doesn't add up.

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If you get one ticket for the whole journey then it's the provider's responsibility to get you to your destination, even if you miss a connection due to a delay.

If you have bought multiple tickets covering the journey, there are a few European agreements that may be relevant in the event of a missed connection:

- Connections between certain high speed services allow you to 'Hop on the next available train' (HOTNAT) if both services are members of the Railteam alliance

- Connections between most services on international journeys are protected by the newish 'Agreement on Journey Continuation' (AJC)

It's definitely confusing and it's far from perfect, but the situation is improving.

Not all railway companies participate in AJC. E.g. neither Snälltåget operating the Stockholm - Berlin night train and nor Flixtrain offering budget tickets between Berlin and some German cities are participating.

So don't use the open access competitors for complicated trips with multiple tickets. There always are traditional alternatives, especially now when the Swedish government and SJ started running their own daily Berlin service.

I love Italo, Snälltåget etc. but it's best to use them for a well-contained itinerary.

Additionally to AJC rights typically the traveller's insurance covers reaching destinations in case of train delays. It's not as grim as the grandparent makes it sound.

At least my insurance has a list of causes when they pay. Besides that the list does not cover all (e.g. in Germany a common cause to cancel train these days is because of lack of staff, but my insurance does not list such cause) it's generally impossible to indentify the cause. There are network effects. Train A breaks down, train B cannot pass, train C should be taken over by staff arriving on train B. So what is the reason that train C runs late or gets cancelled?

In Finland the causes for delays can easily be read from an open data API. Having looked at it, it is completely ridiculous: The conductors seems just to enter some more or less random code at every station.

I doubt any insurance will pay for any kind of missed connection, no matter what.

Mine does, but it could vary by market.

Costs of alternative transport and accommodation due to missing a connection within public transport is covered in my insurance, unless the reason is a strike, bankruptcy or negligence of the passenger. And only if the connection is not the transport operator's responsibility.

As an example in their marketing material, they use a public bus breaking down on way to the airport.

I haven't used this coverage but I think it shows that there are insurance policies to cover missed passenger-designed connections.

Interestingly enough the EU thinks that strike is the responsibility of the company, they have to pay the compensation according to passenger rights (even after the rights have been reduced in the recent reform).

My insurance, too, does not pay in case of strike. Strike is seen as force majeure in many contracts.

I would agree with the EU. Employers have the bigger power on the labor market, it's their responsibility to keep working conditions good enough to avoid strikes.

I don't know if it qualifies as long distance, but I have traveled across Japan a couple of times on train, from Sapporo to Fukuoka. Not in one day, I stopped for a few days in between, but I have done Sapporo to Nara and Kyoto to Sapporo in a day.

I loved all of them, worst train journey I had was Tokyo to Osaka... landed in Japan, slept overnight at an Airbnb and got up to get on the train to Osaka, but we missed our first train... was not a problem catching the next one, but we decided to eat lunch first. Got on the next train and got about 1/3 of the way to Osaka when the train had to stop due to a typhoon. We were stuck in the train for hours, by the time they let us off (we were stopped at a station, but not at the platform) it was too late to book any lodgeing anywhere near the station, and all the food was sold out everywhere nearby. We ate snacks we brought with us and slept on the train station floor! It was an adventure for sure. But things like that can happen when flying too and are quite rare on Japanese trains.

Don't have any experience with cross country train travel anywhere else, but I love doing it in Japan!

This is not an inherent problem with trains though - it should absolutely be possible to implement a continent wide railway system, which I believe will happen sooner rather than later.

Switzerland already has a unified system, where the main train operator SBB and the local public transport operators use the same ticketing system. Both monthly passes are available and a half fare card, which reduces the price by a lot(not half, as is suggested by the name of the card). The Swiss people are so used to travel by train they pretty much treat it like their own living room.

>This is not an inherent problem with trains though - it should absolutely be possible to implement a continent wide railway system, which I believe will happen sooner rather than later.

Of course, it's technically possible, and not really all that hard. But is it politically possible? I doubt it. The EU doesn't even look like it's going to hold together long-term. If the various quarreling nations of the EU couldn't come together after all these decades and make a continent-wide railway system by now, I don't think they're ever going to.

The relevant EU regulation says the trough-tickets should be offered. That's of course useless for the passenger as long as there are no sanctions if they are not offered.

The EU has only existed for 29 years - which is actually very little time for projects of this scale?

It's on the agenda for the next parliamentary session: https://jonworth.eu/tzitzikostas-at-his-ep-hearing-4th-novem...

> it should absolutely be possible to implement a continent wide railway system, which I believe will happen sooner rather than later.

I wouldn’t count on it.

Most people travel during vacations and typically choose air travel over spending extra vacation days on a train. Likewise, bullet trains don’t make much economic sense across national borders, as few people commute daily between countries for work (in the European Union).

The only way to make train travel economical is by artificially increasing costs of air travel or the costs of owning a car. This has slowly been happening already, but will likely lead to a larger divide within the EU.

>artificially increasing costs of air travel

Doesn't have to be artificial. The environmental damage from air travel is a real cost which could be put back on air travel.

Environmental taxation is either 'artificial' or 'fair' depending on where you live in Europe. These taxes will simply further the divide that already exists in the EU.

If you can demonstrate the cost is coming directly from the action, it can only be described as fair. I mean, in an apolitical way.

In the US in particular, so many costs of automobiles are externalized that they genuinely appear to be a decent deal. They're not of course, we just pay for them through other esoteric routes instead of on the sticker.

The topic of 'climate change' (or 'emissions') is highly politicized, especially as most of the costs come from laws that dictate some form of compensation for polluting.

In Germany and many other Western European countries these costs are accepted by society, while in Poland and many other Eastern European countries they are not, especially as they mostly affect the poor.

Around 1% of employed people commute cross-border in the EU. This is presumably more than anywhere else in the world, at least of a similar size.

Non-commuting business travel is also very common, including to cities in neighbouring countries.

You'll need to see the breakdown by region. For example, a lot of people commute in/around Belgium or Switzerland, but not a lot of people commute to/from Poland. The rail links in certain parts of "old" Europe are already very good (or sufficient). But the OP mentioned cross-continent (I assume he means cross-EU).

Business travel is a far larger long distance market, on both panes and trains, than commuting or leisure

... and it's incredibly doubtful that people who travel for business would opt for a 2-day train trip (one way) rather than a 4-hour flight.

Personally I love trains, and they're my preferred means of travel. But they aren't very practical, especially when you have time limitations... and at the moment they are very expensive.

OP was talking about "people commute daily between countries for work". People don't commute between London and Paris in great numbers, but the train is full of business travellers. Same as London to Manchester, or Edinburgh to Glasgow, or Edinburgh to Leeds

Obviously business people travel by train from say Glasgow to London, or London to Brussels, or Paris to Geneva, or Brussels to Amsterdam, or Amsterdam to Hamburg, or Berlin to Prague, or Prague to Budapest, or Vienna to Zagreb, or Stuttgart to Milan, or Milan to Marseille

Just because a business traveller might not do a 12 hour trip doesn't mean they don't do a 4 hour trip, and those 4 hour trips all work together in a reliable network.

Atlanta (5m) to Charlotte (1m) is 250 miles, Charllote to Richmond (1m) 300 miles, Richmond to Washington (5m) 120 miles. Population in brackets is the "urban area" population.

Seems crazy there isn't a half hourly service from Richmond to Washington DC to me, and an hourly service to Atlanta. The 6AM from Atlanta would go through, calling Charlotte around 8.30, Richmond by 12, and Washington by 1pm. The 7am would get to Washington for 2pm, etc.

Would many people do Atlanta to Washington? Probably not. Would they do Atlanta to Richmond, or Charlotte to Washington? Probably. At least with a european culture. 4 hours is deemed to be the "it's not worth flying" level.

(That said this year I've done London-Leipzig, Berlin-Geneva, Geneva-London, and New York-Miami for business on the "more than 6 hour" this year)

Sorry, I was talking about the European Union.

Where people travel via train internationally for business all the time.

This isn't really true, as it only happens in the 'Western' part of Europe (i.e. Germany, France, Belgium, Netherlands) In the 'Eastern' part (i.e. Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary) and the 'Northern' part (i.e. Norway, Sweden, Finland) this kind of international travel happens only rarely.

As I started reading your comment I had a hunch it was France - and sure enough.

Short train connections are a gamble here, and worse still that risk isn't properly communicated to travelers as the official SNCF trip planner will happily schedule passengers on very tight transfer windows with no warning. I'm travelling across France soon and the planner put me on a a 9 minutes connection just before the longest leg of my trip, which is a 10h overnight train.

There's no way I'm going to gamble my entire holidays on a 9 min delay, and thankfully my ticket lets me take an earlier train for the 1st leg, but I pity the clueless tourists who blindly follow the planner and end up with their plans ruined.

I often travel from Switzerland to Scandinavia or Finland by train, so a journey of about 30 to 40 hours.

There are frequent delays, especially in Germany [0], but it was always easy to get a confirmation from the railway companies, and I was always able to take a later train. I never had to pay more, and I even got quite a bit of money back if the delay was relevant. Even if I booked the tickets at different operators.

I also usually use a buffer of about 4-5 hours in the middle of the ride. This can compensate some delays, and if on time, it's nice to visit whatever city you are in.

[0] I heard that some Swedish trains are too slow for the express connections in Germany. The trains must take detours or stop every few hours to let the faster trains pass.

Getting a refund hardly matters if you miss an important event. A lot of us have to travel on tight schedules due to work and family commitments, and can't spare an extra 5 hours.

Traveling on tight schedules is always risky, whether you go by car, plane or train.

With that tight of a schedule, international flights will screw you fairly often too. That's just not enough slack for robustness.

The problem is that the distance to be covered is long, and the train is relatively slow.

I left early in the morning to get to Paris in time for the train, and that was the only train that day, and that train left early because it had a long way to go.

With a flight, normally I can go directly from where I am to where I wish to be.

It's a single hop.

With a train, when I'm travelling across multiple countries, necessarily I will take multiple trains; which then brings the problem of missed connections.

I'd trade reliably late over randomly cancelled any day.

I remember a last minute cancellation on a Toronto-JFK flight meant I couldn't connect to my JFK-MAN flight.

Was downgraded to economy and rebooked on a Tornoto-Amsterdam-MAN arriving 7 hours late, having had very little sleep.

Plane travel isn't viable for those travelling on tight schedules.

> On one occasion I had two days of travel booked, and the very first train was an hour late, which led to a missed connection, and that was it - there was no way I could make my next train, and I lost some hundreds of euros of booked tickets and accommodation

This is one thing that Amtrak does well. I've read many accounts of people missing a connection and being put up in a nice hotel by Amtrak with meal vouchers and a shuttle to/from the station. Still it's not a good way to travel if you have a deadline, and it often costs an order of magnitude more than flying for long distances unless you're willing to spend multiple day/night cycles in coach.

Any given train company in Europe does the same.

The problems come when you travel is across multiple train companies.

That's not really relevant here in the USA though, Amtrak is the only game in town. Although if I had to do it in Europe I would probably buy trip insurance from an independent insurer that had a good reputation.

If you get everything on one ticket (and sometimes not) you can usually simply take the next train, with or without proof of delay on your ticket.

Crossing multiple countries over a couple of days, I've never seen this as possibility.

Going from one country to another is normally one train company, from the origin country, and then moving on from that city - in another country - means a different company, from that second country, and so on.

If you've never seen it as a possibility, have you looked at OBB NightJet? Every one I've taken has been this way.

I keep seeing in reviews that people get woken up no matter what hour of night and have to present their documents for border checking, despite going between Schengen countries. Is that a guarantee whenever you cross a border or is this review bias? (Where annoyed customers are more likely to seek out where to leave a review, I mean.) Apparently you can't just leave the documents with the conductor because they need to check in the cabin for stowaways and match faces to pictures. I've only ever taken a Nightjet within Germany so I haven't experienced one myself

It's happened to me. The good news is they're unfazed if you present said documents in your underwear.

Seems to be certain borders. I've only been from Germany to Denmark twice and each time the Danish police decided to check everyone's passports. Denmark to Germany, Germany to Belgium, and Belgium to Germany, they didn't.

10+ years ago there were very few checks — the police would need a specific suspicion to carry out a check. I saw this once on a daytime train, when they checked three people who clearly matched a description, and arrested the third one! I've also seen this twice when disembarking a within-Schengen plane, with police on the jetbridge checking documents — until they find the person they want.

The neverending "refugee crisis" (the official reason several countries have introduced checks within the Schengen area) has allowed more frequent checks, but it seems fairly random whether or not they happen. Out of perhaps 10 overnight journeys, I've not been checked going south or east, but around half the time I've been checked going into Denmark from Germany.

It's so disruptive that I no longer take the overnight train into Denmark. You should prepare for it — put the passport in the mesh holder so you can just hand it over — but I find it difficult enough to sleep on a moving train anyway.

Leaving Germany? Fine. Entering Germany from Austria? Yes, knock at the door at 4AM.

Having recently visited Germany via plane, they have certainly gotten stricter/performative. Leaving Munich for London and despite already have presented passports to immigration, they had police checking passports on the gangway to the aeroplane…

That's exactly why Interrail[1] has existed for many years. I haven't used it in 10+ years and the webpage is a bit confusing, but generally you would just buy one ticket for e.g. a week and then get on/off wherever/whenever you want.

[1]: https://www.interrail.eu

You need seat reservations for most trains per my understanding. They're cheap and flexible so you're mostly right, but it's a little more involved than "get on whenever you want" unfortunately

It very much depends on the operator; Eurostar and SNCF requires very expensive seat reservations for all TGV services, but hardly any services in the German-speaking countries do so. More important than the price though is the availability - only a small proportion of seats are open to Interrailers on the French trains, so if they sell out you could find yourself unable to board a train that is still half-empty!

The situation in eastern Europe is more variable, but the reservations aren't generally as prohibitive as in France.

Ah, I thought ICE also required reservations but that's only the case if the train is otherwise booked out (source https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/72538/what-if-i-u...). For me, trains like TGV, ICE, and perhaps Nightjet make up the bulk of the distance to most places I go, so for me the reservations were pretty much required no matter where you go; apparently not really for ICE then!

Certainly the case in Summer when I travelled from London to Leipzig on one ticket. Delays (Germany is awful over the last couple of years) and flooding meant I had to reroute. No problem with my ticket, despite through 4 countries.

Likewise a delay from Berlin to Geneva (only two countries, but a long trip) and again no problem with my re-route. Ended up 30 minutes late

This.

One big difference between train and plane is that, for planes, it takes me only a few clicks on one single website to book a multiple legs flight across most of the world, transparently using several companies and I dont have to carry my luggage around.

I rarely find the same for train.

Air travel is a mess but it is still much better integrated than train for long distance.

Everything else about flying sucks though. You have to waste hours before and after because the airport is far away, security, waiting for your luggage (which gets lost more often now it seems), go through the dehumanizing security checks, put all your things in a transparent little bag, no your toothpaste is too big and might blow the plane up leave it behind, there are regular delays, shit food, ridiculous luggage allowance (size, count, weight), you get nickeled and dîmes on anything possible…

I’ll take the train over the plane any day. Just show up, board the train, put your luggage in the rack, done. Leave from the city center and arrive in the city center. There is legroom. You can walk around. Bring your own whatever you want however big you want it. It just doesn’t compare for me.

Edit to add: taking the train in Europe that is. Idk about NA.

I'm not sure what this has to do with American train travel, since it's all within one country (and, generally, one company). It reads as a rationale for why it couldn't work here, except that none of your issues apply to us.

United Airlines did the same to me. Blamed late takeoff on bad weather, but weather was gorgeous that day in SW USA. Resulted in a number of rebookings as well. Was a business trip, so I thankfully did not bear the financial brunt.

Learned that United airlines is not to be trusted. Not viable, in your terms.

>Blamed late takeoff on bad weather, but weather was gorgeous that day in SW USA.

That's irrelevant: the weather was probably bad somewhere else, and that caused cascading delays that affected your flight.

In my (dated) experience with united, they have a fanstasy-land flight schedule they sell tickets for, then cancel flights that aren’t full “due to weather”, and rebook you on an inferior flight.

This way, they never have to pay people when they get bumped for overbooking.

Anyway, I haven’t done business with them for a decade for this exact reason. Maybe it’s different now.

I have over a million miles on United and flew them almost exclusively for over a decade with dozens of flights a year at peak. Not my experience FWIW.

I hate flying United, but this is not a real thing.

Nope, was gorgeous at the destination (Houston) too. We sat at the departure gate for an hour, that was the reason.

Then the #%*$&@! at the connection gate was happy to close the door in my face as I ran to it. Knew I was coming and didn’t care.

They could have said mechanical but didn’t. Leads one to believe it was a canned BS response.

> Learned that United airlines is not to be trusted. Not viable, in your terms.

So what are we advising u/casenmgreen, travel by horse-drawn carriage? Anyone know whether those are viable means of transport for a time-boxed holiday?!

Why would you or the purchaser be liable for rebooking costs that are due to canceled or delayed flights in the first place?

They say the phrase, “acts of god,” and are magically off the hook, according to them. So “bad weather” may be offered on a still, 80 degree sunny day. What are ya gonna do, sue, for maybe $1000?

A vile organization. When they later dragged a paying customer out, I was not surprised.

From Paris most of the operators for some distance are part of Railteam and will allow you to travel on the next available train given proof of delay. Of course eventually if you have a very long schedule with no slack then you would pass out of the Railteam area, but it's not like you're SoL after one delay and one country change.

> From Paris most of the operators for some distance are part of Railteam and will allow you to travel on the next available train given proof of delay.

But that does not help you much if every train for the day is already booked out.

Well, they'll get you on the next one that has any space, which is the same situation as flying. And trains are usually more frequent than planes.

Unfortunately single tickets spanning multiple countries get increasingly rare. Still not too long ago you could by a ticket from any German station to London or Stockholm (or the other direction). In case you miss a connection you still have a ticket and you'll get some compensation (which could be more or less than the extra costs you had). But no longer, those are just not sold anymore.

So if you don't like the reverse gambling (no extra costs if you win, potentially several 100% extra if you lose) you should buy an Interrail pass (Eurail for those not living in Europe). It's often not cheaper than a single advance tickets, but it gives peace of mind that you still have a ticket if connections fail. (You should not try to heavily optimize pass days against schedules though, otherwise you have the same problem, your pass might run out before you are back where you need to be.)

> I rapidly concluded long distance train travel is not viable.

Viable FOR YOU

Many people use long distance train travel and find it very viable

Ooh, and if you get an airplane, someone else deals with your baggage during the connections. Not a big deal if you're an adult traveling on your own, but obviously huge for families with small kids

I had largely the same experience.

As long as you're just traveling with one company it's usually fine - especially DB, you can usually just hop on the next train.

However with a journey spanning multiple companies you're out of luck... and with seat reservations on TGVs you commonly have to wait until the next day.

It's something that shouldn't be too hard to fix: Give passengers an easy and forgiving way to continue their journey (and make the causing company pay) - ideally this should automatically show up on the App and give the passenger options of new connections etc.

None of this fixes seat reservations on TGVs though, which are also annoying for offers like Interrail/Eurail... EU should probably start regulating seat reservations /s

Delays are only a problem when you put tight connection times. If you increase the buffer between railway companies/countries this is hardly a problem.

And train travel is not like plane, if you have to wait, say 4-5hours in a big city you can easily put your luggage in a locker and spend an enjoyable time in that city as the station is usually located in or near the city center and you aren't locked in a terminal nor do you have to account for extra time to pass security.

I have an upcoming transatlantic flight next week. Train is obviously not an option for this one but I will have to spend 4-5 hours at Paris CDG airport for a connection. I have to stay in the airport, pay an awful lot of money for any drink or food I and my family will need instead of visiting a monument/museum and have a nice lunch in the city...things you can do easily by just stepping out of a railway station.

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