How far can you go by train in 5h?

https://chronotrains-eu.vercel.app/

by mritzmann • 4 years ago

871 439 4 years ago

chronotrains-eu.vercel.app

butz• 4 years ago

Why some parts of Europe is missing, e.g. Greece? Source seems to have data for it. Also, it would be neat to see more countries of the world mapped out: Japan, US for a start.

ceejayoz2• 4 years ago

I'd be very interested in China's, given their recent work on high speed rail.

julian_t• 4 years ago

Halfway between LA and SF

marginalia_nu• 4 years ago

I can go about

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kilometers.

kitkat_new2• 4 years ago

sadly it isn't using real transfer times

I supposed it would be much worse in Germany if real data was used

nicoburns3• 4 years ago

Interesting that it uses 20 minutes. I guess that's optimistic if you need to account for delays, but that's much longer than I often take to transfer (5 minutes often being workable if the trains are generally reliable, and you're able to catch a later train if you miss the intended one).

majewsky3• 4 years ago

It depends on the station. If you're in Leipzig Central and you need to switch from platform 20 to platform 6, 5 minutes is very stressful because of the sheer number of platforms you need to walk past.

ben-schaaf• 4 years ago

Swizerland (SBB) has some nice data on this with 98.9% connection punctuality, 40% of connections <5min and 77% under 10min. Though they might be an outlier here given the integrated timetable.

kitkat_new2• 4 years ago

doesn't this assume that trains constantly leave the station?

In reality there is a train e.g. every hour or so, or even none at the same day

yreg• 4 years ago

I think this should be rendered in 3D on a globe so it's easy to compare the covered distances between different places.

jobigoud7• 4 years ago

If you use right-mouse-button it goes into perspective view but the Earth is flat...

goodpoint2• 4 years ago

Sometimes city walkability is expressed more simply: each spot gets a color based on the size of the area that you can reach in a fixed amount of time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrone_map

So you don't have to manually explore the map.

stratom• 4 years ago

It also shows how much the train networks focus on domestic travel.

In nearly all bigger countries it is possible to reach most bigger cities within the 5h. But journeys in this time-frame seldomly go much beyond the border. There is still much optimization potential for transnational travel in Europe's train network.

black_puppydog2• 4 years ago

It also shows an effect that the focus on high speed rail brings: rural areas are often very badly connected. Here in France they've even kept shutting down regional lines. That creates the train equivalent of "fly-over states": areas that you see from the train while going through, but that it would be impractical to go to.

redtexture6• 4 years ago

This is the strong argument against high speed rail in the USA.

We don't even have anything close to regional rail, and highspeed rail would consume all public capital that would be used to improve regional rail systems.

chrismartin• 4 years ago

Has anyone considered the following? In a small town, you have a section of track running parallel to high speed rail. The track has a small and short "local" train (maybe just a couple of cars) that picks up passengers and accelerates to maybe 80 MPH, while the high-speed train slows to the same speed. The trains run next to each other for a couple of miles, some doors open between them, and people can step between the "local" train and the "long distance" train.

This lets the high-speed train serve a lot more places without losing much speed. Maybe the local train serves several towns in the area.

mitchdoogle• 4 years ago

Except "flyover" states are not just rural areas. There are tons of big cities in non-coastal areas of the US. I don't think people who use the term are maliciously doing it, but it does diminish the lives of millions of people as unimportant and inconsequential compared to the "important" areas on the coasts

presentation2• 4 years ago

As a contrast Japan seems to have done a pretty good job of maintaining rail service in really rural areas.

henvic• 4 years ago

I think you are thinking about European countries.

If you take the biggest countries worldwide, this doesn't apply.

nicoburns3• 4 years ago

Well yes, the OP is a map of trains in European countries.

majewsky3• 4 years ago

Wendover had a video on this topic just this week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9jirFqex6g

For a short summary, the basic problem is that rail infrastructure is paid for by national funds, so there is a bigger incentive to connect two places within the same country than to connect one place within the country to another place within a neighboring country.

Wendover theorizes that the decoupling of rail networks from rail service operators (as pushed by the EU-level government) can lead to new demand for international routes as budget operators spring up that are less tied to the demands of a particular national government.

mnd999• 4 years ago

I’m now looking at whether you can get to Paris and Brussels within 5 hours from the village of Wendover in the UK.

And yes, you can.

terramex• 4 years ago

For a short summary, the basic problem is that rail infrastructure is paid for by national funds

EU co-founded projects can be forced to operate only domestically too. For example polish high speed railways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendolino#Poland

certification for international operation is not seen as a priority, as the trains are restricted to domestic services for an initial 10 years under the terms of a grant from the EU Cohesion Fund which covered 22% of the project cost.[31]

johannes1234321• 4 years ago

Yes, funding is one thing. Other thing is that history of control systems and regulations is wild. For each border crossing you need different pantographs (some locomotives have four different pantographs for different countries), the engineer has to be able to identify different signalling systems, the train needs different computer systems for interpreting different control systems ...

There are initiatives like ETCS which partially improve the control situation, but even that has lots of national variations and takes ages to rollout.

Historic systems with little funding (relative to need) are fun.

oittaa• 4 years ago

There are a lot of plans for international train lines in Europe and some of them are actually being built. If you check the Wikipedia page of the the Spanish rail service[1], you'll see that new connections to France should be completed sometime around 2023. Currently the only high speed link to France is from Barcelona, which makes traveling from Madrid and Spain's Northern coast to Paris more time consuming.

There's also a Helsinki-Tallinn tunnel plan, which is more like in an exploration/planning phase, but that should connect those cities and make them function almost like one. Instead of a two hour ferry ride it would be more like a 30min train ride. Øresund Bridge basically did that to Copenhagen and Malmö.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVE#Lines_under_construction

iggldiggl2• 4 years ago

Wendover theorizes that the decoupling of rail networks from rail service operators (as pushed by the EU-level government) can lead to new demand for international routes as budget operators spring up that are less tied to the demands of a particular national government.

Some problems with that approach are

1. It doesn't take that many different operators before you start running into capacity limits of the network and get into a situation where additional services (when you want even more competition) cannot be scheduled without actively worsening the services offered by existing operators (including operators that might not even be competing within the same market segment, i.e. like long distance operators vs. regional and commuter service operators or freight operators).

2. In principle connections are a core part of railways' service offerings (especially in countries that aren't as centralised as e.g. the stereotype of France), but attractive connection times are only possible between a very limited number of trains, so with multiple competing long distance operators who gets to decide which operator gets the path with the attractive connection times and who doesn't? Attractive connections also require through-ticketing in terms of passenger rights, so you won't be left stranded if you miss a connection because of preceding delays, and both scheduled/coordinated connections and through-ticketing run counter to the mantra of absolutely free-for-all competition.

3. For the wheel-rail interface to work well, you definitively need to take a holistic approach between the needs of the infrastructure and the needs of the vehicles running on that infrastructure. Introducing a hard legal split between infrastructure owner and train operating companies in the name of free competition unfortunately tends to turn that interface into a legal and bureaucratic quagmire that is anything but efficient for the railway system as a whole.

For example in Germany construction works (outside of emergency repairs) are required to be scheduled several years (not just a year plus a bit so its known in time for the next timetable, but some years more) in advance. At that point you already need to specify the exact and precise length of any required possessions, but at the same time due to the rules for tendering construction works, you're also not supposed to specify the exact method of doing those construction works, so for anything slightly more complex how are you now supposed to calculate the exact length for the required possessions if you aren't actually allowed to specify how the construction works are to be executed?

Or for another example: Within the wheel-rail interface you cannot avoid a certain amount of wear and tear, especially on more curvy stretches of line. This affects both the train operators (wheels) as well as the infrastructure operator (rails). Ideally you'd work out some compromise that is tenable for both sides of the interface, and normally somewhat more wear and tear on the wheels is to be preferred, because wheels can re-profiled and/or changed in fixed, covered maintenance facilities (i.e. better working conditions) and while the trains are potentially out of service for regular maintenance anyway, whereas rail renewals need to potentially brave the elements and either block rail traffic or else need to be conducted at unattractive times (for workers, i.e. on weekends and especially at night).

The legal separation between train operating companies and infrastructure owners nevertheless has led train operating companies to possibly try optimising the wheel-rail interface for their own benefit, which has meant that on some heavily used routes with tight(ish) curves, due to excessive wear rails now have to be renewed every year or two, which longer term absolutely isn't sustainable in terms of the demands placed on the maintenance personnel of the infrastructure operator (and never mind the costs, too). (Normally, rail life before a complete renewal is measured in decades!)

So now "the empire strikes back" and the infrastructure operator installs hardened rails in order to return to a somewhat more manageable and sustainable maintenance schedule, but because the vehicle operators haven't been prepared for that switch, they now suddenly find themselves with excessive wheel wear (and unfortunately at a point in time when due to outside political events there isn't much excess capacity in the market for railway wheels). In the end, it's ultimately the passenger who suffers here.

adamjb• 4 years ago

Fascinating how clearly you can see this with the 5hr limit from Dusseldorf being pretty much exactly the French border from the Atlantic to Switzerland

Archelaos• 4 years ago

Nice observation. It is interesting that Bruxelles and Strasbourg are an exception.

inglor_cz• 4 years ago

Language barriers in Europe are still rather formidable.

Plus, when it comes to daily "Pendlers" (people who cross the border regularly to work), often they cross the border in places where there is no extant railway connection. In Czechia, a lot of commuting people cross the German border using the D5/A6 highway, which has no nearby alternative. The closest potentially upgradeable railway is 40 km away in difficult mountain terrain, so even if it got upgraded to a reasonable standard, it would have to attract different customers going from different A to different B.

By far the most common demographics to cross the borders in trains in my country are tourists, who like to go from one capital or important city (Berlin, Krakow) to another (Prague, Vienna).

vanderZwan• 4 years ago

The thing is that this used to be better. Groningen (north of the Netherlands) used to connect to Germany. I think there are new plans to restart that. Lots of international night trains also were abolished a decade ago.

I wonder how much privatization has played a role in this.

ceejayoz2• 4 years ago

"Not very far right now" seems to be the answer in Ukraine.

baby• 4 years ago

Being in the east of France, it's a bit sad how misconnected we are with the west of France. (Lyon <-> Bordeaux you'd think can be done in 2 hours, but no it'll take like 6 hours).

Fiahil• 4 years ago

Yes, that's because everything here is centered on Paris

jeffbee2• 4 years ago

I wish we had this attitude in California! Bordeaux is a city of roughly the same population and economic activity as Fresno, but there are many in California who still argue that Fresno should not be connected by high-speed rail to any place.

California's cities are all arranged in a line, it should be the easiest high-speed rail project ever, but it languishes due to lack of imagination.

humanistbot2• 4 years ago

We're of completely opposite minds on this. A stop in Fresno should have been sacrificed so that California High Speed Rail could still happen for the majority of the state. Routing through the Central Valley was practically required for political reasons, and now the entire project has collapsed into a parody of itself.

California's cities are not all arranged in a single line. They are in two roughly parallel lines, separated by up to hundreds of miles and across mountains. There are the coastal cities of SF, SJ, SLO, LA, and SD (follows highway 1) and the Central Valley line of Sacramento, Stockton, Merced, Fresno, Bakersfield, Lancaster/Palmdale (follows highway 99 mostly). The 5 is a compromise interstate that runs in between these two, and there is very little development there. If you've ever driven the 5, you know what I'm talking about. Even most towns "on" the 5 are a few miles away.

The HSR line could have been drawn from LA to SF more or less following the 5, stopping at the outskirts of Bakersfield and then zooming straight through to a fork that stops next in either Gilroy (en route to the Bay Area) or Modesto (en route to Stockton and Sacramento). This would have been cheaper, shorter, and less encumbered by the need to get permits, approvals, easements, and the like from everyone in the Central Valley. Meanwhile, the chosen HSR route through the Central Valley runs through dozens of different counties, cities, tax districts, and regional planning agencies.

Also, Fresno is far less dense than Bordeaux, and has a population that generally considers a mile to be a "long walk."

dragonwriter5• 4 years ago

California’s cities are all arranged in a line

No, they aren’t.

it should be the easiest high-speed rail project ever

The error in the preceding claim isn’t the only reason why this one is false, too (geography and preexisting land use also play roles).

but it languishes due to lack of imagination.

Mostly, it has been delayed by lack of funding, not imagination, but its not really “languishing” right now, either.

hyakosm3• 4 years ago

We're missing a high-speed connection here. The Bordeaux-Sète line is relatively slow (130-160 km/h) and handle a lot of different traffic (freight, regional, TGV, intercity). If the Bordeaux-Toulouse high-speed line is done (planned 2032), that travel time would be shortened.

jobigoud7• 4 years ago

It's crazy, I can reach Strasbourg or Bruxelles from Bordeaux, but not Clermont-Ferrand…

WaitWaitWha• 4 years ago

I delight in isochrone maps[0]! There used to be some open source, web interfaces but they all became commercial.

An isochrone map is one of the best tools for weekend get-aways, job hunting, and finding a home location.

OpenStreetMap[1]! Add it to your site, it will be great hit, in my opinion.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrone_map

[1] https://www.openstreetmap.org

cridenour• 4 years ago

I ran a home search startup in 2015 and I will always remember the moment my searching finally came up with the name "isochrone" and the explosion of research and data that came with that. Our home search went from "we'll send you an email when its done" to adding fake loading bars to make it seem like it was doing more.

mwint• 4 years ago

By 2015 Zillow was already well entrenched, what was your differentiator?

jmkb• 4 years ago

GeoApify[0] is one of these commercial services using OpenStreetMap data. They have a no-friction isochrone "playground"[1] that's sufficient for casual exploration. You can switch the travel mode to "transit" to include train routes, but the maximum travel time for the demo is capped at one hour.

The results are very different, eg chronotrains-eu.vercel.app claims that Wittenberge is within an hour of Berlin Hauptbahnhof, but GeoApify won't take you further than Nauen. Possibly chronotrains-eu is showing a best-case travel time while GeoApify is attempting to calculate realtime travel using the current day's schedules?

I doubt the main OSM site would ever host an isochrone demo, as it's more of a reference implementation of very basic map and routing features that OSM data enables. Notably, the routing demos there do not (yet) include any kind of transit mode.

[0] https://www.geoapify.com

[1] https://apidocs.geoapify.com/playground/isoline

Dagonfly• 4 years ago

Seems like OPs site is correct. There are multiple connections with 54min and occasional ones with 47min.

Though on geoapify you select a a street address rather than the train stop. So maybe they add a few minutes buffer for walking to the station.

twobitshifter• 4 years ago

The atlas obscura article on old isochrone maps and how travel has changed is great. I really like the Melbourne Tram map style. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/isochrone-maps-color-t...

Jugurtha• 4 years ago

I delight in isochrone maps

I almost orgasmed reading "isochrone maps". I wasn't aware of the "concept" but it's one of those things you go "of course it is".

maeln• 4 years ago

You can really see the Paris-centric approach in France: From Paris you can reach almost any other major city in 4h, but on the other hand, all the other metropolis can barely reach 1/4th of the other major population center in 4h.

Compare this to Germany where almost any major metropolis can reach 80% of the country in 4h ...

OJFord7• 4 years ago

Infamously similar in the UK, even despite being smaller. Particularly East-West travel anywhere much North of London. Many inter-city routes are via London.

(I'm not complaining, j'habite à Londres ;))

xenocratus• 4 years ago

anywhere much North of London

You don't need to go that much North - I used to live in Oxfordshire, trying to get to Cambridge for work was a joke (I don't drive). It would take 3.5h+ for a 140km journey from Oxford to Cambridge because train journeys were only through London (+ a railway station change), and there was only one coach that stopped in every town along the way (and which has been axed into two separate legs since the pandemic, making it 4h+ now).

In the end I moved to London, so that's manageable now...

rjh292• 4 years ago

South West connectivity is fine, you can get from Plymouth to Exeter to Bristol to Birmingham and up to Edinburgh without going anywhere near London.

darkwater• 4 years ago

Or Spain with Madrid-centric approach.

marcolussetti• 4 years ago

At least Madrid is roughly in the center of the Peninsula, whereas London is quite a bit off that.

izacus• 4 years ago

And then you have Brussels, center of EU which has a massive reach.

rurban• 4 years ago

And then you have Lille, the logistic centre of the European train network. (Eurotunnel)

aj77• 4 years ago

These are countries the size of Oregon.

umanwizard• 4 years ago

France is way bigger than Oregon (it's about the size of Texas)

twelvechairs• 4 years ago

Metropolitan france is 54% larger than Germany so its not a fair comparison

quelltext• 4 years ago

Huh?

How can metropolitan France be larger than the entirety of Germany?

zwaps• 4 years ago

Germany has more than twice the population density compared to France - and much less variance of it

flipbrad• 4 years ago

Strasbourg seems fairly well-connected, too

cjrp• 4 years ago

Presumably because it’s where the European Parliament is based

jobigoud7• 4 years ago

The asymmetry from my home town of Bordeaux in the South West is striking, towards the North I can reach Brussels, 763 Km away, but going South I can barely enter Spain which is only about 200 Km away!

littlecranky674• 4 years ago

The problem us that Spain uses a different track gauge than France, so connecting the countries is difficult.

dmurray• 4 years ago

This isn't so much about France's network being Paris-centric, but the massive natural barrier to transport that is the Pyrenees.

caradine• 4 years ago

I'd love to see this for the U.S. as well, if only to highlight the contrast

marcosscriven• 4 years ago

I'd love to see the Eurostar on there. A colleague was stunned I could get from London to Brussels in two hours.

joosters• 4 years ago

It is on there - highlight Brussels and it’ll show that you can reach Newcastle within five hours. That’s only possible if you go via Eurostar.

NeoTar• 4 years ago

Sadly, the trains on the Isle of Wight (off the South Coast of England, south of Southampton and Portsmouth) is not included.

I'd be interested in their perspective since you can buy a 'train' ticket which includes a ferry crossing, so the isochrone would either extend up to London and beyond (if you allow the ferry), or be restricted to just the island itself (if you do not).

qalmakka• 4 years ago

As a European it boggles my mind seeing how trains are basically non-existent in the USA (just look at Houston station), given how dominant the whole "Wild West" railroad rush is in everybody's immagination. Railroads are super ubiquitous here, and we've to work with a pretty hostile terrain - Italy has lots of mountains, hills, rivers, and yet has one of the best networks in the world. Most of the USA are basically empty, it would be pretty easy to build high-speed rail.

Robotbeat• 4 years ago

The fact the US is basically empty means the cost to build a HSR route to go between population centers is super high because of the sheer distances involved. You’re talking like 1000 miles, not 200. The places which are closer together, like the East Coast, do have some passenger rail but they’re also much denser, like Europe, and so they have the same kind of constraints (or worse).

The US has a lot of freight rail, and we use it.

The Wild West mentality has gone away in the railroad industry which is now hyper-conservative and regulated.

I do sometimes wish the US lived up to the Wild West stereotype the Europeans imagine. But no, we often have just as much stifling regulation (if not more), depending on where you’re talking about. But we do have gun violence, so there’s that.

OJFord7• 4 years ago

I don't know why this is down-voted so, but to me also outside the US it seems correct? You bill for travel between stations, there'd be a lot more track & travel between stations in the US, on average, if it were as ubiquitous.

Intranational flight is a lot more common there. I imagine the economics of it are better, lower ticket price, and in many cases probably quicker too, even including airport BS.

melling3• 4 years ago

Yes, we agree we should only build where it makes sense.

1000 miles is quite far. That would be 5-6 hours!

- NYC - Miami 1300 miles

- NYC - Chicago 800 miles

Then we have these:

- NYC - Philly 92 miles

- NYC - DC 225 miles

- NYC - Boston 215 miles

- NYC - Portland, ME 325 miles

- NYC - Pittsburgh 380 miles

- NYC - Cleveland 470 miles

- Cleveland - Chicago 350 miles

- St. Louis - Chicago 320 miles

- Houston - Dallas 240 miles

- Houston - Austin 170 miles

- Dallas - Austin 200 miles

- Seattle - Portland 175 miles

- Las Vegas - Los Angeles 280 miles

California too.

woodruffw3• 4 years ago

I agree that we should let density and demand drive construction of HSR.

That being said, there are plenty of plausible HSR routes in the US. We're a very sparsely populated country in our middle, but there's effectively a "string" of large cities right through our middle: NYC - Pittsburgh - Columbus - {Cincinnati, Indianapolis} - {Louisville, St. Louis} - Kansas City - Oklahoma City - Albuquerque - {Phoenix, Tucson} - Los Angeles.

All of the legs there should under 400 miles, and most should be under 200. There's also plenty of room for adjustment: Louisville - Nashville - Memphis - Dallas and then onward south, for example.

aj77• 4 years ago

I see no mention of 737’s and A320’s here or in most posts. Compare the price per mile with those of alternatives. The U.S. doesn’t even resemble Europe.

wbsss44125• 4 years ago

The center of population in the US is still just barely to the west of the Mississippi, whenever people point out how vast and largely empty the US is, the leave out that the population itself is actually generally fairly close together for a majority of the country.

You could easily have HSR all over the south, Midwest and NE, and then between population centers on the west coast, just likely not in the desert and western Great Plains.

scythe2• 4 years ago

the cost to build a HSR route to go between population centers is super high

The cost is high, but more painfully, the cost per-mile is higher than for the same distance of railroad in Europe or East Asia. That's not a result of pure geography.

Also, while the cost is high, it's not actually that large in comparison to the overall DoT budget, which is projected at $142B for FY2023. You could build a lot of train for that. Political will is a much more important factor. We just dropped $40B on the Current War without blinking.

Even so, this misses another key step: intercity rail in Europe usually connects seamlessly to metro rail, which is what makes it so easy and nice to use. But the cities themselves in the United States do not usually have rail systems to connect to. That's why the best near-term rail corridor IMHO is NY-Buffalo (subway) - Youngstown (possible Pittsburgh metro extension) - Cleveland (subway) - Toledo (possible Detroit metro extension) - Chicago, connecting to six subway systems.

darksaints• 4 years ago

The Midwest cluster of cities which include Chicago, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, St Louis, Columbus, and Detroit, have an extremely similar density and distance distribution compared to France, where high speed rail is incredibly successful. We could have successful high speed rail nearly everywhere in the US with a possible exception of the rocky mountain regions. I wish this density trope would die.

The real reason we don't have high speed rail is that right of way acquisition is ridiculously costly unless government is involved, and we don't trust our government to do it right. Probably justified, if urban rail costs are indicative.

eloisant• 4 years ago

We're not talking about doing NYC - SF by train, but there are a lot of places where it makes sense.

As I used to live in the Bay Area, it really surprised me that there was no bullet train between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Yes, apparently it's planned but it boggles my mind that they waited so much before building it.

Americans don't realize how much nicer train is compared to plane for medium distances (up to 500 miles). Station being in the middle of the city, get in the train 10 minutes before departure without check-in or security, no waiting 15 minutes on the tarmac before disembarking... I guarantee you the door-to-door time is going to be lower.

Also train is more confortable, seats are wider, you can use phones/electronics for the full duration of the trip...

not2b2• 4 years ago

You'd only want to build regional HSR systems that would connect cities that get a lot of traffic and flights between them and are under 300 miles / 500 km apart. So, the northeast corridor, connect California major cities, connect Portland to Seattle, connect Dallas/Austin/Houston/San Antonio.

In Canada, half the population lives near a nearly straight line from Quebec City to Windsor; you could put a high speed rail line down the middle of that.

teloli• 4 years ago

Distance alone isn't enough of a reason though, Beijing–Shanghai is 1200 KM and yet you can cover that by train no problem in < 5 hours: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing%E2%80%93Shanghai_high-...

rr8886• 4 years ago

I used to think this too, now I live here the American system actually works pretty well. Railways are actually very busy with freight, which keeps it off the roads and freight doesn't mind pauses and running overnight. Lots of rural connections are much easier to drive. Even between cities its easier because for train connections you'd have to get to the station (usually central) where if you drive you can go directly where you want. As a result people are much more mobile and can live in a wider area in USA, where in Europe to commute to the office you really have to live near a train station.

dr_dshiv4• 4 years ago

But that means the modern USA misses out on the inherent benefits of density. This is a weird counter rational behavior— it is in everyone’s perceived best interest to live in big separate homes, but the collective social economic benefit of living together is evident. Also evident is how sprawl sucks vitality from culture.

avianlyric• 4 years ago

This does make the fundamental assumption that train travel and driving are equal from a users perspective.

Train travel has the advantage of not needing to do the driving. You can spend that travel time doing something productive, rather than staring at tarmac. Additionally train travel is potentially more accessible (assuming proper investment in infrastructure). The obvious example being that blind people are never going drive anywhere, regardless of how “mobile” it makes them.

While your point about being close to train stations has some validity. For the vast majority of European urban, and sub-urban areas, a fast train connection is only 20-30mins away via local public transport. So living “close” in terms of time, doesn’t require you to be physically close to the train station.

Finally high-speed rail, is really fast. Up to 200mph fast, well over double what’s realistically safe in a private car. So while the train might not be direct, it’s going that much faster, you can still get to your destination quicker than a car.

To provide some context, many Amtrak lines are limited to 80mph, and only a small number can achieve Amtraks top speeds of 150mph. That’s ignoring the frequent delays due to track congestion and freight priority, which results in even slower average speeds. It’s not a surprise that trains look unappealing to many Americans, when the average US passenger train can only just keep up with a passenger car.

panick21_10• 4 years ago

So many wrong things here.

Unless you are talking about dumb mass freight, freight does actually mind just staying around. Its just that all those things have been taken of the railroad.

As a result people are much more mobile and can live in a wider area in USA

If they have money for a car.

where in Europe to commute to the office you really have to live near a train station

That's nonsense. There are these things called bicycles and also these things called trams and buses.

js2• 4 years ago

Italy compared to U.S.:

https://www.thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTY3OTMzNjA.NTkxNzE...

U.S compared to Europe:

https://www.thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTc4NDEwOTE.MjkxMDg...

My daughter, visiting home from college this weekend, took Amtrak from Richmond, VA yesterday. She's taking the train back Monday. Without delay, the train takes about 4 hours. Driving takes about 3 hours. Add an extra 15 minutes on each side for getting to/from the station, so 4:30 hours vs 3 hours. Distance is 150 miles (241 km).

Cost of the train is $42 (coach) each way. Cost of gasoline would be ~ $24 each way.

Her train yesterday departed about 30 minutes late and arrived an hour late. Supposedly it may have been traveling slower due to the heat wave.

Here's a live map of the Amtrak network:

https://www.amtrak.com/track-your-train.html

That's just our national train system. Many municipalities have their own patchwork of train networks. Some off the top of my head: BART, LIRR, MTA, MBTA T, Metro (D.C., Atlanta), L (Chicago), Metrorail (Miami).

wbsss44125• 4 years ago

Cost of the train is $42 (coach) each way. Cost of gasoline would be ~ $24 each way.

The cost of driving is more than just the cost of gasoline.

redtexture6• 4 years ago

The IRS allows business travelers 58.5 cents a mile.

That is closer to your total cost of use of your automobile.

IRS 2022 Business milage rates:

https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-issues-standard-mileage-rat...

notagoodidea• 4 years ago

I do a similar travel distance (between 213km - 230km by car on the highway) monthly minimum between Amsterdam - Brussels taking the inter-regional train (NS) (understand the "slow") : 2h45 for around 25-29 EUR each way if booked a few days in advance. The fastest one with the Thalys is 1h55 for around 90EUR. Driving take around the same time than the slowest way ~2h30.

The Amtrak trains are slow? I mean even adjusting for the potential 40 to 10km difference and the fact that the NS does between 8 to 10 stop depending where you want to go out in Brussels or Amsterdam, 4h for a 241km trip is slow.

It is a bit cheating as if you want to do Brussels - Arlon, a 190-ish km trip inside Belgium, it will take you 2h45. And if you want to more or less cross Belgium from North to South (Oostende to Arlon), 310-ish km trip will take you around 4h15 by train and between 3 to 4h by car due to the fact that you will take the Brussels ring road. So small country, yep. Still 4h for 241km is slow.

goodpoint2• 4 years ago

The "murica is big" excuse is silly.

What really matter, obviously, is population density. And population density would justify passenger railways on the coasts and in more than half of the US:

https://www.ecoclimax.com/2016/10/population-density-of-worl...

Additionally, it's also based on the flawed assumption that transportation should adapt to the locations of where people live rather than the other way around.

CPLX• 4 years ago

I think any answer to this has to involve two staples of American culture, cars and racism.

The prevalence of both has been a big detriment to rail initiatives. For whatever reason people have associated a nearby train station with crime and opening up the neighborhood to the "wrong people".

And the incredibly cheap and ubiquitous car culture (especially in the post-war period) provided the alternative. That of course interacts with the dramatic lack of density for new post-war suburban neighborhoods as well, which is a function of both issues mentioned (cars and racism) as well as the fact that the US does indeed (or did) have a whole lot of extra space compared to Europe.

geraldwhen3• 4 years ago

I used to walk past a bus station to lunch most weekdays. Nearly every single day I witnessed an assault at the bus station. Mass transit hubs do bring crime. Why minimize that?

cbm-vic-202• 4 years ago

I live near Boston in the US. In five hours, you can get as far north as Portland Maine (there's no passenger rail service north of there), and as far south as Philadelphia, and as far west as Albany.

In New York, you can probably do better, but if you leave the Northeast Corridor (the stretch between Boston and Washington, DC, along the coast) destinations to other major cities like Montreal will take around nine hours (if they ever restart that service post-pandemic), and even the fastest train to Chicago takes around 20 hours. NYC to Los Angeles? at least 70 hours.

How far can you get to by train from Paris in 70 hours?

melling3• 4 years ago

I can make it to Portland Maine from NJ in 6 hours.

Portland is only 112 miles from Boston.

rr8886• 4 years ago

How far can you get to by train from Paris in 70 hours?

NYC->LA is about the same as Paris->Moscow and that takes nearly 3 days as well. Paris Instanbul is similar distance which is a little quicker but still over 2 days.

PopAlongKid• 4 years ago

a pretty hostile terrain - Italy has lots of mountains, hills, rivers

So does U.S., a lot more in fact. The length of Italy north to south is 1,320km, the distance from San Francisco to Chicago is 3,220Km and that's only 2/3rds of the east-west distance of the continental U.S. And there are two major mountain ranges to cross on that trip, and huge stretches with almost no population. (How many deserts to cross does Italy have?)

Trains need crews, the crews need to work in shifts, the crews need to be available along the way, even in Nowhere, Nevada. That causes delays and restricts schedules.

ClumsyPilot4• 4 years ago

how are deserts a relevant problem?

PeterHolzwarth• 4 years ago

America actually has a rather vast and impressive rail system. It's just used almost entirely for shipping.

aj77• 4 years ago

Exactly. People’s time is too valuable when per capita GDP is $60k.

ChrisMarshallNY3• 4 years ago

As a frequent traveler to Tokyo, I became a fan of mass transit.

A guaranteed way to become sad, is use the Tokyo trains, then come home to New York, and use the Metro/LIRR.

aj77• 4 years ago

Metro/LIRR works fine, if you can tune out the aesthetics.

decafninja3• 4 years ago

This.

I have fond memories of using the subway/trains in Tokyo. Ditto for Seoul (which I'd rank even better than Tokyo's), Hong Kong, Singapore.

I dread using the subway in NYC and nowadays try to avoid using it as much as possible (mostly via biking).

PaulHoule• 4 years ago

It’s almost forgotten how much resentment Americans had to the private railroads. They would buy land along the tracks, refuse to make a stop in your town, and start a new town. There was a phrase, ‘railroaded’ to describe being a victim of this power imbalance.

As such, people saw the roads as belonging to everyone but railroads being to the benefit of a few.

vidanay• 4 years ago

A significant portion of the land wasn't bought, it was acquired through eminent domain.

And an even more significant portion of the land was simply stolen from natives (both by settlers and by the railroads.)

panick21_10• 4 years ago

Yeah partly because the roads were literally paid for by the state, specially the highways, and truck and bus companies don't have to pay for maintenance.

DrBazza2• 4 years ago

I'm not convinced high speed rail would ever work in the US due to how entrenched the car culture is, regardless of the terrain.

In Europe with we have spoke-and-hub railways - want to get into London? There's almost certainly a local station near you in the suburbs. Then jump on the Eurostar to Paris. Get to Paris, and then get a local line back out to wherever you want to go.

Right now, it would have to be airport like terminals, and a multi-decade (if not century long) plan to connect the city centres.

In the US, drive to the new high speed mainline station outside the city, where there would have to be as much parking as an airport, and then get the high speed line to the destination, and then... hire a car?

Building a mainline station in many US city centres for high speed lines isn't going to work right now. There are too few local lines going in, and nowhere to build super-sized car parks.

melling3• 4 years ago

Would never work because of our car culture? I’m going to use my imagination on this one since “never” is a long time.

The year 2040. Two technologies combine make never a reality.

1. Maglev trains that travel at 350 miles per hour (600kph)

2. Self-driving taxis

Exhibit 1:

https://www.cnn.com/travel/amp/china-fastest-maglev-train-in...

NY to LA in 10 hours by maglev sometime in this century.

The 4 hour maglev between Miami and NYC will be popular.

runarberg3• 4 years ago

In the current planed and under construction high speed rail in the USA by far most large city stations are planned to go in (or near) the city center. Texas Central (planned) is only planning on building 2 big city stations which the go to the outskirts of Houston and Dallas respectively.

Meanwhile California High Speed Rail (under construction) is planning to build stations in downtown San Francisco (and anther close to the city center, and a third by the Airport in Millbrae), close to downtown San José, downtown Fresno, close to downtown Bakerfield and downtown Los Angeles. Palmdale is the only city over 100,000 which gets a station in the city outskirts in California, and Burbank gets one by the airport.

I’m guessing California High Speed Rail did the work and came to the opposite conclusion of yours, that it does—in fact—work to build mainline stations in many US city centers.

joe_91• 4 years ago

Travel between countries in Europe is improving every year too. Next week I'll be traveling from Bordeaux to Berlin (over 1,600km) - it's faster than the car (16 hours by car vs 12 hours by train), and cheaper than flying, in the summer at least (150 euro by train, vs 300 euro by plane - booking 6 weeks before).

That will improve next year too with the direct Paris Berlin train that should only take 7 hours.

panick21_10• 4 years ago

how entrenched the car culture is

You mean the culture of the government spending an absurd amount of money on highways and each town massively subsidizing sprawl?

decafninja3• 4 years ago

I'm visiting Italy in a month and have multiple tickets booked on Italo's Club Executive class. The seats look sweet and the price was surprisingly affordable. Looking forward to see how good it is.

Manuel_D• 4 years ago

Trains in the US are widely prevalent! It's just that they're used for freight rather than passenger travel. The main driver behind this is the population density of the USA, cities are spaced too far apart to make passenger travel by train viable. Not coincidentally, the only area that does have significant passenger rail networks, the DC - Boston corridor, has population density similar to Western Europe.

An interesting video on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ

dfee• 4 years ago

Italy is much smaller than the US. It’s about the equivalent size of New Mexico - which has 1/30th the population (2M).

Public transit isn’t bad - I told on an Amtrak from LA to SD yesterday which was quite nice.

But, I also rode on the LA metro which was filed with mobs of mentally ill marauders.

My experience to Rome (albeit a bit over a decade ago) was similar. That’s an off putting response that likely plays a big role in sinking demand for public transit - esp. as compared to a car.

Of course, America was also designed for the auto - we’re newer, and gas was cheap during the highway construction heyday.

davidw• 4 years ago

There are plenty of higher density areas within the US though, where trains would be a good option. Maybe Cyanide Springs, Oklahoma to Blandsville, North Dakota doesn't make sense for trains, but you could do bits of the PNW, California and the east coast with higher quality rail pretty successfully.

mastercheif• 4 years ago

To go against the grain somewhat, I think distance is an overrated factor in regard to its impact in preventing US passenger rail adoption.

I think the most overlooked factor is poor intra-city transit and lack of mixed use density in our city cores.

I recently traveled to Germany on business, a few nights in Berlin then took the ICE inter-city train to Munich.

The ICE train dropped me off at the main station in Munich—my hotel was 7.3 miles driving from the main station. I was able to jump on the u-bahn and with a quick transfer at Odeonsplatz get to my hotel in half-an-hour including a 10 minute walk from the train station.

Door to door from Berlin to the hotel in Munich was 05:00 hours. If one were to drive, maps says 361mi/580km traveled if driving direct with a drive time of 05:30.

For comparisons sake, let's take a hypothetical trip from Dallas Union Station to Apple's engineering headquarters in Austin, TX 14.7mi/24.6km from the Austin train station.

According to Apple Maps, taking public transit would take 09:00 hours. Driving direct from Dallas Union Station to Apple HQ in Austin is 187mi/300km in total with a drive time of 03:00.

reddog• 4 years ago

Actually the US has the worlds most efficient train system: https://www.masterresource.org/railroads/us-most-advanced-ra...

For long hauls, we use our RRs to move freight and airlines to move people. By traveling at 600mph instead of 60mph (the speed of most European train travel - intercity high speed rail is rare and expensive) I can get to anyplace in the continental US in under 5 hours from my home in Austin.

Milner08• 4 years ago

Intercity trains often go much faster than 60mph. More like an average of 90mph with a speed limit 125mph on the main lines in UK. Thats not even the HS1 (and eventually HS2), that's on our old AF Victorian rail roads.

The argument for trains is often more about taking out the need to drive everywhere than the need to fly from coast to coast though, as a train is never going to beat that.

andjd• 4 years ago

The USA has a world-class _Freight_ rail network, and almost all existing track in the country is owned by the freight operators, who manage the track to optimize it for freight operations. In many cases, they are openly hostile to passenger service on their tracks.

On top of this, most cities in the USA were built (or destroyed and rebuilt) for private cars being the primary mode of transportation. In Europe, one of the benefits of taking the train over an airplane is that the train stations will often be in a walkable city center with a good connection to public transit. In the USA, outside of a handful of older cities (New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston . . .), the train station drops you off in the middle of nowhere, usually with far less connections and services than the airport has. When compared to air travel, intercity rail travel is often slower, less convenient, less frequent, and more expensive.

Even with the Acela/northwest corridor, flights are often cheaper than rail, so it is the convenience of the downtown stations and connections to public transit that drive people to take the train over airplanes. It's no coincidence that the major cities on the route (DC, Philiadelphia, NYC, Boston) are also cities with some of the best metro networks in the country.

nickbauman3• 4 years ago

No it doesn't have a world class freight rail network. The North American rail infra is incredibly primitive. Most of it is "dark territory" (no track sensors), unlike Europe. I used to write rail automation software for a German firm. They were appalled at the state of affairs here. One of the most lucrative rail systems in the US had an average speed of their trains in the single digits MPH!

eptcyka• 4 years ago

Flying is cheaper than using trains in EU too.

panick21_10• 4 years ago

And European cities also have a real city center connected with lots of things in the city, rather then just endless sprawl around a small city core.

The Freight network is also not as elite and really only good at a few specific things.

rockostrich• 4 years ago

As an American, it doesn't really boggle my mind at all. We have a very car-centric culture. Just look at how we treat cyclists/cycling infrastructure, especially in cities. It's night and day compared to most European cities.

To be fair though, the continental US is almost double the size of Europe and Amtrak is actually alright in the areas that it serves (although my experience with trains in Switzerland/Italy was definitely much better).

simongray• 4 years ago

the continental US is almost double the size of Europe

Europe (the continent) is slightly bigger than the entirety of the USA...

I guess you are talking about continental Western Europe where much of the high speed rail is?

gwbas1c3• 4 years ago

Trains "work" in Europe because many European cities are easily walkable. The trains (and other public transportation) comes every 10-15 minutes, so you can leave and arrive when you want to.

Now, consider the convenience of traveling by car: You can leave and arrive when you want to. For a longer journey, you don't need to deal with transferring between trains/busses/whatever, which means that you can keep your luggage in your car until your destination. Chances are, you can park your car at your destination or very close.

As far as sprawl: In some places, building codes require more land. Other times, banks won't lend to build unless the land is worth a certain percentage of the building. For example, when I built my house, the bank wanted the land to be worth about 25% of the value of the house; and the town required that it was so many feet away from the road. That forced my neighborhood to have large, open lawns. (And as much as I love my lawn, I'd be just as happy with a postage stamp yard too.)

There's also the rumor that the US was deliberately built to sprawl after WWII as a way to survive a nuclear attack. I don't know if that's true or a rumor, though.

panick21_10• 4 years ago

The solution should be to make US cities walkable, as they were in the past.

glonq• 4 years ago

Canada is even worse. We are proud of our cross-country rail's history, but today it is slow and expensive compared to other systems.

phreeza• 4 years ago

So which starting point covers the largest number of people you can reach? I am guessing Brussels since it covers a good portion of the Blue Banana, plus Paris and other big French cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Banana

nowahe• 4 years ago

(Semi)surprisingly, Strasbourg looks like a good contender as well, as it covers a good portion of the blue banana, most of Germany, and about half of France

d--b• 4 years ago

This is great, but it would be better if the selection of the station was a textbox or a smaller map. Right now you have to zoom in to select a station, and then carefully zoom out to see the reach.

emaginniss• 4 years ago

Or if you could click to "lock on" to a station and then zoom out

ramboldio• 4 years ago

It's sad to see how disconnected the national railway systems are in eastern europe. Basically, 5h always fills the national borders but no further in Hungary, Romania, Poland etc

E.g., train connections from Czech Republic to southern Germany are missing all together.

nisa2• 4 years ago

train connections from Czech Republic to southern Germany are missing all together.

This is a huge problem IMHO. You always have to use the route via Dresden/Prague - it was different in the past - Would be really great if there would be some Eurocity Nürnberg-Pilsen or Munich-Budweis.

klohto2• 4 years ago

We all have neglected the networks while claiming to have “the biggest rail network”. Well, now it’s the slowest, and probably the most underfunded. The missing connection to South Germany don’t make sense though. Just take a train to Berlin and take DB anywhere.

nisa2• 4 years ago

The missing connection to South Germany don’t make sense though. Just take a train to Berlin and take OBB anywhere.

It's the difference between 6-8h and 2-3h to reach a city in Czech Republic. However the tracks connecting Germany/Czech Republic in the south are not in good shape if I remember that correctly.

yorwba• 4 years ago

The Czech borders are fairly mountainous. If you start in Prague, there's a tentacle that just barely reaches Regensburg in Germany. It crosses the border in the gap between two mountain ranges. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cham-Furth_Depression

Building other routes would likely be possible, but only with a lot of tunneling.

The Czech-Polish border is similar, I think.

leto_ii• 4 years ago

While I agree that rail infrastructure should be improved significantly in Eastern Europe, if you look a bit closer you'll see that there are many other countries where the 5 hrs don't take you much outside of national borders, e.g. Spain, Portugal, Italy, the UK, most of Scandinavia etc.

It's also important to note that Ukraine and Moldova run on a different gauge, so the border crossing takes some time.

midasuni3• 4 years ago

The U.K. has nonsense passport and security checks which mean trains only go from london and adds a 60-90 minute connection. Without those you could easily route Manchester, Bristol, Leeds, Birmingham etc via Stratford and the tunnel and into much of north west europe in 5 hours.

88840-8855• 4 years ago

I would love to see the same map for China. They have a fantastic HSR network and great trains.

woodruffw3• 4 years ago

For the Europeans on HN: on the East coast of the US, the furthest you can get by train in ~5h is roughly Boston to NYC, or NYC to Washington, DC. Both are roughly equidistant (~220 miles, ~354 kilometers).

One of the perverse things with our passenger rail network is that you can actually take take trains that "only" take 2.5 hours, but: they run nonstop point-to-point, and any subsequent connection you make (e.g. to Richmond, a major city in Virginia) will be on a diesel train that shares trackage with CSX or another major freight line. The end result is that traveling the extra ~90 miles from Washington, DC to Richmond generally takes over 3 hours, when it should really take less than an hour.

fatnoah2• 4 years ago

Boston to Philadelphia a closer approximation. The Acela is scheduled for 5h 1m for that trip. I travel between Boston and New York by train frequently, and even the slower regional service takes < 4 hours. Either way, still not a great comparison to Europe.

woodruffw3• 4 years ago

Sorry, this was confusing wording on my part -- I was trying to say that Boston/NY or NY/DC is consistently under 5 hours, and that just about everything else is over 5 hours, illustrating a gap in our network.

NYC to DC is also consistently around 3.5 hours, even with the slower NE Regional.

jonas21• 4 years ago

~50 million people live along the Boston to DC corridor. That's roughly the population of Spain, and not much less than that of France.

DiogenesKynikos4• 4 years ago

With a modern high-speed rail line, you'd theoretically be able to get from NYC to Chicago in around 4:15, even when accounting for stops along the way.

That's an average of 300 km/h. There are already lines in service elsewhere the world that are that fast.

gok• 4 years ago

The fastest service was Wuhan–Guangzhou, which averaged 313 km/h on non-stops, but is not run any more.

Chicago-NYC with stops would probably be 5 hours, which is barely competitive with flying. The intermediate stops would potentially make it viable though.

danwee• 4 years ago

When people talk about how bad trains are in Germany and how good (relatively speaking) they are in Spain, well, one word: connectivity. Hover over any city in Germany and you'll see almost no gaps in the map. Hover over any northern city in Spain and you'll see no direct connection by train among them (!).

jbj• 4 years ago

Amazing map.

Hovering around over South Sweden and North Germany, makes it quite obvious that the Femern tunnel will make a difference in connecting that area.

Same for connecting north from Lombardy through the mountains.

kzrdude• 4 years ago

Sweden-Denmark is already well connected too, but I hope that norway-swesen gets improved.

housingisaright• 4 years ago

Sweden-Norway is getting improved, the railroad between åre-trondheim has been 2 separate trains due to the Norwegian train not being electrified. Which is now being worked on. Trains in the northern parts of Sweden will always be sparse due to the low population tho.

arnaudsm• 4 years ago

I'm impressed by the low latency, great job sir

gregsadetsky2• 4 years ago

Indeed, it's very well done.

Each isochrone is loaded from a static server/CDN -- for example https://chronotrains-eu.vercel.app/api/isochrones/7100002 -- and that bit of vector map data is then rendered using the mapbox gl/js frontend. Great work

Kon-Peki6• 4 years ago

Unfortunately it's been hugged to death.

I wonder if it loads the entire set of isochrones when you open the page, given how incredibly responsive it is. I tried to share it with someone who would really enjoy it, but alas, no luck at all.

omega3• 4 years ago

This map is slightly misleading as the areas covered by the train stations are huge.

aj77• 4 years ago

Explains the explosive growth of European regional and budget airlines. Especially with excellent public transportation to airports.

ChrisMarshallNY3• 4 years ago

Nicely done!

thedudeabides5• 4 years ago

The next time we need to print $1Tr we should build a high speed rail from SF to NYC, via Detriot.

#NeoIntercontinentalRailroad

rootusrootus7• 4 years ago

You probably couldn't build HSR from SF to Detroit to NYC for a trillion bucks. But it would be an interesting project nonetheless. With strategic stopping points, I wonder how the population dynamics for the flyover states would change.

dimitrios1• 4 years ago

You can go from Edinburgh to London in 5 hours or less, that's pretty damn cool.

informalo• 4 years ago

Same thing for public transport in metro areas (great if you’re looking for a new place to live): https://www.mapnificent.net/

lkjaero• 4 years ago

Sadly this site doesn't seem to be maintained still, there's lots of contributions that aren't getting merged. https://github.com/mapnificent/mapnificent_cities

gield• 4 years ago

From Brussels, Belgium, you can reach in 5h:

- Wales and deep into northern England (Newcastle

- the whole western border of Germany

- the south coast of France

- Switzerland

I was never into the whole "center of Europe" thing, but this puts things in a different perspective.

Jamie9912• 4 years ago

Is the website not working for anyone else? It says hover over a city to see the isochrones from that city. But when I do so nothing happens at all?

fguerraz• 4 years ago

Same here

vultour• 4 years ago

Looks like the API returns either 429 Too Many Requests or a 500 error, so it's probably hugged to death.

dareiff• 4 years ago

Too much traffic — all endpoints once on the page are erroring out.

em3rgent0rdr• 4 years ago

not working for me. Neither linux desktop chrome nor firefox nor android chrome.

phantomathkg• 4 years ago

Hug of Hacker News. Now all the API returns 429 error.

why-el• 4 years ago

The app is currently non-functioning, I suppose the HN kiss of death (I assume the whole graph was too big to store in the browser?)

activitypea• 4 years ago

Yep, the client app is up but the API is returning 429 and 500

sn0wtrooper• 4 years ago

Hit the RATE_LIMIT of the hosted function.

hnov• 4 years ago

The app spams requests as you hover, but should be trivial to slap a cache-control: public, max-age=600 so it's served out of edge.

pahn• 4 years ago

I made an interactive art installation on this question once: A black box with a knob where you could adjust how much time you have, then it would offer you (Google streetview) panoramas of the locations it found within your distance, and in the end even print a paper slip with your travel itinerary to take with you.

The installation used realtime data (Google directions API): I somehow figured out, that if I would run this from a local machine and reset the browser frequently, Google would let me do this even without an API key… they certainly sensed something was awry and I did get API warnings and captchas because of 'suspicious traffic on my network', but they were nice enough not to block me completely. I strongly doubt this would still work though, this was in 2017.

Pictures and videos of the installation: https://maschinenzeitmaschine.de/derweil/

patrick91• 4 years ago

that's a pretty cool project!

ohg• 4 years ago

Awesome

mustacheemperor• 4 years ago

I have been wishing Apple or Google maps would add this as a feature for at least five years now. When I’m in a new city for work, and I know I have 90 minutes til my next meeting, it would be massively helpful to see every lunch place in a 15-25 minute walking radius. The fact that there’s still not a “search/filter by transit time” feature in any Maps app seems like proof there’s not enough competition in that space in 2022.

jgust• 4 years ago

I think what Maps really needs is more widgets that reduce the screen real estate of the map until we can finally drop that feature entirely.

ajmurmann2• 4 years ago

I started a similar project a few years ago and the real problem for any new player is just data availability. I was able to get Open Street Map data, but I also needed data on businesses with ratings and photos. IMO this creates a huge moat against anyone entering the market.

jsemrau• 4 years ago

I made this app a bunch of years ago where I sourced events starting in the next 0-3 hours nearby. Unfortunately not enough people had this problem. Still found it useful.

thematrixturtle• 4 years ago

Have you tried a "restaurants near X" query? In my experience it's smart enough to calibrate "near" to your surroundings (walking distance in cities, driving distance in suburbia).

RupertEisenhart• 4 years ago

Overpass[0] is made for exactly these kinds of queries, I'd recommend playing with it.

[0] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Overpass_API/Overpass_AP...

dheera• 4 years ago

Before I had a car, or at times when I don't feel like driving, one of the problems I have is friends who always want to find a place to meet that is "between" us or "near me" where they use an Euclidian metric rather than a public transit time metric.

Very often "within a 10 minute walk of ANY train station" is preferable to "halfway between us", even if the train ride is 1 hour, because I can actually work (or catch up on sleep) on a train. Especially if that "halfway between us" is somewhere without transit which means I need to drive the whole way there.

netfortius• 4 years ago

Quite a few. Used this one, while in the US: https://www.meetways.com/

drpancake• 4 years ago

Very cool. Slightly reminds me of an app I made for fun a few years ago that created a visual diary of your location history over the past 48 hours by pairing it with Google Streetview imagery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpreu_pFI2A

TurkishPoptart• 4 years ago

I'm clicking on these cities/populated train station names but don't see any colors populating. Using Chrome here.

wgnmstr12• 4 years ago

There is a lot of what-if here, but the reality is that most people in the USA prefer the flexibility and speed of (1) Driving wherever and whenever and carrying all your stuff with you, and then (2) flying to your destination for speed. You can cross the east coast in 3 hours or the go to the west cost in 6 on a convenient red-eye.

Taking the train is more a novelty, and unclear who would actually use it regularly because it takes much longer (10 hours east cost, 20 hours coast to coast), transport on either endpoint requires you to park or taxi, and you lose all flexibility.

We like the idea of the train more than the reality of the train. I've lived in various places around the world where you had to take mass transit always, and all it does is add one to two hours to your commute when I would have much preferred to drive.

madeofpalk• 4 years ago

You can still drive in Europe. Cars and roads still exist.

rootusrootus7• 4 years ago

Not only that, cars are still more popular than trains. Wouldn't believe it from comments on HN, of course.

fstrazzante• 4 years ago

awesome project! I like it!

ElemenoPicuares2• 4 years ago

Interface seems to be broken on mobile iOS.

tomduncalf• 4 years ago

You just need to close the instruction dialog which is obscuring the whole view

ElemenoPicuares2• 4 years ago

No — the actual controls on the map don’t work for me. If it works for you then it must be something weird on my device.

andbberger• 4 years ago

does switzerland dirty

sorenbs• 4 years ago

We really need Japan on this map :-)

barbazoo• 4 years ago

Beautiful visualization.

onionisafruit2• 4 years ago

This is very timely. In September I will have four days of down time with my wife in Paris. We want to get out of town but don't know where. This gives us some options.

If anybody here has suggestions where we can spend a few days taking in non-Parisian France, let me know.

humanistbot2• 4 years ago

I really liked Strasbourg. France meets Germany in a compact historical center, 2hrs each way from Paris on the TGV. Just go when the EU government is not meeting there, because for 4 days a month, they all have to pack up from Brussels and move to Strasbourg. Reims and the Champagne region are on the TGV to Strasbourg as well, making that an easy day trip from Paris.

There are also the night trains (Intercities de Nuit), which go from Paris to some destinations at the periphery of France that are way too long for a normal day trip. It is usually 4 or 6 bunks in a room, but you can pay extra to book the entire room for the two of you. Go to sleep in Paris and wake up 12 hours later in Nice on the Med coast, Briancon (ski resort town in the Alps, great in Summer too), or any of the medieval towns in the Pyrenees near Spain (Carcassonne, Narbonne, Perpignan)

onionisafruit2• 4 years ago

Thanks for the Strasbourg tip. That's one of the places I was looking at based on the map. The German cultural influence drew me in. Thanks to your comment I checked the EU schedule and found they will be in Strasbourg at the same time.

I like the idea of a night train, but there is a significant chance either my wife or I won't be able to sleep. That would make the next day unpleasant, so we'll save the night train for some time when we have a few more days to spare.

Now we are thinking Dijon.

nixass• 4 years ago

Strasbourg will be a connector for Paris to Vienna line.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Line_for_Europe

It will take 4hrs from Paris to Munich (900km)

panick21_10• 4 years ago

You can hope over and check out Geneva in Switzerland, very nice place.

gwbas1c3• 4 years ago

FYI: I had to disable uBlock in order for the site to work.

gwbas1c3• 4 years ago

I find the boarder between France and Span fascinating. It looks very hard to cross that boarder by train.

Yizahi• 4 years ago

Ukraine data is incorrect, before latest invasion we had multiple semi-fast trains reaching 120-140 km/h between regional centers. Though if it is snapshot of current state of affairs then it can be like that, a lot of trains were canceled or slowed due to war.

kurthr2• 4 years ago

You can also go Beijing to Shanghai in 4.5 hours. That's over 1200km or 750mi averaging above 260km/hr.

I think it's the fastest long distance passenger service available and has the benefit of being central Shanghai to south-central Beijing (rather than north-east where PEK airport is). That made it noticeably better than business air travel between the two cities.

You could also ride the Pudong maglev (at 430km/hr peak and 250km/hr average), but it was never extended from PVG to Jing An and the main Shanghai station.

However, now you have to go through security at each end which adds at least 1.5hr, and that's ignoring pandemic restrictions.

kurthr2• 4 years ago

Then there's Tokyo-Shinagawa to Fukuoko-Hakata which is 1100km and 4.75hr averaging 230km/hr, which is quite fast and easy to take with minimal waits.

rjh292• 4 years ago

Will be even faster once they get maglev.

DiogenesKynikos4• 4 years ago

The Beijing-Shanghai line now averages 292 km/h (that's including stops - the train's top speed is 350 km/h).

Maybe even more impressive, the trains cover the first 1018 km, from Beijing to Nanjing, at an average speed of 316 km/h.

mytailorisrich• 4 years ago

Beijing to Hongkong is about 2,450km and takes 9h by high speed train, which is more than 270km/h average as there are a few stops along the way. I believe that the advertised speed is about 350km/h.

qwezxcrty• 4 years ago

Hmm, I don't think one needs 1.5hr to pass the pre-COVID China Railway security check. 5 min is the norm I experienced. Honestly, I doubt such security checks can deter determined terrorists.

dang• 4 years ago

Sorry for bringing up buses but that reminds me of this:

Just how far can you travel by bus from London in 24 hours? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28262194 - Aug 2021 (128 comments)

webnrrd2k• 4 years ago

3,353 × 10^9 miles, or 5 light-hours, is the absulute theoretical max. So, in practice, something less than that?

KronisLV• 4 years ago

This map shows you how far you can travel from each station in Europe in less than 5 hours.

Aww, seems like Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia aren't a part of Europe, then.

But jokes aside, the visualization itself is pretty cool, though it might also be really useful to be able to put emphasis on the actual train tracks, especially in the further zoom levels, though map implementations don't always allow this to be done easily, without too much customization or running your own tile server.

2dvisio• 4 years ago

Basically, just click anywhere on the south of Italy to understand how infrastructure investment can be done poorly.

notsapiensatall• 4 years ago

It would be interesting to see this for the US.

You might be able to get from New York City to Boston within 5 hours. If you're leaving from Fargo, though, it would be hard to make it into neighboring Montana.

Our best case for taking a coast-to-coast train is 72 hours, but I've never seen a long Amtrak train arrive on time.

bisRepetita• 4 years ago

Little usability nitpick: it is really hard for me to see the connection Paris - London (less than 2.5 hours in real life thx to Eurostar). You need to very precisely mouse over Gare du Nord, which is hard, since it seems hidden by the other train station and airport nearby.

Not sure if at a certain scale, one should see all the conenctions form all the train stations in Paris?

jobigoud7• 4 years ago

Taking into account metro and RER rides should fix this issue I think.

aidenn0• 4 years ago

I've had an Amtrak train delayed by more than 5h on the West Coast, so here at least the answer is potentially 0. I grew up in the NE USA where Amtrak is usable, if not up to European standards, so trains here are particularly disappointing.

huggin• 4 years ago

From Beijing to Shanghai, more than 1000 kilometers

alexott• 4 years ago

I can’t say that’s accurate. For my area it shows that Kassel is 3 hours away, although direct train goes in less than an hour, and even with intermediate stop, it’s slightly more than an hour. South of Germany isn’t connected at all, although I can get to Ingolstadt in less that 5 hours…

have_faith• 4 years ago

Similarly it told me Sheffield to London (kings cross) is 4 hours when it's a little over 2 hours normally.

edit: I think I read it wrong wrong, it put a small darker ring around kings cross and I got 3hr and 4hr colours mixed up (:

szundi• 4 years ago

Useful after robbing a bank

Balgair• 4 years ago

It's funny that Ireland isn't on here considering it's the largest English speaking country in the EU now!

micheljansen• 4 years ago

Very well done! I played around with this sort of stuff many years for a property search engine startup. I tried to make a “max commute distance” filter. It was much harder than I thought at the time!

bergenty• 4 years ago

I don’t like trains though, it takes so long especially in a large country like the US. Great for recreation purposes or travel within places closer than 3 hours by car but not otherwise.

steren• 4 years ago

Nice. It doesn't seem to play very nice with cities that have multiple stations. If you hover Paris, Gare de Lyon gets selected most of the time. But if you zoom in, you can select other Paris stations (e.g. Gare de L'Est) which leads to different results

jobigoud7• 4 years ago

And the station at CDG airport is quite hard to pick, but has much more penetration into the UK than Gare de Lyon.

thejackgoode• 4 years ago

Five hours, I assume, is the maximum amount of time an average person can enjoy sitting in a train. With overnight trains making a comeback, there are much more possibilities. I recently enjoyed falling asleep in Central Europe and waking up over the Alps near the sea. Trains are amazing.

chrisseaton• 4 years ago

It’s more comfortable to be on a train than a flight and people are happy taking ten hour plus flights no problem.

Aachen2• 4 years ago

To be fair, you also get about three to four times the distance per minute out of it (850km/h pretty much the whole way as the crow flies vs 250 average if you're lucky plus curves).

To be clear, I find it absurd that airplane companies are still allowed to sell tickets without pricing in externalities for trips with good and high-speed train connections like Paris–Madrid. However, for actually going somewhere far away there just isn't really another choice but to take that plane. Your only other choice is to never go there at all, or take out weeks of travel for a ship or something. It's still too cheap, at least those that go regularly can also afford for Climeworks to undo their environmental pollution, so I hate to be defending air travel here, but 10h flights are a different ball game than 10h train rides.

rootusrootus7• 4 years ago

Only because there are no viable alternatives to a 10 hour flight. But the alternative to a 10 hour train ride is a 1-2 hour flight.

bigDinosaur• 4 years ago

I don't happily take ten hour plus flights, I take them because if I need to go somewhere that takes that long by plane there's no viable alternative.

jobigoud7• 4 years ago

So what's the longest distance between two such connected stations?

maximilianroos2• 4 years ago

Which city can you reach the most area in 5 hours?

Top contenders:

- Paris, Gare de Lyon (doesn't seem to include going to Gare du Nord and going to London in this?)

- Brussels — can go as far as Newcastle or Avignon

- Random ones in the center of Germany which cover all of Germany

maximilianroos2• 4 years ago

If you zoom in to select London Kings Cross, I think that wins

jobigoud7• 4 years ago

I just realized it's not symmetric. If you click Paris it highlights Perpignan (in the South), but if you click Perpignan it doesn't reach Paris at all. Same for Brussels and Newcastle.

foota• 4 years ago

Maybe express trains only go one way?

brunoluiz• 4 years ago

That is a very nice app and, funnily enough, I was doing this manually (via Trainline) yesterday after watching this Wendover Production video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9jirFqex6g.

One suggestion for the app: allow us to pin a city when clicking on the desktop version ;)

germinalphrase• 4 years ago

On Amtrak? Based on my last attempt - that would be zero meters.

11thEarlOfMar• 4 years ago

I'd expect Japan to have the highest % coverage (though less square km than France).

And the US to just be... humiliating...

presentation2• 4 years ago

The borders really seem to hamper EU train travel, huh.

ittan• 4 years ago

I would recommend an edit to the title to include Europe.

timwaagh• 4 years ago

So it works now and I am sort of disappointed. I can get to Paris and London, which, don't get me wrong, is nice. But Paris is I think three hours and apparently I can't get to anywhere South of there in five.

How far can you go by train in 5h?

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