Italy is betting big on train travel

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/italy-tourist-trains-180982657/

by pseudolus • 3 years ago

83 79 3 years ago

veave• 3 years ago

The title mentions "climate change" but then the article says nothing about how Italy is "grappling" with it.

alanfranz2• 3 years ago

This spring/summer we’re experiencing floods, frequent and intense thunderstorms, and extreme heat. All together, depending on the day and the region. Last year we suffered an absurd drought.

Pepe1vo• 3 years ago

A couple of week ago the south part of the country was dealing with near record high temperatures, while the north was dealing with floods.

rsynnott• 3 years ago

I mean... the author might just assume that most readers will be aware of recent events in Southern Europe; it doesn't really seem necessary to belabour the point. The curious can look it up fairly easily.

If every news article had to go into full detail on every point that most people know anyway, they'd end up kind of ungainly. "A train is a large motorised vehicle which runs, generally on a regular schedule, on steel tracks. Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon. An alloy is..."

Beyond people who actually still deny climate change (they're still out there, though, perhaps unsurprisingly, in the developed world they're concentrated in the US, Canada, and Australia, all big fossil fuel producers... "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it"), I don't think many people would argue that it's not a _fairly significant issue_ for Southern Europe.

inglor_cz• 3 years ago

I took the Frecciarossa twice this May and the ride was extremely enjoyable.

What wasn't as enjoyable were the prices - on order to get a reasonable price, you need to book your trip weeks in advance. For adult business passengers, this is tolerable, but for families with kids ... ?

If the trains are full (and, judging from my experience, they are), there need to be more of them.

LaurensBER• 3 years ago

Part of the issue with public transport is also very much a service issue.

Switzerland has a fantastic "Easy ride" system where you swipe a button in an app to check-in and swipe it at your destination to check-out. It automatically combines trips and applies any relevant discounts. In The Netherlands you can check-in using a bank card so you don't even need an app.

If we want to encourage people to use public transport more, we need to have such a system Europe wide. Grabbing a train should be more convenient than booking a flight, for a family with kids, making a reservation weeks in advanced , at a specific time isn't always reasonable and it's definitely not convenient.

xenonite• 3 years ago

Maybe this works in Switzerland, where delays are rare. But in Germany, where delays are frequently more than one hour, EU law requires the train company to pay back a part of the price because of the delay. But if you cannot show when you would have arrived with no delays, because you used such an app, it does make such an app unattractive.

k8sToGo• 3 years ago

EasyRide is quite buggy and at the end you still have to double check if what they charged is right.

tremon3• 3 years ago

The Netherlands you can check-in using a bank card

How does that work for a family with kids? FAFAIK you can't check in twice using the same card, so does every child need its own bank card or travel pass? In that case, when travelling with a group, I'd choose the app over a stack of plastic cards any day.

vladms• 3 years ago

It's not like they don't build them, it's just that it takes a long time. I know about the French plans, an order for 115 trains takes ~18 years (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNCF_TGV_M).

And if you check the requirements, it might be worth it to take long, for example: "the new trains be at least 20% less expensive to purchase than their predecessors while possessing lower operating costs as well."

WeylandYutani• 3 years ago

In the Netherlands the problem is now getting enough train drivers, conductors and traffic controllers.

The hardware is easy. Just throw enough money at it.

Iulioh3• 3 years ago

The Freccia trains are the ""Standard but Luxury"" trains.

If you need just to move and the speed is not that big of an issue the "treni regionali" are the main way of transport. Fixed and resonable fares.

julkali• 3 years ago

Saying this as a non-Italian, instead of focusing on (presumably) pricey train tickets targeting tourists, they should rather extend the common network which is also accessible and usable to the population without a tourism-adjusted overprice ...

thefz• 3 years ago

Saying this as an Italian, we never had so much choice and fast, reliable trains.

jaclaz• 3 years ago

Saying this as an Italian, your statement misses a [1].

In the last 20-30 years there have been huge improvements on a handful of (highly trafficated) routes, and a corresponding amount of worsening in all the rest.

Besides the so-called "digital divide" (widely different possibilities of access to the internet depending on your location), there is a clear "railroad divide", the biggest/main cities are well connected, all the rest is at the same level as (or worse than) the '60's (or even earlier).

There is a way to draw maps abstracting from geometrical projections (anamorphic), based on some given parameters, if you choose "travel time by train" what you will get will be a "time cartogram" where Italy is very short (north-south) but very, vey thick (west-east).

[1] on selected routes

kwhitefoot• 3 years ago

Also non-Italian here. In my experience of a few years ago local trains in Italy are quite cheap, certainly much cheaper than the UK.

Iulioh3• 3 years ago

As an Italian lving in the northern part of the country:

The trains are used pretty extensively and they works.

The Trenitalia has fixed fares on the low speed lines (so no need to buy them weeks before) and are resonably priced.

I the south...EH.

Would use them only for an extensive trip (from a big city to another big city)

But by nature Italy HAS to use a lot of air travel as the country is very long and that's problematic.

(don't forget than Sicily has 5M people and the 2 main airports see 9M people transit a year)

senkora• 3 years ago

I just played around with https://thetruesize.com overlaying Italy on the United States. In America-terms, it looks like most North Italy trips would be analogous to NYC <-> DC trips, which are often taken by train in the US. North Italy to South Italy would be like SF <-> San Diego and North Italy to Sicily would be like Chicago <-> Atlanta, and both of those would almost certainly be plane trips in the US. So makes sense to me!

alanfranz2• 3 years ago

In the last 10y, train service quality in Italy has improved quite a lot; Frecciarossa and Italo are great services. That’s when it works.

What is really terrible about trains in Italy is disruption handling. You won’t know that your train is late until it’s very late already. Sometimes you’ll be sold tickets for trains that have been canceled already. Getting money back or trips replaced is a nightmare.

From a UX point of view it seems we got the happy path working right, but anything else is absolutely bonkers.

Source: italian regularly using italian trains.

IshKebab2• 3 years ago

That's one think the UK does almost right. Getting money back for a trip is relatively easy. You can do it online.

I say almost though because a) every operator has their own web page to submit refund requests through (why??) and b) a train has to be 30 minutes late before you get anything. What a joke.

switch0072• 3 years ago

The government is making the railway actively hostile now, now they directly control large parts of it. That includes lying to deny Delay Repay claims and accusing people of fraud claims. (Ditto refunds for abandoned journeys)

This shouldn’t put anyone off, quite the opposite. Be prepared to push for what you’re entitled to. If you need any assistance then http://railforums.co.uk is full of experts willing to help.

(Btw some train operators have 15 minutes as the minimum delay (eg Avanti))

dbetteridge• 3 years ago

Probably because every operator is its own independent private entity. No shared infra.

brnt• 3 years ago

I'll never forget that time my SNCF train was about one and a half hour late, which was extra annoying because it was planned to arrive just before midnight, and it was a long ride to I had been looking forward to bed. They have a tiered refund system, where delays or an hour or more qualify for a full refund. But this is SNCF. I took a picture of the clock at arrival. Next day, they reported the train to be 59 minutes late and I could claim my 50% refund.

FirmwareBurner• 3 years ago

yonatan8070• 3 years ago

I don't entirely understand why you need tickets for a particular train at a particular time.

Here (Israel) you get to a station, open an app that finds which station you're at and gives you an entry ticket (a QR code), you scan that ticket at the gate on the way to the platforms, and take whatever train(s) you want, and when you're at your destination station you use the app again, which creates an exit ticket and charges you according to the entry and exit stations

supertrope• 3 years ago

If riders have to make an appointment it’s easier to plan capacity. But if it’s too inconvenient people might drive an automobile instead. There’s a trade off between the system having to be flexible and the rider having to be flexible.

em-bee• 3 years ago

already decades ago germany and i don't know which other countries started charging more for these flexible tickets and you could get cheaper tickets if you booked a particular train in advance. i suppose the advantage is that by committing to a particular train it is easier to predict which trains will be full, and potentially even do something about it like adding a car to fit more passengers.

as far as i know, this only applies to long distance trains and not to regional trains. israel is a small country so all trains are more comparable to regional trains.

selling such a ticket right before getting on the train of course doesn't make any sense.

rawgabbit• 3 years ago

I ride the Frecciarossa from Lyon to Paris recently and loved the experience. Reservations are online. Show up to the train station 30 minutes before departure. No airport like security. Plenty of leg room and space for carryon luggage.

kefabean• 3 years ago

The problem is that many tourists will still arrive and depart by air.

Whilst there are some new cross continent routes coming online, overnight rail routes have been in decline since the 1990s.

It takes quite a bit of persistence to make this work especially if travelling with a young family. For example travelling from London to Rome (although surprisingly can be done in a day) takes 16 hrs and involves 3 changes including slogging across Paris.

https://www.seat61.com is a good resource for planning trips involving European train travel.

pluc• 3 years ago

This will be the case until trains are cheaper than airfare. AMS to FCO is around $100 by air. The train from Frankfurt to Basel alone is that price and about a quarter of the journey.

Iulioh3• 3 years ago

I would LOVE to take a train but even IF it would cost the same I would still buy an airplane ticket because for the router I usually take I only have to fly for less than 2h instead of 14h-21h for the train route.

And taking the train for that does THINGS to your body. It would have to be way cheaper to convince me.

Like the airplane ticket costs usually 70-120€

gbear605• 3 years ago

The train from Frankfurt to Basel alone is that price

No? Maybe if you’re trying to book tomorrow, or at a very specific time, but looking on RailEurope for an arbitrary date (September 1), I see plenty of tickets for under $50.

On the other hand, trying to go the whole way from Amsterdam to Rome does get a lot more impractical, because of all the transfers making the trip take around 24 hours, but you can get tickets for only around $150. I do agree that if you live in Amsterdam, it’s probably worth it to just fly to Rome because of a lack of good direct routes.

Other routes that are about the same distance are a lot more feasible though. Paris to Rome can be done with only one stop, for example.

bluGill7• 3 years ago

For trips of that distance train will never make sense, flying is too much faster. Trains work great for shorter trips and Europe would be served well to focus on those trips. (In particular Europe has a problem with trips that should be in train range but because they cross a border they don't work well)

There is one exception, trains as a land cruise can go that far, but riding the train is the point, not where you are going.

evandijk70• 3 years ago

Replacing only the short flights ( let's say those under 600 mile/1000km) won't sufficiently reduce pollution though.

ClumsyPilot4• 3 years ago

“ For trips of that distance train will never make sense, flying is too much faster."

I think you are making a common mistake of being too focused on speed - what really matters in convenience. I would like to go London -> Prague but there are like 4 changes. That’s too complicated.

If I could rent a coupe with friends and play poker, that’s a different experience than jumping between trains and platforms for an entire day with heavy bags.

There are advantages to trains - you can bring large and heavy luggage, lithium ion batteries, food service, etc.

grishka• 3 years ago

From my own experience, trains only make sense if you're traveling less than around 1000 km. Beyond that, it's a long, boring journey, and often more expensive than a plane to the same destination.

Gare• 3 years ago

It also depends if train travels 100 km/h or 300 km/h on average. With high-quality high speed network across Europe demand for air travel could be greatly reduced. Europe is small.

ClumsyPilot4• 3 years ago

On cost -it is internationally agreed that aircraft fuel is tax free, but train fuel is not. We subsidise air travel.

Now I don’t mind sitting on my butt for 3x longer than on a plane, but I don’t want to pay 3x for the privilege.

PeterisP• 3 years ago

It's not a problem that tourists arrive and depart by air as it still is very helpful if they can move within Italy by train.

bluGill7• 3 years ago

This is what results from building train systems cheaply. You can afford to build a lot and thus get a large network.

The rest of the world (worst in English speaking areas, but even France or Japan are not great, they have been building for years so there are some results but they could do more) spend so much money building that they cannot afford to build a lot of rail and so their network suffers. The cheaper you can build the more you can build, and the smaller the city you can get to. This larger network means people can get more places and so they are more likely to use your train.

If you want this in your country you need to demand cost control. Politicians shouldn't be be choosing routes, opening large stations, or any of the other things they do or allow that increase costs.

Knee_Pain2• 3 years ago

Regional trains only need 4 things:

- to be on time

- to be clean and well kept

- to be spacious

- to be safe and simple

this is utterly lacking in Italy and in many countries

tremon3• 3 years ago

Why do regional trains need to be spacious?

Knee_Pain2• 3 years ago

because they are often used by people commuting and there needs to be enough space for everyone?

jillesvangurp• 3 years ago

Trains are fine but also very expensive. And rail networks are already very congested. And also very outdated in large parts of Europe. People like the idea of trains but not the practice of high ticket prices, disruptive delays, multi day journeys to cover the distance you can fly in 2 hours, etc.

The main issue with aviation is that fuel is burned, which is bad for the environment. However a lot of short haul flight can transition to battery electric pretty soon. Probably before any significant amount of new rail gets built. That removes the major environmental concerns. And lots of small planes can fly point to point so you remove the dependence on big central hubs as well.

mikepurvis• 3 years ago

I think a lot of short haul flights make less sense than people think when you account for travel time to the airport, security, boarding, taxiing, etc.

Trains suffer from intermediate stops of course, but overall it's really important to do a comparison of the true door to door time.

saintkaye• 3 years ago

If K99 turns out to be real in any sense there’s a strong chance all transport moves electric/battery opp.

ChumpGPT• 3 years ago

I spent a month travailing in Europe this Spring and while not horrible, I can see why most people want to take planes or drive. If you are traveling between countries nothing matches up. You land in Europe and decide to take a train from Frankfurt to Prague and the schedules don't sink up. You spend an ungodly amount of time waiting or sitting on a train in the dark. Then if you want to travel to Poland from Prague you end up arriving to your destination 10 hours later in what would be a <4 hour car trip. I can understand why most Europeans I spoke to would much rather fly or drive and leave the trains for tourists. Tourists also don't have time to burn adjusting their schedule to the train schedules. With the Schengen Zone you only have 90 days every 180, where as before you could spend a year travailing across Europe you're now screwed because you have 90 days instead of 90 days for each individual country.

ClumsyPilot4• 3 years ago

Trains are fine but also very expensive

But why is it expensive

mytailorisrich3• 3 years ago

In many cases air travel is more convenient and cheaper to operate than rail (no infrastructure needed).

Air travel is not going away so there should be efforts made to decarbonise it instead of pooping on it at every opportunity.

orwin• 3 years ago

Air travel is almost as subsidized as road travel, I don't think 'cheaper' is a good argument for it (not even counting externalities).

Convenience though is a great argument for air travel.

uxp8u61q4• 3 years ago

Air travel is not convenient. How do you get to the airport? How long does it take you? Do you take your car and pay for parking, do you pay $$$ for a cab? Do you take public transportation and take hours? How long in advance do you need to get there? How much time do you waste in ID checks, security checks, taxiing...?

Meanwhile, where I live, I take a metro car and I'm at the train station in 30 min. I get there 10 min before the train leaves just to be safe. Then I just... get on the train? And when the train arrives, I just... get off it. And that's it.

globular-toast2• 3 years ago

Convenience really depends. At its most convenient, I think rail wins. You could walk to a station and get exactly where you need to go, right into the city centre. No limit on luggage size or weight or anything. No long boarding/deboarding procedure. In fact, now I think about it I'm not sure how you could call air travel convenient compared to rail. The only advantage is you can go further and cross oceans and mountains etc.

uxp8u61q4• 3 years ago

No infrastructure needed? This must be a joke. Have you heard about the concept of an airport? Airports are humongous and contain a ton of infrastructure, compared to a train station.

Gare de Paris-Nord, the busiest train station in Europe, is planned to have a floor area of 120 000 m² after the next renovation. I couldn't find the number for the ground area, but it's obviously smaller than the floor area. Dulles airport, in Washington DC (a relatively small city by all standards), has an area of 47 km². That's 47 000 000 m², for the unaware. Meanwhile, its annual traffic (about 20M passengers) is approximately a fifth of the Gare du Nord (about 100M passengers).

And then you obviously have to take into account everything that goes into an airport. How much infrastructure to carry fuel and equipment to the airport? To carry passengers to the airport? Most airports aren't in city centers! Do the roads and rails that lead to the airport count? Most certainly. Runways, terminals, air control towers... All this is infrastructure.

So no, you don't need to lay out rails in the sky for planes. That's pretty much where the list of pros stop, in terms of infrastructure. The cons, on the other hand...

globular-toast2• 3 years ago

And that doesn't include how you get to and from the airport at either end plus the supporting infrastructure for fuelling, catering etc.

masklinn• 3 years ago

Gare de Paris-Nord, the busiest train station in Europe, is planned to have a floor area of 120 000 m² after the next renovation. I couldn't find the number for the ground area, but it's obviously smaller than the floor area. Dulles airport, in Washington DC (a relatively small city by all standards), has an area of 47 km². That's 47 000 000 m², for the unaware. Meanwhile, its annual traffic (about 20M passengers) is approximately a fifth of the Gare du Nord (about 100M passengers).

Not to detract from the point but Dulles is way oversized for its traffic (so's BWI).

Paris-CDG, Frankfurt, Schipol, or Madrid carry near triple (or above in high-traffic years) the passengers in half to 2/3rds the surface. Heathrow moves more than triple on about 1/4th the surface (though it's rather unpleasant IIRC).

mytailorisrich3• 3 years ago

An airport is negligible compared to the scale of building railways.

Incredible how you and many have drunk the kool aid and are now shutting down any discussions.

throw0101a2• 3 years ago

In many cases air travel is more convenient and cheaper to operate than rail (no infrastructure needed).

This is like saying flipping on a light switch, turn on a tap, or flushing a toilet is very convenient because there is no infrastructure needed.

There's a whole bunch of stuff that happens in the background that you may not be aware of. See also "Dependency" comic:

* https://xkcd.com/2347/

mytailorisrich3• 3 years ago

Not at all, this is disingenuous and a misrepresentation of my comment. You obviously understands my point that railways require massively more infrastructure than air travel, and that their convenience decreases with distance though they do have capacity in their favour.

ClumsyPilot4• 3 years ago

Air travel is cheaper because in Europe at least, we have achieved near perfect competition between many low-cost airlines. This isn’t like dictated by laws of physics.

Trains, on the other hand, are a natural monopoly, and Britain’s privatisation efforts have been a failure. These companies contribute nothing to infrastructure investment, most of our rail is 150 years old and trains between Britains largest cities don’t have access to electricity.

For like 70 years western governments did not take train infra seriously. This created huge problems - stations in UK are designed for small population, platforms are short so you can’t have long trains. the whole point of a train is that it can be long, longest trains in the world are measured in kilometres. Eurostar is 400 meters long. British trains are often tiny.

the new Elizabeth line in London uses 3 different signalling systems because it runs across some track that’s new and some rail that’s prehistoric.

But if you look at physics of it, trains are the only vehicle that does not need fuel or batteries, it feeds on electricity directly from the grid. Electrification of aircraft is both fantastic and fantastically inefficient

alfiopuglisi• 3 years ago

Interesting. I am Italian and I had no idea. From the sound of it, these tourist-specialized trains will be a small niche.

To be fair, trains are already heavily used for domestic tourism, in addition to personal or business travel. Most biggish towns are well connected by local trains, and big cities in the north and center are easy to reach with the high-speed lines. For example, the popular Cinque Terre destination in Liguria is well-connected by a train route that touches all five towns with a frequent schedule, every 20 minutes or so. If you don't need to move too much at your destination, a train is often the most convenient way of reaching it.

Something I often use is the bicycle transport on local trains, allowed with a very low fee, like 3 euros: starting from home, follow any scenic route that ends in a town with a train station, and use the train to go back home. Bonus points if the route touches multiple towns, so if you are too tired after 4h on the bike, you can cut it short and go back anyway.

rurban• 3 years ago

Some countries want to catch up to Switzerland, also Austria

switch0072• 3 years ago

Awesome for tourists because hiring a car and driving in Italy is crazy. I’ve rented cars all over Europe and Italy has the worst service, trashiest cars and craziest drivers. (I love the country, don’t get me wrong)

Trains are so much more relaxing! No worrying about the damage €2000 deposit they’re holding on your credit card.

mimd2• 3 years ago

The Smithsonian is rehashing a press release on available tourist train choices in Italy? Couldn't they spend some more effort, like an examination of one of the historical trains?

haltingproblem• 3 years ago

Sadly, in the era of non-existent budgets this is what counts for journalism. It might even be that it was just LLM generated and then just touched up.

mimd2• 3 years ago

True, and it's mostly a rehash of an already released CNN article. But I don't like that the Smithsonian wants to be a general news service. Their a museum group. But the reduction to being general news/click bait seems to infectious.

Italy is betting big on train travel

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