Distances you can travel on a European train in less than a day

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/06/05/map-the-remarkable-distances-you-can-travel-on-a-european-train-in-less-than-a-day/

by Quanttek • 11 years ago

171 197 11 years ago

washingtonpost.com

PeterWhittaker• 11 years ago

Cool graphics. Once you get used to the colour scheme, you really see how connected are various European cities.

anonymousDan• 11 years ago

For any non-Europeans looking to explore Europe by rail, I can highly recommend getting an Interrail ticket that gives you unlimited rail travel for various durations. For a reasonable price you can get a multi zone ticket that will let you explore most of Europe for a very reasonable price.

tonfa2• 11 years ago

It is also nice for Europeans :-)

saryant3• 11 years ago

Non-European citizens can't use Interrail. There's a similar product called Eurail but with the discounts available for advance-purchase tickets, the pass often doesn't make sense if you're traveling with a relatively specific itinerary and can plan ahead.

The surcharges on the various high-speed trains really killed the cost-effectiveness of the Eurail pass.

edit: There's a good overview of why the Eurail pass if often a bad option at Seat61: http://seat61.com/Railpass-and-Eurail-pass-guide.htm#Should you buy a railpass or pay-as-you-go

avz2• 11 years ago

Non-European citizens can't use Interrail.

Not true. You have to be a resident to use Interrail. So if you don't have a European passport, but live there, you can still use Interrail.

Note also, "European" here means a lot more countries than the EU. Other eligible countries of residence include: Albania, Andorra, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, FYR Macedonia, Gibraltar, Iceland, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Norway, Russian Federation, San Marino, Serbia, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine and Vatican City.

Source: http://www.interrail.eu/help/ordering-pass/do-i-need-interra...

Coincoin• 11 years ago

Actually, if you reserve well in advance the surcharges are much smaller, even on high speeds. But I agree, it's situational.

nerfhammer• 11 years ago

It's only cheaper if you take only the most expensive possible routes

BUT, you can use it to get on any train in Europe even if only by confusing the local conductor with a complicated Eurail pass, even if it's fully reserved or not part of Eurail.

monksy2• 11 years ago

Eurorail is a complete waste of money. The companies who sell it in the US are there to screw you over.

IshKebab2• 11 years ago

Interrail is only really worth it if you are under 26. If you have to get the "Adult" price then you only save money if you travel very frequently on expensive routes (e.g. once ever 2-3 days). Also you have to deal with the hassle of using interrail - nobody knows how the hell it works, you can't book tickets online!, you have to pay supplements on many journeys but again nobody knows which ones and how much.

Worth it if you're under 26 though because it is much cheaper.

Roritharr2• 11 years ago

One of the real reasons why i love living in Frankfurt. I feel closer to all of Europe than everywhere else on the continent.

coldcode• 11 years ago

Having just been in England and Germany I must admit having trains to go everywhere is awesome.

allendoerfer• 11 years ago

To the world really, because we do not have to drive to Frankfurt first to use a proper airport.

I look forward to the Frankfurt-London rail link operated by Deutsche Bahn. Strange times, when the UK thinks about moving away from the EU and staying alone on their little island like in the good old times and yet London is nearly as close to Frankfurt as Frankfurt is to Berlin.

Roritharr2• 11 years ago

Actually i've recently had a chat with people from DB Strategy, they've said that the Frankfurt-London connection is now technically possible and has been tested, but the ICE that should be used on it has a lot of technical issues that push the chances of having technical issues on one trip to above 20%.

That is a reason why they have pushed that connection off into the undisclosed future.

He wasn't a technical person, but the way he described it was that everytime an ICE crosses a country border, it has to change the settings on how the train operates, to comply with local laws and standards. This is stuff like how rapidly it is supposed to brake, etc.

He says that there is a 1 in 10 chance that when doing that "settings-swap" some part of the train software crashes irrecoverably and the whole train has to be rebooted, which can take up to 15 minutes.

So when crossing from germany into belgium, then france, then uk and back again there would be a high chance that those trains would have to be rebooted somewhere along that track, and that would wreck havoc within the international train system.

maelito2• 11 years ago

As a French, I wonder how British people judge their rail system in 2015

pjc50• 11 years ago

It's expensive, terrible, and frequently overcrowded, but at least it's not as outdated as it used to be.

7952• 11 years ago

If you avoid commuting long distances it isn't too bad in most places. Just because you can commute a long way doesn't mean you should.

Chris_Newton• 11 years ago

What standard(s) are you asking about here? Other modes of transport? Our rail system from 20 years ago? Similar services in other European nations? I’d say our rail system is probably significantly better than it was 20 years ago. For some journeys I would almost always choose rail travel while for others I would hardly even consider it, usually as a result of cost or timing — how direct a route you can choose and the convenience of the connections makes a huge difference in our system.

As for comparisons with our European neighbours, there was some interesting discussion a week or so ago about how international rail within Europe works (or, sometimes, does not work yet). I added some comments there about a recent experience travelling between the UK and the Netherlands by train:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9631874

The short version is that international rail travel within continental Europe (well, Schengen really) seems to be much less hassle than travelling to or from the UK by train.

david-given2• 11 years ago

It's crap.

At least, in my opinion --- I live in Switzerland now, so my standards are... different. But, basically, overpriced, unreliable, dirty, and slow. The only places where the train system actually works well is the south-east of England, where it's horribly expensive. I used to live in Reading; a peak time day return into London, which is maybe half an hour a way, costs about £40.

Bear in mind that I know perfectly well that Britain's rail network is amazing compared to, say, America or eastern Europe. But the local perception of it is that it's bad. (Not helped by several rounds of botched privatisation, too.)

Incidentally, I'd love to know how to get from Ireland to Great Britain by train. Do they float?

maelito2• 11 years ago

Thanks ! As for your question, if you can understand french, you should watch this https://vimeo.com/47189915#t=125s

Symbiote8• 11 years ago

There's a ferry from Holyhead to Dublin, you can buy a valid ticket from any British station.

http://traintimes.org.uk/Birmingham/DCL/

You're correct that this is people's perception, but they probably haven't wandered into a typical German city station and found there's a two hour wait for the next train to another city, or that the only cheap option is a very slow local train.

lukeqsee• 11 years ago

I live in Switzerland now

How did you get into Switzerland? I've been considering / researching the possibility for a while, but it seems like a very long process to legally enter the country. Did you find it that way? Any recommendations?

[I looked for a personal email, but there isn't one listed on your profile.]

archagon3• 11 years ago

Having recently visited the UK for a couple of months, I don't really understand why the people there hold their rail system in such low regard. Every time I compared prices between rail and coach, there was almost always a rail ticket that cost about the same as the bus and got me to my destination faster, even at the last minute. The trains were also very slick and clean, and often had outlets and working Wi-Fi. Better than many places in mainland Europe!

Comaleaf• 11 years ago

What aspects of the train system did you find only work well in the south-east?

Curious because I regularly take trains all over the UK and have generally found the ones in the south-east and south in general to be the worst, as well as the most expensive, which seems reflected in customer satisfaction surveys at least – http://www.which.co.uk/home-and-garden/leisure/reviews-ns/be...

rorykoehler4• 11 years ago

Rail and sail tickets for Ireland to UK. Did it once. It was ok but I doubt I'd do it again.

Virgin trains are great. Liverpool to London in under 2.5hrs.

Symbiote8• 11 years ago

It's very expensive, but services are amazingly frequent compared to on the continent, with multiple trains per hour been major cities. There's little compassion from the Staff of there's a problem, since everything's privatised.

renaudg3• 11 years ago

French here : monopolistic, state-run services don't bring you any more compassion from the staff if there's a problem. Quite the contrary !

willyt4• 11 years ago

Overpriced. Overcrowded. Unclean. Cramped. Occasionally unreliable. We don't have any high speed rail apart from the link to Paris, but our standard intercity trains have connected most major cities at 200kph since the 1970's which is faster than conventional rail in Europe. TGV style High speed lines are a real pain to build in the UK because of the high population density of the countryside coupled with the extensive and laborious public consultations required. We don't have Alps but we do have quite a lot hills between the main cities. Once the route has taken account of all these concerns there are often not many parts where the trains will go at full speed. This is why the new HS2 route will only save 15mins off the time from London to Birmingham.

foldr2• 11 years ago

Unclean.

Unclean compared to what? I wouldn't say that the trains or stations are particularly unclean on the whole.

timthorn2• 11 years ago

Well, we love our heritage steam railways.

renaudg3• 11 years ago

As a French who lives in London, my limited experience (London - Brighton mostly) is that they're fine, reliable, and cheaper than the French TGV (which is generally awesome and uncomparably faster, but ridiculously expensive)

I have a feeling the question might be linked to some common myths about the UK being spread by the French left for ages (evil privatized Thatcherite trains crashing into each other, third-world healthcare with people dying in droves in hospital corridors, etc). Right ? :)

tarkin2• 11 years ago

Expensive (London to Manchester 80 pounds, composed to 15 by coach), mostly always delayed and not getting any better apart from the two or so lines Virgin runs which are super nice (but which are very expensive).

France's trains seem futuristic in comparison.

Germany's are super puctural and great value.

Germany's nationalised rail company, DB, who now own Arriva, are servicing some of UK's lines, I see now. The private UK system is helping to fund the puplic German system, heh.

lorenzhs2• 11 years ago

Apart from all the Arriva-branded services, several train operators in the UK belong to Arriva (CrossCountry, Chiltern, and Grand Central Railway). Also, on the freight side of the railway business, DB own EWS (which is now called "DB Schenker Rail (UK)"). Since DB is fully state-owned, parts of Britain's railway system are state-owned again, but by the German rather than the British state :D

But to defend rail travel in the UK, advance tickets are much cheaper (I don't think I ever paid more than £25 between London and Leicester, maybe £15 on average, but then I didn't use the peak trains), but do require planning ahead. If you're lucky you can even snag a first class advance ticket for less than £3 more than standard, which is quite nice (tea! biscuits! juice!). Railcards are also quite affordable (certainly more so than DB's BahnCard) and amortise rather quickly, even more so when considering that you can have the Railcard discount applied to your Oyster Card. All in all, I was quite positively surprised given all the negative things I heard beforehand.

DanBC• 11 years ago

You can get london to manchester for £15 by train. You just need to book in advance. The fare structure is bizarrely complex and it's hard to knkw how much a journey is goin to cost until you get actually buy a ticket.

http://imgur.com/79PAXiq

IshKebab2• 11 years ago

Having travelled by train in other European countries, I'd say it is actually very good. It connects more places than most countries, buying tickets is easy, trains are frequent.

The downside is that is it is phenomenally expensive. Far more than any other country. Yeay privatisation?

VeejayRampay• 11 years ago

I'm French, I was in St Pancras / Margate / Brighton last summer and they have new lines, one of them called The Javelin, it's extremely fast, on time, reliable, so I'd say they've made tremendous progress.

r0naa• 11 years ago

I recently moved to Canada from Europe and one of the "cultural shock" were the difference in scale on the maps and what is commonly considered being "a short drive".

I did a tour of the most active hackerspaces of Europe in six months while I was in high-school. It was a fantastic experience and it is the cheap cost of night trains that made it possible. Granted those were not super confortable but I do not regret the experience one bit.

cosmolev• 11 years ago

I would appreciate if you would list these most active hackerspaces of Europe!

Peroni4• 11 years ago

I was confused as to why Ireland was showing up as accessible in these maps. Mainland Ireland isn't accessible by train from Europe. I found this excerpt in the original blog post which makes the concept slightly misleading:

Any points on water were assigned a swimming rate of 100 minutes / kilometer in order to create dense contours at the coasts.

Symbiote8• 11 years ago

You can buy through tickets from Great Britain to Ireland, there are stations adjacent to the passenger ferries.

Peroni4• 11 years ago

Right, but that requires spending at least three hours on a ferry, therefore contradicting the concept of the title.

timr5• 11 years ago

You commonly hear that it's ridiculous for California to try to build a high-speed rail network, because people are "so far apart". But France -- a nation called out in this article for being well-connected by high-speed trains, is about the same vertical height as California. It's a bit wider.

If you place the northern tip of France on the northern border of California, the southern tip of France lands just north of San Diego. We have about 40 million people; France has about 60 million.

Japan (another country with great trains), is about the same vertical distance north/south as the west coast of the US. And while Japan's population is crammed into the coastline of an island nation where it's expensive to build, we have gobs of open space where it's comparatively cheap to run rail.

There's simply no excuse. Sure, it doesn't make sense to try to make a high-speed train across the country, but we should have great regional rail systems in the US. The east/west coasts, in particular, should be corridors for rail -- if you can get from Kagoshima to Tokyo in 6 hours by Shinkansen, there's no reason you couldn't get from New York to Miami in the same amount of time.

mahyarm• 11 years ago

And California only needs a rail system for about half of it's length, most of the population is in it's bottom half on top of it.

barney542• 11 years ago

The question is why? Why should the U.S. spend billions on a great passenger rail system? High speed rail is almost always a serious money loser. What are the benefits?

Japan and Europe's high speed rail is nice, but it hasn't necessarily resulted in a greater share of passengers taking rail. "Since Japan introduced high-speed bullet trains, passenger rail has lost more than half its market share to the automobile. Since Italy, France, and other European countries opened their high-speed rail lines, rail’s market share in Europe has dwindled from 8.2 to 5.8 percent of travel. If high-speed rail doesn’t work in Japan and Europe, how can it work in the United States?" http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/highspeed-r...

And some environmentalist don't like it either. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/california-hi...

Most people don't know that the U.S. has a great freight rail network. U.S. passenger rail obviously isn't great, but U.S. freight rail is the best in the world. http://business.time.com/2012/07/09/us-freight-railroads/

I just don't know why the U.S. should build high speed rail, other than the fact that it is fun to ride.

cactusface2• 11 years ago

Less cars on the road?

willyt4• 11 years ago

It's not a money loser. TGV is highly profitable in France. All the major intercity routes in the UK run at a profit and these operate at 125-140mph, which is high speed by US standards.

avz2• 11 years ago

Some benefits of a functioning railway system:

- increased throughput compared to highways due to lower volume per passenger (something the US is trying to achieve with carpooling lines),

- increased reliability (there are no train-jams),

- increased passenger convenience (no need to look for parking or do maintenance on the train you ride),

- increased passenger productivity (you can work or read on a train),

- ease of transition to green source of energy.

Advantages of the car over the train:

- greater flexibility (generally roads offer denser network than railways, even in Europe or Japan),

- car is much more convenient for families with children.

I love trains. I love driving. I find that the latter is much more fun and convenience in places where the former works well. San Francisco's 101 could be one of such places if Caltrain was more like SBB.

EDIT: one more important benefit of the train:

- increased safety (much fewer fatalities per passenger; also no need for a designated driver when you go to a party).

Coding_Cat3• 11 years ago

Generally, non-hs trains go as fast as you would on the highway or a bit faster anyway. In the Netherlands our normal trains have a speed limit of 90 Mph I believe, but Wikipedia tells me that 80-120Mph is the normal range for intercitys. HS lines are often 180Mph+.

Brakenshire• 11 years ago

The bit you've quoted from Cato is not a solid point, in my opinion. It is conflating two different things - local / commuter rail, which is in competition with cars, and high speed rail, which is not.

Clearly there has been a massive long term trend towards increasing dominance of the car over the last sixty years, but there has never been any expectation that high speed rail could reverse that trend - after all, the vast majority of journeys and of journey miles are not between cities, but everyday local transport, which has nothing to do with high speed rail.

The benefits are really to do with bringing city centres closer together, to be able to get on a train in London and arrive in Paris (220 miles away, and across a sea) within two and a half hours, or in Manchester (170 miles away) within an hour - the latter is the subject of the next high speed line project in the UK.

It would take four hours to drive London to Manchester, on excellent motorways, and an hour would hardly get you from the city centre to the start of Heathrow airport security. Having another city within an hour of two of hassle free travel just alters fundamentally the sense of distance between those cities. Bridge building is also often not profitable, but has a long term effect on interconnectedness and the development of the area around.

Cthulhu_3• 11 years ago

Being profitable shouldn't be the only measure to implement or improve a public transit system TBF; faster transit times, cleaner fuel, lower highway usage, less stress from driving, working on the go (if people work in coffee shops they can work in the train), tax benefits, cheaper commute costs, all of those should be taken into consideration too. It's not a crime for a government to fund an unprofitable business if said business does good things.

m_mueller• 11 years ago

Why are you quoting political thinktanks as verbatim. Their job is to pick out facts and arrange them so that it suits their narrative. Let's shine some light on their spin:

(a) Japanese HSR. It started in 1964[1]. Is anyone surprised that it lost 50% of its market share to cars if cars were literally at the verge of becoming popular when it started? Japan is a huge car country. The relevant statistic here is that an average Japanese does 25x the rail kilometers per year an American is doing[2], yet has less car km per year[3]. They are second only to Switzerland in that statistic. Japan's railway companies are profitable, both as HSR[5] and local transport in big cities[4].

(b) Rail in Europe: Why are two countries picked out and then their success is measured by the market share in all of Europe, including the severely underdeveloped East? Europe is a big and diverse place too.

The freight train system in the US is a good point - IMO Europe and Asia should take it as an example. I still don't see the relevance for passenger rail though, it's a separate issue. The question is: Does is make sense to push public transport, both locally and regionally. Given that (a) we have examples like Japan that clearly show how it can work and (b) environmental footprint of each person needs to be drastically lowered if we want to survive as a 6+ billion species, I'd put my money on 'yes'.

Edit: The USA is still the only big country with a carbon footprint way above 10 tonnes per capita and year. Americans still emit 1.8x the CO2 of Japan, even though Japanese houses have no isolation to speak of (earthquake safety / corrupt builders). It's getting better, but there's still a huge gap between the USA and and the rest of the highly industrialized world. Everyone needs to get better there, but there are a few countries that absolutely need to do a lot, or we're all fucked. So far I'd put USA, China and Russia on that list, soon probably India and Brazil as well.

[1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_usage_statistics_by_countr...

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-re... (I don't have the source for car km per capita, but you can deduct it from this table)

[4] https://www.jtlu.org/index.php/jtlu/article/view/280/201

[5] http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/investor/financial/2013/pdf/2013_f...

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dio...

delabel• 11 years ago

High speed rail is almost always a serious money loser.

Passenger rail is a public good, just like tax-funded public roads (which also don't make a profit, by the way.) Both are necessary for an effective and fully functioning transportation system.

Since Japan introduced high-speed bullet trains, passenger rail has lost more than half its market share to the automobile.

This is largely due to an increase in rural car ownership since the 60's and the closure of unprofitable rural lines. The profitable Tokaido Shinkansen's ridership continues to increase, with 75% of passenger trips between Osaka and Tokyo using the line. The Shinkansen between Tokyo and Hiroshima, which is a comparable distance to that of LA to SF, carries more than half of the passengers between those two cities. http://www.jrtr.net/jrtr48/pdf/f06_Tak.pdf

It seems to me that California High Speed Rail will have the greatest impact on medium distance trips where it is too far to conveniently drive and not cost effective to fly. For example, it may become more practical to commute between the central valley cities the Bay Area.

simonebrunozzi• 11 years ago

Because you don't spend time driving in traffic, you get from A to B way faster, and if properly designed you pollute much less.

lispm2• 11 years ago

passenger rail system and 'high-speed rail' are two different things. If I want to take the train from Hamburg to Frankfurt, I can take the more expensive and faster ICE or a cheaper and slower EC or IC. personally I would not fly or use the car from Hamburg to Frankfurt, I would take the train, Fast, no check-in, city center to city center, full internet access (free for me).

Plus I have a BahnCard 100, which allows me to use the whole German train system for one year. Fast and slow. local public transport and ICE. That beats the alternatives easily.

bane8• 11 years ago

Rail has a side-effect of also highly urbanizing travelers where secondary mass-transit systems (bus, subway, etc.) makes it easy to get from/to the train station.

sytelus• 11 years ago

You are kidding, right? Do you have any idea of how many hours of lives are lost in traffic? If you sum up all those hours and divide by average lifespan, I bet it comes out to few thousand people getting killed each day.

Trains also hugely impact how much people must pay on housing. In areas with great train network, people can chose to live farther and still can avoid unreasonable commute. Just imagine what if Californians can spend their earnings on meaningful activities rather than just housing.

When I visited Russia, I just began to realize how important is train network and how badly neglected it is in US. Moscow has one of the absolutely best train network anywhere - all built by Soviets. Trains comes every 2 mins, they are fast and there are plenty of routes with plenty of stops to basically go anywhere without wasting your life getting stuck in commute, finding parking and pay bucket loads of money on gas.

In US, governments are extremely inefficient - no matter what party is in White House (this is not to say Russia is better but trains are something they did got right). People are always busy in philosophical issues around abortions, gay marriage, gun rights while doing 3 hours commute one way everyday in frustrating traffic never asking why government isn't fixing it for decades.

grey-area• 11 years ago

The question is why? Why should the U.S. spend billions on a great passenger rail system? High speed rail is almost always a serious money loser. What are the benefits?

How much money does the state road infrastructure make? What are the benefits?

peyoNYC• 11 years ago

Market share is misleading as high speed trains have been deployed on only a few corridors. These are expensive systems that need high volumes - in which case they work. Checking train share of market by corridor gives a better view. Regarding info from Cato or Reason, I'd take it with caution. They used to produce good research but unfortunately they seem to be driven by ideological choices more than facts. Still a good read but needs fact-checking. Last - about environmentalists: the overall impact of high speed train depends on how many people ride it. California should be a no brainer as traffic potential is huge. I wouldn't say the same of Spain (where lines are under used). Overall: don't trust the definitive arguments. Most people have hidden agendas on the high speed rail topic. From a realistic analysis of facts, you may conclude that California hsr should easily be a commercial success, therefore environmentally good, and has a good chance to be profitable if properly managed/built. Texas hsr is the same. North east has a great potential but the costs are so high that just a small deviation ends up in huge sums of money in overspent. Guaranteed commercial success but risky from a construction/financial standpoint. Other projects can be more questionable. I've participated to a review of all them for a potential investor and this is what I remember of it. Don't take it as truth, check the facts.

6t6t6• 11 years ago

High speed rail is almost always a serious money loser. What are the benefits?

When people make this statements is usually because they forget the cost of building and maintaining roads and highways (that is payed by all taxpayers, even if they don't use the car), the actual cost of the land occupied by paved roads and parking (almost 50% in most cities), the deaths by traffic accidents, the deaths caused by the pollution, etc...

Another thing that people use to forget is that low cost flights, the main competitor for high speed train, will be less and less competitive when the fuel prices will rise again.

Taking cars out of the road is always a good investment.

If high-speed rail doesn’t work in Japan and Europe, how can it work in the United States?

This article uses one fallacy after the other. Some have been answered by others; but no one who has put a foot in France, and specially in Japan, would say that High Speed train doesn't work there.

malandrew• 11 years ago

What is valuable and what we need more of isn't regional trains is light commuter rail. This is the rapid transit system the SF Bay Area could have had today had people had more foresight to approve it back in the 1950s.

http://www.jakecoolidgecartography.com/regional-rapid-transi...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/4080507945/sizes/l/

Imagine the San Francisco Bay Area with a commuter train system comparable to that of NYC and the great NY Metropolitan Area.

randall• 11 years ago

Not saying it's truth, but a lot of people believe in this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspi...

codecamper6• 11 years ago

how about this for no excuse: the train between SF and silicon valley is a diesel train. Loud. Shaking and vibrating.

Romania & the Ukraine have electric trains all over the place. I'd bet that Albania has them too.

Why not Silicon Valley?

(for those of you asking why is electric better: lower Co2 emissions in sunny california. It's quiet, so you can get your work done in peace. probably missing another plus point. )

ukandy2• 11 years ago

A local branch line (UK) has been testing battery powered trains this year, to save the expensive of electrifying the line. They charge the batteries on the electrified main line. Hopefully this will take off on other branch lines.

mmckeen• 11 years ago

Caltrain is in the process of adopting electric trains.

http://www.caltrain.com/projectsplans/CaltrainModernization....

You obviously haven't ridden it recently because signs are posted up at the major stations about it.

TeMPOraL3• 11 years ago

I wonder how much % of its electricity consumption a sunny-californian train could generate if one were to tile its roof with PV panels.

ekianjo11• 11 years ago

Japan (another country with great trains)

In Japan here. Trains in Japan (especially Shinkansen) are extremely expensive. Even for trips like Osaka to Tokyo the plane is much much cheaper (we are talking about 40%-50% cheaper). And lines take dozens of years to be paid in full before they generate money. It's just debt that is likely never going to be paid again (another very japanese concept).

timr5• 11 years ago

Your claims didn't match my recollection, so I just looked up a one-way fare from Tokyo to Osaka (6/25/2015; date randomly chosen) on the train, and on Kayak. The first train I found (not necessarily the cheapest) was $117 USD, vs. a cheapest airfare that was $55-$140 via the deep-discount airlines and $200+ for the less crappy ones. So yes, if you're willing to fly the discount airlines, you can save about $60.

That said, flying takes 1h30, plus an hour on each end, give or take, and then you have to get to the city. The train takes 170 minutes (~3 hours), doesn't require security, and drops you right in the center of town. That seems pretty competitive to me -- which is probably why most trains I've taken in Japan have been at least half full, and popular routes sell out on a regular basis.

I won't dispute that Japan has spent a great deal on their train system. The US has easily spent hundreds of billions on the highway system. It's a matter of priorities.

melling2• 11 years ago

The airport in Tokyo was an hour to our hotel. I remember the Shinkansen being close to the hotel. We took it to Kyoto then to Osaka. The train was packed so even if it was expensive, it was full.

chernevik• 11 years ago

The problem with trains in the US is the incompetence of institutions running them.

Acela, for example, was supposed to be a high-speed service, enabled by a tilting mechanism to counter turning forces. But the mechanism is frequently unusable, because the train's tracks are too narrow. It cannot tilt without risk of hitting another train, or a telephone pole. [1] While advertised at 150 mph, it only briefly reaches that speed. Its shorter travel time is mostly a function of being an express. [2]

This was knowable well before Amtrak spent billions on the project, but wasn't realized until after they had. The Acela cars are nice, but their expense was driven by a feature they largely don't use. The whole project is a waste of capital.

What's really needed for high-speed rail between Washington and NY would be straight track. This could be found by going north of DC to Pennsylvania, and then in -- but this would take Baltimore and Philadelphia off the route. A similar route could be found for NY to Boston, but this would abandon Providence. Does anyone think Congress will allow that?

It might also be found by clearing a new right of way by eminent domain. This would already be hugely expensive. And it too would be fraught by politics, as local communities vied to have the route curved to serve them. And can you imagine the corruption possibilities -- to move the route, to gain knowledge of where the route would go for land speculation?

And the construction of the route, and the train equipment, would become opportunities for Congress to take care of their various union and corporate partners, all at tremendous cost, and at risk of the technical requirements of the service.

The US lacks really good rail because it lacks really good civil institutions to build and maintain it. The problem isn't money -- look at the billions that went into Acela -- it is the lack of the competence and focus to actually serve the public interest.

[1] http://articles.courant.com/2000-05-27/news/0005270037_1_til...

[2] http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0110.carr.htm...

EDIT:

It turns out that Amtrak looked at all this in 2010: http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/214/393/A-Vision-for-High-Speed-...

Look at the routes they analyze (p. 9 and 11). Rather than look to straighten track, they bend the NY-Boston route to catch such vital places as Westchester Airport, Danbury and Hartford. The DC - NY route turns to catch Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia and Trenton. The economic case studies talk about the benefits of high-speed rail for Hartford and Baltimore. We can only guess at the cost increases and service impairments associated with routing to those cities.

The point of this isn't to get people from DC - NY - Boston faster. It is to get the promise of that service -- which people do want -- to justify enormous spending serving the interests and vanities of incumbent players.

ZanyProgrammer• 11 years ago

"The US lacks really good rail" You mean lacks really good passenger rail.

grantlmiller• 11 years ago

Sure, high-speed trains were great. So was the Edge Network at one point. The point is that we shouldn't spend time planning for the future with yesterday's technology. The CA high speed rail isn't scheduled for completion until 2029. I would prefer that we invest those 14 years and that 68 billion dollars in advancing driverless car infrastructure (luckily much of this can piggyback on existing highway system). It doesn't take much of an imagination to grasp the impact of driverless cars (on demand, shared, smaller 1 person vehicles, no parking, fewer deaths, etc)... even for longer distances (faster speeds, less traffic, caravanned vehicles).

sliverstorm• 11 years ago

I think the point of "far apart" is the great emptiness between California's cities. In France or Japan, one train line services many many cities, right? In California, you might hit SF, LA, SD, SJ, SAC...

That's not necessarily terrible, because you can carry high speed through the empty stretches, but I think what it really says is any California train would be more like the shinkansen, which (while a great train line) is not as rosy as the other lines. Even in train-loving Japan, I believe it operates at a loss.

lispm2• 11 years ago

Cities develop over time with train access.

Here in Germany it is almost comical how smaller cities fight to be on the high-speed ICE train network. But not all trains are high-speed. There are lots of slower speed trains which reach around 200km/h. The ICE are supposed to connect the larger cities. The ICE from Hamburg to Berlin has a fast connection which allows people to commute over that distance - something which was unthinkable with slower trains. But there are also cheaper and slower trains, which are servicing more cities between Hamburg and Berlin.

bane8• 11 years ago

One interesting difference with both France and Japan compared to the U.S. is that both countries have "chosen" a central city to focus all transit through. It's a kind of modern "all roads lead to Rome" phenomenon.

In other words, in both countries, rail spiders out from Paris or Tokyo respectively. It can be faster to go from the North of the central city to the South of the city, than between two "arms" of the system that are basically right next to one another. For example, it takes about 18 hours to go from Lille to Montpellier by train, on opposite ends of the country. While it takes about the same to go from Metz to Dijon, a 2 hour drive.

The Paris Metro Area has about 12.3 million people, or almost 1/5th of the country. Tokyo Metro has 32.5 million or about 1/4 of the country.

The U.S. on the other hand doesn't have a central capital city. There are no cities that have nearly that kind of gravity.

Despite that, New York to Miami by train takes about 19 hours. Lille to Montpellier is about half the distance of New York to Miami. That's not too bad considering the crap infrastructure the U.S. has in place.

delroth2• 11 years ago

Metz to Dijon is 3h by train. Lille to Montpellier is 5h. I'm not sure how you ended up with 18h.

prawn• 11 years ago

Over the years, I've begun to suspect that the resistance to trains and public transport in general comes from politicians in the pockets of either big business or a particular branch of big business. Is that wrong? If not, what's the crux of it? Maintenance contracts? The auto manufacturing industry? Strength of AAA (RAA in Australia) as lobbyists?

Australian PM Tony Abbott said in a book years back that even the "humblest person is king in his own car."

There are currently battle lines seemingly drawn over (largely left) state governments wanting funding for rail projects with the (right) federal government refusing and only wanting to fund large road projects.

raverbashing• 11 years ago

Or better illustrated (scroll down) http://mapfrappe.com/?show=30898

sschueller• 11 years ago

I think the bigger issue in the US it that it appears no longer possible to start large public infrastructure projects that aren't bogged down by corruption and incompetence at every level.

As an example the "Big Dig" in Boston was almost $12 Billion over budget and many years late. There are huge water leaks and there are many cases of bad work. In one case a woman was killed because the epoxy bolt of a ceiling panel broke and fell on the car she was a passenger in. [1]

Compare this with the Swiss NEAT train tunnel [2] which cost $10.3 billion and will be open for rail on December 2016 under budget by $300 Million. It had Problems as well, such as a stuck drill and bad concreet delivered by a company cheating by selling lower quality for the higher quality price. However these kinds of problems can occur and can be dealt with if you hire the right people for the job which may not always be the lowest bidder.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig_ceiling_collapse [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel

ukandy2• 11 years ago

A great benefit is you end up in the heart of a city, not at airfield 80 miles away. Lock your bag up in the station and explore.

If you like your long railway journeys, Olso to Bergen is beautiful 7 hour trip.

JacobAldridge• 11 years ago

I'll second Oslo to Bergen. We did it in reverse, as part of the 'Norway in a Nutshell' itinerary which is about 12 hours (can be done over two days) because it replaces some of the rail journey with a fjord cruise, the Flam railway, and a mountain coach.

barney542• 11 years ago

And you can watch the entire 7 hour trip from Oslo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7VYVjR_nwE

This is very relaxing to have on in the background.

hahainternet• 11 years ago

That is very cool. I'm testing your theory now.

_delirium• 11 years ago

In Europe, the convenience/inconvenience of airport locations varies a ton (which does influence purchase choices somewhat). For example Frankfurt's airport is only 8 minutes by commuter rail from the city center, and Copenhagen's is 12 minutes. But Paris-CDG and London-LHR are far from their city centers.

rorykoehler4• 11 years ago

You still have to trek through the airport, wait in security lines etc etc. so in reality it takes much longer than the time it takes the train to travel from the airport to the city. That said flying is often if not nearly always cheaper for short hauls in Europe.

rasz_pl• 11 years ago

and Oslo is so far it doubles if not triples cost of your cheap plane ride (30 bucks for train ticket between city and airport)

jameshart• 11 years ago

There's something very special about walking into a train station in the heart of a European city, and seeing a departure board that looks like this: http://www.enjoy-europe.com/hte/chap17/images/P1020015-Bruss...; the sense that you could just buy a ticket and jump on a train to anywhere. You tend not to get the same feeling from an airport departure board, where for the most part you couldn't just buy a ticket and fly to any of those destinations.

donpark• 11 years ago

Would love to see map of Europe reflecting distance by train, drawing countries with fast rail system smaller and those with slow rail system larger.

mathgenius• 11 years ago

Yeah, I'm also pondering different ways of visualizing this data.. I wonder if it is possible to distort the map of europe so that map distance actually corresponds to train travel time. I guess not in general, because of metric curvature: you could have a small (fast) triangle that surrounds a large (slow to access) area.

archagon3• 11 years ago

I enjoy traveling by train, but it's a bit of a shame that it's often economically unwise to pick a train over a coach bus if you're sensitive at all about the price. Difference can be 3x or higher, though some countries are better than others. (Italy, the UK, and Eastern Europe have pretty cheap trains, I've found.) Rail passes seem to only make things better if you're travelling a bunch over a short period of time, not once every few weeks. Still, I'd much rather travel by coach than air!

mattmanser• 11 years ago

In the UK it's often cheaper and quicker to hire a car, so I'm not sure why you think UK trains are cheap?

archagon3• 11 years ago

Over the course of my trip in the UK, I traveled short-distance last-minute dozens of times, and trains were practically as cheap as coach about half the time, so long as you picked the correct departure time. This simply is not the case at all in mainland Europe. Dunno anything about car hiring, but the coach prices were certainly cheaper than the price of gas.

ubernostrum2• 11 years ago

For DjangoCon Europe this past week I flew into London, stayed a few days being touristy, went to the conference in Cardiff, then came back to London and am flying out (home to the US) in a few hours.

I took a train to and from Cardiff. It was £22 each direction, roughly 2.5 hour trip from London Paddington to Cardiff Central, and the same in the opposite direction.

I doubt very much I'd have been able to hire a car for that trip for £22 each way. In fact, I probably couldn't even have gotten out of London for £22.

_puk• 11 years ago

Having spent a couple of years commuting from West Wales to Cardiff daily, at peak, I have to say that there is no way that I could have hired a car for the £18 return.

SE England is ridiculous, I'll give you that, and never a seat.

I once got a lift from a friend from the South West of England to the South East, as the ticket price was £150 PP return (2 of us), and he needed to head up that way anyway. Ultimately the lift ended up only being one way, the price of a single train ticket back.. £149 PP.

renaudg3• 11 years ago

Some of the travel times quoted don't even do justice to reality !

“I was really surprised how well connected Paris is. Both London and the Mediterranean coast are less than four hours away,”

The Mediterranean coast (Marseille) is actually just 3 hours away, and London to Paris a mere 2h15 on the Eurostar train, with stations conveniently located in the heart of each city.

Almost nobody is masochistic enough to fly the London-Paris route, apart from people on connections or some American tourists who didn't do their research and fly by default.

Also "Less than 8 hours" from Stockholm to Copenhagen is actually 5 hours IIRC, on comfy, clean trains with free Wi-Fi and AC power.

lucaspiller• 11 years ago

For anyone wondering why Eastern Europe is so badly connected, it's mainly because the Russian Empire used a different gauge to the rest of Europe:

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

In the Baltics there is an ongoing project to upgrade and switch to standard gauge, which will provide a direct link from Berlin to Helsinki (to start with via ferry, but a tunnel is planned). However a lot of trade done there is with Russia via rail, so it's beneficial for them to keep that as seamless as possible - switching passengers is one thing, cargo is another. Lithuania apparently transports 57% of goods by rail.

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

klodolph• 11 years ago

The U.S. once switched rail gauge. Once preparations were complete, it took only three days for the entire southern U.S. to change from 5' to 4'9".

http://southern.railfan.net/ties/1966/66-8/gauge.html

bane8• 11 years ago

For sake of comparison, Europe vs. Contiguous U.S.

https://mapfight.appspot.com/europe-vs-usc/europe-united-sta...

vs. All of the U.S.

https://mapfight.appspot.com/europe-vs-us/europe-united-stat...

For fun, here's a similar-ish map for calculating travel time in the ancient Roman World.

http://orbis.stanford.edu/

Dewie33• 11 years ago

Wow, I've never seen a map of the world before. /s

dang• 11 years ago

Please keep comments substantive.

Dewie33• 11 years ago

Okay, take 2.

What does the US overlayed over Europe have to do with the topic of rail travel in Europe?

bane8• 11 years ago

Arguments in the U.S. about rail often center on the vastness of the U.S. compared to individual European countries.

However, Europe is about the same size as the U.S. (or bigger depending how you compare) and has generally better rail across the entire territory, this renders the argument fairly moot.

Do you understand now?

Distances you can travel on a European train in less than a day

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