

How Can Germany's High-Speed Trains Get Back on Track? - sdfx
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,699847,00.html

======
masklinn
At this point, for europe it might just be a better idea to let the TGV
network grow outwards from France. It's already started to spread its tendrils
in other countries anyway.

Not that the network is that good in France though, Paris-Lyon-Marseilles has
been nice for years, the connection to Lilles (and now to Bruxelles in Belgium
as well) and to London via the channel tunnel is nice, a line recently opened
to the east of the country (Strasbourg) but the TGV network has a few glaring
issues:

* Everything goes through Paris. Lyon-Paris takes 3 hours, Paris-Strasbourg take about the same time, but a direct from Lyon to Strasbourg (not via Paris) takes 6 hours even though there is pretty much the same distance (~450km) betweem all of them (yep, Paris-Lyon-Strasbourg almost forms an equilateral triangle). Likewise Paris-Marseille (800km) takes 4h but Marseille-Nice (south-east to south-east but further east, 200km) will be 3h30

* There are no LGV (high-speed train lines) to western France, they stop at Le Mans and Tours (200~250km from Paris) so travelling from Paris to Marseille (800km) takes 4h, and Paris to Bordeaux (550km) will take you 4h as well (as the TGV has to use regular lines for half the travel). Paris to Toulouse (670km direct, 780km via Bordeaux) will waste at least 7h (TGV to Bordeaux then regional train).

Thankfully this is changing, there are new lines in the work and projected to
start solving this issue (see dotted lines:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:France_TGV.png>) and overall TGV is
awesome, but it's nowhere near perfect right now.

PS: I note that my timings differ from Spiegel's, I got mine from the SNCF
database so...

PPS: For those unfamiliar with french geography and cities, Paris is of course
the french capital (inner city population 2.2M, 11.7M including suburbs),
Marseilles is France's second biggest city (852k inner, 1.6M metro), Lyon
comes third (472k inner but 1.75M metro), Toulouse is the fourth biggest (437k
inner, 1.1M metro), Nice stands at 5th (348k inner, 990k metro), Strasbourg
7th (273k inner, 638k metro) and Bordeaux is 9th (250k inner, 1M metro)

~~~
pmjordan
_At this point, for europe it might just be a better idea to let the TGV
network grow outwards from France._

I doubt that would solve the problem where political wrangling is the issue. I
_especially_ can't see the Germans allowing the French to build and run their
trains and lines. ;)

The ICE has run to Vienna for a while now, and Austria's ÖBB recently started
their high-ish-speed "Railjet" [1] service (vmax currently 200km/h, due to
increase to 230). Both suffer from the same network problems as Germany -
trains pass through far too many smaller towns; old tracks. Plus there's the
additional difficulty of the Austrian geography. The Vienna-Munich/Frankfurt
route runs through one of the flattest parts of Austria, much of the rest of
the country is covered in mountains.

They are building bypasses (mainly colossal tunnels, as "flat" around here
still is pretty hilly) but it takes decades and consumes a phenomenal amount
of taxpayer money.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railjet>

~~~
ugh
Oh, I don’t think that’s such a big problem. Thalys already exists [1] and
they use TGV trains.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalys>

~~~
pmjordan
I'm aware of Thalys, though Aachen/Cologne isn't exactly a long journey.

------
ugh
A accurate portrayal of the problems, but I would very much like to add that
actually going to places with a ICE really is a joy. I always prefer it to
traveling by car, even if I have to travel some part of the way with a slower
regional train.

(That might be because traveling by train is just plain cool, period. I once
took that Russian night train to Krakow – that was a unique experience.)

~~~
lenni
I love trains, too. Using high speed rail to see my parents is one the
favourite things about my decision to move back to Germany.

ICEs are great and it is such a shame that the network is so patchy. When they
actually do go up to speed it's thrilling.

~~~
ugh
Ah, the 200 km between Cologne and Frankfurt – if only every track were like
that :)

(Here’s a overview over the current state of the German network:
[http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:ICEtracks.pn...](http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:ICEtracks.png&filetimestamp=20091004212526))

~~~
lenni
That Wikipedia graphic looks a lot better than the Spiegel one. Well, maybe
we're complaining on a high level. That doesn't change anything about the
ridiculous stops mentioned in the article.

------
akadruid
this article is a good demonstration of the all-or-nothing big-government
requirements of high speed rail.

In the two countries which have working, effective, high speed rail networks
(France and Japan) it cost billions, took many years and required 100%
government commitment to achieve. Only a few countries have the political
setup to achieve something like that.

~~~
Tangurena
High speed rail is breathtakingly expensive, especially in urban areas. When
BART was planning on a high speed branch out to silicon valley, it was
budgeted to run $120,000,000 per mile of track. Part of the cost is that you
cannot have _any_ at-grade crossings, every road crossing has to be an
over/underpass.

~~~
Retric
That's still fairly reasonable compared to interstate construction costs in a
city.

For ~30 Billion you could build a DC to NY line that runs through Baltimore
and Philadelphia.

"The Big Dig was the most expensive highway project in the U.S.[2] Although
the project was estimated in 1985 at $2.8 billion (in 1982 dollars, US$6.0
billion adjusted for inflation as of 2006[update]),[3] over $14.6 billion
($8.08 billion in 1982 dollars)[3] had been spent in federal and state tax
dollars as of 2006[update].[4] A July 17, 2008 article in The Boston Globe
stated, "In all, the project will cost an additional $7 billion in interest,
bringing the total to a staggering $22 billion, according to a Globe review of
hundreds of pages of state documents. It will not be paid off until 2038."
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig>

PS: It was probably not worth the cost: "The result was a 62% reduction in
vehicle hours of travel on I-93, the airport tunnels, and the connection from
Storrow Drive, from an average 38,200 hours per day before construction
(1994–1995) to 14,800 hours per day in 2004–2005, after the project was
largely complete.[28] The savings for travelers was estimated at $166 million
annually in the same 2004–2005 time frame.[29] Travel times on the Central
Artery northbound during the afternoon peak hour were reduced 85.6%.[30]"

~~~
Anechoic
_PS: It was probably not worth the cost:_

Perhaps slightly off topic, but I have to disagree - your postscript only
looks at one aspect of the CA/T, there were other effects as well. For
starters, the old elevated artery was way past it's useful life, and a
replacement was absolutely needed. Once you realize that the elevated artery
needed replacement, your options start to narrow very quickly: replacing the
old elevated artery with a new elevated artery would have been more disruptive
than the tunnel construction, and building a new highway in a separate
location was feasible since there was no where else to put it. Digging an
expensive tunnel was the least bad of a bunch of bad options, but frankly the
city was paying for a bunch of stupid decisions that were made in the 1950's.

As for the positive effects of the Big Dig, it reconnected Boston with the
water front, it freed up recreational land, it had a positive effect on
Boston's air quality, and it significantly improved automobile traffic flow by
separating out local traffic (which runs on the surface) from thru traffic
(which runs in the tunnel) where before they all moved on the elevated highway
which worsened congestion. Before the CA/T opened, this route:

<http://maps.google.com/maps?q=woburn%20to%20braintree%20ma>

would take a minimum of 90 minutes; double that estimate if you were traveling
during peak hour. Triple it if there was an accident in the area. Right now,
it's a 20 minute drive in non-peak hours, and well under an hour during peak
times. Not bad.

That said, it would have been nice to have had more expanded transit to go
along with the Big Dig. The Silver Line and the Old Colony lines (which were
required as mitigation for the Big Dig) was a good start, but we could have
done better.

(ftr, I worked on the Big Dig as a consultant from 1998-2001. I've also worked
on several dozen domestic passenger rail programs, include T-Rex, BART Silicon
Valley Extension, and the Acela mentioned in this discussion)

~~~
Retric
"Boston city proper had a 2008 estimated population of 620,535"
22,000,000,000$ / 620,535 = 35,450$ per person, for something they helps in
some areas but made congestion worse in others.

Other options included reducing the number of cars large toll to get into the
city which would for high quality and public bus system.

2% of 22billion is 440 million / year that pays for one hell of a public bus
system. Heck, spend 22billion on an above ground mono rail network and you
could build one hell of a system (~500 - 1500km). Most Boston traffic is just
moving people from point A to B so public transportation is a real option. 13%
of all commuting takes place by foot as it is, so even elevated bike paths
could have significantly improved things.

~~~
Anechoic
_"Boston city proper had a 2008 estimated population of 620,535"
22,000,000,000$ / 620,535 = 35,450$ per person, for something they helps in
some areas but made congestion worse in others._

The presumption is that the artery is only being used by Boston residents.
It's used by Boston residents to get out the city, by other MA residents to
get into the city, and by non-MA residents to get in & thru the city, as well
as delivering goods received in Boston ports to points north, south and west.
Freight rail can (and does, vis the huge CSX yard in Allston) move a huge
portion of that load, but you're still going to have trucks for the last-mile
delivery to the industrialized areas in EMass. (and where has it made
congestion worse?)

But even if you want to put everyone on buses, those buses still have to drive
on something - the old artery couldn't be that something because it was
falling apart, and alternatives have the same problem as an alternative
highway system does. IOW. you're still talking about a tunnel system.

------
throwaway321
It's not the trains that are the problem, it's the tracks. There are enough
high-quality, high-speed trainsets to choose from (TGV, Velaro, ETR 500+, AGV,
etc), but they don't have enough track to run them on.

Spain gets it. There, the government has invested an insane amount in a
dedicated HS infrastructure which is used by all types of (high-speed) trains.
Madrid-Barcelona is 3 hours and has already halved the need for the air
shuttle that runs between the cities.

What we need is for governments to stop trying to do everything and do what
they do best: Build the rail infrastructure according to the relevant
standards (ETMS, ERTMS) and cooperate to fill the gaps in the network
(Perpignan-Figueras, Lyon-Turin, etc). Then let private companies do what they
do best: Run the trains, compete and drive down prices.

------
melling
I wonder how many more decades before we get high-speed rail in the US... I've
been on the trains in France and Japan and it's a great way to travel.

~~~
noonespecial
I've got the somewhat unpopular opinion that its probably too late for us
Americans to put something like that together. I live in DC and have witnessed
the nearly 2 decades of political whinging it took to get started on a 20 mile
extension of DC's already sorry little system out to the airport.

It would take a change in attitude so radical to get national high speed rail
to a decent number of cities that I'm not sure it can be done. Perhaps the end
of cheap oil could do it in a generation or two?

For good or bad, we've cast our lot with asphalt tracks and rubber wheels.

~~~
bonsaitree
As a D.C. metro resident (living in NoVA), I share your pain. When I moved, I
made sure to live close to at least 1 airport (ended up being IAD) for that
verysame reason.

~~~
aidenn0
I grew up in Reston. When I started elementry school (1985), the furthest the
metro rail went out was Vienna, though they were talking about running a line
out along the Dulles corridor.

I visited home last year; the furthest the metro rail went out was Vienna,
though they were talking about running a line out along the Dulles corridor,
and they have a website[1]. Now that's progress!

1: <http://www.dullescorridorrail.com/>

------
jambo
Auf Deutsch: <http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,699086,00.html>

Spiegel Online should really give a link to the original German articles from
corresponding international edition articles. Had to go back through
@Spiegel_alles to find it on twitter.

I'm spoiled by Wikipedia.

