
High Speed Trains Are Killing the European Railway Network (2013) - okket
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/12/high-speed-trains-are-killing-the-european-railway-network.html
======
tomelders
We need to nationalise the railways EU wide. Privatised rail makes no sense
anywhere in the world. Flights are cheap because competition drives down
prices. But there's no real competition on the rail network. You can't have
two trains leave the same station and arrive at the same destination as the
same time. The train company that runs the train from Station A to Station Z
at 13:00 get's all the passengers that need to travel that route at that time.
Sure there are ways for one train to overtake another, but that capacity is
severely limited because of the physical and safety constraints.

Trains are also more expensive to run than planes because they need more
infrastructure to operate, and that infrastructure is high maintenance. So we
have almost no competition, high operating costs, and we've set it up so the
people operating the trains are in opposition to each other and have no
incentive or obligation to work together to lower prices or improve the
service.

Nationalise it. All of it. And let's just accept that there are some things
that simply shouldn't be run by the private sector.

And I realise that "Nationalisation" in the context of the EU is the wrong
word. What I'm saying is the that EU should run the whole thing. Whatever
that's called... Federalisation? I don't know.

~~~
rebolek
We have no high speed rails, are finally privatizing some trains and it's for
good. The quality of service is finally going up even in the state run train
company.

The competition works differently. Our country wants train that will run from
A to B, X times a day and companies will present their offers. Who has the
best offer will run this route for Z years.

Nationalization was tried and doesn't work. It has to be supervised by state,
but not run by them, that will lead to inferior service.

~~~
willyt
Privatisation was tried in the UK and it hasn’t worked. Our trains are just as
unreliable as they always were. The food is still shit. Only difference is
that the fares have been going up way faster than inflation for years now
because we not only have to pay for the maintenance and operation costs but
also the cost of someone making a profit from it and all the administrative
costs of having 100 organisations all arguing over who’s fault the delay was.
Our running costs are considerably higher than other EU countries because of
this. Railways are a natural monopoly, just like power lines, water pipes and
roads.

~~~
ricw
That’s debatable and dependent on what metric you’re looking at. Prior to
nationalisation the number of rail passengers in the uk had flatlined for
decades. After prioritisation it has been growing like mad [1].

There are valid criticisms against privatisation or how it was executed, but
generally claiming that it hasn’t worked is not accurate. From a usage stand
point, it has worked rather well.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of_British_Rail)

~~~
willyt
Correlation is not causation though. It is just as likely that road congestion
and land values have more to do with this than privatisation. Rural services
are still underused. Many more families now own two cars. Services in South
East England have high demand because people can’t afford to live in London.
Intercity services are in high demand because motorways are so congested that
road journey times are much slower and more unpredictable. This is probably
due to effects like increased road freight and local commuters using motorways
for parts of their trip.

------
lispm
Hamburg -> Munich. next thursday morning, >600km

ICE, duration 5:40. Cost around 100€ With Bahncard 50: 76 €

Same with slow train: duration 11:00, cheapest ticket 29€

Flight around 200 Euros, Lufthansa 300+€, Flighttime 1:15, Travel time: around
3.5 hours.

Hamburg -> Frankfurt. 400km

IC, duration 3:30, Cost starting at around 75€, with Bahncard 50: 53€

Business Trips: company pays. Many business trips in one year: get a Bahncard
100. Company pays. Costs 4400€. Unlimited travel with full flexibility within
Germany. For example one trip Hamburg<->Frankfurt per week and the Bahncard
100 is easily more convenient.

~~~
stingraycharles
This matches my experience as well. I take the Thalys from Amsterdam to Paris
once or twice a month, and a round trip ticket is around 200 euros.

I don’t think this is expensive at all. Surely the car would be much more
expensive (fuel + maintenance), so I do not share the author’s point of view.

I, for one, am incredibly happy for having a viable (much better, actually)
alternative to the airplane.

~~~
discordance
I took the Thalys from Amsterdam to Paris last week for the first time.

Pretty poor design. There's a horizontal section between two windows that
prevents you from looking out of the window comfortably, and the whole
experience is extremely cramped.

------
the_mitsuhiko
For a really long time I wanted high speed rail but now I just want better
service and wifi. If the train takes some time it does not matter because i’m
productive using it.

I spend so little time at the train stations on either end and I can work the
entire ride that I don’t feel like I wasted time. On the other hand almost any
flight or car trip feels regretful.

~~~
njepa
Agreed. I don't think trains are really good at speed yet relative to costs.
They are however good at comfort if given the chance. There is less of a space
and weight premium. Noise and vibration can be much lower. And a medium speed
train they can still go twice as fast as car.

I wish someone would take the idea of a business or first class flight,
without the luxuries and inflated cost, and put that on a modern medium speed
train. Something similar to this seat layout:
[https://liveandletsfly.boardingarea.com/2018/02/08/swiss-777...](https://liveandletsfly.boardingarea.com/2018/02/08/swiss-777-300er-
first-class-review/)

~~~
pintxo
Business class without luxuries and inflated costs is what? Economy class?

~~~
njepa
You want the comfort. The seats, privacy and trouble free ‘logistics’. You
don’t need the luxuries. The three course meal, the champagne and maybe not
even the personal service. Business class on airplanes are to some extent eat,
sleep and drink class.

Hauling drinks aren’t as expensive so no need to up-sell the service, just
give me a snack station.

~~~
pintxo
I am no airline expert, but the seat, privacy and trouble free logistics is
the expensive part, no? The rest: food and service is the cheap part.

One row of 6 business class seats replaces what, 20-30 eco seats? That‘s where
the cost comes from. So they need to be a factor of 3-5 more expensive because
of space with everything else equal.

~~~
njepa
Yes, for airlines since they are space limited. But the additional space on a
train would presumably be cheaper, so the relative costs of luxuries would be
more.

The point is just that you want "office class" on a train to be its own
product. If I take a high speed train I am still probably just going to go and
do some more work from a hotel, office or home.

So just make the slower train nice enough instead and save on the expensive
track upgrades. Just don't try to sell me, or include, a 3€ water or a 25€
meal because then the extra time becomes a liability and you ruin the concept.

------
switch007
I live on a route that had its local services replaced by new rolling stock to
run new medium-distance services. That change led to higher ticket prices,
reduction of local services, less desirable destinations, longer onward
connections, and a year of abysmal service which resulted in some of the worst
performance of the entire national network.

Local communities have been badly affected. People had to move. We have
timetables that don't work, especially for people with children and jobs. 1
train per hour down from 2. Morning services that get you in to the city at
stupid times (0808 and 0908). The train to one city dumps you at the less
useful terminus, eventually, after it crawls though a busier line. The
franchise is not meeting its contractual obligation for peak service
frequency.

A lot to swallow just to get nicer new trains :/

------
Patrick_Devine
I just took the Barcelona-Paris train a few months ago and paid 119 Euros for
a 1st Class ticket. I think it was 79 Euros for a 2nd class ticket. I was just
looking at buying tickets for my entire family of four from Munich to Berlin
for this summer, and the price is 95 euros for the entire family.

That doesn't really jibe with what the author is complaining about. I get that
there will be instances where the old system better serviced some parts of the
network, but I believe for the vast majority of the people using the train,
high speed lines have been an absolute boon.

~~~
LeanderK
I think the Munich-Berlin route is the prime example where high-speed rail
makes sense. It's long enough to really make a difference but not too long so
that you would consider a plane. 95€ seems cheap for the DB, I have a bahncard
50 (so 50% off) and usually pay ~30€ for Karlsruhe-Munich (bit over 3 hours),
but I usually buy them when I start my trip.

------
t0mas88
He is entirely right, and since 2013 is has become even more like he
described. It now already applies from Amsterdam to Paris... It's a 1 hour
flight, for 99 euros return on Air France / KLM and far less than that if you
take easyJet or another low cost option (with the downside that you're going
to an airport further from the city). The train takes 3 to 4 hours and costs
more.

Only on really short trips like Amsterdam - Brussels the train is the better
option. And on those the normal train is only 15 minutes out of a total 2.5
hours slower than the expensive high speed train, while the high speed is more
than twice as expensive.

~~~
Leszek
Comparing a 1 hour flight to a 3-4 hour train journey by those times alone is
somewhat dishonest: it doesn't take into account the rest of the journey
to/from the airport at either end (usually further out of the city than the
main train station), nor the 1-2 hour early arrival at the airport for bag
drop/security/killing time at the gate.

Not to mention inconveniences like lack of liquids in hand luggage, expensive
airport amenities (should you choose to use them), passing through the
security theatre, and of course the actual cost of getting to the airport (in
the UK, this can be more than the flight!).

~~~
jdietrich
The train probably has proper tables, power outlets and useable WiFi or 4G.
For a business traveller, a 4 hour train journey can be 4 hours of very
productive time, whereas a 1 hour flight can completely obliterate half a day.

------
lars_francke
> For most people, the time gained by taking the high speed train is not worth
> the extra cost.

Citation needed. I'm just a single data point but I'd gladly pay more to be
home w/ family a few minutes/hour earlier and considering how jam packed the
ICEs often are I would say others share a similar sentiment (maybe for other
reasons).

Most arguments in this article are based on price which to me is similar to
people arguing over benchmarks in software/hardware products (i.e. performance
of a product) while there are tens of other factors to consider, performance
being just one of them.

I for one don't consider price at all (within reason, for me that means when
the difference between choices is ~200-300€) when travelling on business (and
the older I get for private travel as well). I favor comfort, speed,
reliability of connections etc.

I basically disagree with almost everything in that article - but similar to
his viewpoint mine is very subjective.

------
thatfrenchguy
What I'm getting from this is that we need to tax intra-EU flights.

~~~
adrianN
What we need is a general carbon tax.

------
jayalpha
European trains a great. I wish Europe would be more positive about the future
and build more modern trains. Why no self coupling train cars that go to
different destinations?

Good news, recently on HN. I love night trains!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19557848](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19557848)

As always: [http://seat61.com/](http://seat61.com/)

------
devit
The article doesn't really seem to address why, if there is demand for what
the author wants (which is quite reasonable), the market (or even a monopolist
train company) doesn't provide it.

~~~
ramshorns
Maybe because it can make more money providing high-speed rail which a few
people want for a high price. The article does address the difficulty of
competition (either between companies or within a nationalised rail provider)
because tracks are one-dimensional, so maybe the rail provider has to choose
between low speed and high speed.

------
DennisP
Well that's unfortunate. I lived in Germany in the '80s, and traveled by train
all over the continent. Especially in Germany, France and northern countries
there was no place I wanted to go that couldn't be conveniently reached by
train, trolley, and bus; I don't think I often had to walk more than a mile or
wait more than half an hour. And it didn't cost much either; the dollar was
really strong at the time but I got six weeks of unlimited travel for a few
hundred bucks.

------
hevi_jos
Europe needs competition on the rail networks, just like air traffic. This
will happen over time. In places like Spain it will start this year or next
one.

In Spain and other European countries, there was a State monopoly on rail.
Extremely bad for the customer. No company could offer cheaper prices or be
smarter. It is a bureaucracy used for political parties to place their(mostly
incompetent) family members and friends.

------
bubblewrap
Trains compete with planes, cars and bus lines. It seems likely that if it
turns out to be necessary to be competitive, they'll reintroduce the cheaper
trains.

Here in Germany, cheaper trains seem to be available for many times I happened
to check (IC vs ICE).

I am also happy about the reduction of my travel time, although the costs may
have been too large (years and years of building new tracks and tunnels).

------
ip26
The funny thing is I rode the Lyon-Paris route, and the train was jam-packed
with what I would consider ordinary people and families.

Although, that was a sample size of one, and I think I read somewhere it was
one of the few profitable high speed routes.

~~~
unstructured
As far as I know its the only high-speed route that is profitable in France.

------
dzhiurgis
With advent of electric buses I believe railway is dead.

For short to mid range trips - electric buses already are capable to cover
them at nearly same comfort level but much lower cost.

For long range we'll have to stick to planes.

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spodek
One of my favorite sites online. I recommend spending time there on other
articles to catch his view of the modern world, which I find refreshing and
timely.

------
burlesona
This is an interesting article, but I think it could be summarized fairly
succinctly: trains are amazing for intercity travel in the 100-300mi range,
and beyond that they’re not really competitive against air travel.

TLDR; The author basically explains that the old system of good regional (euro
national) networks which happened to connect together was almost as fast as
the high speed trains but much cheaper and more convenient. When high speed
lines are added these international regional lines are typically shut down.
Since the high speed trains are expensive this means that the new network
basically only serves medium/short distance business travel, where the old
network was affordable for anyone to take basically any distance.

~~~
maelito
> not competitive against air travel

Financially, maybe. In terms of the negative externalities impacting climate,
high-speed trains are incomparable.

~~~
fetbaffe
Railway on the other hand have negative impact on wildlife when building it.

Give it a decade or two and we will have electrical air travel.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19652363](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19652363)

~~~
0xffff2
No, you absolutely will not. The article you linked is talking about 2/4 seat
trainers. Electric simple does not scale to airliner sizes/speeds/distances.
We're currently working towards hybrid-electric airliners that may offer some
efficiency improvements, and even those are 3-4 decades from commercial
operation. Fully electric requires a fundamental breakthrough in battery
energy density.

------
Causality1
"Hopping on a plane would be a hypocritical thing to do when you run a
publication called Low-tech Magazine."

Yes, using a form of travel invented in 1903 is far more high-tech than
publishing articles to the global information network. Putz.

~~~
adrianN
If you read a couple of articles on the site you'll see that it's about how we
can use well-known, or recently forgotten technology to live in a much more
sustainable way. It's a counterpoint to the "magical technology of the future
will solve it" school of environmental politics.

------
eternalban
What a great website. Thank you for posting this.

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rb808
I totally agree, high speed trains are glamorous and high profile but I think
spoil the main goal. eg California high speed train was hugely expensive,
would be much better to expand commuter trains and/or improve the existing
Amtrak lines.

~~~
shereadsthenews
Expanding commuter service and Amtrak does not solve the problems that CaHSR
solves, namely meeting the long-haul travel needs of the next ten million
Californians and complying with AB32’s carbon reduction requirements.

