Thats because there is a cultural difference between how americans and europeans see trains. For americans its something quaint and wild whereas for europeans its just a basic form of transportation.
I once saw a large party of school children going on a trip on the Caltrain. Turned out they weren't going anywhere... it was just going on the train that was the activity. A commuter train running alongside a highway through urban sprawl. They were whooping when it pulled into the station.
While it's fun for the kids it's also important for them to get used to and respect trains. I've found that kids who grow up in places where trains aren't as popular don't develop a healthy fear of them. When my son saw train tracks for the first time at 2 yrs old his first reaction was to run towards them. So trips like these can teach kids how to properly act at a train station.
I've taken the train in Minneapolis from the mall to downtown several times, purely for the novelty of it. We have a lot of freight trains in Iowa. Passenger, not so much.
I live a few blocks from that train, so I wind up taking it all the time to get to the mall or downtown. The novelty wears off, and you wind up mostly worried about having to share your ride with packs of unruly teenagers, or sports fans heading downtown who can't resist saying racist things about our various African immigrant neighbors. It's a pleasure or a drag, depending on the manners of those who share the ride.
One Iowan to another: you didn't ride a train in Minneapolis. You rode a streetcar (tram in British).
And yes, only the southeast corner of Iowa is served at all by passenger rail. Would be nice if they extended the Hawkeye Express to CR, or better yet, Amtrak service from Davenport to IC to DSM. Alas, not enough $$$ to make it worth doing.
The lines that goes between the Mall of America, downtown Minneapolis, and St Paul are light rail, and are faster than what would normally be considered a "tram" or "streetcar".
I'd think it still counts as being a train. Obviously it's short-distance light rail, but it's still got all the main feature's of a train.
I mainly mentioned it since the parent comment was about a group of girls getting on the train purely for the experience of being on the train, and my experience seemed pretty similar.
Don't know that it terribly matters one way or the other though I guess.
If you really want to get technical, the key defining characteristic of a train is that it consists of multiple connected railway vehicles that move together. A railway vehicle is of course a vehicle that runs on tracks.
So there are some tram/streetcar/light rail systems out there (like the one in New Orleans) that consist of individual railway vehicles, and are thus not trains.
I take the Caltrain almost daily to mountain view, and I feel the exact opposite. Usually I look around and everyone has their bose headphones on while working on their macbook pro. It feels like were all drones, working 24/7 waiting to die. Where as game days/school trips are the highlight of my commute, it feels more human IMO.
I grew up in the eastbay, and at least while I was growing up, the bart train was a friendly environment of people interacting with one another. Obviously it came with some not so pleasant things (i.e. homelessness and unwanted touching) but more human none-the-less.
Knowing I was going to miss the last "Baby Bullet" out of SF to San Jose because a meeting ran late was one of the biggest kick in the guts. I do not miss that commute at all.
I used to like to ride the Staten Island Ferry in both directions in the middle of the night just for the peacefulness of it. That and long 3am walks through midtown east/UES were fantastic ways to clear my head.
Trains can also be pretty quaint in Europe today now that low cost airlines like Easyjet and Ryanair offer cheap flights to most major cities. I live in Berlin and even domestic trains are far more expensive than domestic flights to medium and large cities.
1) Fuel tax. There's no tax on jet fuel, but rail companies pay tax on their diesel or electricity
2) Inflexible service, but high expectations. The European rail timetable is changed twice a year, and those trains will run (in normal circumstances). There will be a train from X→Y every hour from 5am until midnight, and those trains run even if very few people use them on a particular day. An airline can change the schedules more easily, and cancel/rebook passengers at fairly short notice.
3) Rail infrastructure is subsidized differently to aircraft infrastructure. I don't know enough to compare which benefits the most. Externalities aren't costed properly (e.g. noise and pollution).
4) Railways must still provide low-profit-(even loss)-making services, they may be expected to do this using profits from other routes. For example, long distance intercity trains might be subsidizing rural services.
This came up in something related: the Dutch Greens have been campaigning recently to reduce or eliminate flights to and from Schiphol within a 750 km radius, in favour of trains.
Answering your question, on the issue of price they note that no fuel tax is is paid on airplanes fuel and no VAT (21%) on flight tickets.
I think it’s a clever win/win play: reducing short haul flights in favour of railways not only reduces emissions and noise pollution, but it also frees up some capacity at Schiphol.
And there’s been some success already: the house has accepted a motion to eliminate the Schiphol-Brussels route.
I'm also an ignorant american, but I've traveled Europe for months by rail and air.
By american standards, both methods are dirt cheap.
Ryanair cuts every cost you can imagine. No free water or pretzels, tiny seating area, no first class, outskirts airports, no checked or carry on, tarmac boarding.
On trains you get sufficient space to stretch your legs, a power outlet, wifi, unlimited baggage etc. and you get to arrive and depart in the city center.
I think the pricing is based upon consumer value more than service costs.
So long as fuel is reasonably priced, planes can take more people farther, faster it is simple economics. Trains are still preferable for local trips and even some medium range trips, but to go all the way across Europe by train would be terribly expensive compared to taking a cheap flight.
That doesn't really answer the question. What about planes is cheaper? For simple economics to apply, they have to do something cheaper than trains, and it's not obvious what that is. As far as I know, for example, trains are significantly more fuel efficient per passenger-mile.
There are several reasons why flying can be so cheap in Europe:
1. The discount airlines have become masters at turnaround times. When the planes are sitting at the gate, they're not making money. They slashed these as much as they could.
2. They only fly one model of airplane (typically either the 373 or a320) to simplify maintenance.
3. Most major airports in Europe are privatised. One of the effects of this is that they've become giant malls that want to get people through them, so landing fees have steadily gone down (there are edge cases where the airports pay the airlines to go to them, but those are rather rare exceptions).
4. Some airlines (more specifically Ryanair) fly to cheaper/more outlier airports. If you take a Ryanair flight to Paris, you're landing in Beauvais Airport, which is almost halfway to the english channel. You'll then have to take a bus. When in europe, I usually prefer Easyjet for the reason that though they're more expensive, you're landing at an airport with decent transit to the city you're visiting.
5. There's no frills at all. If you're just flying with no luggage, you won't believe how cheap it can be (I flew from madrid to london for 25 euros). But the fills aren't cheap. Checked baggage is more than the cost of the flight, food is a rip off, etc.
Also, trains in europe are still often state-owned (not the case everywhere, I know), so they're forced to run uneconomical lines for political purposes, etc.
> (there are edge cases where the airports pay the airlines to go to them, but those are rather rare exceptions).
Thing may have changed since a few things happened meanwhile, but a couple of years ago Ryanair got about 100 Million EUR [1] (sorry, link in Italian) from various Italian airports. Verona airport used to pay up to 24 EUR per passenger to low cost companies.
My understanding is that some airports have been opened for political reasons even when there was no real need, so they are "forced" to make such agreements in order to guarantee a decent amount of passengers.
I'm wondering if this happens also elsewhere in Europe.
> 1. The discount airlines have become masters at turnaround times. When the planes are sitting at the gate, they're not making money. They slashed these as much as they could.
As a european who moved to the US recently, this was mind boggeling the first time I boarded a plane in the US. I arrived at the airport expecting a typical 10 minute boarding time, but kept getting more surprised at how inefficient they managed to make boarding a plane as time passed. Just the time spend waiting in the plane at the gate before they let you get out seems to be longer in some cases than the typical turnaround time for euro flights.
Not having to maintain thousands of miles of rail seems like a big cost savings right up front. Trains should have lower fuel costs, but fuel really isn't that expensive in the grand scheme of things. People are also willing to give up some creature comforts if the trip is short which helps airlines. Trains also have a lower throughput of passengers compared to employee hours, so salary costs per passenger are higher.
The simple economics is in passenger volume. A plane can carry more people, to more destinations within Europe, several times a day.
Your statement that "As far as I know, for example, trains are significantly more fuel efficient per passenger-mile" definitely has some merit, but... trains are only more fuel efficient per passenger if they are as full as planes. An Airbus with 180 passengers might beat a train in per passenger miles if the train is not loaded.
Considering that, trains definitely are cheaper for highly utilized routes (commuting routes, for example), but for a leisurely trip across Europe, an Airbus packed to the gils could be cheaper.
Planes most likely benefit from the economies of scale, simply for the huge number of riders they service in comparison with trains for longer stretches.
The complicated area of railroad tracks probably doesn't help either. Someone is paying for them and the maintenance is frequent judging by the business my friends working on the railroads get.
This is worth your 8 minutes of time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ
I love trains, but the economics of rail travel in the USA can't be overcome. Until robot trains.
I have seen that and agree that country-wide train service is indeed expensive, but there really should be better offerings on the east coast that could compete against bus service. Being on a train with plenty of room has a huge quality advantage over buses and the scaling of their carrying capacity means that companies can be more free in allowing luggage and seating space than the economics of planning the layout of a bus.
Train service in the US Northeast is pretty good at least for the cities it services. It's not price-competitive with Megabus but is train anywhere competitive pricewise with discount buses?
And that's the catch. I've been told that years ago it was better, but try to catch a train to a secondary city in New England and you'll often find that the only offering is an occasional Amtrak branded bus.
Fair enough. It's mostly the coastal corridor that's good with a couple on inland spurs from NY/New Haven up to St. Albans and Montreal that aren't terrible. But otherwise, there's something of a gap between commuter rail systems (which are pretty hub and spoke in any case) and what Amtrak covers.
As a former vermonter... The St. Albans service is terrible, trains go into Essex Junction (basically, Burlington) once a day and the train leaves NYC at 11:33 am and gets in at 8:18 pm, eight hours for what is a five hour drive with a single train a day.
I don't disagree that some other services might be alright, but that's clearly not one of them.
I haven't kept up on those services. I know they've come and gone over the years but I was being charitable. I used to semi-regularly take the train from White River Junction to Philadelphia but I pretty much only use the Acela/Northeast Regional these days and that's really the "good-ish" part of the service I'm aware of. (Where good-ish is defined as preferable to driving, the bus, and plane--so long as not doing the whole length.)
Part of it is fuel tax (which planes don't pay in Europe). I'm speculating, but I'd guess that the maintenance on the tracks is pretty significant. Planes don't have that issue.
Trains need a lot of infrastructure, meaning maintenance and construction costs (i.e. tracks and stations). Also, as they are slower, wage costs can be higher than planes.
Düsseldorf-Munich for 26,70€ including reserving a seat.
Kiel-Düsseldorf 29,90€. To get back, 26,90€.
Kiel-Munich and back for 53,80€.
Not even Ryanair is that cheap, especially when you consider that with trains you don’t have to go through security, have none of the check-in times and other bullshit, and can take luggage without paying a 60€ surcharge.
None of those are to or from Berlin. Munich might have cheaper rail options than Berlin, especially since Munich is a more traditional hub of industry. Flights Berlin to Köln are definitely cheaper than trains. Generally in my experience flights in Europe are less expensive than trains YMMV.
That's a wild generalization, based on a lack of experience or knowledge. A number of passenger railroads in the United States also have quiet cars. Metra comes to mind, but I know I've seen others.
For americans its something quaint and wild whereas for europeans its just a basic form of transportation
You're either repeating outdated cliches from the internet, or you must not live in a large metropolitan area with passenger train service.
Looking at the top 20 metropolitan statistical areas in the US, you're already at nearly half the population of the US. And I know from the experience of having ridden commuter rail in most of those that most of them have commuter rail, i.e. passenger train service.
You've got to go pretty far down the list to find one without commuter rail or even a subway/light rail system (which I'm not counting as passenger train service).
If it isn't the majority, it's at least a normal experience for a huge swath of the population.
I wouldn't say that difference holds for all americans. The trains in northeast corridor, which serve ~50 million people (~15% of us population) also have no-talking cars. But to your point, train service is treated as a basic form of transportation there.
