About 20 years ago, I visited most of Europe’s major cities over the course of a two-month trip, traveling primarily by night train. Each overnight ride saved me the cost of a hostel or guesthouse, and I’d arrive in a new city each morning feeling refreshed because of the train’s sleeping accommodations.
There used to be a similar service between Toronto and Montreal (both directions), where the train would pause for several hours midway so passengers would arrive at around 7:30 a.m. well-rested.
I’ve taken that route as well, and it’s remarkable how much you see while traveling by train. You pass through countless towns, villages, and beautiful scenery—experiences you simply can’t get from flying.
"I’d arrive in a new city each morning feeling refreshed because of the train’s sleeping accommodations."
Aeh, where were you travelling? Many countries did not have sleeper trains. Don't get me wrong. I did the same, travelling at night in trains, and it saved me a night in a hotel. But I did not arrive well rested, I arrived train wrecked.
I traveled by sleeper train in india, around 2010. They had beds, but every time I woke up, there were 3-4 Indian dudes that had come into our cabin and climbed on my bed to get some shut eye.
It wasn't threatening or anything, just a wild experience and insightful lesson in cultural differences
It's less invasive, but still crazier than it sounds.
Indian railways changed the base sleeper cars into free-for-alls by changing sleeper cabin classifications and stopping verifying tickets. Now you have people buying the cheapest tickets (unreserved general) and swarming the "reserved" sleeper cabin berths. [0] They're just over-cramming the trains.
I spent a couple weeks travelling by train across Europe a few years ago on an Interrail pass. I found sleeper cabins were generally pretty comfortable, though you do have to pay extra for them.
If you were just sleeping in a seat then yes I can believe you felt awful the next day.
That sounds like my experience on Russian trains (traveling between Moscow and Vilnius) except the men were drunk. As a ten year old kid traveling with his mom, it was threatening!
I travel by train regularly in the UK and it isn't unusual to take up to 8 hours to get anywhere :)
The closest I've been to a sleeper in recent decades has been five hours on a cold station because cancellations & delays have meant missing the last onward connection of the day so waiting for the first morning service (there are supposed to be provisions for that by way of providing accommodation or replacement taxi service, which do sometimes work, but at that time of night there isn't always someone available & reachable to enact such policies).
I’ve had my fair share of poor UK rail experiences, especially during holiday periods. Standing on the train from London Paddington most of the way towards Exeter is never fun.
In the case you couldn’t reach someone, doesn’t every platform have a phone as well?
In the sleeping cabins I can sleep fine, but they're usually really expensive. In the couchettes I can sleep about 50-60% of the time. In the seats, not at all.
So I go for couchettes. One time in Sweden I found that the sleepers were only 10 euro more than the couchettes, so then I took one.
There's a map to prove you wrong. I counted 26 from the UK to Turkey and from that bit of Spain to Ukraine (a different gauge doesn't mean you can have nighttrains). The solid lines have sleeper wagons. Which are useless anyways if you are taller than 190cm. https://back-on-track.eu/night-train-map/
You don't have to be younger than 26 to buy one, not anymore, but it is cheaper if you are. If you are a EU citizen, it gets you free, unlimited travel by train in most European countries. If you are not a EU citizen, there is the Eurail pass that is similar.
But that's the theory. In practice there are important limitations:
- You can't use it in your home country, except for a single round trip: in and out.
- If you make a reservation, you will have to pay reservation fees, and many long-distance and high-speed trains only have reserved seats.
- Not all seats are available to pass owners, if you want to travel in these seats, you will have to pay full price.
And considering that the pass itself is not that cheap, you really have some planning to do to see if it is worth it. In many cases, it isn't.
Or no planning at all, as I did 26 years ago. Meet some people in a cafe in Paris, agree to all go to Amsterdam for 2 days, grab your bag and then find a hostel when you arrive. I spent 2 months without knowing where I was going to wake up the following day.
No mobiles, only lifeline home being a pay phone call every week.
Not the same stores in every city as it is today.
Life was beautiful back then and we did not know it.
I understand what you are talking about, and you can still do that, but it is going to be expensive. Or at least, expensive for a typical 20-something heading out to explore the world.
Times have changed, and now like it or not, we are in the internet and smartphone age. The best travel deals are online, the cheapest accommodations are also found online. The Interrail pass is a bit of a relic, it can still be useful, but if you have no plan and limited cash, you are probably better off chasing last minute deals on your trusty smartphone.
And yes, I think we have lost something, disconnecting is hard, and stores tend to be all the same these days, and finding something interesting to bring back home is becoming a difficult task now that you can order everything online.
But I also think we gained something. The language barrier is breaking down. More and more people speak decent English as a secondary language, smartphones come with pretty decent translators, plane tickets are ridiculously cheap if you are not too picky. Getting in touch or keeping contact with people on the other side of the planet is almost too easy, great for exchange. When travelling in a group (even a temporary group), having mobile phones cuts down on the time waiting for people to gather, and offers more freedom than "let's meet at a precise place at a precise time", which is one of the most annoying parts of travelling in a group.
Now, I talked a lot about "cheap". That's because while travelling, I consider using money to be like cheating. You can do everything (well, almost) with money. Want to do a smartphone-less trip, randomly hopping into trains? You can, with money. Finding a ho(s)tel without price-checking online first? Sure, with money. Cheapening out is a good way to keep a "no plan" travel unplanned. But yeah, now there are smartphones involved.
And life is still beautiful. In my opinion, more beautiful than it has ever been, but in different ways.
> while traveling, I consider using money to be like cheating
And even on the cheap, let's keep in mind that money is central to the luxury that any tourism is. In my 90's youth, I figuratively littered the map with pushpins in countries off the path beaten by Westerners, impressing family and friends. But really, I just happened to have the privilege of taking a few months for clueless wandering with no worries about means and the knowledge that if the affair turned sour I could at any point arrange a safety net. Sure, I was a fairly cheap backpacker, but still there was no glory in such adventuring - just money. I still recommend it to anyone who can, and that experience has shaped a large part of my later life in unforeseen ways, but I have long stopped gloating about it.
> But I also think we gained something. The language barrier is breaking down. More and more people speak decent English as a secondary language, smartphones come with pretty decent translators
Is that really something that was gained? As we lose more and more languages we start to lose unique cultural features right? It’s like “we gained McDonald’s in every city - my comforting home food is available everywhere”.
> When travelling in a group (even a temporary group), having mobile phones cuts down on the time waiting for people to gather
Kind of the same thing. It’s a focus on efficiency. Speed run through life experiences. Why even go to the Louvre when you can throw on your Meta headset and do it from your couch?
I’m not a travel elitist or anything like that, I just think these “benefits” come with a lot of drawbacks too. As the world gets smaller and more efficient it becomes homogenized and travel starts to become pointless.
Connectivity/smartphones do make things "easier" but they also tend to make them less spontaneous and serendipitous. And, yes, while a lot of it is that I'm trying to declutter my house and I like to travel light, I also find that I have pretty much zero interest in shopping abroad.
There are some home country limitations for Interrail, but I’m not really sure why the passes are still kept separate beyond that. It seems Eurail and Interrail are mostly identical beyond the residency/anti-residency requirements.
Last summer Spain’s Renfe offered huge discount for a pass for people under 31. Only for paper version though which is slightly less convenient but worth it anyway.
I guess other eu countries could have similar seasonal discounts.
The word "free" is being ruthlessly abused here, surely...
If I follow the link there, it costs 239E for a 5-day pass, where each of the 5 days must be used in a 1 month period. That's not "gratis", that's 47.8E per day the train is used?
I travelled Europe on night trains almost exactly 20 years ago as well, and I was not an EU citizen back then... I guess I just paid more than with interrail? Just wanted to mention it was possible, and must've been pretty cheap as I was broke as hell at the time.
I thought the same as I was reading the comment you're responding to. Arriving rested after public transport? Get a load of that guy :) Not sure how anyone does that, but of course it would be nice to learn this dark magic.
"sleeper train" is the key here. Another keyword to search for is "couchette", I think that's how it's called in some places. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Couchette_car and the map.
I've used the Caledonian Sleeper a couple of times. The first time it worked reasonably well, I got a reasonable amount of sleep. The second time not so much, not really any fault of the train, I just didn't relax enough to get a reasonable amount of sleep.
Both times I'd say well rested would be a stretch. The first time felt a bit like a magic carpet in that I got somewhere while using up no useful hours but it still wasn't perfect.
That’s exactly what I mean. I never sleep much better than I would sleeping in a car.
I suppose it’s the novelty of sleeping in a moving vehicle, my flight attendant friend said it took them a while to start sleeping well on long haul flights.
Perhaps with a lot of benzodiazepines or drowsy anti-histamines I could attempt to sleep well in a sleeper train, but not normally. Happy for those who can of course.
Gotcha. It's the same for me on an airplane (I think maybe because I'm unable to fall asleep on my back), but I didn't have problems on the sleeper train.
Do you think it's the noise for you, the movement, or something else (like lack of privacy)? I started taking earplugs with me for any kind of trip now, they are a godsend.
Yeah, you can stay on it for a bit longer after they arrive but you'd have to be very asleep not to notice the lack of movement and noise of the station around you. Funny enough the best night I had on it, it was delayed by a few hours (normally a horrible thing on the train but perfect on a slightly too short sleeper!).
Sleeper train can be a great experience. Unfortunately, this was not an option when I was young either due to pricing or due to availability. At least in Europe with the InterRail ticket.
Sleeper trains and being young help a lot. I always chose 10h sleeper over 5 hour bus or car when I had to do the trip between Odesa and Kyiv in my 20ies.
Being short is probably the biggest decider - I went around the indochinese peninsula on sleepers a few years ago, and my wife, pretty much on par with the average height for the region, slept like a tot, found her bunk spacious, while I, several SDs above the average, awkwardly wedged myself into my coffin and encountered every jolt through my bones - and believe me there were a lot of jolts. They stop everywhere, and there’s plenty of shunting.
But then again some sleepers (Shiki-Shima in Japan) are like being in a luxury hotel. Rather enjoyed having a soak in the tub in my suite.
I rode in a sleeper car in December 1999 in Australia, between Melbourne and Sydney, and it was an unpleasant experience. It was a jerky, bumpy, noisy ride, somebody kept going between the cars for smoke breaks and the smell wafted into our cabin, and there was a baby crying in the cabin next door.
I think this is a personal thing. Even at home we are not equal. I can sleep almost anywhere, and usually fall asleep in a very short time after lying down and closing my eyes. Some people can even fall asleep on a chair in a wedding party with loud mudic and bright lights without even being wasted. Some people can't. Some will always complain about the bed, even in the most luxury/premium hotel. My partner can't stand the slightest light going through blinds, a neighbor making noise or the drunktards making noise in the street at night. Yet she will fall asleep in a matter of minutes in a car.
So as an individual traveling alone, you know your limits and can pretty much figure out if that way of travelling works for you. For a family, you are pretty sure at least one member of the family will have a rough night and complain in the morning.
A sure way to spend good night while travelling is to be very active during the day. You sleep much better if you have walked for 15 to 20km around a city to visit it than if you have been idle most of the time and taken taxis and buses whenever you could. Most lazy people don't understand that rest has to be earned.
I often have trouble first night on a trip even when jet lag isn't involved although that, of course, makes things worse. Then I usually get into a rhythm.
And, yes, especially when time zones are involved, sticking to a schedule and getting exercise helps.
I would travel more around the USA if we had a decedent high-speed rail system. Spent too much time flying, red-eyes, and driving for work, 7-12+ hours one way, and hate those modes of transportation. They may get you from point A to B but your time is wasted along with the enjoyment of the trip.
Unfortunately the Oil industry won over the politicians in the USA with donations, legal bribes, and they prevent the building of quality train travel. Bet that if majority of the USA left and spent time in countries with quality rail system, they attitudes would change dramatically and push for better. They would experience how much time they waste in traffic and queuing for boarding and de-bordering.
This is a false conspiracy narrative that belongs on Reddit in the r/fuckcars filter bubble.
Sure, the automotive industry stood to benefit from the decline of rail travel in the US. But they didn’t really need to do anything for that to happen on its own. Reality is far less interesting than that. Turns out when you have tons of fertile land, even pre-industrialization your population tends to spread out a bit (the vast majority of Americans used to be farmers). Today the US has 3-5X less population density than any country with high speed rail. Autos saw massive success in the US due to this fact, and their prevalence reduced the demand for rail travel as a side effect, it wasn’t some top down evil conspiracy.
It’s fun to blame everything on evil big business or evil big government, but it’s also important to look at the first principles and base properties of the issue at hand first.
> Today the US has 3-5X less population density than any country with high speed rail.
This may be true when averaged across the entire country (or even just the lower 48).
But it is absolutely not true if you consider various zones of the country as candidates for good rail service.
Several such zones exist, among them:
1. the north east corridor, perhaps one of the largest and densest conurbations in the world
2. the roughly rectangular shape formed with the NW corner in Minneapolis, the NW corner in Milwaukee, the SE corner in Detroit and SW corner in <wherever the hell that is>
3. The triangle in Texas formed by Dallas/Ft. Worth, Austin and San Antonio
All 3 have higher population densities than those found in non-urban parts of Europe; the latter have good to excellent train service, but none of these 3 do.
The problem is the equivalent driving times aren't crazy on those routes either though.
When you factor in that you need a car in both your departing city and destination city (except for NYC), AND the fact that nearly every household in those regions owns one or multiple cars (which is not true in higher density/higher urbanization countries)...it begins to not make sense especially given the massive upfront cost of construction.
That requires the area around rail stations to be built for pedestrians and bicycles, not cars. That doesn’t seem to be the case in many places in America.
I do take Acela from Central Massachusetts to NYC but mostly because I hate driving into NYC so much. (And don't need a car when I get there.) It basically involves driving an hour in the wrong direction to south suburban Boston. I could drive to New Haven and for a longer drive I'd get a shorter/cheaper trip.
I will speak to the Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, Minneapolis/St Paul region.
Rail is not going to happen until you don't need a car in those cities. Chicago you could do, but the others are not pedestrian friendly. Anyone traveling within that region will have a 95% chance of already owning a car. Unless the train gets you from Chicago to Minneapolis in an hour, people are just going to drive. The risk with car rental and money spent on Uber's isn't worth it.
I feel like these types of comments come from people that live in NYC or LA. The rest of the country is so fuckin sparse. Your "walkable cities" idea doesn't make any sense and is completely unfeasible outside of major metro areas which land wise in the US is like 99%.
I don't see why Madison doesn't work. I've taken buses to Madison, you can get downtown. You can usually find some transport. Or you can just call a ride share or something!
I've done Chicago -> Madison by bus, and honestly prefer it to the plane at least (even from the airport). More comfortable seats and I get out just at a station. High frequency bus lines feel like good indicators of where some trains could work, and it's not like bus services are dead.
(Similarly, I did Portland -> Eugene on Amtrak and it was nice and chill! I roadshared to my final destination but I had to get from A to B somehow)
I do agree with the idea of building out strong localised networks (and roll my eyes at the "US rail network" dream maps people post out). But my impression from France and Germany at least is that you have two sort of failure modes:
- For France, rural areas don't really have that good of a rail network. Instead there are several trunk lines that are reliable. But it means that east-west stuff is nearly non-existent. Lots of "drive me to the station and drop me off please". Good enough to put France at number 2 in numbers of km ridden per passenger!
- For Germany, the network is much more evenly spread out. But ever German I've met complaints constantly about the unreliability of the trains, combined with the low rate of service. So you end up with stations everywhere, but if a train gets cancelled you could be stranded for hours.
Anyways I do think the French model makes a hell of a lot of sense (prioritizing train frequency over coverage), but it might not be what people are expecting if they just look at a map of trains.
At the time, it seemed that Musk had dished out the Hyperloop proposal just to make the public and legislators rethink the high-speed train.
He didn’t actually intend to build the thing. It was more that he wanted to show people that more creative ideas were out there for things that might actually solve problems and push the state forward. With any luck, the high-speed rail would be canceled. Musk said as much to me [Ashlee Vance] during a series of e-mails and phone calls leading up to the announcement.
Trying to convince internet leftists that a cabal of Evil Capitalists are not behind all of the worlds ills is like trying to convince internet right wingers that most vaccines work.
I don’t really care what is in Elons heart. The lesson learned is the same regardless: ignore the nonsense gadgetbahns dreamed up by business people and focus on the real proven technologies in use already around to world.
An influential person admitted that he had interfered the development of the high-speed railway at US with a vaporware project, which reported to him juicy economic revenues generated by investments and subsidies from all over the world. Just with vaporware.
Should people think that this kind of interference does not happen with influential pockets because you call it a conspiracy, while they call it just business?
I don’t understand the density argument: HST aren’t supposed to connect every places, that’s totally ineffective.
Instead you build rails between major hubs (those that got the biggest airports usually) and add stops on some medium cities that happen to be on the way. It serves those living close enough of the connected cities that want to go close enough to another connected city. _close enough_ depends on the local connection options like regional trains, bus, bikes, trams… and if there’s nothing you just grab a cab or rental car. The city of departure can be reached with your own personal car which is usually a bit cheaper and faster (therefore more range). Most travels destination are big cities or close enough (business, tourism…).
If you ran high speed rail between the two most populated cities in the US (NYC and LA), it'd be a 14 hour journey. And there's not that many conveniently placed major cities along the way where it even makes sense to add more than a few stops.
I know we have a lot of rail enthusiasts here, but the average person tends not to like being stuck in a tube for 14 hours...even if that tube is substantially nicer and more roomy than an airplane.
Let's not even talk about the cost of constructing that route.
For what it's worth, I somewhat agree. High speed rail in particular is super expensive, and airplanes are surprisingly cheap and flexible in comparison.
Here's the source. There were actual-court cases which found that oil and car manufacturers conspired to monopolize and convert local public transit to buses from rail.
"Between 1938 and 1950, National City Lines and its subsidiaries, American City Lines and Pacific City Lines—with investment from GM, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California (through a subsidiary), Federal Engineering, Phillips Petroleum, and Mack Trucks—gained control of additional transit systems in about 25 cities.[a] Systems included St. Louis, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and Oakland. NCL often converted streetcars to bus operations in that period, although electric traction was preserved or expanded in some locations. Other systems, such as San Diego's, were converted by outgrowths of the City Lines. Most of the companies involved were convicted in 1949 of conspiracy to monopolize interstate commerce in the sale of buses, fuel, and supplies to NCL subsidiaries, but were acquitted of conspiring to monopolize the transit industry."
This history also plays a large role in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," as a bit of fun bonus lore...
Local public transit in the US is a very different beast to getting across the country.
Manhattan may have high population density, and the public transit that goes with it; but building passenger rail thousands of miles to the other side of a sparsely populated continent just doesn’t add up in the same way.
No, but the two feed into each other. Intercity rail loses most of its advantages if you have to hire a car at the destination.
> Also I'd argue street cars are way worse than busses which have route flexibility.
They're better for that very reason. You can move somewhere with a decent commute and know that the streetcar isn't going to disappear at the stroke of a pen.
I know that you were talking about individual commutes here. The city of Oslo, Norway was considering having a shared trunk in one corner, where the metro, the streetcar, and the intercity rail all shared a stretch of track. I believe it was to make efficient use of existing right-of-way. I think that there were problems due to electrification (750 V vs 15 kV) and other political problems.
There is a different section in Oslo where the streetcar and metro share a stretch of track using a clever interlocking.
US has a huge social problem that spills into a security one.
Quite unsurprisingly Americans end up isolating from each other in suburbs, often gated neighborhoods with private schools, cars and live overall miserable and unhappy lives.
Can you provide sources for the Big Oil conspiracy you cite? Because nationwide high speed rail isn't as easy - or practical - as you think. California hadn't been able to build a train a fraction of that distance without delays and squandering massive amounts of money.
The PNW has been unable to build it from Portland to Vancouver.
The US is many times larger than any European country or Japan. There are US states similar in size to EU countries with comparable rail networks.
The US literally invented air travel, which made traveling long distances by train largely obsolete.
Aircraft aren't limited to where they can go by rails.
So please explain with all these concrete examples of failure how it's a corporate conspiracy and not general purpose government ineptitude?
Japan is almost all mountains, it's one of the worst geographies to build high speed rail where tunnels and turn radii need to be especially large. But they pulled it off anyway. The bullet train initially only connected metros like Tokyo and Osaka but today runs all the way to many remoter areas. The most recently added line connects Fukui prefecture, population 780k.
The US has many areas with suitable population density to be served by high speed rail, and with more accomodative geography than Japan. It's just that in the US, it was considered fine to use government funds and authority to bulldoze land for the interstate system, but not for high speed rail.
> California hadn't been able to build a train a fraction of that distance without delays and squandering[??] massive amounts of money.
It costs money and time to build HSR. Fine. The J(N)R director who ran the shinkansen project literally lied to multiple levels of government to shield the (2x+) budget overruns. He resigned and then within a year of it opening he was given a medal for extraordinary contributions to Japan.
> Because nationwide high speed rail isn't as easy - or practical - as you think.
Who is claiming that it is easy? However, it is practical! It takes 6 hours to drive Tokyo to Osaka; it's 2hr by train. Trains leave every 5 minutes.
A west coast HSR network is just obviously practical! Beijing-Shanghai HSR is 1300km; SF to Seattle would be the same. It'd be 4-5h on a train. Right now it's 2.5 hours on a plane plus a recommended 1.5 hours for security and boarding plus transfers on each side--I'd rather take a high speed train If I could! SF to LA could be ~3h. 90 minutes on a plane plus lead time and transfer times and it's competitive. Again.
> There are US states similar in size to EU countries with comparable rail networks.
>A west coast HSR network is just obviously practical! Beijing-Shanghai HSR is 1300km; SF to Seattle would be the same. It'd be 4-5h on a train. Right now it's 2.5 hours on a plane plus a recommended 1.5 hours for security and boarding plus transfers on each side--I'd rather take a high speed train If I could! SF to LA could be ~3h. 90 minutes on a plane plus lead time and transfer times and it's competitive. Again.
So just to be clear you are saying at best the time difference between flight and HSR would be minimal - so where is the payoff for the billions the infrastructure would take to build. If it's purely capacity couldn't you spend a fraction of the billions you'd spend on the new infrastructure to bolster the existing system?
I think it's relevant that Shanghai and Beijing are 5x the size of SF and Seattle while construction cost are a significant upfront barrier and don't go down much by needing to service fewer travelers.
Can you cite the reasons that these large countries are capable of building high speed rail while the US is not?
Where is the recent innovation in US air travel? It has gotten considerably worse over the last 30 years. Supersonic passenger flights stopped in 2003 around the same time that TSA added hours to every flight.
I don't know which wealthy, western country you live in, but to be clear in the US Acela trains get up to 150 mph (241 kmh) -- admittedly in a short section, but with other sections that have a top speed of 135 mph (217 kmh). The entire route from Washington to New York has an average speed (including stops) of 90mph (140 kmh).
Should Acela be faster? Probably! But people should be clear-eyed about what the reality of the situation is.
That might be the average scheduled speed, but it’s not my average experienced speed on Acela, with about half the trips seeing significant delays from schedule.
As others have pointed out Russia didn't have high-speed rail. The reason is related to the real reason the US doesn't have it. It's of course density. Relevant US cities are much further apart. You practically need hsr to make it practical at all which prevents incremental improvement of the train system. I hear that's different on the east coast (I've spent very little time there) but it certainly sets culture when for most of the country trains are a bad option.
I mean, the recent innovation in US air travel is that the TSA no longer adds hours to every flight. Like, is it maddening that we're curing a self-inflicted problem? Sure, of course it is. But the railfan community is also stuck in 2010. Every flight I've been on in the last 10 years I've walked through a metal detector, not a scanner, I've kept my shoes and belt on, my laptop in my bag. It's like 2000 all over again, except that now we have to pay a nominal fee every 5 years or whatever it is to use PreCheck.
Everyone should be mad that we dug this hole and then climbed out of it, but people shouldn't pretend that we're still in the hole.
Still, we don't put airports in the middle of built-up downtown areas, and for good reason. You usually have to hail a taxi or bus from an airport, whereas you can step out of a (good) train station and be right where you want to be.
There are good transit connections from Logan airport, but you'd still have to board them. I wouldn't want to walk anywhere from the arrivals terminal on foot. Walking out of South Station is pretty nice though, lots of places I'd want to be nearby.
Billy Bishop is pretty convenient, I think it's quite unusual in that respect. But for the same reason, it's rather controversial and limited in the airplanes it can take, and its future is often in doubt.
Train stations and airports are where they are. Lots of them are quite close to downtowns. Others aren't. Nobody's changing their locations in existing large cities.
There are plenty of cities where the nearest airport is closer than the nearest long distance rail station. There are plenty of cities where they aren't.
I tend to show up fairly early because neither myself nor my limo companies like the stress. But the idea that you need to show up hours early just isn't true in general.
The proof is in the profits that result from a favorable and otherwise illogical set of choices. Who even cares about the details? The oil and related industries are notoriously corrupt, introducing lead into gas knowing the toxic effects among other policy choices aimed at reducing alternatives to cars such as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
Where's the logical argument against high speed rail that is based on physical limitations of reality and not simply uh its infeasible because policy?
The logical argument is even if you include my time in the airport on both ends it'll still be faster for me to fly from DFW to NYC or LAX than even the fastest trains of Europe, and probably still cost a comparable amount.
If there was HSR between Houston and Dallas, sure I'd take that. Same for Dallas to Kansas City or something similar to that I'd love that. But that's about the distance where even the extra wait and commute time for the airport balances out the fact the plane is going to be flying straighter and faster. In the end I'm not going to take HSR to go to Orlando or Montreal from Dallas, I'm going to fly.
"High-speed rail isn't meant for DFW to NYC distances. "
Why not? Include comfortable, silenced sleeper cabins and I rather take spend a night in a bed and wake up the next morning rested and fresh, than going through the stress of flying.
For long distances like that, planes are faster and cheaper so the market is smaller. Yes, there will be people who prefer the sleeper train, but more people will prefer a shorter, cheaper flight. For distances under 500 miles, trains usually work out faster once you factor in security, travel to and from the airport etc.
So the top destinations out of Dallas are Atlanta, Denver, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Austin, Phoenix, Houston, Orlando, Chicago, and New York.
So HSR would potentially be competitive with maybe two of the top 10 destinations when comparing to air travel for DFW. I'm a proponent for the Texas HSR projects, but I don't think it's going to really radically change how most North Texans travel.
Partially because of the above (only 2 of the top 10 flights), but also because while it'll be nice to just take a train instead of driving to Houston, I'm probably going to have to rent a car or do a lot of ride hailing once I get there. Outside of a small section of a lot of these cities downtown areas you practically need a car to get around or be willing to make a lot of sacrifices.
So I'd love to take HSR to visit family in Clear Lake. I could take DART from my home, HSR to Houston, take METRO to the Bay Area Park and Ride, and then...walk several miles with my family's luggage a few miles on maybe paved sidewalks with a few kids under 3. Ride hailing is pretty much out of the question with little kids, good luck on them having adequate child seats available.
But I'll still champion and argue for the Texas HSR projects, even though I might personally not use it a lot. Maybe transit will improve where I want to go. I hope so. And even then I'll still probably take it to watch a Silver Boot series sometime. But there will be others who will be able to leverage it, and that means fewer cars on the road for me for these trips I'm somewhat forced to choose the car.
But I don't like people acting like there's no logical reason for HSR to be the dominant way for people to travel in the US. As we both agree, trips like DFW-NYC don't make much sense taking a train for most travellers.
Right. HSR isn't meant to replace all long distance travel. European cities still have very busy airports, and just look at the Ryanair route map: https://www.ryanair.com/en/cheap-flight-destinations. HSR would be ideal for DFW, Austin and Houston, where a triangular route would be very competitive, and I'd imagine would have very high passenger numbers and would replace a lot of plane and car journeys.
The traffic from Love Field would be a better target/comparison, as it's a regional airport. European style HSR doesn't replace international hub airports in europe, either.
You think asking someone else to do the research to prove a conspiracy for you is intellectually honest? Do we really need to get caught up in the details of how health insurance is a conspiracy to know that it is a conspiracy? Do conspiracies need to be coordinated to be successful or can they be informal, unspoken, and implied culturally so as to conceal their existence? Isn't worrying about those specific details actually a distraction? There is already proof that there are better systems by their existence world wide. Why don't you do the research to explain why the richest country in the world doesn't have a high speed train system and write a paper on it? Publish it on Arxiv, include physical reasons that it is not possible.
which part of this was intended to convince me of your initial theory further or lead me to think you are more credible than those you are arguing with?
A ton of new destinations? wow what an amazing improvement! Is it possible that was just inevitable network effect and had nothing to do with intentional investments in R/D?
It's almost as if the development of technology and politics are interrelated. Half the cost of building US airports were subsidized by the government when they added them.
Path of development and real estate prices are related to accessibility. Most of the US is not accessible, there are an equal number of paved and unpaved roads in miles. Consider receiving mail in a rural area where it's going to be 3-5 days for an amazon prime package and the closest store is 30+ miles. If you randomly sample locations in the US you'll find that is actually really common, it's just not experienced by many people. Rail networks aren't about going on vacation, it's about developing real national infrastructure that creates efficiencies that boost multiple parts of the economy.
> A ton of new destinations? wow what an amazing improvement! Is it possible that was just inevitable network effect and had nothing to do with intentional investments in R/D?
No, not possible at all.
Intentional investments in R&D led to more fuel-efficient and long-range aircraft technology such as the B787 and A350 which allowed new point-to-point routes between cities that were never before possible, abandoning the hub-and-spoke model of the past.
Like Auckland-NYC nonstop.
Imagine if they had to build rails between those two.
Your airplane facts are offset by your lack of train culture and ignorance of fundamental infrastructure efficiencies that are offered by high speed trains and not airplanes.
I’m not sure about that. I’d imagine that trains are going to have the worst of both worlds. They will take a long time (closer to amount of time to drive to destination). They also will have costs approaching that of a flight. To me a train trip makes sense if you enjoy trains and feel that the travel itself is part of the reward.
As a US person who has, You need to experience euro train travel. The whole experience, from booking using an app to waiting for a train. You’ll find the apps are good, the schedule information accurate and up to date. The apps don’t do stupid things mostly. When you arrive at the station, you’ll find it generally clean and well maintained. Signage is clear and tied into the train information system. Arrival times accurate. You can get a nice sandwich if the shop is open. Intercity Trains are modern and fast. Lots of power ports to plug in your phone. Nice seats. Also great electronic signage in the train. You might even have good wifi. You would not be afraid to use a bathroom in a station or on a train. Best part is that you CAN rely on the trains. Nothing like Amtrak where if it’s on time it’s remarkable.
Have you ever taken any trains in Europe? I cannot think of any route in any country where I've lived in Europe where driving would be even remotely close to taking the train, and in some cases it's faster than flying. Newcastle to London is 2h40m by train, about 5 hours of driving. Flight is 40 minutes but you're nowhere near the city centre, so once you take into account going through security plus necessary transfer times it's much longer. Brussels to Paris is an hour and a half on the train, driving is at least double that. Krakow to Warsaw is just over 2 hours, the drive is at least 3 hours and that's to the outskirts not city centre to city centre.
Portugal, unless you happen to be a lucky one travelling on the Lisbon - Porto connection line, good luck travelling faster than taking a car, or eventually a long distance bus.
Spain, outside of the lines connecting Vigo, Barcelona, Madrid, Malaga, axis.
Taking a fast train is significantly faster than driving. On short and medium trips they're even competitive with flying, if you factor the time it takes to get to/from the airport and associated lead time associated with airports vs showing within 5-10 minutes of departure right at the city centre.
High speed rail in Europe (mainly France) runs at an average speed of 270km/h (167mph), usually city centre to city centre. It is often more convenient than flying, given check-in times and airport distance from cities. It’s certainly quicker than driving.
I'm a 100% supporter of getting nice trains throughout America, but trains are relatively expensive for long distances. I don't know why, but if you compare ticket prices (globally!) its often not cheaper to take a train. In my experience, trains are a superior experience, and worth spending more on, but generally not cheaper. The ultra-low cost airlines (especially outside the US) are really hard to compete with on price.
For example, the Shinkansen in Japan (which I totally recommend!) is usually over $100 USD. Which is pretty similar to a flight price. This pattern repeats in Europe as well.
My friend just traveled London -> Edinburgh in the last few weeks, and found the train 2x the cost compared to RyanAir or EasyJet.
Even in the US, this pattern holds. Seattle -> LA costs $50-150 by plane, depending on the airline (3hrs). By train, it's 35hrs and $150. Its a lovely train ride, if you have a weekend to dedicate.
Why should we? The difference is a drop on the ocean for the climate. While choosing convenience/price has a immediate impact on yourself.
The rational choice at the individual level is not to care for such things. Actions has to be taken at the political level.
...and because they want you to be on time, you end up waiting for another half hour at the gates to sit in a cramped seat near a narrow aisle.
I went by train to Germany during the autumn of last year and oh man, what a pleasure it was. I got there about 5 minutes before the train, got in, dumped my suitcase and had room to spare.
During the trip I sauntered between carriages, bought some (mediocre) food to scoff down in the restaurant carriage, which I opted to do at my seat rather than right there because I felt like some quiet time rather than the buzz.
Later I traveled by plane to Spain in the spring and as nice as Barcelona was, I couldn't say the same about the plane trip, which was a necessity rather than a pleasure.
The state railways have large exited night trains as a form of transport, due to economics, although it’s a much more sustainable form of transportation compared to aviation.
Since Europe has a liberalized market in the rail sector, some startups are trying to fill the gap.
European sleeper operates a night train on the route Brussel-Amsterdam-Berlin-Prague, using old rented rolling stock.
I’m involved with Luna Rail (in Berlin), which is trying a more technical approach around rolling stock design to improve unit economics to make Night trains profitable.
There’s also a startup in the US, dreamstar, whose primary effort appears to be about getting track rights for now (something that’s not such a big concern in Europe - here the barrier is rolling stock).
The situation is a lot better today than 10 years ago or so, largely thanks to ÖBB Nightjet. But yep, it's not only state railway companies anymore, as can be seen on the map
I've taken a few night trains. They were mostly a fun experience, but they weren't in general especially time or cost efficient (though you have to factor in saving a night of hotel).
It also helps if you're generally going city center to city center and aren't lugging large suitcases around. (Which you might think would be a better fit for trains but really aren't for the most part.)
I've been wondering how long it would take for a startup to figure out how to build train cars for cheaper than the incumbents. I know it's hard, but not as hard as building airplanes... As long as the authorities agree to certify them, and I could see a lot of corruption there.
The unit economics for Night trains are in the operation. U want your cars to minimize operating cost, which may actually make the asset costs more expensive (at least at first).
Curious about the issues you're having with rolling stock. Given Germany's industrial prowess, I would've thought that that wouldn't be an issue to manufacture, either for domestic use or export.
For startups, building up the financing for buying rolling stock is very difficult. There’s currently very little available on the rental market.
It’s difficult to just do a startup on general in this space (it’s sustainable mobility, but involves hardware, an old industry, old tech).
The state railways can afford rolling stock, but it’s extensive and takes a long time. They are not too innovative either, so may not solve the economics issues with new approaches, because they are too conservative.
Ah, I had interpreted your statements as an issue of manufacture and availability, not financing.
As to finance, it does suck that we throw billions at economically, socially, and/or globally destructive, unprofitable startups and yet something that is a net good for society and environment can't get that funding. I guess that's where government steps in or private/public partnerships.
>> a much more sustainable form of transportation compared to aviation.
Night trains are not like normal trains. They carry far fewer passengers per car. That doesn't make them as bad as flying on pure CO2 emissions, but night trains are not as efficient as "trains" generally. They are more comparable to luxury busses. But ... if the other option is an electric car, or even an electric aircraft, then even an electric night trains will likely no longer win on CO2 emissions.
Seating rail cars have 70-90 seats, whereas couchettes have 40-66 beds, but at lower emissions (lower speed->less drag) and higher occupancy (in Germany, occupancy is around 50% for day trains). It’s pretty much a wash. If you mean luxury sleepers, they’re worse sure. None of the startups are really targeting those luxury/low density levels, because of the overall poor impact.
Flying has around 10x the co2eq emissions of trains (300g/km, including infrastructure, occupancy). Cars are still pretty bad, but also don’t compete well for 1000km trips in Europe. It’s basically only aviation at those distances.
Electric airplanes that can do 1000km trips don’t exist. They may exist one day in significant quantities… but perhaps only after we’ve used up all our carbon budget on the path to a 2-3C increase.
> night trains will likely no longer win on CO2 emissions.
The comparison is more complicated though isn’t it? It isn’t a comparison with a plane, it’s a variable comparison with a plane, a taxi, and a hotel etc.
> I’d arrive in a new city each morning feeling refreshed because of the train’s sleeping accommodations.
Oh man this has definitely not been my experience! Last I tried this I booked a "VIP" sleeper car with a private bathroom/shower, and it was anything but. The constant shaking of the train side to side coupled with a bunch of young American girls running up and down the halls screaming to each other all night meant I didn't get any sleep at all. To make things worse, the same girls making noise all night used up all the water, leaving me covered in soap with no way to rinse it off, and still 8+ hours until my hotel check-in. I can usually sleep anywhere regardless of noise or light or mattress quality, but sleeping a train is a new category of difficulty.
This is the part that really frustrates me. Not that I've researched, but it seems like trains should have basically unlimited space for passengers, at very little increase in cost -- a five-mile-long train takes maybe 1-2 more people to operate than a 1-mile train? So why doesn't the U.S. lean into the sleeper concept? If we could increase speeds to 90mph and have affordable sleeper cars, trips of up to 1,000 miles would be conveniently achievable -- that's Chicago to Dallas, Los Angeles to Denver, or Miami to Washington, D.C.
"a five-mile-long train takes maybe 1-2 more people to operate than a 1-mile train"
Likely a bit more. Also there is maintainance, the extra weight, the extra cost of buying more waggons .. but still I agree, thay this should be the direction.
Still, a 5 mile train will have problems at most train station ..
Yeah, I would rather go with smaller, but automated trains. But in germany for example this would mean, basically changing everything installed electronically there already is.
The problem with trains in Germany is not high tech automation it is the aggressive cost-cutting that removed a lot of redundancy and stability, so now it is a worse service in quality and reliability
Well, it is one of the problem. Recently new tech was installed - but not at all with the idea of automatisation in mind. Apart from that I know, I often had the fun adventure of not knowing will I catch the last connection, or not.
Sure, I'm dramatically oversimplifying, but I think my point still stands: putting it another way, trains have an ability to accommodate travelers in a way that nothing else -- planes, cars, buses, etc. -- can even approach. It wouldn't be as easy as I'm making it out to be, but it also doesn't seem (in the larger picture) to be particularly challenging either.
And you're right, you'd probably have to designate a section of the train as the "getting on and off" bit, and make it easy for people to move from car to car.
I did <any research at all> and found the following in case anyone is interested:
1. It appears Amtrak sleeper cars accommodate between 30 and 50 people.
2. An Amtrak coach car seats up to 80 people (fewer than I expected).
3. So to switch everything to sleeper cars would require trains to be 2-3 times as long.
4. A typical Amtrak train is 11-12 cars long, and each car is about 85 feet long.
5. So Amtrak trains are currently about 1,000 feet long, which means they could be 2-3x as long and still be *well* under a mile long.
This seems easily doable. As others have pointed out, super-long trains have a number of issues, but trains could accommodate almost 2x the passengers, and be all-sleeper, and still be only a mile long. Then you run multiple trains to handle the larger demand!
Do you not expect attendants on these trains? And since your train only travels at 90mph you will need a larger number of dining cars and their associated cooks and waiters/waitresses.
The whole point is to offer sleeper accommodations. That requires more people to clean up/prepare the train for the next trip, but not (many) more for the actual operation while running. Although the goal is to get more people to take the train by making it more attractive as an option, the direct comparison is for the same number of passengers: take advantage of the flexible length of trains to provide a more compelling travel option, but with the same number of people. So no greater number of dining cars etc. -- unless you're pointing out that not everyone gets dinner on a regular trip, in which case sure, I guess.
I like trains, but I was never refreshed and well-rested after a night journey in a sleeper car. It just twists and jumps too much (extra points for curvy tracks where you end up with your head slightly downwards from your body half of the time), plus many railway stations on the way have way too loud announcements, plus the border police likes to check even when it theoretically shouldn't (Schengen). I just can't manage to get deep uninterrupted sleep in such conditions.
> There used to be a similar service between Toronto and Montreal (both directions), where the train would pause for several hours midway so passengers would arrive at around 7:30 a.m. well-rested.
That trip is 1h 15m by air with 30 flights a day each way. That train doesn't exist anymore because it's impractical and people's time is valuable. We stopped taking Conestoga wagons from New York to California for the same reason.
There is also flights in Europe that are faster. I recently traveled from Stuttgart to Vienna via night train. It was even more expensive. But this is not the point. Time sleeping in a night train is not lost. Also typically getting to the airport and from the airport into the city takes time. Same for airport security. And if there is enough wind that night one might even travel CO2 emission free.
That was an example of a train going slower on purpose to let people sleep a full night. A regular high-spees train could do that trip in 2-3 hours, beating a 1:15 flight in convenience by a huge margin.
Since we're citing European trains, let's also cite European airports - I can arrive to the airport for an EU flight 20 minutes before take off and still have plenty of time to get everything sorted out. And I'm out of the airport within 15 minutes after landing - usually stepping right into a subway or something. I don't think it's such a huge margin if you fix your airports, which is going to be many orders of magnitude cheaper than building high speed rail from everywhere to everywhere.
> I can arrive to the airport for an EU flight 20 minutes before take off and still have plenty of time to get everything sorted out.
Maybe you can but none will recommend that you do, for example Paris recommends at least 2 hours [0]. And if you need to check luggage you have no chance if you're only 20 minutes early, on a train you just carry it onto the carriage.
While i agree that EU airports are very efficient, 20 minutes before schedule take-off must be impossible. Surely you mean 20 minutes before boarding starts?
No, I'm usually the last person to board. Departure (but not arrival) frequently gets pushed back by 10-20 minutes, though I am making it on time even if not. I have literally never waited at a security check and it takes a minute or two to get through - speaking about EU flights.
90% yes. I don't live nor work in the major hubs, sometimes I fly through as a stopover though (in EU you don't need to go through security again). I do this on purpose - often there are several airports about the same distance from my destination, so I just pick the least used one.
I took one of these trains. The service was short-lived though.
It was called iDNight, by iDTGV, a former low cost high speed train operator in France. The idea was to run high speed trains at a slow speed during the night, turning a 3 hour trip into an 8 hour trip so that you can get a full night, and also so it can leave as the departure station is closing and arrive as the destination station is opening, therefore exploiting downtime, I guess.
These were not sleeper cars but regular high-speed train cars, not ideal for sleeping, but since most seats were vacant, at least in my experience, you could easily get two seats for yourself.
There used to be a similar service between Toronto and Montreal (both directions), where the train would pause for several hours midway so passengers would arrive at around 7:30 a.m. well-rested.
I’ve taken that route as well, and it’s remarkable how much you see while traveling by train. You pass through countless towns, villages, and beautiful scenery—experiences you simply can’t get from flying.