Europe's train woes

[Henry Kisor]

Think Amtrak's the only screwed-up rail system in the world? Think again.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/22/world/europe/europe-trains-climate-goals.html

 

[AmtrakMaineiac]

Is there a non paywalled version of this article?

 

[joelkfla]

Is there a non paywalled version of this article?

Here it is:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/22/..._49NNtJRjKC8ePdIc8C3Ajzohz7ujg&smid=share-url

 

[MARC Rider]

I wonder if any of the European rail operators offer the equivalent of Amtrak Thruway buses with combined ticketing and coordinated schedules. For some of the more lightly traveled routes, I would suspect that a bus would be a more cost-effective and "climate-effective" way to go. A bus with 50 passengers that gets 7 mpg would result in 350 passenger miles per gallon, and it's not unrealistic to expect that buses will be getting as much as 10 mpg in the near future. On the other hand, a diesel locomotive getting 1 -2 mpg will only yield 50 - 100 passenger-miles per gallon if the train is only carrying 50 passengers, which is a distinct possibility on a lightly used route. A diesel train probably needs to regularly carry 200 or 300 passengers before it becomes more "climate-friendly" than a diesel motorcoach. Electrification may well have better performance, depending on the source of the electricity, but the cost of installation is such that it would only be considered for routes with heavy passenger use.

 

[Arctifox]

I wonder if any of the European rail operators offer the equivalent of Amtrak Thruway buses with combined ticketing and coordinated schedules. For some of the more lightly traveled routes, I would suspect that a bus would be a more cost-effective and "climate-effective" way to go. A bus with 50 passengers that gets 7 mpg would result in 350 passenger miles per gallon, and it's not unrealistic to expect that buses will be getting as much as 10 mpg in the near future. On the other hand, a diesel locomotive getting 1 -2 mpg will only yield 50 - 100 passenger-miles per gallon if the train is only carrying 50 passengers, which is a distinct possibility on a lightly used route. A diesel train probably needs to regularly carry 200 or 300 passengers before it becomes more "climate-friendly" than a diesel motorcoach. Electrification may well have better performance, depending on the source of the electricity, but the cost of installation is such that it would only be considered for routes with heavy passenger use.

The transportation system in many places in Europe work a bit different than that and going into full detail would be one or multiple articles.
First of all, there is of course no "one solution" used in Europe but it differs in each country, my experience is mainly in Austria, Germany and the Nordic countries, and even within those there are differences.

First of all, there are (or have been) individual cases that are comparable to the Thruway buses, but in general they don't. The reasons for this is though that the rail network is so much denser in the first place, but also that the transportation systems are set up much more like a massive network, kind of like in a city with a regional bus network. In Austria for example, regional bus' schedules are usually coordinated with the train schedules to allow convenient transfers, but are not necessarily run by the rail operator. Every year in December, there is a European train schedule update which is usually when major changes to the schedules are introduced. To get to this point, there are on-going negotiations between the operators, infrastructure managers, local and regional governments, etc. to work and coordinate on a schedule that serves all trains, starting from long-distance international trains between Berlin and Paris to local trains bringing commuters from one town to another. And as part of those schedule updates, regional and city buses are updated too. Some of those buses can be run by sub-companies of rail operators or other operators. In addition to this, the ticketing system is different, there is a unified ticketing system within each region of Austria (and there is even a national annual ticket that works on all modes of public transportation) which is usually applied in these cases. But that's another topic.

And about capacity: DMUs and EMUs are very common in Europe, especially on routes with less demand, so it's not necessary to provide a train with a capacity for several hundreds of passengers as some of those trains sets have capacity for less than 100 passengers.

But as I said, these topics are much more complex and detailed than what I could briefly summarise here.

 

[rs9]

This felt like a poorly reported article. While I don't doubt the problems are real, for some reason American reporting on rail travel routinely suffers from lack of information and context.

The Breslau-Berlin route anecdote was a bit baffling for me. In the 1930s, Breslau was part of Germany. Now, it's part of Poland. Perhaps demand has changed? We'd all like rail lines that go everywhere, but some realism is needed, too.

The Bucharest-Budapest comparison also gives me pause. Yes, 15 hours sounds worse than 12 hours, but I would argue that for overnight non-high speed travel, in which couchettes are commonplace, a longer duration might actually be better. It's not super-easy to sleep on a train, and the longer one has, the more sleep one gets.

Sadly, the article does not explore the reasons why London-Paris flights are cheaper than train travel (all the costs airlines let the public handle).

As far as I understand it, European rail operates largely on a hub and spoke system similar to airlines. This model may not be ideal, but as a reader I need a lot more detail about how point-to-point travel is going to work economically, in terms of passenger demand, equipment needs, etc.

 

[Trollopian]

The Breslau-Berlin route anecdote was a bit baffling for me. In the 1930s, Breslau was part of Germany. Now, it's part of Poland. Perhaps demand has changed? We'd all like rail lines that go everywhere, but some realism is needed, too.

This. In 1996, I threaded my way up to Jesenik, Czech Republic, which was Freiwaldau, Austria when my grandmother was born there in 1894. (For those interested: this meant taking a series of smaller and smaller trains from Vienna [Wien] to Brno [Brunn] to Olomouc [Olmutz] to Jesenik. I speak no Czech beyond a few memorized tourist pleasantries.) As the crow flies, it's only 75 miles from Jesenik to Wroclaw, Poland (Breslau, Germany), which I wanted to visit. But there was no way to get there by train except by back-tracking. Literally. Same for Oświęcim, Poland (Auschwitz, 125 miles east); I recall long waits in Ostrava (Ostrau) and Katowice (Kattowitz). Terezin (Theresienstadt), 175 miles to the west, was well-connected, but that's chiefly because it involved no border crossing, just a change of trains in Praha (Prague).

When my grandmother emigrated in August 1922, she left by train from Freiwaldau to Prague to Hamburg then the S.S. Wuerttemberg to Ellis Island. 100 years later I'm grateful beyond words.

 

[Arctifox]

This felt like a poorly reported article. While I don't doubt the problems are real, for some reason American reporting on rail travel routinely suffers from lack of information and context.

I agree, I often feel like it is not understood how the systems actually work, and miss a bigger context. It's not solely an American issue though, I sometimes think that rail travel is generally a topic that is not well understood by reporters not specialising in this field, also in Europe.

Yes, there can be issues when travelling by train across borders in Europe, but it also works really well on many other routes and that is completely ignored in the article.

 

[MARC Rider]

I just reread They Have their Exists by Airey Neave. In his account of his 1942 escape from a POW camp at Colditz Castle, he mentions he traveled by train from Leipzig to Ulm, which required a transfer in Regensburg. He and his companion shared a compartment with an SS officer who was heading for Munich. So it seems that the train from Leipzig to Munich passed through Regensburg. I checked the available service using Google Maps (which might not be 100% complete), and it seems that if you travel from Leipzig to Ulm today, you don't pass through Regensburg, and the only way to do it is to travel all the way to Munich and change trains there. It has occurred to me that one of the reasons the rail network in this part of Germany might not be as complete as it used to be is that the route from Leipzig crosses the former Iron Curtain, and some through tracks may have been removed during the Cold War. From Ulm, they wanted to get to Singen, but this town was so close to the border that it attracted the attention of the authorities, so that had to sneak out of town before they could be arrested and took a train from Laupheim (an outlying town) to Stockach via Pfullendorf. According to Google Maps, you can't do that today. You can take a train from Ulm (or Lauphiem) to Friedrichshafen, change to another train and ride to Ludwigshafen where you have to change for a bus to Stockach.

Later on, Neave and his companion successfully cross the border into Switzerland, where they end up in a town called Ramsen, which is in a small part of Switzerland that protrudes into German territory. According to his account, the Swiss police took them on a train ride to a larger town, Schaffhausen, which involved the Swiss train crossing back into a salient of German territory for a short while, which freaked out Neave. I studied the map carefully, but it seems that there is now no train service to Ramsen, and I couldn't find any local rail routes in the area that cross into German and go back into Switzerland.

As for the rest of their journey, they were smuggled out of Switzerland through Vicy France and into Spain. There wasn't as much detail about the train rides they took, but they rode from Annecy to Marseilles, form Marseilles to Toulouse, from Toulouse to Perpignan, where they were smuggled by foot across the Pyrenees, and then a train from an unspecified Spanish border town into Barcelona. From their they were transferred by car and charter bus to Gibraltar, where they took a troopship back to England.

So it is true that you can't ride trains in Europe now that you could 80 years ago.

 

[Willbridge]

The transportation system in many places in Europe work a bit different than that and going into full detail would be one or multiple articles.
First of all, there is of course no "one solution" used in Europe but it differs in each country, my experience is mainly in Austria, Germany and the Nordic countries, and even within those there are differences. ...
.....................................

And about capacity: DMUs and EMUs are very common in Europe, especially on routes with less demand, so it's not necessary to provide a train with a capacity for several hundreds of passengers as some of those train sets have capacity for less than 100 passengers.

But as I said, these topics are much more complex and detailed than what I could briefly summarize here.

I was always intrigued by the variety of emu and dmu solutions in Europe.

A one-car train into rural Brandenburg on a contract service.




A four-car dmu train made out of two two-car trains.

 

[Gemuser]

I wonder if any of the European rail operators offer the equivalent of Amtrak Thruway buses with combined ticketing and coordinated schedules. For some of the more lightly traveled routes, I would suspect that a bus would be a more cost-effective and "climate-effective" way to go. A bus with 50 passengers that gets 7 mpg would result in 350 passenger miles per gallon, and it's not unrealistic to expect that buses will be getting as much as 10 mpg in the near future. On the other hand, a diesel locomotive getting 1 -2 mpg will only yield 50 - 100 passenger-miles per gallon if the train is only carrying 50 passengers, which is a distinct possibility on a lightly used route. A diesel train probably needs to regularly carry 200 or 300 passengers before it becomes more "climate-friendly" than a diesel motorcoach. Electrification may well have better performance, depending on the source of the electricity, but the cost of installation is such that it would only be considered for routes with heavy passenger use.

Switzerland. You have the major railways, SBB, BLS, SOB etc on the main lines & major branches, then more local railways [sometimes narrow gauge] & very local railways [often narrow gauge] usually in Alpine Valleys & other difficult landscape and the Swiss Post Office buses. Just about all trains connect with each other although not always for every frquency. The buses take over where there are no railways, sometimes locally & sometimes thru difficult landscape or thru mountain passes. These buses are listed in the National Railway Timetable [hosted by SBB], bookable there with thru fares, as are almost trains & lake boats throughout the country. It is quite common to arrive at a small station to 1 to 6 buses waiting for the train, in bigger towns even more. Chur, for example has a bus station built over one end of the station with escalator & lift access directly from the platform that handles 15 - 20 buses at one time [my eyeball estimate].

 

[Arctifox]

So it is true that you can't ride trains in Europe now that you could 80 years ago.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean with the comparison of trains to 80 years ago. Google Maps is not a good source to look for available train services (in Europe, at least). Nowadays, there are six direct ICE services between Leipzig and Ulm (it's routed via Frankfurt, not Nuremberg), and even one direct overnight ICE service.

But in general: Obviously, the systems change. Some trains do not run anymore, and instead other trains now run that previously did not exist. And those changes can happen very frequently. And as I said before, it's a network. If one train does not exist anymore, it does not mean that you can not travel on this route anymore. For example, several years ago, the last direct train between Berlin and Vienna via Prague was suspended so passengers had to change in Prague (several connections per day). A few years later, direct services were reintroduced and now there are four different ones available (in addition to those with changes). And that's just one of so many examples. As I said before, every December, the network in Europe changes. New trains are introduced, others are suspended.

 

[PeeweeTM]

...
So it is true that you can't ride trains in Europe now that you could 80 years ago.

This is true. However, the app from Deutsche Bahn gives this as one of the many options for Leipzig - Ramsen tomorrow:





The only 'direct' train from Leipzig to Ulm goes via Frankfurt (M). Many of the local lines which existed in the 1940s are gone, but a lot of new or renovated higher speed lines are now available.

The Dutch railway app also includes all busses, troleys, subways in the Netherlands.

The problem for cross border traffic and using multiple railway companies and their tickets can however still be a real problem, especially in case of delays and missed connections.
On the other hand, my wife travelled from Rotterdam to Berlin last Saturday. The local train across the border was full, so she had to wait one hour for the next one. She could still use the ICE high speed train in Germany. And this trip (NS Dutch railways in the Netherlands, VIAS private company cross border, DB German railways in Germany) was one just 1 ticket.

 

[Herb]

I wonder if any of the European rail operators offer the equivalent of Amtrak Thruway buses with combined ticketing and coordinated schedules. For some of the more lightly traveled routes, I would suspect that a bus would be a more cost-effective and "climate-effective" way to go. A bus with 50 passengers that gets 7 mpg would result in 350 passenger miles per gallon, and it's not unrealistic to expect that buses will be getting as much as 10 mpg in the near future. On the other hand, a diesel locomotive getting 1 -2 mpg will only yield 50 - 100 passenger-miles per gallon if the train is only carrying 50 passengers, which is a distinct possibility on a lightly used route. A diesel train probably needs to regularly carry 200 or 300 passengers before it becomes more "climate-friendly" than a diesel motorcoach. Electrification may well have better performance, depending on the source of the electricity, but the cost of installation is such that it would only be considered for routes with heavy passenger use.

My personal experience in Europe was that a trip that involved rail and bus was pretty easy to make happen. Electrical power is the way to go even here in the US. Cost of electrification is the crutch that America uses to stay invested in diesel powered locomotives. Switzerland has a total electric system powered by hydro and nuclear (4 plants that produce 40% of electricity for the country). Electrical power from fossil fuels generated at a base plant is much easier to control its by products than on mobile plants. Plus the incidents of accidental spills would be eliminated. Lastly the impact of the power catenaries ( on scenic values ) which some have complained about is really much less than most people think. Again look and visit Switzerland !

 

[Herb]

Switzerland. You have the major railways, SBB, BLS, SOB etc on the main lines & major branches, then more local railways [sometimes narrow gauge] & very local railways [often narrow gauge] usually in Alpine Valleys & other difficult landscape and the Swiss Post Office buses. Just about all trains connect with each other although not always for every frquency. The buses take over where there are no railways, sometimes locally & sometimes thru difficult landscape or thru mountain passes. These buses are listed in the National Railway Timetable [hosted by SBB], bookable there with thru fares, as are almost trains & lake boats throughout the country. It is quite common to arrive at a small station to 1 to 6 buses waiting for the train, in bigger towns even more. Chur, for example has a bus station built over one end of the station with escalator & lift access directly from the platform that handles 15 - 20 buses at one time [my eyeball estimate].

Switzerland has the best example of train connections in the world. They built their system with the goal of providing transit from almost every place not just the big urban centers. In fact according to Railways Explained there are more Swiss living outside the major city centers than in the cities. One of the reasons is that it is easy to live in a small village and get to the city’s. Maybe a short drive, walk or bike ride to a station then it’s a train ride. I’ve enjoyed that convenience during several trips to Switzerland.

 

[Herb]

Think Amtrak's the only screwed-up rail system in the world? Think again.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/22/world/europe/europe-trains-climate-goals.html

From personal experience the European rail experience is far better than AMTRAK . I live in Northern California about 45 miles from the Oregon border. My nearest AMTRAK station is 8 miles away in Dunsmuir CA. I have traveled the entire west coast ( Canada too ) and across the country to the East coast. The AMTRAK booking app is years behind all the options available in Europe. When a conductor has to physically get out of the train to throw a switch to move the train to a siding, that’s old!! The US has very little Federal or State owned infrastructure (Tracks and stations) which is crippling the expansion of all passenger rail service.
Yes Europe does have issues but they are working on solving the issues and have solved many.