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In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
Situation in Europe is far from ideal. In most cases it’s cheaper to fly than to travel by rail across multiple country borders – which I’ve always found odd, considering the journey takes much longer and each connection brings some degree of uncertainty.
18 min delays aren’t uncommon. Or your train being outright cancelled, announced only in the local language (fair enough).
The whole system is chronically underfunded, probably in part thanks to the car lobby
The most ridiculous situation I came across was getting the train from Biarritz in France to Bilbao in Spain and back. I heard the phrase "It's another country" uttered in both French and Spanish - turns out they really hate each other! We had to walk a few minutes from France across the border to another station in Spain.
I once heard of someone who had to go from somewhere in the south of England to London, and took a plane to Berlin and another to London because it was cheaper than the train.
I don't understand why plane tickets are so cheap compared to plane tickets. Part of it is that plane fuel isn't allowed to be taxed while other forms of energy are, but there's got to be more. The situation is insane.
Anyway, let's at least tax plane fuel.
Yup, I live in Warsaw, its hard to book sleeping train to Vienna. There are maybe 15-25 beds available everyday. In the meantime for the same prive or lower you can fly to Vienna. And probably more than 2000 people fly there
Looks like China 50 years ago.
Europe is not a single country. Sadly things are not the same everywhere. South-eastern european countries still lack the infrastructure required for secure transport with trains.
Europe is not a single country.
Workin' on it
Freight Trains in USA, for comparison.
You've got plenty of trains and train lines, but your government, unlike most of the world, refuses to subsidise public transit, so they all go for the option that's most profits-per-km, Freight
Yeah, UK is the worst train service in Europe, that's nothing new.
That's cause the UK privatised 90% of rail in the 1980s
Another one I found:
Apparently this is a weak point for Europe, and even other rail systems like China's. The US has a relatively efficient cargo rail network, while more stuff is shipped across the EU in trucks than it probably should be.
Well, Electric Trucks are prevalent now, so still pretty efficient
Yeah and it's not nearly enough
Here in Canada we have more former abandoned rail then active rail lines. And around where I am people are fighting to stop the old rail lines being used as biking and walking trails. YAY
I feel like many people oppose rails to trails because then there’s much less of a chance it will become rails again, so you have to let go of the hope of any sort of trains coming back. Though becoming a trail is certainly a lot better than the track land being split up and sold off to developers, since then there’s no chance.
Yeah, that is not at all the case here. There is no new passenger rail even as a dream and these rails used to be everywhere. We are talking about at least 40 years since a train was ever down these lines, and they have sat there doing nothing this whole time.
Why ? that can't be dangerous if no trains are running
Land owners have gotten used to just using the land for free, and they don't want people near their land and other self serving things.
oh, ok. Landowner things I guess
Asshole landowner things yes.
Funny thing, the UK we had the opposite problem, people fighting to stop the reopening of lines that have become walking and biking trails (usually for freight train profit)
We also converted many of our local innercity lines into into ELR, which is slower but it's also cheaper and they're all loop lines with a schedule of 1 every 5-10 minutes
I live in Jersey, and we have tons of them. And fortunately they are turning some into pedestrian paths, rails-to-trails style, but we have literal (albeit old) infrastructure for rail lines between places that are only accessible via rail by going to Newark, changing, and hopping on a different line. We're talking hours for a 30 mile ride.
I need me some eminent domain. There's some major hubs west of Newark that you can only drive between.
But yeah, seeing them turned into trails is at least better than nothing. But I want moooorrreee.
There are some trail networks in the eastern provances that allow people to go snowmobiling for weeks at a time on groomed trails (former rail lines) and I have known people that is what they did for their vacation each year, stopping in at all the small towns on the way.
"Trains wouldn't work in the US, we're too spread out"
Meanwhile, we did have a near-ubiquitous rail network a century ago and destroyed it.
Meanwhile, the US road network is the single most economically expensive undertaking in human history and has achieved complete ubiquity in almost every lived location in the country, all of it costing more per mile than your average rail line, much of it literally poured over old rail line.
Meanwhile, Europe is the size of the US and achieves equivalent rail density with far less investment.
Meanwhile, China is larger than the US, has an order of magnitude more people, an even more dispersed population, and achieved high speed rail ubiquity in less than two decades.
Anyone who tells you ubiquitous rail cannot work in the US because of our size and density is either disingenuous, misled, or ignorant.
edit - Or they're doing a bit!
Not saying I disagree, but I can already hear the response: "well population density is far less in the US" What's the response to that? That they can then just connect the more populated areas? Or point to the past, where there was rail all over the US?
Europe and China are both bigger than the contiguous 48 states. The US is only “bigger” because of Alaska. Alaska is like 1/4th of Europe or something.
Reminds me of my home city where people argued that there was no way to incorporate urban rail into the city, but luckily the town is crisscrossed by bike trails. The bike trails were literally the rail bed from our urban train system that got torn out in the 50s.
I love and use rails-to-trails myself, but I can't shake the feeling that they're essentially motornormative culture scapegoating cyclists to bury any possible hope of reviving rail networks. The carbrained planner says "No you can't put the rails back in, you'd displace the cyclists!" While displacing cyclists every time they choose to exclude cycling infrastructure on streets.
I have similar feelings bit ido tell myself this: If nothing else rails to trails maintains the right of way. The carbrained city planner says you'll displace the cyclists, but in 30 years that planner will be retired or dead. What would kill railroads forever would be carving up the ROW and selling it off.
Wanna be even more upset, fellow Americans? Take a look at what we used to have:
It was so widespread that I've never been to a small town, in the region I grew up in, that didn't have an old passenger rail station that was repurposed into something else. Your map starts well into the 1900s, my area started being built up hundreds of years before that. Shit my house is almost 100 years older, alone.
My current small town has THREE, ffs, but no, this rail can only be used for freight, because reasons
Metro Atlanta's only passenger rail station that still exists, a tiny thing on Peachtree Road in Brookwood (just north of Midtown), was originally a commuter stop on the way to the big, beautiful stations downtown. They were all torn down decades ago.
I've just realized I don't even know how many traditional train stations (including ancillary commuter ones, but not including streetcars or the modern subway system) the city/metro area even had. It's gotta be dozens, at least.
Phoenix Arizona literally doesnt have a train station at all. You have to go 30 miles / 48km south to a suburb to catch a train and even then your destinations are heavily limited as you can only board a train from there 3 times a week.
Its a massive building downtown that just doesnt, supposedly because of failed union negotiations 3+ decades ago. Yeah we just let corporations get rid of everything for "efficiency" of cheap roads.
Everyone support Murkan Cowboy Capitalism, and get out there and drive big clumsy SUVs!