> While I like the idea of traveling by train, and I even took a night train from Munich to Budapest in the past, but on that specific route I had to share my cabin with a guy who just got released from jail a day earlier so I was not pleasantly relaxed. The fact that the cabin only had 2 bunk beds and I was pretty much isolated from other passengers and I had no way to keep my money and other important things in a safe, made me worried a lot.
>The big advantage of air travel is exactly this, you don't need to spend much time in the actual plane. And the passengers are by definition under full-time supervision by other passengers, so stealing or attacks are not so easy to get away with.
There are also drawbacks to air travel that you're not mentioning. I was in a sleeping segment with 5 other people and felt more safe than in an airplane. The important thing though is: we need to cut down on carbon, and travel by train is an important way to do it.
> The overnight trains here (Scotland) have lockable cabins and lockers for those that choose to use the reclining seats. Not that crime is a problem anyway.
I've had these long distance trains a couple of times and ICE of Deutsche Bahn (I went through Germany with ICE) did not have such coupes or lockers.
> It certainly explains why plane is actually faster where you are.
It was an example of a vacation in Serbia. Train is great here in The Netherlands. People moan they're not on time, but if you look at the density of the infrastructure its a prestige.
> Travelling by plane with a small child seems equally irritating.
True, but the thing is, that travel by train (as I described) is very long. Either way all you gotta do is keep them (relatively) silent. Either via asleep or by keeping them occupied.
Regardless now that I have a child, I have a lot more sympathy for other parents with their child. And dogs remain the most disgusting, for me.
> but most of the passengers are just weirdos who enjoy wasting their time taking the train cross-country in 2018 (like me).
If you waste time while you're travelling with public transport you're doing it wrong. For example, something like an e-reader is pretty thin and weights a few hundred grams and can hold thousands of books. Noisy? I bought half decent earplugs the other day for just 12 EUR. All you gotta do is take them with you. But you'd do that in an airplane as well. Add to that, airplanes are terrible for the environment; trains are less bad.
> But, yeah, in general sleeper trains don't work other than for the experience. Just for kicks, I looked at traveling to Chicago from Boston by sleeper a couple years back instead of flying. Made absolutely no sense for me in terms of time and I couldn't have justified the expense to my company.
I regularly travel Munich-Hamburg via sleeper train. It has many advantages:
- at short term booking it's way cheaper than a flight
- I arrive well rested, showered and fed in Hamburg, compared to being essentially a wreck the whole day after having to get up at 0330 (this alone is well worth the extra cost compared to a flight)
- I don't waste time travelling to and from the airports, or security crap, or have to expense taxis
>While taking train for me was more comfortable, most of the times it is not feasible and definitely a lot longer than taking an airplane.
well personal experience is not always representative - but anyway isn't one of the ways how trains could replace planes by increasing number of connections and speeding them up so that it does become feasible?
> There's really no reason a human would try to fly instead of take a train.
My anecdote:
Some time ago I did a lot of business trips around Europe. All business travel was organized by a subcontractor. They sometimes wanted to route me through a crazy amount of short airplane hops to get me to the destination. Sometimes even when a direct flight was available they couldn't put me on it because they didn't have a contract with the operator or something like that.
For some reason they strongly favored air travel and fell back on other means of transport only when there was absolutely no way to get there by air.
One some occassions I was supposed to do 4 or 5 500 km short hops, which would mean a whole wasted day of basically waiting at airports and boarding airplanes. In such cases I just said no, paid out of my own pocket for a train ticket or took my own car. And then spent next 3 months doing paperwork to get travel expenses reimbursed.
> Ever better: Night trains. Take the 21:00 train. Fall asleep. Wake up at 09:00 having passed two countries.
Get mugged while asleep. Also, train with a small child?
Also,
> The loss of time is minimal for small distances (< 500km) as you don't have check-in and don't have to travel to the airport first.
Depends. In like 2009 or so I had a train in Serbia. It went with 60 km/hour. It took me a whole day (24 hrs) to get to my destination. With plane and bus, it only took me half a day.
Stories are plenty of people that get their baggage stolen while they are sleeping
Your comment is loaded with romantic idealism (which I won't say I don't have as well) but is sorely lacking on the practicality of it
Yes, I like getting to the city center. In Wien this cost me around 4€. In Paris, 17€ (the more expensive bus) or 10€ for the cheapest bus (you can take the RER as well), yes, if you take Ryanair it's probably more to get there.
But staying in a train all night doesn't make me enthusiastic anymore. I'd rather cope with the hassles of air travel but it will still get me somewhere faster.
>When journey times are less than four hours, people usually prefer to travel by train instead of alternative options, such as air or road.
I'm sure the airport security theater plays no small part in this. Would you rather sit on a train for four hours or spend two hours at an airport, get treated like cattle, get told you can't bring X Y or Z past security, get felt up by a stranger, and in a cramped tube for an hour? I'll take the train every time.
> Trains are pretty awesome, especially in small Europe.
Trains aren't really about the region's size. They are about the region's population density and the volume of travel demand between somewhat close urban centers (max 600/800km).
> Flying always comes with security hassle.
Nowadays trains also come with security hassles. For example, Spain's RENFE enforces security checks, complete with baggage scanning and metal detectors, to board high-speed lines.
The key difference is where train stations are located vs where airports are located. Due to historical reasons, nowadays most european cities have train stations essentially in their city centers, whereas airports tend to be >50km out of the city. This means that the door-to-door travel time for any flight must include a >50km trip to the outskirts of a city for then to way out the mandatory 60 to 90 minute boarding process.
>> On a couple of trips over the past few years, I've looked into taking trains between destinations in Western Europe (e.g. Dusseldorf to Paris) and it's turned out that taking the train was going to take me far longer and cost far more than flying.
That comparison is a little disingenuous, of course flying between two cities with an airport, that are not major hubs connected directly by hi-speed rail, will be faster and cheaper. Now consider how you'd get to Dusseldorf or Paris from whatever random smaller city with a train station (in western Europe basically any city with a population over ~100K). I'm not sure if there even are international airports around western Europe that arent directly accessible by train...
Besides traveling for business or pleasure, trains here are heavily used for commuter traffic as well. If you live and work close to a train station, which is quite common in the more densely populated countries, traveling by train will 100% be faster that sitting in a traffic jam every day. And in many cases your employer will even cover most or all of the cost (at least here in the Netherlands).
Obviously trains are still only point-to-point transportation, so if you need to be somewhere without a train station, or without many connections to larger hubs, you will lose time. But compared to the pitiful state of passenger rail in the US (or at least that's how I experienced it), it's pretty great here. I took the train from San Jose to SFO once: there was only one train every hour or so, which took something like 2:30 hours at a snails pace to get to San Francisco, then I had to get on the BART (which is actually pretty good), then I needed to get on the AirTrain, all just to get to the departures. By car it usually takes less than an hour... There really is no excuse for that...
> I just wish they were more financially competitive.
I'm doing Paris <=> Wien, and it was financially competitive to airplanes. 100€/person/way (ok cheapest seat rate, that's probably very uncomfortable... I'll see) I had 240€/person/2 way with airplanes. I just checked airplane prices again and that's still pretty much the same prices (a bit lower than train if you accept going to the FarAwayAirport, much higher if you take the Airport on a train/subway station)
It does take a lot more time because it's one train every 2 day and arrives a bit late to do train => home => workplace, so if you value being where you want to be when you want to be, you could probably say that airplanes is more competitive)
> That appears to be about 650 miles (1050km). That’s around the point where many people will still prefer to fly.
Not sure that is true.
When you have a high speed train, going from the centre of a city to the centre of another city... and can subtract time to get to airport, time in airport security, time to wait to board a plane, time to taxi, time to circle before landing, time to get to the city, time to safety margin most of the above... the train comes out at least comparable on time (not an order of magnitude off), cheaper, greener, and centre-to-centre.
For me... European trains are so nice in comparison to flying that unless there is a time penalty of more than double to triple the real time spent flying (which in this case does not feel true)... then the train wins.
It's also a very productive journey. I can't do meetings on a train, but 6-7 hours uninterrupted in a comfy chair with power and internet is still coding / making slides / etc.
>> I'd really like to travel by train sleeper car, but I just can't justify it as transportation
> What an odd comment. It gets you where you're going, the same as any other form of transportation. For a long time it was the default way people took long distance trips.
But far slower than air travel, which I imagine is a big reason why air travel displaced it.
> Do you also consider road trips or long bus rides to be not transportation?
I don't take the bus, but when I drive, it's cheaper than flying (or flying + car rental).
>> given the prices.
> Again, with two people, it's been about the same price the last few times we've done it.
“ For trips of that distance train will never make sense, flying is too much faster."
I think you are making a common mistake of being too focused on speed - what really matters in convenience. I would like to go London -> Prague but there are like 4 changes. That’s too complicated.
If I could rent a coupe with friends and play poker, that’s a different experience than jumping between trains and platforms for an entire day with heavy bags.
There are advantages to trains - you can bring large and heavy luggage, lithium ion batteries, food service, etc.
> Right now, if I don't want to drive, my only option is to fly mostly in a shitty plane cramped up with strangers on a 4 hour flight.
Would high speed rail be that different? Not being snarky, I really don't know. I just figure that if it's very fast and/or expensive, it's probably not going to be very roomy on the inside. That Chinese train looks like it's about the same width or less than most airliners.
> There are really people who are willing to spend five hours, six hours, seven hours on a train
Yeah! I have no problem spending 6, 7 hours in a train if I have a comfy seat, Wifi and someplace where I can get a coffee and some food, like a dining car or a nice vending machine. A clean WC would also be a plus. There is no comfier way to travel, IMO, and you can be productive if you want to, too.
As someone who used to use the Munich - Paris TGV regularly, I'm a bit sad that they will use German ICEs, as the french trains are a bit nicer food-wise :D
> it's great to get into the train without doing all the procedures you do with a plane.
Well, if they just let go of the security theater and phobias, we could theoretically have a situation where you just board with no procedures, like on a train: Ride a local train/metro/bus up to the larger train station, flash your card or pass or what-not, maybe flash your passport, put your suitcase on the baggage cart or beltway going up to the cargo hold, and get on the plane. No queues, no checks and no nothing - basically like a train.
I realize it's not that trivial to switch to that way of thinking of air travel, but again - not impossible.
>The big advantage of air travel is exactly this, you don't need to spend much time in the actual plane. And the passengers are by definition under full-time supervision by other passengers, so stealing or attacks are not so easy to get away with.
There are also drawbacks to air travel that you're not mentioning. I was in a sleeping segment with 5 other people and felt more safe than in an airplane. The important thing though is: we need to cut down on carbon, and travel by train is an important way to do it.
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