Legends π
this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2024
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Incredibly based.
It helps that Spain has world-class trains and are continuously investing in expanding the network.
I'm so jealous. I wish the complete shitstain right-wingers that cancelled train investment in my country were fired. (out of a cannon into the sun)
It helps that Spain has world-class trains
As Spaniard I wouldn't go that far.. but yeah they are good. But not all of them π specially the shorter routes. Apart from some maintenance issues, It doesn't help that from time to time a line is down because they have stolen copper wires...
One tragic fact of life is that it doesn't really take that much to become world-class as far as trains go. The HSR network alone basically places you on the podium.
To be fair (and Im from a family of train workers, did my master thesis there), there is a lot of mismanagement and politics, lack of investment and stuff, which decrease the quality of train services. But there's also part of the problems who are inherent to the fact of moving steel boxes safely on thousands of km, without endangering the workers either.
Depends on the age of your tracks, if you have old Victorian bridges etc or aging signal systems it can be very hard indeed.
(London btw)
People steal the copper wires everywhere.
I know someone that works in the rail industry with building and maintenance.
It's apparently very important to electrify the wire as soon as you are done with whatever you were doing. Otherwise someone will know that it's not electrified and they will steal it. And the company/state will lose quite a lot of money in raw materials (the overhead wires are expensive as fuck), delays and further work.
Edit: This isn't in some third world country or anything either. This is in a rich first world country that's in the top 10 in terms of HDI and at least top 20 of pretty much every other positive index.
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I was once running to the station in sevilla to get my train. I arrived 40 minutes late. The train departed right after I boarded.
Much love to the renfe, they waited for me :3
I read about world-class and then 40 minutes late...
Delay is most of the time due to congestion. Expanding the network is the way to reduce that.
Why bother wasting the resources to send em to space, when a bullet suffices.
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The move to trains in Europe seems great! But still it costs me ~Β£300 short notice, ~Β£100 otherwise per person to get from London to Paris by train so for any trips it'll still need to be planes unfortunately. I dream of a day I can make an affordable night time trip to the Mediterranean on a train
The UK has an atrocious train system in terms of cost.
Point fingers where they belong: your own government.
amazing that building, maintaining, and fueling a fleet of airplanes is more cost effective than a few engines, coaches, and track.
That's the innovation of privatization.
Yea I got a fine because I took an Avanti North-west instead of an Avanti Wales train, on the same route -_- like wtf, if they are not the same company maybe they should not share the same name?
thanks a lot margaret
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No taxes on fuel
Trains use infrastructures and not the air
it's just 2 examples. Complain at your government if you want things to change.
You are correct but we should also point blame at the people who vote them into power!
The pricing and general operations on the Eurostar are pretty crap, which also annoys me to no end since I also use it semi frequently. Thankfully from what I've heard the high speed trains in Spain don't suffer from the same issues.
Hopefully some competition will improve things. If this gets off the ground it can only be good for prices and service. https://www.euronews.com/travel/2023/10/12/evolyn-the-high-speed-rail-startup-with-mystery-investors-coming-for-eurostars-crown
"Competition will improve things" yeah sure.
Mass rail transportation as a public utility at an affordable price for everyone is never going to be a profitable operation. Competition in such a setting won't improve anything.
They'll just invest to run things at a loss while maintaining the same quality for a few years, get their share of the market and run the historical company in the ground, then increase prices and lower quality.
If the is one thing that the last couple of decades of privatised trains in the UK have shown, is that there is no possibility for real competition in trains, which should've been obvious from the start as you can't just have tons of companies lay train track at will to compete with uncompetitive established train operators.
The competition to trains are buses, cars and to a lesser extent planes, and some of those are only competitive against trains because their Negative Externalities (i.e. Polution) aren't reflected in the ticket price.
It works on high speed lines in Spain, where youβve got Renfe, SNCF and Trenitalia all competing for business between Madrid and Barcelona. Also in Italy where Italo and Trenitalia compete head to head on a bunch of route. London/Paris isnβt that much different.
Three decades of having private operation in Britain for the whole train network only yielded higher prices and shittier service than the old public service.
Also every single one of the companies you listed there are public companies and that entire business model is only working because the State paid for the high speed infrastructure.
If you want to see what happens some years after the State stops pouring money into infrastructure, look at Britain again - the infrastructure is slowly decaying and trains are getting slower, with the exception of the whole Eurotunnel which is brand new, State paid, infrastructure.
Last and not least, 2 or 3 companies only caring about a handfull of high value routes is in no way form or shape sufficient competition to add up to a healthy competitive market (just look at how many airlines serve high value routes for reference of how real competition looks like and even there, there are barriers to entry - in the form of airport slots - that limit competition so it's far from perfect in terms of competition), not to mention tgat what you see in the main most profitable routes is most definitelly not something that you see in an entire network.
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This would be great, but won't happen as quickly as they say, and even if a competitor does get going, the lack of capacity at St Pancras is a major blocker to reducing the ticket price.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this only applies public flights not private flights.
IIRC that's the case in France, but per the article
It isnβt yet known how many flights will actually be impacted by restrictions.
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How about closing airports as well so private jets have no places to land and the overlords can take the fucking train like the rest of us?
Taylor Swift enraged!
Not applied to private flights from what I grasped. Taylor swift can rest easy.
PP member Guillermo Mariscal explained that he believes the initiative is βineffectiveβ because it would only result in a 0.06 per cent reduction in emissions according to data from the College of Aircraft Engineers (COIAE).
Really? Just 0.06%? How can it be so low?
It depends on what the 100% represents. Does it represent the emissions of just Spain or the whole world? If the latter, then it makes sense.
But every bit counts, so this is a welcomed change - to an extent. Family and work emergencies will have to wait longer with this, for example.
It says in the article, the number of flights this would affect might be very small. They originally wanted to ban flights with a train alternative under 4 hours, but that didn't get through.
Because he's from the college of aircraft engineers, who may have a vested interest in flight, and is therefore paid to make that number look as small as possible.
The article talks about a plan, which depending on what it includes would vary. In the article one optimistic prediction says 10% the other more pessimistic says 0.06%. Until more decisions are made the real number will be unknown.
Also because aviation is actually not a big part of the CO2 emissions
https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
We should still try to fly less, but there are other sectors that can make a much bigger impact.
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It might be a low number, but then again this also seems like a initiative that will affect an even smaller number of people and is targeting something where a completely valid alternative exists, that has lower emissions.
It might not be the end it all solution, but there won't be one of those. So measuring it by that standard seems pointless to me.
I'd rather look at things like: Is there an alternative (and if so, what compromises does it make), what are the relative gains, and how easy is it to implement? And banning short distance flights seems to check those marks in my book.
Also for connecting flights, or only if the whole trip is a single short haul flight?
Are there train stations at the airports for connections?
I think every airport I've been to in Spain is connected to the rail network. Connection to rail and bus is pretty standard, in Western Europe at least.
Airports are notoriously badly connected to final destinations, while trains usually take you to the city center and other public transport.
All the main airports are reached by train. Spain has relatively cheap high-speed railway network.
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