i would say from now on links to cnn should be automatically lite-ified. they have a plain-text version of all their articles. link to that instead.
every once in a while i read something or hear a narration and i cant help but suspect that GTP had some part in writing it. this article gives me very strong GTP vibes. i remember in 2018 i realized that i would never again be able to assume that an online account, post, comment, article was written by a human. and here we are. think about the author of this article. he would almost be forced to use GTP because it makes the writing and composition so much better. so much smoother. i dont think this is a good situation we are wading into…
Air travel within Europe is cheap and easy, night trains are far more expensive, slow and run unreliable schedules sometimes, and they often don’t even take you to places you want to go.
In America though, night trains would be awesome, since air travel is expensive, hellish, and the country is built in a way that the destinations most people will want to go to are already laid out in an efficient layout due to the car focused culture.
> since air travel is expensive, hellish, and the country is built in a way that the destinations most people will want to go to are already laid out in an efficient layout due to the car focused culture.
What? Air travel may be hellish, but it's super-cheap domestically compared to driving or trains. Both air and train share the issue of needing to rent a car or pay to be ferried about at $destination.
1. This can change due to political reasons. E.g. "As part of far-reaching 2021 climate legislation, France proposed banning domestic flights where equivalent journeys taking less than two-and-a-half hours on its excellent and wide-ranging rail network are available."
2. Yes, you all know the USD 10 airfaires from Ryanair. But often destinations are very limited and often it is 3rd tier airports. Good luck getting there.
I welcome night trains. They were always cheap, good an convenient in China and Eastern Europe (legendary Prague -> Budapest -> Bucharest line e.g.). I hope this might get more convenient in Western Europe in the future. And why not add a nice bar and coffee place and internet when you are on it. Board at 8, have a few drinks, get up at 7, have a coffee, work and get off at 10am.
France has an excellent high speed rail network it has less need for domestic flights. Other countries in the EU could learn from that.
Germany particularly is a basket case. If you take the "high speed" train from Berlin to Köln, it takes nearly five hours, the train stops lots of times, and with the exception of a few tens of kilometers never hits anywhere near its maximum speed. Combined with all the delays, cancelled trains, strikes, etc. It makes for a bit unpredictable experience. Domestic flights are well under 1 hour, typically. Even with the hassle of getting to and from airports, it's way faster.
https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ has a nice map that you can show the maximum speeds on rail segments. Spain and France are the best. I've taken high speed trains in both and their high speed trains go the maximum speed most of the journey. Germany is notable for just not having a lot of rail suitable for its trains to drive their maximum speed.
Germany could do a lot better. But it will require massive investments.
I think the idea of a night train is more attractive than the reality of it being very slow, expensive, and relatively uncomfortable (at least I never managed to sleep well on one).
IMHO domestic flights in many countries can start transitioning to fully electric hops in the next decade or so. Anything under 700 miles is fair game for that. The battery technology is getting there. So, investing in lots of rail might not be the smartest thing.
> Air travel within Europe is cheap and easy, night trains are far more expensive, slow and run unreliable schedules sometimes, and they often don’t even take you to places you want to go.
And of course their solution to this isn't to try to improve the trains. It's to ban flying between anywhere that trains exist! In case it isn't clear, this isn't a hypothetical: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36046764
That's not a defense. It makes it worse. The elites still get to pollute, but we don't. And it's especially bad since flying commercial is way better for the environment than flying private.
>At least that’s the theory – and why the new wave of night trains are being touted as one way to replace short or even medium-haul flights across Europe and the US.
I am sure in the US it is and will always be talk. Train service in the US is terrible compared to what is in the EU. It will never happen.
Maybe this will work in Boston where the subways run a 3 MPH (~5kph) due to ignored repairs over the past 30/40 years.
> Train service in the US is terrible compared to what is in the EU.
And train service in the EU is terrible compared to Japan.
If EU/US trains ran like Japanese Shinkanzen then there would be exactly zero need for night trains.
You would board a clean train, that departed on-time, and whisked you along the countryside, reaching your destination hundreds of miles/kilometers away in 3–4 hours.
Before the pedants arrive, yes I am aware there are some night trains in Japan, but they constitute 0.0000001% of Japanese train services, and are mostly a fun-tourism thing.
> If EU/US trains ran like Japanese Shinkanzen then there would be exactly zero need for night trains.
Nah, if I need to be somewhere in the morning I prefer a sleeper train over a regular train. Can't sleep while seating, gives me utterly horrible back pain.
> Before the pedants arrive, yes I am aware there are some night trains in Japan, but they constitute 0.0000001% of Japanese train services, and are mostly a fun-tourism thing.
It's not. It's expensive, noisy, takes a long time (6h door to door) and is uncomfortable as fuck.
I recently had to go to Edinburgh. It was £235 standard class to get a train that takes several hours. Or £80 to get a plane that takes 2h door to door (1h in the air).
If I want to go anywhere in Europe it's quicker, easier and almost always cheaper to fly. Even on a bad Lufthansa flight where everything goes wrong :)
Edit: just checked I can go from my LHR to BER on Monday and back same day for £127. I can't get to the English Channel and across it at any time for twice that.
Yeah I'm all for fighting climate change but air travel should be excepted until there's battery-powered options available. We can't go back to the dark ages of travel. And especially internationally in Europe the rail network is shit and has way too little capacity. There's almost no good international high speed rail. It's only in countries that invested in it locally like Germany, France and Spain.
Anyway shifting all our trips to train travel is not the answer. The answer, which I do prefer, is not travelling at all when avoidable. I only ever travel for holidays and funerals. Never on business. All business can be conducted on conference calls.
As someone who lives in another country I don't really agree. I do agree some trips (especially business) are avoidable. There's an unfortunate stigma that if you don't travel for a meeting you're not considering it important enough. I personally really like VR meetings as a replacement, they make me feel much more together.
But for personal use I don't think travelling less is an option. I hate travel but it's important to see family too. We can't just roll the world back to where a different continent was unreachable.
You must be having noisy nights at home to enjoy 2 hours door to door travel by plane.
The state of the train network is terrible so it should be used as a bad example. Trains are longer but for most people they are more comfortable physically and mentally : more space for your legs, your luggage and less hassle going to the station and passing controls.
Night trains are not perfect, but with earplugs they can be pleasant.
Trick is to live perpendicular to the flight path where there is good public transport ;)
As for the trains, no. Standing up with a suitcase between your legs is not uncommon. I prefer Ryanair to that.
When I travel by air I have hand luggage and that's it. Maybe if I do a couple of weeks away I'll have a small suitcase as carry on. Don't pack the kitchen sink.
> I recently had to go to Edinburgh. It was £235 standard class to get a train that takes several hours.
UK rail is truly depressing.
In Japan you can take a Shinkanzen from Tokyo to Hokkaido, 4.5 hours, 800km (appx 500 miiles) for 20,000 Yen (£108) first class or 11,000 Yen (£60) standard class. And that is walk-up fare for "right now", you can use an app to get advanced fares.
And I can assure you those 4.5 hours will be insanely comfortable compared to the UK. And you can pick up some very tasty food at the station, unlike the UK where you can only buy garbage.
In the UK I agree, I'd fly from London to Edinburgh in preference to the ghastly train. Assuming the London train even leaves the station and is not delayed or cancelled, as usual.
Agreed. Japan is exceptionally good I agree. Europe not so much. Germany's rail system is a shit show for example. I had to get a taxi to a car hire place a couple of times there.
PSA: I took a long "first class" Shinkansen trip last year, and it was hideously uncomfortable. Swaying movement made me feel sick when I did anything, and the seat was curved in a way that made it impossible to relax as a 6' tall person.
My toddler went on a rampage the whole way, too, since it was an open cabin and not a private cabin
I've never taken the train in the UK, but had a much more comfortable ride in Italy a few years back
Unfortunately we have the oldest railway in the world in continuous use, running mostly at capacity, with draconian planning laws, ridiculous land costs, population density, and a stupid general public.
You'd be hard pressed to find any capital project that's been built in the UK that anyone regrets, and that includes the Millenium Dome. I'm old enough to remember opposition to HS1 ("No to route 2!"), and opposition to CrossRail.
No one would argue that any of those were a waste.
Yet we've cancelled parts of HS2.
With the absurd bidding process of:
Govt: we have a budget of £10bn for this section in the Cotswolds, how cheap can you do it?
Bidder, erm, £9.99bn ??
Govt: ok!
Bidder: kerching!
Trying to find the link, but Rob Holden, HS1 boss, stated that HS2 budgets were publicly disclosed and the above is pretty much the outcome of contract firms knowing how much the Govt is prepared to pay.
Had we pressed ahead with HS2 we might have gotten an HS3 and 4, but that's vanishingly unlikely now.
> Assuming the London train even leaves the station and is not delayed or cancelled, as usual.
Apparently German trains are far worse than London right now.
A sleeper train takes 0 useful hours, because you’re asleep.
Plus you potentially save on a night’s accommodation.
Last time I took the Caledonian Sleeper was for a morning meeting in Glasgow. My colleagues flew from Luton on the first morning flight and turned up irritable and tired. I got the Cally Sleeper and was fresh as a daisy with no time wasted - in fact I could do a couple of hours’ work while they were trogging around airports and planes.
> It was £235 standard class to get a train that takes several hours.
Presumably for some people the sleeper saves a hotel night, so there's that.
Pricing is definitely inverted vs long ago because I would take the sleeper (archaic term for what we're now calling "night train"??) from Edinburgh to go to business meetings in London vs flying which was much more expensive, we well as inconvenient. On the train you get to walk off the platform reasonably refreshed after a night's sleep and your bacon/egg/beans breakfast and saunter to your 9am meeting. By plane you'd be getting up at 2-3am.
Recently I took a Caledonian Sleeper (Edinburgh->London) and everything was great except the cost. But UK trans are expensive in general for some reason, for commuter trains £/km even higher than for this overnight train.
Not a night train, but this summer we went on vacation to Scotland from Germany and took the Amsterdam-Newcastle overnight ferry instead of flying.
One major issue is one of headspace, as you sacrifice a day of holiday for a day of travel. You have to feel on holiday right as you enter the train. If you're getting antsy for every hour not spend at your destination, you will never be happy with anything but flying. But we had a wonderful time on the ferry and waiting for our connecting trains, we had a nice time in both Newcastle and Amsterdam.
With a toddler in tow, the freedom of movement and the space in a train or on a ferry beats air travel or car travel almost every time.
For next year we plan on spending even more time "travelling". Adding one or two additional overnight stops between rail connections is fine with us. It's fewer days at the destination and it's a bit more expensive with the multi-leg train journeys. But as the travel is not very stressful that way, it comes out about even.
I feel very similar to you. My family took an overnight Amtrak from Albany to Chicago. We got a full sleeper room which ranges from $500-$1000 per person per room, which is certainly more expensive than a flight, and I recognize it's a privilege that we can afford it. That being said, it was far more enjoyable than flying. It left Albany at 7pm and the kids (3 and 5) were beyond thrilled to be on a train. Laying back and watching the sun set as I watched America go by in the window was beautiful and romantic. The beds were fine. And on top of that it has a dramatically lower (close to an order of magnitude) carbon footprint, something I believe you need to care about if you have kids. I understand that this won't work for everyone in every scenario but I do think it's great option that people should consider more.
$1k is on the high end, if you were traveling Dec. 23rd or something like that. The last time I did this the price was $680 per person, which again is more expensive than a flight, but for me was totally worth it and so much more enjoyable than a flight I don't know if I'll ever fly home again. However, to each their own. I fully understand this isn't for everyone.
What in tarnation is up with American rail?? Picking random routes spanning the EU, I’m seeing things like a 15 hour sleeper journey costing €100 for a private sleeper cabin (or €16 for one bed in a shared 6-person cabin)
For most short-to-medium-length flights, first class merely upgrades you from a seat that is massively larger than a small child to a seat that is even more massively larger than the child. You’re still stuck on a plane with a fasten seatbelt lights for exactly the same amount of time. (Maybe longer because first class often comes with early boarding.)
One of the things that needs to change is that the pricing becomes more reasonable.
I believe that the US has terrible passenger rail, so it makes sense for things to be overly expensive, but in Europe this is a major problem too. One fair fix would be to start taxing flying more (e.g. fuel is untaxed right now) and actually give tax benefits to trains.
Just before covid I'd planned to fly from Scotland to Italy to see where my grandma was from, and then get the train back to Amsterdam via Switzerland, Germany, Belgium stopping for some food and sightseeing on the way back.
Covid scuppered that, but it's something I'd love to do - even with my recurring dream of being awoken to pitchforks from the rest of the sleeping train thanks to my snoring!
Capacity is ultimately much harder to expand on 1D trains compared to 3D airspace. Economic pressure also means the removal of what is, for many people, the most romantic part of the whole experience: the dining car. The economics seem to be this is basically always going to be about first class travel, at least if you want a bed, which is a shame.
Listening to this program made me really want to experience it again. The last time I took night trains was when I was backpacking around China in the 90s where there was very much a culture of first class travel (closed cabins, duvets, two-double or one-double bunks) but also a very accessibly priced second tier of carriages with open cabins and a pair of triple bunks. I loved every moment of it.
Because a fast train is about as fast as a plane on short flights once you add in security and all the little waits, plus getting to the airport of departure and from the airport of arrival.
The capacity of a fully loaded conventional HSR line is massive.
The Beijing-Shanghai HSR route (a northbound and a southbound track on a right of way 20 meters wide) and every UK airport combined, carried about the same number of passengers every year before COVID, just above 200 million. We can make conscious choices about whether we want comfortable accommodations or cattle cars, and cattle cars are what we ask for when we say "Absolute minimum capex on rolling stock" and "We're going to size passenger station platforms for 6 cars instead of for 20 cars".
If you are running 10 million passengers per year, but still running rolling stock that will fully utilize the capacity of the rairoad, you can afford to use space 20x less efficiently than the Beijing-Shanghai HSR line does.
Personally, I regularly have to travel between Munich and Hamburg. Flying that route is a nuisance: either fly the day before and have to spend a day in a hotel, or get up at 03:30... get ready, travel to the airport (~1h regular time + buffer of at least 30 minutes because the goddamn train always has issues), account for 2 hours of pre-boarding crap (security checks, boarding), 1.5h flight, .5 h to account for getting luggage, .5h to be at Hamburg Hbf, and spend the rest of the day as an overtired zombie running on coffee.
In contrast, the sleeper train is easy: be at Munich Hbf at 2240, grab a few burgers for late night snack binges and beers to share with your roommates, enter the train at 2250, it leaves at 2252, empty the crate of beers and the burgers, fall asleep, wake up at 07:45, go for a shower, eat breakfast, arrive at 08:50 well rested in Hamburg.
I went on one with a bed (6 people) some years ago from Berlin to Vienna and it was a nightmare (OEBB Nightjet). It stopped several times and there were constantly people getting in and out of bed, storing suitcases, getting dressed etc.
Yeah you have to get a personal/dual cabin ($$$) or travel with people you know otherwise it's a gamble.
As for the stops you get used to it, I couldn't sleep during my first night train trip, after 5+ I know sleep like a baby. I haven't used planes in a few years too, and for my use case it's actually cheaper/more convenient than planes
Went to Ukraine from Poland twice this year with night train (for obvious reasons airplanes werent an alternative). It was less bad than expected and def something I could do again.
What I really miss sometimes is a different approach: offer trains that can take me really far (e.g Warsaw - Paris, Berlin - Madrid), but allow me to take my car with me on the train. This way, I can enjoy the comfort of the sleeping wagon, give the kids space to move around, and I do not need to rent a car at the destination, which is very expensive and is not-my-car.
I think there are some trains like this. But unfortunately it is rare. Even for bicycles, ÖBB NightJet has just 3 places (with exception Vienna-Amsterdam, that has more).
We used to do this, going on holiday to Scotland from London. Drive your car onto the train at Olympia, go to sleep on the train, wake up to breakfast and then get into your car in Stirling and drive off.
I regularly take the Amtrak Crescent overnight to visit family down south. With two people (my wife and I), a roomette has been about on par with air travel pricewise the last couple of times we've traveled. Total privacy, comfy accomodations, internet access, meals and snacks included.
Yeah, it does take longer, but frankly I find air travel to be stressful and uncomfortable. The longer travel time is worth it to me, especially if it's roughly the same price. Not to mention that air travel at our airport has had declining on time reliability, probably because of problems with and shitty business practices of its biggest airline. Our trip might take double or triple what we expect anyway due to canceled or delayed flights.
As a bonus, a sleeper car ticket counts as "first class", so we get to enjoy the lounge at Moynihan Train Hall during our stopover in NYC.
Clarification edit: the Amtrak Crescent roomette has been on par pricewise with two regular old sardine-class airplane tickets. I'm not comparing first class to first class.
I've never actually flown first class. I doubt it is as nice as an Amtrak roomette.
> I regularly take the Amtrak Crescent overnight to visit family down south. With two people (my wife and I), a roomette has been about on par with air travel pricewise the last couple of times we've traveled. Total privacy, comfy accomodations, internet access, meals and snacks included.
I'd really like to travel by train sleeper car, but I just can't justify it as transportation (rather than as "an experience") given the prices.
In the US, either air travel needs to get a lot more expensive, or they need to pump subsidies into trains, or it'll stay an impracticable niche thing.
> 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. I don't take it repeatedly for the "experience". I take it because it's a more pleasant way to travel at roughly the same price point.
Do you also consider road trips or long bus rides to be not transportation?
> given the prices.
Again, with two people, it's been about the same price the last few times we've done it.
> Again, with two people, it's been about the same price the last few times we've done it.
What rates are you finding? Because in my experience just earlier this year, while moving cross country, I found that an Amtrak across the US costed exorbitantly more than an airplane ticket, and comes with a dozen times as many transfers. It was cheaper still to just say screw it and rent a uHaul the entire way.
>> 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.
I've flown first class. Whether it counts as nicer or not probably depends a lot on your preferences.
The actual service provided on a first class plane flight is definitely more classy. Everything in the plane is more likely to be in perfect repair, with no signs of wear and tear like you see on Amtrak's aging Superliners. And the flight attendants are more likely to give you "first-class" treatment than an Amtrak porter in small ways like more consistently using "ma'am" and "sir" when they talk to you. None of that is consequential to me, but I realize it's worth calling out because my rust belt sensibilities are maybe tuned a bit differently from others'.
If you don't mind things being a bit less polished, though, a Roomette is physically more comfortable than a first-class seat in almost every way. It's quieter, you can get up and walk around as much as you want. You don't have to deal with airports and airport security. You can close your door and make a phone call without bothering anybody. You can close your door if you don't want to listen to your neighbor's conversation. You can close your door and watch a movie without headphones. There's an actual table so you can play a proper card game with your traveling partner. etc.
First Class flight within USA is significantly different than a international long haul first class flight. But nobody takes an over water long haul train, so these are different markets.
"Hailed" by many people many times over the last 100 years but the idea has mostly not worked in many countries.
From what I can work out, the economics don't scale in the way we would assume. 200 people on a train sounds like a large economy of scale, and indeed, on the excursion trains we have been on, it is cheaper than a normal 1st class ticket for a longer journey even with 20-30 paid employees aboard but I don't think the access charges work for regular trains.
Hopefully they can work in the US although from what I understand, the Eastern seaboard is much more setup for passenger traffic than the rest where you are more likely to get slow average speeds or frequent stops for single track.
At the same time, people who compare the plane usually compare the air ticket to the train ticket, not the ticket to the airport, the things you might buy there, the time you have to waste waiting, the car parking at both ends etc.
i took a sleeper car on an overnight train from dc to chicago. it got delayed for 5 hours in sub zero temperatures _with no power/heat_ because one of the cars caught on fire. Other that that the trip was great.
I've heard stories of people taking the Empire Builder from Whitefish, MT to Seattle which leaves at about 10:30pm and gets you to King Street at 11:30am. Pretty niche I realize, but it's an observed phenomenon and I would be interested in trying it when I move back to the Flathead someday.
this is one of the few trains in north america i've actually ridden. the journey was fine. I think it would be better during the day so you can see the dramatic scenery of glacier and the rockies. but as a broke college student, time is of the essence, and so the nighttrain to seattle was perfect.
And you still get a bit of a scenery in the morning as well. The conductor on our train called out various points of interest.
More trains, please! Everything about flying sucks and that's even before taking climate into account. I'm not holding my breath but I do hope to see better US train infrastructure in my lifetime. I've never had a better time traveling than when I've taken the Northeast Regional/Acela. Would love to ride the trains in a country that actually has good infrastructure for them.
The idea of night trains is incredible, but in practice they are brittle to rely on (at least in Europe).
I remember sitting at the Padova rail station until 3AM waiting for the beloved night train to Wien Hauptbahnhof (Vienna) to arrive; the train was four hours late. Let's not neglect to acknowledge the downsides.
Even after that bad experience, I still support them as a great alternative to air travel, but I hope for more reliability in the future.
Before the advent of teh interwebz, railing in Europe had a train-based accommodations hack.
When trying to visit a number of cities in not many more days, you could take an overnight into City X, arriving in the morning, and leave that same night on another overnight to your next city. This had the distinct advantage that you didn't have to waste most of a morning trying to find a room - not in a hostel, not anywhere. You had one day - but the full day - to explore.
The disadvantage was that you might have to deal with currency exchange (pre-Euro!) when making those same-evening sleeper reservations. In particular, Copenhagen was a PITA. Cash only, Danish crowns only, ripoff currency exchange only.
In India, for anywhere there's an overnight bus or train, I prefer it to a flight. Then again, our train and bus networks cater to a very large population, and trains in particular are dirt cheap.
I remember going from Hyderabad to Delhi, a distance of 1500+ km, for Rs 626 or so during my college days, in a sleeper coach. (2010) The ride took 26 hours, but was comfortable, and my only means of travel to and from college multiple times a year. The price is now 695 for a sleeper coach, or about 8.5 USD. 3-tier ac is more comfortable at 1825 INR, about 22 USD. A one way flight is about 50-55 USD equivalent and takes 2h30m or so.
I used to tell people anyone who flew from hyderabad to bangalore was a masochist. It was my regular route, and an overnight sleeper ac bus costed the same as what a cab would cost me to and from airport alone. In addition, due to travel times, security checks, etc the overall time lost was far greater by air, given that you can sleep well and wake up refereshed when travelling by bus.
The only times I take a flight these days is if the bus or train options take over 15 hours or if there's. No good overnight sleeper option. Time awake and lost to transportation tilts in favor of shorter air travel then.
I wish the US had cheaper sleeper options more like second-class service in India. This makes much better use of space, but it requires different cars.
They're essentially coach during the day, but at night the bench-backs swing up to become beds (so, two side by side bench seats become two vertically stacked bunk beds). This does require some consensus on the train about when the "transformation" is supposed to happen (incompatible with hyper-individualism?). I also suspect that it is made more viable by India's extra-wide rail gauge (they can fit an extra, sideways bench on the other side of the aisle).
Eastern European trains are close to this, but they seem to have 2/3rds the capacity, because they don't have the sideways benches. Soviet rail gauges are again wider than the "standard" Western one, but perhaps not as wide as India's.
Let's see:
- "The 1,676 mm (5 ft 6 in) gauge is now commonly referred to as Indian gauge."
- "The standard Russian railway gauge of 1,524 mm"
- "The U.S. federal safety standards allow the standard gauge to vary from 4 ft 8 in (1,420 mm) to 4 ft 9 1⁄2 in (1,460 mm)"
So yeah, India has nearly an extra foot to work with.
Still though, I think Eastern European style cars ought to be possible in the US. It shouldn't be "sit upright in coach all night, or get your own private room", with nothing in-between.
They are super common in many countries including mine. It's a very neat way to travel somewhere for a weekend (leave Friday evening, return Monday morning), and it is typically fancier and more comfortable than a plane.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 171 ms ] threadevery once in a while i read something or hear a narration and i cant help but suspect that GTP had some part in writing it. this article gives me very strong GTP vibes. i remember in 2018 i realized that i would never again be able to assume that an online account, post, comment, article was written by a human. and here we are. think about the author of this article. he would almost be forced to use GTP because it makes the writing and composition so much better. so much smoother. i dont think this is a good situation we are wading into…
We should not accept news that use weasel words so blatantly.
Air travel within Europe is cheap and easy, night trains are far more expensive, slow and run unreliable schedules sometimes, and they often don’t even take you to places you want to go.
In America though, night trains would be awesome, since air travel is expensive, hellish, and the country is built in a way that the destinations most people will want to go to are already laid out in an efficient layout due to the car focused culture.
What? Air travel may be hellish, but it's super-cheap domestically compared to driving or trains. Both air and train share the issue of needing to rent a car or pay to be ferried about at $destination.
1. This can change due to political reasons. E.g. "As part of far-reaching 2021 climate legislation, France proposed banning domestic flights where equivalent journeys taking less than two-and-a-half hours on its excellent and wide-ranging rail network are available."
2. Yes, you all know the USD 10 airfaires from Ryanair. But often destinations are very limited and often it is 3rd tier airports. Good luck getting there.
I welcome night trains. They were always cheap, good an convenient in China and Eastern Europe (legendary Prague -> Budapest -> Bucharest line e.g.). I hope this might get more convenient in Western Europe in the future. And why not add a nice bar and coffee place and internet when you are on it. Board at 8, have a few drinks, get up at 7, have a coffee, work and get off at 10am.
Germany particularly is a basket case. If you take the "high speed" train from Berlin to Köln, it takes nearly five hours, the train stops lots of times, and with the exception of a few tens of kilometers never hits anywhere near its maximum speed. Combined with all the delays, cancelled trains, strikes, etc. It makes for a bit unpredictable experience. Domestic flights are well under 1 hour, typically. Even with the hassle of getting to and from airports, it's way faster.
https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ has a nice map that you can show the maximum speeds on rail segments. Spain and France are the best. I've taken high speed trains in both and their high speed trains go the maximum speed most of the journey. Germany is notable for just not having a lot of rail suitable for its trains to drive their maximum speed.
Germany could do a lot better. But it will require massive investments.
I think the idea of a night train is more attractive than the reality of it being very slow, expensive, and relatively uncomfortable (at least I never managed to sleep well on one).
IMHO domestic flights in many countries can start transitioning to fully electric hops in the next decade or so. Anything under 700 miles is fair game for that. The battery technology is getting there. So, investing in lots of rail might not be the smartest thing.
And of course their solution to this isn't to try to improve the trains. It's to ban flying between anywhere that trains exist! In case it isn't clear, this isn't a hypothetical: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36046764
* except for private jets
* in fact except anything that would give this ban teeth, since Macron's cabinet members all end up working for shady companies afterward
That's not a defense. It makes it worse. The elites still get to pollute, but we don't. And it's especially bad since flying commercial is way better for the environment than flying private.
I am sure in the US it is and will always be talk. Train service in the US is terrible compared to what is in the EU. It will never happen.
Maybe this will work in Boston where the subways run a 3 MPH (~5kph) due to ignored repairs over the past 30/40 years.
And train service in the EU is terrible compared to Japan.
If EU/US trains ran like Japanese Shinkanzen then there would be exactly zero need for night trains.
You would board a clean train, that departed on-time, and whisked you along the countryside, reaching your destination hundreds of miles/kilometers away in 3–4 hours.
Before the pedants arrive, yes I am aware there are some night trains in Japan, but they constitute 0.0000001% of Japanese train services, and are mostly a fun-tourism thing.
Nah, if I need to be somewhere in the morning I prefer a sleeper train over a regular train. Can't sleep while seating, gives me utterly horrible back pain.
Sorry, it's actually 0.000001%.
- A. Pedant
https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2023/02/21/green-line...
I recently had to go to Edinburgh. It was £235 standard class to get a train that takes several hours. Or £80 to get a plane that takes 2h door to door (1h in the air).
If I want to go anywhere in Europe it's quicker, easier and almost always cheaper to fly. Even on a bad Lufthansa flight where everything goes wrong :)
Edit: just checked I can go from my LHR to BER on Monday and back same day for £127. I can't get to the English Channel and across it at any time for twice that.
Anyway shifting all our trips to train travel is not the answer. The answer, which I do prefer, is not travelling at all when avoidable. I only ever travel for holidays and funerals. Never on business. All business can be conducted on conference calls.
But for personal use I don't think travelling less is an option. I hate travel but it's important to see family too. We can't just roll the world back to where a different continent was unreachable.
As for the trains, no. Standing up with a suitcase between your legs is not uncommon. I prefer Ryanair to that.
When I travel by air I have hand luggage and that's it. Maybe if I do a couple of weeks away I'll have a small suitcase as carry on. Don't pack the kitchen sink.
UK rail is truly depressing.
In Japan you can take a Shinkanzen from Tokyo to Hokkaido, 4.5 hours, 800km (appx 500 miiles) for 20,000 Yen (£108) first class or 11,000 Yen (£60) standard class. And that is walk-up fare for "right now", you can use an app to get advanced fares.
And I can assure you those 4.5 hours will be insanely comfortable compared to the UK. And you can pick up some very tasty food at the station, unlike the UK where you can only buy garbage.
In the UK I agree, I'd fly from London to Edinburgh in preference to the ghastly train. Assuming the London train even leaves the station and is not delayed or cancelled, as usual.
My toddler went on a rampage the whole way, too, since it was an open cabin and not a private cabin
I've never taken the train in the UK, but had a much more comfortable ride in Italy a few years back
You'd be hard pressed to find any capital project that's been built in the UK that anyone regrets, and that includes the Millenium Dome. I'm old enough to remember opposition to HS1 ("No to route 2!"), and opposition to CrossRail.
No one would argue that any of those were a waste.
Yet we've cancelled parts of HS2.
With the absurd bidding process of:
Govt: we have a budget of £10bn for this section in the Cotswolds, how cheap can you do it?
Bidder, erm, £9.99bn ??
Govt: ok!
Bidder: kerching!
Trying to find the link, but Rob Holden, HS1 boss, stated that HS2 budgets were publicly disclosed and the above is pretty much the outcome of contract firms knowing how much the Govt is prepared to pay.
Had we pressed ahead with HS2 we might have gotten an HS3 and 4, but that's vanishingly unlikely now.
> Assuming the London train even leaves the station and is not delayed or cancelled, as usual.
Apparently German trains are far worse than London right now.
I'm always curious about these "we should obviously do it" comments - what if it cost £1tn? Obviously not then right?
Clearly there is a price point at which you should cancel it. What price would you say that is?
I'm with you on most points, fair enough.
But don't quote "land costs", and especially please don't cite "population density" at me when comparing UK and Japan.
Plus you potentially save on a night’s accommodation.
Last time I took the Caledonian Sleeper was for a morning meeting in Glasgow. My colleagues flew from Luton on the first morning flight and turned up irritable and tired. I got the Cally Sleeper and was fresh as a daisy with no time wasted - in fact I could do a couple of hours’ work while they were trogging around airports and planes.
Only if you manage to fall/stay asleep...
Presumably for some people the sleeper saves a hotel night, so there's that.
Pricing is definitely inverted vs long ago because I would take the sleeper (archaic term for what we're now calling "night train"??) from Edinburgh to go to business meetings in London vs flying which was much more expensive, we well as inconvenient. On the train you get to walk off the platform reasonably refreshed after a night's sleep and your bacon/egg/beans breakfast and saunter to your 9am meeting. By plane you'd be getting up at 2-3am.
Surely doesn't include wait time?
Or did you mean airport door to airport door
Timing was 2h14m to be precise so a little over. 11 minutes to get to the airport from here. I was running somewhat late I will add!
Eurostar St Pancras - Lille €144 Monday evening. But I agree that the prices of air vs rail are way out of whack.
https://www.eurostar.com/search/rw-en?origin=7015400&destina...
One major issue is one of headspace, as you sacrifice a day of holiday for a day of travel. You have to feel on holiday right as you enter the train. If you're getting antsy for every hour not spend at your destination, you will never be happy with anything but flying. But we had a wonderful time on the ferry and waiting for our connecting trains, we had a nice time in both Newcastle and Amsterdam.
With a toddler in tow, the freedom of movement and the space in a train or on a ferry beats air travel or car travel almost every time.
For next year we plan on spending even more time "travelling". Adding one or two additional overnight stops between rail connections is fine with us. It's fewer days at the destination and it's a bit more expensive with the multi-leg train journeys. But as the travel is not very stressful that way, it comes out about even.
What in tarnation is up with American rail?? Picking random routes spanning the EU, I’m seeing things like a 15 hour sleeper journey costing €100 for a private sleeper cabin (or €16 for one bed in a shared 6-person cabin)
I believe that the US has terrible passenger rail, so it makes sense for things to be overly expensive, but in Europe this is a major problem too. One fair fix would be to start taxing flying more (e.g. fuel is untaxed right now) and actually give tax benefits to trains.
Covid scuppered that, but it's something I'd love to do - even with my recurring dream of being awoken to pitchforks from the rest of the sleeping train thanks to my snoring!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001ryt1
Capacity is ultimately much harder to expand on 1D trains compared to 3D airspace. Economic pressure also means the removal of what is, for many people, the most romantic part of the whole experience: the dining car. The economics seem to be this is basically always going to be about first class travel, at least if you want a bed, which is a shame.
Listening to this program made me really want to experience it again. The last time I took night trains was when I was backpacking around China in the 90s where there was very much a culture of first class travel (closed cabins, duvets, two-double or one-double bunks) but also a very accessibly priced second tier of carriages with open cabins and a pair of triple bunks. I loved every moment of it.
Freight has no opinion about speed. Trains are great for this.
Reducing the total amount of freight that has to be moved, and moving as much of it to rail as possible, is the easiest improvement we can make.
I think the US falls short sometimes because of the unwillingness to admit of excessive first class things that can help subsidize cheaper options.
This hypothesis doesn’t explain why international (night) trains are booming again in Europe.
The Beijing-Shanghai HSR route (a northbound and a southbound track on a right of way 20 meters wide) and every UK airport combined, carried about the same number of passengers every year before COVID, just above 200 million. We can make conscious choices about whether we want comfortable accommodations or cattle cars, and cattle cars are what we ask for when we say "Absolute minimum capex on rolling stock" and "We're going to size passenger station platforms for 6 cars instead of for 20 cars".
If you are running 10 million passengers per year, but still running rolling stock that will fully utilize the capacity of the rairoad, you can afford to use space 20x less efficiently than the Beijing-Shanghai HSR line does.
In contrast, the sleeper train is easy: be at Munich Hbf at 2240, grab a few burgers for late night snack binges and beers to share with your roommates, enter the train at 2250, it leaves at 2252, empty the crate of beers and the burgers, fall asleep, wake up at 07:45, go for a shower, eat breakfast, arrive at 08:50 well rested in Hamburg.
As for the stops you get used to it, I couldn't sleep during my first night train trip, after 5+ I know sleep like a baby. I haven't used planes in a few years too, and for my use case it's actually cheaper/more convenient than planes
The 6 is too much for me.
It wasn't cheap but I really miss it.
Yeah, it does take longer, but frankly I find air travel to be stressful and uncomfortable. The longer travel time is worth it to me, especially if it's roughly the same price. Not to mention that air travel at our airport has had declining on time reliability, probably because of problems with and shitty business practices of its biggest airline. Our trip might take double or triple what we expect anyway due to canceled or delayed flights.
As a bonus, a sleeper car ticket counts as "first class", so we get to enjoy the lounge at Moynihan Train Hall during our stopover in NYC.
Clarification edit: the Amtrak Crescent roomette has been on par pricewise with two regular old sardine-class airplane tickets. I'm not comparing first class to first class.
I've never actually flown first class. I doubt it is as nice as an Amtrak roomette.
I'd really like to travel by train sleeper car, but I just can't justify it as transportation (rather than as "an experience") given the prices.
In the US, either air travel needs to get a lot more expensive, or they need to pump subsidies into trains, or it'll stay an impracticable niche thing.
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. I don't take it repeatedly for the "experience". I take it because it's a more pleasant way to travel at roughly the same price point.
Do you also consider road trips or long bus rides to be not transportation?
> given the prices.
Again, with two people, it's been about the same price the last few times we've done it.
What rates are you finding? Because in my experience just earlier this year, while moving cross country, I found that an Amtrak across the US costed exorbitantly more than an airplane ticket, and comes with a dozen times as many transfers. It was cheaper still to just say screw it and rent a uHaul the entire way.
> 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.
But it's slower, so the time-cost is higher.
The actual service provided on a first class plane flight is definitely more classy. Everything in the plane is more likely to be in perfect repair, with no signs of wear and tear like you see on Amtrak's aging Superliners. And the flight attendants are more likely to give you "first-class" treatment than an Amtrak porter in small ways like more consistently using "ma'am" and "sir" when they talk to you. None of that is consequential to me, but I realize it's worth calling out because my rust belt sensibilities are maybe tuned a bit differently from others'.
If you don't mind things being a bit less polished, though, a Roomette is physically more comfortable than a first-class seat in almost every way. It's quieter, you can get up and walk around as much as you want. You don't have to deal with airports and airport security. You can close your door and make a phone call without bothering anybody. You can close your door if you don't want to listen to your neighbor's conversation. You can close your door and watch a movie without headphones. There's an actual table so you can play a proper card game with your traveling partner. etc.
From what I can work out, the economics don't scale in the way we would assume. 200 people on a train sounds like a large economy of scale, and indeed, on the excursion trains we have been on, it is cheaper than a normal 1st class ticket for a longer journey even with 20-30 paid employees aboard but I don't think the access charges work for regular trains.
Hopefully they can work in the US although from what I understand, the Eastern seaboard is much more setup for passenger traffic than the rest where you are more likely to get slow average speeds or frequent stops for single track.
At the same time, people who compare the plane usually compare the air ticket to the train ticket, not the ticket to the airport, the things you might buy there, the time you have to waste waiting, the car parking at both ends etc.
And you still get a bit of a scenery in the morning as well. The conductor on our train called out various points of interest.
I remember sitting at the Padova rail station until 3AM waiting for the beloved night train to Wien Hauptbahnhof (Vienna) to arrive; the train was four hours late. Let's not neglect to acknowledge the downsides.
Even after that bad experience, I still support them as a great alternative to air travel, but I hope for more reliability in the future.
When trying to visit a number of cities in not many more days, you could take an overnight into City X, arriving in the morning, and leave that same night on another overnight to your next city. This had the distinct advantage that you didn't have to waste most of a morning trying to find a room - not in a hostel, not anywhere. You had one day - but the full day - to explore.
The disadvantage was that you might have to deal with currency exchange (pre-Euro!) when making those same-evening sleeper reservations. In particular, Copenhagen was a PITA. Cash only, Danish crowns only, ripoff currency exchange only.
I remember going from Hyderabad to Delhi, a distance of 1500+ km, for Rs 626 or so during my college days, in a sleeper coach. (2010) The ride took 26 hours, but was comfortable, and my only means of travel to and from college multiple times a year. The price is now 695 for a sleeper coach, or about 8.5 USD. 3-tier ac is more comfortable at 1825 INR, about 22 USD. A one way flight is about 50-55 USD equivalent and takes 2h30m or so.
I used to tell people anyone who flew from hyderabad to bangalore was a masochist. It was my regular route, and an overnight sleeper ac bus costed the same as what a cab would cost me to and from airport alone. In addition, due to travel times, security checks, etc the overall time lost was far greater by air, given that you can sleep well and wake up refereshed when travelling by bus.
The only times I take a flight these days is if the bus or train options take over 15 hours or if there's. No good overnight sleeper option. Time awake and lost to transportation tilts in favor of shorter air travel then.
They're essentially coach during the day, but at night the bench-backs swing up to become beds (so, two side by side bench seats become two vertically stacked bunk beds). This does require some consensus on the train about when the "transformation" is supposed to happen (incompatible with hyper-individualism?). I also suspect that it is made more viable by India's extra-wide rail gauge (they can fit an extra, sideways bench on the other side of the aisle).
Eastern European trains are close to this, but they seem to have 2/3rds the capacity, because they don't have the sideways benches. Soviet rail gauges are again wider than the "standard" Western one, but perhaps not as wide as India's.
Let's see:
- "The 1,676 mm (5 ft 6 in) gauge is now commonly referred to as Indian gauge."
- "The standard Russian railway gauge of 1,524 mm"
- "The U.S. federal safety standards allow the standard gauge to vary from 4 ft 8 in (1,420 mm) to 4 ft 9 1⁄2 in (1,460 mm)"
So yeah, India has nearly an extra foot to work with.
Still though, I think Eastern European style cars ought to be possible in the US. It shouldn't be "sit upright in coach all night, or get your own private room", with nothing in-between.
They are super common in many countries including mine. It's a very neat way to travel somewhere for a weekend (leave Friday evening, return Monday morning), and it is typically fancier and more comfortable than a plane.