Alon Levy’s Article: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2022/06/05/intercity-rail-frequency-and-the-perils-of-market-segmentation/
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Hi, my name’s Reece. I’m a passionate Creator, Transportation Planner, and Software Developer, interested in rapid transportation all around my home base of Toronto, Canada, as well as the whole world!
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You should’ve made this video earlier when I was doing an assessment at school for persuasive advertising and I had to try persuade people to use train travel instead of air travel!
Due to monopolistic nature of railways, the best alternative to an airplane is any automobile with automatic pilot. Hundreds of cars can be built with the energy and metal used in production of a single train. Therefore the production of trains should be made harder via imposing more taxes on train travel.
Agree with this video for the most part – a lot of today's flights strictly speaking are unnecessary and stressful to take. The biggest reason why domestic flights exist in the UK (and short hop international ones to France, Germany, Spain etc) exist is due to the sheer cost of train travel within and linking to the UK. The fares are so high people are willing to take a more stressful option, and when the flights advertise a "1 hour" journey time (which doesn't include the waiting, security and check-in etc) it pushes people even further towards them. Add to that coaches are also really cheap if lengthy options, and high speed rail just isn't all that compelling for most people here.
I live near the city of Esbjerg (5th largest city in Denmark) and enjoy holidays in Edinburgh (Capital of Scotland). Back in the day, I would be able to take a ferry to Newcastle. If that Ferry came back, I could easily take that, and then, I could take a High Speed train to Edinburgh. Where's now, i'm basically bound to take a plane.
Very common in Germany to take High Speed Rail direct to Frankfurt Airport and then board an intercontinental flight.
Do you suggest partnerships between the airlines and rail? If you want to go from the DC area to a location in Europe, and that airline doesn’t offer the flight out of DC, but they have it out of NY, your solution might cause even MORE flights, such as DC – CO – NY – EU.
Very informative and presented. Lets hope governments are bold to replace short haul flights with high speed rail. Melbourne -Sydney would make so much sense economically, environmentally, convenience and experience wise …but the Airlines ( Qantas) have the government captive to the status quo. Must pay a lot for lobbying!
A point frequently missed is that metro areas are huge. Rail can make a suburban stop and a downtown stop making rail much more convenient to the larger area rather than a single airport on the edge of town.
I don't think electric planes will ever be a thing.
Yes… BUT there’s a point where train is too expensive, reason why new fuel like SAF or Hydrogen for aircraft is the future, specially in cases where air travel is the only option
Yeah except when you want to take TGV from Hendaye (the most southwestern town of France) to Nice for example and the only way is passing through Paris
To all my PF homies watching this video 💯💯
China's HSR makes inter-city commuting practical.
Who is interested in a significantly lower cost alternative which can be as fast, safe & reliable… as well as higher capacity than hyperloop /maglev? Using already proven technologies, and fully compliant with all international standards & regulations… it should also be faster to build & develop…
Promote & see our legacy for all generations, especially those yet to come!
No transport network is immune to faults and weather disruptions for instance. All modes of transport working together are part of a back up system in order to complement each other despite the fact for me all transport system should be made of railways of all kind and shapes.
Thank you for sharing interesting content.
Britain has a historic and serious infrastructure problem leading to lack of capacity, and that makes the railway to suck in that nation. There is a High Speed Line that if not explained to outsiders can pass the idea it connects the country's major cities sucha as in France and Spain for instance. Actually the High Speed 1 is a rapid connection from Londo to the Southeastern most region of England to reach the Channel Tunnel Rail Link where tha under sea crossing to Mainland Europe starts. High Spees 1 is an International HIgh Speed Services line with the addition of Semi-Fast domestic services taking advantage of speed avoiding commuter lines, thus the reason why Eurostar Services do not connect intermidiate stations apart from allowing passengers to boarding and alight this services for international travel only. Hopefully the introduction of High Speed 2 finally makes justice to british commuters can be served of much faster domestic connections denied for decades.
I was at Stratford International the other day and the abandoned platforms 1 & 4 are a pretty dismal sight; I will forever regret that Eurostar services north of London were never implemented. Putting aside certain political nonsense that would forbid any kind of easy travel to mainland Europe, having international trains running the length of the country would be fantastic, and ideally would've taken a big chunk out of airline emissions.
Stratford is not a stop for Eurostar because it takes too long. For high speed, the train needs quite a few kms to accelerate and since Stratford is so close to St. Pancras, you basically need to slow down right after you leave. For high speed rail to compete with air travel, you need as few stops as possible. So more stops on high speed rail take relatively more time off the schedule than stops do for conventional speed rail.
Pratt and Whitney is making an engine and aircraft with bombardier which will be as efficient as a gray hound bus….. sooooo
There are also flights I ask myself why they even exist. for Example Zürich-Géneve. there is a direct Train every 30min and it takes less than 3h so why people use the plane there?
3:27 French man here 🙂
Yes, high-speed rail is better than flights but regular rail is much better is most cases. If we have convenient overnight sleeper trains running on conventional rail, that should better than both flights and high-speed rail. I don't understand why people feel the need for speed when conventional rail works well in 90% of the situations.
After a month for watching this video, I realised that there is another notable difference between airplanes and trains: Their stations. Trains run on rails so not only need infrastructure for the stations but also for the path but thanks to being grounded, trains can run underground and don't require much clearance while airports need a large, flat area on a surface for their runway which must be clear from obstacles and as a result imposes a height limit on the surrounding area, not to mention the sound of airplanes is harder to deal with than those of trains.
I don’t know, if I wanna get from England to America I’m gonna need a plane. Trains can’t match cross Atlantic speed and usability. However if I want to get from one end of my country to another, I’d much rather use a train than a plane, unfortunately our service isn’t as reliable as driving or flying as our government is crap. I also think that unless a lot of rail infrastructure is improved, taking a train to Portugal every year instead of flying would take days instead of 6 hours (including airport time), so in the current day and age planes definitely are superior. But I would love it if I could just take a high speed train rather than flying as it could be comfier and have less faff on the ground.
“English speaking countries aren’t very good with high speed rail” England: am I a joke to you?
I think short flights (2 hrs) should be banned in countries where possible and an air miles system should be introduced where you are limited how much you can fly per year. People travel way to much by flight and most isn't 100% necessary. If global warming is to be reduced I think the airline industry might have to shrink.
Okay genius. Where do YOU buy transatlantic rail tickets?
Sweden might have a problem with excessive high speed rail plans. There are plans of building HSR between the big cities (i.e Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö) while some other cities have kinda bad train connections. Norrbotniabanan (planned rail line going Umeå-Skellefteå-Piteå-Luleå) will take until atleast 2030, a timeline that could be shortened if those HSR plans in the big cities didnt take priority
Rail vehicles aren't able to get up into the air.
Paris to Francfort in 4h when Plane is 50 minutes is not very a good alternative to me when you take 4 times as long …
I am not sure I understand the eco friendly side of HSL train because you need to literally destroy the environment to build a competitive HSL over its whole length.
When airplane you only need to build the airport infrastructure.
And don’t tell me you should use existing infrastructure because they are already busy and too slow (talking about France where I leave)
Given the option i will use the HSR everytime.
You are right that the High Speed Railway is better than Airplanes because you can enjoy it and you can see rice paddies when you are on the trip. It is the top 5 countries that are the best high speed railway Japan, China, UK to France, Korea and then European Countries. I hope that in the Philippines we will have an Interconnect from Ilocos or Cagayan Provinces to Cebu and Davao City and then the main station will also be near Manila itself because we are having a hard time traveling, it will take us a few hours if we travel because most here in the Philippines are still lacking on the road and railway and there are also many people who object because their land was affected when they were included in the right of way, so this is our country, we don't know when we will have a High Speed Railway in the whole of Southeast Asia, Indonesia would have it in Philippines we will have it soon and if we don't really have a High Speed Railway in the Philippines, maybe I should think about going to another country like China and Japan because this is really the best High Speed Railway and for when I go to China and Japan I can only experience riding this type of transportation.
After taking the Acela from Boston to NYC once in my early 20s, I was totally sold on trains. I used to either drive or take a bus to NYC which was always a nightmare. I had no idea traveling by train could be enjoyable. It was by far the least stressful way I've ever traveled
Some good points about trains being able to board faster and carry more passengers than planes. However, the fact remains: they are slower and more expensive than planes. Most HSR lines are unprofitable, so it's no wonder that not many are being built. Some governments dole out huge subsidies to get them built and get people to ride them, but this forces everybody to pay for them, hwhether or not they're actually riding them. Not cool.
As for the convenience of downtown-to-downtown travel:
* Not all HSR stations are downtown. Due to the large turning radius required for HSR, this can be quite impractical. Many HSR stations around the world are, in fact, quite far from downtown.
* Not all airports are out in the boonies. Consider, for example: Billy Bishop (Toronto City Centre) Airport
* As you noted, not everyone is traveling from downtown to downtown
* But adding non-downtown stations on an HSR line reduces their high speed!
* The traveling time to/from a non-downtown airport can be mitigated by making HSR or even maglev trains connecting the airport with downtown. This is certainly far cheaper than building long-distance HSR.
As for security wait times, this is a policy failure. Air travel probably has too much security. Rail travel probably has too little. Esp. considering the 2004 Madrid train bombings.
I think the biggest argument for HSR vs air travel, is higher carbon emissions of air travel. I suppose if you think global warming is a bad thing, then this can be a good argument to encourage HSR vs air travel. And with high carbon taxes (to internalize the negative externalities, as you say), the price of HSR could be competitive, without the need for subsidies. Personally, I think global warming is a good thing, so carbon emissions are actually positive externalities. It would be hard to convince me, as a traveler, to choose HSR over air travel. Again, HSR is slower and more expensive than air travel. And the few other advantages (faster boarding) just don't really do much to convince me. It would be hard to convince me as a voter to support high carbon taxes for air travel or high subsidies for HSR.
My point is: If you take global warming out of the equation or even see it as a positive benefit, like me, it's really hard to see the appeal of HSR vs air travel. And, though a lot of woke companies and celebs like to virtue signal about global warming, not everybody is "on board", so to speak.
Biofuels being even close to as bad as fossil fuels is a myth, especially considering how much timberland can now be used to make it since paper is falling out of favor. Obviously high speed rail is still a necessity, but I seriously doubt we will ever need electric jets withe the new biofuels coming out.
High speed can work, but in the US, this will have to be Maglev. The US is so large that 250 kph ain't gonna cut it. If MagLev is run at 600 kmh, there's a chance this could even happen in the US. But with the current crop of 'high-speed' trains, this is not doable in North America. And even for Switzerland, Maglev would be beneficial for the East-West transit. Even more so in Germany.
does the southeastern rail network have some high speed rail i think it does it think it goes up to 150 on some parts?
Airports use a lot of space? Only if you compare them to a train station, without taking into account ALL the land the train uses to go from point A to point B. Remember, once an airplane gets off the ground, it uses air to get to its destination: a train uses land, continuously. Can you imagine how many thousands of square meters or kilometers an HSR line uses? Just multiply it’s width by its length. Not to mention all the areas the rail line physically cuts in half. So as far as land usage goes, the trains are a disaster compared to planes.
i once looked at travelling from copenhagen to london via rail. unfortunatly the price was exorbitant compared to a flight as one would have to purchase around ten different tickets. hopefully in future the train network will offer better options for international travel