Haha I’m scared of sounding like I don’t like high speed rail, which I do! I love trains in general, I’m interrailing right now! Buuut I felt this was a relevant place to link this fascinating article (slightly click-baity headline) about how high speed rail in Europe is actually not constructed in a very good way, because it ends up eliminating many of the positive sides with the European railway network: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/12/high-speed-trains-are-killing-the-european-railway-network/
Edit: fixed typo
The problem isn’t how they’re constructed, it’s how they’re run, and this article is basically just complaining about SNCF without realising it. They run bad timetables and aim for high occupancy rather than transporting more people. Jon Worth has better writing on the topic IMO.
That’s really a great article, thanks for the link!
Still, there’s plenty of criticism in the article I linked that is not touched on, I hardly think it becomes irrelevant by reading Jon Worth’s writing! Even with his proposals I’m really not sure if we would get back the cheap and still relatively fast connections that have been removed. To me there’s not a clear benefit to getting rid of the old “low-speed” rail even if we fix SNCF.
It’s cheaper to run a high speed service than a low speed one. You can transport more people with the same number of staff and trains because it runs faster. The solution isn’t to run an artificially cheaper low speed service along side, it’s to run the high speed service in a sane way.
Is it really? Because that claim goes against my intuition so if it’s true I would be happy to get more details! But what you say doesn’t quite make sense to me, sorry if I seem pedantic: transporting people faster is not the same as transporting more people. You transport more people per unit time, but not necessarily in total. I also don’t see how faster trains need less staff. When you say it’s cheaper, do you also take into account investment cost, or do you neglect those and just mean operating costs?
A single train with a single crew can transport more people in a day when travelling at higher speed.
This is running costs. The capital costs are irrelevant.
I’ll express my last bit of disagreement with your reasoning and then I’ll probably leave this argumentation, but I will read if you choose to respond. This is not what cost means, you are basically saying that your gut tells you it should be cheaper without any supportive arguments. If e.g. the train requires more energy to run faster, that alone could make it more costly, even if it has a higher capacity. Since neither one of us seems to have idea of the actual costs of running trains, I don’t think we’ll get anywhere with this!
Is it really hurting the low speed networks? I would imagine there are many stations that high speed rail doesn’t go to. Let goods travel long distance low speed, let people go fast.
So the article is very long so let me TL;DR a little. It mentions that when high speed rail is build, existing low-speed rails are often removed. Those removes routes are a little slower but often MUCH cheaper. I would say, like the author, that more expensive trains that are a little faster doesn’t rhyme well with “let people go fast”. He also has examples of night trains being removed in favour of a high speed rail, which hardly is a time-save if you count sleeping at night! Great examples in the article.
High speed rail doesn’t have to hurt low-speed rail, it just has the way we’ve been doing it in Europe.
Hmm. I see the argument, but it seems to be more like an issue with pricing than a flaw with HSR. Once high speed track is in service it should be able to run plenty of trains all around the clock, I can see how it could make low speed rail seem redundant.
I’d think it would make more sense to keep the low speed tracks and use them for freight, and also make high speed rail cheaper to ride.
I don’t disagree with you, I didn’t mean to say that there’s no way of HSR being good, just that maybe we’re not doing it quite right! Maybe just fixing pricing would be possible, I don’t know what. I also don’t know if they actually got rid of the old tracks or just of the train route. I just want both HSR and the old trains back haha!
Deja vu!
You listed “Transit Enthusiasts” and “Bottoms” as if that isn’t the same thing
How dare you be 100% correct
High ✅
Speed ✅
Rail ✅
Oh no they’re all me
I would assume a cocaine addict actually wants a high-cocaine rail.
A high-coke rail off a hand rail on high-speed rail.
Hold on, I can only breathe so deeply…
I love seeing these memes and checking how many apply to me
I haven’t quite checked off cocaine addicts yet… but I think every other box may or may not be at least somewhat applicable.
I’m 5 out of 8. I won’t say which.
I just want to see what happens when a bullet train hits a moose.
Fuck i hate train
mission
If only it were true.
Source: California voting for the Hyperloop in 2008
It’s definitely true, California is just governed by right-wingers.
I’m not afraid of flying. I’m too big for the planes. Trains are much nicer for people more than two standard deviations taller than average.
From my experience, environmentalists don’t like large construction projects of any kind.
It depends on the kind. There are groups that would prefer to see human presence reduced to a speck so nature can thrive. There are groups that somehow care for one single bog or meadow but fail to see the bigger picture. There are also those that simply want to protect everything and do support large projects provided they fulfill a lot of regulations. There are also people such as myself who have given themselves to Realpolitik: Local environmentalism is pointless if global protection fails (some drama added for effect)
There are groups that somehow care for one single bog or meadow but fail to see the bigger picture
This is mainly what I was thinking about. People care a lot more about things local to them, rather than a railway which probably won’t have any nearby stations.
Funny, as I’m a staunch environmentalist, and I’m fine with large projects if they have a few things:
- a purpose that serves society (and not just shareholders)
- a plan for mitigating environmental impacts (e.g., and environmental impact assessment --> environmental management plans)
- A compensation and offsetting plan for impacts that can’t be mitigated
- A plan for closure and reclamation
- birdwatchers
- Girls in Sundresses
