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“Ah! Here comes my train.”
Train speeds by and doesn’t stop
“Drat! Just missed it. I am Brian and this is a very old joke.”
Wait, you guys have trains?
Oh yeah, we have so many trains. They go everywhere, we have a very comprehensive network of them
Oh wait… Did you mean passenger trains?
Wait, you guys have trains?
Depending on whether the stars are right. Or whether you need to cross the tracks - there’s always one when you need to cross the tracks.
there’s always one when you need to cross the tracks.
This, but you ever notice that it’s pretty much never passenger trains? This efficient mode of transportation is largely designed for and used by industry rather than for travel or commute. The exception is within big enough cities like DC and NYC to get from one side of the city to the other or anywhere between. Sure there are some trains that go between cities, but they’re largely unreliable because passenger cars yield to industrial freight, and so people are less inclined to opt for them over planes or cars, and so there are fewer trains available to go wherever you’re going in the window you’re trying to go. So you book a flight instead.
I’d take a long train ride over a road trip any fucking day. I don’t understand anybody who would rather drive than chill and read a book or play games or watch movies or nap.
This, but you ever notice that it’s pretty much never passenger trains? This efficient mode of transportation is largely designed for and used by industry rather than for travel or commute.
Yet massive amounts of goods are shipped long-distance via truck anyway, clogging up highways and polluting far more per-ton and per-mile moved.
Truly the worst of both worlds! USA! USA! USA!
Exactly, it’s not that the US doesn’t have trains, there are plenty. Lots of relatively small towns have rails going to or through them. The problem is that only a tiny fraction of them are passenger rail.
Got it, always cross the tracks
Stand on the tracks to summon the train.
The train needs a human sacrifice
We have trains that have lethal derailments every year or so.
It’s not like a BMW is more reliable.
Every BMW comes with a complimentary jar of blue electrical smoke. 💨
Does the blue electric smoke at least stay inside the jar while I’m leasing it?
Yeah, but you can be stuck in traffic in your BMW without needing to interact with the poors!
What the actual fuck are you talking about?
BMW’s are famously known to be in the workshop more often than on the road. My friend’s BMW had a type of self-cleaning oil. All he has to do is top off the oil once a month. Just ignore the stain on the parking lot, it’s not oil.
They are very sensitive and do require to regular cleanings and oil changes
But saying that they are less reliable since our regulations are so much stricter, no less to say that they less lasting is not only the silliest fucking thing I have heard all tuesday but objectively false
European cars generally last much longer than American vehicles
I’m European. I’m not talking about American cars.
And it’s also a joke with a bit of truth to it. They do require much more care so they’re more often in the workshop than, say a Toyota.
If you can read than in my source you will see that no thats objectively not true
And if you think that danish cars are better than bmw-s then you are delusional
It’s a common stereotype in America, I guess periodic inspections are too expensive and they skip them.
In Germany BMW are considered quite reliable. Expensive to maintain but reliable.
They are very sensitive and do need periodic cleanings and oil changes, but its really nothing you can’t do on your own?
But saying that they are less reliable since oir regulations are so much stricter, and to say less lasting is not only the silliest fucking thing I have heard all tuesday but objectively false
European cars generally last much longer than American vehicles
As a European I have to say, you are very optimistic about our train schedules.
As an American, I would say the same…except about the American train schedules.
If you’re German, RIP in peace.
A German intern came to our american city and was flabbergasted that the trains here ran consistently.
I had a laugh since I always assumed it’d be the opposite.
Not to downplay any of the myriad problems here in the USA, but I think many of us are trying to believe that a better world is possible and this sometimes leads to unrealistic views of how much better things are abroad. Sometimes.
But I am hopeful that this country is increasingly humiliated for at least a couple of decades.
Peak moments of MÁV (Hungarian State Railways)
- Soviet tractor overtakes train (2024): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5wkW1nKfJY
- Man in snail costume outruns train (2018): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WAY1sFM6yQ
- Passengers pushing the train to the station (2021): https://www.youtube.com/shorts/bNUWNxt-lyg
I hear Italian trains are very timely?
Especially regionale ones used by people to commute for work
I think watching Jet Lag let’s you see the full breadth of transit systems pretty well, because the whole game relies on it. Japan is amazing. A lot of Europe is good enough that you can get around, some great and some not so great. The US is so bad I don’t think either team bothered taking a train when they did the show there.
It’s funny (and accurate) that they keep getting fucked over by Deutsche Bahn.
The blind hope that somewhere in this world there is a functioning public transit system is all that keep me going some days. Let me have this
Tokyo I’ve heard. For sure not Europe. Halve of the scheduled trains didn’t run today in Belgium.
To be fair they’re striking because checks notes their special treatment is ending.
Switzerland is pretty good at well with trains.
A swiss train operator excused the 30 sec delay
The german trains measure delays in 5 minutes intervals, everything under 5 minutes in punctual.
And if a train is canceled, it doesn’t go into the delayed train statistics as delayed.
https://media.tenor.com/qRq6uenJInkAAAAM/think-smart-meme.gif
Oh true, I forgot that. Nice little talk by David Kriesel on that topic: https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10652-bahnmining_-_punktlichkeit_ist_eine_zier
I heard they are so good that they point it out in announcements when a delay was caused by foreign trains (Looking at you Deutsche Bahn)
Haha, DB also does this with foreign delays. I’ve been in a German train starting in Amsterdam that left 5 mins late - they mentioned it at every stop until Munich.
They were just happy it wasn’t them for once.
That’s still more trains than in the US
It’s a problem of reliability. If you need to be at work at 08:00 and your train is regularly late or getting cancelled, you can’t take the train to work.
Not to mention even a small delay could mess up the timing of taking the next bus/train. For not too busy routes it could mean waiting in the cold for half an hour… If that next bus has a good delay you could be there for almost an hour. (Totally not speaking from personal experience)
When I lived in New York there was a place I’d go sometimes that required 2 trains and a bus. On the weekdays it took about 40 minutes, but on weekends with the cumulative effect of less frequent service it was typically 2 hours, or longer depending on how quickly the first train came.
“Halve” isn’t a word.
Multilingual Belgian makes a mistake in English. I think we can give them a pass on this one.
To “halve” something is a real thing. But I think the word wasn’t used exactly right here…
Halve of the scheduled trains didn’t run today in Belgium.
Only half were cancelled? Man, that sounds nice.
Honestly, the perspective of what constitutes a functioning public transit system depends a lot on what you have as a point of reference.
I’m portuguese but I lived in Germany for 5 months during which I used exclusively public transports and bikes. Central Europeans complain a lot about Deutsche Bahn and indeed during this time I saw a few strikes, delays and suppressions. However, transports were still much more reliable and much more frequent than I’m used too so I could never really consider it problematic, although my Central European friends complained a lot.
I take the light rail into work from the suburbs of Seattle into downtown. Trains run every 7-8 minutes. They’re expanding it in all directions now. Only downside is that a lot of homeless ride the train because it’s cold as heck on the streets. That’s a societal problem though, not an issue with the train.
I’ve been in Vienna from time to time, and it’s pretty good, 365€/year for the pass that gets you buses, trams and subways with unlimited access and no turnstiles anywhere, you just go and enter
Schedules follow work hours and go from a subway every 2 minutes during peak hours to one every 15mins late at night
You have night line buses for weekdays and on Saturday night public transport doesn’t shut down
Coverage is good, you almost always have a bus or tram line less then 5 minutes of walking
There are bike sharing places with 20 bikes each ~1km apart and they cost 60 cents for half an hour, or e-scooters in the designed locations which are basically everywhere (but being owned by companies they cost so much more then everything else)
Ukraine wasn’t completely horrible… before 2022 :(
Japan is the MVP here. I live there and I literally have never seen a train not arrive exactly at the scheduled time. However “public” transport is privately owned so… Uh… Yeah, tradeoffs.
Given that it works so well, what are the negatives due to being private? Is it expensive to ride?
Is it expensive to ride?
Yeah. It also stops running at around 11 or 12 so if you stay out late you just might find you can’t get back home.
As an American, this is exactly correct. The last time I tried to take Amtrak the train literally did not show up and they told us they had no way to contact it and didn’t know where it was. After waiting many hours with no change in status I finally gave up. The last time I actually rode Amtrak it was multiple hours late and cost about the same as a plane ticket.
Like, you lost the train? Did you look under the couch?
But, I bet the train didn’t fall apart in air, and didn’t crash because of overwhelmed ATC
Where is this magical European place with trains that are only .5sec delayed? Our public transit authority considers train “on time” if they’re no more than 20min late…and still, less than 80% of trains are “on time”…
compared to my area where we don’t even have busses, trains are a dream
BMW (Big Metal Willy)
I thought authoritarianism was supposed to at least make the trains run on time. Or maybe the dictator will just edit train schedules with his sharpie if anybody dares to ask.
The origin of that saying, the trains in Fascist Italy, were basically never on time. But the fascist government put great effort into telling people that, at long last, they were running on time, so it stuck.
Narratives dig deeper into cultural consciousness than reality itself.
So it’ll be the sharpie then.
American’t build a railway system worth a damn.
We already did!…And then we tore it down to make our interstate highway system. Any remaining tracks turn into museum exhibits we call “rail trails”.
That’s just sad.
This shit keeps me up at night while I play STALKER. America feels like the Zone sometimes; nobody’s in control, there’s a tendency to romanticize our shitty trashcore setting, everyone’s just living get-rich-quick scheme to get-rich-quick scheme, and there’s bloodsuckers and pigs everywhere. At least the zone is pedestrian-pilled.
Man, I wish we had a working maglev train over here.
As a taxpayer you really don’t.
Guess what, I am a taxpayer and you can’t tell me what I “really don’t” want. Do you think i have come here from the stone age to not know that infrastructure and services cost money?
The reason I said it is because there are alternatives which are significantly cheaper and more effective. Maglev is expensive, shit ROI and massive downsides over conventional high-speed rail, namely system complexity and maintenance. Short version: expensive AF.
Edit: I’ve made another comment below. Also the French TGV has proven it can go 575 kilometers per hour, why not make regular trains even faster? It would be cheaper, would achieve the same thing and keeps the benefits of regular trains. There are always multiple approaches to the same problem, and the flashiest solution is seldom the best.
I’m well aware that rail/wheel tech works well. However
It would be cheaper
is not true. High speed rail is precision engineering and what you gain from the reduced complexity of not having magnets on the rails is lost by the required precision to make trains as fast as you claim them to be. The cost for a Transrapid line was claimed to be pretty much on par with an ICE line, with trains carrying fewer people but on a higher frequency, so even that would have evened out. The advantage you claim, which is compatibility to existing rail networks, can be regarded as a disadvantage, too, as high speed trains suddenly compete for the same limited resource as all other trains in the network and are sometimes travelling quite slowly as they utilise the same, old rails because the pain of using the old network isn’t big enough to make people build new high speed infrastructure. Add to that the issue of too many stops that are added for political reasons and high speed trains suddenly become less and less of a competitive player when it comes to international traffic. If there was another network that would simply be incompatible to existing ones, a lot of these issues wouldn’t even arise. A Transrapid just wouldn’t stop in Erkelenz, Züssow or Altenbeken and no overly confident mayor could even suggest it, simply because there wouldn’t be the infrastructure. And that would be a good thing.
Also, the speed comparison is not that simple. You’re comparing wheeled trains that took decades to evolve with the first generation of maglev trains and as far as I see, that’s also the highest speed recorded, which isn’t what they’re allowed to do during regular operations. I highly doubt that there’s no room for improvement to get faster for maglevs.
All that said, I’m well aware that “the train has passed”. Europe uses wheels and I’m fine with that. I don’t want to sound overly negative and I’m happy for every cm of rail that’s built. It’s just that high speed rail needs to up its game a bit if they want to compete with planes. Right now, they’re still too slow. Next week I’ll be in Italy for a conference… High speed trains would have taken 4 to 5 times as much time, so I ended up getting a plane ticket booked. That’s a pity and had we built a maglev infrastructure 20 years ago, maybe it would have been better by now.
That’s an interesting take on it. Thanks. :)
The estimated cost of construction of the maglev line in Japan is a bit less than 10% of the yearly U.S. military budget. The Northeast Corridor is about 10% longer, so let’s round that to 11%. And I would be surprised if that infrastructure would not be used at least partially 100 years after construction.
Keep in mind that the proposal is to buy the technology from the SCMaglev people, which is something IIRC they indicated they were supportive of doing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Maglev
It’s currently stuck in an indefinitely paused environmental review as far as I can tell, due to no one caring about it I guess
I am staunchly anti-maglev for different reasons. Firstly, it’s incompatible with other systems. Building it is expensive as hell because of the awkward way you have to build the rails of magnets which the train will then glide upon. Since every centimetre of the train needs magnets to be floating above the rails, the trains themselves are incredibly short and expensive for their capacity. Short version, you need a lot more trains, which are significantly more expensive for the same capacity of a normal train. A hundred years sounds impressive, but for example, a railway tunnel with conventional rails has only the drive wire and the rails, which will need to be exchanged in the future. The tunnel itself can be easily used for hundreds of years most states calculate with 200 though. Speed isn’t everything, capacity is. The Austrian railjet only drives 230 km/h because you don’t need to make the train airtight, meaning for 2 million (2008 money) plus two eurosprinters (5 mil a pop, todays money) you get 500 meters of railjet, which can transport approximately 1,400 people. Also, the railjet can just be separated into two 250m trainsets and the go into two completely different directions. All of these are benefits that Maglev hasn’t got. It’s more expensive and can do less. But it does go fast, admittedly. But at what cost is this speed gained? And is it really the most important thing if 250 people can reach something twice as fast as a contemporary high-speed train? Also, the French TGV has proven it can go 575 km/h, So even in that regard, if you were to reduce it to the engines in the front and the back in a single passenger car, you basically have Maglev, but for a fraction of the price.
I would be surprised if the French TGV can go into tunnels at those speeds, or maintain them safely 24-7. Also, the 100 years figure is one I completely made up based on what I’ve seen from conventional trains, I have no idea how long maglev track actually lasts.
Also, the scmaglev is advertised to be able to hold up to 728 people in the 12 car configuration, and can probably reach high frequencies similar to the rest of the shincansen system.
Speed matters for people to actually want to use trains, and maglevs are supposed to be both much faster and even more comfortable than conventional rail. They are a proven technology by this point.
Yes, it’s not cheap, but it has the ability to significantly improve rail service in the northeast, and as the richest country in the world surely we should be able to afford that.
The other argument I’ve seen is that we have to go through all of the trouble and lawsuits around obtaining a new right of way anyways, even for normal high speed rail, so we may as well put the best technology available there.
At least they alleviated the capacity problem of the system. But since you are talking about the USA, you have high quality rail treansport almost everywhere in the EU but the USA dismantled their own railway system and essentially reduced it to a trailing exhibition. Why should now a new system that is even more expensive, succeed, while the old system, which was real world tested for 200 years, was defunded and dismantled?
In my opinion, the real issue in the USA are the politics. As you said, speed and comfort is important for people who actually want to go somewhere, but driving a train where you just board it and set off is faster and more comfortable than a car, and at least more comfortable than an aeroplane. Again, the USA have destroyed what they had previously. Why should a new system fix this social problem? Because it is a social and not a technological problem, look at the EU. Also the company wanted to open commercially in 2030, they still lack the environmental feasibility study. Let’s just call that date optimistic.
Genuinely, I want to be wrong about this, but the signs are there.
I agree that it’s a political problem, but I think that a modernized rail system would be well-used if it were available.
I would be shocked if they actually start building the northeast maglev. Happy, but shocked.
The one on the left seems to be a Chinese train tho https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_maglev_train
Deutsche Bahn has entered the chat.
Too early
As a DB user: “ha!”
50 minutes late due to a door malfunction.
DB doesn’t hold a candle to VIA Rail. Germans and Europeans in general like to mock DB, and with reason, but as a Canadian, I’m still so very jealous of DB.
Due to [these] restrictions, 80 per cent of trips suffered delays of more than 10 to 15 minutes in February between Quebec City and Windsor, where the majority of Via trains operate. In January, 67 per cent of trains were late on the same corridor. Delays have been even greater between Quebec City and Ottawa this year, affecting 94 per cent of trains last month and 86 per cent in January.
DB uses this novel trick to avoid delays: they simply don’t count trains that don’t run at all as delayed. And then they also sometimes cancel trains for being delayed. They simply turn the train around before reaching it’s final stop so at least it’s somewhat on time running the other way.
Nice the train is only 15 minutes late? That’s awesome - me riding any train in the US
ah yes when you get to the station and the announcements say “the next train to so-and-so has been cancelled, sorry for the inconvenience” Always a fun day
Wait until you hear about Spanish trains.
I think you may have Europe confused with Japan.
Deutsche Bahn will definitely proof that public transit in the EU isn’t necessarily…. there? Working? …
It’s definitely better than nothing but it doesn’t feel better than nothing.
