Still too much plane for local journeys
And is France train are not cheaper than planes or buses… Which is stupid, they should start to properly taxe Airlines
Comment on Anon likes trains
echodot@feddit.uk 16 hours ago
Yeah why doesn’t Europe have trains?
Europe definitely doesn’t have trains already.
whyNotSquirrel@sh.itjust.works 15 hours ago
Tenkard@lemmy.ml 15 hours ago
They’re building high speed rails connecting major European cities as we speak, we’ll be good
Opisek@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Do you happen to use Dvorak?
Sorry for the random question out of this air, but the in/is typo is something that happens a lot to me while being nearly impossible on “standard” keyboard layouts.
fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 13 hours ago
We do. Not as much as we used to because privatisation is a plague upon mankind, also we have very diverse geography which makes developing new lines prohibitively expensive, even more so when you’re a private company. Add to that a lack of political backing and yeah, it’s all rather turgid, even if there are some extremely recent talks concerning transeuropean night trains and such.
Those are going to be for our nice flat and speedy routes no doubt, but hey, it’s an effort in the right direction.
But yeah, things are not gonna get better fast as long as we are cursed with privatisation. What a shit show to see our glorious TGV reduced to a shell of its former self.
Meanwhile I just got an article yesterday that Wuhan is now connected to the super high speed network and the first 450kph train now connects it to Shanghai. Last time I was there the train was already TGV levels of speed and much more modern, and only a year later they are leaving us on the fucking dust…
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
China sees investment in mass transit as a loss leader. It costs more to put in than it generates in fairs, but the boost to connected economic zones pays back the cost several times over.
The US sees investment in mass transit as a detriment to the airline, automotive, and fossil fuel industries. It would shrink the economy in three places where the nation has tried to goose growth for the last 60 years.
fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
For real. If those idiot neighbours would stop fucking around, we get trains from Wuhan to Bordeaux in about a week. It’s a real game changer.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
What if we told them they could keep killing each other, just on the train, and then we’d make a murder mystery about it?
echodot@feddit.uk 10 hours ago
I never really understand why historically trains were so rare in the US. They had loads of trains at one point left over from the industrial Revolution and then they seemed to decide to get rid of them all. Even Beaching didn’t shut down that many lines
pdqcp@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 minutes ago
Oil and auto industry were literally buying tram tracks to dismantle them and make the roads only for cars. For the curious:
How The Auto Industry Carjacked The American Dream
yewtu.be/watch?v=oOttvpjJvAo
www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOttvpjJvAoUnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Rail lines were converted to highways. They weren’t simply removed and abandoned, they were cannibalized to clear space for more lanes
nsfw_alt_2023@lemmynsfw.com 8 hours ago
We still have them all, we just prioritize moving cargo on them.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
I’m from Europe. What’s a train?
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
If you’re on a long tube that travels quickly on the ground from one city to another, and everyone is talking in Spanish, you’re in a train.
If you’re in a long tube that travels quickly on the air from one city to another, and everyone is talking English, you’re on a plane
PlexSheep@infosec.pub 14 hours ago
My total journey from Berlin home this week was about 50 minutes late, and the connection after the ICE was not pretty.
Enkrod@feddit.org 14 hours ago
Yeah, but that’s not a rail problem, that’s a Deutsche Bahn problem.
Barbarian@sh.itjust.works 14 hours ago
In Romania, CFR makes DB look like the most competent shining lights of progress by comparison.
Track that hasn’t been properly maintained since the fall of communism (and we keep lowering max speeds because of it). Rolling stock consisting of hand-me-downs. Constant engine breakdowns.
And the worst part? Due to political shenanigans finding inventive new ways to siphon money out of the company, it’s still managed to find a way to go bankrupt again, meaning another government bailout.
PlexSheep@infosec.pub 14 hours ago
Yes, not just DB too, but the local transit agencies too. Its a wonder that it all works so well DESPITE decades of mismanagement and austerity.
echodot@feddit.uk 10 hours ago
Apparently Germany’s problem is that they run all the high-speed trains on the normal lines which means all of the normal trains have to work around them. Obviously you can’t have a normal train in front of a high-speed train so if the high-speed train is delayed by even a small amount it has a knock-on effect where a bunch of local service trains have to sit around waiting for the line to clear.
Everyone else runs high-speed rail on their own tracks. So everyone gets to do what they want and not affect anybody else.
The French do it better than the Germans, which is just not an acceptable state of affairs.
ptu@sopuli.xyz 13 hours ago
I’ve heard flights are sometimes also late or even cancelled
arrow74@lemm.ee 11 hours ago
50 minutes isn’t that bad tbh. I dont remember the last time I flew that there wasn’t a delay. Hell even the whole arriving 2 hours before ,finding parking, going through security is all so much more of a hassle.
I’d much rather walk 5 minutes to the local subway head to the hauptbahnhof and wait 50 extra minutes for my train. I can at least go get a reasonably priced coffee while I wait.
BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 52 minutes ago
Yeah, we have trains at home… (greece)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempi_train_crash