Filed under: Transportation Alternatives, Europe/EU
High speed trains are killing airplanes
Here's another harbinger: air traffic between cities that are linked by high speed train lines is significantly reduced. This was a notorious effect of the Paris-Lyon route (Europe's first high speed train link), and has been seen more recently in the Paris-London, Paris-Brussels and Paris-Amsterdam combinations. In the country where high speed trains are growing the fastest is seeing the effects as well: The Madrid-Barcelona high speed link in Spain (AVE), which started operating in March, has reduced by about 18.4 percent the air traffic between the two cities.
June is expected to offer more dramatic results. Railway traffic has increased steadily by five percent every month since then, and Renfe, the company that operates the line, has increased train frequencies accordingly. Train speeds are also going to be faster this fall, from the current 300 km/h to 350 km/h (186 to 217 mph) completing the 615 km (382 mi.) long trip in 2 hours and 15 minutes. The Spanish high speed train network is expected to be linked with France and the rest of the European continent in 2010.
[Source: El Periodico]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Andy 12:25PM (6/17/2008)
Yay.
Vote for high speed rail!
http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/
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s10 12:32PM (6/17/2008)
At last! A train is much more fuel efficient than an airplane and it is a much nicer way to travel.
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Throwback 12:42PM (6/17/2008)
This is very believable. Imagine no Amtrak service between DC and Boston. The airways would be even worse.
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Mike Z 12:59PM (6/17/2008)
Someone made a powerful observation on why high speed won't be successful in the US--80% of the population of the EU lives within 500 miles of each other.
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Phil 1:24PM (6/17/2008)
Trains and air travel are very close on CO2 when the labour and materials to construct and maintain tracks is included.
Cars beat trains hands down for CO2 emmissions.
Mind you, I'm happy for smug but uninformed greenies to take the train so my airports and roads are less busy.
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Yggdrasilly 1:37PM (6/17/2008)
For passenger rail travel to be broadly affordable, it must be heavily state-subsidized.
This is enough of a problem in Europe, where people are already used to paying high taxes and waiting on schedules, and where population centers are denser and closer together.
It was tried in America, and it worked for about a hundred years--if you count inefficient, uncomfortable and undependable service as "working." But it left a legacy of public resentment at the "Rail Barons," their union-busting, their hideous treatment of workers, their endless feeding at government troughs and their instaiable hunger for private land condemned through eminent domain, with no benefit to those nearby.
This was one reasons why Americans were so quick to ditch train travel for the car and, later, the airplane.
We can have cheap high-volum passenger rail travel back again: all it will cost you is a new levy of taxes and the creation of yet another class of corporate bighshots with their hands in the government's pockets. And in return you'll get uncomfortable, undependable service at the convenience of some corporation's schedule, just like you have today.
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Sasparilla 1:37PM (6/17/2008)
(Someone made a powerful observation on why high speed won't be successful in the US--80% of the population of the EU lives within 500 miles of each other.)
I'd have to disagree with the premise that this is why we don't have high speed trains in the US. The US has alot of routes where true High Speed trains (not just 100mph trains) would do well and eliminate alot of the less efficient air traffic. Some examples would be Chicago to St. Louis or Chicago to Indianapolis, Washington to NY to Boston etc., the list goes on and on. As a nation, from a policy point of view, we just aren't smart enough here in the US to see that up front investment in some things pays off (and is often cheaper) in the long term.
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dhofmann 1:49PM (6/17/2008)
Phil, these aren't your grandfather's trains. High speed rail gets 300-500 passenger miles per gallon. Not even a fully loaded Prius can match that. And airliners get only around 45-60.
Yggdrasilly, which high speed rail lines in the world are subsidized? My understanding is that they all make a profit or very close to it. America's only nearly-high-speed rail line, the Acela Express, is Amtrak's only profit-making route.
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Matt 1:56PM (6/17/2008)
>Trains and air travel are very close on
>CO2 when the labour and materials to
>construct and maintain tracks is included.
Maybe if you conveniently omit the inputs to build and maintain huge airports and the exploration, extraction, refining, and transporting of oil and eventually jet fuel around the globe.
Funny how people always want to compare the cradle-grave footprint of "green" choices but only the tailpipe emissions of the traditional ones.
Looked at operationally... a bullit train and a jet have roughly the same aerodynamic profile but the jet has to be lifted thousands of vertical feet and travels at more than double the speed of a train with the associated drag quadrupling as speed doubles.
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steven 2:02PM (6/17/2008)
@9: you forgot that the air is a lot thinner up there.
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Whopper 2:12PM (6/17/2008)
The majority of airline tickets are purchased by business travelers. For years the airlines have tried to compete by offering frequentl flyer miles, meals, special seating etc. However, most business people travel because they need to be somewhere at a certain time - whichever airline gets you there and back at the right time and most reasonable cost gets your business. By their very nature railroads cannot offer the convenience (I can't leave for Dallas at 6:00 a.m., but I can catch a flight at 7:30 a.m.) of flying. One hundred miles or less, I'll drive. More than that I'll fly.
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Denny 2:18PM (6/17/2008)
I don't know too much about the public tranport in the US. But here in Germany the high speed trains are often faster than taking a plane.
You are very flexibe (tickets, including seat reservation can be bougth 2 minutes in advance).
No check-in and travel time to the airport (which is very often 20 miles or more away from the city centre)
Having a rail pass its cheaper.
Its more comfortable and you can use the time for working (much better than in a plane).
And with 150 mph ore faster the trains are not too slow.
It may not be suitable for connections between east and west coast. But connections beween cities like Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago and Indianapolis may be very efficient and reliable with modern high speed trains (like the french TGV, the japanese Shinkansen and german ICE).
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BlackbirdHighway 2:30PM (6/17/2008)
Commuting by train is very popular along the east coast corridor from Washington DC to New York and Boston. In the time it takes to get through the airport hassles of parking shuttle buses, security lines, finding your way to the gate and getting boarded, you can already be halfway to your destination by train. The new high speed Acela trains help a lot too.
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MarcT 2:44PM (6/17/2008)
Forget how low population density is in the US as a whole. No one is expecting high speed rail tracks criss-crossing the country. But in certain corridors, its such a no-brainer. SD-LA-SF. In under 4 hours. Sign me up. How about LA to Vegas. 2 hours? Can you imagine??? Im sure you east coasters have simlar corridors where Acela just is not cutting it.
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Phil 2:58PM (6/17/2008)
High speed trains use more fuel than moderate speeds (just like cars). Check out this presentation:
http://www.engineering.lancs.ac.uk/research/download/Environmental%20impact.pdf
The conclusion is that high speed trains use more primary fuel than cars or planes.
Matt: what difference is there between extraction and distribution of fuel for aviation or trains? Perhaps nuclear has an advantage, but in most countries tains are just as dirty as planes and cars.
I've done London to Paris by plane and train, and the plane wins easily. The airport is easy to get to (not in the middle of a city), the journey faster, classier and (here's the clincher) cheaper.
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Matt 3:24PM (6/17/2008)
Phil:
The very fact that stations tend to be in the centre of cities is on of the benefits of trains! If I am working in the centre of London and need to be in the centre of Paris, the train leaves from the centre of London and arrives at the centre of Paris. No travel time, no enforced 2 hour wait between check-in and boarding etc. Even in the UK with trains only doing
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KM 3:27PM (6/17/2008)
And yet, according to the article, trains are consistently pulling passengers from air travel.
So if it isn't convenience, it must be price. It is definitely not ideology. So your opinion is that trains are becoming popular as a result of fuel prices/inflation?
Therefore, can we extrapolate that trains are dealing with high fuel prices better than airline companies are?
I'd also wonder if the new trend of airlines charging for everything (luggage, snacks, etc) will further encourage the use of rail over air.
It seems to make its own case that if rail is dealing with high fuel prices better than air it might be because rail is more efficient at transporting passengers.
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Matt 3:27PM (6/17/2008)
Interesting :) Autoblog green's commenting system is pretty broken.
I was going to say, even with trains in the UK doing LESS_THAN 180mph, its still quicker to go by train when you consider the entire journey time, not just the time it takes between take off and landing.
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jake 3:41PM (6/17/2008)
@KM
Yes I agree with your comment, the trains must be doing SOMETHING right for people to switch to them.
@Phil
"Trains and air travel are very close on CO2 when the labour and materials to construct and maintain tracks is included.
Cars beat trains hands down for CO2 emmissions."
I think you corrected this already, but this is not true in general for trains, just high speed trains (but if you travel by car at the same speeds I would be willing to bet you probably will do worst than a highspeed train).
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rj 3:42PM (6/17/2008)
Germany is smaller than some us states. There are entire states that have no passenger rail service at all. Because of how the railroads were built the tracks tend to go east west but not north to south, so even though there is an amtrak station in north dakota and one in texas you can't take a train from one place to the other.
The situation does not get much better when you talk about airports either. My grandparents live at least 4 hrs from the closest major airport.
My family lives over 2100 km away but it is cheaper to drive. Driving I only have to pay the cost of gas, flying would require purchasing a ticket for each passenger. Depending on the time of the year it is sometimes cheaper to fly to Germany than it would be for me to fly home, because the town my parents live in only has a regional airport. It is possible to get tickets for half as much if we are willing to fly out of a larger airport, 300 km away.
Even on the east coast trains are not very practical. There are several systems that do not interconnect, marc train, light rail, amtrak, dc metro, some have separate lines that do not connect or a branch that forks with no way to get from a station on one leg to the other without taking 2 trains. The train might be useful if you live outside of town and work downtown but not if you live north of town and work south of town because even though the train that goes from north of town to the center of town goes no farther and does not connect with or share a station with the train that goes from the center of town to south of town.
There are train stations near my home, and train stations near my work, but the station nearest my home does not connect with the station nearest my work, they are not the same system, the station nearest my home does not connect with the station nearest my work either, same system different lines, the station farthest from my home connects with the station farthest from my work. But the train ticket would be more expensive than driving, plus I's still end up walking 5 mi a day, on a trip that is only 5mi one way to begin with.
Why not walk or bike the whole way? I did when I lived farther away. Now the route I drive is all interstate highways where pedestrians and bikes are prohibited, there is an alternative route but it does not have sidewalks or even a shoulder for riding on.
Everyone complains about gas prices being high, despite the fact that they are cheaper than other places (like Germany) but we are not willing to spend money on making alternatives to driving practical. The train station near my work does not have a cross walk, a light or a sidewalk.
Trains can be very useful, here they are not, and with at system that is so poorly implemented no one wants to use it, its very design seems intended to discourage use. Since no one uses it why would anyone spend money to upgrade it?
I'm not sure what my point was other than the rail system in the usa is broken and it would take much more than faster trains to fix it.
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