this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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Most railway systems are publicly owned and that seems to work best in the world we currently live in. Smaller systems, like trams and metros are operated by cities and even smaller ones by groups for the fun of it. It really is not that much of a problem, if you do not exclude people working together in coops, local governments and so forth in a solarpunk future. That will be necessary all over the place. For longer distances you need either lots of smaller systems agreeing on standards or a large one run by a large organization. Both can be made to work.
Yea, urban trains can work really well. With somewhat overlapping services.
But for longer distances i don't really understand why today's fares are higher than using a car share between 2 people. I've seen that kind of pricing weirdness in Portugal, Spain, England and France, and that does not sound efficient at all.
The issue with cars is that they cost a lot in taxes, insurance, loss of value of the car and upkeep, which adds up to a lot of money. With a cheap car you are talking 500€/month or 50Cent/km and more for more expensive ones. Basicly all public transport passes are under 500€/month many are significantly cheaper. That does not include parking, which is rightly expensive in cities, as parking spots could also be housing and so forth. That alone can make public transport cheaper. Long distance trains including hsr are often relativly cheap, if booked early enough.
People tend to underestimate car costs a lot.
Yes, you make some very valid points on underestimating the costs of a car. But even at 50c/km, that compares with 10c/(km.person) on a train. On the other side of the competition, long/medium distance trains are more expensive than airplanes. What's up with that? Look at France legislating to favour trains. So I ask myself if it is even possible to get around those centralisation issues with a more DIY fashion.
In the EU there are no taxes whatsortever on aviation fuel. Furthermore airlines get free emission certificates for every flight. For international flights you do not pay VAT in the EU and only seven European countries have ticket taxes.
Pretty easy to see why rail has a problem in competing. The good part is that aviation fuel taxes are supported by most members and are in the work, the Comission is proposing to cut the free certificates. VAT remains a problem thou.
Did not know that. Thanks for the info.
It still surprises me that a 300km train ticket costs about the same per person as taking a car with 2 people paying fuel and highway tolls. A 600 seat optimized 'car' on a dedicated low friction track should be, maybe, 100x cheaper.
In Kazahkstan you can get 1329km train journey for $18.40. That is not uncommon in poorer countries at all to be around $2 for 100km. So I presume it is higher wages. At the same time energy is incredibly cheap today, so the optimization with low friction does not help much.
The high prices are mainly a result of the push for high-speed trains that are exponentially more expensive to built and operate than regular speed trains. And to make things worse... the push for high-speed trains has resulted in the decommissioning of a lot of regional regular speed lines, meaning that now often you have to make a detour with a high-speed train to reach the same destination, and thus you are not actually faster at all.
Fuel is heavily subsidized, trains are not. When you get a full tank you're actually paying only part of the real price.
Additionally, people tend to underestimate how much owing a car costs. City nerd has a video about it.
Will look for that city nerd.
How do these subsidies work, that the rail companies cannot tap into those. The electrified trains have most of their electricity coming from fossil fuels which would benefit from the same subsidies.
I feel that an optimised engine on a low friction track carrying 500-1000 people should be orders of magnitude cheaper than a car.