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I reeeeeaallly hate how almost all people see fast travel at plane speeds as a commodity and a basic need. It just isn’t true, every flight is borrowed from our future, most of the other citizens of this world don’t have access, and still people are like “8 h instead of 4 h for 1000km just isn’t practical” yeah! Because it’s 1000km why does everybody think their entitled to traveling by jet, when this has been a luxury not present in history, not present for most people that live right now and will not be present in the climate crisis that is our current future… 🫠🫠🫠
8h train journey is really nbd. Especially if it’s a direct connection. On the ICE you will also get better food than on the flight, you get to stretch your legs and can bring way more luggage without paying an arm and a leg.
I’d pick an 8h train over a 4h flight for Berlin -> Paris in a heartbeat. Even if the flight would end up being slightly quicker including travel to and time spent at the airports (which it might not be). With the train you can at least sit down with your laptop or whatever and just chill the whole time. When you’re flying you’re spending a lot of time waiting in queues, walking around the airport and changing modes of transport.
8h city center to city center is pretty comparable to 4h flight 2h wait beforehand, 30m bag collection, and 2x45m to and from the airport
Also 8h is sleeper train territory. Don’t consider it a vehicle, consider it a hotel teleporting you from city to city.
Sleeper trains are peak luxury travel right after private jets and yachts.
Since this is a direct route and you don’t have to change trains it isn’t that much of a luxury. Just bring some headphones a pillow and an alarm on your phone and you can comfortably sleep through the journey.
Reminds me of this article from the Low Tech Magazine.
idk man, at least for germany i have the opposite impression: it is a integrated system and if you dont live in a large city it would be very usual to combine high speed legs with regional trains. heck i even mostly cross the dutch-german border on regional trains. in germany at least there has been a huge jump in accessibility of regional and interregio trains with the introduction of the “germany-ticket” which grants access to all public transport which is not high-speed across all germany for 50€ p/m (which unfortunately will already rise to 60€ with the start of ´25 which i am so mad about). I dont see high speed rail as a problem in germany.
Once a luxury is present for long enough, it becomes normal. You cannot be angry at masses of people for wanting to enjoy their life.
Your points are not invalid, it’s not sustainable and likely won’t be for some time, but many things are a luxury only available to a few in the present (e.g. MRI scans, 50" TVs, car capable of going +100km/h, 3+ electronic devices per person). No one is ready to give up their luxuries, especially when others still have more.
what? of course i can be mad about people enjoying their life if it is causing direct harm to other people in the present and the future! why shouldnt I ? this is a zero sum game: somebody is and will be paying the price!!!
also “especially when others still have more” is considering how fucking rich we are a sentence dripping with greed.
e.g. MRI scans, 50" TVs, car capable of going +100km/h, 3+ electronic devices per person
One of them is not like the others.
(Accessibility to MRI scans should not be luxury (as it is true for accessibility to any given medical procedure).)
…the train will depart at 11.54am
The inaugural journey will set off from Berlin Hauptbahnhof at 12.02pm
Only eight minutes late. Not bad by DB standards.
no replacement bus… fucking lush by aussie standards.
By British train standards, that translates to ~35 minutes early
It’s already delayed a day before it is due to begin?
The DB doesn’t calculate timetables anymore, they estimate them. So this is only a rough guess of when the train might or might not depart.
I’d probably prefer 13 hours at night over 8 hours during the day, but more trains more better.
There are night trains as well : check out European Sleepers. Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam-Berlin-Prague (including other stops).
More better is certainly bestest.
Business travel needs more connections. It’s a start, but only a start.
Business? Why are you focusing on business travel?
Because that’s most of the travel between European capitals, especially including government and institution work.
Tourism is a drop in a bucket.
I would really like numbers on that. Do you have them?
I don’t, but I image they exist. It’s a pretty big industry.
Anyway, try taking an easily morning or late afternoon flight/international train on a weekday between any two European capitals and you’ll see.
Of course, things are completely reversed if you travel during holidays, to/from holiday destinations and/or using holiday travel airlines.
Source: am business traveler.
Stockholm – Helsinki doesn’t seem that way. Tourists, people visiting friends and family in the other country, some business people. I fly regularly, in the morning, during the day, and in the evening, on weekdays and weekends.
I flew Prague -> Brussels once and perhaps a third of the plane seemed to be commuting government people. It might have been due to the time of week though.
Please say this goes through the Ardennes.
Pretty cool but 8 hours is still not practical for most people.
That flight is about 2 hours. But you have to account for getting to the airport, getting through security, boarding, checking bags, deplaning on the other end , getting bags, getting back to city center. That’s easily an hour and half or two hours on each end.
When you add up all of that time, it starts getting pretty competitive.
Id love for more(any) high speed rail in the US.
Business travelers at that distance wont have checked bags. The timing of the route is also pretty terrible. Too late for lunch before hand in Berlin, too early for dinner in Paris. Still need a hotel in Paris.
You still lose 4 hours.
Where TF do you take your definition of practical from?
Without trying to be scientifically accurate: 8 hours has the opportunity cost of 120 euros with an hourly salary of 15€. Slightly better travel comfort, marginally less stress and climate consciousness need to do a lot of heavy lifting to offset the lost time compared to a flight. I don’t think price competition is possible.
And of course there are people who this makes sense for. I would have taken this train on an interrail a few years ago and been happy, instead of the slow and painful connection they had back then. But you gotta have a lot of time to justify this option. Or just a very bad timing so that flights are really expensive.
You can work during Travel. With train travel you’re avoiding boarding time in which you cannot work.
To some extent, but 8 hours straight on a train is pushing it
There are a bunch of holes in the high speed line right now. The really bad one is Frankfurt, which has a massive terminal station, which means the train has to change direction. There are also no high speed tracks from Fulda to Frankfurt and between Frankfurt and Mannheim. Then there is an option of a more direct line from Erfurt to Frankfurt, which would avoid the high speed line via Hannover, which shortens the journey. Good news is that quite a bit of that is in the works.
Also the flight is 2h and you can probably add 2h at the airports with security control and so forth and another 2h for going to and from the airport to the city centers. So a grand total of 6h travel time for the trip.
This one is not going to Frankfurt Hbf, it’s going to Süd.
It’s about 1000km, so with proper infrastructure at T.G.V. speeds it should be around 4 hours. That’s better than air travel when you factor in the shitshow that’s CDG.
8 hours? Not so much.
with proper infrastructure
Proper railway infrastructure in Germany? What’s next, a minister of traffic who’s not in the automobile industry’s pocket? roflmao
“High-speed”
