Europe’s Experiment: Treating Trains Like Planes

Writing by Sam Denby and Tristan Purdy
Editing by Alexander Williard
Animation led by Josh Sherrington
Sound by Graham Haerther
Thumbnail by Simon Buckmaster

[lik]

I know Ryan air is cheap, but it is so much worse than paying a little extra for a high speed rail train. Almost all HSR trains have free internet, cell service, double the leg room, and cafe cars. Not to mention the train starts in the centre of the city without stressfully tight security and luggage restrictions. I know some people are on a tight budget, but if you book train tickets early, they can be surprisingly cheap, and much better than air travel.

[jaredweinfurtner]

When comparing air travel to train, you're forgetting one major metric: travel from airport to the city center. Trains take you from city center to city center, where the vast majority of people want to go. Often, airports are outside of the city and one must then travel from airport <-> city center which often takes around 45 minutes each way (and also costs €). In addition, airports have security lines requiring an additional 45 minutes of travel; whereas, you can walk right onto a train without hindrance.

[JonLupen]

A case study in trains vs planes: Shibuya-Shi to Hiroshima-Shi, a route my wife and I end up on every time we're in Japan. Many sources will tell you that's a 1.5 hour flight vs 4.5 hours by Shinkansen. Both are approximately the same cost. What no one tells you is flying involves taking a 1.5 hour train ride to Narita Airport, getting to the airport at least hour early, and Hiroshima Airport is an hour outside city center. When all is said and done, it takes at least five hours and lots of tedium before you're in Hiroshima city center.

Conversely, going by Shinkansen, it's around 15 minutes from most train stations around Tokyo to the Shinkansen terminal in Shinagawa station, waiting on the platform for another 5 to 15 minutes for your train to show up, then relax on the Shinkansen for 4.5 hours, before landing directly in Hiroshima city center. Shinkansen offers far more leg room, and much more comfortable seats.

At the same cost, and same time after including all peripheral factors, one of these routes is far easier and far more relaxing.

[worldcomicsreview]

"Dense and efficient networks of passenger railways"
*Shows British trains*
Man, this is the best comedy channel on Youtube

[minecrafter]

I think the Thalys service should've been mentioned in this video. It's a french-operated train network that spans France and the neighboring countries Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany. Their trains are able to operate in the different rail standards of all countries seamlessly, avoiding any need for changing the locomotive at borders. This is part of an EU effort to connect Paris, Brusseles, Cologne, Amsterdam and London by rail, with dedicated border crossing tracks and guidelines on how trains have to work in order to operate in all countries.

[SimonClark]

I honestly cannot wait for a fully interconnected high speed rail network in Europe. It took me a full day of travel to get from Copenhagen to Bath, and that was on almost entirely high speed rail. Being able to get from say London to Barcelona entirely on high speed rail, even on a single ticket (not an interrail pass), would be the dream.

[Amicondrous]

The absolute only thing that I am afraid of is that the high-speed network in Europe is going to be like buses in the UK. To travel from the outskirts of Manchester to the city centre, you have to get two tickets from two different bus operators with zero connectivity assurance. In Germany we have the trains which guarantee you arriving and we have so called public transport associations which bundle all different companies under one ticket. I want that for Europe's international high speed rail network.

[whocares]

"Airports exist effectively everywhere" (17:30) is a very American view. If you want an airport that has actual service to useful other places you need to go to the nearest major city. Rails on the other hand do exist almost everywhere. Even small towns can have local train lines, and if they do not then there is probably a frequent bus service to the nearest town that does.

[helloed]

A small correction, it takes a maximum of 10 minutes to walk from Euston to St Pancras. The stations are incredibly close. It’s a 1 minute tube journey too. Also, it is possible to book a through ticket from Paris to Manchester.

[brandonlignon]

this man is realllly dedicated to involving planes in his vids

[diegod.]

There is also a major flipside to rail privatization that i wish would have been mentioned in the video: Private companies will usually only run services on routes between major cities, while public rail operators also have to serve non-profitable routes to small cities and villages. This is why private companies can easily undercut the public rail operators in ticket prices and still be profitable. The loss in ticket sales to the public rail operators as a result of the new market competition can therfore be seen as a handout to the private competitors by the taxpayer.

[pauldanon]

Here in England we were told our railways were being opened to the market, yet there is next to no competition. Instead, there is a network of private monopolies which pay their shareholders dividends out of government-subsidies.

[martinlanz]

I think there are a few wrong assumptions in this video.
1. Europe did not choose to develop these networks, they mostly existed in some form or another. look at how Germany spends money on the road network compared to the train network. They are not developing much, they are barely maintaing a functional network.
2. Trains compete with Airplanes on Tourist flights. This is in my opinion the fatal flaw in this video. Most Countrys are trying to stop short-distance "hops" via planes and target buisness travelers. Here Rail comes into play. It makes sense to construct high speed rail between Frankfurt and Cologne since these are major buisness hubs. There was no incentive to interconnect these high speed segments further to London because that is already aircraft teritory (time-wise).
3. France is a bad example. Treat France like a gigantic hub-and-Spoke country. Want to get anywhere, better go through Paris. There are only a few interconnecting trains that leave out paris. Germany is a better example.
4. No advocacy for night-trains. Biggest advantage of rail. Enter a Train in Munich at 22:00 and wake up in Rome the next morning. Amazing!

The general terms and conditions apply (Trainstation closer to city than airport, Shinkansen to TGV/ICE is no fair comparision, and so on and so forth). I Agree that cross-Border-Rail needs to get better buit itinerarys are not the problem. A centralized Booking system is needed, that takes all operators into account and gives you one Ticket with full passenger-rights. Check out John Worth on Twitter and his corssBorderRail Project, very insightfull.

[dasBunny]

I live in Austria near the tripoint with Germany and Switzerland and I use international trains here every day. They are excellent compared to almost everywhere else in Europe and only run by state owned railways (DB, SBB, ÖBB). On my daily commute I will use a ÖBB local train into Switzerland and there I can connect onto other swiss domestic services departing 3 minutes later. If I want to visit my family in Germany, I'll take an austrian local train to the next larger station, where an international high speed train, coming from Switzerland and jointly operated by the three state owned companies, will take me to Munich where I can get a connection onto a DB ICE minutes later. That works because all three companies synchronize their schedules and offer joint tickets to everywhere in the respective countries. Flixtrain runs part of the route too, but they are never an option for me, because they just don't integrate with the rest of the journey. They can do point to point, but they add zero value to the entire network.
Ouigo uses TGVs equipped for both France and Spain, but purely inside Spain. They waste vehicles that could be used for Paris to Barcelona services, which would be much better for the network, but probably don't make as much money as domestic spanish routes. Or Trenitalia, who now run a service from Milan to Lyon minutes apart from an SNCF service, yet at the same time refuse to support the joint DB-ÖBB Eurocity connecting Munich to Verona. Sure, it may be profitable, but the outcome for the passengers could be much better, if instead of competing for money, the different operators would work together like they do between Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
And Flixtrain doesn't really operate to Switzerland. Yes, the terminus station is Basel Badischer Bahnhof, which is on swiss territory, but owned and operated by Deutsche Bahn under german operational rules. Flixtrain wouldn't even be allowed to continue to Basel SBB, because services that don't integrate with the coordinated timetable and accept the swiss national ticket system are simply not allowed in the country.

[itsgonnabeokai]

Sleeper trains are the thing I miss the most after I moved to Berlin from Moscow. In Russia you can get over 1000 km overnight in pretty much any direction, and have a decent sleep lying down, but in Berlin I only have sleeper train connection to Zurich, Vienna, Stockholm and Amsterdam, and the trains are ancient.

If you travel in a bed, you don't need the super high speed rail, it's actually sometimes better to go slower so that the train doesn't start too late/arrive too early, travel time overnight should be at least 8 hours

[fabswisss]

The main problem of rail transport in Europe is not at all a question of market liberalisation. In fact, there is no example of railway liberalisation that has led to a long-term improvement in service. The main problem is related to the infrastructure. In addition to the lack of high-speed tracks to connect different countries, there are different industrial standards between countries and even within countries. For example, the track gauge is not the same in Spain as in the rest of Europe, so it is technically not possible to use the same vehicles between Spain and the rest of Europe. Then there are different electrifications. The Germanic countries use electricity at 15000V 16.7hz, Italy works with 3000V 50hz, France has had the intelligence to use 3 different electrification voltages (25000V, 3000V and 1500V). And finally, the safety systems integrated into the tracks are not the same. France uses crocodile, TVM300, TVM 430, ETCS1 and ETCS2, Switzerland uses ETCS 1 and 2, Germany uses ETCS 1 and 2 and ZUB, etc. So a company that would like to make a Prague-Barcelona train via Munich, Zurich, Geneva, Lyon, Marseille, would have to buy machines capable of accepting 3000V DC, 15'000V AC, 25'000V AC and 1500V DC, be equipped with ETCS 1, ETCS 2, TVM 300, TVM 420, ZUB, LZB, PZB and crocodile. And with this train, it would not be possible to run outside the high-speed line in Spain because the track gauge would be different. Moreover, if the transport company operates multiple lines, it would have to have several different trains fleets, as it is still other systems in other countries. This is why international trains are rare in Europe: it is excessively complicated to produce international trains, which only represent a very small share of the market. And you can easily see that this is the real problem, because between different countries that use aproximately the same standards (Switzerland, Germany and Austria), the international service is of excellent quality. Liberalisation will not change these industrial barriers, only strong political action can overcome this problem

[ambergris]

Great video, but you left out two key aspects :
- First, since Europe has been united only recently by regulations, national rail has been built with different rules, which means that for instance, the voltage differs from country to country. This means the trains you use nationally cannot always cross the border, so you have to have specialised machinery if you want to open a cross-country service. It's possible, since it exists, it's just a hurdle more.
- You still have to account for geography. Though it's not an issue to put a line between France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, because all of those borders are really flat, it's much harder to cross the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain, and the Alps between France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria and even Germany. It's definitely possible to have train lines, but not high speed ones (which explains why Switzerland doesn't have any high speed lines, even though they have some of the most efficient and qualitative network), and crossing remains difficult. Today, it's only through huge investment like rail tunnels that mountains can be navigated efficiently time wise, like between Lyon, France and Turin, Italy (a good example of very high cross-border investment in Europe).

[karadin_]

I like your videos, but like some people in the comments, I disagree with a lot of what you said here. As a European, I don't think trains need competition/to be opened to the market. It is proven by the opening to competition in France, where most companies want to compete with the SNCF (French national railway company) on its profitable railway lines (between Paris and Lyon for example).This creates an issue where the nationalized company, who are made by the government to operate in non-profitable areas (namely the regional trains which need to be subsidized), start having competition in the only places where they gain money. If it creates more demand and they manage to stay afloat, fine. If they get killed on the profitable lines/start making less money there, the overall balance of the national company starts losing money, and guess which lines get cut: regional trains.

Competition doesn't necessarily mean opening more lines/more services, since these are only driven by the potential of earning profit. Smaller cities and regional centers are then thrown into a deadly spiral: less trains because of the market, less people want to live there, less demand so even lesser trains etc.. When the state is providing transportation as a service to its citizen, this doesn't happen as much (depending on the state's objectives of course)

[trains_worldwide]

Low-cost high-speed trains are a very interesting and successful concept. They attract different passengers than usual high speed trains, most of them don't take the train regularly. Conversely, most frequent train users don't take them, because of impractical schedules or stop locations, and also often they have passes and frequent traveler programs that don't work on these trains, so both systems have similar prices for them.

I travel by TGV many times per year, and I've used Ouigo only once in ten years, and only because there were no regular TGVs at the time I wanted to travel. I don't snob them, they're just impractical and as expensive as regular trains for me, as I have a -27 year old SNCF card.

[dezzmotion]

ÖBB (Austrian State Railways) are doing it right. They have brought back international night services across most of Europe and plan to expand greatly.