Trains are pretty awesome, especially in small Europe. Flying always comes with security hassle. A train is just: get in/get out.
If Europe would just spent more money on infrastructure.
We have trains in Germany that can do 350km/h but I've yet to ride one that goes faster than 200, probably because the rails aren't what they're used to be.
Then we have the Germany Ticket. A 50€/month subscription to all regional trains (not the fast ones). Which removes the hassle of dealing with local subway and bus companies.
But the trains are often late, which sucks, especially if you want to ride in the evening.
If Europe could get on Japan's level, that would be a dream.
Personally my main gripe is not so much the speed as going to higher speed is probably less efficient hence more expensive.
My main gripe is the price (I am poor by european standards). For example going from Paris to Napoli only by train is currently above 300 euros whereas you can find a flight for 40 euros. I am ready to pay around 100 euros for that.
Recently there was sleeper car train from Paris to Milano which was affordable but the company did not last alas.
I am personally ready to pay more in order to avoid a flight, I don't even care about the time it takes, I like being on trains. Sleeper cars are even better. The only thing is the price.
I think that the hidden benefits of open travel is highly elastic.
That is to say, that if we subsidized train travel, then there are benefits (open trade, comms, etc.) that are easily realised but that we don't see.
I feel it is so elastic (sorry, I'm misusing this term somewhat) that you can subsidize to an extremely high percentage without net cost (if all externalities could actually be known and costed in)
I want train journeys to be 50Euro Athens-Stockholm. 10Euro Paris-Hamburg. I want my taxes to pay the difference.
So much this. We’re so spolied by low cost airlines in Europe.
I can either
- go for a train trip to the 2nd largest city in Denmark (Copenhagen to Aarhus) for 230 eur (2 adults + a kid) and it takes almost 3 hours. - take a Ryanair flight to Alicante for 240 eur (2 adults + a kid), flight takes 3.5 hours
The weather will be much better, the food and accommodation cheaper by a long shot (not to mention Spanish cuisine). It’s not even comparable how much more value you get when flying.
Is probably an unfair comparison. (And if you think that living in Alicante is cheap, you should see the boring inner smaller cities, easily reachable by train)
My impression is that Air travel to touristic destinations is just too cheap, for a reason. Selling airplane sits for pennies is probably just part of a bigger business. Tourists typically will spend money on services and hotels that could be owned by a sibling company, etc...
In Spain is often discussed how UK tourists can came to Spain for ridiculous prices, while we can't do the same in the opposite direction (or when flying inside the country). Tour-operators altering the market could be the reason for that "magic" IMAO.
Trains are nice in any case (but nobody is armed here, so just copy the system could be more defiant in other places)
> This is because of the extreme subsidies air traffic receives.
I don't think so. Railway lines are the epitome of lost fund subsidies by the state. You need to build and maintain a new line for each direct connection you want to create. The construction cost of a railway line, let alone a line that supports high-speed rail, eclipses the cost of a brand new airport.
Once a railway line is in place, getting a train to travel from point A to B costs peanuts.
Tax on fuel reflects the externalities to the whole of society, and arguably it is not high enough.
So exempting tax (equivalently not charging for externalities) is indeed a subsidy, a transfer of wealth from government (and so society) to the airline operators.
In my opinion the main "low hanging fruit" Europe has with trains are international birders, especially if they're trying to compete with flying.
Trains in Poland work great, trains in Germany work pretty well but every train I've taken between Poland and Germany has been delayed. The standard thing is that while you're in Poland they claim the delay is because of previous delays in Germany and while you're in Germany they blame delays from Poland.
If you're trying to do something more advanced like get across Germany to Belgium or France & eventually the UK the it gets quite annoying.
German trains wishing to enter Switzerland need to wait at the border so the DB’s, err, _erratic_ scheduling doesn’t perturb the much more rigorous Swiss system.
My experience of German trains is one train arriving on time, to find my connection is delayed, but actually leaving earlier because the same train 1h before was 54 minutes late and I could get that instead.
> German trains wishing to enter Switzerland need to wait at the border so the DB’s, err, _erratic_ scheduling doesn’t perturb the much more rigorous Swiss system.
I'm rather skeptic of this take. Railway operators provide services by reserving track sections and train stations in specific time windows which take into account travel speed and scheduling. Rail track capacity is typically reserved for periods of over a year. If german trains run on time in Germany and swiss trains run on time in Switzerland, then it sounds like germany's trains being delayed when entering swiss lines is an impedance problem caused by the way the swiss infrastructure manager is handling german trains.
70% of German trains that arrive at their destination are “delayed” (30 min or more).
A train that never arrives is not counted as delayed. About 30% of German trains do not arrive at their destination.
In Switzerland, the stats are single low percentage digits.
After multiple ultimatums, Switzerland stopped allowing German trains into Switzerland. The most popular connection between Switzerland and Germany (Zurich-Munich) has been kept but is now operated by Switzerland even though most of the ride is in Germany.
This is shameful and a lose-lose for all parties, but necessary.
I doubt your stats, where'd you get them from? And there are multiple connections per day from Germany to central Switzerland. Take the Hamburg-Interlaken ICE for example.
Just built a separate international network, with its own separate system and tracks. The way Japan handles complexity is through redundancy. Japan runs both really old trains, hyper modern high speed rail and everything in between. Each system runs on separate tracks, are from different companies, and are not interconnected.
This can be a lesson on how to run complex systems in general.
Enaaem:
It already works that way.
The Iberic Peninsula has a different rail gauge from Central Europe, but - in parallel to Iberian Gauge - is building and expanding its TGV network, which is in the Central European gauge. So, a secondary network.
> Why not build parallel tracks, but with the same gauge?
Jevon's paradox [1] probably. The most profitable part of the rail system will grow to crowd out and interfere with the rest. By keeping it different gauges, they all operate independent of each other's incentives.
I don't really see this dynamic working in rail. In Japan, many of the companies operate trains on two gauges.
People read too much into this, it's mostly just historical reasons. Most slow Japanese rail has a quite narrow gauge which is less suitable for high speed trains. The interoperability benefit is limited since you typically won't want to operate both Shinkanzens and local trains on the same rail.
Having different gauges provides no real benefit. It's just that unifying gauges provides too little benefit to justify the massive investment required. I expect this to be the same for most other countries. (and for similar problems like different railway electrification systems within/across countries)
I can see other advantages like having same maintanence rail cars, emergency rail cars, ability to divert traffic in case of accidents. I guess there are even more such minor advantages.
Unless you live in the Europe of Napoleon or Hitler, when they were built. Then the benefit is huge and obvious. Imagine how much easier the life would had been for Ukranians if the Russian trains that transport heavy army stuff would operate by default in a different rail width
Because different countries might have different gauges. Japanese system is great not because they have different gauges, but because they don’t see it as a problem if there are different gauges. In general, Japan has many train companies that run on totally separate systems.
Do you know how politically complex it is to build a single high speed rail line? In one country? Its so mind blowing complex politically, its almost unfathomable. And even then often it only results in an upgrade of an existing line, rather then a new line.
Building a whole new infrastructure from the ground up, would not only be absurdly expensive, it would also be absurdly impractical and take literally 50 years if it would ever happen.
Yes, Japan is correct that sometimes, more separation is a good thing if your network can be simpler.
But at the same time you can't just reverse that and then conclude that 'lets make everything as different as possible' and believe that's somehow going to turn into an efficient system.
We can not just simply ignore 200 years of train history and evolution each countries system has. I'm all for learning from Japan, but we also can't and shouldn't just copy Japan.
> Just built a separate international network, with its own separate system and tracks.
This is what Rail Baltica is going to be. The Baltics are using the Russian gauge, but RB will be using the standard gauge. And it won't be connected to the existing railway system. So if it all works out - we'll finally have a high-speed rail line from Tallinn to Warsaw,
Did Prague to Brussels in one day (~ 12 hours) in 2010 and everything just worked. One connection in Frankfurt airport (it has a train station) and it was cheaper than flying. Will need to check how I bought the ticket but do know it was bought as a single ticket.
Good thing I left early in the morning because the later trains to Germany all got stuck in heavy snow downfalls. \o/
In December I could not even buy tickets online to a train from Berlin to Warsaw because DB website is terrible. Had to cancel my trip — this is really a shame, that EU cannot fix cross-border connectivity.
I think everyone complaining about DB should be forced to live in the UK for a short while first. My 15 yo daughter has just come back from her first trip to Koln to stay with friends. She was wide eyed with how well everything worked, and how nice the trains were. It was interesting to me to see that she saw it too and it’s not just jaded politics that makes me think the UK is going to the dogs.
My experience is at UK trains are a bit more reliable at turning up on time than DB. German trains tend to be cheaper though and you sometimes have to do stupid ticket-splitting stuff in the UK.
Oh, login here specially to reply.
Not really, pkp site is an old slow garbage with bugs, it makes everyone cry.
So, you can buy, just do not expect it would be a good experience buying.
I tried Omio and one more, but this specific direction was not available there via train. DB website was simply showing an error at the last step. A month later, by the moment error was gone all tickets appeared sold.
Europe is not small. And lots of European countries are investing/have invested heavily in their rail networks, especially compared to the United States.
Spain and France have extensive high speed rail and regular rail networks. There's an EU level initiative to connect all the national rail networks and facilitate the creation of robust pan-euorpean rail services.
German rail infrastructure is...in need of help. Here, in Switzerland, many trains come from Germany. Well, they did. They are so often late that some routes now stop at the border, so that the Swiss schedule isn't impacted by German problems.
Germany is also years behind on putting cargo onto trains for transit through the Alps. Even Italy was faster.
This is true, but I have watched with amusement as a Swiss station master paced, tutted and finally started swearing under his breath as a train from Milan got later and later. It amazed me at the time he cared so much - it seemed personal. But I guess that’s why Swiss rail is so great - that and the funding.
Yeah that's a very Swiss thing. People get upset when trains are more than 1-2 minutes late. It's so reliable even a delay of < 5 minutes is important to people. Not to mention, transfers sometimes are < 5 minutes long, so a train being 1-2 minutes late means you might miss a timed transfer.
You also have Thalys in .de which is not just get in. The same goes for Eurostar. Maybe more, but I don't know about them.
That aside, some could do 350kph in theory, but there are no tracks anywhere which are certified for more than 330kph in regular daily operations. With the additional constraint of limiting that to 280 kph max after several fuck ups, which I don't know about if that limit was lifted, or not.
And if you think you could board the Japanese fast ones at Deutschlandticket prices? Dream on! :-)
Anyways, it was fun to use one of the very first ICEs on the runway right side of the Rhine from Cologne to Bankfurt and back at 331kph, sometimes parallel to the A3 at a distance of only few 100meters, and watching the lichthupenden and warnblinkenden Nieten in Nadelstreifen trying to overtake the Normalos, while they seemingly stood still. Some sort of parallax-effect, I guess.
At that times I've thought: "Wozu brauch ich noch mal 'nen scheiss Transrapid?"
Ja das war halt so. Fette Karren, Audi, Benz oder BMW, Sakko wackelnd am Bügel auf'm Rücksitz hängend. Kannte ich bisher nur als Clichè, aber das war da so zu beobachten. Und wirklich alle immer lichthupend und drängelnd, und nicht linksblinkend, sondern warnblinkend.
Aber bei 330 war das als würde man an einem Diorama vorbeifahren.
That doesn't make any sense. Network topology is designed in such a way as to make connecting routes as short as possible so it's 100% related to Euclidian distance. You know, we even build super expensive tunnels and stuff to make sure that the routes are as short as possible
My hypothesis is that planes are just as often late but people complain less because :
1. They have already taken the whole day because getting to the airport, booking, security... so they don't care as much about a two hours delay.
2. They have some respect for the fact that we are allow to fly and see that as big technical challenge depending on weather and good security practices. On the other hand a train *seems* trivial when in reality it's not. Psychologically for most people it's just putting some cars on rails and it will basically drive itslef to its destination.
You also aren't switching planes as frequently as you do trains, much less with 5-15 minutes of time to switch trains in many cases. 6-15 minutes of delay absolutely matters if it means you will likely miss connecting trains, which can easily lead to hour or hours long delays in reaching your destination.
Unfortunately that is not the case, the security theater seems to be slowly contaminating rail too.
The Barcelona->Paris connection has some bullshit security on the Barcelona side (luggage x-ray & plastic trays for laptops), and I think the Eurostar had some of this on the London side too.
I cannot say for Spain, but for the Eurostar it has been like that for quite a long time and it is related to the Schengen area border. The checks are made on boarding, so in Paris, Lille, London, Brussels, and Amsterdam before they started refurbishing the station (I am not sure about seasonal destinations but I can’t see how they could avoid checks at some point). It is not an example of increasing security theatre.
Spain has had train security even on long-distance domestic journeys at least since I lived there in 2008. I suspect it's a reaction to the train bombing they had, but don't quote me.
This is partly to do with the fact that the UK was never part of the Schengen group of countries (i.e. countries where you can travel from one to the other without a passport), even when it was part of the EU.
Europe isn't microscopic. Paris to Amsterdam is about 300 miles, which is the same as Chicago to Cleveland. This is for intercity travel, and of course in the Western USA, except for the Pacific Coast, it is really not very dense.
Traveling on Deutsche Bahn in the hopes of making a late Eurostar connection was nailbiting for this reason. I hear that Switzerland is strict about cancelling late trains so as not to interfere with the overall schedule, and as a consequence most DB trains from Germany don't make it past the border.
I have no experience with trains in Spain or Italy, but trains in Germany are notoriously unreliable. I don't think I've had a single train trip through Germany in the past year without some kind of delay and extra hassle.
For our summer vacation, we travelled from Amsterdam to Switzerland. We had first class seats with one layover in Frankfurt. Frankfurt was a mess, the train was sent to a different station, our connecting train was cancelled, we had 5 layovers instead of 1, and had to stand. When we finally got to sit, we had no reserved seats and were split up. On the return trip, similar problem, though with less extra layovers.
A few months later, I went to Essen by train. The ICE stopped at Düsseldorf and the connection to Essen was delayed or I missed it because the UCE was delayed. Still best train experience in Germany that year.
The return from Essen, the train from Essen back to Düsseldorf was cancelled, and the connecting bus would guarantee I'd miss my last ICE and I'd have to spend the night at Düsseldorf. Instead, I paid a lot of money for a taxi to race me there. Got there in time, and at the last minute they sent the ICE to a different platform without clear notification, and I'm pretty sure a lot of people still missed that train. I fortunately noticed some people leaving the platform and informed some others who hadn't noticed.
Trains in Netherland and Switzerland are absolutely perfect, but to get from one to the other you have to go through Germany, and that's a problem.
Spain and Portugal adopted initially a system of rails that are focused on security (both for customers and national security). Spain railways were built wider than the European standard; while other countries ignored the advice to focus in economy.
Iberian gauge allows trains to run faster without losing stability. The more narrow the railway, the cheaper to build, but the less stable for trains crossing hairpin bends for example at a decent velocity.
The climate is also very different, so is not really fair to compare both, but Europe saved a lot of money when building their first railways (and have more problems with ice and snow now for this reason)
The service level in Italy was unbelievably bad for a time, then got much better, with occasional dramatic drops in quality.
The problem is that (like in many areas) our collective subjective memory of things lags behind reality, sometimes by decades.
Things get enshrined deep in culture (not only films, but day to day jokes and mechanical repetition of cultural self-flagellation).
I'm living in Italy for almost 20y now, coming from Switzerland. I came here in part because I wanted the experience of a more chaotic place, coming from the extreme order in Switzerland I found confining and suffocating.
Central Italy in the 2000s was a good mixture of chaos and infrastructure that worked ok in order to have a civilized life. Roads had potholes but they did exist, it's wasn't Madagascar level bad.
Yet italians complained and complained and kept saying that they were backward country and looked up at Germany or the Netherlands or whatnot.
Over the years everything got incrementally improved. Roundabouts got built, green grass inside roundabouts got actually cut, parking spaces started to be delimited and you no longer had to park your car in the mud alongside a road (but now you had to pay for parking in more places) ...
And also trains got better! Objectively better. And more expensive. They were incredibly dirt cheap 20 years ago, now they are not too expensive but it's an entirely different ballpark.
20 years ago my average experience from Pisa to Florence was to suffocate for 50 minutes because somebody let a puddle of vomit uncleaned in the train and there was no physical space to go to escape that because the train was so packed.
Now trains are much cleaner, more frequent, bigger, faster, ...
Occasionally you get stuck in a tunnel for a couple of hours because something breaks but hey it only happen to me once in the last 10 years and it happened 10 times the decade before, so improvement!!
Yet, locals still think nothing improved. Yesterday I had a conversation with Italians who thought they were the country with the worst infrastructure. The thing is, most people here live in an imaginary world.
Even when they do travel abroad, they don't update their beliefs about that stuff. It's a bit like identity politics. They watch TV journalism shows that show how well executed (cherry picked) public systems in other countries work, and bask in self-flagellation. While the other identity group declares how Italians are the best in the world and that nothing approaches their virtues etc. these two camps (I struggle identifying them as left and right anymore) affect each other and make their position even stronger.
Just matching the Netherlands in punctuality and connections would be more than enough (using the word 'just' here does not do their rail network the justice it deserves).
Argh. I moved away but am back in NL regularly and the train service has degraded beyond all recognition for me done in comparison to 2021 or so.
Short trains, cancellation of 75% of scheduled services for random reasons, regular failures on key links (Amsterdam CS/Zuid-Schiphol, HSL-Zuid, Delft-Rotterdam etc etc) leading to widespread network disruptions.
NS wasn’t perfect before, but it sure seems that they and their evil twin, ProRail, aren’t even trying any more.
That's interesting to read. I recently visited the Netherlands on vacation and one of the things I was most impressed by was the train service. I came away from an excellent opinion of NS, but I'd probably chalk that down to my extensive experience with Portugal's own national train service which is an absolute clown show on rails.
What isn't awesome is cross-border trains, it's always ad-hoc. I think there should be some grand unifying vision of complete cross-border (at least Schengen) connections. Possibly a new EU institution, whatever, because often it looks like every train company is playing in its own playground and cross-border connections are at best an afterthought.
> Trains are pretty awesome, especially in small Europe.
Trains aren't really about the region's size. They are about the region's population density and the volume of travel demand between somewhat close urban centers (max 600/800km).
> Flying always comes with security hassle.
Nowadays trains also come with security hassles. For example, Spain's RENFE enforces security checks, complete with baggage scanning and metal detectors, to board high-speed lines.
The key difference is where train stations are located vs where airports are located. Due to historical reasons, nowadays most european cities have train stations essentially in their city centers, whereas airports tend to be >50km out of the city. This means that the door-to-door travel time for any flight must include a >50km trip to the outskirts of a city for then to way out the mandatory 60 to 90 minute boarding process.
"A train is just: get in/get out" - alas, not really. High-speed AVE trains in Spain are subject to security checks with you/your luggage going through the scanners. Fortunately, no need to take out laptops, throw water away, put liquids in a transparent bag and other nonsense.
Do they have a similar program to TSA precheck in europe? That has really changed flying for a lot of airports in the US, to the point where it kind of is now a quick thing you can just get in/get out, only real issue being the artificial barriers airlines put on your like having to check in to the flight a certain time before boarding and having to board a certain time before doors are closed.
Except for Germany and the UK where trains are also quite bad, security usually doesn’t take too long. Boarding is typically 15 mins before the flight, but then again airports are usually more comfortable to navigate than train stations since you get rid of your large luggage in the first step
> We have trains in Germany that can do 350km/h but I've yet to ride one that goes faster than 200, probably because the rails aren't what they're used to be.
no, they never built high speed rails in germany simply. a decision that baffles me. whereas france has been at it for 30 years for example.
This is not true. I fly freely Vienna<->Germany and it has always been better,faster and cheaper than trains. There is absolutely 0 issue with security.
Is there a pattern in Germany engineering? Airport Berlin, Stuttgart 21, constantly late running trains? Is Germany over-engineered and over-regulated, what's the issue?
Trains being late is simply an overrated problem. This is not something that DB should optimize for. It would be easy to make sure every train is punctual by running one Munich-Berlin-Hamburg train a day.
Trains are late because they run a demanding schedule, trying to serve every big city (this is not like France where everything is supposed to go through Paris, this is a country that unified late with many powerful regions who all want direct connections between them).
Trains being late isn't that overrated. Its not the most important thing, but it is important. Because being late messes up the whole system. One train being late can cascade to lots of other trains being late. Causing system degridation.
There is not one single issue with the German network. Yes, the multi polarity you mentioned is one of them. But that's not the main issue, really more a feature.
One of the issues is that early on DB wanted to continue to make money with cargo, so they insisted on having cargo (and other trains) use the same lines. Rather then building new lines that nobody else uses. This choice over long term degraded to a situation where lots of high speed lines are just major upgrades of existing lines.
That leads to the network not having as much capacity as it could have had. And you have ICE trains blocking lots of the tracks for other trains, and the other way around. And even if the ICE can go, it can't go full speed because some parts aren't upgrade enough. You constantly go from a speed line, to an upgraded line, to a normal line, to a city approach.
While its great that in Germany the ICE goes to the main station, unlike in France where Paris doesn't even have a real main station. It also leads to ICE trains having to use an excessive amount of the old city network. And there are always issues there. Just last week our train was lolligaging around the approaches to Hamburg.
There is also just a general maintenance issue, personal and so on.
That all said, having traveled threw Germany a lot with the train just in the last couple months, overall, I think its amazing. But could be so much better still.
Schedule isn’t the root cause. DB has serious problems with staffing, because their workforce is going to retire soon in large numbers and finding replacement is hard. They have problems with infrastructure: it is telling that a heavy rain, moderate snowfall or burning grass can knock out a major route.
Both are management problems.
Not really. It's just heavily used and so the faults are very obvious, and we Germans are extremely quick to complain. Objectively there's not much of a difference and for almost all European countries it's complaint at a high level[1]
Of course Stuttgart 21 is objectively a mess but Germany is big, there's more than just a handful of engineering projects at any given time. We brought a pretty substantial amount of LNG capacity online in just two years but that never gets any press compared to the latest airport chaos.
Not sure whether you're sarcastic or doing some PRs but trains in Germany are from my experience definitely not awesome. Flying is usually much more reliable in Germany as long as it doesn't snow (but trains are stopped too when it snows anyway). Trains in Germany are:
1- constantly delayed (ironically I already missed my flight because of that)
2- very expensive (unless you've hours to waste on regional trains)
3- slow in average (yes it can clock at 300kmh+ for 20 minutes just to get stuck behind a freight train using the same network..)
4. German train can use a completely different route to destination, dropping all passengers who were going to an intermediate station somewhere early on the route (you figure out yourselves how to get home at this late hour). I was on board of ICE from Rostock to Berlin which was suddenly routed via Greifswald with arrival in Berlin delayed by 2 hours. There was some fire on the tracks between Oranienburg and Berlin.
What's small about the scale of Europe in this context? Even taking the extremely conservative measurement of Madrid to Berlin, that's 1200 miles/2000 km, which is comparable to the entire length of the Japanese isles, or the distance from Beijing to the South China Sea, or the distance from Boston to Minneapolis and/or Miami. Speaking as an American, I'd be over the moon if our passenger rail was half as nice as Europe's, and we can't even use the scale of the country as an excuse.
The scale of the country is an excuse in many cases. There are densely populated areas in many parts of the USA, but nearly all of Europe is densely populated. The EU has an average density of 112 people per square km compared to 36 in the USA.
The USA still can and should do better, but there are important geographical differences to the EU.
And as an aside, I don't think many Europeans are taking the train from Madrid to Berlin ;-) most people still prefer to fly rather than take a multi-day journey on the train. Maybe that will change if more sleeper carriages are introduced.
> The EU has an average density of 112 people per square km compared to 36 in the USA.
Isn't that a misleading statistic, though? It's not like the USA is an evenly spread wasteland in comparison to Continental Europe. It's more like pockets of high population density throughout, which trains can handle perfectly well. Russia and Ukraine are similar in that they're pockets of cities separated by miles of steppe. Both are known for heavily using rail travel.
Hell, wasn't the USA built on the back of continental rail travel during its industrial revolution?
Yep, it's misleading. The America is big argument fails to hold water once you actually take a look at a map. Take Columbus for example where we're within just a couple hours by train (could be less if we had any sort of seriousness about our country) away from:
Chicago
Detroit
Cleveland
Cincinnati
Indianapolis
Pittsburgh
and maybe just a few hours away from other cities like Toronto, Buffalo, Louisville, and more.
The US has the largest rail network in the world (for now). It’s hugely dominated by freight.
It’s not for lack of rail lines we don’t have good passenger service it’s a priority and preference issue.
If you got a fast train between Indianapolis and Cleveland what would you do with it? Neither has reasonable public transit and aren’t dense cities that are good for walking. They also are only 4.5 hours away from each other by car, something residents of both largely own.
Chicken-egg problem with the density. But we know that things can change and it's always surprising when we're always very open to changing things when it comes to technology, but other areas we're not so open to it. Amsterdam is a canonical example [1] or how you can fix infrastructure.
Example: I am not the biggest soccer fan in the world, but I might take a train down to Cincinnati and get dinner, stay the night, and watch Columbus play Cincinnati. I'm not doing that with a car because of parking and it being a big hassle. If I can take a train down there, I'm way more likely to go. Once I get there the very first time I'll just arrive in the downtown area, plenty to walk around to see and do. The same is true for the reverse trip. Someone coming from Cincinnati can arrive in the Short North in Columbus and walk anywhere they want from German Village to Downtown to Ohio State's campus.
I'm not entirely sure about Cleveland (haven't been in a while) or Indianapolis (haven't been maybe ever?) w.r.t to walking around, but in the example I gave you can see there is plenty to do with a train that gets you from one of the example cities to another and it only improves as more and more people use the service.
Funny actually. What you were saying kind of applies to cars too. You'd just drive through or around Indianapolis. After all once you park there's nothing to do and nowhere to go.
> They also are only 4.5 hours away from each other by car, something residents of both largely own.
Not to sound too flippant but this is the most American thing I've read that doesn't involve guns. Being in the UK, the idea of "only" being 4.5 hours away by car is unreal. This is exactly the kind of thing getting the train should be perfect for.
For context: that's longer than Manchester to London, essentially opposite ends of England!
It's only misleading if you disregard the rest of my comment :-)
You have identified a part of the USA with a decent density of cities - nice! That is exactly what I think. There are pockets where rail makes sense, and should be built up. But even this area is not nearly as dense as Germany, England, Belgium, Italy, etc, so I fail to see why it makes sense to compare this to the EU.
There are lots of pockets in Europe that aren't that dense, they still have good public transport, as least compared to the US.
It always really funny when American point at some place, and say 'look how not dense' and then there is like a city of 200+ people there. Sure maybe not close to other cities. But any city that size should have its own S-Bahn system at least.
Right, but that's where the vast majority of the population is too. It's not that there are pockets where rail makes sense, rail just makes sense and should be built up.
> But even this area is not nearly as dense as Germany, England, Belgium, Italy, etc, so I fail to see why it makes sense to compare this to the EU.
Why would you compare America to the EU anyway then?
-edit-
Sorry I also wasn't trying to disregard your comment, I just thought it wasn't a great argument (you're a great person though I'm sure! :) )
Sure but I was commenting on the "too big" argument which I think we can say is just factually incorrect at this point.
To address your points I think it's a much more nuanced conversation. I'd argue that car-only infrastructure is actually a gigantic financial disaster as well but it requires additional examination.
It's an average, so of course it says nothing about the distribution. I don't find that to be misleading, or at least I did not intend to insinuate that the USA is a perfectly distributed wasteland! It shows that while the EU and US kind of look similar in size, actually their population density on average is wildly different. Just look at a population density map of both continents side by side. It's fine to talk about certain parts of the USA being dense and able to support passenger rail. But when we talk about country-scale rail systems, that's where I have a bone to pick.
As I said, there are areas of the USA that are perfectly suitable to rail, and there should be more.
My criticism is the notion of "you can technically take a train from Madrid to Berlin, so you should also be able to take a train from Boston to Minneapolis". Trains in Europe go long distances, but most importantly they connect a lot of medium-sized cities along the way.
With some fairly minor deviations on the path. (Assuming a fairly straight path that stays in the US, going south of the lakes). Depending on your tolerance for minor deviations from the straightest possible path it could be all or a subset, but not none of those. They are all medium sized or larger cities.
There are ton of small cities too, but the train doesnt have to stop in each one - there's lots of through trains in Europe to that skip towns/cities they pass.
I don't know why we're still stuck on the Berlin <-> Madrid topic, but I'll bite :-)
I added up the population of all those cities: 6.13 million. The population of Berlin and Madrid alone is 6.86 million, and our theoretical journey would take us through several cities of 1m+ along the way: Cologne, Brussels, Paris... The dense parts of Europe have 500k+ cities basically overlapping.
As someone who grew up in the Midwest, I would absolutely love this theoretical train, but I'm not surprised it doesn't exist (yet)!
It's a bit misleading to claim: "The dense parts of Europe have 500k+ cities basically overlapping.", while pretending that Chicago doesn't have 6M+ additional people in its immediate suburbs who would also be able to use this hypothetical train. The US and EU structure administrative units a bit differently, so using the Urban or Metro populations for both is a better metric for population served.
I agree that Europe is more densly populated than US, so there would be longer stretches without a stop in the US. But that's OK - the long-distance trains in the EU don't stop at every station along the way anyway, it would just be a different structure of "locals" and "through trains" to service the poulations.
I disagree however that population density is even all that relevant. All the cities in the US that I've mentioned have rail through them already. It's used profitably for freight all the time. I think the US doesn't have good passenger rail service because of a heck of a lot of other factors - subsidies favoring cars and planes over rail for transit, infrastructure having been created around getting everyone an automobile, a huge amount of FUD from various lobbies against rail (including arguments about population density), and a dozen others probably have more actual impact than "people per square mile is different on average".
Sure, all mega cities have even larger metro areas. I'm not pretending Chicago doesn't have a huge metro area. But my point stands: the European route has much higher catchment than your proposed USA route, even if you include metro areas. Population density is not the only argument, although I think it's pretty clear why the US and EU are not comparable: https://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen/#4/38.51/-51.06 Most of the US looks more like Spain and less like Central Europe.
There needs to be local public transportation infrastructure. This is where the US should be focusing efforts, no long-distance high-speed trains. It works in Europe because there are huge catchment areas (see population density) that funnel riders to regional hubs that are then connected with high speed trains. I don't think the first step to making rail work in the US is connecting metropolises with high-speed trains. Until there's a better local public transportation story, it's expensive and impractical once you arrive at your destination.
The US has like 6 Super-Metro complexes that are all perfect for trains.
- Great Lakes
- North East
- Texas Triangle
- Florida Super City
- Bay Area
- Southern Cali
And of those the Lakes and the North East are perfect to connection. In all of them trains are massively underused.
Frankly some of these couldn't be more perfectly placed for trains.
But I do agree with your point. You need good local public transport. Or in more general terms, land use. Infill development, bikes and reliable bus system that is not designed to serve only poor people that don't have other options.
I think this is the core of the issue. People are getting hung up on Madrid -> Berlin and coming up with things like New York -> San Francisco as a comparison. I don't know how many people regularly need to go 6 states across a vast continent...
Really, what it seems the discussion should focus on is those shorter (but still quite long!) journeys that people would likely want to do. Train lines in California seem to make a lot of sense. A quick look on Google Maps suggests there's no train between San Francisco and Los Angeles which seems insane to me!
But that not the point. Many of these borders are arbitrary e.g. it's like saying that Paris has a lower population Berlin even though such a claim would make no sense at all.
> I added up the population of all those cities: 6.13 million.
Well just Boston (where it would presumably start) is over 4 million (and whole Massachusetts is almost as dense as Belgium). Minneapolis is another ~3 million. Chicago is over 8 million. I didn't even look up the other cities... yeah it's lower but really not as much as you're implying.
Oh if we're talking about metro area population, then the EU route is also significantly higher (for example, Paris goes from 2 million to 13 million). I was just looking at city limits in both cases.
Honestly I agree with your sentiment. We should connect all these urban areas with passenger rail. But I don't think that this is the first step. Most American cities have atrocious public transit, which needs to be fixed first. No one will take a train from Chicago to Minneapolis if they just have to rent a car once they get there anyway. It would be a shame to invest billions in connecting cities with high speed rail, only to have low ridership because it still doesn't compete with flying/driving.
Yes, it's not population density that's important but the distribution of said population, and USA is more urbanized and clumped up than many European countries with much better train system than USA.
The problem in USA is that the people making the decisions don't live in the cities.
Europe mostly speaks a different language in every country, so the actual scale of Europe isn't the whole continent (or whole EU), but a single country. Sure you can travel to other countries, but there is a language barrier (though English is common enough to get by most places).
Note that GP was talking about Germany with seeming no awareness that the situation is different in Switzerland, France, England and Spain. (of the 5 countries I named there are significant differences that are unique to each - Swiss trains run ontime, French trains are fast...) God help you if you are trying to cross a border by train in Europe - it is possible, but often much harder than it should be.
There is daily trains between all the countries you named (at least those that share a border) most of them are no different than any other border crossing with exception of the trains going to and from England as you have to go through security for that one. I don't remember ever having a bad experience crossing a border when I was on InterRail some years back.
Really. Crossing borders within the Schengen-zone is trivial and goes unnoticed for most travellers. You can even cross multiple borders in your sleep on the night trains.
The problems crossing the border in Europe have nothing to do with the physical crossing. the Schengen zone is nice for that, but only solves one problem.
Often there is no border crossing at all where there should be one. Often nobody knows how to sell you a ticket for a trip that should be possible (or they will only do it with stupid restrictions). If you can find a train it may be a slow speed train despite this being trips where high speed is most useful. The trains may not be on time and you miss a connection.
This is true. And sadly the big state monopolies have been lobbying against the airline like system of bookings. They don't want to be responsable for connection like airlines are. And they don't want to compete on a level bases either. They don't want open ticketing information.
The EU approach to rail improvement is incredibly flawed.
And all the different monopolies have their own dumb as opinion about things. French system is run by a bunch of airline manager idiots. German can't make their IT work for shit. And so on.
It's so seamless that I was racing someone through Belgium and only realised I'd entered the Netherlands when I got a text telling me I was on a Dutch phone network!
By car you'd notice, but that's mostly because suddenly the car goes quiet upon crossing over onto the smooth asphalt of the Dutch snelwegen. (Despite being neighbouring countries, the contrasts are often interesting.)
I don't have experience with InterRail, but the bad experience often starts with buying a ticket.
The amount of "we cannot sell you that ticket, we can't even tell you the price" I have gotten when checking international connections is wild. It is slowly improving (I just checked a particularly absurd example where Deutsche Bahn was unable to sell a ticket to switzerland through if it wasn't bought a long time in advance - seems at least they fixed that), but still... it's absurd if your train trip starts with "figure out how to get a ticket, because the train company won't tell you."
Oh that's nothing. 5 years ago DB couldn't sell you all tickets within Germany (if you didn't cross a Verkehrsverbund boundary the local train company could refuse to license that right to DB). So yeah. Improving ;)
The trains exist, but they are not as useful as in country trains. Just getting a ticket can be tricky as not everyone will sell them. Most train systems assume you are going to the major city in their country, (Paris) and so the routes do not always make sense for other trips. One train per day (or less) is not good service. Cross border makes it much more likely you have to transfer to a different train and the poor on-time performance of some nations becomes a problem.
There are not border controls which is nice. However there are a lot of other things that can go wrong. Some routes work much better than others. Europe is a big place with lots of different trains systems if you only went on the good routes you won't have a problem, but there are a lot of routes that are not as good - and many more routes that should exist but do not at all.
It is a mixed bag, but definitely improving. Some experiences: From Holland, It was impossible to do an online booking a ticket to Italy. Only possible via phone, or as separate legs. For long journeys with changeovers watch out that you don’t get stuck halfway due to a missed connection.
From NL, London, France, Germany is easily reachable, as well as Barcelona. I took a sleeper train to Stockholm last Christmas, we had delays, but made it in time.
In general if you have a long distance leg, it’s best to have it at the start of your journey so you don’t miss it.
Railways do have single points of failure. A single disruption on a key piece of track can disrupt service for hours, even days. This is less of an issue with air travel, there’s usually other airlines, and alternative routes.
This is not really true. There are high speed trains operated by Italy that start in the center of Germany (Frankfurt) and end in Milano – crossing Switzerland. There are also trains that start in Germany end end in south France (Mannheim - Marseille). Super easy to purchase tickets.
Not only does English get you by in most big cities, a fair amount of European citizens are multilingual and often it’s the neighbouring countries that people speak the language of.
You'll bet by in English as a tourist, but you probably aren't getting a job with just English, and you're definitely not holding down a full social life either. Despite the EU's efforts at integration, Europe is still effectively separated by languages and cultures way beyond anything in North America.
I had zero trouble visiting my german friends by train last november, departing from Paris. I didn't even have to leave my seat.
I have no idea what you are trying to say.
This is changing, at least in France. Enshittification of train travel has begun by SNCF/ouigo. I traveled last month, now (at least for some trains) you must have a ticket at your name to travel, you must register big suitcases.
It is becoming less and less get in / get out, unfortunately :-(
Yes, paying for things is a hassle, but it's also a great way of incentivizing companies to provide services that people actually need, and incentivizing people to use only those services that they actually need.
And yes, figuring out what exactly you have to pay for on public transit is an especially big hassle, but that's a problem that's solved technologically in many countries, where you just have to swipe a card at the entry and exit.
Worth noting that it's still a struggle because of competing interests. For instance in Germany the auto industry and its lobby is strong enough to succeed in keeping freeways toll free, whereas the German Railways infrastructure part was split out into a company called DB Netz. So when you buy a ticket the cost of using the railway infrastructure is included in the price. Also other things, but not relevant for this discussion.
So yes the railway is a lot better in Europe and the rest of the world than the US, but it's almost always a question of politics and interests of different groups. I also think it's poor framing to say people do it because of climate change - I do it because it's the best way to travel. During early corona time I went with a car on a typical 2-3 hour trip I usually take and it was just horrible in comparison. In the one case you can sit in comfortable seats, walk around, get something to drink an eat, and in the other you are usually stuck in a cramped seat, can't get out and can only take a break on a gas station or a similar place.
In Italy the high speed trains literally killed the internal flights. Moving between the major cities is cheaper and more comfortable by train and the time spent on the train is the same if you consider security controls, boarding and the fact that airports are usually outside the city center.
Let's wait that the tunnel under the Alps will be ready and we can have fast trains also between Milano and Paris (5 hours).
I have amazing memories, as a kid, of going on vacation with my parents, from Belgium to the french riviera... We'd load our car, a Lada (the Lada Riva, an horrible car btw), on the train and then, in the same train, we'd go to the passenger car. The trip was about 1100 km / 685 miles. The train would drive over night and we'd eat and sleep in the train and then arrived near destination next morning, we'd hop into our car.
We'd do that every year. There were both 2nd and 1st class cabins.
You'd save 1000 kilometers to the car (and in gasoline), times two.
I miss that a huge lot: apparently some european countries, including France, are planning to reintroduce these.
I think because cars became much more reliable, we felt we didn't need these anymore.
The reintroduction of that type of service would mean you no longer thad to worry about your electric car's range when going on a road trip. The car could even charge while in the train.
Hyperloop does not contain cars, that a vacuum tube system. I think you are talking about the normal small tunnels from the Boring company, that's just called loop.
And its not actually useful or effective outside of a few specialized situations. Like in Switzerland where you only have 1 tunnel and no actual car tunnels. So all cars have to get on trains.
It just makes no sense. You can get a car share in like 10min. Just go where you want to go and rent bikes or a car. Honestly in most places, you really don't need a car anyway.
Luggage isn't more convenient on trains, and car rental often isn't super convenient either, if you need e.g. a 10 minute walk through city streets with all your bags to get to some multi-story car park.
Those still exist in Austria! As you write, great for travelling with the whole family. There are regular services in the summer time between ie. Vienna/Innsbruck and Livorno, Vienna and Split and others (Hamburg iirc). Also some all year round connections between Vienna and Bregenz/Zurich.
As a Belgian I am very envious of Japanese rail. While it does have its own problems (overcrowding during rush hour in the major metropolises), I really miss various Quality of Life conveniences like being able to pay the difference if you need to go to a further station than you originally planned.
In the Netherlands, you can tap your credit card when entering the railway station, and tap again when you exit the destination station. The exact amount for the trip will be deducted.
Works with all types of public transport and in the entire country.
This sounds incredible! Is this a private company, or a government program, or an open standard? I couldn't tell from the 'about' page on the linked site. I'd be interested in seeing how this could be adopted in other areas or modalities.
When in France, I could reschedule my rail ticket to a different time by using ticket machine and paying some extra cash. You don't have to be in Japan for QoL.
SNCF is the absolute worst in term of customer service. They even consider that a train is on time if it's less than 15mn late on almost all TGV lines [1]. And if they provide a bus as an alternative to your cancelled TER (local train), they won't refund you at all whatever the time – that's from personal experience.
A Shinkansen is late from the first second behind schedule, and Japan Rail will apologise if a train leaves a couple seconds too early.
PS: A bit bitter I'll admit, reading any kind of praise for SNCF always triggers me.
Shame on Australia, my adopted country, for lacking the courage to back rail transport.
They’ve been talking about a high-speed route from Melbourne to Sydney — one of the worlds’ busiest rail corridors — for decades. God knows how much has been spent on feasibility studies. And yet we’re decades away from progress, and that’s optimistic.
Can rail be that hard? You acquire the land by compulsory acquisition — not popular, politically — and then you lay track. 99% of the land from the centre of both state capitals is farmland. Tracks exist to the outskirts of both cities. Actually, track exists between the cities! Agh fuck it makes me angry to even think about.
I live in Canberra, the capital. I can get a delightfully quaint train to Sydney. It takes 4 hours. It’s 245km by road. The only plus is that it’s fairly cheap.
Oh and the cost. How did we allow rail to cost BETWEEN SIXTEEN AND ONE HUNDRED AND TEN MILLION DOLLARS PER KILOMETRE? Excuse my French but: fuck me. [0]
Traintraveling in Europe is amazing. Mainly Germany is the problem. And noone knows why. Maybe it’s because the have the longest distance to travel and share the same network with the short travel trains.
Btw short train travel in Germany is mostly on point. And the problem with the delay is mostly along the rhine river . There is an excellent talks about German train delay from Daniel Krisel on the ccc
The way I see it, induced demand is just a way of saying that all modes trend towards equilibrium. If you invest more in trains, they become more attractive, and people gravitate towards them. The same is true of cars, busses, etc... How each mode of transport scales influences whether you want to induce demand for it.
AFAICT trains scale pretty well in terms of space and environmental impact, and point-to-point latency decreases as more trains are run (and transfer times decrease), so it's pretty nice to induce demand for it.
You can visit 10 countries in 24 hours by train in Europe. It's a challenge but it's possible.
I'm aiming to break my record with 11 countries, but we'll see.
The problem is that even though the balkans are a lot of countries, the rail is very slow compared to going north and east towards Slovakia and Poland.
Trains are full in my country because nothing have been expanded in the last 50 years, so with the population growing 50% it can't keep up. I commute with a train and when people say they want lower prices so more people will commute I roll my eyes.
To every American posting that NY Times piece about high speed rail in Europe - I can sort of forgive you, as Europe’s trains are better than America’s
To every European posting the piece - it’s superficial PR guff from the rail industry, semi formed into an article. You can do better!
I was in Toronto over the winter break, with many relatives and friends in the greater Toronto area. I took the GO Transit trains to travel between Union St in Toronto and nearby cities.
I was quite impressed by the system. A simple Tap on/off with your credit card works for payments. Trains were on time within the minute, which was very comforting. The trains were clean and well maintained.
I don't know about usage during normal days, but it's likely used quite a lot. Might be used a lot more if the trains were a bit faster.
Was largely a commuter service. Unfortunate part was that it was built over existing freight rail so mainly suburban stations with big parking lots that can be out of the way (and have to side to let prioritized freight pass, but new tracks have largely eliminated that).
Pre-Covid, often at full capacity during morning/evening rushes and never “sold out”, you could always stand if you couldn’t get a seat. And flexible as no scheduled/reserved tickets.
Credit card tap on/off is very new (last 12 months maybe).
Nice that they have bathrooms on every car (looking at you Paris RER!!!).
A plane flies faster so you can amortize the cost over more flights. A plane only requires 2 airports, which can be used as a starting point to connect with any other airport again amortizing the cost over many flights. For trains you need rail all the way, which is not flexible and costs a lot.
Then the planes don't pay their full cost as they emit a lot of CO2 but aviation fuel is not taxed so you get planes that already have quite a lot of structural advantages getting even cheaper.
Budget airlines are probably also run a lot more efficiently than most train systems
Rails have much more limited capacity. Train costs in the UK are mostly dominated by demand exceeding supply, and supply being hard to add. Also you don't have to maintain tracks in the air, and airlines have less militant unions.
The final big hammer is of course competition. Airlines have lots, rail companies don't.
Let’s not try to insinuate that trains are anything but extremely cheap in the Netherlands. You can go from one end of the country to the other in peak times without advance purchase for about 29 EUR (4 hour journey, Maastricht to Groningen)
If only we got connections outside bigger cities, losing connections wasn't an expected travel experience, and prices that were actually cheaper than some plane connections.
> Amid concerns about climate change, demand for rail service is strong
This attempt at spinning it as people being motivated to use trains out of concern for the climate is hilarious. Almost nobody thinks like that. Trains are just a hell of a lot more convenient than alternative modes of transport for long distance trips.
I have avoided flying and instead used trains for the last 10 years due to climate concerns. I know plenty of people who have made the same change in behaviour and my experience from the public debate in the nordic countries is that such a behaviour shift has grown more common among consumers in general.
I found no study on consumer preferences on this topic that covers all of Europe but to get started here are two reports on single country surveys, in Portugal and Germany.
https://www.eib.org/en/press/all/2021-389-91-of-portuguese-p...https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200128-why-germans-ar...
Do you know of some survey evidence that points in the other direction?
Your second link also gives an alternative explanation of people being motivated economically, not environmentally. And quote from the first link:
> 91% say they want to replace short-distance flights by fast, low-polluting trains in collaboration with neighbouring countries
See how a train being fast was bundled into the question.
Let’s forget about environment for a moment. Going by plane is a lot less convenient, when you can take a train, due to needing to show up a lot earlier at the airport, going through security and all kinds of overhead. So when trains work, i.e. they’re fast, reliable and affordable, nobody needs environmental concerns to use them.
For me to be convinced that someone is taking a train for environmental reasons, the train would need to be more expensive for them than going by plane. Because otherwise everyone likes to see themselves in a good light and say how much their choices are dictated by ethics, when in reality the wallet is often a more potent motivator than environmental concerns. Just like every employer likes to say that they hire and promote based on merit, but then it turns out that on average taller people get hired and promoted more often. And the employers will still believe that they weren’t influenced by that. Just like travellers will overestimate the influence of environmental concerns on their choice of mode of transport. In both cases it’s because people like to see themselves in good light. And same way most of the people who say they’d prefer to buy products produced in fair worker conditions, won’t actually buy the products whose prices reflect that. Declarations are cheap. Particularly feel-good declarations.
Against your "almost nobody thinks like that" I and others described that we do think like that and personally know others who do too. I also posted two links that has some more general evidence against your claim. Your reply has some reason to lessen the weight given to that evidence, but not enough to cancel it. I rest my case until you present empirical counterevidence.
Your speculations/prejudice about motivations of others is not evidence and such stories can be made up in almost any direction e.g. maybe you delude yourself into thinking no one takes trains for environmental reasons because it makes you feel good and superior in thinking you know their motivations better than they do.
I have no data but I personally think like that and I have had conversations with friends who think like that. Why do you think demand is increasing then -- the convenience you mention isn't new?
The convenience is very much new. 15 years ago in Poland it was completely normal for a train to have multi-hour delays. Now it’s not, and the trains are getting a lot faster. E.g. currently it takes 2h-2h 22m to go from Warsaw to Gdańsk. In 2016 it used to take 3h. 15-20 years ago it could take half a day or longer.
The article is citing Alberto Mazzola, the executive director of the CER. He says that reduced emissions and price are driving the rise in demand. Clearly he's not impartial here, but I'd trust him to be forthright about these reasons.
I can see reduced prices driving the demand. I doubt about the reduced emissions part. Why should I believe that that’s what’s driving people?
To me it just sounds like a marketing spin. Don’t get me wrong: it’s cool that people are choosing a cleaner means of transport, but I doubt this is the reason.
I'm sure there are a mix of reasons. It's definitely significant for us and as we went to Cornwall this year we spoke to people on the way there and way back who offered this without promting for why they took the train. Different people may choose trains for a mix of different reasons.
Sorry to burst your bubble but the trains in western Europe are a transport mode that caters to a specific class of people, mainly urban well educated people that work for in government, academia or for big corporations. I would occasionally take a train to go to a conference if the venue is close to the station otherwise it is just not practical.
Er, no, not really? I live in Sweden and a large slice of society take the trains. Ditto everywhere else I've been in Western Europe. Is it possible that your train network specifically is mediocre?
I grew in a rural village, many of my class mates were literal fucking mountain farmers. Some of us went to Prague at age 15. Over the years we have been many places. Its traditional for young people to get Interrail and travel around Europe.
People taking the train to Amsterdam is incredibly common. Taking the train for Vacation to Northern Italian (like Venice) is super common. Visiting Paris is super common by train.
Trains are use for all sorts of reasons both professional and not. And a wide range of different people is on the train, you see bushiness people in suits and you see fucking stoners going to raves you see families you see tourist from outside of Europe.
And the waste majority of people I talk to prefer to go by train and only use planes if it really a major improvement.
If Europe would just spent more money on infrastructure.
We have trains in Germany that can do 350km/h but I've yet to ride one that goes faster than 200, probably because the rails aren't what they're used to be.
Then we have the Germany Ticket. A 50€/month subscription to all regional trains (not the fast ones). Which removes the hassle of dealing with local subway and bus companies.
But the trains are often late, which sucks, especially if you want to ride in the evening.
If Europe could get on Japan's level, that would be a dream.