Nope, there was an article back in 2016 having _Germans_ starting to prefer air travel over rail travel. The sad reality is that cargo rail is the only rail. The _MOMENT_ any sort of capable non-oceanic alternative shows up, passengers flawk to it. Unless AV fuel is extremely expensive (to the point that, no matter what, you'll pay high hundreds/low thousands just to get to the next airport), passenger rail will _loose._
@@TheTrueAdept Not surprising seeing how outdated, consistently late and allround terrible Deutsche Bahn is. If they'd operate anything like the Thayls or Eurostar, I highly doubt Germans would be as pessimistic about train travel as they are according to that survey.
@@larsvanzijl1060 here's the thing, rail only works well outside of just cargo when there is no real alternatives around. It was only a matter of time that the rest of the world understands what the US went through during the late 1950s/early 1960s when passenger rail was discontinued.
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and subsidizes lol I'm not going to pay 250Euros for a train that takes 10 hrs vs a 100 Euro 1.5 hrs flight
The fast train I took from Venice to Rome was an absolute pleasure. You can sit and relax for few hours and enjoy the stunning Italian countryside. No hassles with taking a bloody flight from security checks, baggage issues, turbulence, tight uncomfortable seats and transports to the airport
@@FriendlyCroock When people say "America" what comes first in mind? The continent or the country. This "Europe is not a country" thing is an old eurosceptic line. More and more when the word "Europe" will be mentioned, everyone will understand EU and it's a good thing.
@@FriendlyCroock oh ffs they haven't even mentioned the word europe in the comment they just said they enjoyed the train ride and that this project could be nice when done. Yes not all European (or even EU) countries have developed train system but they're not claiming that they have so once again what you're saying here makes no sense. I get that you are proud of your nationality and ethnicity but please stop bothering people you're making me cringe.
@@FriendlyCroock 😪My guy, did you even read the original message? He just said something about Italy by itself and you start talking about Europe not being a country. Next you're calling people out for not making any sense and trolling? What a joke. Regardless of how you feel all of Europe (with the exception of Ireland) is already connected by passenger rail. Most of Europe's large population centers are connected by High Speed Rail or has access to it's own localized High Speed Rail network. The Baltic and Balkan states are getting their own networks in the future too which will basically complete the connection of every European & European Union country (likely again with the exception of Ireland lol) to a connected High Speed Rail network. God damn you are a cringe persona. You got me though... we Americans are uneducated, afraid of the Euro, & racist as all hell and we still make you look stupid. Seriously though check yourself before you start suggesting people aren't smarter than you or that they're racist. You just end up opening yourself up to getting shit thrown back in your face.
You must work for the FS (Ferrovie dello Stato) then because I took trains hundreds of times in Italy and only one time I arrived with a delay of 15 minutes. The rest were all between 30 minutes and 3 hours and 45 minutes of delay. I don't consider this as a "absolute pleasure". And I am not mentioning the fact you can't sleep or relax on the train because many chancers there so you need to keep looking at your belongins. Also is much cheaper to fly or to drive.
For me especially the ticketing and connectivity is important. I am going to Poland for family a lot, by train. If I book either polish or German trains online I get a digital ticket, but with the border crossing connection suddenly I have to wait for a paper ticket by mail, same for other countries. 1000 apps, prices and systems are just making it 1000 times harder to get by than it could actually be at this moment. The Interrail pass is a good option to show that its possible
I am assuming you’re going from Germany to Poland, or the opposite. With the Berlin - Warsaw express train, I didn’t need to print any tickets, just used my online ones. I just bought it through PKP’s website but DB’s also shows that route and is purchasable. However yeah a unified app would be best. Currently, railway administrators need to cooperate to sell each others tickets (and often don’t do it for the same price)
@@szymex8341 really? I dont find any option on the PKP website for intl tickets and DB only gave me the mail option, maybe because of the cheap option... But generally also SuperSparPreis is possible to have digital
@@fabianstudtmann9344 on the PKP intercity website, I just set from station to my polish station and the to station to berlin hauptbahnhof, bought the ticket, and showed the pdf to the conductor. But im not sure if the PKP website can buy connections to other german cities, might be needed to buy that separately on DB
I've been traveling from Italy to Germany, from Spain to France and from Germany to Neetherlands and I didn't have to print a single ticket, all digital
@@szymex8341 problem with privatization. Sweden used to have just one railway company. Now its two or more and you have to check all of them and buy separately to plan properly.
In recent years Trenitalia has completely renewed the fleet of regional trains by inserting more than 750 regional trains with ROCK, POP, BLUES, ETC trains. It currently has the most modern fleet in the Western world between high-speed trains and regional trains
Trenitalia is doing an absolutely excellent job. I think the weakest link at the moment is clearly Germany, they can‘t even get their shit together when it comes to electrification.
@@stefanobonaiuti8243 it's because their trains always come late, if they come and didn't get cancelled. There is always a dumb reason why your train will come hours later or it isn't going to come at all, like fake protests for stupid reanson just because they are lazy to work and the company never fire its lazy workers.
Wrong. American politicians from both parties have terminal car brained syndrome, which results in them spending exponentially more money on highways than railways for the past 80 years, despite the obvious fundamental benefits of rail transport. Sometimes, it's not about funding; it's about policy.
@@Pensyfan19 No. It IS that we don't have the capability. California is building a high speed railway 171 miles and it's taking well over the time it should take, partly because of litigious Americans. France took 5 YEARS to build a line between Paris and Bordeaux and it goes much farther than California's. Texas is supposed to be building a railway but has been dealing with lawsuits from NIMBY Americans who stop progress in its tracks at every turn, and now we don't know WHEN the project will start. Brightline built a railway that isn't even high speed and has had multiple accidents since their inception. They're also trying to build one to connect LA to LV, and THAT one keeps getting pushed back. Again. Please show me an example that proves I'm wrong about everything I just said.
Anything outside of suburban and intercity networks here in Australia is the same, the XPT from Sydney to Melbourne (one of the busiest air routes in the world) takes a steam age route with trains from the 60s. The government has set a budget for Sydney to Newcastle and hopefully that extends to the whole east coast from Melbourne to Brisbane at least
I think its great. Planes make a lot of sense for long distance travel. For short distances, its better to have trains. I always thought its ridiculous to have 40 minute flights between cities, the planes can't even reach their most efficient speed when the flights are that short.
I absolutely agree to your opinion, here too in India. I'd go with trains for regional connectivity, like between districts or within a state. But for travel between states, I'd go with flights which are way faster than trains.
@@anandhukb2900 , Yes. I am happy that India has a good railway infrastructure. Also, massive investments are being done to improve the railway infrastructure. The Vande Bharath express are acting as a stepping stone to high speed rails. Coming to goods, DFCs will be a game changer.
As a regular Amtrak commuter (Washington, DC to New Haven), I am envious of the European trains. Amtrak upgrades trains, but the rails and right of way allow high speed only in very limited areas, so what should be a 2 hour trip takes nearly 5 hours, and is vastly more expensive than a corresponding European train. I have used the trains in France, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands, and all have some very high performance trains at reasonable price.
@@DeusUltraviolaceus He may mean that the Freight trains have the right of way on the tracks (since freight train companies own most of the tracks in the US). Amtrak gets screwed regularly on timings...intentionally to keep it mostly useless for passenger travel.
It's surprising that the American rail system seems behind that of Europe. You would have thought it would be easier to set up a unified infrastructure for one single country than to set up a rail infrastructure that straddles several different countries.
It's very simple. European countries built train infraestructures, plus an universal health care and education system including University. You built aircraft carriers and 5th gen planes. Nobody can afford both. So we choose the first thing
There is a strong political component, as well, because high-speed trains could help tie Europe closer together. There are several routes that would make obvious sense. A line from Berlin through Dresden to Prague to Vienna to Bratislava to Budapest would be one. Another would be Berlin to Poznan to Lodz to Warsaw that could hook up with Rail Baltica. These would help build a stronger and more-connected Europe.
Berlin - Prag - Vienna is already planed. The projects name is „Via Vindobona“ the estimated time from Berlin to Vienna is about 4h. Though, knowing DB I am not very positiv they can handle that. ;) if they can I guess that’s a real challenge to Airtravel. 4h comfortable in a train without the airport, security and luggage hassle. And missing one train one just goes for the next one… It’s just a question of how expensive a ticket will be.
@@MathieuDeVinois Thanks for pointing this out: I looked it up on-line. This is exactly the type of project that Europe should be pursuing. Also, it can always be extended at a future date. Let's hope that steps will be taken to keep the prices of tickets at a reasonable level.
@@Byk37 Once Berlin to Vienna is completed, moving on to Budapest is the next logical step. Though I don't know about the difficulties of traversing the terrain, extending lines to either Belgrade and Sofia, or to Bucharest, will likely be promoted. After that, connecting to Istanbul makes perfect sense.
Great video. I was intruiged by the fact that you pointed out that not only highspeed railway needs funding, but also commuter lines. Here in Germany we had a 9€ ticket, allowing you to take every commuting train for a whole month for just 9€. The trains were totally overcrowded. Showing that if you make it affordable the people will cram themselves in the trains. Plus it highlighted that these lines do not have enough trains for high interest peaks.
It also needs development of the rail system across Europe. Right now only Western Europe has a very well developed rail system. While their is almost nothing in existence in Eastern and Southern European countries that are fully dependent on cars.
@@Matruchus Spain (Southern Europe) has the 2nd largest number of kilometers of high-speed rail in the world, only behind China (and I am not referring to kilometers per inhabitant, but total kilometers). Spain has 3 times more kilometers of high-speed rail than Germany and 5 times more than Italy.
@@Matruchus Italy used to have a very extensive network of short branch lines that served all the medium and small cities of the peninsula, they lasted until the 80s and 90s of the last century, but thanks to the political short-sightedness of the governments, they were all discontinued instead of being revamped and upgraded to make them competitive with other forms of trasport. The result is that today, especially during summer time, there are costantly huge traffic jams near many small towns that once where served by railways but not anymore.
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yeah, that's for Germans though...I wanted to go from Amsterdam to Prague by train and it cost me over 100 Euros... cheaper taking a plane and saving the 10 hours.
I wish. But my native country of Portugal doesn't have any high speed rail, any standard gauge rail... Connections to Spain are done via broad gauge diesel on an electrified railway... Likewise, the currently I currently live in, Estonia, has no high speed rail and only has broad gauge connection to Latvia, but trains don't run on it internationally, stopping at the border where you need to wait over 4 hours going from Tallinn to Riga.
Latvia is getting a highspeed standard gauge connections thanks to the rail baltica project. they are connecting Talin with Warsaw trough high speed rail.
Portugal is building an high-speed rail along its Atlantic axis from Porto to Lisbon to Faro. Maybe in the future we'll get the Lisbon-Madrid high-speed connection that is sorely missing.
Spain is already set to open the line to the border in Badajoz - Madrid in 2025, Portugal's part is missing. There will also be a connection between Porto and Vigo in the north but that won't be helpful to reach the rest of Europe. There's also the possibility (no plans yet) of a South link from Faro onto Huelva and then Seville, but again, that won't help in connecting quickly to France.
The biggest challenge will be to keep Deutsche Bahn out of it. If they get involved the high speed train will leave 55 minutes late, travel with 45 km/h, arrives 3 hours late and the tickets costs 3 times as much as without them.
i think i've heard that a lot from german people but actually even in france we really suck with our strikes every two days, let's not be so hard with our train compagny haha
And they are still receiving subsidised for their operations… plane travel should be plain banned between destinations that have a good train between them
Bro give them a break! If you look at the end credits it's one person making this video. Probably just an honest mistake. They did a great job making this video.
Regarding Trenitalia, in the last 20 years local services generally inporved, the worst years were between the 80s and the 00s. Consider that Italy is now adopting ERTMS (newest european segnaling) on all the lines, as an exanple.
Yeah getting large scale investment underway is definitely the biggest hurdle. Especially with how many countries already have, or are investing into domestic infrastructure, cross border lines are often neglected. And while quite a few such missing links are thankfully being built like the Femern tunnel between Denmark and Germany, and the Lyon-Turin high speed line, there's still a long way to go, like with connecting the Netherlands with Germany, which should be easy, but just has a lack of political will, especially from Germany. Though even projects that are specifically meant for high speed rail can often indirectly improve local traffic as well. Take for instance the Vejle Fjord high speed rail bridge in Denmark. This project would make a shortcut across a Fjord in Denmark east of the city of Vejle, cutting travel times down by 6 minutes compared to today, and being part of investments called the "Hourplan" to bring journey times down to one hour between each danish city pair so trains get there faster, and meet in these cities. That way the timetables for local services could be planned around said trains so passengers dont have to wait more than a few minutes. On top of that, the bridge would've allowed for the space on the old line's timetable, previously taken up by the express trains, to have more frequent local trains, going from once per hour, to every 15 minutes, and still have twice as many express trains across the country, including half, still serving Vejle Sadly this project got cancelled by a newly elected centre government since the politicians in it only see it at face value and have spread fearmongering that it would somehow mean, the city of Vejle would lose its express trains, and completely ignoring the increase in capacity for local trains. Other projects of a similar nature might sadly be on the chopping block and we've also seen the same in Sweden where a new right wing government has cut back plans for their proposed high speed rail network, lowering speeds and removing parts of the project. Their whole idea is they "Should invest more in local traffic" yet fail to neglect how the projects in question would help both Express trains, and local traffic by providing extra capacity, and allowing for faster regional express services to use the high speed line to get to cities faster and more frequently. That's just the way it goes sadly.
Regarding a high speed rail connection between the Netherlands and Germany I noticed there's a lack of a true high speed rail line connection between Amsterdam and Berlin and the regular intercity train connection between those two cities was clunky. The first time I took that train it didn't go into Germany due to a DB strike and the 2nd time I rode that line we had to change trains in Bad Benthem to a ICE train to continue to Berlin.
@@ehstronghold Yeah that's a stinker. The Amsterdam-Berlin route wl actually get new trains and be upgraded to an ICE service though. And towards Hamburg, there are plans involving the proposed Lelylijn line to Groeningen and from there taking the Wunderline to Bremen. The Wunderline project is very modest, mostly there for local trains, but it should still help with making it faster to get from the Netherlands north to Hamburg and Scandinavia, should express trains be used on the infrastructure.
It is actually the opposite Germany wanted to build and invest in new trains and rails on the line from Amsterdam and Berlin, but The Netherlands refused and they wanted to just refurbish some trains and things like that. This is at least what I have heard. I can also be completely wrong.
Yeah the lack of political will in favour of rail travel in some countries is shameful, particularly in Nordic countries actually, considering how much money the states of Denmark or Sweden have at their disposal, theoretically. However, in general, the problem is lack of investment. In Spain and Italy for instance, a lot of money gets spent on high-speed rail and not enough on local rail. However, the solution to this is not to cut back massively on high-speed rail, rather it would be to set aside more money for rail infrastructure in general and increase funding for local rail. Unfortunately, long-term rail infrastructure investment is not a political votes winner; probably also the reason why China managed to build so much HSR in so little time. The solution is of course not Chinese style autocracy, rather it is to consider the short-comings of Western Democracy in regards to long-term planning and try to address them.
I looked into going to Spain by train from England but it is very expensive compared to how cheap flying is, there are rich people who travel short distances by plane but they can afford to travel by train.
Agreed. It seems that globally the price of train tickets is the main problem that prevents rail industries from challenging airlines. I guess we’ll have to see it this changes in the future. Thanks for watching!
Even from France to Spain by train is expensive, because both national operators are in a poor relationship and there are only few trains each day that cross the pyrenees. I hope things will get better in the coming years
@@amelien08 I really wanted to go from Barcelona to Marseille by train, but it was just not affordable, especially compared to the plane. Ended up having a miserable journey with flixbus, but I wouldn't repeat it
I think the biggest obstacle is standardization. There are so many different systems across Europe. Most of it has standard gauge, but there are some countries with broad gauge. But the most difference is with electricity. It differs from country to country. Some have AC, some DC, with all kinds of voltages. That's the real reason it's so hard to have international rail travel in Europe.
i'm not sure about other countries in europe, but in italy all high speed trains can switch between both types of electricity without even needing to stop, also the trains have been designed for years to travel all over europe despite the infrastructural differences
Great video ! It was very interesting. Just one thing, is it possible next time when talking about distances to put them in kilometers too next to it or in a footnote ? It is better for us European ;)
European ? No ,Human in general . The only country where the majority of the population doesn't understand the Metric system is the US ,while the other 2 country that use another system understand Metrics (Liberia and Burma/Myanmar) and the one who officially are Metric but use a mixed system (Australia ,Canada ,UK ,New Zealand) so they still understand it .
It's easy to tell "Europe" when it's actually only WESTERN Europe. The idea is beautiful but it's impossible in the next 30/40 years in countries behind Germany, in the central Europe, Balkans etc.
Trains are way way better than planes. Even if it may take a bit longer, I want to avoid the whole airport and checkin headache. I love taking the bullet train in Spain, there is a bar carriage too! I always wanted to get a train across borders!
High speed rail is much better than cars, but i think high speed rail should collaborate with planes and not compete. If Airlines would compete with high speed rail, you could travel from a little small european countryside town to New York with 1 ticket.
Trenitalia has improved A LOT over the last 20 something years. They invested in their fleet, renewing most of it, and they are currently investing big sums of money all over the country. All the big projects are listed on their website, there's around 30 of them.
The problem is the economics of high speed trains. They are heavily subsidized in countries like Japan. In Spain it hasn't generated the money spent to build them
4:49 Thank you!! I'm so happy you brought this point. Everyone loses their mind about high speed travel for long distances, and they seem to forget that the actual importance of rail transport resides in the commuter and regional services that serve millions of people for their essential daily activities; as well as the efficient and clean freight transport that should be the backbone of goods transportation through the continent. But of course, these type of lines are more complex and not as profitable to run, so governments barely invest the minimum and private companies usually ignore them altogether. We need to address these questions first before we embark on megalomaniac high-speed projects. The rail revolution must start from below, not from above.
I travel quite frequently long distances by rail. I can say that I want this to be true, but non centralised ticketing system along with massive delays and frequently missed connections on top of ever increasing prices, lead me to believe that we are far from reaching the point where people travel long distances by rail...
4:49 The best line on the video thanks for pointing out one big problem in Europe that we need to solve it Asap not onlly in Italy in Spain same problem and others countries
Yeah. HSR is good and all but local / regional rail is just way more important. In the end of the day you can cross the entire country on regional rail but you can't go to the town 20 km over with HSR
The biggest problem for me, that could be solved very easily, is changing trains. Trains should either be synchronised, or frequent. I don’t wanna be stuck in a random German city because my train was late. And trains should obviously be more punctual.
I feel you, travelling around north rhine-westphalia felt like gambling you have to choose among several small trains that all change in different and unkown small towns and if you are out of luck because the next connection gets cancelled (not very unlikely), then you are screwed
@@tank-eleven its the exact same for me in NRW as well....thats why I mentally prepare myself to miss my connection and I usually try for direct trains or 1 change at most.
Keep in mind that France and Italy have invested in HSR since the 1970s and UK, Germany, Spain & Belgium since the 1980s. It is not unrealistic that they will have to build more HSR & Regional Rail lines and improve cross-ticketing by 2040 to match China and Japan per capita ridership by 2040. The US and Canada are the ones to worry about.
Here in Denmark we are building the Femern tunnel to connect Germany and Denmark and make the way to Sweden or Copenhagen way shorter. It goes under water and it's a huge project. The estimated cost is about $7.5 billions. Nothing like this has been built before.
There are a couple more problems standing in the way: 1. Almost every country uses different train control systems which are incompatible with each other. 2. There are many different electricity systems in operation (sometimes within the same country), e.g. 15kV 16,6 Hz, 25kV 50Hz, 3kV DV, 1,5kV DC. 3. Different track gauges. Not such a huge problem as most of continental Europe and the UK uses standard gauge (1435mm). Notable exceptions are Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Finland, some ex-USSR states. Ignoring track gauge, this still means that Multiple Units habe to be purpose built for a certain international line. For loco-driven stock this means a change of locomotive is required at every border crossing. Some of this is being alleviated with the introduction of the European Train Control System (ETCS), but the rollout is slow. I hope Europe manages to overcome these challenges and in future we can get rid of continental flights all together.
Last summer I was considering a train home from Milan to Copenhagen. The difference between ground transport (mostly train and some bus) was huge. 2 hours with a plane (4, when you add time at airport) to 23-24 hours with mostly train. I opted for the plane
Yep. This is authentic experience most people who travel see. Not to mention the difference in pricing. Sure, there's luggage cost. But planes are dirt cheap compared to trains. A lot of times trains are about 10 times the price of a plane. And if they want to cover the cost of the investment, I don't see this is very likely to change soon. Sure trains have their perks, but to compete with airlines is a tall order. I always say, wake me up, when a train that takes me from Venice to London in under 4h and costs under 100$ is invented.
this is a way too long route across multiple countries, of course it is better by plane. High speed train is more convenient than plane when the u need to travel within 600-800km max distance, especially within the same country or two countries max. There is not one single operator across EU, crossing many countries would mean many changes
@@tanner293 The suggested route was, iirc, bus from Milan to Switzerland, train to Southern Germany, switch to a train to Hamburg, switch in Hamburg and then direct to Copenhagen. Some suggestions stated a bus ride from Hamburg to CPH instead of a train.
@@tanner293 pricing is ridiculous even within 1 country. had a trip this november. athens-milan-barcelona-seville-madrid seville-madrid by train , costed me more than previous 3 lega combined...
@@maxyakovenko9865 that depends how much earlier you booked, i payed maybe 70€ for Sevilla-Madrid, now with the liberalized market in EU and the entry of new competitors price are suppose to drop
In European Union if France decide something, the rest is like " Hahaha what a dumb decision" and then everyone copies it, with a angry face and while thinking " Why didn't we do it frist! Duck!"
It is also worth noting that Poland is in the game as well. In past years vast amount of the infrastructure projects were completed and many modernisation projects are ongoing. Right now PKP Experss Intercity Premium high speed trains are connecting almost all major polish cities and the tickets cost around 35 EUR and rigth now almost no one is flying witinh the country when they can take high speed train.
0:03 wow you used a map with 1900's european borders. Very peculiar that an animation showing a futuristic look into europe, while using those old borders, exist. I wonder who created it.
Really good video and like others said your channel is really underrated. Sometimes the background music cuts were really abrupt though, fixing that would make the production quality a 10/10
I am going Amsterdam to Copenhagen for new years, and I checked rail first, but the trip was MUCH longer, so I ended up getting a plane ticket, which was also cheaper. I know that I am burning some time at airport security too, but it was still faster. I wish it were otherwise.
In Denmark we are building one of the biggest under water tunnels. The Femern tunnel from Germany to Denmark. The estimated cost is about $7.5 billions and its planned to be ready in 2029. This should shorten the way to Copenhagen significantly.
Honestly, there is a charm to a decent train ride. Despite it's cost, methods like planes, and geography. I would like to see this applied in the U.S.A. Going from East to West in a train like we did in the past would be nice.
@@denniszenanywhere building train in usa is a geographical nightmare, compare to Europe where major locations are just miles from each other, US is just to scattered for it to be economically possible.
Mythical is the right description! The critical factor carefully omitted from this discussion is cost. The only way that high-speed rail travel becomes economical is to impose levies and taxes on other forms of transport, especially air travel. The main effect will be to make anything other that local journeys by public transport unaffordable for a large proportion of the population. Fortunately, for the class who will be able to afford it, various 'green' policies will assist in the upward transfer of wealth and so they won't be forced to stay at home like the common people.
Infrastructures cannot be count itself like a normal business, a train station can’t be profitable but it’s externalities (more people travelling, more business open and more people meeting ) creates more income on the society.
Once I had a ride between Marseille and Geneve with TGV. Man, that was lovely experience. If you count time lost on check-in, and check-out, it definitely was faster. But, before that, when I've found out I will have to go with train, I have raised a noise back in HR.
Did anybody notice that the europe map in the beginning and later the map of germany is like over a 100 years old? :D The europe map shows the borders from before the first world war and the map of germany is the borders from between first and second world war :D
No, No, No! Save us from this! Trains are not as fast as planes and can't replace them! Travelling from North to South of France takes me a full day now! When I could be done in 45 minutes! And it's not cheaper!
All fun and games until the train gets cancelled or cannot go further than half the route you want to take. Happened to me a couple of weeks ago with an ICE from NL to DE. Couldn’t get the second ICE either because of this and my whole trip to Switzerland by fast train couldn’t go through.. Next time I’ll take the plane again
From what I’ve heard, a train company in Austria will over a direct train from NL to Switzerland so basically you wouldn’t need to change if you were to still take the train
Milan to paris via frecciarossa is already around 6 hours right now. If you leave early at morning you can arrive in Paris for lunch and you do not have to go through the airport security etc
We are already in the big crash, Inflation is a catastrophe. This CPI report is a colossal failure. To bring the housing market to a halt, the FED will have to pull all the stops. The unfortunate issue is that other markets are being decimated If you want to stay green, you have to rely on a lot of diversification. Currently up 14% and being careful. Still a better deal than leaving it in a savings or checking account yielding 0-1 percent interest.
I engage in diversifying various investments through proper planning and management of a good Investment Professional and so far have earned many returns (the amount is confidential)
in italy we are building 3 major progect : Govi tunnel (Genova to Tourin/Milan), The Tourin to Lyone and the Brennero BASE tunnel (longer than the Gotthsrd) connecting Italy to Austria.
Even though I always take the train when going to Switzerland/France/Austria for skiing (from southern Germany) it’s not worth it for any distance longer than that. Taking a train vs flying to Barcelona would take 3x the time from door to door and cost me about 5x the money. Same goes for most destinations in Italy (except Milan for some reason).
i love over night trains with cabin.....you arrive in morning, already after breakfast, after shower and good to go. no hassle with airport, check ins and such
You only briefly mentioned it, but how is Europe planning on moving freight transport onto rails? Trucking represents a much higher percentage of GHG emissions than aviation, yet Europe has historically discouraged rail freight, pushing it onto trucks instead. Without proper planning, HSR upgrades will push even more freight off of trains and onto trucks, which could result in an overall net increase in GHG emissions.
"but how is Europe planning on moving freight transport onto rails? " there is a lot of freight transported via rail across Europe already, but most tracks are mixed use tracks which are running at their full capacity, or anywhere near its full capacity. Rail transport isn't really discouraged, it's simply that trucks are quicker, more flexible in time and way cheaper ...
An asterisk should be added to the China comment. They don't care about the impacts on the local populace, environment, working conditions, wildlife, etc.
@@thebigmacd public transit is meant to help boost the economy. Most public transport systems do lose money. The highway system is a good example. It costs billions to build and maintain. And it probably doesn't make money either.
3:28 Specifically mentioning Munich - Milano while talking about the problem the alps pose is just straight up comedy. Switzerland literally built three long railway tunnels (Zimmerberg, Gotthard base and Ceneri base tunnel) before Germany got their shit together and electrified Munich - Zürich. So while the alps would be a huge problem it is also where you can find by far the most competent countries when it comes to large infrastructure projects. If Germany had to deal with this problem we would probably have to wait until the 2050s until they even start to work on building a large tunnel.
as a european; they're just too fkin expensive lmao. it's so much cheaper for me to fly from edinburgh to berlin, or london to zurich, or paris to warsaw than it is to try and navigate the hells of LNER, SNCF, ICE, DB, OBB (actually obb is quite good), with each train costing upwards of €100. i can just get a direct flight between all of those routes for around €100, less if i spend some time searching and don't just book the first thing that comes up. domestic flights in the US are hell; here, those short 1 hr flights are fine. unless you're trying to get into innsbruck with bad weather. also the interrail ticket is very cool, but still so expensive.
Why don't you have an app or travel service that coordinates the best route through all those companies and their lines? That honestly seems like something that would have been created years ago.
Flights are highly subsidized which depressed prices, and thus decreases cost lowering pressure for trains. Nor do flights have any connection/cost with carbon, which trains can be electrified.
@@crazy808ish There are differnt apps like Trainline that do this. But overall it tends to be more expensive than flights. I travel a lot by train but it is mostly not the cheapest option
My issues with railway is that it is more expensive than flying. Especially when you look at the maintenance of all the railways. I already know what they will do. They will higher the taxes on planes to make it less attractive, but the train will still be expensive. So in the end it’s us customers who will pay more to travel in Europe.
Building new rail is expensive. But is it really that expensive to operate? I thought rail was like the cheapest option of all for short to medium distance travel. For cargo it's most definitely cheapest.
@@theamici You can't simply say that rail is the cheapest option. It might be the cheapest if there is sufficient demand, otherwise it might as well be a deep money pit. Even freight transportation by rail is more expensive than trucking in many cases.
I wonder why so often in "historical" contentent, creators are using maps with modern borders? And vice versa - in stuff regarding modern issues, maps with historical borders are in use. Like here, with focus on Germany in shape from before 1939.
I completely agree with you, but I want to go to London from the Netherlands with train, the ticket for train is €799 for 2 person, when I checked plane ticket from the same day, it shows that plane ticket is €212 for 2 person... So please make the train cheaper
I totally agree. The price of train tickets is a HUGE problem in many places globally. Meant to touch on that but just couldn’t work it into this video properly. Thanks for watching!
Im a semi regular Eurostar user (London St Pancras to/from Ams C viz Brussels) and if one books sufficiently well enough in advance, good value tickets can be obtained. Not so for last minute just walk on though..
No, it doesn't. I live in Germany. The trains are unreliable, often late and getting from a to b may often require a number of changes. But if one train is late, you miss the next one, sitting frustrated in the middle of nowhere. Flying or driving is much easier. Munich to Prague, 4-5 hours by a car. Train 1 stop and 6 hours at best.
I took the highspeed train from Milan to Paris The Italian high speed trains feel like jets on the inside and very very comfortable and new. I'll recommend you take the trains instead on planes because theres so much to see. Especially the alps!
Biggest issue is central ticketing system for the trains, not sure if you will have a seat on the train and the many delays next to that almost each country in the EU has their own electric system for trains which makes it almost impossible to travel on the same train straight to the destination.
The main issue with high speed rail (or any rail really) is that their prices can be incredibly high. For me, there is little reason to take the high speed rail from Brussels to Paris of 1-2 hours when you can also take a long distance bus (such as flixbus) that takes a little longer (say 4-5 hours) but costs a fraction of the price (i.e. 10 instead of 100 euros in some cases). I could even find flights that are cheaper than the trains. This is partly the reason why European governments try to artificially make them look more appealing by forcibly making aviation more expensive (for example by adding costs for short distance flights), but now we are simply left with less cheap options.
I think the busiest planes routes in Europe are not busy because of direct flight, but because of transition for longer flights. Therefore, it cannot be replaced by train going from city centers to city centers. To replace those routes you would need fast trains who go diretly to the airport. But the problem is that if your train gets delayed or cancelled because of strikes, you cannot get your plane ticket refunded because it is independant of the flight company. So it wouldn't be as easy to replace those planes routes by trains routes. Also, I don't see how it would be profitable, in Belgium, in one of the country with the highest density of population, we still have trouble filling some of our high speed trains, even with a high demand, the trains are much more expensive than planes and busses. Even if they are subsidized, the trains are still very expensive compared to other alternatives. And I don't see how European countries will have the capability to fund those infrastructures, since they have to cut into every budget, it's the case in Belgium and France, I don't really know for other countries, but since a country like Italy had a huge bridge collapsing due to lack of maintenance, I guess it's the case for many other countries. So even if the project looks nice, I unfortunately highly doubt that it will work. But again, there are things that make me think it's gonna work. First, there are tax break for kerosene for european planes, if they cancel these taxes breaks, there won't be plane ticket prices as competitive. Also I think that the increase in passenger is not proportionate to the increase in number of lines, I think it's exponential. Let's say there is two new line, between lyon and Bordeaux, and Turin and Lyon. It makes that not only people who want to go from Lyon to Bordeaux or Lyon to Turin, take this train instead of the plane. But also people who want to go from Paris to Milan, Lyon to Barcelona, etc ... Therefore I think that to be profitable, there is a certain amount of lines requested, which we haven't achived yet, maybe with the lines who are planned to be created, it would make it profitbale.
Europe as we see has its own share of problems with such a project. USA on the other hand has unpleasant weather phenomenons: regularly occurring hurricanes and frequent tornadoes that may be very damaging to a typical train infrastructure. The Florida's Brightline opted for diesel-electric locomotives to avoid suffering from such events there.
@@mythicalmodern that would be great. love your channel! Personally I've completely stopped flying and while hsr is great its expensive and doesn't go everywhere. Night trains can be extremely cheap and it's a great way to go a long distance. It's good to see videos about the disappearance of plane travel within Europe.
I always wanted to travel by train when I go visit my country and see Europe by train, but as long as a train ticket from London to Paris cost more than the flight to Bucharest is hard to convince myself that's a good idea. Eurostar: London to Paris £100. Easyjet: London to Paris £35. Ryanair: London to Bucharest £40. So ya, train operators have to do a lot of work before they can overtake airplane travel.
unlike a friggin airplane on a train you can get up, stretch, walk around to some amenities. planes?! i'm sitting crammed into an iron maiden for a good three hours with not-good snacks.
Very interesting and high quality video. It just put me off that you used some old maps in some scenes. For example at 0:02 that maps is pre-WW1 and the one at 2:53 is pre-WW2
Fact = Italy's Trenitalia helped the Italian airline Alitalia become bankrupt after more passengers preferred train travel as it was cheaper and more efficient.
Well, in a way, but the fact that Alitalia had very few years (1977 / 1983-88 / 1997 and finally 2002) in which they weren't plainly loosing money speaks LOUD about their efficiency, trains or not.
@@gromosawsmiay3000 in Italy that's not the case, unless the car is full, the fast train is cheaper: Milan-Rome in train is between 60 and 100€ (300-500pln) and by car is ~100€ between gas and highway fees. In Poland the trains are even cheaper, if I'm not wrong last time I took the fast train between Warsaw and Gdansk I spent around 40€...
@@AlessandroGenTLe 4 people by train it is 60-100€ x 4 = 240-400€ , is it cheaper than by car? in Poland 40€ x 4 - 160 € this is expensive than car- and not faster. for your information distance between Warsaw and Gdansk is 340 km fuel cost is around 35-40€ so for one person cost is almost equal for car and train, for more than two people car is cheaper (if you use LPG cost for car is two times lower). For Italy calculation is almost the same.
@@gromosawsmiay3000 kind of. If you consider the real cost/km of a car the things change: a BMW 320I 2.0 184CV doing 15000km/year has a costs of 0,6701€/km in Italy (comprehending everything but the highway). Milan to Rome by car are 573km and the highway is 42.6€, so in total we're speaking of 426.5€ Gdansk to Warsaw on A1 is 119pln (25€) and they are 416km. Let's take 10% away from cost/km calculated on Italian rates, and we still have 25€+249€= 274€ I wouldn't call that cheap...
@@counterfit5 The problem is that the public grew up when their overseas competitors either were bombed or didn't exist. Today Chinese sweat shops are increasing their wages to prevent their workers from joining other companies. Therefor material costs will go up. Will spending 1 hour each day driving to work be as attractive if the fuel costs twice or even triple that it does today?
@@jmd1743I feel like you strongly underestimate not just how cat culture operates in America, but also *why* it operates as it does. The gas tax increasing would hurt lower income drivers yes, but for middle America and up it would just be get another incentive for electric cars, which are quickly becoming popular
@@jasonkatz4430 I agree there is a car culture but for majority of the public the cars are for getting from point-a to point-b. The reason kids are shooting up the place is because they need a drivers permit to basically have a childhood, and once they get their restricted license they're 2 years away from being booted onto the streets. People really, really hate driving to the point that they desire driverless cars. Look at how many tens of billions of dollars is going into developing that technology. So you need a drivers license to have a childhood and you need a drivers license to function when you're an elderly person. There are plenty of elderly people who you wouldn't trust behind the wheel of an automobile but you would trust them to walk through town to do errands. Car culture is not that important compared to say being able to live outside of an assisted living center, and apartment is cheaper than assisted living center.
If Europe standardized their ticketing systems then the flight industry might be completely overtaken by rail
Nope, there was an article back in 2016 having _Germans_ starting to prefer air travel over rail travel. The sad reality is that cargo rail is the only rail. The _MOMENT_ any sort of capable non-oceanic alternative shows up, passengers flawk to it.
Unless AV fuel is extremely expensive (to the point that, no matter what, you'll pay high hundreds/low thousands just to get to the next airport), passenger rail will _loose._
@@TheTrueAdept that's because what all Germans really want to is to travel to Mallorca and Tenerife and those are not very accessible by train
@@TheTrueAdept Not surprising seeing how outdated, consistently late and allround terrible Deutsche Bahn is. If they'd operate anything like the Thayls or Eurostar, I highly doubt Germans would be as pessimistic about train travel as they are according to that survey.
@@larsvanzijl1060 here's the thing, rail only works well outside of just cargo when there is no real alternatives around.
It was only a matter of time that the rest of the world understands what the US went through during the late 1950s/early 1960s when passenger rail was discontinued.
and subsidizes lol I'm not going to pay 250Euros for a train that takes 10 hrs vs a 100 Euro 1.5 hrs flight
The fast train I took from Venice to Rome was an absolute pleasure. You can sit and relax for few hours and enjoy the stunning Italian countryside. No hassles with taking a bloody flight from security checks, baggage issues, turbulence, tight uncomfortable seats and transports to the airport
@@FriendlyCroock When people say "America" what comes first in mind? The continent or the country. This "Europe is not a country" thing is an old eurosceptic line. More and more when the word "Europe" will be mentioned, everyone will understand EU and it's a good thing.
@@FriendlyCroock Oh look! A guy that just says people are wrong and makes no sense when he doesn't have a rebuttal!
@@FriendlyCroock oh ffs they haven't even mentioned the word europe in the comment they just said they enjoyed the train ride and that this project could be nice when done. Yes not all European (or even EU) countries have developed train system but they're not claiming that they have so once again what you're saying here makes no sense. I get that you are proud of your nationality and ethnicity but please stop bothering people you're making me cringe.
@@FriendlyCroock 😪My guy, did you even read the original message? He just said something about Italy by itself and you start talking about Europe not being a country. Next you're calling people out for not making any sense and trolling? What a joke.
Regardless of how you feel all of Europe (with the exception of Ireland) is already connected by passenger rail. Most of Europe's large population centers are connected by High Speed Rail or has access to it's own localized High Speed Rail network. The Baltic and Balkan states are getting their own networks in the future too which will basically complete the connection of every European & European Union country (likely again with the exception of Ireland lol) to a connected High Speed Rail network.
God damn you are a cringe persona.
You got me though... we Americans are uneducated, afraid of the Euro, & racist as all hell and we still make you look stupid.
Seriously though check yourself before you start suggesting people aren't smarter than you or that they're racist. You just end up opening yourself up to getting shit thrown back in your face.
You must work for the FS (Ferrovie dello Stato) then because I took trains hundreds of times in Italy and only one time I arrived with a delay of 15 minutes. The rest were all between 30 minutes and 3 hours and 45 minutes of delay. I don't consider this as a "absolute pleasure". And I am not mentioning the fact you can't sleep or relax on the train because many chancers there so you need to keep looking at your belongins. Also is much cheaper to fly or to drive.
For me especially the ticketing and connectivity is important. I am going to Poland for family a lot, by train. If I book either polish or German trains online I get a digital ticket, but with the border crossing connection suddenly I have to wait for a paper ticket by mail, same for other countries. 1000 apps, prices and systems are just making it 1000 times harder to get by than it could actually be at this moment. The Interrail pass is a good option to show that its possible
I am assuming you’re going from Germany to Poland, or the opposite. With the Berlin - Warsaw express train, I didn’t need to print any tickets, just used my online ones. I just bought it through PKP’s website but DB’s also shows that route and is purchasable.
However yeah a unified app would be best. Currently, railway administrators need to cooperate to sell each others tickets (and often don’t do it for the same price)
@@szymex8341 really? I dont find any option on the PKP website for intl tickets and DB only gave me the mail option, maybe because of the cheap option... But generally also SuperSparPreis is possible to have digital
@@fabianstudtmann9344 on the PKP intercity website, I just set from station to my polish station and the to station to berlin hauptbahnhof, bought the ticket, and showed the pdf to the conductor.
But im not sure if the PKP website can buy connections to other german cities, might be needed to buy that separately on DB
I've been traveling from Italy to Germany, from Spain to France and from Germany to Neetherlands and I didn't have to print a single ticket, all digital
@@szymex8341 problem with privatization. Sweden used to have just one railway company. Now its two or more and you have to check all of them and buy separately to plan properly.
In recent years Trenitalia has completely renewed the fleet of regional trains by inserting more than 750 regional trains with ROCK, POP, BLUES, ETC trains. It currently has the most modern fleet in the Western world between high-speed trains and regional trains
Trenitalia is doing an absolutely excellent job.
I think the weakest link at the moment is clearly Germany, they can‘t even get their shit together when it comes to electrification.
it's doing an amazing job, but still it's taking shit from everyone in Italy
I dont know how they did that, Denmark got Italian made trains way back,,,,, it was in mild words a distaster.
from Florence above is Heaven, from Florence below is hell break lose
@@stefanobonaiuti8243 it's because their trains always come late, if they come and didn't get cancelled. There is always a dumb reason why your train will come hours later or it isn't going to come at all, like fake protests for stupid reanson just because they are lazy to work and the company never fire its lazy workers.
The United States could never do anything like this. We're stuck in the past.
Wrong. American politicians from both parties have terminal car brained syndrome, which results in them spending exponentially more money on highways than railways for the past 80 years, despite the obvious fundamental benefits of rail transport. Sometimes, it's not about funding; it's about policy.
@@Pensyfan19 You just proved my point so exactly about what am I wrong?
@@TheRailwayDrone It's not that we don't have the capability, it's that we choose to fund stuff other than trains.
@@Pensyfan19 No. It IS that we don't have the capability. California is building a high speed railway 171 miles and it's taking well over the time it should take, partly because of litigious Americans. France took 5 YEARS to build a line between Paris and Bordeaux and it goes much farther than California's. Texas is supposed to be building a railway but has been dealing with lawsuits from NIMBY Americans who stop progress in its tracks at every turn, and now we don't know WHEN the project will start. Brightline built a railway that isn't even high speed and has had multiple accidents since their inception. They're also trying to build one to connect LA to LV, and THAT one keeps getting pushed back. Again. Please show me an example that proves I'm wrong about everything I just said.
Anything outside of suburban and intercity networks here in Australia is the same, the XPT from Sydney to Melbourne (one of the busiest air routes in the world) takes a steam age route with trains from the 60s. The government has set a budget for Sydney to Newcastle and hopefully that extends to the whole east coast from Melbourne to Brisbane at least
I think its great. Planes make a lot of sense for long distance travel. For short distances, its better to have trains. I always thought its ridiculous to have 40 minute flights between cities, the planes can't even reach their most efficient speed when the flights are that short.
I absolutely agree to your opinion, here too in India. I'd go with trains for regional connectivity, like between districts or within a state. But for travel between states, I'd go with flights which are way faster than trains.
@@anandhukb2900 , Yes. I am happy that India has a good railway infrastructure. Also, massive investments are being done to improve the railway infrastructure. The Vande Bharath express are acting as a stepping stone to high speed rails. Coming to goods, DFCs will be a game changer.
As a regular Amtrak commuter (Washington, DC to New Haven), I am envious of the European trains. Amtrak upgrades trains, but the rails and right of way allow high speed only in very limited areas, so what should be a 2 hour trip takes nearly 5 hours, and is vastly more expensive than a corresponding European train. I have used the trains in France, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands, and all have some very high performance trains at reasonable price.
It's called CONgress...if they had given Amtrak money back in 2009 when it was requested, by 2025 the NE Corridor would have true HSR.
@HM51 what do you mean right of way in terms of limiting high speed?
@@DeusUltraviolaceus He may mean that the Freight trains have the right of way on the tracks (since freight train companies own most of the tracks in the US). Amtrak gets screwed regularly on timings...intentionally to keep it mostly useless for passenger travel.
It's surprising that the American rail system seems behind that of Europe. You would have thought it would be easier to set up a unified infrastructure for one single country than to set up a rail infrastructure that straddles several different countries.
It's very simple. European countries built train infraestructures, plus an universal health care and education system including University. You built aircraft carriers and 5th gen planes. Nobody can afford both. So we choose the first thing
There is a strong political component, as well, because high-speed trains could help tie Europe closer together. There are several routes that would make obvious sense. A line from Berlin through Dresden to Prague to Vienna to Bratislava to Budapest would be one. Another would be Berlin to Poznan to Lodz to Warsaw that could hook up with Rail Baltica. These would help build a stronger and more-connected Europe.
Berlin - Prag - Vienna is already planed. The projects name is „Via Vindobona“ the estimated time from Berlin to Vienna is about 4h. Though, knowing DB I am not very positiv they can handle that. ;) if they can I guess that’s a real challenge to Airtravel. 4h comfortable in a train without the airport, security and luggage hassle. And missing one train one just goes for the next one… It’s just a question of how expensive a ticket will be.
@@MathieuDeVinois
Thanks for pointing this out: I looked it up on-line. This is exactly the type of project that Europe should be pursuing. Also, it can always be extended at a future date. Let's hope that steps will be taken to keep the prices of tickets at a reasonable level.
"stronger and more-connected Europe" with borders from Hitler's Germany, or 1914, pre-WWI?
and it should continue from budapest down to instanbul, so all the turks can use it during the holidays and not to condense highways and borders :D
@@Byk37
Once Berlin to Vienna is completed, moving on to Budapest is the next logical step. Though I don't know about the difficulties of traversing the terrain, extending lines to either Belgrade and Sofia, or to Bucharest, will likely be promoted. After that, connecting to Istanbul makes perfect sense.
Great video. I was intruiged by the fact that you pointed out that not only highspeed railway needs funding, but also commuter lines. Here in Germany we had a 9€ ticket, allowing you to take every commuting train for a whole month for just 9€. The trains were totally overcrowded. Showing that if you make it affordable the people will cram themselves in the trains. Plus it highlighted that these lines do not have enough trains for high interest peaks.
It also needs development of the rail system across Europe. Right now only Western Europe has a very well developed rail system. While their is almost nothing in existence in Eastern and Southern European countries that are fully dependent on cars.
@@Matruchus Spain (Southern Europe) has the 2nd largest number of kilometers of high-speed rail in the world, only behind China (and I am not referring to kilometers per inhabitant, but total kilometers). Spain has 3 times more kilometers of high-speed rail than Germany and 5 times more than Italy.
@@iGaVlogs and yet it's still a pain doing any travel that doesn't involve Madrid, ridicoulous
@@Matruchus Italy used to have a very extensive network of short branch lines that served all the medium and small cities of the peninsula, they lasted until the 80s and 90s of the last century, but thanks to the political short-sightedness of the governments, they were all discontinued instead of being revamped and upgraded to make them competitive with other forms of trasport. The result is that today, especially during summer time, there are costantly huge traffic jams near many small towns that once where served by railways but not anymore.
yeah, that's for Germans though...I wanted to go from Amsterdam to Prague by train and it cost me over 100 Euros... cheaper taking a plane and saving the 10 hours.
US: Best I can do is 1 line that only goes high speed for a small section of its route
American military complex had invested heavily in wars and military bases around the globe 🌍 instead.👎
I wish.
But my native country of Portugal doesn't have any high speed rail, any standard gauge rail... Connections to Spain are done via broad gauge diesel on an electrified railway...
Likewise, the currently I currently live in, Estonia, has no high speed rail and only has broad gauge connection to Latvia, but trains don't run on it internationally, stopping at the border where you need to wait over 4 hours going from Tallinn to Riga.
Latvia is getting a highspeed standard gauge connections thanks to the rail baltica project. they are connecting Talin with Warsaw trough high speed rail.
Portugal is building an high-speed rail along its Atlantic axis from Porto to Lisbon to Faro. Maybe in the future we'll get the Lisbon-Madrid high-speed connection that is sorely missing.
Spain is already set to open the line to the border in Badajoz - Madrid in 2025, Portugal's part is missing. There will also be a connection between Porto and Vigo in the north but that won't be helpful to reach the rest of Europe. There's also the possibility (no plans yet) of a South link from Faro onto Huelva and then Seville, but again, that won't help in connecting quickly to France.
@@guerreiro943 Really? I haven't heard of any rail investment since Sócrates was prime minister.
@@realhawaii5o It's still in the planning phase, so no construction so far. But if you look it up you can find many news online about it.
The biggest challenge will be to keep Deutsche Bahn out of it. If they get involved the high speed train will leave 55 minutes late, travel with 45 km/h, arrives 3 hours late and the tickets costs 3 times as much as without them.
i think i've heard that a lot from german people but actually even in france we really suck with our strikes every two days, let's not be so hard with our train compagny haha
@@sullfolife Let's just have the Swiss do everything. Traveling there is a bliss :D
I was shocked to hear how little train companies were compensated for the Covid disaster. How much were airlines compensated?
I’m not sure exactly, but I do know that U.S. airlines received tens of billions from the government during COVID. Thanks for watching!!
And they are still receiving subsidised for their operations… plane travel should be plain banned between destinations that have a good train between them
@@mythicalmodern amtrak received two bucks and a middle finger from uncle Sam...
@@szymex8341trains don’t work without rails
Lufthansa received a huge package of aid from the german govt.
0:03 nobody noticed there's something wrong with this map?
Apparently, the Austro-Hungarian Empire could use some high speed trains.
@@Ruinenoberbaurat_Weckenbarth They are thinking about building one between Vienna and Budapest incidentally.
@@boomerix This will be perfect for the K. u. K. Hochgeschwindigkeitseisenbahngesellschaft.
Bro give them a break! If you look at the end credits it's one person making this video. Probably just an honest mistake. They did a great job making this video.
@@boomerix no, they are thinking in one between Warsaw and Budapest.
I love trains. From my home I'm in Milan in a little bit more than 3h without changing thanks to the new gotthard tunnel. Should go there asap
I travel Geneva Milan almost every weekend. Italian High speed trains are best I think, in class.
Regarding Trenitalia, in the last 20 years local services generally inporved, the worst years were between the 80s and the 00s. Consider that Italy is now adopting ERTMS (newest european segnaling) on all the lines, as an exanple.
Yeah getting large scale investment underway is definitely the biggest hurdle. Especially with how many countries already have, or are investing into domestic infrastructure, cross border lines are often neglected. And while quite a few such missing links are thankfully being built like the Femern tunnel between Denmark and Germany, and the Lyon-Turin high speed line, there's still a long way to go, like with connecting the Netherlands with Germany, which should be easy, but just has a lack of political will, especially from Germany.
Though even projects that are specifically meant for high speed rail can often indirectly improve local traffic as well. Take for instance the Vejle Fjord high speed rail bridge in Denmark. This project would make a shortcut across a Fjord in Denmark east of the city of Vejle, cutting travel times down by 6 minutes compared to today, and being part of investments called the "Hourplan" to bring journey times down to one hour between each danish city pair so trains get there faster, and meet in these cities. That way the timetables for local services could be planned around said trains so passengers dont have to wait more than a few minutes.
On top of that, the bridge would've allowed for the space on the old line's timetable, previously taken up by the express trains, to have more frequent local trains, going from once per hour, to every 15 minutes, and still have twice as many express trains across the country, including half, still serving Vejle
Sadly this project got cancelled by a newly elected centre government since the politicians in it only see it at face value and have spread fearmongering that it would somehow mean, the city of Vejle would lose its express trains, and completely ignoring the increase in capacity for local trains.
Other projects of a similar nature might sadly be on the chopping block and we've also seen the same in Sweden where a new right wing government has cut back plans for their proposed high speed rail network, lowering speeds and removing parts of the project. Their whole idea is they "Should invest more in local traffic" yet fail to neglect how the projects in question would help both Express trains, and local traffic by providing extra capacity, and allowing for faster regional express services to use the high speed line to get to cities faster and more frequently.
That's just the way it goes sadly.
Wow, I didn’t know that about Sweden. Thanks so much for this comment!
Regarding a high speed rail connection between the Netherlands and Germany I noticed there's a lack of a true high speed rail line connection between Amsterdam and Berlin and the regular intercity train connection between those two cities was clunky. The first time I took that train it didn't go into Germany due to a DB strike and the 2nd time I rode that line we had to change trains in Bad Benthem to a ICE train to continue to Berlin.
@@ehstronghold Yeah that's a stinker. The Amsterdam-Berlin route wl actually get new trains and be upgraded to an ICE service though. And towards Hamburg, there are plans involving the proposed Lelylijn line to Groeningen and from there taking the Wunderline to Bremen. The Wunderline project is very modest, mostly there for local trains, but it should still help with making it faster to get from the Netherlands north to Hamburg and Scandinavia, should express trains be used on the infrastructure.
It is actually the opposite Germany wanted to build and invest in new trains and rails on the line from Amsterdam and Berlin, but The Netherlands refused and they wanted to just refurbish some trains and things like that. This is at least what I have heard. I can also be completely wrong.
Yeah the lack of political will in favour of rail travel in some countries is shameful, particularly in Nordic countries actually, considering how much money the states of Denmark or Sweden have at their disposal, theoretically. However, in general, the problem is lack of investment. In Spain and Italy for instance, a lot of money gets spent on high-speed rail and not enough on local rail. However, the solution to this is not to cut back massively on high-speed rail, rather it would be to set aside more money for rail infrastructure in general and increase funding for local rail. Unfortunately, long-term rail infrastructure investment is not a political votes winner; probably also the reason why China managed to build so much HSR in so little time. The solution is of course not Chinese style autocracy, rather it is to consider the short-comings of Western Democracy in regards to long-term planning and try to address them.
Imagine a train highspeed network that connects every major city in europe
*shows pre ww1 europe*
I looked into going to Spain by train from England but it is very expensive compared to how cheap flying is, there are rich people who travel short distances by plane but they can afford to travel by train.
Agreed. It seems that globally the price of train tickets is the main problem that prevents rail industries from challenging airlines. I guess we’ll have to see it this changes in the future. Thanks for watching!
Even from France to Spain by train is expensive, because both national operators are in a poor relationship and there are only few trains each day that cross the pyrenees. I hope things will get better in the coming years
it depends, because italy to france is just 25€
Flying companies have way more money so they can keep prices low because of lobbying and bribing
@@amelien08 I really wanted to go from Barcelona to Marseille by train, but it was just not affordable, especially compared to the plane. Ended up having a miserable journey with flixbus, but I wouldn't repeat it
Italy's Trenitalia is actually substituting old regional train with new ones, and soon we''ll have the newest European regional trainsets .
I think the biggest obstacle is standardization. There are so many different systems across Europe. Most of it has standard gauge, but there are some countries with broad gauge. But the most difference is with electricity. It differs from country to country. Some have AC, some DC, with all kinds of voltages. That's the real reason it's so hard to have international rail travel in Europe.
DC is the way to go from 2 reason :
1. you cannot steal DC electricity to you home
2. BEVs needs high speed charge station.
Isn't hard. They're multiple system train's for decades.
i'm not sure about other countries in europe, but in italy all high speed trains can switch between both types of electricity without even needing to stop, also the trains have been designed for years to travel all over europe despite the infrastructural differences
The problem currently is the 3x in price compared to a flight. By flight you can get to your destination 10x faster and 3x cheaper.
Great video ! It was very interesting. Just one thing, is it possible next time when talking about distances to put them in kilometers too next to it or in a footnote ? It is better for us European ;)
European ? No ,Human in general .
The only country where the majority of the population doesn't understand the Metric system is the US ,while the other 2 country that use another system understand Metrics (Liberia and Burma/Myanmar) and the one who officially are Metric but use a mixed system (Australia ,Canada ,UK ,New Zealand) so they still understand it .
@@plumebrise4801 Yeah so true 😂
Yes, will definitely make sure to do that! Thanks for watching!
Yes please. Can't stand dumb American measuring system when we have a much simpler and convenient metric system developed by the French at hand.
It's easy to tell "Europe" when it's actually only WESTERN Europe. The idea is beautiful but it's impossible in the next 30/40 years in countries behind Germany, in the central Europe, Balkans etc.
Trains are way way better than planes. Even if it may take a bit longer, I want to avoid the whole airport and checkin headache.
I love taking the bullet train in Spain, there is a bar carriage too! I always wanted to get a train across borders!
The train is way less stressful! I can’t wait to take a bullet train in Spain one day. Hopefully soon 🙏 Thanks for watching!!
spoiler alert: in Spain they do check you and your luggage anyway
@@tank-eleven Yea, but not as annoying as getting to the airport in the outskirts of town and going though check-in and security.
@@tank-eleven Barcelona, if I’m correct
@@MrStark-up6fi so far it happened to me in Barcelona, Sevilla and Madrid in the high speed rail stations
High speed rail is much better than cars, but i think high speed rail should collaborate with planes and not compete. If Airlines would compete with high speed rail, you could travel from a little small european countryside town to New York with 1 ticket.
Trenitalia has improved A LOT over the last 20 something years.
They invested in their fleet, renewing most of it, and they are currently investing big sums of money all over the country.
All the big projects are listed on their website, there's around 30 of them.
Trains are definitely not replacing planes in Europe.
Why did you use a pre-WW1 map in the beginning (0:03)?
The problem is the economics of high speed trains. They are heavily subsidized in countries like Japan.
In Spain it hasn't generated the money spent to build them
4:49 Thank you!! I'm so happy you brought this point. Everyone loses their mind about high speed travel for long distances, and they seem to forget that the actual importance of rail transport resides in the commuter and regional services that serve millions of people for their essential daily activities; as well as the efficient and clean freight transport that should be the backbone of goods transportation through the continent.
But of course, these type of lines are more complex and not as profitable to run, so governments barely invest the minimum and private companies usually ignore them altogether.
We need to address these questions first before we embark on megalomaniac high-speed projects. The rail revolution must start from below, not from above.
In Italy the high speed network is so profitable that it is subsidising the regional trains. Regional trains are becoming better and better every year
I travel quite frequently long distances by rail. I can say that I want this to be true, but non centralised ticketing system along with massive delays and frequently missed connections on top of ever increasing prices, lead me to believe that we are far from reaching the point where people travel long distances by rail...
4:49 The best line on the video thanks for pointing out one big problem in Europe that we need to solve it Asap not onlly in Italy in Spain same problem and others countries
Yeah. HSR is good and all but local / regional rail is just way more important. In the end of the day you can cross the entire country on regional rail but you can't go to the town 20 km over with HSR
@@glntv5217 Bingo
Trains are Ridiculously expensive in Europe.
Expensive or expansive? I'm british BTW
The biggest problem for me, that could be solved very easily, is changing trains. Trains should either be synchronised, or frequent. I don’t wanna be stuck in a random German city because my train was late. And trains should obviously be more punctual.
Well thats a you problem :( we cant have everything as western rich children born to a perfect world
@@karigrandii what?
I feel you, travelling around north rhine-westphalia felt like gambling
you have to choose among several small trains that all change in different and unkown small towns and if you are out of luck because the next connection gets cancelled (not very unlikely), then you are screwed
@@tank-eleven its the exact same for me in NRW as well....thats why I mentally prepare myself to miss my connection and I usually try for direct trains or 1 change at most.
@@karigrandii Try having long delays and having to stand in overcrowded busses because the train doesn't run on your daily commute to work
Keep in mind that France and Italy have invested in HSR since the 1970s and UK, Germany, Spain & Belgium since the 1980s. It is not unrealistic that they will have to build more HSR & Regional Rail lines and improve cross-ticketing by 2040 to match China and Japan per capita ridership by 2040. The US and Canada are the ones to worry about.
Lol, was this video made in 1910 or have you just not updated your map of Germany yet?
this is future map :D
Mythical Modern: Airlines don't take people to city center.
Lisbon: HOLD MY BEER.
Local citizens, paying high rents or mortgages: 😠
Here in Denmark we are building the Femern tunnel to connect Germany and Denmark and make the way to Sweden or Copenhagen way shorter. It goes under water and it's a huge project. The estimated cost is about $7.5 billions. Nothing like this has been built before.
Why was there a map of 1910 Europe and not modern day europe at the beginning?
2:52 - is this pre-WWII Germany map some sort of a statement?
There are a couple more problems standing in the way:
1. Almost every country uses different train control systems which are incompatible with each other.
2. There are many different electricity systems in operation (sometimes within the same country), e.g. 15kV 16,6 Hz, 25kV 50Hz, 3kV DV, 1,5kV DC.
3. Different track gauges. Not such a huge problem as most of continental Europe and the UK uses standard gauge (1435mm). Notable exceptions are Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Finland, some ex-USSR states.
Ignoring track gauge, this still means that Multiple Units habe to be purpose built for a certain international line. For loco-driven stock this means a change of locomotive is required at every border crossing.
Some of this is being alleviated with the introduction of the European Train Control System (ETCS), but the rollout is slow.
I hope Europe manages to overcome these challenges and in future we can get rid of continental flights all together.
high-speed trains in 1914 0:03
0:03 That's a map of WW1 Europe with big blob Austria-Hungary after they annexed Bosnia. Lol.
Last summer I was considering a train home from Milan to Copenhagen. The difference between ground transport (mostly train and some bus) was huge. 2 hours with a plane (4, when you add time at airport) to 23-24 hours with mostly train.
I opted for the plane
Yep. This is authentic experience most people who travel see. Not to mention the difference in pricing. Sure, there's luggage cost. But planes are dirt cheap compared to trains. A lot of times trains are about 10 times the price of a plane. And if they want to cover the cost of the investment, I don't see this is very likely to change soon.
Sure trains have their perks, but to compete with airlines is a tall order. I always say, wake me up, when a train that takes me from Venice to London in under 4h and costs under 100$ is invented.
this is a way too long route across multiple countries, of course it is better by plane. High speed train is more convenient than plane when the u need to travel within 600-800km max distance, especially within the same country or two countries max. There is not one single operator across EU, crossing many countries would mean many changes
@@tanner293 The suggested route was, iirc, bus from Milan to Switzerland, train to Southern Germany, switch to a train to Hamburg, switch in Hamburg and then direct to Copenhagen.
Some suggestions stated a bus ride from Hamburg to CPH instead of a train.
@@tanner293
pricing is ridiculous even within 1 country. had a trip this november. athens-milan-barcelona-seville-madrid
seville-madrid by train , costed me more than previous 3 lega combined...
@@maxyakovenko9865 that depends how much earlier you booked, i payed maybe 70€ for Sevilla-Madrid, now with the liberalized market in EU and the entry of new competitors price are suppose to drop
Price is the reason. Flight you can get it as low as 80 EUR, while Train costs 200 EUR.
Some of the needed money could come from taxation. If commercial flights had to pay the same amount per kW/h in energy taxes than trains.
In European Union if France decide something, the rest is like " Hahaha what a dumb decision" and then everyone copies it, with a angry face and while thinking " Why didn't we do it frist! Duck!"
It is also worth noting that Poland is in the game as well. In past years vast amount of the infrastructure projects were completed and many modernisation projects are ongoing. Right now PKP Experss Intercity Premium high speed trains are connecting almost all major polish cities and the tickets cost around 35 EUR and rigth now almost no one is flying witinh the country when they can take high speed train.
0:03 wow you used a map with 1900's european borders. Very peculiar that an animation showing a futuristic look into europe, while using those old borders, exist. I wonder who created it.
2:52 too. That are the German borders between WW1 and the annexion of the Sudetenland (parts of Czechoslovakia) in 1938
Really good video and like others said your channel is really underrated. Sometimes the background music cuts were really abrupt though, fixing that would make the production quality a 10/10
Thanks so much for the constructive feedback! I’ll fix that for next time. Appreciate you watching!
2:53 That's a very wrong map of Germany.
937
Where did you find the footage of the monastery/school/village at 3:07?
I am going Amsterdam to Copenhagen for new years, and I checked rail first, but the trip was MUCH longer, so I ended up getting a plane ticket, which was also cheaper. I know that I am burning some time at airport security too, but it was still faster. I wish it were otherwise.
well if you only care for time, you will only be left with wishing
In Denmark we are building one of the biggest under water tunnels. The Femern tunnel from Germany to Denmark. The estimated cost is about $7.5 billions and its planned to be ready in 2029. This should shorten the way to Copenhagen significantly.
I prefer trains over planes. Trains are so calm, nice, relaxing and safe.
Honestly, there is a charm to a decent train ride. Despite it's cost, methods like planes, and geography. I would like to see this applied in the U.S.A. Going from East to West in a train like we did in the past would be nice.
In USA it would be good enough to be able to go from Boston to NYC cheaper then by plane
@@tokarp390 I completely agree since the USA is *massive*. Like even when not East to West, North to South trains would be neat.
I'm all for it but people in the States just hate any talk of trains.
There is one already and it's called amtrak.
@@denniszenanywhere building train in usa is a geographical nightmare, compare to Europe where major locations are just miles from each other, US is just to scattered for it to be economically possible.
Mythical is the right description! The critical factor carefully omitted from this discussion is cost. The only way that high-speed rail travel becomes economical is to impose levies and taxes on other forms of transport, especially air travel. The main effect will be to make anything other that local journeys by public transport unaffordable for a large proportion of the population. Fortunately, for the class who will be able to afford it, various 'green' policies will assist in the upward transfer of wealth and so they won't be forced to stay at home like the common people.
High speed will not work in Scandinavia. To few people lives here
Which makes it perfect...? Plenty of space to place down rails.
@@56independent Learn basic economics before you write this crap
Pic at min 5:20 is not a train from Trenitalia, it's still a train from Italy, but it's a smaller regional one from a different company.
interesting europe map in 0:02
Infrastructures cannot be count itself like a normal business, a train station can’t be profitable but it’s externalities (more people travelling, more business open and more people meeting ) creates more income on the society.
Once I had a ride between Marseille and Geneve with TGV. Man, that was lovely experience. If you count time lost on check-in, and check-out, it definitely was faster. But, before that, when I've found out I will have to go with train, I have raised a noise back in HR.
Did anybody notice that the europe map in the beginning and later the map of germany is like over a 100 years old? :D The europe map shows the borders from before the first world war and the map of germany is the borders from between first and second world war :D
2:52 Poland be mad
No, No, No! Save us from this! Trains are not as fast as planes and can't replace them! Travelling from North to South of France takes me a full day now! When I could be done in 45 minutes! And it's not cheaper!
All fun and games until the train gets cancelled or cannot go further than half the route you want to take. Happened to me a couple of weeks ago with an ICE from NL to DE. Couldn’t get the second ICE either because of this and my whole trip to Switzerland by fast train couldn’t go through.. Next time I’ll take the plane again
From what I’ve heard, a train company in Austria will over a direct train from NL to Switzerland so basically you wouldn’t need to change if you were to still take the train
Milan to paris via frecciarossa is already around 6 hours right now. If you leave early at morning you can arrive in Paris for lunch and you do not have to go through the airport security etc
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2:53 why is the map showing Germany before 1945?
3:35 The new Gotthardtunnel is also a good example
in italy we are building 3 major progect : Govi tunnel (Genova to Tourin/Milan), The Tourin to Lyone and the Brennero BASE tunnel (longer than the Gotthsrd) connecting Italy to Austria.
I love my continent. I’m proud to be Italian and European. 🇪🇺⚜️🇮🇹
Even though I always take the train when going to Switzerland/France/Austria for skiing (from southern Germany) it’s not worth it for any distance longer than that. Taking a train vs flying to Barcelona would take 3x the time from door to door and cost me about 5x the money. Same goes for most destinations in Italy (except Milan for some reason).
Yes now but not in the future when flight is banned
Milano - Napoli is 4h40m with high speed trains, I think it's alright for almost 800km
i love over night trains with cabin.....you arrive in morning, already after breakfast, after shower and good to go.
no hassle with airport, check ins and such
You only briefly mentioned it, but how is Europe planning on moving freight transport onto rails? Trucking represents a much higher percentage of GHG emissions than aviation, yet Europe has historically discouraged rail freight, pushing it onto trucks instead. Without proper planning, HSR upgrades will push even more freight off of trains and onto trucks, which could result in an overall net increase in GHG emissions.
"but how is Europe planning on moving freight transport onto rails? " there is a lot of freight transported via rail across Europe already, but most tracks are mixed use tracks which are running at their full capacity, or anywhere near its full capacity.
Rail transport isn't really discouraged, it's simply that trucks are quicker, more flexible in time and way cheaper ...
Thanks to Europe's unique geographical characteristics, freight is also transported in masses by ships in seas and rivers.
An asterisk should be added to the China comment. They don't care about the impacts on the local populace, environment, working conditions, wildlife, etc.
And they are apparently losing billions on operations.
@@thebigmacd public transit is meant to help boost the economy. Most public transport systems do lose money. The highway system is a good example. It costs billions to build and maintain. And it probably doesn't make money either.
3:28 Specifically mentioning Munich - Milano while talking about the problem the alps pose is just straight up comedy.
Switzerland literally built three long railway tunnels (Zimmerberg, Gotthard base and Ceneri base tunnel) before Germany got their shit together and electrified Munich - Zürich.
So while the alps would be a huge problem it is also where you can find by far the most competent countries when it comes to large infrastructure projects. If Germany had to deal with this problem we would probably have to wait until the 2050s until they even start to work on building a large tunnel.
Are You Mean Munic-Lindau Insel/Reutin
as a european; they're just too fkin expensive lmao. it's so much cheaper for me to fly from edinburgh to berlin, or london to zurich, or paris to warsaw than it is to try and navigate the hells of LNER, SNCF, ICE, DB, OBB (actually obb is quite good), with each train costing upwards of €100. i can just get a direct flight between all of those routes for around €100, less if i spend some time searching and don't just book the first thing that comes up. domestic flights in the US are hell; here, those short 1 hr flights are fine. unless you're trying to get into innsbruck with bad weather. also the interrail ticket is very cool, but still so expensive.
Yeah, the cost is crazy in some places and not worth the headache in a lot of situations LOL. Thanks for watching!
Why don't you have an app or travel service that coordinates the best route through all those companies and their lines? That honestly seems like something that would have been created years ago.
Flights are highly subsidized which depressed prices, and thus decreases cost lowering pressure for trains. Nor do flights have any connection/cost with carbon, which trains can be electrified.
The flights will be much more expensive soon.
@@crazy808ish There are differnt apps like Trainline that do this. But overall it tends to be more expensive than flights. I travel a lot by train but it is mostly not the cheapest option
If trains do NOT allow at least 2 suitcases with 23 Kg each, there is no way they will entirely replace planes.
My issues with railway is that it is more expensive than flying. Especially when you look at the maintenance of all the railways. I already know what they will do. They will higher the taxes on planes to make it less attractive, but the train will still be expensive. So in the end it’s us customers who will pay more to travel in Europe.
Building new rail is expensive. But is it really that expensive to operate? I thought rail was like the cheapest option of all for short to medium distance travel. For cargo it's most definitely cheapest.
Planes are, bizarrely, comparatively subsidized; right now, you (and every other tax-payer) are paying for those "cheap" tickets through other means.
@@theamici You can't simply say that rail is the cheapest option. It might be the cheapest if there is sufficient demand, otherwise it might as well be a deep money pit. Even freight transportation by rail is more expensive than trucking in many cases.
I wonder why so often in "historical" contentent, creators are using maps with modern borders? And vice versa - in stuff regarding modern issues, maps with historical borders are in use.
Like here, with focus on Germany in shape from before 1939.
I completely agree with you, but I want to go to London from the Netherlands with train, the ticket for train is €799 for 2 person, when I checked plane ticket from the same day, it shows that plane ticket is €212 for 2 person... So please make the train cheaper
I totally agree. The price of train tickets is a HUGE problem in many places globally. Meant to touch on that but just couldn’t work it into this video properly. Thanks for watching!
Im a semi regular Eurostar user (London St Pancras to/from Ams C viz Brussels) and if one books sufficiently well enough in advance, good value tickets can be obtained. Not so for last minute just walk on though..
Italy has some serious problems with trains. Often they are cancelled or on strike. Planes are more reliable in my experience.
No, it doesn't. I live in Germany. The trains are unreliable, often late and getting from a to b may often require a number of changes. But if one train is late, you miss the next one, sitting frustrated in the middle of nowhere. Flying or driving is much easier. Munich to Prague, 4-5 hours by a car. Train 1 stop and 6 hours at best.
That’s literally the point of a better HSR system
It's a great video! But I would like to point out that in 2:53 a map for Europe was used which was way outdated.
I took the highspeed train from Milan to Paris
The Italian high speed trains feel like jets on the inside and very very comfortable and new.
I'll recommend you take the trains instead on planes because theres so much to see. Especially the alps!
1:52 - what’s that? Amazing building
Altare della patria, Rome
bro is stuck in 1914
The European Union could do something like they decided with the USD-C rule. One app for all countries, connecting us all.
Biggest issue is central ticketing system for the trains, not sure if you will have a seat on the train and the many delays next to that almost each country in the EU has their own electric system for trains which makes it almost impossible to travel on the same train straight to the destination.
The main issue with high speed rail (or any rail really) is that their prices can be incredibly high. For me, there is little reason to take the high speed rail from Brussels to Paris of 1-2 hours when you can also take a long distance bus (such as flixbus) that takes a little longer (say 4-5 hours) but costs a fraction of the price (i.e. 10 instead of 100 euros in some cases). I could even find flights that are cheaper than the trains. This is partly the reason why European governments try to artificially make them look more appealing by forcibly making aviation more expensive (for example by adding costs for short distance flights), but now we are simply left with less cheap options.
I think the busiest planes routes in Europe are not busy because of direct flight, but because of transition for longer flights. Therefore, it cannot be replaced by train going from city centers to city centers. To replace those routes you would need fast trains who go diretly to the airport. But the problem is that if your train gets delayed or cancelled because of strikes, you cannot get your plane ticket refunded because it is independant of the flight company. So it wouldn't be as easy to replace those planes routes by trains routes.
Also, I don't see how it would be profitable, in Belgium, in one of the country with the highest density of population, we still have trouble filling some of our high speed trains, even with a high demand, the trains are much more expensive than planes and busses. Even if they are subsidized, the trains are still very expensive compared to other alternatives. And I don't see how European countries will have the capability to fund those infrastructures, since they have to cut into every budget, it's the case in Belgium and France, I don't really know for other countries, but since a country like Italy had a huge bridge collapsing due to lack of maintenance, I guess it's the case for many other countries. So even if the project looks nice, I unfortunately highly doubt that it will work.
But again, there are things that make me think it's gonna work. First, there are tax break for kerosene for european planes, if they cancel these taxes breaks, there won't be plane ticket prices as competitive. Also I think that the increase in passenger is not proportionate to the increase in number of lines, I think it's exponential. Let's say there is two new line, between lyon and Bordeaux, and Turin and Lyon. It makes that not only people who want to go from Lyon to Bordeaux or Lyon to Turin, take this train instead of the plane. But also people who want to go from Paris to Milan, Lyon to Barcelona, etc ... Therefore I think that to be profitable, there is a certain amount of lines requested, which we haven't achived yet, maybe with the lines who are planned to be created, it would make it profitbale.
Europe as we see has its own share of problems with such a project. USA on the other hand has unpleasant weather phenomenons: regularly occurring hurricanes and frequent tornadoes that may be very damaging to a typical train infrastructure. The Florida's Brightline opted for diesel-electric locomotives to avoid suffering from such events there.
How are you gonna track the passengers?
I think night trains should have been mentioned, because they're way more viable for longer trips across Europe.
Indeed OBB (Austrian rail) have re introduced over nite sleeper trains (Night Jet)..some link Vienna with Brussels or Paris...
That's a great point! I just couldn't include everything in this video. I'll try to make another video about train transport in the future, though!
@@mythicalmodern that would be great. love your channel! Personally I've completely stopped flying and while hsr is great its expensive and doesn't go everywhere. Night trains can be extremely cheap and it's a great way to go a long distance. It's good to see videos about the disappearance of plane travel within Europe.
I always wanted to travel by train when I go visit my country and see Europe by train, but as long as a train ticket from London to Paris cost more than the flight to Bucharest is hard to convince myself that's a good idea.
Eurostar: London to Paris £100.
Easyjet: London to Paris £35.
Ryanair: London to Bucharest £40.
So ya, train operators have to do a lot of work before they can overtake airplane travel.
I love modern trains. They are so spacey, comfortable and quiet that I can't imagine I chose any airplane over a modern train.
unlike a friggin airplane on a train you can get up, stretch, walk around to some amenities. planes?! i'm sitting crammed into an iron maiden for a good three hours with not-good snacks.
@@Scriptorsilentum that’s what I’m saying
Very interesting and high quality video. It just put me off that you used some old maps in some scenes. For example at 0:02 that maps is pre-WW1 and the one at 2:53 is pre-WW2
Fact = Italy's Trenitalia helped the Italian airline Alitalia become bankrupt after more passengers preferred train travel as it was cheaper and more efficient.
Well, in a way, but the fact that Alitalia had very few years (1977 / 1983-88 / 1997 and finally 2002) in which they weren't plainly loosing money speaks LOUD about their efficiency, trains or not.
tell me why my car is cheaper than train, especially when I travel with my family.... this is ridiculous
@@gromosawsmiay3000 in Italy that's not the case, unless the car is full, the fast train is cheaper: Milan-Rome in train is between 60 and 100€ (300-500pln) and by car is ~100€ between gas and highway fees. In Poland the trains are even cheaper, if I'm not wrong last time I took the fast train between Warsaw and Gdansk I spent around 40€...
@@AlessandroGenTLe 4 people by train it is 60-100€ x 4 = 240-400€ , is it cheaper than by car? in Poland 40€ x 4 - 160 € this is expensive than car- and not faster. for your information distance between Warsaw and Gdansk is 340 km fuel cost is around 35-40€ so for one person cost is almost equal for car and train, for more than two people car is cheaper (if you use LPG cost for car is two times lower).
For Italy calculation is almost the same.
@@gromosawsmiay3000 kind of. If you consider the real cost/km of a car the things change: a BMW 320I 2.0 184CV doing 15000km/year has a costs of 0,6701€/km in Italy (comprehending everything but the highway). Milan to Rome by car are 573km and the highway is 42.6€, so in total we're speaking of 426.5€
Gdansk to Warsaw on A1 is 119pln (25€) and they are 416km. Let's take 10% away from cost/km calculated on Italian rates, and we still have 25€+249€= 274€ I wouldn't call that cheap...
Are they? We have not noticed. Cheers from Europe!
Americans are going to have a rude awakening when their federal gas tax gets hiked for the first time since 1993.
It should happen annually anyway.
@@counterfit5 The problem is that the public grew up when their overseas competitors either were bombed or didn't exist.
Today Chinese sweat shops are increasing their wages to prevent their workers from joining other companies.
Therefor material costs will go up.
Will spending 1 hour each day driving to work be as attractive if the fuel costs twice or even triple that it does today?
@@jmd1743I feel like you strongly underestimate not just how cat culture operates in America, but also *why* it operates as it does. The gas tax increasing would hurt lower income drivers yes, but for middle America and up it would just be get another incentive for electric cars, which are quickly becoming popular
@@jasonkatz4430 I agree there is a car culture but for majority of the public the cars are for getting from point-a to point-b.
The reason kids are shooting up the place is because they need a drivers permit to basically have a childhood, and once they get their restricted license they're 2 years away from being booted onto the streets.
People really, really hate driving to the point that they desire driverless cars. Look at how many tens of billions of dollars is going into developing that technology.
So you need a drivers license to have a childhood and you need a drivers license to function when you're an elderly person.
There are plenty of elderly people who you wouldn't trust behind the wheel of an automobile but you would trust them to walk through town to do errands.
Car culture is not that important compared to say being able to live outside of an assisted living center, and apartment is cheaper than assisted living center.