I wish we had the Swiss system where trains and buses actually time with each other. Where I live only 1 or 2 buses an hour actually times with the train which is rubbish when there are a combined 8 trains per hour at the 3 local stations.
@aaronsmith9209 this👌 I used to travel between Leicester and Birmingham regularly, my home stop in brum was served by buses hourly after a certain time of night, every time my train was due to get me back precisely the time the bus got there, so by the time I'd ran over the bridge to the bus stop the bus had left. Thus meaning either an expensive taxi or an hour wait at a cold wet bus stop 🤦♂️
I think this format should be available in a 90min version for people that just want to know the facts and a 180min extended chat version for us train nerds!!!
Yes. We would love a 3 hour long video, I'm not even being sarcastic. This has been a genuinely interesting discussion, I'm even going to buy his book.
Awesome! I love this message. I'm a passionate urbanist, transit advocate, cyclist, and car free in Los Angeles. It's great to see transit advocacy in places that aren't exclusively about urbanism! By the way, I got my friend to take the bus for the first time in a long time as we went to a used bike shop and I helped him buy his first bike yesterday. The bike revolution is under way!
He has a TH-cam podcast called Railnatter so congrats because you can listen to/watch him plenty more. He is also currently guest hosting on Well There’s Your Problem which is also excellent.
@@Ozzy1984_ Yes. The dishonesty of continuing to spread the lies about EVs, their batteries, their excessive weight etc. really annoyed me. He's got a (very) valid argument for much, much greater investment in all forms of public transport, not just trains. But his (apparently) deliberate misrepresentation of the real facts about EVs just made me turn off. Rail is fine for large urban populations, but rural populations also exist, and straight up lying about cobalt (pretty much the entirety of the battery industry has declared that they won't be using it by the end of 2025, and most no longer use it already) does nobody any favours at all.
I’d much rather rely on public transport and trains could be better than cars, but in the UK, this is certainly not the case. I live only 10 miles north of Brighton with a 20 minute walk to a train station on the main London to Brighton line and yet I never get the train down to Brighton because it costs more than paying to park and the trains are almost always cancelled or severely delayed, making them totally unreliable. I always get the train to London though, because driving to London is a form of torture.
That's rail privatisation for you. Same here in NW England. To get to Liverpool I have 15 miles of railway (the same actual track) that's Northern Rail and ancient diesel trains pulling decrepit carriages on a threadbare service. Then the next 15 miles is Merseyrail and electrified which is better. The two timetables do not match up in the slightest. It's expensive and very time consuming getting two trains for a 30 mile journey along the same actual track. So I drive. I absolutely hate the drive by the way. It's horrible. But it's less horrible, less time consuming and less expensive than the train.
That’s what happens when we prioritise car ownership. Look at how much *space* roads for cars take up as well. Imagine if we could pedestrianise most high streets and plant trees, have markets, live music. All kinds of things. That was reality until, what, 100 years ago, max. Cars were also incredibly, incredibly dangerous and were the largest killer of people under 30 or 40 until 30-40 years ago
Government policy. Since the 1960s and Beeching, whose cuts are still being carried out, the Government has been systematically working against the railways.
I prefer using trains to travel between cities - I can sit with my family and spend time 100% on them and not on the road. While trains are super efficient but when they get delayed unreasonably, it all falls apart pretty quickly.
I love using trains, but the cost is just far too much most of the time. Took a train from Portsmouth to Bristol and back recently and it rinsed me out of about £150! I could have driven and it would have taken roughly the same amount of time, but cost me a fraction of that price in petrol. Work recently paid for a return train fare for me to get from Portsmouth to Fulham for a meeting and it was nearly £300!!! Privatisation has made it too expensive for all but occasional use if you also have the option of a car. Such a shame - railways are something the British were once proud of. Just like with poor nations vs rich ones, for regular people I think the cost is more important than any environmental concerns.
I agree with you. Rail fares should be cheaper, especially in your country. However, the cost of fuel does not nearly account for the cost of choosing to use a car.
@@taipizzalord4463they'd have to re-nationalise the railways. But that should happen anyway. Not for any ideological reason, just on the grounds of sanity. In big countries it's possible to have a private rail company serving very large sections of rail. It can work. But in a small crowded island country like Britain it's just stupid and inefficient having one company operating 20 or so miles of track then another operating the next 20 miles. The delays, problems with connections, the huge differences in quality of service, and even the inability of private operators to make it work financially - make the privatised system unworkable in small countries.
@@taipizzalord4463 that would require double-track or even quad-track railway lines. The North American freight railway companies can do that with ease, bur they simply refuse to because they hate capital costs reducing profits for their shareholders.
The uk railways were built by private companies to reduce the cost of moving manufactured products and raw materials. Moving passengers was a secondary consideration. However, the UK now needs railways for a low energy efficient multipurpose means of transport to match France, Germany and Itsly, not to mention Switzerland.
just to jump on the title + the thumbnail, because this is a common theme in my circles: *Trains are indeed better than cars; however, EVs are **_not_** a "scam".* As for the part that I agree with: For moving large numbers of people between their respective points A and B, the private automobile is the _worst_ tool for the job. This is not a matter of politics, or "culture", or personal preference, or aesthetics, or mUh FrEeDuMz, but a matter of basic geometry, arithmetic, and physics. If everyone goes everywhere individually wrapped in their own large metal box, there simply isn't enough room - and making enough room for the car as _the_ way to get around has been devastatingly destructive. I'm lucky to live in one of the two metro areas in the USA that has a decent mode share for public transportation, on account of spending the money to make a useful public transportation system. And even though the necessary qualifier "for the USA" means the bar is quite low, and even though everyone complains about it (just like everyone in the world does about their transit), I've been living happily car-free in this apartment for 30 years - I actually declined a free car shortly after I moved in here - because the combination of walkability and mass transit makes a car an entirely unnecessary burden. *And yet* even in the most walkable and multi-modal cities in the most enlightened countries, there are still valid use cases for the automobile. Sometimes, you really do need all that space to move the people and/or gear you need to move, and/or your points A/B aren't well served by mass transit. While the car is the worst tool for the job of _default_ transportation mode, it is still the best or the only tool for _some_ jobs. And *electric **_anything_** >>> the fuel-burning version of that thing* - whether you're talking about trains, buses, trucks, delivery and utility vehicles, or even cars. Automakers want to sell the idea that simply replacing fuel-burning cars with EVs while leaving the car-centric infrastructure and land use patterns of the mid-20th century in place. That is, indeed, a scam. And the folks I go to for my EV news (Transport Evolved) agree.
Yep, totally agree. Everyone should use buses and trains is a city dwellers perspective. This guy needs to get out to the country for a bit and see how he completely fails to get on.
Nate Hagens discusses this with a more structured and wide-boundary systems lens, with higher orders and logics precluding the benefits from being realised.
@@petebateman143 how about flipping your perspective and taking into account where _most people actually live_ : you need to get out of the sticks and into civilization for a bit and see how stupid private cars are as a mode of individual transportation. No one is telling you you can't have your private car when you're out in the middle of nowhere. But don't bring your cars to town.
I am under the impression that a sizeable and vocal minority in Britain are anti railway, especially in terms of investment in the railway network. Don't understand it but recent governments appear to have pandered to them.
I use trains,I have for 57 years . Its the best way to travel. It could be so much better ,but we are where we are .private travel in a motor vehicle is a luxury, however far to many people won't use any other mode . Their wedded to them . Its laziness ,and convenience that stops them to travel any other way .
I hate trains. Mainly because of the stations. They are too far apart from where I want to go. My workplace is 12km from my home. But the nearest station is 8km from my home. I should drive there, park my car, and use the train. But then, at the other end, I'm still 4km away. And I don't have a car there. It's too far to walk in a reasonable time. I've not been on a bicycle for years, because I'm too scared of getting run over by all the cars on the road. I feel like trains are not size correctly. They're too big, heavy, and expensive. That's why there's so few lines. And the signaling systems (to avoid collisions) is archaic. I want a mini train system. Cars on it will weight a max of 200kg, though most would be less. Max speed is 30kmh, so nearly all accidents would not be that serious, and we don't have to massively reinforce and armour them. This makes lighter, more energy efficient cars. Because of the ultra light weight, tracks will be cheap and easy to build, and will go everywhere. They would be 10% of the cost of building roads, and would take less space. New housing areas will be built with them, and make do with a narrow single row, lightly used actual road for the delivery of heavy goods or emergency services like fire engines. Developers would love this because they are cheaper to build than roads, and takes up less space, so more houses to sell. There would be no stations. Each house or shop would have a short siding just long enough for a car or two, where your car porch used to be. But mini train cars are smaller than ICE cars, so they take up less space. This allows us to load/unload cars without them stopping on the main track and blocking traffic. In apartments and shopping complexes, they would be where the car parking use to go, but take up only 10% of the space (because nobody is parking there, it's only for loading/unloading). What is missing is a computerized system to manage traffic on the thing that guarantees zero congestion (by not allowing more cars on it than the system can support). If demand exceeds capacity, you would not be stuck waiting on transit. You would be waiting at home. Developing this should be easier than AI self driving. The track solves 99% of the problem and removing all human drivers solves 0.99% of the remainder.
M8 we get royally fucked by Westminster on everything in wales. I live in South Wales and it's shockingly shite. Despite owning 11% of UK railway we only get 1.5% of rail funding. I can't imagine how bad it is in mid wales, the only route i can remember is the Swansea to Shrewsbury line.
We would all love to live in an area with ample public transport options. The sad reality is that’s currently not possible for everyone. In suburbs and rural areas, kids need to get to school and their parents have to get to work and time and distance don’t always conspire to make public transport a viable option. Replacing every car with an EV is obviously not the desired solution but cars are going to continue to be needed and these EVs produce less emissions than ICE in total from 3 years onwards. More so if you power off solar. The energy density of batteries is improving at a rapid clip, as is battery swapping technology. These factors are helping to reduce EV weights. Battery chemistry is also improving with sodium-ion batteries predicted to be able to replace lithium in the next few years. Furthermore, much smaller EVs currently exist in China but importers haven’t seen demand in importing these in the same way transport planners in government haven’t seen demand for rail in certain corridors. Even though in both cases the demand might be there. In the same way that EVs are not material neutral, neither is new rolling stock with large quantities of cobalt and copper also being required. Lots of new steel, concrete, ballast, aluminium fencing, plastic fittings, stations that have to be serviced and replaced. There’s also the electrical load that is used to trundle empty rolling stock throughout all these cities late at night. It seems disingenuous to hold EVs to such a high standard yet when we discuss public transport we only talk about their efficiencies in peak hours and when servicing large congested cities.
Public transport isn't supposed to be only for large congested cities. Lausanne, Switzerland has a population the size of Blackburn and it has a driverless underground line with a stop less than every 500 meters that runs every 4 minutes. Loads of tiny suburbs all over Europe have tram lines or suburban railways with a stop every few hundred metres running through them. Kids ride this to school, to go to extracurricular activities or to visit their friends after school, to get home in time for dinner and to explore at the weekend. Many cities on the continent had no such thing as a school run until covid. In Germany, it costs 49€/month to use all bus, tram, underground and local and regional trains throughout the entire country. Local public transport is noticably lacking in the UK, both in large and small towns. It would just be nice if cars were an option, not a mandate.
@@lazrseagull54 yeah that is the future I would love to live in. China has achieved an insane amount of public transport development in the past 15 years. And it’s always a pleasure to easily and affordably get around Europe without a car or Uber. I loved not needing a car when I lived in London but I was lucky enough to be a leisurely hour long, flat walk to work each day. (Unfortunately the coastal town I now live in a couple hours outside of Sydney isn’t so accommodating.) Aside from a few good examples, Anglosphere nations have a terrible recent record delivering diverse public transport options to their populace. I would love for that to change but I don’t begrudge people buying an EV if their circumstances dictate they need a car.
@@petebateman143 What I described has been the reality for most of Europe for decades. It's just the UK and Ireland that struggle to catch up. I'm starting to worry they won't. Only London has normal public transport but the rent there is very expensive and it's not exactly a safe place to raise a family. Life in the UK is very car dependent.
I would say there are better ways to criticize the hyperloop (pod/train in a vacuum powered by magnetic levitation), because some of these grifters will say "well the pod can be as large as train and carry more people". Let's say you want to connect 2 cities 50km apart and the tunnel have 3.5m of diameter. When you calculate the volume that is 481000 cubic meters, so to maintain vacuum you will need to pull out as much air as possible (what if the giant pod/train breaks are they going to vent it all out for people to not die or you going to remove the vacuum and how are people going to get out of that pipe/tunnel). If you pull out all the air and next pod/train gets launched, what will happen with the vacuum. I see some of the tubes being proposed to be out of steel (which famously never expand and contract depending on the weather) or concrete (which famously can't crack leaking all the air). Hyperloop is cool model train project for nerds, but not something that can work as a real project.
So you’re happy to burn fossil fuels and pump co2 into the atmosphere? OK 👍 Plus, the EV sales trend is still up; you probably just have a myopic view.
@@TheDogsbollocks925 They're expensive and collectively we are afraid to move away from ICE for a number of reasons. As the affordable second hand market comes online over the next few years I think we'll see a big uptake.
The tram system here in Prague is amazing. Far better and faster than what London loves- cars and busses. We also have a great metro system, and about half as much rail miles as all of the UK- in a country 5 times smaller. I can get to pretty much any part of the Czech Republic by rail, which is fast and cheap. Even little villages have rail stops. I also have a EV, though and get free parking and charging at a lot of places. Sometimes I need a car for certain tasks and situations.
How can you sit there and say with a straight face London loves cars and busses? Nowhere in Europe has anything on the public transport infrastructure of london, taking account londons sheer size by area and population. I think there's whole countries that don't have as many options as London does.
Absolutely true, but it's not just about London. I have a car because I live in a rural town in the SW (- population about 14k) which has to rely on private sector bus services, with rail services a 30 minutes drive. I can't help thinking back to a visit to a similar rural town SW Germany a few years ago where you could walk a few yards, hop on the tram that trundled up the high street and travel pretty much anywhere on the continent. Of course, they didn't impose Beeching on themselves and had an intact, accessible and far reaching rail infrastructure in place to support growth in population, commerce and industry. Missed a trick again didn't we.....
@@waqasahmed939When transport in London is being discussed it's always about Greater London and TfL's remit to provide public transport (except a lot of suburban national rail services) in the 32 boroughs and the City of London.
In the UK this is true, but lots of other countries manage far better than we do. But yeah, at the moment it's awful outside of cities, I lived in the cotswolds for a couple years and I'd have had no life at all without a car.
@@paulfletcher3998 Bournemouth and Poole are both bigger than Lausanne, Switzerland which has a driverless underground network that runs every 4 minutes and has a stop roughly every 500 meters. Public transport is great if you actually build it in the first place.
I clicked on this thinking it was about EVs. If you'd mentioned it was about trains I would have skipped the whole thing. Surprised and pleased to find it so interesting. More Gareth please!
I enjoyed this interview way more than I anticipated. And it's the first time I've heard anyone talk about the major benefit of HS2 being that it'll allow more capacity on the existing rail network. Great interview Aaron!
East Anglian is the best railway in the UK. It has step free access with the superior Stadler EMU's and bi-modes. Southeastern, Scotland and Wales are soon to be catching up with EA. However, the Northern urban network is sadly far behind with the inferior stations, mostly unelectrified network and poor riding DMUs. It is hoped that the new Labour Government gets its finger out and upgrades the northern networks asp.
it's actually quite baffling how GA gets FLIRTs and 720s, SE will likely be getting some variant of the stadler metro, scotland want new level boarding trains (probably stadler too) and what does the north get? CAF it's actually kinda wild to think that a 150 is better built, more reliable, and smoother riding than a 195 northern do have a tender for level boarding stock out, hopefully thr DfT lets them go with an actually good manufacturer (stadler)
Apples to Oranges. It's the infrastructure which needs changing from car-centric (for the last 60 years) to more pedestrian friendly. That involves cutting roads to car traffic and mixed areas. As of now, commercial, residential and industrial are very separated - something that benefits large businesses and not the independent shop keepers.
I love trains. You can make much more dense cities. Long rides are great too, gives you time to sleep or be online or work. Also being active keeps you healthier by walking around everywhere.
I sometimes finish work later than trains run, and can be working hundreds of miles from home so I have to drive. I do get trains when it’s possible but they aren’t the answer to everything.
@@paullambert8183 they're not built to be as useful in the UK once you get outside of London. They're also really expensive here and have a different ticket system to the buses. I can think of at least 10 German cities that expanded their underground network or opened one from scratch in the last 2 decades but only one such city in the UK. Trains are the answer to most of our transport needs but only if we actually build them.
To get a train to my work is nearly £10. To get a bus is over £5. To drive my 10 year old EV (so fully paid off finance), when charged from my house on an overnight tariff is under £1. Even with ever increasing insurance costs it's still cheaper. And I get there faster than both public transport methods. And I pollute less. Until public transport gets faster, cheaper & greener it's a hard sell to get me to use it.
I have been saying this sort of thing to everyone that'll listen to me in my small social sphere. It's so validating to have someone to point to who's able to back me up. Fuck cars. Bikes and trains ftw!
@@riggmeister He makes the argument that they are much heavier and so will ruin the roads and that the materials they use are not good for the environment
@@Phil-n7c materials of which aren't single use and aren't just burned away? There are many battery technologies which don't require exotic metals and surely if you could exchange all the oil, gas and coal mining, drilling, fracking etc. for a smaller amount of mineral and metal mines which don't spill or leak out and destroy large ecosystems, this would be preferrable. And the technology will eventually be such that even after batteries are past their best, over 97% of their materials can be recycled and reprocessed into new batteries, meaning this will eventually reduce the need for mining almost entirely.
@@Phil-n7c the ridiculous and unnecessary trend towards SUVs (even in cities) already started a normalisation towards multi-ton vehicles, perhaps the roads need to be surfaced better and perhaps we need new material science developments for this in general, but there are already mutli ton lorries and vans all over the place too, so seems a bit of a stretch that this should be an issue specific to EVs
@@Phil-n7c other than the actual mining and processing of materials, I don't see how the materials are bad for the environment. And this is a new developing field, so things will get much more efficient and environmental in time. I'd like to see some data for how the single use oils, get drilled, transported, refined, transported, mixed, transported and eventually burnt in a one time use (with all transportation steps burning similar fuels) and how those environmental, emissions and energy costs compare to those of mining and processing battery materials which allow simply recharging batteries thousands of times with (potentially) entirely renewable energy.
wish we would stop coping with this bashing ev nonsense. they re here, they are better than alternatives now and when they are autonomous they will be better than public transport of all kinds. chill out. zizek said on this very show that we lost this race and maybe we should learn to tax and live with billionaires making ev's possible.
But not everyone wants to live in a high density, urban area. Some of us do enjoy the wide spaces, farms and a bit of insects. Mice excluded of course…..
I was initially dubious about watching a 95 minute conversation about trains, but this was incredibly interesting. I'm probably going to read the book, so job well done.
Loved that chat. I'm a big ev fan but that has opened my eyes to absolute necessity of improving our railways. As front line staff. The same is true of the NHS. Excellent people providing the best service they can in spite of the high level management.
As much as I love travelling by train, here in the Highlands they are anything but efficient. If you live in the North (the true North) such as Thurso a train will take over 4 hours to go South to Inverness. By comparison driving is just over 2 and half hour, whilst the X99 bus/coach service takes just over 3 hours.. again the main line South from Inverness (Highland Mainline), trains are slow and often stop to let trains the other way, painfully slow compared to the car or coach.. it’s also extremely expensive costing as much as £18 for a return for a half hour journey (Inverness to Aviemore) and on very old trains
Northern Ireland has the worst public transport in the UK and no one ever seems to mention us, completely ignored all the time, 99% of the time a video speaks about the UK all they mean is GB
I’d love to see Novara talk about active travel, I’d say it’s equally important when you consider for most people any journey under 5 miles can be done relatively easy on a bicycle instead of a car. It’s also essential in getting people out of cars that disturb local neighbourhoods and are a danger to children.
I live in a very rural area. Up until the 1960s many of our small towns were connected by branch lines. They were all shut, but what really annoys me is that the land where the lines ran were all allowed to be developed on, this makes it so much harder, almost impossible to reopen them as they can't just simply follow the old routes. They also would probably struggle to turn a profit, which is what did for them in the first place. Obviously in a nationalised system profitable lines can pay for loss making lines. But we're probably even further from that way of thinking in 2024 than we were when the Beeching report devestated rural branch lines in the early 1960s.
I wouldnt say cars if asked whats most efficient, look at how slow traffic is round the North Circular in London. But out here in a small rural town in Norfolk, which lost its rail station in the 60s, the bus service is dire. 1+ mile traffic jams into the town in the mornings, almost all cars.
Pricing is very important. I love in southern Sweden, and taking a short train ride into town and back will cost you approx 100SEK (7,25£). Service is good, but people decide that it’s just easier to drive when it’s cheaper and way more comfortable
The problem with trains (for both people and cargo) is the last couple of miles to/from the station, and the cost. I use the train and taxis for work, because they are picking up the tab, but it's 3-5 times as expensive as taking my diesel estate, even if I'm on my own, if there are two people it's a lot cheaper to take a car. Outside of work there are very few occassions when I could use the train for my daily running about.
I think this is a reductive argument. It totally depends on the specifics of the journey. If you've got lots of people all travelling on similar routes at similar times (like for commuting, venues, or airports) then trains and buses are the best solutions. If you've got people travelling all different routes at all different times (like in rural areas) then cars and bicycles are the best solution. This should be looked at pragmatically as a civil engineering issue, not an ideological one.
@ Oh, sure, I think those are a good idea too. But if you imagine somewhere like (for example) The New Forest. It would just be totally absurd to propose linking every home and business with a high frequency bus network. In sparse areas like that it’s just more efficient for most people to use cars and bicycles.
I think his argument is if you build the infrastructure, the evidence shows it will hit capacity immediately. It's a faite accompli near enough. So that theoretical debate doesn't come into play.
@@philly5452 Yes, definitely. But the primary mode-of-transport is always going to be cars in a place like that. And I think that’s fine. Whereas cars are completely impractical in dense city centres.
If they worked properly in this country I would agree. However, they are extortionately expensive and ridiculously unreliable. I have to use them a lot but if I could I would buy an EV and use that instead in a heartbeat. No more dirty smelly seats, noisy people, expensive tickets, or regular cancellations. Trains are so often rammed and uncomfortable. I don’t have a huge choice in using them but they’re not good at all. Trying to tell us that they’re brilliant is extraordinarily cloth eared.
Real shame the negativity around hs2. It wasn’t about just about speed, it was capacity on the rail network. They should have started building it from the north. No way theyd have cancelled it. Instead us northerners have to continue to put up with overcrowded trains on victorian infrastructure.
We all knew that in the north when they released the maps that the northern part would not get done. They should of started in Scotland in Aberdeen or Edinburgh then down to York then down south and across to Manchester Liverpool and Birmingham
Fascinating interview! He's absolutely right about governments being the true ground breakers. Tech such as Concord and the Saturn V rocket come to mind. There are countless others.
It is amazing to see that people get so impressed with Teslas for supposedly being fully autonomous while this technology is still insanely dangerous and full with bugs. Automated trains are operational since decades with almost no crashes to speak of. Good that he also mentioned the absolute and unacceptable carnage that is traffic fatalities. Yet people will often tell me how dangerous they perceive public transit. Yet a country like Germany has 2500 people killed every year on the road and single digit or ZERO fatalities in railways.
The Victoria Line capacity theory is in fact true , but keep in mind that a 6 lane highway includes cement trucks and dump trucks and general delivery and mail trucks . Vic Line is people only during the day and the freight is only in direct relation to maintanance . You can also say that a single railway track can handle 100 million tons of freight a year as long as it all goes to the same places unlike a highway has a more organic set of traffic . I also belleive that inovation has to continue into the future . The railways are important butit has to hold it's own .
I look forward to all the replies that say "I can't use public transport because it's not good enough."
I wish we had the Swiss system where trains and buses actually time with each other. Where I live only 1 or 2 buses an hour actually times with the train which is rubbish when there are a combined 8 trains per hour at the 3 local stations.
@aaronsmith9209 this👌 I used to travel between Leicester and Birmingham regularly, my home stop in brum was served by buses hourly after a certain time of night, every time my train was due to get me back precisely the time the bus got there, so by the time I'd ran over the bridge to the bus stop the bus had left. Thus meaning either an expensive taxi or an hour wait at a cold wet bus stop 🤦♂️
I can't use cars because they're fucking the planet.
Yo they got the #1 trashfuture guest a spot on downstream!?!?!
Yeah unfortunately that is the case for most of the Anglosphere.
Yesss finally 90 minutes of talking about trains!
I think this format should be available in a 90min version for people that just want to know the facts and a 180min extended chat version for us train nerds!!!
Brilliant something to watch while your train is delayed .
I recommend Gloves trains on TH-cam. She has an infectious love of all things trains in Great Britain.
Yes. We would love a 3 hour long video, I'm not even being sarcastic. This has been a genuinely interesting discussion, I'm even going to buy his book.
It’s mad to have seen Gareth Dennis’ story just completely blow up! Sacked for having an commonly held opinion so impersonally!
Awesome! I love this message. I'm a passionate urbanist, transit advocate, cyclist, and car free in Los Angeles. It's great to see transit advocacy in places that aren't exclusively about urbanism!
By the way, I got my friend to take the bus for the first time in a long time as we went to a used bike shop and I helped him buy his first bike yesterday. The bike revolution is under way!
Good job!
❤❤❤ yes
Good for you and your friend
What's an urbanist?
This was a delight to listen to, I could've definitely handled another hour or two of Gareth Dennis
I feel like this about basically all the Downstream guests though, I think this format should be available in a 90min and 180min version!
He has a TH-cam podcast called Railnatter so congrats because you can listen to/watch him plenty more. He is also currently guest hosting on Well There’s Your Problem which is also excellent.
I cannot thumbs up this video hard enough. Gareth Dennis is an inspiration and we need more voices like his to be amplified.
Do you believe in Climate Change? Just asking.
This guy is straight up my hero - every argument he makes is gold. I will read his book, cheers
He's got a lot of facts and some good analysis. He presents data in a biased way though, and I find that disappointing.
@@Ozzy1984_ very biased he could have been more honest I would have probably been interested in his ideas but ... mehh..
@@Ozzy1984_ Yes. The dishonesty of continuing to spread the lies about EVs, their batteries, their excessive weight etc. really annoyed me.
He's got a (very) valid argument for much, much greater investment in all forms of public transport, not just trains.
But his (apparently) deliberate misrepresentation of the real facts about EVs just made me turn off.
Rail is fine for large urban populations, but rural populations also exist, and straight up lying about cobalt (pretty much the entirety of the battery industry has declared that they won't be using it by the end of 2025, and most no longer use it already) does nobody any favours at all.
Been waiting a while for this guest, excited is an understatement.
This has been the best description of why HS2 was necessary - thanks for the clear explanation, I've modified my view
I’d much rather rely on public transport and trains could be better than cars, but in the UK, this is certainly not the case. I live only 10 miles north of Brighton with a 20 minute walk to a train station on the main London to Brighton line and yet I never get the train down to Brighton because it costs more than paying to park and the trains are almost always cancelled or severely delayed, making them totally unreliable. I always get the train to London though, because driving to London is a form of torture.
That's rail privatisation for you. Same here in NW England. To get to Liverpool I have 15 miles of railway (the same actual track) that's Northern Rail and ancient diesel trains pulling decrepit carriages on a threadbare service. Then the next 15 miles is Merseyrail and electrified which is better. The two timetables do not match up in the slightest. It's expensive and very time consuming getting two trains for a 30 mile journey along the same actual track. So I drive. I absolutely hate the drive by the way. It's horrible. But it's less horrible, less time consuming and less expensive than the train.
That’s what happens when we prioritise car ownership.
Look at how much *space* roads for cars take up as well. Imagine if we could pedestrianise most high streets and plant trees, have markets, live music. All kinds of things.
That was reality until, what, 100 years ago, max. Cars were also incredibly, incredibly dangerous and were the largest killer of people under 30 or 40 until 30-40 years ago
Southern Rail isn't it and they are notoriously bad
Government policy. Since the 1960s and Beeching, whose cuts are still being carried out, the Government has been systematically working against the railways.
This bloke is brilliant, why isn't he more mainstream?. If guys like this were just left to run their railway it would be freaking amazing.
He has been on the BBC a couple of times. Gareth is quite well known in the train nerd circles
Most interesting video I've seen all year. Please get Gareth on again!
Having spent 38 years working in the rail industry, I couldn't agree more with this. A balanced and informed discussion.
I prefer using trains to travel between cities - I can sit with my family and spend time 100% on them and not on the road. While trains are super efficient but when they get delayed unreasonably, it all falls apart pretty quickly.
@@fablewalls I prefer using trains to travel around within the cities but most of the UK only has buses for that kind of thing.
I love using trains, but the cost is just far too much most of the time. Took a train from Portsmouth to Bristol and back recently and it rinsed me out of about £150! I could have driven and it would have taken roughly the same amount of time, but cost me a fraction of that price in petrol. Work recently paid for a return train fare for me to get from Portsmouth to Fulham for a meeting and it was nearly £300!!! Privatisation has made it too expensive for all but occasional use if you also have the option of a car. Such a shame - railways are something the British were once proud of. Just like with poor nations vs rich ones, for regular people I think the cost is more important than any environmental concerns.
I agree with you. Rail fares should be cheaper, especially in your country. However, the cost of fuel does not nearly account for the cost of choosing to use a car.
There's far too much freight on the roads that could and really should be on rail. I'll agree with that.
Yeah, although I do not want a us/Canada system where passenger trains are waiting in sidings for freight trains.
@@taipizzalord4463they'd have to re-nationalise the railways. But that should happen anyway. Not for any ideological reason, just on the grounds of sanity.
In big countries it's possible to have a private rail company serving very large sections of rail. It can work. But in a small crowded island country like Britain it's just stupid and inefficient having one company operating 20 or so miles of track then another operating the next 20 miles. The delays, problems with connections, the huge differences in quality of service, and even the inability of private operators to make it work financially - make the privatised system unworkable in small countries.
@@taipizzalord4463 that would require double-track or even quad-track railway lines. The North American freight railway companies can do that with ease, bur they simply refuse to because they hate capital costs reducing profits for their shareholders.
Been watching gareths channel for years now, love how animated he gets when hes passionate about something 😂
Lovely to see the ‘I like trains’ boy from asdf movie is all grown up now 🥰
The uk railways were built by private companies to reduce the cost of moving manufactured products and raw materials. Moving passengers was a secondary consideration. However, the UK now needs railways for a low energy efficient multipurpose means of transport to match France, Germany and Itsly, not to mention Switzerland.
Absolutely loved this episode
just to jump on the title + the thumbnail, because this is a common theme in my circles: *Trains are indeed better than cars; however, EVs are **_not_** a "scam".*
As for the part that I agree with: For moving large numbers of people between their respective points A and B, the private automobile is the _worst_ tool for the job. This is not a matter of politics, or "culture", or personal preference, or aesthetics, or mUh FrEeDuMz, but a matter of basic geometry, arithmetic, and physics. If everyone goes everywhere individually wrapped in their own large metal box, there simply isn't enough room - and making enough room for the car as _the_ way to get around has been devastatingly destructive.
I'm lucky to live in one of the two metro areas in the USA that has a decent mode share for public transportation, on account of spending the money to make a useful public transportation system. And even though the necessary qualifier "for the USA" means the bar is quite low, and even though everyone complains about it (just like everyone in the world does about their transit), I've been living happily car-free in this apartment for 30 years - I actually declined a free car shortly after I moved in here - because the combination of walkability and mass transit makes a car an entirely unnecessary burden.
*And yet* even in the most walkable and multi-modal cities in the most enlightened countries, there are still valid use cases for the automobile. Sometimes, you really do need all that space to move the people and/or gear you need to move, and/or your points A/B aren't well served by mass transit. While the car is the worst tool for the job of _default_ transportation mode, it is still the best or the only tool for _some_ jobs.
And *electric **_anything_** >>> the fuel-burning version of that thing* - whether you're talking about trains, buses, trucks, delivery and utility vehicles, or even cars.
Automakers want to sell the idea that simply replacing fuel-burning cars with EVs while leaving the car-centric infrastructure and land use patterns of the mid-20th century in place. That is, indeed, a scam. And the folks I go to for my EV news (Transport Evolved) agree.
Yep, totally agree. Everyone should use buses and trains is a city dwellers perspective. This guy needs to get out to the country for a bit and see how he completely fails to get on.
Nate Hagens discusses this with a more structured and wide-boundary systems lens, with higher orders and logics precluding the benefits from being realised.
@@petebateman143 how about flipping your perspective and taking into account where _most people actually live_ : you need to get out of the sticks and into civilization for a bit and see how stupid private cars are as a mode of individual transportation.
No one is telling you you can't have your private car when you're out in the middle of nowhere. But don't bring your cars to town.
@@dwc1964 I'm not the one telling city people how to live while completely ignorant of their circumstance, now am i?
Anyone lived in Japan knows how useful railway transport is. You never think about owning a car unless you are in the countryside.
@@IaN09876 fond memories of the Yamanote line. I couldn't believe how fast they accelerate.
I am under the impression that a sizeable and vocal minority in Britain are anti railway, especially in terms of investment in the railway network. Don't understand it but recent governments appear to have pandered to them.
I use trains,I have for 57 years . Its the best way to travel. It could be so much better ,but we are where we are .private travel in a motor vehicle is a luxury, however far to many people won't use any other mode . Their wedded to them . Its laziness ,and convenience that stops them to travel any other way .
Yeah and trains are so much less stressful than cars and roads. No such thing as "train rage" afaik
I think it's about having more autonomy
Trains doesn't really solve the last mile, and in many cases the last 100 miles, need to actually arrive at the destination.
@@SweBeach2023 a mile is what, less than 15 minutes of walking, even less when biking. I don't get why it's an issue.
I hate trains. Mainly because of the stations. They are too far apart from where I want to go. My workplace is 12km from my home. But the nearest station is 8km from my home. I should drive there, park my car, and use the train. But then, at the other end, I'm still 4km away. And I don't have a car there. It's too far to walk in a reasonable time. I've not been on a bicycle for years, because I'm too scared of getting run over by all the cars on the road.
I feel like trains are not size correctly. They're too big, heavy, and expensive. That's why there's so few lines. And the signaling systems (to avoid collisions) is archaic.
I want a mini train system. Cars on it will weight a max of 200kg, though most would be less. Max speed is 30kmh, so nearly all accidents would not be that serious, and we don't have to massively reinforce and armour them.
This makes lighter, more energy efficient cars. Because of the ultra light weight, tracks will be cheap and easy to build, and will go everywhere. They would be 10% of the cost of building roads, and would take less space. New housing areas will be built with them, and make do with a narrow single row, lightly used actual road for the delivery of heavy goods or emergency services like fire engines. Developers would love this because they are cheaper to build than roads, and takes up less space, so more houses to sell. There would be no stations. Each house or shop would have a short siding just long enough for a car or two, where your car porch used to be. But mini train cars are smaller than ICE cars, so they take up less space. This allows us to load/unload cars without them stopping on the main track and blocking traffic. In apartments and shopping complexes, they would be where the car parking use to go, but take up only 10% of the space (because nobody is parking there, it's only for loading/unloading).
What is missing is a computerized system to manage traffic on the thing that guarantees zero congestion (by not allowing more cars on it than the system can support). If demand exceeds capacity, you would not be stuck waiting on transit. You would be waiting at home. Developing this should be easier than AI self driving. The track solves 99% of the problem and removing all human drivers solves 0.99% of the remainder.
Aaron I absolutely want two more hours of this
We live in mid-west Wales. This discussion is largely irrelevant.
We need vast investments in infrastructure.
M8 we get royally fucked by Westminster on everything in wales. I live in South Wales and it's shockingly shite. Despite owning 11% of UK railway we only get 1.5% of rail funding. I can't imagine how bad it is in mid wales, the only route i can remember is the Swansea to Shrewsbury line.
Great guest, and great conversation. Thanks, Novara
His book is pretty good, defo recommend 👍
We would all love to live in an area with ample public transport options. The sad reality is that’s currently not possible for everyone. In suburbs and rural areas, kids need to get to school and their parents have to get to work and time and distance don’t always conspire to make public transport a viable option.
Replacing every car with an EV is obviously not the desired solution but cars are going to continue to be needed and these EVs produce less emissions than ICE in total from 3 years onwards. More so if you power off solar.
The energy density of batteries is improving at a rapid clip, as is battery swapping technology. These factors are helping to reduce EV weights. Battery chemistry is also improving with sodium-ion batteries predicted to be able to replace lithium in the next few years. Furthermore, much smaller EVs currently exist in China but importers haven’t seen demand in importing these in the same way transport planners in government haven’t seen demand for rail in certain corridors. Even though in both cases the demand might be there.
In the same way that EVs are not material neutral, neither is new rolling stock with large quantities of cobalt and copper also being required. Lots of new steel, concrete, ballast, aluminium fencing, plastic fittings, stations that have to be serviced and replaced. There’s also the electrical load that is used to trundle empty rolling stock throughout all these cities late at night.
It seems disingenuous to hold EVs to such a high standard yet when we discuss public transport we only talk about their efficiencies in peak hours and when servicing large congested cities.
Public transport isn't supposed to be only for large congested cities. Lausanne, Switzerland has a population the size of Blackburn and it has a driverless underground line with a stop less than every 500 meters that runs every 4 minutes. Loads of tiny suburbs all over Europe have tram lines or suburban railways with a stop every few hundred metres running through them. Kids ride this to school, to go to extracurricular activities or to visit their friends after school, to get home in time for dinner and to explore at the weekend. Many cities on the continent had no such thing as a school run until covid. In Germany, it costs 49€/month to use all bus, tram, underground and local and regional trains throughout the entire country. Local public transport is noticably lacking in the UK, both in large and small towns. It would just be nice if cars were an option, not a mandate.
@@lazrseagull54 yeah that is the future I would love to live in. China has achieved an insane amount of public transport development in the past 15 years. And it’s always a pleasure to easily and affordably get around Europe without a car or Uber. I loved not needing a car when I lived in London but I was lucky enough to be a leisurely hour long, flat walk to work each day. (Unfortunately the coastal town I now live in a couple hours outside of Sydney isn’t so accommodating.) Aside from a few good examples, Anglosphere nations have a terrible recent record delivering diverse public transport options to their populace. I would love for that to change but I don’t begrudge people buying an EV if their circumstances dictate they need a car.
@@lazrseagull54 "isn't supposed to be"
true, but, back in reality...
@@petebateman143 What I described has been the reality for most of Europe for decades. It's just the UK and Ireland that struggle to catch up. I'm starting to worry they won't. Only London has normal public transport but the rent there is very expensive and it's not exactly a safe place to raise a family. Life in the UK is very car dependent.
I would say there are better ways to criticize the hyperloop (pod/train in a vacuum powered by magnetic levitation), because some of these grifters will say "well the pod can be as large as train and carry more people". Let's say you want to connect 2 cities 50km apart and the tunnel have 3.5m of diameter. When you calculate the volume that is 481000 cubic meters, so to maintain vacuum you will need to pull out as much air as possible (what if the giant pod/train breaks are they going to vent it all out for people to not die or you going to remove the vacuum and how are people going to get out of that pipe/tunnel). If you pull out all the air and next pod/train gets launched, what will happen with the vacuum. I see some of the tubes being proposed to be out of steel (which famously never expand and contract depending on the weather) or concrete (which famously can't crack leaking all the air). Hyperloop is cool model train project for nerds, but not something that can work as a real project.
He's called Gareth, likes trains, has a moustache. Wonderful. I'm getting the train tomorrow.
Great episode and fantastic guest
Just read his book and found myself wondering why he hadn't been on Downstream yet, looking forward to enjoying this one.
Finally a real piece of transport journalism not rich clarkson clone motor mouths.
This guy is fucking amazing. Brand new Gareth Dennis convert here
Can we get a Novara episode on busses? I enjoyed this discussion while cooking and more British transport information could be good time.
Are you familiar with the channel "Not Just Bikes"? You might find it interesting :)
I hate cars. However, commuting via the tube for all of my life has been such a distasteful experience that I’ve started thinking about getting a car.
EVs are better than fossil fuel cars at least
Oh Yeah, so how come no one is buying them, people are going down the Hybrid route.
So you’re happy to burn fossil fuels and pump co2 into the atmosphere? OK 👍 Plus, the EV sales trend is still up; you probably just have a myopic view.
@@TheDogsbollocks925 They're expensive and collectively we are afraid to move away from ICE for a number of reasons. As the affordable second hand market comes online over the next few years I think we'll see a big uptake.
@@TheDogsbollocks925 so you make all of your determinations in life based on what other people are buying? 🐑
The tram system here in Prague is amazing. Far better and faster than what London loves- cars and busses. We also have a great metro system, and about half as much rail miles as all of the UK- in a country 5 times smaller. I can get to pretty much any part of the Czech Republic by rail, which is fast and cheap. Even little villages have rail stops. I also have a EV, though and get free parking and charging at a lot of places. Sometimes I need a car for certain tasks and situations.
How can you sit there and say with a straight face London loves cars and busses?
Nowhere in Europe has anything on the public transport infrastructure of london, taking account londons sheer size by area and population.
I think there's whole countries that don't have as many options as London does.
@@pierzing.glint1sh76Perhaps they mean greater London? That's a huge area.
Absolutely true, but it's not just about London. I have a car because I live in a rural town in the SW (- population about 14k) which has to rely on private sector bus services, with rail services a 30 minutes drive. I can't help thinking back to a visit to a similar rural town SW Germany a few years ago where you could walk a few yards, hop on the tram that trundled up the high street and travel pretty much anywhere on the continent. Of course, they didn't impose Beeching on themselves and had an intact, accessible and far reaching rail infrastructure in place to support growth in population, commerce and industry. Missed a trick again didn't we.....
I lived in Prague for a year, and nowhere else lives up to it for me it was painful moving back to Glasgow after being there.
@@waqasahmed939When transport in London is being discussed it's always about Greater London and TfL's remit to provide public transport (except a lot of suburban national rail services) in the 32 boroughs and the City of London.
Public transport is great if you live in a city. Try using public transport to get anywhere in somewhere like Dorset and it's almost impossible.
OK this is weird..I literally just posted about living in Dorset and then I saw your reply. You are 100% correct.
In the UK this is true, but lots of other countries manage far better than we do. But yeah, at the moment it's awful outside of cities, I lived in the cotswolds for a couple years and I'd have had no life at all without a car.
this is the point of his whole thing lmao??.
@Elspm well it's almost impossible to build any kind of infrastructure in the UK now. Look at HS2, or building any crossing over the Thames
@@paulfletcher3998 Bournemouth and Poole are both bigger than Lausanne, Switzerland which has a driverless underground network that runs every 4 minutes and has a stop roughly every 500 meters. Public transport is great if you actually build it in the first place.
A superb interview. Thanks again, guys :)
I clicked on this thinking it was about EVs. If you'd mentioned it was about trains I would have skipped the whole thing. Surprised and pleased to find it so interesting. More Gareth please!
I enjoyed this interview way more than I anticipated. And it's the first time I've heard anyone talk about the major benefit of HS2 being that it'll allow more capacity on the existing rail network. Great interview Aaron!
this dude is 🔥
East Anglian is the best railway in the UK. It has step free access with the superior Stadler EMU's and bi-modes. Southeastern, Scotland and Wales are soon to be catching up with EA.
However, the Northern urban network is sadly far behind with the inferior stations, mostly unelectrified network and poor riding DMUs.
It is hoped that the new Labour Government gets its finger out and upgrades the northern networks asp.
it's actually quite baffling how GA gets FLIRTs and 720s, SE will likely be getting some variant of the stadler metro, scotland want new level boarding trains (probably stadler too) and what does the north get? CAF
it's actually kinda wild to think that a 150 is better built, more reliable, and smoother riding than a 195
northern do have a tender for level boarding stock out, hopefully thr DfT lets them go with an actually good manufacturer (stadler)
Apples to Oranges. It's the infrastructure which needs changing from car-centric (for the last 60 years) to more pedestrian friendly. That involves cutting roads to car traffic and mixed areas. As of now, commercial, residential and industrial are very separated - something that benefits large businesses and not the independent shop keepers.
I love trains. You can make much more dense cities. Long rides are great too, gives you time to sleep or be online or work. Also being active keeps you healthier by walking around everywhere.
Great subject - Would love to know more about double deck trains, EU's and China's train networks
Great Guest. Gareth is one of the best spokesperson on transport in the UK. The book is well worth a read too. Thanks Novara.
I sometimes finish work later than trains run, and can be working hundreds of miles from home so I have to drive. I do get trains when it’s possible but they aren’t the answer to everything.
@@paullambert8183 they're not built to be as useful in the UK once you get outside of London. They're also really expensive here and have a different ticket system to the buses. I can think of at least 10 German cities that expanded their underground network or opened one from scratch in the last 2 decades but only one such city in the UK. Trains are the answer to most of our transport needs but only if we actually build them.
Nice clickbaity thumbnail there Novara.... you didn't need to add to the anti-EV narrative
To get a train to my work is nearly £10. To get a bus is over £5.
To drive my 10 year old EV (so fully paid off finance), when charged from my house on an overnight tariff is under £1. Even with ever increasing insurance costs it's still cheaper. And I get there faster than both public transport methods. And I pollute less.
Until public transport gets faster, cheaper & greener it's a hard sell to get me to use it.
Didn't expect to see you over here! Just finished the new WTYP episode and you were great!
I have been saying this sort of thing to everyone that'll listen to me in my small social sphere. It's so validating to have someone to point to who's able to back me up. Fuck cars. Bikes and trains ftw!
What is wrong with cars which are run off 100% renewable energy? They are able to go many more places than trains.
@@riggmeister He makes the argument that they are much heavier and so will ruin the roads and that the materials they use are not good for the environment
@@Phil-n7c materials of which aren't single use and aren't just burned away? There are many battery technologies which don't require exotic metals and surely if you could exchange all the oil, gas and coal mining, drilling, fracking etc. for a smaller amount of mineral and metal mines which don't spill or leak out and destroy large ecosystems, this would be preferrable. And the technology will eventually be such that even after batteries are past their best, over 97% of their materials can be recycled and reprocessed into new batteries, meaning this will eventually reduce the need for mining almost entirely.
@@Phil-n7c the ridiculous and unnecessary trend towards SUVs (even in cities) already started a normalisation towards multi-ton vehicles, perhaps the roads need to be surfaced better and perhaps we need new material science developments for this in general, but there are already mutli ton lorries and vans all over the place too, so seems a bit of a stretch that this should be an issue specific to EVs
@@Phil-n7c other than the actual mining and processing of materials, I don't see how the materials are bad for the environment. And this is a new developing field, so things will get much more efficient and environmental in time. I'd like to see some data for how the single use oils, get drilled, transported, refined, transported, mixed, transported and eventually burnt in a one time use (with all transportation steps burning similar fuels) and how those environmental, emissions and energy costs compare to those of mining and processing battery materials which allow simply recharging batteries thousands of times with (potentially) entirely renewable energy.
Fantastic conversation. It was a pleasure to listen to it.
This only works if you live in London - we don’t have the infrastructure and there’s no sign of it being built
You’ve just described the NOVARO followers, middle class champagne socialists living in cities.
Pretty much ONLY greater London has a decent public transport system...elsewhere it's so erratic
This is exactly the point.
wish we would stop coping with this bashing ev nonsense. they re here, they are better than alternatives now and when they are autonomous they will be better than public transport of all kinds. chill out. zizek said on this very show that we lost this race and maybe we should learn to tax and live with billionaires making ev's possible.
But not everyone wants to live in a high density, urban area. Some of us do enjoy the wide spaces, farms and a bit of insects. Mice excluded of course…..
Wow, what an amazing video! Gareth is extremely knowledgeable and very handsome to look at too... those eyes, so full of passion!
Most efficient mode of transportation is a good bloody book.
I’ve an EV, and once you get one, you start looking a petrol cars as the past.
I was initially dubious about watching a 95 minute conversation about trains, but this was incredibly interesting. I'm probably going to read the book, so job well done.
Always good to hear Gareth voice.
facinating! many thanks for this video 🥰
Loved that chat. I'm a big ev fan but that has opened my eyes to absolute necessity of improving our railways. As front line staff. The same is true of the NHS. Excellent people providing the best service they can in spite of the high level management.
Fantastic interview. Love his POV. More infrastructure videos please!
So nice to see Gareth in more things!
More rail, light rail and trams absolutely everywhere. I so miss public transport in Germany. This country could be so much better, in so many ways.
As much as I love travelling by train, here in the Highlands they are anything but efficient. If you live in the North (the true North) such as Thurso a train will take over 4 hours to go South to Inverness. By comparison driving is just over 2 and half hour, whilst the X99 bus/coach service takes just over 3 hours.. again the main line South from Inverness (Highland Mainline), trains are slow and often stop to let trains the other way, painfully slow compared to the car or coach.. it’s also extremely expensive costing as much as £18 for a return for a half hour journey (Inverness to Aviemore) and on very old trains
Wonderfully insightful.
What about all the areas of the UK that have little or no railways ? Horse and cart maybe ?
Northern Ireland has the worst public transport in the UK and no one ever seems to mention us, completely ignored all the time, 99% of the time a video speaks about the UK all they mean is GB
I’d love to see Novara talk about active travel, I’d say it’s equally important when you consider for most people any journey under 5 miles can be done relatively easy on a bicycle instead of a car. It’s also essential in getting people out of cars that disturb local neighbourhoods and are a danger to children.
The Treasury view has been deranged and insane since in the 1920s at least.
I live in a very rural area. Up until the 1960s many of our small towns were connected by branch lines. They were all shut, but what really annoys me is that the land where the lines ran were all allowed to be developed on, this makes it so much harder, almost impossible to reopen them as they can't just simply follow the old routes.
They also would probably struggle to turn a profit, which is what did for them in the first place. Obviously in a nationalised system profitable lines can pay for loss making lines. But we're probably even further from that way of thinking in 2024 than we were when the Beeching report devestated rural branch lines in the early 1960s.
I wouldnt say cars if asked whats most efficient, look at how slow traffic is round the North Circular in London. But out here in a small rural town in Norfolk, which lost its rail station in the 60s, the bus service is dire. 1+ mile traffic jams into the town in the mornings, almost all cars.
EXACTLY!! Thank you so so so much for sharing!!
Pricing is very important.
I love in southern Sweden, and taking a short train ride into town and back will cost you approx 100SEK (7,25£).
Service is good, but people decide that it’s just easier to drive when it’s cheaper and way more comfortable
The problem with trains (for both people and cargo) is the last couple of miles to/from the station, and the cost. I use the train and taxis for work, because they are picking up the tab, but it's 3-5 times as expensive as taking my diesel estate, even if I'm on my own, if there are two people it's a lot cheaper to take a car. Outside of work there are very few occassions when I could use the train for my daily running about.
Mass transit is always better than private vehicle use. That's actually a no brainer.
Better at getting you to the general vicinity of your destination. How you actually get to the end point is a different matter
I think this is a reductive argument. It totally depends on the specifics of the journey. If you've got lots of people all travelling on similar routes at similar times (like for commuting, venues, or airports) then trains and buses are the best solutions. If you've got people travelling all different routes at all different times (like in rural areas) then cars and bicycles are the best solution. This should be looked at pragmatically as a civil engineering issue, not an ideological one.
@ Oh, sure, I think those are a good idea too. But if you imagine somewhere like (for example) The New Forest. It would just be totally absurd to propose linking every home and business with a high frequency bus network. In sparse areas like that it’s just more efficient for most people to use cars and bicycles.
I think his argument is if you build the infrastructure, the evidence shows it will hit capacity immediately. It's a faite accompli near enough. So that theoretical debate doesn't come into play.
@@philly5452 Yes, definitely. But the primary mode-of-transport is always going to be cars in a place like that. And I think that’s fine. Whereas cars are completely impractical in dense city centres.
love this, mainly because Aaron is always banging on about Xiaomi, the answer to cars isn't more cars. Great great guest. Cheers!
roads don't work anymore, haven't for quite a long time ... don't even start on the impact on 'productivity' and 'infrastructure' arguments ..
super ace guest!!
... and China should not be held up as exemplary. It is, but not in ways that should be emulated.
This was so interesting in so many ways. If only the need to always do something new modern and amazing and just ignore existing stuff that works
Tesla is building electric cars in the USA and China, but Stadler are building superb electric trains in Europe and the USA.
Please do keep going for at least another three hours 😊
It really is sickening the more and more I learn about HS2, how much good it could have done.
Thumbs up for this, great topic, hugely interesting and we can't allow ourselves to become fatigued in the fight against climate change.
If they worked properly in this country I would agree. However, they are extortionately expensive and ridiculously unreliable. I have to use them a lot but if I could I would buy an EV and use that instead in a heartbeat. No more dirty smelly seats, noisy people, expensive tickets, or regular cancellations.
Trains are so often rammed and uncomfortable.
I don’t have a huge choice in using them but they’re not good at all. Trying to tell us that they’re brilliant is extraordinarily cloth eared.
Real shame the negativity around hs2. It wasn’t about just about speed, it was capacity on the rail network.
They should have started building it from the north. No way theyd have cancelled it. Instead us northerners have to continue to put up with overcrowded trains on victorian infrastructure.
We all knew that in the north when they released the maps that the northern part would not get done. They should of started in Scotland in Aberdeen or Edinburgh then down to York then down south and across to Manchester Liverpool and Birmingham
Awesome to see you Gareth
Very easy to call EVs a scam when you live in London Novara 🙄
this guy is a brilliant speaker -
Fascinating interview! He's absolutely right about governments being the true ground breakers. Tech such as Concord and the Saturn V rocket come to mind. There are countless others.
“post Truss pounds” - that is good.
Anyone unsure about the idea of trains and their ability to move millions across the country.
Get yourself to Tokyo.
It is amazing to see that people get so impressed with Teslas for supposedly being fully autonomous while this technology is still insanely dangerous and full with bugs. Automated trains are operational since decades with almost no crashes to speak of.
Good that he also mentioned the absolute and unacceptable carnage that is traffic fatalities. Yet people will often tell me how dangerous they perceive public transit. Yet a country like Germany has 2500 people killed every year on the road and single digit or ZERO fatalities in railways.
So good ❤
The Victoria Line capacity theory is in fact true , but keep in mind that a 6 lane highway includes cement trucks and dump trucks and general delivery and mail trucks . Vic Line is people only during the day and the freight is only in direct relation to maintanance . You can also say that a single railway track can handle 100 million tons of freight a year as long as it all goes to the same places unlike a highway has a more organic set of traffic . I also belleive that inovation has to continue into the future . The railways are important butit has to hold it's own .
Excellent. Thank you.
Well, there's your problem... loved this Novara, thanks!