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trains rule
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2026
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Good for you then. Properly working trains are great. I will take nice train over driving any time. I'm just saying that often the reality is that trains are not that nice. Many countries in Europe struggle to found railway at the levels required to provide good service, especially with growing demand. I think recent events in Spain show that there are limits to how fast you can expand railway. Not everyone can just switch, it will be a long, difficult process.
that's not due to the technology but rather politics and privatization agendas.
All problems of priorities and political will, like I said previously. Plenty of rail systems show they can work just fine. They are a lot safer than driving too. Problems can occur with all means and you are just as trapped on a highway as in a defect train.
I disagree. I can see what is happening in my city right now. They want to expand the train service at one of the lines by adding a new track and you can't do that without stopping the whole service for months. They will provide buses as a replacement which will get stuck in traffic. There's no amount a political will that will magically expand train service without major disruption. Highway? You can make a detour or slow the traffic down. Airports? You can add entire runways without stopping the service. Trains are different. Trains are difficult.
No one will prevent you from opening a window in a car or getting out to stand in some shade. You can't do that in a train. It's also way easier to tow a car than a train.
So your argument against trains is that expansion can't be done without temporary closures and restrictions? Just like with any road project? The problems with cars are just as bad, detours and closures kead to traffic infarcts, and are at least as much of a hassle like transit replacement services.
Expanding airports can be better acommodated but is in many cases close to impossible. Having aviation carry the capacity of an HSR because national infrastructure is underdeveloped is a major issue and limits development.
If you leave your car in my country on the highway, without being involved directly in an accident or such, you have a good chance of losing your drivers license. Opening the windows in a car grilled by the sun, does no good either. Anyone can open the door in a standing train in case of emergency btw. If staff doesn't allow passanger evacuation in case of danger to passenger health, that is an issue with badly run train services. Tunnels have to have an evacuation plan, at least in decently run systems.
It's not an argument against trains. Trains are great. I'm just saying trains are difficult to expand. EU is trying to promote trains recently but you simply can't expand the infrastructure that fast. And doing it too fast is dangerous as we've seen recently in Spain. If you have a good service that's great for you. For many people it's not that simple and it's not just about political will. It will take a lot of time to change it.
All major infrastructure programs take a lot of time. Rail isn't really harder or slower to build than highways, given an equally strong political will.
I said "expand", not "build". Do you know what the difference is?
The Viennes main S-Bahn corridor is being expanded for example within 4 years. Highway expansion is not much faster and in many cases impossible without rebuilding everything.
What is your point again? What makes railways so much harder to build or expand compared to highways?
I already said it. Highway expansions around me happen with couple of detours or some close lanes. Railway expansions require complete cancellation of services. I remember when Poland was renovating their trains they signed a deal for new Pendolino trains that didn't have the ability to lean on tight turns. This limits their top speed to 160km/h if I remember correctly. Increasing speed would require changing all the trains. In Spain some trains have to be build for specific lines because tunnels there have different size. There are many incompatible system which mean that choosing one or another locks you in for decades (I think BART has this issue). You really don't have those issues with cars.
Highway expansions usually leads to serious capacity reduction and therefore to more traffic jams and increased drive times. The difference to transit is really not that large. Transit lines will (in well run countries) always have replacement services. Possibly with some extra travel time but enough capacity.
Train control on upgraded or new corridors is done with ETCS and if it isn't we are back to political will of doing it properly. Operation speed is of course determined by infrastructure but that is also the case for highways. Going beyond those specifications is also hard to impossible on highways.