Germany and Summer Maintenance
I’ve been looking at some intercity rail trips in Germany for later this summer, and was reminded of how nonfunctional the system is this season. I was asked specifically about Cologne-Frankfurt trips, and discovered that for later this month, they’re timetabled to take 2.5 hours. These cities are 180 km apart on the high-speed line, where trains normally take a little longer than an hour, but right now the trains don’t seem to be using the line – rather, they’re on the classical line, which follows the Rhine and is not at all fast. This is not the only line or the only summer that this is happening; since I moved to Germany, my summer travel plans have been constrained by these seasonal slowdowns, and between them and the mediocre average speed of most German intercity lines, I’ve forgone trips I would have made at French speeds and reliability. The rationale for these summer closures for maintenance is wholly without merit on intercity rail, and this practice holds back rail travel at the time when demand is highest. Deutsche Bahn should cease this practice and instead do like neighbors with year-round intercity rail travel.
Why?
Rail lines must have regular closures for maintenance. The norm is that this is done overnight, on both urban rail and mainline rail. However, overnight closures are sometimes supplemented by daytime closures, especially for longer-term renewal; daytime closures are especially common on lines that don’t close overnight at all. Readers from New York with its 24/7 service are all too familiar with weekend service changes, which may shut down entire line segments and direct riders to alternative routes. German U-Bahns don’t run 24/7, but do run overnight on weekends, so there are only five nights of maintenance windows and not seven. New York-style weekend closures are not common in Berlin, but occasionally some segments are shut, though in my experience it’s more common on the S-Bahn.
To be clear, there are good and bad reasons to engage in daytime shutdowns. Long maintenance windows allow higher productivity, so agencies prefer them when they can get away with them. The balance of when agencies and rail companies use daytime maintenance windows depends on all of the following factors:
- Traffic: daytime shutdowns are used more often during less busy times – for example, RATP uses them in the summer, when everyone is on vacation and so Métro traffic is reduced.
- Redundancy: systems on which passengers can bypass closed sections, such as the New York City Subway or the German national rail networks, can reroute passengers onto alternatives, which does not eliminate the cost to passengers of the closure but does reduce it. RATP also uses the redundancy of the Métro with the RER to do summertime shutdowns and tells passengers to transfer.
- Single-tracking options: this is specific to weekend closures rather than longer-term ones, but, if the system is set up in a way that permits trains to single-track around obstacles, which is common in twin-bore tunnels, then weekend closures are rather easy. The Copenhagen Metro’s combination of twin-bore tunneling and driverless operations permits single-tracking even overnight, permitting 24/7 service without weekend service changes.
- Agency culture: some agencies are just more accepting of disruptions than others. MBTA insiders insist to me that concrete curing requires weekend shutdowns, often of multiple lines at once, even though Boston has regular nighttime shutdowns; evidently, Japanese subways manage to run without this.
The situation of German intercity rail
Germany uses long-term shutdowns, measured in months, to do rail infrastructure renewal. These are usually in the summer, because, in Germany as in Paris, this is vacation season and therefore people are less likely to be going to work. The national network here is highly redundant, and intensive summertime shutdowns slow down passengers but do not make trips literally impossible: the Cologne-Frankfurt work is evidently adding about 1.5 hours to trips, and work previously done on the Frankfurt-Mannheim line slowed passengers by about 40 minutes (while still permitting some timed connections); in contrast, unscheduled breakdowns on the Northeast Corridor due to summer heat lead to trip cancellations.
The stupid thing about this is that while summer vacation travel reduces demand on urban rail, it has the opposite effect on intercity rail. The summer is consistently high season for intercity travel, precisely because it’s when people take vacations. In France, at least on domestic TGVs, fast trains are in plenty. But not here – instead, the trains are the least likely to be running, due to maintenance.
Much of the problem is that, unlike Shinkansen lines and LGVs, most German high-speed lines do not have regular nighttime closure windows. They run mixed traffic – passenger trains during the day, freight trains during the night. This feature allows for more flexibility of freight rail, but raises the construction and maintenance costs. Mixed lines must be built with freight-friendly features including gentler grades and lower superelevation (see explanation for superelevation here), the latter requiring wider curves to allow high speeds on passenger trains; both features require more tunneling, and as a result, German high-speed lines are much tunnel-heavier than French ones, raising costs. Maintenance is more difficult as well due to the lack of regular nighttime shutdowns.
That said, the Cologne-Frankfurt line is not a mixed line. It’s a passenger-only line, with a ruling grade of 4%, higher than any other high-speed line I know of (LGVs use 3.5%). It also has the tightest curves I know of on newly-built high-speed lines relative to speed, running at 300 km/h on 3.35 km radius curves, a lateral acceleration in the horizontal plane of 2.07 m/s^2; only the Shinkansen has faster lateral acceleration, and that’s on older lines running tilting trains. Consequently, it’s actually the least tunnel-heavy of the German high-speed lines. Nonetheless, it evidently does not run every day, every year, the way LGVs and Shinkansen lines do.
This is where I suspect agency culture comes into play. American cities other than New York and to some extent Chicago shut down their subway systems overnight, but still force passengers onto bus diversions on weekends for maintenance, where their foreign counterparts do no such thing; this has to be understood as a combination of managers not really caring about weekend service (leading to lower base frequency as well) and comparing themselves to New York even without 24/7 service. In Germany, the culture is that high-speed lines should be built to mixed standards, even if they are useless for freight, for political reasons, and renewal should consequently be done in long-term shutdowns with accelerated work, and this culture is evidently also affecting a line that is built to passenger-only standards. This may also be compounding with the European culture of summer vacations, leading to reduced urban rail service during summers – I am not sure, having seen explicit service reductions in Paris and Stockholm but not here.
Conclusion
Long-term closures have tradeoffs. In some cases they are legitimate, especially when the time cost to passengers is greatly reduced and when traffic is lower. However, neither of these two conditions applies in the case of intercity rail traffic in Germany. The closures are happening during the busiest time of intercity travel, and delaying passengers by an hour or even more. Worse, this practice is used not just on mixed lines like Hanover-Würzburg but also on passenger-dedicated Cologne-Frankfurt, which has regular nighttime work windows. When the reason for the closures is cultural, it ceases to be legitimate; it instead points out to an agency that refuses to think outside of its box, and will not assimilate better practices from elsewhere.
Pedestrian Observations 
Here in Philadelphia we’re on the tenth year of the Trolley Blitz, in which the trolley tunnel is shut for roughly 2 weeks in July. At first it was billed as a one-off event, and then as something that would continue another year, and now it’s become the “traditional” tunnel closure. While I understand that there’s a lot of work to do, it’s still kind of absurd that we now have to expect a 2-week shutdown of a major part of our transit system.
I want to say that I don’t mind it as much, since the trolley tunnel is redundant with the MFL. But then it’s the United States, not Europe, so there’s no big ridership dropoff in the summer on urban rail.
Plus the MFL doesn’t run additional service to make up for the lost trolley capacity, and the transfers between the MFL and the trolleys during the Trolley Blitz are extremely painful.
Are there not nighttime ICEs running on that line? Certainly there are quite a few nighttime ICE services in general.
Fully agree about freight and shutting down the line for weeks in the summer being bad.
It all depends on what the maintenance is. If its routine trackwork, reprofiling etc. then that’s not really legit but lets say its maintenance on steep sided cuttings, maybe the rock needs scaling back and the slope reestablishing then that’s the kind of stuff that you would ideally want a complete shutdown for, unless you build massive safety walls and protection around the track, which all adds to the cost. By the time you set up and make safe you’d only be getting say 6 hrs. on a night time closure and while weekends would work it just drags the work out. Plus for weekend and night time work you have to hope that the sectionalizing of the OC is in your favor, or that needs to be done ahead of time, more closures.
I would imagine from a train operations perspective its much easier for DB to shut things down long term and reroute than it is to cancel/reroute select trains to accommodate overnight or weekend working, but that’s just being lazy.
SNCF did manage complete track renewal on the LGV Nord over 10 years just during the night time shutdowns.
Knowing that I can always rely on TGVs to run is really nice. Well, except for the strikes but nowadays they also happen in DB.
Another excuse I heard for DB daytime shutdowns is that service span is longer in Germany. Compared to TGVs, the earliest ICE of the day departs earlier and the lastest one departs later. SNCF gets longer night time shutdown windows, at the cost of worse late night and early morning service.
This is where my lack of knowledge of Shinkansen operations bites me. I’m pretty sure they manage a DB-like service span without daytime shutdowns for routine track maintenance.
I’m checking Berlin-Hamburg, which seems to be running normally this month. First train of the day departs 5:30 and has low fares, suggesting low demand; last train departs 23:38 and has high fares, suggesting the opposite, but then there’s also a nighttime train departing 1:14, also with low fares, coming from Munich and Frankfurt (doing Frankfurt-Berlin in five hours and not four but that might be summer closures elsewhere). I wouldn’t call it “span” so much as “one random night train that nobody wants.”
Overnight ICE does sound like a miserable experience. I put up with the discomfort of sleeping while seated only when there’s no alternative (long distance flights).
It’s not exactly overnight – it terminates at Altona, getting there at 3:something.
Ah right, Berlin-Hamburg is quite short. But I do know there are overnight ICEs. ICE 921 goes departs Altona at 22:28 and gets to Frankfurt Hbf at 7:02. Very slow, even by German standards, because it doesn’t take the HS line between Köln and Frankfurt and also because of the 47 min layover in Köln Hbf (lol)
@Diego, I assume it is timed to go along the slow line, that doesn’t mean it always does.
The Night Rivera from London to Cornwall is timed to go via Chippenham, Westbury and Axminster on some crazy route (as it happens it is doing tonight) so they have flexibility of where it goes for night maintenance closures.
@Alon there is an overnight Dortmund-Munich one that looks to go between Cologne and Frankfurt (though I guess it also uses/is timetable to use the slow line). It leaves at 00:20 and arrives at 07:04.
I guess there are probably quite a few to be fair. I think I have seen some before in other places looking at the timetable.
The first Shinkansen of the day from Hakata to Tokyo leaves at a leisurely 6am. The last arrives before midnight.
Shinkansen wants to be done by midnight and up again at 6:00. This is achieved on the Tokaido line. But final eastbound arrivals are 23:51, Tokyo; 23:23,Shizuoka; 22:20, Nagoya; 23:32, Osaka; 23:54, Hakata. Final eastbound arrivals are 23:51, Hakata; 23:45 Osaka; 23:49, Nagoya; 23:22, Shizuoka. First departures are at 6:00 except from Nagoya which is 6:20.
One of the advantages of speed of course is it’s easier to to provide late departures and maintain this sort of work window. But I’d probably advise anyone running a very high frequency intercity service to ditch the overnight train if doing so gives them a six hour work window.
One of the most important concepts in planning IMO is to not let the tail wag the dog. So much infrastructure complexity is caused by attempting to accommodate relatively rare use cases of a piece of infrastructure. Alon’s citation of freight (real freight not say parcel or mail) along High Speed lines is a great example. Night trains along the rail network are another. Probably a less obvious one to many readers of this blog would be American long distance services which due to low reliability consume a lot of capacity. The routes out of NYC for example have around an order of magnitude less ridership than the Northeast corridor. But of course the routes are all now congressionally fixed so turning them into timed transfers at the periphery of the network to keep the core running at high capacities is extremely difficult.
The long distance trains can weave themselves in between the commuter trains. Someday far far in the future when there is high speed rail along the Northeast Corridor.
Another example is keeping switches around in station approaches for rare train movements. It’s another piece of infrastructure that can break down and has to be maintained, all for that once-every-2h train, or to allow a diversion in case of trackwork.
The Japanese have the right idea with the simple track layout at their stations.
The TGV network has an even longer night time shutdown, 7h typically between around 23:30 and 6:30.
The 6h shutdown of the Shinkansen seems like a decent compromise, especially since they’re able to do all their maintenance at night.
There have been press reports that DB deferred routine maintenance for several years. Is it possible that the current closures are a result of an accumulation of maintenance issues that could not be addressed by short night time closures?
The closures have been going on since my first summer here, 2019.
DB does spend less on maintenance than SNCF, but I can’t tell whether it’s that Germany defers maintenance or that France is inefficient.
Some of the reports trace the change in maintenance policy to privatization, which happened in 1994. Your 2019 time perspective may not be sufficiently long.
There was no privatisation, DB is state owned company.
“There was no privatisation, DB is state owned company.”
That’s like saying there has been no change in the operation of the US Post Office from when it changed from a cabinet department to a company completely owned by the US government.
I agree. But you should take the opportunity to ride more slowly along the Rhine. I was forced to do that on a business trip once and quite enjoyed the view. So I do not regret the fast line shutdown. Once.
Regarding the Shinkansen. They shut down every night. And, I understand, they do proactive maintenance every night. By doing that, they reduce the number of major issues and avoid major shutdowns. (Also, no freight trains on Shinkansen tracks probably reduces track damage as compared with DB).
Yeah, but Cologne-Frankfurt doesn’t have freight… and the recent NBSes are built with shallow grades to allow freight (in order to tell NIMBYs “the new line will take freight trains off your backyards”) but then don’t run freight because these are not good freight corridors anyway.
Like I said. I agree.
How is maintenance done on freight railways in USA ? Do they usually close the line, or a track ?
BTW, freight rail in USA is quite impressive, it is years ahead compared to Europe in transported tonnage, but also technologically: standardization, trains length, axle load and other parameters. So I am wondering, what could Europe learn from US freight rail ?
Have a continental-scale network, mainly, rather than national-scale fiefs. Russia, China, and the US all have about the same total ton-km, for essentially the same reason.
That said, do not imitate US freight maintenance practices. They’re not good; accidents are routine. Passenger rail is safer but also incredibly inefficient – little automation, little ability to use nighttime windows, low reliability.
Yes, USA may have somewhat worser safety record, Alon had an article about passanger rail statistic some time ago, I did not found any spurce for freight rail though.
Freight is harder to compare, because the mix of goods is different – the US is more low-value bulk goods of the type that go by boat here.
Standardisation – this is big problem in Europe, each country has its own set of railway rules. It is riddiculous.
For example trolleybus in Slovakia is by law a railway vehicle, so even if it is approved for use in other country lets say in Poland, it needs separate approval.
Each country has at least one unique legacy train protection system + there are multiple national implementations of ETCS.
Railway signaling is a mess.
At least railway electrifycation is unifyed to some digree, but there are still unique cases like Netherland.
Loading gauge and train lenghts are bad everywhere, except Scandinavia, but UK is exceptionally bad.
Axle load – Ukraine has better axle loads, than most of EU.
I do not see much will to change it unfortunatelly.
The Shinkansen runs a track geometry train every night. It’s a standard to which every high speed railroad should probably strive for.
That is very rider hostile. People have places to be, they do not want to look at the scenery they want to be there.
Sometimes you have to force people to take the slow route while you do maintenance. Sometimes those people will even enjoy the scenery one time. However lets not forget that this is not a compromise that you only do when you are forced to. The point of transit systems is to get people from point A to point B.
If by everyone you mean white collar symbol manipulators like the author of that meme.
The people doing the maintenance aren’t on vacation. Are they invisible or is it that they aren’t people? The people staffing the vacation spots are working too. And all of the people in between. Dial the emergency services number someone answers and responders show up. The lights stay on, water still flows out of the wall and down the drain. The newspapers still get printed, there is someone on the radio or television. Food miraclously appears in supermarkets. Whoever said “when everyone is on vacation” is stunningly clueless. Or thinks that jobs that can’t shut down for the month of August aren’t filled by people.
Service jobs go away in August in Paris too. July is when the tourists from elsewhere come to the city.
So the tourists who do manage to hike to Paris, because the trains, planes and buses stopped running, bring their own food and water with them and camp out? It must be very disappointing that everything is closed. The people doing the maintenance, where did they import them from if all the French workers, including the managers, are on vacation.
Some of what you write as a joke, does actually happen. Approximately half of Parisians are on holiday; approximately half (maybe it’s only a third, in any case a lot) begin their 5-6 week annual hols at the end of June/beginning July and the other half (one third, whatever) begin theirs in late July; so there is a approx. two week period of overlap when the city is seriously depopulated of residents. I quite liked it. There is a lot less traffic (and tourists will find it harder to get a taxi; Metro and buses run on weekend timetables IIRC, but M1 is driverless so presumably unaffected) and about one in two or two in three boulangeries will be closed which means you have to search for an open one which will have a long queue. Plenty of restos, bars etc will have a fully-closed period, plus a half-staff period. I am not quite sure how the hotels and hospitality industry manages to cope with the tourist trade. But who has any sympathy for the tourists, not me, choosing that time to visit? (I know, poor widdle Americans with their 2 weeks to rush frantically everywhere ticking off their lists.)
The influx of tourists in no way replaces the departed Parisians so the city really does have an “empty” feel (of course still plenty of people). Then every First Monday in September, it never ceased to amaze me that everything returns to normal; no “slow starts” in France, one day half the joint is on holiday and the other half who is back at work is working slow but on the La Rentrée it is instantly back full bore.
Here’s author (Australienne?) Janine Marsh:
Given that most of the white collar symbol manipulators are on vacation now, this can hardly be true. 😀
The people staffing tha vacation are on vacation, or at least at the vacation spots, not only in Paris. Everybody else mentioned is unlikely to work a standard white-collar 9-to-5-workday and equally unlikely to to flood transit (and roads) during rush-hour, and therefore invisible if your rush-hour loads are the peak loads and you are looking only at peak loads (because they determine the needed fleet and workforce size).
(Your peak loads might look different on the RER to CDG airport and Marne-la-Vallée—Chessy or similar. But these tend to not be the majority of your network.)
Side note on this: in Washington, I’ve recently been told that rush hour on Metro is completely gone, since it’s so dominated by civil servants and these days they only need to be at the office 2-4 days a week; Monday and Friday are the lowest-ridership days, since there’s greatly reduced commute travel without weekend leisure travel to partly compensate. Working-class ridership just isn’t that peaky.
So “everyone” is 9 to 5 people who type for a living and any other work doesn’t count? I’m still not sure if that means they are invisible or that they aren’t people.
People schedule breakdowns?
The New York Times article is paywalled. Anything else I can find is that Amtrak was blaming a circuit breaker. How old is the circuit breaker. How long has been increasing capacity been on Amtrak’s wish list? More trains use more electricity. They use even more on hot days when all the air conditioners start to run.
The Amtrak conductor was blaming a transformer fire when I was on the train that day. Speculation was that someone threw a cigarette on the highway and it started a brush fire.
I can’t read the TImes article. I don’t know if they quoted your conductor. You said “summer heat” that can make the untensioned catenary sag enough that they lower the speed limits. Apparently that wasn’t the problem. Anything I can find is citing “Amtrak” claiming circuit breaker problems. And that the brush fire didn’t have anything to do with the delays. Transformer fires, brush fires, circuit breaker problems, aren’t “summer heat”.
One reason for DB’s lackluster maintenance and the current peak in line closures is federal policy. Until recently, state money could only be used for large scale (re)construction, while general maintenance was fully DB’s responsibility. Along with general stingy funding from the government until recently, there was just too little maintenance in general, resulting in the unreliable network we have at the moment. The current government has fixed the aforementioned regulation and is now spending a lot of money on the renewal of the most important corridors, but of course this means a frustrating amount of month-long closures in the short term.
Are there numbers/studies on this? It would be nice to understand the trade offs so we can have a debate.
Of course the full chart would be too complex to explain to the public, but it would be nice to say something like “For $X we can close the line for N weeks every year, for $Y we can close the line overnight, or for $Z we can reduce service overnights to M frequency. Sure there are a lot more possible options, but just give the community 3 to pick from with costs so we can debate.
Don’t you lose less revenue if you do nighttime closures?
Maybe, there are very few private passenger rails systems left in the world (I understand most of them are tourist destinations not day to day getting locals around). As such revenue isn’t the goal, other than to get enough to pay for the overhead that isn’t covered by other subsidies. Most systems also have goals like getting disadvantaged people around the city (poor or disabled), reducing road congestion, better air quality as well. Even private systems often have goals like revenue growth over time.
In short, most should care about riders. If you close the track at any time what will the people who would ride at that time do instead. We often have no choice but to close a track, but we should be careful about how we do that – can we just close one track/close it for a short enough time nobody notices/provide a bus alternative/something else?
The key in the previous paragraph is should. All too often nobody thinks about this and so no attempt is made to make an alternative anyone who relies on your system is left out. This isn’t just about rail, if you are talking about roads, bike lanes, or sidewalks the same applies. However only in the case of roads does maintenance always provide reasonable alternatives, every other transport mode the people doing work do not think the users of the system are important and so they will just close things and not care about whoever might need to use that system while it is closed.
Nearly all passenger rail in Japan is private and profitable.
I would hope that pretty much every suggestion I have made on this blog (aside from the transcontinental US stuff) would be profitable – i.e that it would more than cover its marginal operating costs.
Both of those claims, “private” and “profitable” are at the very least arguable. The reason this matters more than the usual bun fights we (I) have on this site, is that Alon presents it as if a Japanese privatisation is the same as any similar thing elsewhere in the world, whereas it so clearly is no model for anywhere else. Here is Wiki:
The privatisation involved the approx. US$300 billion debt being hived off into a separate entity, the government-owned JNR Settlement Corporation. Without that it, such a debt-laden entity could not have been privatised. For the obvious reason that, not only would it have been impossible to persuade private investors to assume such debt, but that the repayment of such debt would have meant JRG could never have been “profitable”. The history of this debt and what fraction the JRG has paid back (some has been repaid but certainly less than one third probably a lot less), or is still expected to repay, is very difficult to get to the bottom of, but here is a summary:
Finally, there is the matter of how those Japanese rail companies make their “profits”. Again this is only of interest with respect to it being a model for western rail companies; ie. does anyone imagine the property development industries allowing a (government created) transit company to grab profits that they consider to be theirs by right? Which is a pity because it is the secret to financially sustainable transit.
Actually Florida Brightline probably comes closest to this Japanese model, in that the railway is not the thing driving the project. It is the property development of shopping malls and apartments at the major termini.
The $300 billion debt was for JNR-era operating losses; the Shinkansen debt was not assumed by the Japanese state, and the JRs are paying interest on it.
And Cervero is wrong. There are primary sources on this from e.g. JR East profit and loss statements, and secondary ones from JRTR, and all Tokyo-area operators are profitable on transportation alone – real estate just has higher margins. There’s no cross-subsidization, just synergy. The cross-subsidization model is not Japanese but American and once the properties were sold, the streetcars ceased to need to exist and were removed.
Then Wiki and its sources would have to be wrong too. Sorry, the JNR Settlement Corporation was a government-owned entity set up to manage the larger portion of the debt and indeed owned the 5 JRs until full sale in 2002. The JRs didn’t even repay the smaller portion of the debt they were supposed to. You can believe company statements but I read thru the entire thing (did you?) and it was totally obscure on those repayments. I posted my interpretation on PO. No one, including one familiar with JR bothered disputing it other than your kind of arm-waving.
Like I said, I’m ok with that because it “manages” the debt, keeps the rail network “viable” (though technically not if truly private, except perhaps after passing thru bankruptcy and restructuring–which of course is what the privatisation was intended to do). And it runs a functional network. I don’t think it helps any arguments to make those contrary claims. Railways and Metros cost an awful lot to construct and to maintain and operate. Governments need to bite those bullets (and minimise some of the costs) instead of imagining they could magically “do it like the Japanese” in which thrusting private industry makes a great success and profit of transit!
And no, your American model is not at all the same for exactly the reasons you give. That is mere carpetbagging not the kind of long-term land-value-capture to support sustainable operation. The Japanese, and now the HK-MTRC, model is to use property development and long-term rental incomes to make the transit sustainable over the long-term. Even funding, at least partially, the capital cost of new lines etc.
Do you predict that Brightline will sell off the railway once they make their mega-billions on the property plays? (Of course the master company owns the freight lines so no …) The original attempt to build HS1 linking London to the Tunnel was supposed to harness all that private capital and know-how, blah blah but it collapsed spectacularly to be bailed out by the state. Cervero was not wrong.
What Wikipedia is saying is that the JRs’ share of the JNR debt was originally 40% of ¥37 trillion, but they ended up paying less, with the taxpayers at the end footing 65% of the bill. The article doesn’t break it down as Shinkansen vs. rest, because the Shinkansen debt, which was about 15% of the total, was offloaded to a separate company; see for example here for a brief discussion, or here for a longer one (PDF-p. 46).
Company statements are generally extremely reliable, because if the company lies to the shareholders, it’s fraud. (Relatedly, this is why, when businesses tell the media they’re closing stores because of crime or quiet quitting or whatever right-wing media hates today, you should check what they say against reports to investors. It’s legal to lie to the press; it’s not legal to lie to your shareholders.) Then there’s the JRTR paper, sourced to these profit and loss statements on the private railways. Note that these private railways all make money on rail operations per table 2, at least as of 1997; the property development is there to generate additional profits, not to cross-subsidize. Japanese corporate culture hews to the conglomerate model that the US had until the 1980s, in which the same company might do different things.
I didn’t say those companies reports lie, certainly not outright, but they are often masterful at hiding, obscuring or distorting things. They often need a forensic account to unravel the truth. And this is Japan where outcomes are agreed behind closed doors between the government and companies etc. Another factor that blurs the distinction between private and public in Japan (and Korea, China, Singapore).
And so you have admitted the companies claim to have repaid 35% which, as I recall, is close to the conclusion I came to in that much earlier discussion (I’m not sure if you aren’t quoting myself back at me! including those references) which is different to the argument some were making that it was 100%. That leaves about $200bn because the Settlement Corporation debt holdings actually grew.
Here is one summary by a western rail expert:
OK, I searched and found what I wrote (extract):
Then, once the situation with the spun-out JRs had stabilised, the remaining debt was subsumed by the public:
Finally, another factor is that this was all a long time ago and most people are looking at the new millennium, when the new JRs with top-performing assets, relieved of the gross overstaffing of the original JNR, and freed of the huge debt overhang, they could operate profitably. (Ahem, along with being encouraged to generate extra income from diversified investments, eg. property development, sometimes being given old land holdings by the public body. Incidentally the ROI of those non-rail investments is way higher than the rail assets.)
So, yes the JRs are successful, something I have never denied. But again I will stress that it is simplistic to ignore the complicated history including financial history, especially to imply that it is a model the west could follow. Another shibboleth of the free-market brigade like Randal O’Toole that is slain by a sober analysis of the JR story is that the success has nothing to do with competition. The JRs each had their monopoly in their geographic territory and even in Tokyo the bequeathed assets (some 64% of pax travel on assets built with public money) each line is a monopoly. The EU has it “open access” obsessions but no where has shown it works, not in Japan, or Switzerland and least of all in the debacle of British rail privatisation.
Again, the vast majority of that debt was about past operating losses, covered by borrowing rather than by ongoing state subsidies. There’s no question that JNR was losing money between 1964 and 1987; there’s likewise no question that the mainland JRs are making money these days.
You’ve said that many times and I’m not quite sure why. We know the losses happened due to massive overstaffing and running a large number of barely used rural lines. We know the “privatisation” was to remove those issues from the long-standing political interference (or timidity to change anything). It worked, which no one disputes. In fact, the service run by JNR (from immediate post-war to its breakup) was as efficient as it was after the new JRs took over; ie. privatisation did not improve these things. The thing that changed was that the government finally dealt with the big problem (overstaffing, 80 rural lines that represented 40% of the network but only 5% of pax).
What I object to is that you insist on treating the JRs as if they represent private interests creating and running a great national rail network, and as if de novo. From which it follows that you imply it is something other nations with big unprofitable rail networks can emulate. It’s simply not true because all of it–from funding and construction of the network, to the nature of the transfer out of government with only a portion of the accrued debt along with valuable assets and the great effort to ensure the new entities were sustainable along with land grants to facilitate their second income–was carefully directed and enforced by government and its institutions (a bit paradoxical in that it was government, though perhaps more accurately, politicians who created the problems). All of this is best summed up by the extract of Ian Smith. Though the final bit: “facilitated the attainment of profits by the JRs giving an instantly favourable impression of the benefits of privatisation” I think was driven more by the absolute need to make the JRs viable (and claw back some of the debt from share sales).
The paradox here is that you are almost aping Randall O’Toole. Smith added this:
My earlier reply is stuck in the spam filter.
While that is unstuck let me add that I am ok with the Japanese approach. The “privatised” companies continue to provide excellent service (if a bit expensive), and even if they return some “profit” in the form of dividends (I assume, but Japanese companies are often stingy on dividends) that is ok as part of the overall compact. That is, the profit is really at the expense of government and tax payers due to the massive debt held by the Settlement Corporation.
But the utter debacle of the UK Water companies shows how this stuff works in the west. Thatcher (who else?) massively discounted the public investment when they were privatised: as usual, government debt was waived and they were ridiculously (criminally?) undervalued. Investors piled in but cashed out quickly as the true value was realised and share price adjusted commensurately. Further, the companies paid out huge dividends to investors but this was mostly not from profits but by raising debts. Here is business journalist Nils Pratley:
On the other hand the private train companies here did increase the service level to significantly improve the train service for middle class areas and above.
And while aside from Chiltern they didn’t build anything new – which means they haven’t added any new capacity and we have reached the end of the line. But certainly initially there was great value.
how did I forget about Japan? I stand corrected.
The rest of my point stands though, in most of the world profit is not the only consideration.
@henrymiller74
Most of the developed world’s railway passengers each day are in Japan though, with most Japanese railway passengers being carried on either private sector, or for profit public sector railways. By an overwhelming margin, most private sector and for profit public sector railway service is aimed at locals around the region they live in, not as part of tourist destinations.
And even not for profit railways should care about revenue, because choosing to pay for something is how most people express their most of their preferences to entities who do not care about them at a personal level. Absent some tiny minority of exceedingly riders willing and able to pay an exorbitant sum for a service almost no one else wants, turning away less revenue, and serving riders better, are pretty decent proxies for each other.
With that in mind, overnight closures are absolutely the best thing, especially for intercity services. Overnight intercity rail services move scarcely any passengers to begin with: two night trains per day between a city pair is a lot, while several times that many HSR trains per day would still be nothing special. In addition, the alternatives, night buses or hotels + a faster daytime trains, are also well developed.
I am not sure the Japanese have most rail passengers but it is very high compared to everyone else:
7.5 billion in Japan
2.9 billion in Germany
1.7 billion in France
1.7 billion in the UK
Certainly the Highland Sleeper and probably the others are diversity and inclusion spending in the UK. No less important than any other diversity and inclusion spending.
I think 7.5 billion would be JR Group alone. 21.05 billion across all railway companies, which I think is a pretty comfortable majority of rail passengers transported in the developed world. https://www.statista.com/statistics/627136/japan-number-railway-passengers/
Your other numbers are likely also only for the national rail company as well, though adding other companies to the numbers for the other countries doesn’t fully close the gap.
Oh if it is 20 billion in Japan you are definitely right.
SNCF does do line closures too, and so does RFI. Currently the Simplon route is closed between Stresa and Arona, and the line to Venice is closed east of Verona.
And RFI is planning on closing the Simplon route pretty much every summer for the next decade, as it rebuild the line a little bit at a time. I think that the German way of doing the whole line at once during a 5 months closure is better.
SNCF of course has the added advantage that they run as few trains as possible, so there is more room for closures. Most lines are closed for several hours every day. And the whole of Paris Nord goes on a lunch break for 1 1/2h hours…
The LGV Sud-Est runs, what, 250 trains per day in both directions? Its passenger traffic density is higher than that of Frankfurt-Mannheim.
The London-Reading high speed line runs more trains than that. And the largest cities it serves are Bristol and Cardiff.
Including commuter trains and Crossrail, right?
Don’t forget they can’t run Duplex trains, either commuter or HSR 🙂 Thus apply a factor of 0.5x (or 0.6x whatev).
Don’t forget a TGV Duplex has barely more seats than a single-deck Velaro.
Matthew H should tell us how many seats, instead of trains, are running those routes.
Plus, how many Velaros running to Bristol and Cardiff? At least the Velaro model you are talking about whose width gauge couldn’t run on those tracks just like they couldn’t run on quite a bit of the French system. Appropriate solutions for different situations each with their limitations. The Velaro and the TGV-Duplex both solve the problems they confronted, but whatever is running on those Brit lines doesn’t, even (or especially) for those London commuters paying £4,000 for a season pass and have to stand up all the way.
The EMUs running in the UK are fine; the problem is limited track capacity, since building RER-style tunnels at British construction costs is a once per monarch kind of project. I just hope XR 2 is going to be the Charles line and not the William line at this rate.
So, you agree that the solution is either run Duplexes if possible, like the French did on those RER and LGV lines that exceeded carrying capacity, or at phenomenal expense and disruption rebuild the network (bridges, tunnels, platforms, and lots of track too) to take the Velaros?
(Note, the choice here is not the TGV Duplexes but the AeroLiner3000 duplex that can run on existing British track, and carries 30% more pax. Crossrail/Elizabeth line can run duplex RER trains and if they had gone that route they would not have the same level of serious overcrowding it experienced shortly after opening.)
At first I was surprised you were expressing a monarchial preference. Generationally-wise one would have expected you to prefer William!
But of course you are implying it would take them decades for any new project. Though Charles did say in his King’s Speech (a very peculiar parliamentary protocol!) that ‘his’ government would renationalise the rail system. A bit of a surprise since it wasn’t something Starmer said explicitly in his manifesto. And of course it has been happening de facto anyway.
My monarchical preference is “none.”
And yeah, I’m excited about the renationalization; I could tell it was not just a Corbynite idea when the big anti-Corbyn line in 2016-7 was “he botched the renationalization proposal, which we still support.”
You must know it is my preference too. It is an enduring frustration of an Australian though our PM did remind some journalist asking some twee question about the upcoming visit of Charles & Camilla, that his and Labor’s long-standing policy is to become a republic. Actually even Charles agrees. Unfortunately the media and too many susceptible voters …
I was also planning a joke about what could happen to Charles on that coming royal tour (around the Pacific) but thought it was too distasteful given the Trump incident (but the joke involved an outraged kiwi because they are not visiting NZ this time, and it is even more kowtowing to royals).
As for denationalisation of rail, it needs to be cost-free, ie. as they go bankrupt they automatically fall back into state ownership. Bankruptcy should be encouraged by preventing them paying outrageous dividends to shareholders based on loading up on debt rather than non-existent profits.
“Matthew H should tell us how many seats, instead of trains, are running those routes.”
Except the number of seats running on a line is irrelevant to how usage affects maintenance windows. 260 daily 2-car GTWs with 104 seats each has the exact same impact on maintenance availability as 260 daily 16-car E4 series Shinkansen with 1,634 seats each (or would if the E4’s still existed).
You don’t have to rebuild to take Velaros, the 16-car e320/Class 374 (Eurostar) seats 950 (59 per car) and the 8-car DB 407 seats 460 (57 per car) while the 9-car Class 800/3 used today on the British network seats 650 (72 per car). Lengthening platforms to make those 9-car sets 10 or 12 cars would add capacity at low cost compared to rebuilding tunnels and bridges.
Ah yes, the AeroLiner3000 that is the project of a design studio not a rail manufacturer, has never existed even in prototype form, has so little headroom not everyone can stand up straight, and with zero overhead bag capacity relies on ‘robotic luggage unloading.’ Yes, that is definitely the answer.
If you prevent the rail companies from paying dividends, that won’t make them go bankrupt, that will keep them from going bankrupt by ensuring they have the cash on hand to make their debt payments.
Same old, same old. I am always amazed at how conservative railfans can be.
I hate to use him as an example but you mean like Elon Musk and Tesla and Space X? For that matter Apple/Steve Jobs and the iPhone? The AeroLiner3000 was a collaboration between Andreas Vogler Studio and the German Aerospace Center. Not amateurs at very demanding, complex engineering. Appropriate as it needed to marry the kind of efficient use of space that aerospace requires with clever design. I don’t know why people want to sneer at that, and sometimes it takes engineers outside the usual ones to find a solution.
A full-size prototype was built but a working version to test on the British network was never funded even though HS2 has thrown countless billions away for little. (It was a participant in the HS2 design competition.) I suspect one reason it was rejected is that it is more expensive because of the use of special steels and aluminium alloys and specialist engineering/manufacturing. Yeah, HS2 is so parsimonious with the government’s money!
First the Eurostar complies with European standards not British. HS2 specifically rejected the approach a design that could only work on HS1 & 2. The AeroLiner3000 seats up to 1400. That’s 47% more. It’s 27% more than the Hitachi-Alstom design chosen by HS2, which does comply with British standards so the trains can continue off the HSR track onto regular track.
Not sure it has to rely on it. In any case I don’t quite see the issue. TGVs have a luggage rack system near the doors. The upper level is actually spacious (and intended for premium tickets) because it has 2+1 seating.
But anyway, here is the thing. The British rail network suffers various compromises because of its legacy system. So there are a few compromises in a duplex train that can comply with the British rail gauge everywhere. I don’t think any of them are that serious. (Sure, I’ve never built a train either, just like you and Alon.) But compare it to the compromises British rail travellers have been experiencing for decades now, combined with high travel costs. At the very least HS2 should have paid for a working version to be made and tested on the British rails, and in particular with long-suffering British passengers to see how those compromises really impact travel.
Oh, and in the 20 years I used Heathrow the only rail choice was the Piccadilly line which was a near third-world experience, with no space anywhere (let alone overhead) for luggage and usually super-crowded at peak commuter times (which was a large part of the day) including hostility to Heathrow fliers with their luggage. Ask the millions of users of Southern and all the unnecessary compromises they have had inflicted on them, most recently a reduction in the number of trains which reduces the capacity even more (if improving reliability): ask them if getting 30% more of them into a seat on each and every train is worth the compromises you apparently find unbearable though without actual experience (unless you visited InnoTrans 2016 in Berlin where the prototype was demonstrated).
………………
Whoever made those loans deserves to lose their money. Let them sue the companies, top management and shareholders who got the money. Those companies never ran their operations planning to repay it, as shown by several surrendering their franchise (and often just after a final dividend to shareholders and bonuses to management!). Government has no obligation to any of them, only to the public.
Certainly it is difficult to argue Duplexes are good unless a given railway line is actually full to capacity. And aside from pinch points the only part of the UK network that could be argued to be full to capacity with no ability to further lengthen trains is London to Milton Keynes.
To be clear off peak on the fast tracks out of Paddington there are 2tph to Cardiff, 2tph to Bristol, 2tph fast to Oxford (of which 1tph extends to Worcester), 1tph to Cheltenham and 1.5tph to the South West. These are all or almost all class 800s.
That doesn’t include the local services on the slow non high speed tracks or the 4 Heathrow express services.
@Onux there are definitely 10 car trains on the Great Western Mainline but not many – I believe the issue is a shortage of rolling stock.
@Michael, Lou Haigh is renationalising the railways when their contracts expire at zero cost. She has thought things through pretty well actually.
Her proposal to do a new high speed line that is not HS2 between the end of HS2 and Norton Bridge/Crewe points to her caring about costs as well.
To be honest the people upset with her online are whining that she won’t do their politically unviable scheme with a cost benefit ratio of less than one.
I am sure if Alon or someone else came up with a coherent proposal for improving services between Liverpool and Hull with a cost benefit ratio of at least 1.5 and got it to someone who has a Labour MP to pass it to her that she would be interested (and I can certainly manage that).
Isn’t that what I suggested? And what even the Conservatives were doing though still trying to use a contracting system, still a version of nationalisation.
Incidentally Labour are promising to renationalise the rail franchises but not the rolling stock, presumably because it would be too expensive. They are making a parasitic profit totally dependent on government subsidies. What a mess.
@Michael, the banks wont give the train ownership back for free. Best to do a windfall tax if the profits are excessive. And/or buy any new trains directly.
We’re talking about when the franchise naturally expires and returns to the government. The owners of that debt don’t have the ability to stop that happening. Or are you saying that the debt transfers across to the government? We cannot ever underestimate the outrageousness of the Tories but that would be seriously ridiculous. Of course there may have been an assumption that as long as the Tories were in power they would bail out the usual suspects with public monies. Labour need to hold their nerve and resist any of that shit. Of course the management and shareholders have made out like bandits but it needs to stop. The same thing will happen with the water companies.
@Michael, unless the Americans stop their circular firing squad on Biden at this rate the Westminster system is going to outlive the US system as well as preceding it.
It does have a bunch of advantages too, you win the commons and you win power and then the voters can judge you on the result in a simple way. Plus you have a built in not considered unfair method of switching out a leader who is unpopular.
you mean like Elon Musk and Tesla and Space X? For that matter Apple/Steve Jobs and the iPhone?
This means the opposite of what you think it does. SpaceX actually builds rockets that go to space. Apple actually produces iPhones. Andreas Vogler Studio has never produced a single working rail vehicle. The better analogy would be if Gucci released a drawing of a smartphone they claim has 5 day battery life and you said “Oh my gosh Steve Jobs and Apple are such fools with that iPhone!”
A full-size prototype was built
No, a 9m architectural mockup was built, not any actual rail vehicle.
Not sure it has to rely on it.
It has to rely on it because there is absolutely no space for carry-on luggage inside the cabin. Ordinary trains have luggage racks above the seats, but as we are about to see, there really isn’t room above the seats for the heads of the people sitting in them, let alone luggage.
The upper level is actually spacious (and intended for premium tickets) because it has 2+1 seating.
Please tell me you are not this dense. The upper level doesn’t have 2+1 seating because it is “spacious” and the seats are wider like in normal business class train seating, it is 2+1 because there is not enough room for four ordinary seats side by side. The upper aisle is only 163cm high – that means that 94% of men and 54% of women can’t stand up straight – and just 43cm wide at floor level. Floor to ceiling height at the seats is 136 to 141 cm. For comparison the aisle height of a 737 is 210cm and 51cm between armrests and from the floor to baggage storage is 158cm. Given that the Aeroliner specifies airline-level 83cm seat pitch, good luck selling those same-legroom-but-less-headroom-as-airline-economy seats at a ‘premium’ price.
The headroom of the two upper level outer seats is so compromised I could see people refusing to buy them or sit there – with seven seats in cross section that would de facto remove 28% of seats or all advantage over existing sets like the Class 800.
Lower level isn’t much better. Aisle height is just 185cm (now only 10% of men cannot stand up straight!) while height at seats is airline like at 156-176cm. I can see the marketing now: “The spaciousness of a plane with the speed of a train!”
Note the upper aisle is 56cm wide, leaving a step to one side since it is narrower and offset at floor level. This creates a tripping hazard: human nature is to center path of travel between visible obstructions (the armrests) but this means that one of your feet is likely to encounter the floor ~20cm before it expects too (by contrast airliner aisles are wider at floor level than between the armrests, and of course centered between them). I could see this being illegal (just as one cannot build stairways with varying riser height) if lawmakers ever thought anyone was stupid enough to actually design a path of travel this way.
Goodness gracious, just look at the cross section provided in an article written by the designers: https://fft-keymodernrailways.b-cdn.net/sites/modernrailways/files/styles/article_body/public/imported/2020-03-24/img_50-2.jpg?itok=rnQbsJQJ
They show a 167cm tall person standing with their head tilted to the side!
So there are a few compromises in a duplex train that can comply with the British rail gauge everywhere. I don’t think any of them are that serious.
You don’t think people walking stooped over to get to their seat or bumping their head on the ceiling while sitting down is serious. OK.
in the 20 years I used Heathrow the only rail choice was the Piccadilly line which was a near third-world experience, with no space anywhere (let alone overhead) for luggage
And so your solution for British railways is to extend the third-world no space for luggage experience from a 50min Tube ride to a multi-hour intercity train journey – with less headroom than on the underground!?!?!? Great plan!
Not until they produced their first car, rocket or phone they hadn’t! And in the first two cases it took many attempts and failures before success. Had Jony Ives ever designed a phone before? Another example would be James Dyson with something as simple and mature as vacuum cleaners! And is your criticism true of the other partner, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (planes obviously, not trains)? Seriously your whole diatribe is a an ode to status quo-ism. It is the easiest, and laziest, thing to criticise new ideas and designs. And so I assume you don’t believe it was worth making a proper working prototype where all your nay-saying would be proven? Or not. Maybe some other train engineers and designers might have been able to improve upon it?
As to the upper level, it is spacious because the floor plan is the same as the train & lower level. Sure, the seating is constrained by the top curvature of the train, ie. ceiling/height clearance. Doh! Once you are seated it is absolutely fine and this is little different to lots of other situations including most planes even today, and even many trains with those overhead racks, and in fact most cars where average sized people, not to mention tall people, have to squeeze into the drivers’ seat. Have you tried a Ferrari? Or more prosaically have you been to many old British pubs? And this great burden of discomfort is for what, 0.1% of the total time spent on the train?
It is true that the design employs many of the compromises of aerospace, for example on small jets including the bargain level of executive/commuter jets. Also Concorde where heads of state, billionaires, celebs and royals were quite happy to suffer those terrible impositions and pay ten times the usual ticket price. Of course there was a payoff. The payoff with duplex trains on the British network is a substantial solution to their capacity constraints across the entire network. Without changing a single bit of the physical infrastructure. It is worth some experimentation and resources (tiny compared to what is wasted elsewhere) and yes, some compromises.
Fundamentally, as a scientist I want to see experimentation in searching for a solution. Then some serious resources into making working prototypes to test the ideas in the real world. Instead you are taking the approach of Thatcher all those decades ago when an early test of the tilt-train led to its cancellation. It was developed on minimal resources and forced to demonstrate it before it was properly ready so it wasn’t wonderful and she cancelled the whole thing. Yet that technology (IP purchased from BR by the Italians, now owned by Alstom) is on hundreds of British trains including any future train running on HS2.
Onux, page 42 of the NIMBY/BANANA manual is to suggest the wundertech that will solve all problems, cheaply. Page 43 is how to disparage people who just don’t unnnnderstandddd that the wunnnnnnndertech will solve all problems, cheaply. At least it’s not HyyyyyyyyperloooooooooPPppPPp !!!! !!! !! !
@Michael, wouldn’t it be cheaper/better to finish HS2 to Stafford, grade separate Didcot West and Wooton Basset junctions and cancel the Heathrow Express on the Great Western and build a new bridge/tunnel at Welwyn north and perhaps some more four tracking further north on the East Coast to add capacity rather than buying weird trains?
And that would let you run London-Leeds or London-Bristol every 20 minutes which is also a service improvement.
And if you hit capacity constraints there wouldn’t it be better to send freight on the Settle Carlisle instead?
The significance is not in HS2. Obviously there was no need for duplex trains, though the requirement of the competition was that trains could continue on to the regular track from the HSR track and a case could be made … Clearly there are plenty of trains that can do that though they’d require more trains etc. The significance was as a general solution to capacity constraints on lots of the British network, mostly the south-east. But the entire system has been getting busier and HS2 doesn’t solve the congestion in the SE.
My contention is that with the humungous amounts of dosh that HS2 was spending, it was a great opportunity and a trivial expense to spend a few million on commissioning a single working version of the German design.
The challenge with commuter trains is dwell. And given the longer dwell times and higher costs I am really not sure double decker trains are worth it.
The French do seem obsessed with them. Certainly it is very difficult to see the value for long distance trains not on LGV Sud Est.
And I mean even there Lille-Paris and Paris-Lyon should just be four tracked. It’s too easy a spine between Northern and Southern Europe that isn’t too painful to cross the alps. And frankly that has been fairly obvious since LGV Nord was finished.
And the 1tph London-Amsterdam demands isn’t enough to avoid it.
And I mean even there Lille-Paris and Paris-Lyon should just be four tracked.
Matthew, the long term plan is to add a second LGV route from Paris to Lyon via Orleans and Claremont Ferrand rather than four tracking the LGV Sud-Est (or was, not sure this has updated since it was announced ~2010, or that anything has been done to start construction in 2025-2030 as planned then.)
The Paris-Orleans-Clermont-Lyon aka POCL project went through a public consultation phase at the end of 2011 but there was no consensus on the route and the financing. In 2018, the government decided to put it aside for at least 10 years and to upgrade the existing network.
The LGV Sud-Est power supply and signaling (ERTMS2 instead of the original TVM) will be upgraded in order to accept up to 16 trains per hour in 2030 at a cost of 820 million Euros. The line will have to close for 4 days next November.
In 2026, the Paris-Clermont line will receive EMUs from CAF to replace the Corail coaches, stronger power stations on the north and some speed upgrades towards the south.
The Paris-Orleans line was closed during 20 week-ends for signaling and track work and will close 8 hours a day between August 25 and January 26 to renew tracks. This work will take place during the day instead of during the night where the line becomes a major freight route.
I think you’ll be delighted to find that they have accepted a Vogel design for a triple-deck TGV. The “T” will now stand for Tardis.
Is this an April fools?
The steam era service frequency is really what the French should be focusing on addressing.
Epic fail, Matthew Hutton. And there I was thinking you were a pommie basta… err, dinky-di Englishman.
Anyway, I am the doctor and have to go now to regenerate, then travel back in time to change that damned committee’s judgment. Unfortunately the current Matthew Hutton will wake up tomorrow in the same universe of shit British trains. An alt-Matthew Hutton will wake up with shiny duplex trains efficiently shuttling Brits all over including HS2 phases 1, 2 & 3 (the one that goes across Boris bridge to Belfast) and who knows maybe an unstressed NHS and sewage system that works. This alt-Matthew may have a slight hunch from his preference for the upper deck; it gives much nicer views and one can avoid the hoi-polloi like Onux (in any case whose head has exploded in this new universe as he refuses to bend to avoid collisions, thus CTE, Chronic (low) Train Encephalopathy). And the French (and 90 million foreign trash) will be even more efficiently gliding around on the Tardis Grande Vitesse, naturally superior in whatever universe. Don’t ask if Macron or Trump are president in that universe as I cannot disclose. However I can say that the new prez is (a) brat.
Arrggh, reply stuck in spam filter, again. Don’t know why but Word Press has messed me around ever since I got my new laptop. This time it seems to have treated me as a new poster. Previously it assigned me the username “Michael” ignoring my own choices. Forces me to go thru the log-in routine for every single post. I wonder what will happen this time.
[Rescued.]
Matthew, it’s a cultural thing. Continentals simply don’t know that single deck means fast and twin deck slow. The Swiss trust complicated contraptions called watches and believe that the Dopplestocktriebzug taking 15 minutes between Kusnacht and Zurich Hbf (8 km at 32 km/h after 4 intermediate stops) matches the Elizabeth line 32.31 km/h (Paddington-Liverpool St 7 km in 13 minutes after 3 intermediate stops). The French even think that the RER A (Etoile-Nation 8 km in 11 minutes after 3 intermediate stops or 43.6 km/h) is faster and that adding a deck to their TGV is easier than your suggestion, adding 2 tracks to the Lille-Paris LGV.
Paddington-Liverpool Street is 10 minutes on the Elizabeth line – not 13.
And also the problem with the double decker trains is that you still get terrible frequency.
If you want a basic reasonable service from Paris i.e.
2tph to Dijon, 2tph to Lyon, 2tph to Marseille (with 1tph extending to Nice), 1tph to the French alps, 1tph to Geneva, 1tph to Milan, 1tph fast to Barcelona (I.e Paris-Montpellier Sud de France-Perpignan-Barcelona), 1tph slow to Barcelona that is 11 trains per hour
Even allowing a basic service to Lille, Strasbourg and Brittany of:
1tph to Lyon, Marseille and Nice
1tph slow to Lyon, Montpellier, Perpignan and Barcelona
1tph to Geneva/Lausanne via Dijon
1tph to Milan/the alps
And you are at pretty much full capacity for 4 track line – especially if you beef up Lille with extra service given Britain and the Low Countries.
Don’t know about passenger traffic density, but the Riedbahn (Frankfurt–Mannheim) runs more than 300 trains a day, according to DB.
The thing in Germany is that the 16 years of Merkel administrations left the infrastructure to rot—not just rail but also roads. Now it needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Normal maintenance just won’t do. Therefore, the new “Ampel” administration decided for a radical overhaul with months-long line closures. The idea is that inflicting severe pain briefly so as to get to a better state quickly is preferable to a perspective of a very unreliable train network for another decade or more.
This is a one-off campaign, not how they plan to run their normal maintenance in the future. As such, it makes a lot of sense to me. Your experience notwithstanding, Alon, I never noticed any regular summer closures in Germany so I’d be very surprised if that were their normal approach.
The one-off campaign is for longer-term closures, like the Riedbahn. The shorter summer closures are more routine; in the summer of 2019, the trains were completely fucked going east to Frankfurt an der Oder and Poland, and I think also to Dresden but I don’t remember.
The Cologne–Rhein-Main line is indeed closed for “only” four weeks. They are replacing 70 km of tracks, 13 switches and doing construction at the Frankfurt airport station: https://www.bahn.de/service/fahrplaene/baustellen/koeln-frankfurt Is this the kind of maintenance they could do without closures by stretching it out over a longer period? I wonder if they opted for complete closure because the Riedbahn closure anyway blocks one of the two connected lines at the airport.
It’s such a backward way of looking at it. They’re closing the second busiest intercity line during the busiest period for intercity travel, simultaneously with closing the single busiest. If I’m traveling and I know the Riedbahn is closed I’m going to pick other destinations, so even though Cologne-Frankfurt is not parallel to the Riedbahn, it is a substitute for it for leisure travel, which is what peaks during summer. “The Riedbahn is closed so might as well also close a connecting line” is a stronger argument any other time of the year, when travel is more for business necessity than leisure and two lines in opposite directions are therefore not substitutes.
OK, I get your point. Thanks for elaborating.
Seriously your whole diatribe is a an ode to status quo-ism. It is the easiest, and laziest, thing to criticise new ideas and designs.
No my entire argument is that it is not possible to make a double deck train with sufficient space for people to actually use it inside of British loading gauge W6a (or in a vehicle shorter than 4.2m more generally). I have provided detailed dimensions and statistics to back this up. You are the one who brought up Apple and Space-X, but really its all irrelevant, either there is sufficient head room or there is not (spoiler: there is not).
But for the record, the only reason you could say Johnny Ive wasn’t a successful designer before the iPhone is that he was much better than that, he was almost universally considered the greatest consumer electronics designer ever. Yes, my criticisms apply to DZfLuR, they are a scientific research organization, they do not design or build vehicles either, not even planes, only one off space probes. And of course neither Tesla, Space-X, or Apple needed the HS2 program or anyone else to fund a prototype to prove what would work, they just built them. If this design was so fantastic surely AV and DZfLuR would start production and have British rail companies lining up at their door just like Tesla’s and iPhone’s fly out the door. Your example of the tilting train proves this. After Thatcher cancelled it others picked it up because the concept did offer benefit. Who is independently pursuing this concept because of its benefit?
And so I assume you don’t believe it was worth making a proper working prototype where all your nay-saying would be proven?
No, for the same reason I do not think it would be worth making a prototype of a tractor with a distilled water transmission for use at Britain’s Antarctic research station. I already know the transmission will freeze, just as I can already measure that the AeroLiner 3000 does not have sufficient headroom on the upper level for many to most people to use it.
As to the upper level, it is spacious because the floor plan is the same
Wow, you really are dense enough to believe that headroom isn’t important and two areas of equal floor area are equally spacious.
Once you are seated it is absolutely fine
No. The height of the ceiling over the two outer seats is so low, that on one side ~50% of the population (80% of men and 16% of women) would be too tall to sit up straight there (ceiling height is 1362mm, seat height is 460mm, sitting height available is 902mm, with sitting height being 53% of standing anyone taller than 170cm is too tall to sit there). On the other outer seat 1 out of 6 people couldn’t stand up straight (almost all men). Remember this is for 99.9% of the trip per you, although I would argue between the bathroom or wanting to go visit a cafe car the three quarters of adults who can’t stand up straight in the aisle would be affected for more than 0.1% of the trip.
this is little different to lots of other situations including most planes
No, my previous post made very clear that the seated height and aisle height of the AeroLiner is less than regular passenger planes on the upper level and on the lower level the aisle height is lower and seated height about the same without the benefit of luggage bins. Don’t bring up executive jets, they are a luxury product that offer the advantages of jet speed and personalized service. This train doesn’t travel at Mach 0.8+ or leave at your command to with no other passengers on it. Even then, several models of Cessna Citation, as an example, have a cabin height of 1700-1800mm, equal to or higher than the lower level aisle and much more than the upper aisle, so you have made yourself look stupid saying this train has the same compromises of a small jet when its compromises are greater. The Concorde? Aisle height was 1960mm, once again much more than the AeroLiner, so no, billionaires and heads of states were not walking bent over at the waist to reach a seat where their head touched the bid above them. And the payoff of a cabin less cramped than this train was Mach 2+. The payoff for passengers in this train is supposedly a seat when they stand now, but I don’t people will appreciate sitting in a seat where their head hits the ceiling, so you are just left with the imposition and no benefit, a double imposition if people feel the need to stand in the lower aisle that is more cramped with less headroom than the aisle they stand in now. And to get this terrible passenger experience you have paid more, since according to you the train is more expensive. Great deal! Lose-lose-lose!
Fundamentally, as a scientist
You should be able to do basic math and compare dimensions to widely available human physiology statistics to know that something is too small for use without wasting time and money building a fully working prototype.
I didn’t claim it as a fantastic design but I do think it is worthwhile.
Some of your claims don’t jibe. Perhaps the photos are deceiving and staged but there appears adequate headroom above the headrests (which by itself is sufficient for most average people). You are implying the designers are idiots or charlatans. If it is so self-evident why was the competition staged and why was this design chosen as a finalist? Would they really present such a terrible design if it as risible as you claim?
I took the designer at their word, as they don’t try to hide or mislead about headroom:
Unlike the tilt-train tech there is no other market outside the UK for such a compromised double-deck design and they rejected it, so of course there is no other way to develop it further. Like that and several other of your comments these are disingenuous arguments. Then again railfans do seem ideologically fixated against double-deck in all forms, whether commuter or long-distance rail, yet such trains transport billions of pax perfectly adequately (more than that, at higher efficiency) all around the world.
I have not denied the headroom compromise but remain to be convinced it is irredeemable given the various and severe problems with the British rail system.
Some of your claims don’t jibe. Perhaps the photos are deceiving and staged but there appears adequate headroom above the headrests (which by itself is sufficient for most average people).
You claim to be a scientist. One of the principles of science is repeatability. There is a cross section of the AeroLiner 3000 here:
There is a cross section of a 737 here:
You can measure the various dimensions of the two modes and determine if the figures I gave are accurate or not. This is much easier on the 737 cross section because it gives dimensions (the lack of any dimensions on the AeroLiner cross section should itself be a sign) however knowing that the AeroLiner fits loading gauge W6a that it is 2777mm wide at its widest point and 3975mm above top of rail at its highest you can scale to determine other dimensions. Note that due to the inaccuracy inherent in measuring off a photo versus a CAD file, I grant that there may be a few % error in the figures I presented.
As to the photos, I notice that almost none of the promotional photos have any people in them, which suggests that they are staged (as most marketing photos are). I did find this photo with people in it in which you can clearly see a not-terribly-tall person bent over on the upper deck, and another average height person who appears to have their head almost at roof level while standing two steps down.
It’s not just the headroom, it is also the lack of any storage space other than under seat (people want to bring luggage with them when they travel) and the split level upper aisle that is a huge tripping hazard.
Regarding the Learjet, the entire cabin is less than 4m long with six seats. The Aeroliner was going to have 17m long cars with many more. Crawling through a short Learjet cabin a few meters just once at the beginning and end of a journey is a far cry from expecting people to walk bent over (perhaps with bags or kids in tow) for a dozen meters with people getting both on and off at stops to say nothing of trips to the bathroom or to visit the cafe (i.e. the things that are supposed to be better on trains than planes). And once again comparing luxury private aircraft to intercity rail travel is just silly, people will accept less headroom for a few hour flight that leaves at their beck and call.
double-deck in all forms, whether commuter or long-distance rail, yet such trains transport billions of pax perfectly adequatelyAll of those double-deck train in other places have more headroom, both in the aisle and at the seats.
First, you continue to write in a patronising way as if I, or the designers, are unaware of the compromises. I gave a citation from the designer that addressed that directly. The question is not whether there are compromises, it is whether they might be tolerable if the design substantially alleviated the capacity crunch on many parts of the British network, especially on those lines into London and especially the biggest and busiest, Southern. Southern cancelled one in six trains off their permanent schedule, not because they weren’t required but because that frequency was provoking service interruptions and making things worse. The outcry by Southern travellers was huge because there weren’t enough trains, certainly not enough seats (paying £4k for a season ticket then standing all the way on an hour commute!) and then too often couldn’t get on a train due to congestion. Again, I say to ask those long-suffering regular commuters whether they would find the compromises a reasonable trade-off. I might be wrong as the last 40 years has shown they will tolerate all kinds of shit (and literally shit from their failing sewage system) most of us wouldn’t.
Second, as a scientist I believe I am probably more open to experiment and alternative ways of achieving a given goal. Railfans seem to have very fixed and inflexible views. You have reacted primarily that a duplex train is a bad thing, then gone looking for every possible thing you can criticise. You have repeatedly used precedent and “standards” as a criticism of the design, but the designers themselves have admitted the compromises which were to achieve the goal. You don’t really consider whether they may have at least met the goal (30% increase in pax load). Another factor appears to be an Anglophone resistance to “other” solutions. I note that Crossrail was constructed 43 years after RER-A which was an explicit model for it; another little novelty that Parisian metro trains have had forever and which have appeared for the first time to my knowledge on the Elizabeth line trains: strapontin (in the foyer area but I seem to recall some American long-distance commuter trains, maybe LIRR? have them in the actual aisles; a rather drastic thing to add seats on commuter trains).
So, I’ll briefly address some of the issues you continue to raise, probably the last time because none of these are new and clearly we are never going to agree.
I’d have to say that those diagrams confirm what I wrote previously. First, it only concerns the upper deck; if you look in the pic you posted, the seated guy in the lower deck has huge head space. Second, it looks little different to the 737 diagram (we’re talking sitting head room not standing). Are you saying you have never hit your head on the luggage rack on a train or plane when getting in or out of the seat?
The standing headroom may well be compromised (which the designer admitted). It’s hard to tell how much from either the pic or the diagram, but you exaggerate both the inconvenience and the time spent navigating those few metres, generally only twice on a trip. Most of the commuter and regional train journeys are about one hour or less; you find a seat and stay put. The outlined figure on the lower deck in the diagram looks like a giant. If it is the same figure on the upper deck then it is the “worst case” scenario. Very tall people both understand these issues and will know that it makes better sense for them to choose the lower deck. Note that such people will already usually have to bend their heads/necks entering the train; in the Netherlands due to the strange increasing height over the past few decades they actually changed the building regulations to increase door jamb height to try to reduce the number of head injuries at ERs! (I must admit I am a bit deficient in sympathy for very tall people! Let Darwinian selection do its job:-)
Again you exaggerate and don’t consider whether the compromise (only 20% of seats have a step, ie. 2/3rd of upper deck only) is unbearable or unsolvable. And how many people on the British network have big enough luggage to be an issue? Certainly a minority. And as I pointed out, the upper deck does have surplus floor space due to 2+1 seating, which you can see on the right in your diagram. Further, large luggage would use special luggage racks as indeed most long-distant trains in the world use.
This also reminds me of the buses from HK airport to Central. They are double-deckers and I always take them into the city (but the Airporter train for the other direction) because of the exhilarating ride and views from the top deck (front seat is spectacular) which you don’t get on the train; you leave your luggage on the big racks on the lower deck and at first you worry about it but they have a camera trained on it with displays throughout the bus. Needless to say there are no overhead luggage racks.
When seated there is no difference! Srsly.
It still doesn’t stop you guys complaining that those trains are a pox on the world of rail! And you are doing it again, complaining because Brit gauge compromises these things instead of asking whether compromising it for 30% of pax, for a tiny part of their journey, is a reasonable tradeoff. Further, a lot of the time the train won’t be busy enough to really inconvenience anyone; this train seats the same number of pax on the lower deck (plenty of headroom) as normal trains, if sans o/h luggage rack.
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Re scientists and intrepid experimentalism: Vale Dr Robin Warren, who died last night at 87y, winner of Nobel Prize (Phys&Med 2005) for identifying H.pylori as the major cause of stomach ulcers. He and colleague Barry Marshall got so frustrated with scepticism from other doctors & scientists about their theory, and failure to obtain NHMRC research grants, they did the experiment on themselves. Drinking a culture of the bacteria, developing ulcers and treating them successfully with ordinary antibiotics (fulfilling Koch’s postulates). Today the NHMRC have a grant program named after them to specifically fund “off-the-wall” ideas! On a personal note, the US has a program to do the same thing, ie. support ideas at the leading edge that are not so easily funded by their normal programs (peer review tends to kill too adventurous ideas). After failing three times with the Australian NHMRC, I won such a grant (for US$1m, three times the average NHMRC grant! non-US-based, non-citizen scientists can apply!) with my first application on the exact same project.
Michael, I am with you on the tendency among rail fans to decry any unorthodox technique. It is surprisingly strong here since Alon’s work is dedicated to the evaluation and comparison of various projects.
Warren and Marshall faced the same skepticism because H. Pylori did not fulfill part of Koch’s first postulate (the microorganism should not be found in healthy individuals). Healthy carriers are common. It is often said that science progresses one funeral at the time because famous scientists tend to be reject new ideas. Koch was not so stubborn. Discovering healthy Vibrio Cholerae carriers he acknowledged that his first postulate was wrong but it survived him. Warren and Marshall did what was not possible in Koch’s time, or when Daniel Carrion died demonstrating the bacterial origin of Verruga Peruana. They treated the infection with antibiotics and the stomach mucosa healed. Their discovery resonates beyond the question of ulcers, H. Pylori being linked to 90% of gastric cancers and lymphomas.
To be fair Michael there are only 18tph off peak into London Victoria over a minimum of 4 tracks, so aside from terminal capacity and perhaps pinch points elsewhere I think you could probably run more service on the Southern lines if needed.
“I did find this photo with people in it in which you can clearly see a not-terribly-tall person bent over on the upper deck, and another average height person who appears to have their head almost at roof level while standing two steps down.”
The photo I was referring to:
One thing you’re overlooking is that construction workers are currently somewhat of a scarce resource, too. Even if you wanted to do things differently, a lot of the companies doing permanent way maintenance, earthworks and other civil engineering stuff like that aren’t tied down to only working for the railways, because they can just as easily be doing work in road construction/maintenance and for various utilities, too (the rollout of fibre internet needs a lot of trenching for example, too).
Offering unattractive working conditions (night and weekend shifts only) is a good way of not getting back any bids nowadays, because right now there’s enough work going around where you don’t have to put up with that kind of stuff.