100 comments on Local Rail - An Overview
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100 comments on Local Rail - An Overview
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It's interesting to see that both the central planning as in France, or some grassroot commitment as in reviving many abandoned rails in Germany actually work.
Switzerland is the best example that rail can even get the support of the voters. Zurich has often been called the city with the highest quality of living in Europe. And these huge tunnel projects, all approved in a referendum.
In Berlin, some of the busses and trams have their own lanes, so they don't get stuck in the traffic. They can also control traffic lights and signals, so that the cars have to wait...
Parking in the center has become expensive, too. A rail ticket is cheaper. Or look at London with their congestion pricing.
A combination of more attractive rail services and alienating car traffic helps people to switch as well.
In 1998, the Swiss nation voted to spend 31 billion Swiss francs to improve their already fine RR system (perhaps the best in the world). About half goes to those massive tunnels.
There were several goals for such a massive project(s) but #1 was to move freight off trucks and onto (hydro) electric rail.
1 billion CHf of the 31 for quieter rail cars. 240 kph pax service (160 kph for specialty freight on the same tracks) from Zurich to Milan and 200 kph Bern to Milan, etc.
Adjust for population and currency, and it would be like US voters approving $1 trillion.
Best Hopes for Long Range Planning,
Alan
Moving freight off tracks has not worked well in Europe because of all the different technical systems and regulations in all the countries.
We will now get ERTMS (European Rail Traffic Management) and ETCS (European Train Control System), and the trains are more and more compatible with the different power systems (15kV 16,7Hz in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden and 25kV 50Hz in France and most other countries).
Deutsche Bahn moved 306,7 million tons of goods in 2007, 266,5 in 2006 and 1,864 billion passengers in 2007, 1,785 billion in 2005. Deutsche Bahn operates 34122 km of tracks, that's second after Switzerland per km².
So, after a long decline, both freight and passengers are increasing again, and finally, the countries cooperate. A couple of years ago, it was unthinkable that a French TGV could move far into Germany, or a German ICE far into France.
Now, there is a TGV Paris - Stuttgart - Munich and an ICE Frankfurt - Paris.
Slowly, slowly we are moving ahead. To expand your point, railfreight is most profitable over distances of say 500-1000 km, a distance which cuts across borders from most European cities, but there is a great number of technical issues that result in incompatibility, even if there would be no bureaucratic obstacles. Thus railfreight has a much lower share than in the US!
Eliminating all of these obstacles is a herculean job. Unfortunately, the second level of ERTMS (which relies on cell phone communications technology) is so far a running technical failure, causing delays for several new high-speed lines, so there we have to wait. On the different supply systems issue, multi-system locomotives solved the problem rather well. Different cross sections (gauges) was already dealt with for freight, now high-speed trains are standardised in that, too. The most spectacular and expensive integration policy is Spain's aim to re-gauge its complete rail system to normal gauge (over decades).
A little clarification: what you talk about is the NEAT aka AlpTransit project of the Swiss federal state, what my diary and Siggi talked about is the project of the canton and city of Zurich. The latter involved a 5-kilometre and a 10-kilometre tunnel, and another 6-kilometre one in preparation, pretty massive undertaking for a mid-size city.
The NEAT project involves the half-finished 57-kilometre Gotthard Base Tunnel, and the 34.6-kilometre Lötschberg Base Tunnel, about whose recent opening I wrote a diary over at European Tribune.
But what you say is valid for both projects: population-adjusted, they mean the possibility of massive popularly supported rail investment.