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Zephro posted:It's hard to do a proper straight-up comparison because if you want to be really http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalised_cost This is what they do all the funny benefit/cost ratios for railways on, and it's not really a normal way of thinking (while being sensible to human nature). Like all good economics, its bullshit with just enough whiff of truth to make it useful.
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May 10, 2012 22:40
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about it you need to consider the cost of insurance, road tax, MOTs, servicing and the fact that you can't do anything while driving other than driving, but given that those are sunk costs for anyone who already owns a car, yeah, it's very often cheaper unless you book three weeks in advance and don't mind leaving at five in the morning.
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I can drink a beer on the train, I can't while driving. Ergo trains = better. Also there was a plan to double track the freight line that runs into the Port of Felixtowe but it was scuppered by farmers and bullshit nimbyism from people in the town who still complain about the lack of jobs there while continually opposing expansion of the port and it's transport links.
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May 10, 2012 23:58
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Endjinneer posted:
I think he was more asking about why it's difficult to convince people to switch to railfreight rather than roadfreight, rather than the specfics of rail's green credentials. However, rail always tends to be greener than roads for freight no matter what locomotives you use simply because (I think) it uses the power more efficiently and is less start-stop. There are a lot of problems with railfreight compared to roadfreight. There's the obvious one of needing a rail connection, which fewer and fewer companies have access to nowadays. This means that goods need to be trucked - usually in containers nowadays - to and from the nearest railhead at either end. This rules out a lot of short and medium-distance freight, as it's often easier to just cut out the middle bit and use trucks the whole way. The reason barely any companies have a rail connection anymore, though, is the collapse of "wagonload" freight. In days gone by, you could hire a suitable wagon from BR or whatever, load your goods onto it in a siding and shove it onto the back of a suitably train when it arrived. Usually these were dedicated wagonload freight trains, but sometimes they were passenger trains with freight wagons shoved on the back! This train would eventually end up at a marshalling yard where it would be broken up and the wagons distributed amongst a whole bunch of different trains going to different places. It might have been going directly to the wagon's destination, or to a closer marshalling yard, where the same process might happen again and so on, until it finally got to its destination. As you can imagine, this was slow and very labour intensive. Beeching-era rationalisations and modernisations couldn't save the wagonload network, the vast majority of which was shut down in the 90s. There's a lot of other factors and bad decisions that contributed to this, and before you get the idea that this was some sort of foregone conclusion in the modern age, many European countries still run variously successful wagonload networks. However, it is certainly true that rail is much more suited to "trainload" flows - that is, a whole train's worth of goods from one place to another with no fussing about in between. It's thanks to this that you rarely, if ever, see a coal lorry travelling down the motorway - coal has been a mainstay of the rail network since its inception, and other aggregates and things like fuel are still quite well represented. I mentioned containers earlier, and these are a method of bridging the gap - you can have a trainload of containers going from one place to another, but each container can be from a different company. You still have the problem of getting it to and from the container terminal in the first place, but it's a good solution and is probably the biggest growth sector in railfreight at the moment and very exciting (to certain people...) Many hauliage companies like Eddie Stobart and WH Malcolm use these trains as "trunk routes" in their network. Railfreight companies are even discussing "urban freight," where passenger stations and sidings in central locations might come back into use for freight just like in the wagonload days. This is of course a direct challenge to roadfreight companies for whom urban deliveries are a core business. Finally, we mustn't forget the role that privatisation played. Along with all the fragmentation and disruption that had been going on for decades, real damage was caused with the huge disruption that followed the Hatfield crash. Hundreds of crippling speed restrictions had to be enforced throughout the network, destroying railfreight performance and presumably resulting in many unhappy customers who made the decision (or had the decision made for them) that they'd have to switch to road. Moving to railfreight is often a big risk, with large investment needed for a decision which might not even end up saving money, so reputational damage like that was the last thing the sector needed. However, the NR-era railway is constantly improving and a lot of the damage has worn off now. Railfreight is growing pretty fast already and with roads becoming increasingly congested, road travel becoming very expensive and pollution becoming an ever-important issue, it's is probably going to develop rapidly over the next few years. Jonnty fucked around with this message at 01:09 on May 11, 2012 |
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May 11, 2012 01:01
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  I worked for a brief stint as a RO2S for TransPennine Express in the North of England. I had so much fun dealing with Northern Rail and their pieces of scrap with wheels that they call trains.
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May 11, 2012 07:45
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EDIT: I derped. Still not woken up yet. Plasmafountain fucked around with this message at 08:31 on May 11, 2012 |
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May 11, 2012 08:27
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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad posted:I can drink a beer on the train, I can't while driving. Ergo trains = better. Are you, by any chance, an oil rig worker? Also, outside London, there are other reasons to make use of trains:
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May 11, 2012 15:30
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This morning I missed my train from London to Liverpool. The price of another ticket, when I checked, was a hundred and fifty quid. A bus was thirty. gently caress trains.
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May 11, 2012 17:22
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tentish klown posted:This morning I missed my train from London to Liverpool. The price of another ticket, when I checked, was a hundred and fifty quid. A bus was thirty. gently caress trains. "gently caress train operators", I think you mean. Which quickly extends to "gently caress privatisation" 
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May 11, 2012 17:52
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GuestBob posted:Are you, by any chance, an oil rig worker? Except if you really want to do that properly, don't go in that multicoloured modern rubbish: use one of the only daily steam services left in the UK, the Jacobite. 
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May 11, 2012 18:42
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That undergrowth looks suspiciously not dead and burnt for a regular steam service
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May 11, 2012 22:01
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I've had the joy of dealing with three days straight of signal failures on the Thameslink/First Capital Connect.
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May 11, 2012 22:04
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Hezzy posted:
As much as it is to rag on Serco, that one isn't their fault. We'll perpetually have 20-year old trains because we're not London. 
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May 11, 2012 22:25
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TinTower posted:As much as it is to rag on Serco, that one isn't their fault. We'll perpetually have 20-year old trains because we're not London. TransPennine manage to have a fleet that was built within the last decade
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May 11, 2012 22:28
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MrL_JaKiri posted:That undergrowth looks suspiciously not dead and burnt for a regular steam service Well it is seasonal - perhaps this is one of the earlier runs of the summer. On a related note, here's a picture from what some characters in a Stewart Lee routine would call the "good old days."
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May 12, 2012 01:07
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MrL_JaKiri posted:That undergrowth looks suspiciously not dead and burnt for a regular steam service Have you ever been to the west highlands? Do you have any idea just how soggy it is? I was up there recently and quite disappointed to find many fire pits in the middle of pine forests, remarkably the pine forests were not on fire.
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May 13, 2012 01:08
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Found this article on the Beeb: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18032721 Apparently it is cheaper to travel by taxi than by train in Greece. I now suspect that a century into the future people will be commuting up and down the Thames in luxury yachts, all to save money. Somehow.
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May 13, 2012 10:05
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Pipski posted:Not my cat, sadly. That can't be it, they charge you to piss in the Gare du Nord as well, at the other end of the Eurostar. Pisschat
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May 13, 2012 13:09
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Ghost of Babyhead posted:That can't be it, they charge you to piss in the Gare du Nord as well, at the other end of the Eurostar. 30p seems to be the standardised cost of a poo ticket in all NR stations but I think St Pancras isn't owned by NR. Wikipedia seems to confirm this.
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May 13, 2012 17:48
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I use my work ID to blag free pissing. Best use of safety critical competence cards going.
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May 13, 2012 17:53
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Those barriers are pretty easy to get around if nobody's around. Just pull them towards you, slip in from the side and then push it forward to slip out the other side. They have plenty of space.
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May 14, 2012 13:46
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Zombywuf posted:Have you ever been to the west highlands? Do you have any idea just how soggy it is? I've been up to Oban a few times and it was pretty dry on the way there. Was the height of summer, though.
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May 14, 2012 13:51
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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad posted:An example: there are still sections of signalling equipment in use on the London Underground that dates back to the 1950s. Thanks, Thatcher (Local Government Act 1985 dissolving Ken Livingstone & the GLA / Secretary of State for Transport being responsible for LRT). The New York City Subway still has plenty of signalling equipment that's been in place and in use since the 1930s or earlier (if I remember right the last equipment in place and in use from before 1910 was finally removed a few years ago). It honestly doesn't matter much how old it is as long as it works properly. kingturnip posted:Talking about weird infrastructure, the line that's run by First Capital Connect that goes from Moorgate to Alexandra Palace (and beyond) is, I'm told, unique in that it uses both overhead power lines and a third rail. The overhead for most of the line, the third rail for the section from Drayton Park to Moorgate, where the line goes underground. If you sit on the train at Drayton Park, you'll notice the train powering down briefly as the overhead connector (thingy) retracts and the third rail connector (thingy) extends. The weirdness is one of the reasons the rolling stock is poo poo, because I guess it'd cost quite a lot to design a train just for one freaky line. It might be unique in the UK, but it isn't globally. As one example, the New Haven line of Metro-North in New York and Connecticut operates on 700 volt third rail DC power from the terminal in NYC up to the joining with Amtrak lines, where the trains switch to 12500 volt overhead catenary AC power. This is a result of it operating what was formerly two different railroad companies' lines, half a century ago, which had implemented the two incompatible electrification systems. So you have 14 mils done on third rail, and another 60 or so under catenary. Bozza posted:I think it's a bit a bullshit to call the railway a "rich mans toy". Commuting certainly is, but travel in general is not. Far be it for me to defend ATOC, but there are cheap fares out there and it is by far and the way the best method of travel if you are willing to vary your travel time or date. This is why I find it so astounding that the re-privatization of British passenger service ever happened. Despite all attempts from conservatives in the US, Amtrak is still around for intercity/long-distance stuff (and at prices generally 25%-50% lower than the private carriers were charging back in their heyday) and the various regional/state authorities that handle commuter service are still around too.
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May 14, 2012 17:19
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Install Gentoo posted:The New York City Subway still has plenty of signalling equipment that's been in place and in use since the 1930s or earlier (if I remember right the last equipment in place and in use from before 1910 was finally removed a few years ago). It honestly doesn't matter much how old it is as long as it works properly. But MTA have a big advantage over LUL in their subways layouts are much, much more sensible than the clusterfuck that lives under the streets of London*. The most important thing is that more of theirs is four tracked (ours is only two) so if something breaks here everything stops, where as there they can go around. It's also why they get a 24/7 service and we get one that starts at roughly 5:30 and ends at midnight. *fun fact: this is due to the inherent inefficiencies in private companies building railways, for example why is Oxford Circus station so badly laid out? Because it was two stations run by rival companies (the Central London Railway and the Baker Street & Waterloo Railway), until unification as the Underground Electric Railways Company of London and then the London Passenger Transport Board.
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May 14, 2012 17:43
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My favourite story of railways in the Victorian era being shits to each other is that the platforms at Basingstoke are numbered backwards to the rest of the stations on that route, so the Great Western Railway platform wouldn't be number 1. Also, got my design licence approved today!
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May 14, 2012 18:11
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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad posted:But MTA have a big advantage over LUL in their subways layouts are much, much more sensible than the clusterfuck that lives under the streets of London*. The most important thing is that more of theirs is four tracked (ours is only two) so if something breaks here everything stops, where as there they can go around. It's also why they get a 24/7 service and we get one that starts at roughly 5:30 and ends at midnight. MTA also has the big advantage over the various London underground authorities that once it went 100% government owned in 1940 it's stayed government owned since then. No loving about with public-private "partnerships". Ultimately that's the important thing. It also has the advantage that a third of the system was built by the NYC government owned Independent subway, and that much of the other two-thirds of the system, while built by the IRT and BMT (and the BMT's predecessors, with some parts of some routes dating back to 1870s steam railways) private companies, was done under city contracts mandating various things that result in better interoperability then and now. There's tons of stations in NYC that consist of stations built by 2 or 3 entirely separate companies originally, but the government authorities in control have managed to make them work together now - though even today there's station complexes that aren't fully conected. And hell, you'd think a system that shuts down every day would mean they'd have the ability to do things like lengthen platforms system-wide and all that. Or that they'd have the brains when building the Jubilee line in the 70s to make that use normal size trains and 4 track it, since it wasn't just another existing private line from the late 1800s that needed to be small tunnels and 2 tracks.
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May 14, 2012 18:28
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Install Gentoo posted:And hell, you'd think a system that shuts down every day would mean they'd have the ability to do things like lengthen platforms system-wide and all that. Or that they'd have the brains when building the Jubilee line in the 70s to make that use normal size trains and 4 track it, since it wasn't just another existing private line from the late 1800s that needed to be small tunnels and 2 tracks. Part of what is now the Jubilee used to be the Bakerloo though so there would have been all kinds of fun problems with bridge clearances and so on.
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May 14, 2012 18:58
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Lengthening platforms is actually pretty bad for capacity, you're better ff just making trains more frequent, especially on a metro.
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May 14, 2012 19:09
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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad posted:Part of what is now the Jubilee used to be the Bakerloo though so there would have been all kinds of fun problems with bridge clearances and so on. Yes, but a different route could have been used. At the very least the new parts of the line could have been built to a size that larger trains could run through, even if they'd still run small trains through to start, you know? As it stands now, to put through a normal size train on any part of the Jubilee line would require complete shut down for months at the least to build bigger tunnels. Again to compare with NYC. To this day, the former IRT lines use narrower, shorter train cars than the rest of the subway in NYC. However, a lot of that trackage was built with the provision that in the future, all that would be needed to convert those lines and portions of lines to using the same, larger, rolling stock on the other parts of the system is platform shaving and moving the rails slightly - no need to dig/drill out to widen the stations and tunnels. Bozza posted:Lengthening platforms is actually pretty bad for capacity, you're better ff just making trains more frequent, especially on a metro. It's worked great for New York City, though? I certainly don't see how any of the lines I use every week would be better off with shorter platforms and trains, and waiting 3 or 4 minutes between trains hardly seems too long! Edit: The Jubilee Line in London runs trainsets about 4/5 the length of the usual trainsets used on IRT sections of the NYC subway. Each 1996 stock trainset on the Jubilee line is rated to carry 817 people, each R142/R142A trainset used on the various IRT lines can hold about 1800 people per train. With the Jubilee line running at about every 2-3 minutes at peak and the Lexington line (for an example IRT line) running every 3-4 minutes at peak - well there's just no way around it you can fit a lot more people in the latter before you add on that the Lex is 4 track. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 20:06 on May 14, 2012 |
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May 14, 2012 19:50
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Aren't all the New York lines cut-and-cover? That's a lot cheaper than building a double-wide deep line.
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May 14, 2012 20:44
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False equivalence I'm afraid. Making trains longer increases your headway distance thus buggers your capacity. This is particularly key in platform reoccupation times. I'll draw a diagram, cos I'm probably not being very clear.
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May 14, 2012 20:48
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Install Gentoo posted:
Maybe I'm missing something but if the train is 80% of the length but only ~45% of the capacity, the capacity difference doesn't seem to have much to do with the length of the train. Switching to cars which are able to carry more people might be worthwhile, but just tacking on more of the low-capacity cars doesn't seem like a great plan.
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May 14, 2012 21:16
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God I fucking love Diablo 3 gold, it even paid for this shitty title
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Bozza posted:False equivalence I'm afraid. Making trains longer increases your headway distance thus buggers your capacity. This is particularly key in platform reoccupation times. It's not a thing where its a linear tradeoff though. 1000 foot long metro trains would just be silly, but it doesn't seem unreasonable at all to lengthen stations to fit say 500 or 600 foot trains. The Lexington Avenue Line itself, is carrying a bit over 1/3 the total daily passengers of the entire London Underground (LAL carries 1.3 million per day, the Underground carries 3 million), along its 4 track approximately 10 miles length. It's doing that with 10 car trains of 51 foot cars, running as often as 3 minutes apart during rush hour. When I say 3 minutes apart, note that I mean on the same track, same direction; you have a train on the express track going north every 3 minutes, and also on the local track going north a seperate one every 3 minutes. Zephro posted:Aren't all the New York lines cut-and-cover? That's a lot cheaper than building a double-wide deep line. They're not all cut-and-cover, just mostly. It's cheaper to do, but, honestly cheaping out upfront just causes huge problems forever after. misguided rage posted:Maybe I'm missing something but if the train is 80% of the length but only ~45% of the capacity, the capacity difference doesn't seem to have much to do with the length of the train. Switching to cars which are able to carry more people might be worthwhile, but just tacking on more of the low-capacity cars doesn't seem like a great plan. The London "deep level tube" train cars are rather small in order to fit the narrow width tunnels they run in. Sadly they've kind of got no real chance of expanding the tunnels for larger cars (which would be ideal), running longer trains and expanding the stations some is really the only sane thing to do. Compare the room in average tube stock in London to the room in the NYC one i mentioned (which are also the smaller variant in that system):  
Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 21:36 on May 14, 2012 |
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May 14, 2012 21:30
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Or they can do what South West Trains did and increase capacity by taking out seats. You can cram in more people standing than you can sitting.
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May 14, 2012 21:35
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I can't help but think that some sort of leaflet or piece of information needs to be prominently displayed that says "Move down the carriage when you board a busy service". Saw a TPE train yesterday that was completely ram packed full in carriage B but carriages A and C were pretty much empty. Seems silly for everyone to be crowding round in the same carriage...
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May 14, 2012 21:44
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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad posted:Or they can do what South West Trains did and increase capacity by taking out seats. You can cram in more people standing than you can sitting. They've done that already when you compare the old Bakerloo deep trains and the modern ones in the Jubilee line etc. The New Metropolitan line trains also trade sitting room for standing room.
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May 14, 2012 21:46
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Install Gentoo posted:They're not all cut-and-cover, just mostly. It's cheaper to do, but, honestly cheaping out upfront just causes huge problems forever after.
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May 14, 2012 22:00
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Hezzy posted:I can't help but think that some sort of leaflet or piece of information needs to be prominently displayed that says "Move down the carriage when you board a busy service". Saw a TPE train yesterday that was completely ram packed full in carriage B but carriages A and C were pretty much empty. Seems silly for everyone to be crowding round in the same carriage... I think you'll find that the doors of that carriage are closest to the exit / next train of the station they get off at. I know it's hilarious on the Waterloo and city line, the front will be jam packed at waterloo to the point you can wait for several trains before getting on but the rear will have seats available.
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May 14, 2012 22:54
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Bozza posted:My favourite story of railways in the Victorian era being shits to each other is that the platforms at Basingstoke are numbered backwards to the rest of the stations on that route, so the Great Western Railway platform wouldn't be number 1. Pontefract still has 3 stations because of Victorian competition. On the other hand, Huddersfield has a gigantic train parthenon because the competitors decided to join forces. Signalling right? I'll have 2 LOCs and a relay room please.
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May 14, 2012 22:58
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Install Gentoo posted:
Yeah that's what I assumed. I was just trying to expand on Bozza's point that adding cars to the train isn't necessarily the best way to increase capacity.
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May 15, 2012 00:09
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 21:10 |
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Well comrades I'll be going to this, anyone else in the Birmingham area interested (even if it is just to meet Bob)? Save Your Railway – Public Meeting May 24th Save your railway – public meeting, Thursday 24th May, 7pm at the Unite Offices, 211 Broad Street, B15 1AY. Speakers include: Bob Crow – General Secretary, RMT Becca Kirkpatrick – Birmingham Trades Union Council On top of rocketing energy bills, the government wants us to pay inflation busting rail fare increases of up to 30 per cent, or even more – over the next three years. At the same time, the government’s policy calls for fewer, more overcrowded rail services, ticket office closures, the axing of tens of thousands of front-line railway staff, the break-up of Network Rail into “mini-railtracks” and reduced safety standards. But the railway companies are being given the green light to make even bigger profits on top of the astonishing £11 billion of your money that has been drained from the industry since privatisation. Elsewhere in Europe, railways are cheaper and more efficient because they have been kept in a unified structure in the public sector. Come to the public meeting and discuss how we can save our railways and campaign for a rail network fit for the 21st century. No Fare Hikes! No Service Cuts! Staff Our Stations! Organised by Birmingham Trades Union Council and the rail unions.
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May 15, 2012 00:32
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