- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.skoops.social/post/727
crossposted: https://lemmy.skoops.social/post/665
Oh boy…
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I just took the train from Switzerland to Italy. Can confirm, people do it.
I took a train through germany just last week.
I had a US colleague stay with me in Ireland for a week and he was asking if it was possible to catch a train to England. It’s amazing the geographic ignorance of some people and Americans seem to be especially afflicted. Maybe it’s because the USA is so big, large cities so far apart, and public transport so terrible it doesn’t occur to them that Europe is not the same.
To be fair, these exist not in Ireland but in other places they do.
I took the train from brussel to sicily. It’s not that stupid. Sometime trains go on boat.
… Your train went on a boat to sicily? From where? Marseille ? Never heard of this, i’m curious
I mean it’s actually quite unique to sicily, but there is a boat that starts in reggio (on the tip of the boot) and ferrys to messina, sicily. It have rails connection, so the train is loaded on the boat on one side and discharged on the other side.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_train_ferries#Italy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_float
Apparently there are also similar connection between Varna and Odessa (awesome, after the war I’d love to do that). It would be awesome to have them between Ireland and the UK. There’s the booze cruise between hollyhead, wales and Dublin. People used to take them during holiday in ireland (because alcohol sales was forbidden) just to get pissed during the crossing and back lmao
I’m from Australia and wouldn’t have been able to confidently say there wasn’t a tunnel between Ireland and England. There are long tunnels in a few places and one there wouldn’t be too surprising to me
If it wasn’t for NI being somehow behind the times compared to both England and Ireland, there would be a chunnel between them.
I doubt it. The enormous cost of the chunnel made economic, as well as symbolic and political sense. Between ireland and UK it wouldn’t.
Come to think about it, maybe now it should be closed
i’d say the largest reason it won’t happen is that ireland has a tiny population, compared to the channel tunnel linking london and france
In their defense, I have no idea what the capital of Kentucky or Virginia is :/
PS: I don’t know it for most states 🙃 actually, I didn’t know California’s, New York’s or Illinois’…this is starting to look like a conspiracy to make your largest city not the capital, lol
this is starting to look like a conspiracy to make your largest city not the capital, lol
Usually this is because the capital doesn’t generally change over time while the relative size of cities often does, especially on the scale of a century or more.
Looking at China’s provincial capitals and EU’s capitals, they all look like they hoovered up all the population around them, why doesn’t that happen in the US? Lemme guess…car culture?
No its just completely wrong theory. Population centers are usually on the edge of the state and capitals are deliberately kept in the geographic center of the state. If the population center isn’t on the edge then its in the capitol.
That’s completely wrong. Many states moved their capital away from population centers on the coast into more geographically central locations inland. Other states deliberately planned their capitals to be in central locations when it was already clear where the population centers were going to be.
If anything the capital city only grows and becomes the population center. Population never drifts away from the capital.
Tell that to Albany, NY. Population is about 1.2% of NYC.
Or to Sacramento, CA which is the fourth largest city in the state.
Then there are states where the population doesn’t really concentrate like that, like WV. Biggest city is the capital, but that’s not saying much. That’s largely a result of the geography, where most of the state is forested mountains, with people wherever there’s a flat spot. It’s beautiful, but wildly impractical for large population centers. The only reason Charleston is still the biggest city is the three-way interstate junction that meets at it, and that’s thanks to Robert C Byrd using his influence to help his constituents.
What point of mine are you trying to refute here? Sacramento and Albany were never the population centers of their states as your theory suggests. They were selected because of their central geographic location as with the vast majority of US state capitals.
Its like your hung up on me saying “population drifts towards the capital” because it generally does but rarely overcomes any major metropol on the coast.
I live in West Virginia and a recurring joke is that we should just give up and rename the state to Robert C Byrd. His name is on everything.
I do too, I’m in the greater Charleston area. And yeah, fucking everything is named for him, but to be fair much of the time it’s because he secured the funding to make it happen. Man was corrupt as hell, but he did a lot of good for the state.
I live in Charleston, nice to meet you. Yeah he wasn’t a pleasant man but nobody can deny what he accomplished. Even compared to him our politics is a total shitshow now. I do like the mayor, she’s pretty good for a Democrat.
As an American, neither do i. I was taught them but unlike STEM courses i would never use that knowledge in my adult life.
Meanwhile i knew there wasn’t a tunnel between IE/UK.
Some of us are more worldly i guess…
Yeah but I do know that I can’t take a train from Hawaii to California, there’s a big wet thing in the way.
Also the country’s called Ireland, it’s a hint.
Yeah except that logic doesn’t apply to the UK and France
Kentucky is Frankfort. Yes its spelled differently from Germany’s one.
California is Sacramento, New York is Albany, and every once in a while the capital is the biggest or most important city like seriously, Philadelphia was nearly the nation’s capital but fumbled even being the state capital.
Oh and ohio is fun here because Columbus has slowly grown to be the biggest city in ohio. Cleveland and Cincinnati are more historically significant while Columbus was just a big city focused on the university and business. But as the great lakes manufacturing and ohio River manufacturing fell by the wayside and Columbus kept growing it beat them out.
and yes it’s spelled differently from Germanys one
That’s because it’s not named after the German one. It’s named after “Frank’s Ford” which is part of a creek in the area.
Some people say it’s because there is a surprisingly large German population in the area, but it was already called Frankfort by the late 1700s when the large influx of German immigrants really started.
Who really knows haha
That’s really interesting. That said, it’s an unimaginably meh city. Like gorgeous to get to but it’s there alright. Certainly is a city I’ve been to many times.
I actually think that’s a fair question, the distance between Ireland and Scotland is less than the English channel and that can be crossed by rail. If I were to travel to Japan or some other place that I don’t know, then I’d assume that some of the islands are connected by rail and some aren’t, so in a conversation it would be natural for me to ask the same question: can I go there by rail?
Honestly, if I ever get out of this shithole and into a country with decent public transit and healthcare, it’s going to feel like I stepped onto the USS Enterprise.
You live in a world with the chunnel. The odds that a similar passage between islands formerly of the same empire is not so remote.
The odds are and were actually zero since no such tunnel exists. And if people are aware of the chunnel spanning 20 miles they sure as hell would be aware of a tunnel between Ireland and England which would be a nigh impossible feat of engineering whether it went directly, or circuitously through Wales or Scotland.
Yes it doesn’t exist, but the idea that it could exist and be unknown to an American tourist is not terrifically remote. Sorry if I wasn’t clear enough.
I make no claims for the base knowledge of any of my countrymen - they will make a fool of me if I try. But the distance between ~Donaghadee in N.I. and Portpatrick in Scotland is roughly the same between Dover and Calais.
Not knowing the geographic or hydrological factors of either area, it doesn’t seem to me to be much more impossible a feat than the chunnel was.
Yes there are parts of Ireland and Scotland which are close but the engineering challenge is so vast that it would cost hundreds of billions if not trillions. The channel tunnel was a major feat of engineering made possible by the relative shallowness of the channel and boring through soft rock and chalk.
The sea between Ireland and Scotland is 2-3x as deep and through granite & igneous rock. A tunnel isn’t an option. People have proposed a bridge instead, assuming they can figure a way to sink piles 100-150m into the sea floor and build a 20 mile bridge over waters that can have 15-20m freak waves, high winds and storms. Or the seafloor that is scattered with thousands of tonnes of unexploded ordinance.
But even if they did all that, trains in Ireland / UK aren’t even on the same track gauge. Nor would anyone to travel to the tip of Ireland to get to the hinterlands of Scotland, to change trains, to get another train to catch another train to get anywhere in England. Not when it would be easier and faster to get a ferry/coach or just fly.
So basically the idea comes up every now and again but it is not practical or feasible.
Is an American tourist really expected to know all that? How many locals even know all that?
Brit here. I had no idea about the rock formations under the Irish sea. None whatsoever. I don’t think it’s on the GCSE geography syllabus!
Estimating by the next reply you got, maybe they’re being sarcastic on a long timescale.
Jesus Christ, everyone should know it especially if they’re flying there, to the island known as Ireland. And yes all the locals would.
Facts, if you are aware of a tunnel I expect you to be subscribed to Tunnels & Bridges monthly, that kind of arcane knowledge is not for the faint of heart
Maybe. On one hand, I’m inclined to agree, but I also don’t know how many of these sorts of tunnels exist. There’s one connecting mainland Japan with Hokkaido too.
Edit: The Wikipedia page lists oodles of underwater tunnels, but most are well below 15 km long, with the channel tunnel at 50.4 km.
Is that a no?
TGV: Am I a joke to you??
I love the multiple layers to it. Obviously European travel is not what he believes it to be, but neither is American airplane travel, and he must know that, but he’s so desperate to pretend otherwise.
I used to take the train from Wales to Scotland. I’d get on at my local station and change once about half way through the trip. On arrival I could walk to my flat. The whole process took about eight hours.
Once I flew. First I had to get a bus to the airport, arrive early for security theatre, eventually fly, land, take a shuttle bus to a train station, then take a train to Cardiff Central, then take another train to my actual destination. The process took about six hours and was utterly exhausting.
Within the Schengen zone it’s like that second paragraph, even for cities in different countries.
(Whilst the UK does have high speed trains to other cities in Europe from St. Pancras in London, even back before Brexit you still had to go through passport control to board so it does add a bit more overhead to the train trip, plus those trains are normally pretty expensive if you don’t book a month or two in advance)
I remember this one time when I went to ski in Austria and to get there I had to catch a train from Innsbruck to the village nearest the resort and as it so happens that was a train that had departed from somewhere in Germany, was passing through Austria and was going to end somewhere in Switzerland. Normal interurban train (not even a high speed train) making its way through the Alpine valleys in Austria, that just happened to stop in cities in 3 different countries.
The high speed Paris to Berlin train just started in December:
There are about 25 trains per day on the route, but I guess according to this American they’re all empty?
I’m not sure that an 8 hour route between these cities with ~900 km between them really makes our case here. I don’t think there’s really a strong argument to be made that taking the train is better than flying between these cities.
International trains in Europe are a weak point of our network, one which we desperately need to improve.
That no one travels from Germany to France is of course entirely false. Frankfurt to Paris would be a far stronger example, coming in at 3 hours 30 minutes for ~500 km.
Germany in general is a bad example for train travel.
Lille Marseille is a 1k km trip and is done in less than 5 hours I believe
Love it when people argue that it takes 45 minutes to fly from Y to X. 45 minutes is roughly the time your plane is airborne. The whole process takes 3-5 hours door to door.
Once I flew to a city that’s about 6 hours away by car. Work was paying for it, and I figured it would be easier and less stressful to fly than to drive. A coworker drove instead. He left 2 hours after I left for the airport. After my plane arrived they were cleaning it out and one of the attendants hit his head and had to go to the hospital for stitches. I scrambled and was able to get on to another flight, although it took me about 2 hours into the opposite direction, where I then had to sprint from one end of the airport to the other. When I finally landed in my destination city my coworker had been there for over an hour. There was nothing easier or less stressful about that day.
That said, that was my worst experience flying, usually it is very easy - especially if I’m traveling by myself.
It means your driving coworker was thinking about you the entire time while driving and wishing you went on the ride with them :)
Ah, but only for normal plebs like you and me. If you fly private, you just show up at the hangar half an hour before takeoff and walk right in. TSA and waiting in the terminal are for peasants.
Wouldn’t a private plane start taking off as soon as you arrive? Assuming the runway is free.
If you have a private airport yes!
You don’t?
This why I drive anything less than 2500 miles. That’s two days of driving and I get to see the country. Flying would take a whole day anyway, and then I’d have to get a rental car on the other end anyway. Plus it’s difficult to find a decent lifted 4wd rental, and I usually travel to spend time in the mountains on unimproved roads and hiking and camping. Probably similar carbon footprint to flying anyway.
If you’re close enough, you can walk.
ETA I’d expect there are fast rails from Berlin to Paris, and if not, why not?
Interesting to note is that many trains crossing the east part of France to Paris are actually German ICE trains
I buy my groceries in Germany from France, and I often do that by bike. Or sometimes I take the tramway.
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You can go via express train non-stop from Cologne to Paris via Belgium. At least if that journey is still I served, I did that 15 years ago several times when I still lived in the area. Took like 3-4 hours? Not sure anymore.
You can do it from Berlin now. Still takes 8h, but that it is possible is amazing. Why it Takes you 4 Hours extra from Berlin to Cologne is another story, bascically: German train Company is terrible and they have not invested enough Into the infrastructure for the past 20 years. This year its especially bad
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Would fit really well in [email protected]
It’s crossposted from there.
Interesting. That doesn’t show on mbin. Maybe the instance is defederated.
The world will progress out of sheer spite for Americans and I wouldn’t have it any other way
Just took the train from Frankfurt to Strasbourg.
I’d love to hop on a train for a trip like that. So much more relaxing.
I’ve been in Germany two years and gone to France three times by train.
I honestly don’t think people appreciate public transit enough. Trains are the fucking bomb and if people could make trains and trams and buses a priority I think the world would be a remarkably more fun and enjoyable experience.
Vote for the political parties, even at and especially the local level, that want to put more money into public infrastructure focused around public transit. Cars and planes have their places, but they should never be the priority when city planning and a strong country is one connected by high speed rail and convenient, reliable public transit.
It’s the other way round. Individualism prevents communism. People drive cars to prevent them from voting for those parties.
Downvoters, do you think all that bad urban planning is incompetence of the specialists while every comment section is filled with geniuses who for some reason are enlightened about public transport but never in the position of power to bring it to life?
It’s the other way round. Individualism prevents communism
Is that supoosed to be a good thing or a bad thing ?
Downvoters, do you think all that bad urban planning is incompetence of the specialists
No, they’re just narrowly constrained as to what they can do eg. They cant knock back a Cosc-Co because there’s no train station so, you end up with a sprawling shit hole as de facto
A good follow on Mastodon who’s an actual traffic expert and teaches it
A good read
https://bookwyrm.social/book/1907724/s/killed-by-a-traffic-engineer
Is that supoosed to be a good thing or a bad thing ?
I don’t judge. I just care about the mechanisms.
No, they’re just narrowly constrained as to what they can do
It’s turtles all the way down. At some point, somebody makes a decision against public transport.
A good follow on Mastodon who’s an actual traffic expert
Thanks for the link. Frustrating content but good.
I love traveling by train, but in Poland it’s so fucked I have to either drive or waste days just to get somewhere. They just deleted train I could use to get to Warsaw in about 5h, now it’s extra transfer, almost 7 hours, and I have to do it a day earlier, so extra night in a hotel vs 4,5h drive. The same with Berlin, I’d love to just ride a train, it’s less than 4 hours drive vs 6,5 hour train ride (which is fine, I can go with that), price of the single ticket is more than gas for my car, so twice as much for two person – I could live with that, but the transfer time is under 30 minutes, which with notoriously unreliable trains means I would probably miss the connection and lost all my bookings (or just tried to go back with train/bus just to my village (already losing ~80€ for the tickets), and then grab a car.
I’m not familiar with Poland’s political or train situation, but these problems are fixable. Vote for progressives, make it a priority, we need to start taking power back from the inept and corrupt and start fixing problems again.
I’m sorry your trains aren’t good. Everyone deserves good trains.
