World rail speed record broken.

[ecoclean]

Now THAT is what I call an informative thread! It really is fantastic to be able to follow through on something like this and to learn so much from both the technical and logistical perspectives. Many thanks to all contributors!

One of my ambitions has been to travel on the Eurostar, and I was delighted to finally have the opportunity of traveling on their service from Brussels to London last December. I booked it online about 2 months in advance, and (thanks to a tip off on another website) was surprised to find that its actually cheaper to book a return ticket than a one way journey! Ridiculous, but true. As a special treat, I decided to book business class from Brussels to london, and chose the cheapest journey in economy from london to Brussels a week later, knowing full well that I would'nt be using it.

The flight from Dublin to Brussels cost €45, the Eurostar tickets €140 (€100 business + €40 economy), and the flight from london to Dublin was €38. The journey time on the train is timetabled at 2h 20m to cover a distance of 340km, 55 km of which is under the waters of the English channel.

As for the big day itself, well it didnt exactly go according to plan. To begin with, I managed to miss the booked journey from Brussels to London, and as it was a non flexible ticket, I had to purchase new! The 'lady' at the counter wasnt too interested in my sob story, and informed me that i had no option but to pay out over €270 for the cheapest seat on the next service, until I remembered to ask for a return instead and found the price dropped by over €100!! And that was for business class on the Brussels to london part of the journey too!

I tried my best to enjoy the rest of the experience, and I have to say that I was duly impressed. Check-in and passport control took about 5 minutes, the waiting area was clean and modern, and the train arived on time. The journey itself was well worth it too. I lost count of the times the free bar service came through the cabin, the food was restaurant quality and the service was courteous and efficient. As for the train itself, it took a bit of getting used to traveling so fast yet so close to the ground, but the speed really was amazing. Unfortunately, our train managed to break down in the city of Lille in France, but the delay was only about an hour. The conductor couldnt apologise enough, and told everybody on board to contact customer service at Eurostar upon arrival in london. I didnt bother following it up until last week, and instead of the expected verbal apology for what was just a technical fault, they gave us two free tickets EACH to use on a future Eurostar journey. Now THAT is what I call customer service, and they certainly get my vote as a safe and comfortable alternative to air travel!

 

[petek]

Thanks for the account of the trip. I'd love to make that trip one day along with the TGV. BTW I'm wondering you said passport control when I thought you no longer needed a passport to travel between countries in the EU?

 

[ecoclean]

..no longer need passports to travel in the E.U..

Hi Petek,

Its funny you mention this, because its a bit of a mixed bag really as to where and when you need to use a passport for travel within the European Union.

Traveling out of Ireland, you need to have photo I.D to go as far as the U.K, but you must have a valid passport to go anywhere else. Within the European mainland, the situation is a lot more liberal. For example, you can drive through Holland, then Belgium and on to France and then through to Germany without crossing a visible border. However, you need a valid passport if traveling from mainland Europe to the UK, or to other countries that may share a border but not have signed up for part or full membership. Not a very harmonious union after all, is it?!

Petek, I see from your profile that you live in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada. I first travelled to Canada back in 1983, and instantly fell in love with those monsterous GO transit engines. I also thought the VIA LRC trainsets were pretty impressive too! Im traveling back to Toronto next month and hope to use the occassion to catch some photos of the latest renaissance carriages. Mind you, taking photo's of trains usually gets the same looks from passers by as you get when taking photo's of washing machines!!

 

[MrX]

Slightly less complex than that on the UK / Ireland thing.

The UK and Ireland have a common travel area. i.e. You can travel between the two countries without any form of ID. However, if you're traveling by air, you are required (by the Airline) to provide them with Photo ID, the exact requirements of which type vary by airline.

In general, a driver's license or passport for Ryanair
Aer Lingus : Driver's Licence, Passport, Work ID, Student ID etc.
others : varies

Same goes for an Irish or British domestic flight.

Basically what happened was the rest of the EU signed a common border agreement, the Schengen Agreement a few years ago which eliminated passport control between those countries that had signed up. The Schengen Agreement was also signed up to by Iceland and Norway who are not in the EU.

It also does not yet apply to new EU member states:
So, it only works in:
Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, spain, Italy, Austria, Greece, Denmark, Finland, (Iceland), (Norway) and Sweden. (Not in EU)

The timetable for New EU members to implement the agreement is unclear, but it's expected by March 29th 2008.

The UK opted out of parts of it and, because the Republic of Ireland shares a land border with the UK, we followed suit as otherwise we'd have had passport controls on our border with Northern Ireland which would have been very impractical as there are countless little roads that weave their way across the border, you wouldn't even know you'd crossed. There are even villages straddling it.
The two countries possibly have the most intertwined relationship in the EU. i.e. a UK citizen living in Ireland can pretty much do anything an Irish citizen can, including vote and fully take part in politics, as can an Irish citizen living in the UK. This is due to the historical fact that the Rep. of Ireland was part of the UK until 1921 etc etc. There's also a very deep and ever increasing level of cross border cooporation on law enforcement, infrastructure, etc etc etc.

The requirement is that UK and Irish Citizens (as we have no ID cards) must show a passport when entering the Shengen Area and Shengen Area citizens must show a passport or national ID card when entering Ireland or the UK.

However, the UK and Ireland did sign up to the other aspects of it, covering full police cooperation, the Schengen Information system (SIS) (allows us to see details of records for border security and law enforcement)

Other than that, there's nothing.

For a non EU national, bare in mind that you do need to carry a passport while in the EU. While there are no internal border controls, you can be asked to produce it.

There's also a Schengen visa which gives people rights to visit the entire Schengen zone. However, each country still has control of it's own work permits and long term visas / residency permits.

 

[MrX]

Here's our Scary UK/Ireland border

As you can see it's quite hard to notice!

You're looking towards the UK (Northern Ireland) from the Republic of Ireland.

The only noticable change is the road markings. There are yellow lines marking the outer edge of the lanes in the Republic. Also, we seem to be a little more cautious about allowing people to pass note the double white (no passing line)

 

[petek]

All the while the EU relaxes it border crossing the USA does the exact opposite. Currently Canadians don't need a passport to enter the US from Canada but will sometime in 2008, at land border crossing. Air travel it's already required. Even American citizens re-entering the USA from Canada will have to have a passport. Needless to say this is causing an uproar both on the Cdn side and with the states bordering Canada, none who want it.

 

[dalangdon]

Ridiculous Border Hi-jinks

As most of you know, my partner works for Amtrak, and occassionally works the Seattle-Vancouver train. For the most part, the northbound border crossing on this train works remarkably smoothly: No stops between the border and the Vancouver station, and customs are handled at the station.

On the way back, however, it can be really silly: They stop the train at the border, and Homeland Security gets on, and asks the most ridiculous questions that are evidentially designed to uncover "threats". They do the same thing on the train from Montreal to NYC, but they take even longer there.

What's funny is that the DHS guys don't like to ask for help when it's time to leave, but they don't understand how the doors work, and they usually end up locking themselves on the train. (The trains were made by Talgo in Spain, and have an electronic door system) They get really huffy when they have to get bailed out.

If that weren't enough, they invested all this money into an X-ray machine to X-ray freight trains. It's pretty nifty, but they put it on the mainline instead of a siding, so if anything fishy shows up, they have to isolate the offending cars and rescan them. As you can imagine, that takes hours on a two-mile long freight train, and if a passenger train is behind them, it's just too bad.

 

[sudsmaster]

Here in the Bay Area we have BART, which gets up to speeds of about 80 mph on a regular basis. Much of the system is either elevated above the road grid, or in the medians of freeway systems. The system covers quite a wide area - about 100 miles north-south and about 50 miles east-west, in a modified H pattern. Fatal accidents are very rare with BART, and are generally in stations where someone decides to end their life in a very public way.

BART's biggest failing (besides stinky carpet in the older cars) is that it has never made it to San Jose. This means that a major job market is out of reach of those who don't want to drive. Yes, there is Amtrak/Capitol Corridor service, but it's really kind of a joke if you have to be in the office or at home at any particular hour. The fact that these passenger trains share tracks with freight is a big problem. I suppose Caltrain on the Peninsula has a better record, but along with CC and the ACE service it suffers from having many at-grade crossings. The Amtrak service also seems to average at least one pedestrian fatality per year between San Jose and Sacramento - more than a few of them less than a few miles from my home.

IMHO it's a travesty that BART never made it to San Jose, and one of the reasons why I don't work in Silicon Valley any more is that I couldn't stand the commute by car. At the height of the dot.com boom it would take two or more hours to go 25 miles to get home on a Friday night, and 1.5 hours to get into work in the morning was not unusual. Who needs that?

I also think BART should run to Sacramento, and if they put on beefier cars and dedicated tracks it could probably make it to LA as fast or faster than by car with a lot less wear and tear on the passengers. It is a 3rd rail system so the upper speed limit is probably less than 130 mph, but that would still be fast enough for many people who don't want to deal with driving or with the nonsense that goes along with flying these days. The advantage of extending the BART system is that the tracks are already in place in the SF Bay Area, so there wouldn't have to be any expense involved in getting rights of way in those areas. And for the long hauls, just run the trains down the center of a major freeway - like Highway 5. Lord knows LA has plenty of freeways to plunk some rails down the middle of, as well.

BART is in the process of replacing its entire car fleet; it will be interesting to see if the new cars are capable of higher speeds with fewer breakdowns that the old stock.

I don't envision high speed rail as ever replacing air travel for big interstate travel, such as SF-Dallas, any time soon. There will always be a place for air transit. But for in-state and regional hauls, it makes a lot of sense.

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en.wikipedia.org

 

[hydralique]

The idea of some high-speed long distance rail in and out of LA is great, but it's not gonna happen in the middle of an existing roadway! Very few freeways around here even have shoulders in the middle, let alone space for a train.

Given how desperately we need both more mass transit and larger freeways, I'd love to see some double decking on the 405 through the Westside and the Ventura through the San Fernando Valley. That would allow room for the train in the middle, busways on either side, and express lanes outside of that. I'd be willing to pay an extra $.50 per gallon of fuel in taxes to fund this kind of thing too, and I suspect plenty of others would as well.

However, to come up with something like this and follow through would assume some competence and imagination on the part of Caltrans . . .