Road wear scales with the fourth power of weight over the axle so, even with personal cars getting heavier, I’m not sure that moving people from cars to trains makes much of a difference – I think most wear typically comes from heavy vehicles or weathering – so it mightn’t make much difference to repair costs.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t other advantages. Eg reducing parking spaces (as a sibling points out) to increase urban density is probably good for the economy, and time on a train can be better spent than time in a car because one doesn’t need to pay as much attention, which could be a small improvement to many people’s lives.
> time on a train can be better spent than time in a car because one doesn’t need to pay as much attention, which could be a small improvement to many people’s lives.
This is not really true on busy trains. I've commuted both on trains and in cars, and when comparing transportation methods near the saturation point, cars win when it comes to personal comfort.
A traffic jam is no fun, but you can still sit, aren't jostled about by other people, have your personal space, and keep your climate controlled to a good level.
In a full train, you will be standing up, pressed against a bunch of other people. The climate will be other people's sweat. You may be able to use your phone, but not much more.
On a longer quiet route the train can be very nice. Get your laptop out, do a little work, nice coffee or tea with you. But on a busy commuter line it's more annoying than a car.
> I've commuted both on trains and in cars, and when comparing transportation methods near the saturation point, cars win when it comes to personal comfort.
Note that if you're at the saturation point of both modes, you're moving a lot more people with (light/heavy) rail:
Also worth considering that while it may be personally comfortable for you in on saturated rail, you're still moving towards your destination, whereas at car saturation you may be physically comfortable, but you are not making progress towards your goal of actually achieving your goal of getting to your destination while your speed is zero.
That is like saying that with pig factory farming (aka intensive pig farming) you can produce far more meat per square foot than with organic pig farming and therefore it must be better.
Or, from another perspective, you have a budget of $/€ y for transportation, what mode of transportation will allow you to move the most people for that money? Unless you believe in MMT, government budgets are a finite resource, so how do we get the most bang for our buck?
Certainly you need some roads as vehicles such as trucks (UK: lorries) are very handy for society in running the economy. I myself own a car, a motorcycle, a bicycle, and have a transit pass (though I can use debit/credit tap-to-pay) and use each mode when appropriate. But the overemphasis on automobiles—specifically for private transportation—is suffocating the availability for other options.
To go back to your analogy: if you have a starving population, then factory farming is better because you can provide more calories to more people (and probably at lower cost). In that case organic is worse because you may be sacrificing people's well-being by not having enough capacity. Once you solve your first problem (enough calories/capacity), then you have the luxury of other considerations.
Obviously it is better. The better alternative to intensive animal husbandry is not eating meat (or other animal products, but in a lesser way) than greenwashing via "organic" designation.
I.... I really don't feel like driving in a traffic jam is better than being in a train in anything except the most extreme cases of train crowding. I haven't experienced massive commuter driving but even the cases I've just been stuck in stop and go traffic for 30 minutes it felt worse than any train ride I've taken except for the few times I was in "I feel like I'm going to get crushed" levels of crowded.
And like... generally speaking, the crowded train is still going to get you where you need to go. I don't know how you walk away from the 30 minute trip that took 2+ hours with any happy feelings. To each their own of course
I want to preface this by saying that my favourite mode of transportation has been NS rail in the Netherlands, but that I do 99% of my travel (where I live, in Canada) by car since I live outside of the city.
>the cases I've just been stuck in stop and go traffic for 30 minutes it felt worse than any train ride I've taken except for the few times I was in "I feel like I'm going to get crushed" levels of crowded.
I would much rather sit in a seat that has been meticulously adjusted to fit my body perfectly, with climate controlled to the exact temperature I want, with music/audiobook/etc playing at the exact volume I want, with 0 encroachment on my personal space, than to sit on a crowded commuter train, where crowded == more or less every seat is taken, with some people likely standing. I don’t care if I have to be in stop and go traffic for a bit, I know how to drive smoothly (usually smoother than trains) and I have pretty good patience, so I just sit there and relax listening to music for a bit longer than normal.
Maybe if you drive a particularly barebones/uncomfortable car[0] I could see a train being preferable. Aside from that, I will take the car over the train for commuting pretty much every time. The exception is if the train is notably consistently faster, or if I’m somewhere like the Netherlands where cars are more of a general inconvenience.
[0] Or any modern non-luxury car, since every manufacturer has decided “sporty” sells so you need 20” wheels with rubber band tires and sports suspension on your commuter car. I would highly recommend driving something like a 1990s Buick Roadmaster or Chevrolet Caprice, or Lincoln Continental, or equivalent vehicle - we had figured out how to make commutes incredibly comfortable for little money 30 years ago, but it seems like pretty much everyone forgot.
> I don't know how you walk away from the 30 minute trip
You never drove with the DB before I take it (die Bahn - German trains). You routinely have that a 30min trip takes multiple times of what it should.
* train coming in late
* no replacement
* suddenly from another track
* people taking their life
* missing the follow train
* having to wait because an ICE gets priority
You don't know how many trips I had to cancel because coming 3 hours to late (when starting the trip 30min early) isn't viable.
Yeah sure being in a traffic jam sucks! Big time. I hate it with all my heart, but I then start playing a podcast or calming music and actually get something out of it. It's actually not so nervewracking if you change your mindset. It bothers me more that I know that my mileage will tank for that short while... But yeah if I can I stay at home...
I'm fortunate enough to have only taken trains in places where there's an understanding that people actually... really actually do need to get to where they're going.
If your network doesn't have any sort of resilliance to failure, not much to do really.
(Aside: for the longest time I was always a bit miffed at France's train network, because it's mostly "go to Paris"/"move away from Paris" and very few sideways connections. Germany's transit map has always looked more evenly spread out! But every German I know who tries to take train transport complains about this lack of resiliance and now I'm pretty convinced that the network is too thinly spread out)
i also live in germany and its crazy. we are one to of the most developed country in the world and our train suck that hard that beeing stuck in traffic is way more pleasant and faster then beeing stuck somewhere for hours because of die bahn.
and that’s frequent. i did have to take the train for 6 months with 1 change of train and it was completely full all the time and late half the time so a missed the other train. its not all trains but some are freaking late all the time. especially those between frankfort and stuttgart.
there is a talk from daniel kriesel on youtube called bahn mining. very worth it
edit:// i use the 49 ticket because it is nice to use trams and buses in towns.
But if the train is that busy it likely couldn’t be replaced by people travelling in personal cars anyway as they would take up to much road space and cause a huge traffic jam and there would be nowhere to park at the end of the journey in a presumably dense city centre.
German cities have much less parking lots than American ones because of the way they were built. There may be a few that you can replace with a building, but not a lot.
In the first comment you seemed to have commented on the effect of the Deutschland ticket and now you seem to comment on the difference between US and German cities. Somehow I don't understand the connection between the two / your point.
I‘m commenting on reduction of parking spaces. In Germany there’s not so much parking to observe any visible effects. USA was mentioned only for comparison, because they have a lot of parking and there it could be noticeable.
> In Germany there’s not so much parking to observe any visible effects.
That doesn't make sense. German streets are full of cars, partly because there's insufficient dedicated parking space. Lower car ownership would have a very visible effect on the streets.
Yes, you can remove cars from the streets. My point is, you cannot use that space to increase urban density, because that space aren't parking lots. You can plant more trees, add bike lanes or convert the entire street to a pedestrian zone with a playground. But you cannot build there.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t other advantages. Eg reducing parking spaces (as a sibling points out) to increase urban density is probably good for the economy, and time on a train can be better spent than time in a car because one doesn’t need to pay as much attention, which could be a small improvement to many people’s lives.