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Trains

Started by Sarlock, October 28, 2012, 04:51:40 AM

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Sarlock

It's very interesting.  Playing Simutrans has actually introduced me to the importance that trains have in the European transportation network.  I knew this peripherally, but being from Canada, our relationship with trains is much different.

There are very few passenger lines available and they are very expensive to take: they are more of a holiday choice for tourism than as a common choice for transportation.  This is mostly due to the distances involved, especially in western Canada/US: The closest city to Vancouver, where I live, is Seattle, WA, which is over 200km away.  The next closest city is Portland, OR, which is another 280km distant from Seattle.  These three cities (Vancouver, Seattle and Portland) are then a considerable distance from any next city of any significance.  We have Calgary (population 1 million), which is nearly 1,000km to the east of Vancouver and to the south of Portland, it is 900km to Sacramento (2.5 million).

Essentially, Vancouver/Seattle/Portland, which has about 8 million people combined, is on an island unto itself with the next major cities being nearly 1,000km away.  This makes train transportation for passengers an unlikely choice as a preferred transportation method.

To understand this, here are the options for passenger train travel from Vancouver on a typical day:

SOUTH:
Amtrak from Vancouver-->Seattle-->Portland: First train departs 06:40, Second train departs 17:45.  Two trains per day.  That's it.

NORTH:
Edmonton, 300km north of Calgary, is 1,200km from Vancouver and also has 1 million population.  You cannot get from Vancouver to Calgary by train...

VIA rail Vancouver-->Edmonton:
2 trains... PER WEEK: Tuesdays and Fridays.  Depart 20:30.
Time for trip: 26 1/2 hours.  No, that isn't a misprint.


That's all there is for available passenger train services from Vancouver.  (except for a light rail transit system serving just the inner urban area)

The viable transportation options are road travel (drive your car) or fly.  For longer distances, flying is the only real option.  Driving from Vancouver to Toronto is over 4,000 km and would take 4-5 days to drive by car.  By train, it would take 83 hours (3 1/2 days).  By airplane, it's "only" 5 hours.  Driving to Edmonton is 12 hours, Portland is 6 hours from Vancouver.

Thus, our rail networks are really for freight only.


It is interesting for me to play Simutrans because of its heavy reliance on trains as a primary mode for passenger delivery.  I have been to Europe twice, Spain, Portugal, France, UK, Belgium, Netherlands, and the train system is truly amazing.  I took the TGV from Arras to Paris and back one day just for fun because I had never been on a high speed train before.  You can get anywhere by train and the trains run all of the time.  Where I live, you drive everywhere... and because of our heavy reliance on cars and our open spaces, our cities are very spread out.  This is another thing that strikes me when I play Simutrans: I am used to urban sprawl, not tightly compact cities (the European model).

The city I live in, Vancouver, has 2.4 million people in its metro area.  I live near the edge of the metropolitan area and I am over 50km from the downtown core.  It takes me a full 1 1/2 hours to drive from my home to the downtown urban centre.  I live farther away from the urban centre than the entire width of London!


I try to play Simutrans in a way that is familiar to me: thus the large mountains and vast forests, spread out suburban areas, reliance on bus/road transportation, rail networks that are mostly freight oriented... but the game doesn't really work that way.  It's built from a European perspective and I am slowly starting to play it that way more and more... and in the process I am seeing the world from a different perspective... transportation systems evolve to suit the the local geography, population density and economic factors.  Each system is optimal for the area it serves and it even has a hand in guiding the culture of that area.  I can't wait to go back to Europe again and ride on the trains :)
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

ӔO

yup. The north american continent's express service is mainly served by airplanes.
My Sketchup open project sources
various projects rolled up: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17111233/Roll_up.rar

Colour safe chart:

greenling

I Think that the USA and Canada in the next 20 year be get problems with her Traffic on roads and air,
the in the city and out the city want.
The USA and Canada have to long not invest in new transport systems.
Oil was too long to cheap. That can you now view by the car factory's
Opening hours 20:00 - 23:00
(In Night from friday on saturday and saturday on sunday it possibly that i be keep longer in Forum.)
I am The Assistant from Pakfilearcheologist!
Working on a big Problem!

prissi

Of course there is also an option for that. You can spread out cities by lowering the renovation percentage in cityrules.tab. Try

# chance for renovation versus new building (bigger number => less sprawling)
renovation_percentage = 1

# citys will not growth further along exiting roads, if the buildings density is lower (in percent)
minimum_building_density = 0

Ters

Quote from: ӔO on October 28, 2012, 05:24:35 AM
The north american continent's express service is mainly served by airplanes.

That's true in Norway, too, in part because the rail network basically hasn't changed in 100 years, except for electrification. It isn't very popular for freight either, as increased rainfall recently has caused several landslides, which along with technical problems in old equipment makes service too unpredictable (arrival tomorrow, or next week, depending on chance). Most trains are local trains near the biggest cities, especially Oslo. Those run every hour or so. Intercity trains run about four times a day, including a night train. I think most passengers on those are idealist, people who don't like flying, or who get better discount on train than air service (military personnel, perhaps retirees and students). Perhaps the most important thing, though, is that Norwegian cities are like villages compared to the rest of the world.

I also expect the situation in eastern Europe to be different from Sarlock's description.

el_slapper

Geography often dictates choices. Norway is a very mountainous country, and building railroads there would be a nightmare.

For Eastern Europe, I've done some travels in Poland, & they have a dense rail network. There again, geography works : Poland is nearly a rectangle, and made mostly of plains. I guess South-East Europe, with mountains everywhere, is another thing.

Difference with my french country, though, is the speed of trains. This one is related to prices, I think. One TGV between Wroclaw & Krakow would probably need less than 2 hours, instead of the 8 we took. OTOH, it would be muuuuch more costly than 45 zlotys - 11 euros.

mEGa

Quote from: prissi on October 28, 2012, 08:45:35 AM
# citys will not growth further along exiting roads, if the buildings density is lower (in percent)
minimum_building_density = 0

I tried it and I noticed that there was an error on the name of the variable in the pak 128 version 111.3.1

# citys will not growth further along exiting roads, if the buildings density is lower (in percent)
minimum_building_desity = 33
Current projects in progress : improvements of few designed french paks

Ters

Quote from: el_slapper on October 29, 2012, 08:17:09 AM
Geography often dictates choices. Norway is a very mountainous country, and building railroads there would be a nightmare.
There are mountains further south in Europe, too. I also suspect land owners and local governments are a bigger nightmare than mountains.

Quote from: el_slapper on October 29, 2012, 08:17:09 AM
For Eastern Europe, I've done some travels in Poland, & they have a dense rail network. There again, geography works : Poland is nearly a rectangle, and made mostly of plains. I guess South-East Europe, with mountains everywhere, is another thing.

Difference with my french country, though, is the speed of trains. This one is related to prices, I think. One TGV between Wroclaw & Krakow would probably need less than 2 hours, instead of the 8 we took. OTOH, it would be muuuuch more costly than 45 zlotys - 11 euros.
Pretty much what I expected. They do have a rail network, it might even be more used than airplanes even over long distances, but it's not express.

Fabio

Express trains require dedicated infrastructure (in this, Simutrans is realistic ;)).
A train is considered high speed when its top speed is 200 km/h or more, but this requires heavy investments.
It's possible to obtain higher commercial speeds on conventional tracks (e.g. by using tilting trains) but it still requires heavy investments in the rolling stock.