French rail company makes $1.7 billion profit in 2007
While airlines and automakers struggle to minimize their losses as fuel prices keep climbing, at least one transportation company is thriving. French rail operator, SNCF, scored a profit of over $1.7 billion in 2007 and expects to do even better this year. SNCF operates the TGV trains that routinely travel at speeds up to 200 mph in commercial service. Unlike here in the US, rail companies in Europe and Asia have actually invested in the infrastructure and equipment to make train travel fast and reliable. Admittedly, in the days of cheap fuel, Americans had little interest in trains, but maybe they need to reconsider.
Air travel in the age of the TSA and $145/barrel oil is anything but fast and efficient. And flyers are getting squeezed more and more. For example, US Airways announced that it will remove in-flight entertainment systems from domestic aircraft to save 500lbs. Furthermore, every airline is now charging fees for checked bags and just about everything else. As a result, European travelers are hopping on the train in ever greater numbers, with SNCF expecting an increase of 8 percent this year to 80 million passenger trips. Too bad we have no such viable option here in the US. Unless you live in the Northeast, where the the Amtrak Acela runs between Boston and Washington, D.C., train travel really isn't an alternative to flying or driving on short or medium distance trips for most Americans. For longer distances, trains make no sense in the U.S. from a time and cost standpoint, particularly for business travelers, for whom those two factors are critically important.
[Source: The Guardian]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
James Sonne 5:40PM (7/12/2008)
Trains arent used for long distance travel in Europe, either, mainly commuting. The population density of France is the same as that of Ohio. The article refuting the benefits of trains in America is bound by fallacy. Sure it would take longer to travel across the nation laterally, but people in Europe don't generally travel from Nice to St. Petersburg by train, either.
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TANKD0G 9:44PM (7/12/2008)
To built one of these in the USA, TSA would demand the entire route be encased in a bulletproof glass tube. And of course Haliburton would be the only one qualified to build it.
ddub 10:21PM (7/12/2008)
I don't think TSA is as concerned with trains as they are with airplanes, unless the french trains are able to travel off the rails and nobody bothered to tell me.
Andrew 6:09AM (7/14/2008)
People in Europe *do* travel long distances by train! And increasingly so with the advent of the Eurostar line. London-Paris-Brussels at 300 km/h (186 mph).
Also, have you heard of Eurail? It's very popular amongst students, young people and backpackers from all over the world.
scatter 6:42AM (7/14/2008)
I am currently sitting in Paris having taken a very comfortable, Deutsche Bahn sleeper train from Berlin last night. Two weeks ago I travelled from Paris to Trieste by train in order to go to Croatia.
Granted the route you suggest would require at least 5 changes and would take over 50 hours. Not all routes are easy or quick but many are.
qdoll 12:25PM (7/14/2008)
Andrew: i think you have a different concept of a "long distance" -- london to paris is no more than DC to NY, and berlin to paris is ~50 miles more than Pittsburgh to Boston. All of this travel is still considered travel in the NorthEast of the US; when considering long distance travel in terms of the US, you need to think much much bigger.
TX CHL Instructor 6:34PM (7/12/2008)
If I was the head of a major US-based airline, I would be looking at investing in high-speed rail.
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why not the LS2LS7? 7:19PM (7/12/2008)
The Northeastern Corridor is the 2nd longest all-electrified rail line in the world. So we do invest some in trains here.
However, the rest of the country is too spread out for trains to compete with planes. I'd love to see regional train, like Sacramento/San Francisco/Los Angeles/San Diego or Dallas/Austin/Houston.
Beyond that, I think it's pretty hopeless.
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Tony Belding 8:04PM (7/12/2008)
It still hacks me off that our bullet-train project here in Texas was derailed (so to speak) by politics and lobbying from Southwest Airlines. Now instead the state is forging ahead with a gargantuan superhighway boondoggle called the Trans-Texas Corridor, which appears to be hated by everyone in the state -- except our governor and his cronies in the construction business.
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Bill 8:48PM (7/12/2008)
From comments on the last article about the Acela:
"It turns out that the route is so twisty that even the fastest trains can only run fast on a few stretches of track.
To get serious speed Amtrack would have to buy hundreds of miles of new right-of-way–mostly prime shoreline real estate in Connecticut. Never happen."
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stevefazek 1:21AM (7/13/2008)
sure you can lol my parents house on the shoreline sold for only 2 million for half a acre lol.
But seriously if the train followed a path simular to i84 it wouldn't be nearly as exspencive. Its mostly woods and farmland there any who.
True the valley region and the CT river valley would cost more money to put a rail through it. Parts of the houssitonic river valley reminds me of west virgina
stevefazek 1:19AM (7/13/2008)
as a frequent rider of the northeast coridor i love and hate the trains.
Yes we use all concrete ties and its a bit smoother but still the design of this corridor is 150 years old and shares use with freight trains. We need a high speed City to city route cutting inland.
If we bother to spend half of what we waste on oil in a year we could install 5,000 miles of maglev. Thats also the cost of 2 years in iraq.
We could pretty much cover the entire east coast with this.
And kill airlines. Combine federal and airline money where everyone shares the profits.
Think of how cool that would be having a train that goes 400 MPH. Whats the point of flying 2 hours when you spend 45 min waiting for your fucking luggage and have to get in there an hour before the flight leaves.
the train is just as fast. Like when i lived in maine from portland jetport to JFK was 50 min via jet blue. but the real time is 3.5 hours from setting foot on airport to setting foot in manhatten. Amtrack woudl take 4.5 hours.
but at 50 a barrel oil it was only100 bucks round trip cheaper then the train lol
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Wally 7:59AM (7/13/2008)
It's all about leadership. The French seem to care about their "own" countries future....look at their power grid for instance. Yes the country is smaller than the US, but that's only relative.
Maybe if our leadership thought more about his own homeland, and less about being a dictator in a third world country we would be better prepared for the future.
Change may be coming...........
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Dave R 11:54AM (7/13/2008)
Just got back from Europe, where we rode trains from Lucerne, Switzerland to Rome. They were all electric, fast, comfortable, and convenient. The stations were easy to get to (city centers), and the experience was FAR easier and more pleasant than using airlines.
Not sure of our top speeds, but on several sections in Italy that paralleled the autostrata, no cars could come close to the train's speed.
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Sasparilla 12:21PM (7/14/2008)
Hey there #7, the US actually has alot of potential routes that scream for high speed rail, however we made the decision as a nation to use short haul air transport for these (the government pays for the underlying infrastructure for air travel - traffic control, navigation etc. essentially the laying the rails). Here is just a few that I can think of off the top of my head since I live and travel in these areas. Chicago - St. Louis, Chicago - Detroit, Chicago - Cleveland, Cleveland - Pittsburgh. I'm guessing Seattle - Portland would be a good one as well. The southeast (Atlanta etc.) could probably do very well as well as well as southern Florida. Basically wherever you have a plane trip of an hour or less, that's within high speed rail distance - there's alot of those city pairs in the US with capacity.
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