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The French railway network has shrunk over the years (i.redd.it)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/map_enthusiasts@sopuli.xyz
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[–] 37 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I'm not sure if you've really thought this one through. Railway maintenance is expensive, and operating stations and switches requires personnel as well. In low-traffic areas you could get away with one single bus line, meaning you only need to maintain that one bus and pay the driver's salary.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    I like the idea that bus just magically floats to the destination as if roads are any cheaper to maintain than railway.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Roads are used for a lot more traffic than rails.

    So if you break it down by traveler, it's much cheaper and more flexible.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    Do they ? You state that roads are carrying more traffic than rails as obvious but I am not certain it's true.

    I'm not sure what would be the best metric so I decided to compare the number of passagers on the most used road in France with the most used rail line, that are both in Paris.

    The most used road is the Autoroute urbaine Nord with 200 000 vehicles per day.

    The most used rail line is the RER A with 1 400 000 daily passengers, 7 times more.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    This is called survivor bias.

    If you remove every train line except the RER A, would you say that trains are always less expensive than every roads? That would be the logical conclusion 🤣

    You have to look at the lines that disappeared, to see that they likely had very few users and the costs were therefore much higher.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    Its not one bus for any sort of remotely regular service, and even if it was its not one driver either, unless you don't run the service one or more days a week or while they are on holiday or while the bus is out of action for repairs or servicing.

    I am not going to pretend that a bus isn't cheaper, because it is, but its not massively cheaper than an existing railway service in good repair.

    Part of the problem when the UK went through the same changes was that the local branch lines had 4 people working each train, and that train might service less than 50 people during a quiet day. Sure, a bus can have 1 person working it, but so can a train. Stations also used to be heavily maned, it was ridiculous.

    Rather than fixing the issue we moved to Motorways, minster in charge of it owned a company building them, funny that and buses that were cancelled for the same lack of demand.

    Public transport (which includes buses) is either expected to be a cost to the tax payer or its not practical long term. The only other alternative offered to rural areas is the car, totally shit idea for mass transport.

    Every route that is still profitable has been enshitified to such a degree its now extremely expensive and unpleasant to use.

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