I would say although, that less rail density in areas with comparable population density means underinvestment to me.
Also what factor does Wealth Density play? Why shouldn’t poor Regions get Rail Infrastructure?
Every region should build the public transit it needs and can afford. The most boring, proven transit won’t win beauty or speed awards or attract tourists but gets people cheaply from A to B and boosts the economy. To build a high speed connection, you have a certain economic start-threshold where the investment amplifies the economic output enough to benefit the region and not suffocate it in debt before it can flourish. So I’d expect more high speed rail between economically well faring regions, which increases the ‘euro per person’ but could be the same or less spending relative to gdp or avg. income.
Equality discussion aside: the spending discussion needs to be split in maintenance and expansion. Regions with currently more rail should be spending more on maintenance than those with less. Underinvestment in this area means decay, so to see decay of german rail compared to swiss rail, you need to compare how much they spend on maintenance, and normalize to account for differences in bridges, tunnels, high-speed, low-speed, single track, etc.
Expansion is a differrent beast, especially because the price decreases if you build steadily every year and economies of scale kick in. If only our polititians would get that… RMtransit made some good videos how to decrease the costs of transit expansion.
I never talked about high speed rail.
I think most of the times it’s a huge cash sink (especially the 300km/h ones where you need a lot of tunnels and bridges)
Maintaining the existing infrastructure so you could ride the planned speeds and avoid delays would be a huge win.
If we look at Europe, the countries that don’t bet big on high speed have a dense network and more people riding Rail, and then the countries who’ve built a lot of High Speed Lines which sped up the connection between a few huge cities at the cost of all the middle cities in-between who have lost most of their rail services.
It would at least be connected to one factor that needs to be normalized for this comparison. The problem is, different countries have different rail density, population density and wealth density levels and if you really want to compare how much ‘value’ is put into rails, you need to weigh that stuff in. That was just the first ‘fix’ that came to mind, but you are right, the full normalization would be more complex. That Luxemburg, a small urban country with high gdp/capita is leading this list, seems completely reasonable, and nothing France or Germany with their wide countryside and poorer urban areas should aspire to catch up to. Disposable income differences: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Living_conditions_in_Europe_-_income_distribution_and_income_inequality#Income_distribution GDP per capita differences: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=GDP_per_capita,_consumption_per_capita_and_price_level_indices
I would say although, that less rail density in areas with comparable population density means underinvestment to me. Also what factor does Wealth Density play? Why shouldn’t poor Regions get Rail Infrastructure?
Every region should build the public transit it needs and can afford. The most boring, proven transit won’t win beauty or speed awards or attract tourists but gets people cheaply from A to B and boosts the economy. To build a high speed connection, you have a certain economic start-threshold where the investment amplifies the economic output enough to benefit the region and not suffocate it in debt before it can flourish. So I’d expect more high speed rail between economically well faring regions, which increases the ‘euro per person’ but could be the same or less spending relative to gdp or avg. income.
Equality discussion aside: the spending discussion needs to be split in maintenance and expansion. Regions with currently more rail should be spending more on maintenance than those with less. Underinvestment in this area means decay, so to see decay of german rail compared to swiss rail, you need to compare how much they spend on maintenance, and normalize to account for differences in bridges, tunnels, high-speed, low-speed, single track, etc.
Expansion is a differrent beast, especially because the price decreases if you build steadily every year and economies of scale kick in. If only our polititians would get that… RMtransit made some good videos how to decrease the costs of transit expansion.
I never talked about high speed rail. I think most of the times it’s a huge cash sink (especially the 300km/h ones where you need a lot of tunnels and bridges) Maintaining the existing infrastructure so you could ride the planned speeds and avoid delays would be a huge win. If we look at Europe, the countries that don’t bet big on high speed have a dense network and more people riding Rail, and then the countries who’ve built a lot of High Speed Lines which sped up the connection between a few huge cities at the cost of all the middle cities in-between who have lost most of their rail services.