Comment by ReptileMan
3 hours ago
>Our "high speed" rail is a joke
Do you need high speed rail at all? There are not many points in the country that are more than 1 hour away with regular speed trains.
3 hours ago
>Our "high speed" rail is a joke
Do you need high speed rail at all? There are not many points in the country that are more than 1 hour away with regular speed trains.
Taking a train to the nearest (usable) airport within the Netherlands takes between 2 and 2.5 hours depending on the available trains, amount of transfers, and "high-speed" (not actually) rail surcharge. Actually, because of a train hitting someone, I currently can't reach any airport by train because my city is right at the edge of the train network. Groningen-Schiphol is similar, and Maastricht-Schiphol is 2,5 hours at the very minimum. Meanwhile, Amsterdam-Brussels takes about 2 hours.
Our regular train speeds are 80kmh to 140kmh, with maybe a little bit of 160kmh on specific stretches.
I realize my country is incredibly well-connected by public transit and those 2 hours are already a massive luxury compared to probably most of the world's population, but I wouldn't mind a few high-speed lines from the center of the country (probably Utrecht) to major cities. With trains currently being more expensive than taking a car if you travel with two people or more, it'd make the high cost worth it.
It would be nice to have a couple of routes between a few major cities with nonstop service, but there are are no bypasses around the interstitial cities so those would need to be built first.
Groningen -> Amsterdam
Maastricht -> Amsterdam
Eindhoven -> Amsterdam
Nijmegen -> Amsterdam
I can only speak for myself, but a trip from Maastricht to Amsterdam is almost 2.5 hours by train for a distance of a smidge over 200km. This is mainly due to all of the stops along the way to pick up riders in every major city between the two.
Currently, our trains never go faster than 160km/h if the onboard screens are to be trusted.
There are a few tracks that can go faster than 160km/h (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Baanvaks...) but also slower ones. The 80km/h tracks especially have a tendency to make a relatively short journey feel like it takes forever, especially if your train journey includes a trip over the 200km/h segment.