French trains? They're worse than ours
By Henry Samuel in Paris
(Filed: 25/05/2006)


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/images/new_hed_story.gif
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/05/25/wrail25.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/05/25/ixnews.html


France's railways, traditionally a source of national pride, are falling into a ruinous state, according to a leading expert.

Britain has saved most of its network through an "enormous catch-up effort," but vast tracts of the French system are being ruined by a short-sighted repair policy, said Robert Rivier, a Swiss professor.

Mr Rivier, the author of a damning audit on the railway ordered by the French government, said track needed to be renewed and ageing or underused lines closed, rather than patching up infrastructure.

While the TGV network remained the envy of the world, the high-speed system only ran on 1,000 miles of track from a total of 19,000 miles. The smaller regional lines have been left by the wayside, Mr Rivier said.

He estimated that two thirds of the national network would be unusable by 2025.

The amount of track on which trains are forced to slow down due to security concerns has doubled in the past year to 900 miles. A recent series of derailments has been blamed on ageing and faulty infrastructure. More serious accidents could follow, he said.

"In Great Britain, it took dozens of deaths, after which the British took remarkable action," he said.

"They made choices, set out a long-term strategy and chose to scrap parts of the network. The French have that ahead of them."

Britain spends £140,000 per kilometre of track on maintenance and renovation compared with France's £35,000. Italy, Spain and Switzerland spend somewhere in between.

The French transport minister, Dominique Perben launched a rail rescue package on Monday but ruled out closing any lines.

Mr Rivier said it focused more on repair than renewal and would not be enough.

"If it's not the TGV, the SNCF don't care" is something I've heard quite a few Frenchies say already. Most of their railways aren't in that great a state indeed, and the frequencies they offer are often abysmal.

sssshh, we're not meant to know this, the grass is o so much greener on the continent ;)

Class 360 Pendolino
http://www.transportblog.com/images/390002test.jpg
or
TGV Duplex
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/nicolas.claude/Images/2005-09/TGV-duplex-02.jpg
I'd go with the TGV.

Midland Mainline - Class 222.

http://www.felmersham48.freeserve.co.uk/images-netnews04/meridiantrain.jpg

Also GNER and all the Virgins are quality!

Britain spends £140,000 per kilometre of track on maintenance and renovation compared with France's £35,000. Italy, Spain and Switzerland spend somewhere in between.

That might sound like good news, but I suspect the reality is we're getting terrible value for money in comparison due to cowboys like Jarvis etc filling their pockets with government subsidies.

I'd sooner see comparisons along the lines of km of track replaced per year rather than what is spent.

Class 360 Pendolino

or

TGV Duplex

I'd go with the TGV.

I think you're missing the point. Of course the TGV is superior to our highspeed network, the question mark is over the other 18,000 miles of French railways. I certainly get the impression they are overlooked in favour of the TGV, and suffer as a consequence.

Britain spends £140,000 per kilometre of track on maintenance and renovation compared with France's £35,000. Italy, Spain and Switzerland spend somewhere in between.


But I think that the French network has far more kilometres of railways than the British network. So this comparaison is somewhat irrelevant.

German railways are far far better.

You should compare region with a density that allow comparisons.... of course the service and frequency should be better on average, considering the average density in england (almost 400 in england and 250 in the UK, compared to about 110 in France) , if that were not the case, that would be really sad !

Now if you compare with regions with a high population density (not ile-de-france of course), like the Nord-pas-de-calais , or Rhone-Alpes, here's the kind of trains you find since a few years :

http://www.espacetrain.com/parcmoteur/Z23500/23527.jpg

http://www.rail.lu/im/g/P5060056.jpg

http://perso.orange.fr/protrain/phototheque/x76500/xgc1.jpg

And frequencies are of course higher (for example, about 40 trains a day between Lille and Valenciennes) than in regions with a density of about 40 like Limousin.

What is "falling apart" is the service on lines that would have been closed long ago in Britain but that are still opened cause of that french obsession called "service public".

Do you expect to find a high quality of service and do you really think RFF will be eager to maintain lines which see something like 2 trains a day ? That would be great, but that's not possible...

Look at this table of density of regions in france :
http://splaf.free.fr/regions.html
Think that on 365000 km² of Metropolitan France (that is to say excluding dom-tom), you have a density around 65 ppl/km²....

But I think that the French network has far more kilometres of railways than the British network. So this comparaison is somewhat irrelevant.The report was based per km, not overall network size, similar to say GDP per capita.

French railways are suprisingly also not significantly larger (and when you factor in the size of France in relation to the UK, being more than double that of Britain)

France: 29,519km
Britain: 17,274km




Phil - Unfortuantely due to the nature of Britain, double decker trains are non-existant due to the obscene cost of re-building all bridges and tunnels along the route (instead longer trains are the answer, hence why Eurostar is so long because the Channel Tunnel can't take TGV Duplex's).


Comparable trains in the UK around (but outside the metro area of London are akin to this) the south-coast area:

Class 450
http://www.railfaneurope.net/pix/gb/electric/emu-dc/450/UK450014.jpg

Class 444
http://www.railfaneurope.net/pix/gb/electric/emu-dc/444/UK444007.jpg

Class 377
http://www.railfaneurope.net/pix/gb/electric/emu-ac/377/gb-emuac377450-01.jpg

I'm sure there's great trains in the UK, I really wasn't dissing the british train system which has greatly improved over the last few years. I just meant that when you have thousands of kilometers of railways between rather distant small cities, you're not going to spend as much on average per km as when you have relatively big cities close together (like in my example, northern france, or england). As a consequence, the average spending/km in France falls, many lines are neglected because they're simply "not worth".
Though of course some are neglected because of a lack of money, like around Paris where some railways need some investment.

German railways are far far better.True. The good thing is we are following their approach of solid investment all round, rather than ploughing money into a few prestige projects.

Check the frequency here, the Nagoya Railroad, "Meitetsu" a private regional railway.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_a7BtSAhL78&search=%22meitetsu%22

German railways are far far better.
Depends again. Overall it's a great system, but Germany also has some very old railways with very infrequent trains in some areas. Railway prices are also high, and frequencies, well, differ.

I think the Dutch and Swiss systems are some of the best in Europe really, with good service on both small and big lines, all around the country. Then again those are small countries.

I think you're missing the point. Of course the TGV is superior to our highspeed network, the question mark is over the other 18,000 miles of French railways. I certainly get the impression they are overlooked in favour of the TGV, and suffer as a consequence.
If you look at what France what to do in in the next ten years. They want to build aload of other new TGV lines. There building afew now, more than what we are doing.

At least trains in France run. Unlike most of the trains I've been on in the past decade in England. Don't get overexcited. And by the way, the NL is about of a third of England. Would you call a third of England small? I guess you won't. It would make, say, London town look small.

The TER 200 running at 200 km/h in Alsace and starting every 30 minutes from Strasbourg are just fine.

+ they look like mini TGV and are cheap.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/SNCF_X_72729.JPG/800px-SNCF_X_72729.JPG

^^ People in England would hardly understand what you're on about!

A train service that's fast and new but doesn't go to the nation's capital. Such a silly concept! Every train is supposed to go to Überlondon; everybody in en-ger-lan knows that.

...

Great Northern Eastern Railway (GNER)

http://static.flickr.com/77/163236847_21321ed957.jpg?v=0

http://static.flickr.com/46/163238090_3efd004a2f.jpg?v=0

British trains are cool. Especially the mainlines.

At least trains in France run. Unlike most of the trains I've been on in the past decade in England. Don't get overexcited. And by the way, the NL is about of a third of England. Would you call a third of England small? I guess you won't. It would make, say, London town look small.Well that may well have been the case but unless you haven't noticed improvements have been made by mail-delivery man! In 2001, the percentage of all train services on-time (commuter, urban, rural and inter-city) was a pathetic 75%. Last year this had been increased to 83.5%. By 2012 the estimates are that this will be somewhere in the 90's. I believe the national figure for France is 89%, but someone will have to check up on that.

The Netherlands has a smaller population than the metro of London... ;)

As for your other comments, there are regional services that don't operate to London, and due to the geographical profile of the UK most are constrained to lower speeds due to higher population densities and more numerous stops. The longest train journey that can be made in the UK bypasses London altogether.

Also I do believe the TER services are those that Mr Rivier most likely sees as failing (are they not some of the most subsidised lines in all of Europe?). TER services would be comparable to express services radiating from regional centres under the regional train operator.

I think British trains are pretty good. The best long fast trains are the Eurostars and Pendolinos:


Eurostar at 300km/h in Kent. Eurostar trainsets are 400m long with 2 power cars and 18 trailers (double the length of a regular TGV) and carry 800 passengers in two classes. The trainsets have two full buffet cars:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/Trains/contractLarge.jpg


At their base in London Warterloo's dedicated Eurostar terminal designed by Nicholas Grimshaw (soon to move to even more magnificent quarters at London St Pancras):

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/Trains/Euro-Wat02.jpg


Virgin Pendolinos operate the West Coast Main Line from London via Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, to Glasgow (Europe's busiest trunk railway). Using tilt technology developed by Britain's 1980s APT programme, the Italian built trainsets can tilt around curves to avoid slowing down, and have a maximum service speed of 225km/h:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/Trains/390010_man_picc_1.jpg

I also love the looks of the Gatwick Express:

http://www.paulpettitt-photographs.co.uk/460007_Gatwick_Express_Salf.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/Trains/GatwickExpress.jpg

Pulling a Pendolino over a viaduct near Carlisle (this part of the line is not electrified and needs a diesel loco):

http://www.therailwaycentre.com/file-store/userpics/00058/2006_0422Image0008%20copy%20copy.jpg


A former APT experimental tilting train (XPT) in service again in 2006!

http://www.therailwaycentre.com/file-store/userpics/00088/2006_01_27-035.jpg


I have always liked the 200km/h Adelantes than run out of Paddington on the Great Western - they match the HSTs as the fastest diesels in the world:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/Trains/150914.jpg


HST - what an amazing 200km/h diesel workhorse!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/Trains/hst1small.jpg

Here is an interesting comparison of formations, capacities, and speeds of different train types in Britain, France, and Japan. Most Japanese Shinkansen have a capacity of 1324 passengers. The double deck E4 Series Shinkansen has a world record capacity of 1,634 passengers. TGVs are slightly faster than Shinkansens apart from the 500 Series which shares the 186 mph (300 kph) maximum speed with TGV's and Eurostars. As you can see Eurostars are the best trains in Europe - double the length and capacity of a regular TGV Atlantique but running at the same 186 mph (300 kph) speed:


Virgin Pendolino (class 390)
Formation: electric multiple unit with 8 or 9 cars
Capacity: 363 or 439 seats
Service speed: 225 kph

First Great Western Adelante (class 180)
Formation: diesel multiple unit with 5 or 10 cars
Capacity: 280 passengers or 560 in double formation.
Service speed: 200 kph

Inter City 125 or HST (class 43)
Formation: diesel electric trainset with 2 power cars and 8 trailers
Capacity: 600 passengers
Service speed: 200 kph

Inter City 225 (class 91)
Formation: electric locomotive hauling 9 carriages and 1 driving van trailer
Capacity: 508 passengers
Speed: 225 kph

TGV (older Paris Sud-Est type sets)
Formation: electric trainset with 2 power cars and 8 trailers
Capacity: 377 passengers
Service speed: 270 kph.

TGV (newer Atlantique type sets)
Formation: electric trainset with 2 power cars and 10 trailers
Capacity: 485 passengers
Service speed: 300 kph

TGV Duplex (double decker)
Formation: electric trainset with 2 power cars and 8 trailers
Capacity: 545 passengers or 1090 in double formation (European record)
Service speed: 300 kph

TGV Korea
Formation: electric trainset with 2 power cars and 18 trailers
Capacity: 935 passengers
Service speed: 300 kph

Eurostar
Formation: electric trainset with 2 power cars and 18 trailers
Capacity: 794 passengers (394m long - European record)
Service speed: 300 kph

Shinkansen Series 300/700
Formation: electric multiple unit with 16 cars
Capacity: 1324 passengers
Service speed: 270 kph (300 Series) 285 kph (700 Series)

Shinkansen Series 500
Formation: electric multiple unit with 16 cars
Capacity: 1324 passengers (404m long - world record)
Service speed: 300 kph

Shinkansen Series E4 (double decker)
Formation: electric multiple unit with 8 or 16 cars
Capacity: 812 passengers or 1624 in double formation (world record)
Service speed: 240 kph

What's happening to the current Eurostar terminal at Waterloo when the trains move to St Pancras ?

What's happening to the current Eurostar terminal at Waterloo when the trains move to St Pancras ?
Southwest trains will increase their number of services using those platforms.

Every now and then you hear talk about a few Eurostar trains continuing to go to Waterloo as well.

And isn't the HST going to do just fine and dandy when hitting 200kph on curves like that :lol:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/Trains/hst1small.jpg

the speed of the train is pretty much bollocks if it doesn't have the appropriate track and the French whip all our arses in that department.

(and yes I know Britain has the most extensive '100mph' network on the planet and all that extra http://www.sensational-adelaide.com/forum/images/smiles/wankmotion3.gif )

And isn't the HST going to do just fine and dandy when hitting 200kph on curves like that :lol:

the speed of the train is pretty much bollocks if it doesn't have the appropriate track and the French whip all our arses in that department.

(and yes I know Britain has the most extensive '100mph' network on the planet and all that extra http://www.sensational-adelaide.com/forum/images/smiles/wankmotion3.gif )

I should point out Tayser, that the photo above was taken by a long telephoto lens. This means it exaggerates curves by compressing distances (to achieve the longer focal length) This effect is basic optics.

Let me give you an example.

There looks like quite a reasonable curve in the river in this photo. I took this at around 150mm. A 300mm lens would double the depth of that curve.

http://www.pbase.com/jchambers/image/41630847.jpg

Now look at it on a map. The curve in question is between Eiserner Steg (the white bridge in the map) and the end of the island to it's right along Sachsenhauser Ufer (about half way to the next bridge Alte Brücke) - it is hardly a serious curve, yet in my photo it looks like significant. This is the same principle as the photo above.

http://www.mapshop.com/Travel_Maps/Central_europe/Frankfurt/Frankfurt-9789633527405.jpg

First GW is getting rid of the Adelente's they hate them apparently in that part of the World, Talk of moving to Scotrail.

Well that may well have been the case but unless you haven't noticed improvements have been made by mail-delivery man! In 2001, the percentage of all train services on-time (commuter, urban, rural and inter-city) was a pathetic 75%. Last year this had been increased to 83.5%. By 2012 the estimates are that this will be somewhere in the 90's. I believe the national figure for France is 89%, but someone will have to check up on that.

The Netherlands has a smaller population than the metro of London... ;)

As for your other comments, there are regional services that don't operate to London, and due to the geographical profile of the UK most are constrained to lower speeds due to higher population densities and more numerous stops. The longest train journey that can be made in the UK bypasses London altogether.

Also I do believe the TER services are those that Mr Rivier most likely sees as failing (are they not some of the most subsidised lines in all of Europe?). TER services would be comparable to express services radiating from regional centres under the regional train operator.:? Why would it matter who funds public transport? It needs to be good and efficient and you often express your favour for more government spending. Somehow when it's French spending it switches to bad. Odd change of opinion.

NL not only has 16,3mln inhabitants but, with Japan, also has the busiest railways. In NL you have faster, smoother trains that run later and more frequently than in your plus 16.3mln metro area of London. And from most stations you get discount cabs at €6/£4 for the whole ride. I live 70 miles from Amsterdam but I can catch a train leaving past midnight and be home before 1.30 in the morning.

NL is economy #11, Germany #3, Germany's the largest exporter, so what would the whole of transport in NL look like with Rotterdam now the #2 of the world, just by an inch from #1 - the position it used to hold? London/Orbital and all that doesn't compare. NL: busiest motorways, busiest rivers, busiest railways.

Public transport is handled on a regional level which is much better than a capital orientated scheme. Estate agents plus the council funded a station in Arnhem, as does the province authority. In particular regional transport in England looks very poor when compared to that in most of the countries of the old EEC.

By law, you get a full refund if your train is delayed for more than an hour. With less a delay you can get your money back as well, though not the entire sum.

NL's railways are way ahead in terms of punctuality, frequency and service. This actually inspired an American on SSC to start a thread whether the Netherlands are too perfect. We look at France in admiration and shake our heads when looking at England. Meanwhile we joined the German ICE services as well.

I doubt you know the sheer size of transport around here. I have been a guide for people from Birmingham, Bristol etc and they always seem stunned; doubting the size of the city, assuming it's like a million because of the volume of the buildings and the infrastructure.

I'm not doubting the Netherlands has a great public infrastructure, but is it really so much better than the UK's?

Nick was right to point out that due to the size of the Netherlands, and thus it's density and close proximity of urban area's, it should really be compared to the Surrounds of London than a whole country. Density demands higher frequencies and more extensive networks.

Anyway, to have a look for myself, rather than just listening to people's personal opinions, I have checked using www.db.de. This may be Germany's main rail website, but they have timetables for the whole of Europe including the NL and UK. It's a good "third party" check.

First of all, I checked the differences between two major cities in both countries. I used something closer to London for the UK to make it more comparable due to the smaller size of the NL

Rotterdam to Amsterdam (Today - Saturday, between 11 and 12 lunch)
7 trains an hour: Average time 1:02: Distance (straight) 56km
http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en?ld=212.18&seqnr=4&ident=ls.02401242.1149929537&REQ0HafasScrollDir=1

Reading to London (Today - Saturday, between 11 and 12 lunch)
7 trains an hour: Average time 0:30 - Distance (straight) 66km
http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en?ld=212.55&seqnr=4&ident=mb.02444913.1149929613&REQ0HafasScrollDir=1

Seems to me that the speed of trains between Reading and London, are significantly faster.

Now something like an important city to a much smaller one of little significance and further apart.

Maastricht to Middelburg (Today - Saturday, between 11 and 12 lunch)
2 trains an hour: Average time 3:42 - Distance 201km
http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en?ld=212.26&seqnr=2&ident=3x.01308849.1149930566&REQ0HafasScrollDir=1

Portsmouth to Chelmsford (Today - Saturday, between 11 and 12 lunch)
2 trains an hour: Average time 2:52 - Distance 193km
http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en?ld=212.27&seqnr=2&ident=56.0888150.1149930747&REQ0HafasScrollDir=1

These are just two services I have checked now. I am sure you will find some where the NL service is better, and others where the Southeast services are better, but from what I can see there is no great advantage over the NL service.

Really, the Dutch rail network isn't all that amazing. The Rotterdam to Amsterdam connection will soon be under half an hour with the new high speed line though, but that will be a more expensive than the regular trains. They will also cut the direct connections between the two cities via Schiphol to get people to take those hst's.

Dutch trains aren't that fast, with a maximum of about 90 miles an hour, and a whole lot of stops because we have such a high amount of mid-sized cities. Investment in the infrastructure has been lacking as well, and a few upgrades such as a 4-track Utrecht-Arnhem are very much needed.

I get a feeling you live in Arnhem by the way... and that past midnight train only leaves on saturdays doesn't it? It's also basically the only city that gets an extra night train once a week, that's outside of the regular nightline.

The UK's system being pretty capital oriented is very logical since it's a very centralised economy. If you consider the Randstad as one metropolis you'll come to pretty much the same conclusion. A trip from Maastricht to Groningen (south east to north east) for example goes via Utrecht (to the west of the country), because connections like Roermond - Nijmegen and then on to Zwolle are simply worse than the big detour in km.

The ICE services in the Netherlands... well, you probably know what they're like right. :) Your supermodern train will very likely be stuck at a slow speed behind a stoptrein near Ede-Wageningen or such.

Now I like the Netherlands and I think they do have a very good transportation system, but it definitely does have its flaws and I am not at all sure whether it is better than the services in and around London.

That photo of the pendolino being pulled by the loco, is that while upgrade works were being done on the WCML and it was on an alternative route. They can go London to Glasgow on fully electrified lines can they not? If not thats a surprise to me lol!

That photo of the pendolino being pulled by the loco, is that while upgrade works were being done on the WCML and it was on an alternative route. They can go London to Glasgow on fully electrified lines can they not? If not thats a surprise to me lol!
Yep its fully electrified to glasgow, its just the Holyhead services that use locos.

-Sweek

The whole point of trains stopping at Ede-Wageningen is because it's yet another region of 300-400 thousand with plenty of clientèle.

I just measure by travelling time: Arnhem trolley busses are faster than the London tube. The railways in NL are far superior. Just compare services in peripheral regions. I've been on trains from Kent and Surrey and never understood why these ought to smell like piss always and come to a grinding halt with no obvious reason.

The last train on workdays arrives at close to one past midnight and apart from extra train services, there are nightly services for busses as well. On top of that I get a cab from Arnhem's main station for the amount of money that couldn't buy me 2 pints in the UK. Any consumer would fully agree that he or she is being robbed in the UK.

The trains in the NL were much better when we visited there, from my little experience. Reliable, relatively cheap, fast and double decker trains.

Alot of money is being pumped into parts of the public transport in this country, most notably London, where the buses are extremely good and constantly improving and the tube is getting alot of work done to it. However very little new construction is happening elsewhere in the country and there are still extremely bad problems with the public transport in the UK.

-Justme

There's little avail in checking those timetables. Check the ones which are in popular demand. Those aren't from Middelburg of Maastricht.

The middle part of NL has an amount of traffic the UK will never equal (the european backland (Germany, Swiss, Austria etc) and main routes which run along the Rhine.

I know of a few people living in Amsterdam, working in Arnhem. The railways in NL have always been far more flexible, like with the hightime in the house music era, trains ran from 5 in the morning; from Arnhem to Amsterdam.

You'd have to compare services inbetween smaller cities on the continent to fully realize how crappy services in England really are.

-Justme

There's little avail in checking those timetables. Check the ones which are in popular demand. Those aren't from Middelburg of Maastricht.
...
You'd have to compare services inbetween smaller cities on the continent to fully realize how crappy services in England really are.
Wait so do we have to look at popular demand (to/from london mostly) or inbetween smaller citiies? The differences in time it takes to get from one city to the other over that were shown in those examples is very big, and I think it's a pretty big problem that we don't have any "real" intercities. IC's simply stop in too many places.The UK has trains going straight from Manchester to London I believe, without stopping once. I'd like to see services such as Maastricht - Eindhoven - Utrecht CS - Amsterdam CS without stopping anywhere else. We once had plans for this in the NL you know, it was called IC+. It's completely gone now and instead we are going to make the IC's we have stop in even more places.

I'm not saying trains shouldn'st stop in places like Ede-Wageningen, I meant that ICE's get stuck over there because there's simply too much traffic on that line. I really don't think you can claim trolley buses being faster than the tube at all. Maybe on some district/circle line services in the centre of town, but definitely not in general.

I probably took a few other routes in England than you, but I've found trains on SouthWest (commuter stopping train) services to be much nicer and more comfortable than the ones I'm used to in Holland. Same with Pendolino's compared to our IC material. We still haven't gotten rid of Mat'64 and DDAR isn't exactly great either. And well, have you tried the Amsterdam metro lately?

Both countries have their good and bad bits really.

I'm perfectly willing to realise that public transport is better in the Netherlands than is it is here in the UK, however some people also seem to be forgetting how quickly it is progressing. Last year there was record passenger numbers throughout the country for over half a century. Give it until 2012 and im sure we'll have a public service transport system that is working as well as or better than much of contintental Europe.

I also, think it its worth mentioning that Middlesbrough train station is having a rather large make-over. Considering that it is a relatively small train station I feel that it is quite a step in making rail travel in the UK a more common means of travel. If this is happening in several places throughout the country (and I assume it is), then this is a good development for rail travel throughout the UK.

-Justme

There's little avail in checking those timetables. Check the ones which are in popular demand. Those aren't from Middelburg of Maastricht.

The middle part of NL has an amount of traffic the UK will never equal (the european backland (Germany, Swiss, Austria etc) and main routes which run along the Rhine.

I know of a few people living in Amsterdam, working in Arnhem. The railways in NL have always been far more flexible, like with the hightime in the house music era, trains ran from 5 in the morning; from Arnhem to Amsterdam.


Ok, I just checked from Arnhem to Amsterdam and Oxford to london. Both are from similar distances apart. I checked for next Monday night after 11pm.

Arnhem - Amsterdam
After 11pm, 4 trains before last service at 00:12. Next morning service is at 5:24am: 5 services between 5:24 and 7am
link (http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en?ld=212.18&seqnr=4&ident=k8.01646442.1149976112&REQ0HafasScrollDir=1#)

Oxford - London
After 11pm, 3 trains before last service at 00:20. Next morning service is at 4am: 6 services between 5:20 and 7am
link (http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en?ld=212.57&seqnr=4&ident=k2.03184715.1149976088&REQ0HafasScrollDir=1)

Both services take approx 1hr 10minutes for the journey. So, again, no. I don't see exactly how the NL network is "so much better" than the UK service around the South East. And we should be looking at this area of the UK as it has a similar population to that of the Netherlands. Of cause, in far flung remote places of the UK the services are not as good, but you simply do not have far flung places in the NL.

Here in Saltburn (on the Newcastle to Saltburn line), which I feel is a fairly below average regional service, there is often full trains at peak times, they run every 30 minutes. You have to remember that these trains do not get any more demand simply because of the areas they service don't run through many of the largely popular areas. Anyone who has been to the train station at Newcastle may have seen the Newcastle to Middlesbrough service, but lets be honest, who's heard of Saltburn.

Here, there is the only old, 142 class trains that sqeal when moving around the bends at the top end of the town and wake up everybody at roughly 6:50am, simply because Northern Trains can't be arsed to buy new trains that don't do that. If this wasn't to happen though, there would be literally hundreds of people that couldn't get to work in Middlesbrough, Thornaby & Darlington.

Quite simply, the regional services in Britain may not be perfect, but they certainly ain't as bad as some try to portray, here. Living on a line that was due to be closed down just over a year ago and having that decision reveresed, makes me feel like I'm the only one on here that the rail network in Britain is on the up.

Being non British and also travelling frequently in Continental Europe, including the Netherlands, I would like to contribute my opinion:

- If you compare the UK to Continental Europe, you'd have to compare the SE of England to the Netherlands and the rest of the country to France in terms of population density.
- The railways in SE England have progressed much more than in the Netherlands over the last ten years and are approaching the same level of quality.
- BUT Regional trains in Randstad and the RER in Ile de France offer a type of metro service the SE England does not have. Therefore your typical journey into London will be bus - train - tube, whereas for a large percentage of the commuters in Randstand and Ile de France it is just bike/walk - train - walk.
- Maintenance in the Netherlands is clearly much better, you can tell by the clean stations and trains. France is probably at par with the UK.
- Regional railways in the UK outside of SE England have been outperforming the French over the last ten years by a huge margin - this is because all the money being invested in the Paris-centered TGV and before that in the Paris RER.
- France and the Netherlands introduced railways much later than the UK and on top of that did a major overhaul of their railways after the second world war. The UK did not as it was paying off the debts of liberating Europe. This has massive implications that are very expensive to remedy now: sharp radients, low bridge spans, crumbling viaducts, buildings constructed right up to the track everywhere, grade-listed stations that are very expensive to restore etc. In fact a fair comparison would have to be Belgium which was the first continental European country to industrialise and introduce railways (long before the Dutch and French) and you notice they have been tackling many of the same problems as in the UK. The difference is the Belgians have been doing it progressively since the 50s whereas the UK has been very slow up to the end of the 90s.

But there three main problems in the UK:
- SE England really needs a proper metro system - it is called Crossrail and in fact it is unbelievable politicians are still debating the construction of the first Crossrail line when the Ile de France already has - I believe - 7 RER lines !!!!
- The UK needs a HST network but that is not really very relevant for travel within SE England (what's the point to travel at 250 km/h from Ebbsfleet to Kings Cross if you first have to take the bus to get to Ebbsfleet, then have to wait for a train that passes by every 30 mins and then have to take the tube from King's Cross)? It is perfectly fine for the HST network to start north of Luton because only on the long distances you save enough time worth the expense of the HST network.
- There are far too many consultants and enquiries involved in any rail or infrastructure project in the UK - many more than in France or the Netherlands. This makes the decision processes extremely long (Thameslink 2000) and the construction cost between double and triple (WCML). The engineers in the UK need to take over again! I read they already spend 0.5 bio on the Crossrail preparation, this is just unheard of in the Netherlands and France and would create public outcry.

i remember a comparison of european railways in the guardian or the independent a few years ago. the netherlands was the only country that came below the uk...

the uk also has a much higher patronage of its railways, and i think better punctuality than in the netherlands now.

It looks like poor Bikkel is having his nose rubbed in the sour facts.... again. ;)

What's happening to the current Eurostar terminal at Waterloo when the trains move to St Pancras ?

The will given over to SWT when Eurostar moves. They should also be starting a massive redevelopment of Waterloo whcih would involve extending all the platforms & move the waiting areas to below the platfrom level like Eurostar has now.

With regards NL rail services- It is very good but remember the Netherland is a very small country & all the major cities & towns are pretty equally spaced out so your never really more than an hour or so from them its not supprising they have a pretty good rail/road network. Plus thefact itrs right next door to Germany & Belguim then you would expect it would have very good connections.

But thats indicental to the thread- The railways in hte UK are finally getting better after the the disastrously botched originanl privitisation model. I think the government has seen sense & by extending the areas of the franchise & keeping Network Rail a non-profit making organisation. They just need to extend the vision & start of schemes that will make a difference such as crossrail, Thamelinks & new High speed networks across the country & not do as was donei n the past & starve the system of investment & let fall it behind to such a state we got into a few years ago with with the crashes & speed restricitons with dilapidated track.

(..)I really don't think you can claim trolley buses being faster than the tube at all. Maybe on some district/circle line services in the centre of town, but definitely not in general.(..)
Sorry, that's plain ridiculous; if anywhere I travelled on London's tube and Arnhem's trolley busses most during the past decade. And before I might have agreed with you but now from experience, nope; trolley busses drop you off at a few steps from where you need to be. Even when you race up the stairs in tubestation it cannot compensate for the loss of time. Besides on many trajects, along 30 miles speed limit roads, trolley busses are allowed to speed up to 50!!
I've missed my train at Velp a few times, took the next trolley bus and got there before the train would arrive at the platform ... Whilst it included walking longer distances than with just switching platforms at Arnhem would have been the case.

I can't vouch for the travelling time in Holland there. I don't live in that province, you see.

Ok, I just checked from Arnhem to Amsterdam and Oxford to london. Both are from similar distances apart. I checked for next Monday night after 11pm.
So what? Oxford can't be compared to Arnhem. It's not just Amsterdam that counts. I've got trains from all directions. If you were to compare London to a city the size of Arnhem, try Edinburgh or somewhere. Not little ole Oxford. You can reach Arnhem from all directions much later than Oxford from anywhere other than from London. Amsterdam certainly doesn't compare to Arnhem like LDN-OX. You love metro definitions and in metro terms Arnhem is well over a million. Does Oxford have late night services from Gloucester, Bristol, Reading, Cambridge? Bet it doesn't.

You seem unable to see that abroad things are run with a very different mindset. Amsterdam is hardly anything more interresting than Arnhem. The oldest music hall and cinema are both in Arnhem you see. Amsterdam is a bit of a new town really.

It looks like poor Bikkel is having his nose rubbed in the sour facts.... again. ;)
:laugh:
:pet:

Train services in this country are completely fucking shit. Take this morning for example. I had to wait 12 minutes for a train, only to find it had been delayed by another FIFTEEN minutes, then it was so unbearably crowded by the time it arrived that it was barely fit for a human being to travel on. On the way home this evening it was just as bad, if not worse. We were kept waiting at London Bridge for over TWENTY MINUTES in a sweltering, packed train... barely able to stand up straight because it was so fucking overcrowded, and all because some idiot parked a train in front of us that shouldn't have been there. When it finally got moving, most of the people on my carriage were on the verge of passing out. Total fucking shambles, and it seems to happen nearly every other day, but today was 10 times worse because of the absolutely awful humidity.
People back in England tend to agree to me, unwantonly though. This Foxy quote is from the skybar.

@JGG

I skipped your reply at first but SE includes Kent which has archaic connections. Again which I can vouch for having travelled on those myself.

I honestly feel like going back 40 years in time, which I can at the age of 45 almost 46, having first visited England in 1965.

This thread is just a big laugh. Honestly, England comes behind: Netherlands, France, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria. Maybe it can beat say Spain or Italy, but England can't have a siesta so the folk in the latter two won't be that bothered really.

@JGG

I skipped your reply at first but SE includes Kent which has archaic connections. Again which I can vouch for having travelled on those myself.

I honestly feel like going back 40 years in time, which I can at the age of 45 almost 46, having first visited England in 1965.

This thread is just a big laugh. Honestly, England comes behind: Netherlands, France, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria. Maybe it can beat say Spain or Italy, but England can't have a siesta so the folk in the latter two won't be that bothered really.

that's how it feels to me when using non-tgv french trains. i'm thinking of paris to chateauroux, and chateauroux to limoges. reminds me of a cross between 1950s english trains with the separate compartments, and the new york subway!

Sorry, that's plain ridiculous; if anywhere I travelled on London's tube and Arnhem's trolley busses most during the past decade. And before I might have agreed with you but now from experience, nope; trolley busses drop you off at a few steps from where you need to be. Even when you race up the stairs in tubestation it cannot compensate for the loss of time. Besides on many trajects, along 30 miles speed limit roads, trolley busses are allowed to speed up to 50!!
I've missed my train at Velp a few times, took the next trolley bus and got there before the train would arrive at the platform ... Whilst it included walking longer distances than with just switching platforms at Arnhem would have been the case.

To be fair Bikkel, on the trams I travelled on over in Holland, they werent faster than most of the tube and had to keep stopping for red lights and pedestrians. At times they got fast, but not as fast as parts of the tube or the piece of line I use most frequently.

Don't get me wrong, they're wicked to ride and very well organised, but on speed I honestly think the Tube is faster.

Of course the Tube is faster. No trolley buses anywhere in the world run as fast as the Tube. They would be a serious safety hazard if they did. Bikkel's just farting again.... ;)

Monkeydonkey, I'm not saying trolley busses run faster - even when they do run much faster like 85km, but because these halt at busstops at only a few steps from your destination, I have known them to be the faster means of transport.

Listen kiddo. I first travelled on the tube way before you were born and most recently travelled on the tube in March this year. You never travelled on the smooth Arnhem trolley bus system. Admit it :yes:

You cannot compare!! While I can :yes:

To be fair Bikkel, on the trams I travelled on over in Holland, they werent faster than most of the tube and had to keep stopping for red lights and pedestrians. At times they got fast, but not as fast as parts of the tube or the piece of line I use most frequently.

Don't get me wrong, they're wicked to ride and very well organised, but on speed I honestly think the Tube is faster.Trolley busses in Arnhem run smoothly. The national railways faced several delays with the October 2003 storm. None of the trolley busses were delayed - think overground electricity systems to feed the trolleys. Trains not running, trolley busses unaffected. Trolley busses can also run on other streets; away from their overground electricity netwerk.

Monkeydonkey, I'm not saying trolley busses run faster - even when they do run much faster like 85km, but because these halt at busstops at only a few steps from your destination, I have known them to be the faster means of transport.

Listen kiddo. I first travelled on the tube way before you were born and most recently travelled on the tube in March this year. You never travelled on the smooth Arnhem trolley bus system. Admit it :yes:

You cannot compare!! While I can :yes:Yeah but so far your "comparisons" have all been proven completely wrong! :laugh:

And please; Holland is the the Milton Keynes of Arnhem. Really. Hanseatic Leagues; centuries before Amsterdam and all those towns even existed.

The 'n' in www.ns.nl stand for Netherlands, just like the dot NL bit after it. As long as you continue to persist in calling this country Holland, kindly allow me to laugh in your face.

With all good reason. Holland wouldn't have continued to exist if it wasn't for France. And since you all hate France, you must be delighted to know that without Burgundy (France/Dijon, Lyons) Holland would have been conquered by Gueldres. Gueldres should celebrate its military superiority now that it's about 500 years ago.

Never thought I see the day!!!
Its amazing the perception that France has had in this country at being the utopia for almost everything. My personal view of France today has sadly gone completely down hill, particularly in the last year:ohno: . I mean I bet there schools & hospitals aren’t as good as they’re cracked up to be either!

Just out of interest how are the Dutch & French railways organised compared with our un-strategic set-up. I know both the French & Dutch railways have an interest in the privatised situation in the UK. Are SNCF and NS state owned monopolies? Or are there other operators?

I have no idea in this respect.

I can only speak for South-Eastern trains, as they're the only service I use, and they are efficient, with good routing and scheduling.

From outlying towns like Sevenoaks, there are many express trains, with the next stop being London Bridge, therefore skipping suburban stations. This makes the commute from outside London the same travelling time as a commute from within south-east London, which is good.

As for quality of trains, South Eastern trains have updated their rolling stock, so these are by far the most common trains on the rails:

Suburban Electrostar (for London neighbourhoods)

http://img125.imageshack.us/img125/3695/set18ts.jpg

Electrostar (for towns outside London like Ashford)

http://img126.imageshack.us/img126/6387/set34bt.jpg

Future trains to run from Ashford:

http://img95.imageshack.us/img95/8246/set29ba.jpg

No, but the railway company that was state owned still is the one which runs most of the services. Parliament can tell the railway company - for example - to refund with delays. State owned should not necessarily be a negative thing. If the railway company was to be a completely privately run company, the public would never have achieved such a rule for example.

The most successful however are new private ones, NoordNed in Groningen and Fryslân and Syntus here around Arnhem. New material, new prospects, new concept; Syntus personel work on both trains and busses. So in Arnhem you'd see 4 railway companies (NS, Syntus, DB (ICE), DB Cargo).

Never thought I see the day!!! Its amazing the perception that France has had in this country at being the utopia for almost everything. My personal view of France today has sadly gone completely down hill, particularly in the last year :ohno: . I mean I bet there schools & hospitals aren’t as good as they’re cracked up to be either!I don't think France is seen as a utopia for jobs or economy or good manners. However it is certainly seen as a utopia for rail transport. Having lived in Paris I find the French far more polite than their reputation but I find their transport system a good deal less impressive. The Paris Metro, for example, is very slow. The trains themselves are slow and the stations are just a few hundred metres apart. It stops all the time meaning that it takes forever to get across the city unless you happen to live conveniently close to an RER line going in your direction (it's as if every line is as slow as the District/Circle Line - only Metro line 14 compares to the Victoria or Central or Jubilee lines for example.). With the Metro you look at the map and you see how long it has taken you to travel how far..... and it's not impressive! If a bus route is more direct then it's often faster. The correspondances (interchanges) are often very long in Paris and lines frequently cross one another without any interchanges whatsoever. The map is less intuitive than London's too. On the plus side the trains are frequent on all lines (not just on some lines like in London) and the frequency of stops means you never have to walk far to the closest Metro station. It's also cheaper than the Tube. However on balance I prefer the Tube.

:? Why would it matter who funds public transport? It needs to be good and efficient and you often express your favour for more government spending. Somehow when it's French spending it switches to bad. Odd change of opinion.

NL not only has 16,3mln inhabitants but, with Japan, also has the busiest railways. In NL you have faster, smoother trains that run later and more frequently than in your plus 16.3mln metro area of London. And from most stations you get discount cabs at €6/£4 for the whole ride. I live 70 miles from Amsterdam but I can catch a train leaving past midnight and be home before 1.30 in the morning.

NL is economy #11, Germany #3, Germany's the largest exporter, so what would the whole of transport in NL look like with Rotterdam now the #2 of the world, just by an inch from #1 - the position it used to hold? London/Orbital and all that doesn't compare. NL: busiest motorways, busiest rivers, busiest railways.

Public transport is handled on a regional level which is much better than a capital orientated scheme. Estate agents plus the council funded a station in Arnhem, as does the province authority. In particular regional transport in England looks very poor when compared to that in most of the countries of the old EEC.

By law, you get a full refund if your train is delayed for more than an hour. With less a delay you can get your money back as well, though not the entire sum.

NL's railways are way ahead in terms of punctuality, frequency and service. This actually inspired an American on SSC to start a thread whether the Netherlands are too perfect. We look at France in admiration and shake our heads when looking at England. Meanwhile we joined the German ICE services as well.

I doubt you know the sheer size of transport around here. I have been a guide for people from Birmingham, Bristol etc and they always seem stunned; doubting the size of the city, assuming it's like a million because of the volume of the buildings and the infrastructure.No I tend to believe in stronger private and public co-operation. We're moving more towards this structure, the structure that Japan follows.

Others have adequately addressed your points without me having to intervene, but I should add that while there is 2,808km of route km track in the Netherlands, there is over 4,000km in the London Metro.

I'm unsure what busy motorways, busy railways and busy rivers has to do with efficient movement of people and goods. Too busy and you get congestion, and thus longer journey times - perhaps that is why the Netherlands in some of the examples listed by Justme highlight slower journey times compared to similar distance British railway journeys? Or that British railways ended up running later and starting earlier?

You can get refunds (entire cost of journey) for far less than that, but fortunately the number of refunds has been going down due to the simple reason that journey times have improved, trains are on time more often and so forth.


So what? Oxford can't be compared to Arnhem. It's not just Amsterdam that counts. I've got trains from all directions. If you were to compare London to a city the size of Arnhem, try Edinburgh or somewhere. Not little ole Oxford. You can reach Arnhem from all directions much later than Oxford from anywhere other than from London. Amsterdam certainly doesn't compare to Arnhem like LDN-OX. You love metro definitions and in metro terms Arnhem is well over a million. Does Oxford have late night services from Gloucester, Bristol, Reading, Cambridge? Bet it doesn't.

Arnhem | 98.25 km² | 142,162 (2006) | 1,447/km²
Oxford | 45.59 km² | 145,100 (2004) | 3,183 / km²

It might suprise you that not only is Oxford more populated than Arnhem; it has a higher population density to boot as well. It may well have a metro of 1mn, but I'm not sure how large that area would be considering the city itself is sparsely populated and not to large itself.

Oxford - Gloucester : Arrive 0:23
Oxford - Bristol : Arrive 1:30
Oxford - Reading : Arrive 0:51
Oxford - Cambridge : Arrive 1:39

Not to bad considering that these aren't exactly inter-city routes or heavy urban corridors and that Arnhem is at the helm of several intercity routes throughout Europe.

I know you don't like Britain, but you could at least make an effort if you're trying to make a point about it. ;)

And please; Holland is the the Milton Keynes of Arnhem. Really. Hanseatic Leagues; centuries before Amsterdam and all those towns even existed.

The 'n' in www.ns.nl stand for Netherlands, just like the dot NL bit after it. As long as you continue to persist in calling this country Holland, kindly allow me to laugh in your face.

With all good reason. Holland wouldn't have continued to exist if it wasn't for France. And since you all hate France, you must be delighted to know that without Burgundy (France/Dijon, Lyons) Holland would have been conquered by Gueldres. Gueldres should celebrate its military superiority now that it's about 500 years ago.


Bikkel - Have a look at the pictures of derailed, grafitti covered dutch trains and client complaints on www.NSstress.nl! It does not agree with you that the "n" in NS stands for Netherlands. "NS = Niet Snel (not fast) - No Service - Niet Stipt (not punctual) - Nationale Schande (national disgrace)." I also read that the major of Maastricht wants the Belgian Railways to run part of the Maastricht Station to finally get some proper HST connection. Hmmm, to bad some of us can also read some Dutch....

http://img95.imageshack.us/img95/8246/set29ba.jpg

I like them alot. When are these coming into service?

Monkeydonkey, I'm not saying trolley busses run faster - even when they do run much faster like 85km, but because these halt at busstops at only a few steps from your destination, I have known them to be the faster means of transport.

Listen kiddo. I first travelled on the tube way before you were born and most recently travelled on the tube in March this year. You never travelled on the smooth Arnhem trolley bus system. Admit it :yes:

You cannot compare!! While I can :yes:
So are you arguing for more stops meaning that the total travel time becomes much longer? The tube right now is just fine when it comes to that I think. A lot of stops in the cenre, not so many outside. Otherwise it'd become much slower. And don't forget that London has one of the (the?) biggest bus transport systems in the world as well that are meant to cover those shorter distances. Really, give me an example of where you would want another tube station on the network.

And I have travelled on both systems.

Here's an example of how fast the system is, completely random route on the trolley bus:

Arnhem station - Presikhaaf, line five. 18:13 - 18:31
Length: 5,7 km. (according to http://www.trolleybussen.com/)
That's 18 minutes for 5.7 km, or ~ 20 km/h on average.

So basically very argument you've given so far has been counterbalanced, but again you said that the Netherlands has a better network.

I think Holland really has a good system, but that the prospects are not looking that good. There aren't really any exciting projects besides the HSL and the Hanzelijn (which should've been built a long time ago anyway). We need upgrades to the already existing lines, mostly. Four tracks on the busy randstad ones to run fast and slow services at high frequencies without delays, IC+''s stopping on less stations, upgradingi tracks to 200 km/h instead of the 140 we have as a maximum now. Stuff like that.

And do you seriously care about whether people say Holland or the Netherlands? It's pretty clear that the two are the same things internationally (and during football games, heh), and I really think people should just stop whining about stuff like that. And no I'm not even from North or South-Holland.

^ Yup - 19km/h average speed on that Arnhem trolleybus. The average speed on the Tube is 33km/h - rising to 39.4km/h on the Victoria Line (I believe the Victoria Line is the fastest). Once again Bikkel is proven completely wrong by the hard sour facts.... :)

surely bikkel's point is that the trolleybus takes you closer to your final destination though? with the tube, you have to go up and down the escalators and through the ticket hall, and then there is the journey to and from the tube station, all of which eats up time.

surely bikkel's point is that the trolleybus takes you closer to your final destination though? with the tube, you have to go up and down the escalators and through the ticket hall, and then there is the journey to and from the tube station, all of which eats up time.
Well yeah that's why I pointed to the bus system. The trains are meant for logner distancse, the tube for mid-long distances in the city. Than DLR, trams, and buses to take you to every corner of the city.
Combine them and you have a system that takes you everywhere and you're able to cover most of the distances faster than in a (trolley)bus.

surely bikkel's point is that the trolleybus takes you closer to your final destination though? with the tube, you have to go up and down the escalators and through the ticket hall, and then there is the journey to and from the tube station, all of which eats up time.

Well, in reality, the only difference is the extra time it takes from the platform to street level. This is true that on the tube this may take a little extra time, but once you are at street level, the distance to your final destination depends exactly where it is. In reality it could be anywhere.

Also, it is more in retrospect to inner London tube stations which are underground. Many suburban ones are above ground and thus quicker. And we all know that underground rail is far quicker in the congested inner city than street traffic.

your destination could be anywhere, but since there's more stops/more routes/more accessibility on the trolleybus, it's much more likely to be closer to your final destination.

when i had to go to the strand from oxford street, it was often more convenient to use the bus (during offpeak times) and get off 2 steps from my destination, rather than get off at holborn tube and walk ten minutes. even though the journey times are pretty much equal, with one i have to walk a lot more. usually though the shorter the trip, the more the hassle of getting to a tube station and getting down and up from the platform becomes a waste of time. and that is in gridlocked london so no doubt bikkel's dutch experience works better.

so he does have a point though i'm sure it's more appropriately confined to a less congested city like arnhem, raher than a bustling metropolis where the traffic inhibits movement.

Perhaps I can stick a spoke in the wheel and ask some of our south-eastern forumers who have been championing how great their trains are this question:

How often do you see a pathetic two car train on your lines that is employed even during early morning peak hours and weekend services when passenger numbers far outweigh the actual physical number of seats?

I bet they're practically non-existent down there - from what I see, four or six car seems to be the norm - or absolute minimum. Whilst most commuter and long distance trains I see in the SE are 8 coaches minimum. Truly those in the south-east or indeed anywhere around that region don't know how privileged they are compared to us up here in the provinces...!

I only wish that there was a new law that was implemented just after the 1996 full privatisation that stipulated that NO trains should be less than 3 cars in length UNLESS they were servicing less busy branch lines or local routes with frequencies of LESS than a train every hour. But no such luck eh? :|

Here in Saltburn (on the Newcastle to Saltburn line), which I feel is a fairly below average regional service, there is often full trains at peak times, they run every 30 minutes. You have to remember that these trains do not get any more demand simply because of the areas they service don't run through many of the largely popular areas. Anyone who has been to the train station at Newcastle may have seen the Newcastle to Middlesbrough service, but lets be honest, who's heard of Saltburn.

Here, there is the only old, 142 class trains that sqeal when moving around the bends at the top end of the town and wake up everybody at roughly 6:50am, simply because Northern Trains can't be arsed to buy new trains that don't do that. If this wasn't to happen though, there would be literally hundreds of people that couldn't get to work in Middlesbrough, Thornaby & Darlington.

Quite simply, the regional services in Britain may not be perfect, but they certainly ain't as bad as some try to portray, here. Living on a line that was due to be closed down just over a year ago and having that decision reveresed, makes me feel like I'm the only one on here that the rail network in Britain is on the up.



Talking of line closures.....wasn't that clueless and incompetent turd Alistair Darling pretty much set on closing the wonderfully picturesque Middlesbrough-Whitby (Esk Valley) line anyway cos he was convinced that buses could do the job better than just five trains a day thus cite economic reasons for shutting down a series of small local rural lines around the country? I mean - talk about making U-turns on his so-called "environmental" credentials. I bet his successor has also got the planned closure orders in place now. I have yet to travel on that route (for obvious reaons as I live here in Cheshire) but I always felt that one day it would be worth a nice detour or two. In this respect, I'd hardly say that the picture for rail travel in Britain was that rosy.

Talking of line closures.....wasn't that clueless and incompetent turd Alistair Darling pretty much set on closing the wonderfully picturesque Middlesbrough-Whitby (Esk Valley) line anyway cos he was convinced that buses could do the job better than just five trains a day thus cite economic reasons for shutting down a series of small local rural lines around the country? I mean - talk about making U-turns on his so-called "environmental" credentials. I bet his successor has also got the planned closure orders in place now. I have yet to travel on that route (for obvious reaons as I live here in Cheshire) but I always felt that one day it would be worth a nice detour or two. In this respect, I'd hardly say that the picture for rail travel in Britain was that rosy.

Yeah, I heard about that a while ago, but I've not heard about it since. Though more recently i've heard about a new line being laid from Guisborough to Middlesbrough, which will be good for Guisborough but im not sure exactly how likely it is to go ahead.

Back to Alistair Darling though, busses wouldn't be better for this area as the busses stop going to Marske, Saltburn and several other towns and villages after 5pm on week days. Also, Arriva have stopped all bus services going to Skinninggrove, so basically they have no connections with the outside world unless they have cars now, and its not exactly the richest town in the area. Its a shit-hole, to be honest.

Well, in reality, the only difference is the extra time it takes from the platform to street level. This is true that on the tube this may take a little extra time, but once you are at street level, the distance to your final destination depends exactly where it is. In reality it could be anywhere.

Also, it is more in retrospect to inner London tube stations which are underground. Many suburban ones are above ground and thus quicker. And we all know that underground rail is far quicker in the congested inner city than street traffic.
At least some insight!
First of all, agglo Arnhem is about 4-5-6 the size of Oxford. the www.kan.nl is about 800 thousand and secondly, because the trolley network is very well thought out - we're good at thinking, with them Germans we're the smartest, remember - travelling time makes the trolley transport faster than the tube.

It's simply from experience that I can state this. It's not 'little time extra'; it's substantially longer. On a few lines, it's 10 trolleys an hour. With diesel busses running on the same traject as well.

I used to fancy a tube for this region but perfecting flexible bus routes - the electric wiring can be changed for little money; I've seen 4 makeovers around my neighbourhood in the past decade - is far superior.

Nick-
The numbers you've googled are those of the municipality, not of the city. Arnhem has about 96k jobs on a 142k population. It's the capital of the 2mln province. N-Holland: 2,5. Brabant 2,4. S-Holland at 3,4 are all bigger. Arnhem has consulates, courts, 4 multinational co's at Wall St. On a NL level compare to the UK's Brum, Edinburgh. It has trains arriving from 4-5 directions way past 1 in the morning. With 3 quid cabs running to any destination within the agglomeration.
Amsterdam - Arnhem goes via Utrecht which is the nation's switchboard. None of that on route from LDN to OXF.

Another aspect: the NL and French railways have far superior records on accidents.

I remember this case where a sleepy bugger got sentenced because his car and trailer ended up on a railwaytrack. In NL or France that would have been practically impossible.

It's absurd that poor fellow was sentenced. Think he got 10 years or so whilst it was a planning failure. It ought to be impossible that a car hobbling down from the M-whatever could end up on a railway track with trains running as fast as that. Hang the planner! Not the bloke who dozed off early in the morning.

Oh, right, only read your last line again realizing you don't have read my reply carefully. Trolleys have exclusive rights to lanes, with permission to speed up to around 80km. They're powerful engines and rides are free from some parking lots - to keep traffic out of the shopping centre - it's #4 or 5 in the national ranking of the most popular shopping cities. You also get a free ride to and from a football match.

Underground transport is only faster in regions with stupid overground traffic policies. Want to go the first music hall of the Netherlands? Only 45-60 seconds from where you get off your trolley bus. Connections are so much faster here and I have never understood as to why, with so little physical barriers, transport around London is so time consuming.

The trains and rail network has definitly improved in Britain the past few years. It seems like 2001 was the low point, since then things have steadily been improving.

At least some insight!
First of all, agglo Arnhem is about 4-5-6 the size of Oxford. the www.kan.nl is about 800 thousand and secondly, because the trolley network is very well thought out - we're good at thinking, with them Germans we're the smartest, remember - travelling time makes the trolley transport faster than the tube.

It's simply from experience that I can state this. It's not 'little time extra'; it's substantially longer. On a few lines, it's 10 trolleys an hour. With diesel busses running on the same traject as well.

I used to fancy a tube for this region but perfecting flexible bus routes - the electric wiring can be changed for little money; I've seen 4 makeovers around my neighbourhood in the past decade - is far superior.

Nick-
The numbers you've googled are those of the municipality, not of the city. Arnhem has about 96k jobs on a 142k population. It's the capital of the 2mln province. N-Holland: 2,5. Brabant 2,4. S-Holland at 3,4 are all bigger. Arnhem has consulates, courts, 4 multinational co's at Wall St. On a NL level compare to the UK's Brum, Edinburgh. It has trains arriving from 4-5 directions way past 1 in the morning. With 3 quid cabs running to any destination within the agglomeration.
Amsterdam - Arnhem goes via Utrecht which is the nation's switchboard. None of that on route from LDN to OXF.

Another aspect: the NL and French railways have far superior records on accidents.

I remember this case where a sleepy bugger got sentenced because his car and trailer ended up on a railwaytrack. In NL or France that would have been practically impossible.

It's absurd that poor fellow was sentenced. Think he got 10 years or so whilst it was a planning failure. It ought to be impossible that a car hobbling down from the M-whatever could end up on a railway track with trains running as fast as that. Hang the planner! Not the bloke who dozed off early in the morning.

Oh, right, only read your last line again realizing you don't have read my reply carefully. Trolleys have exclusive rights to lanes, with permission to speed up to around 80km. They're powerful engines and rides are free from some parking lots - to keep traffic out of the shopping centre - it's #4 or 5 in the national ranking of the most popular shopping cities. You also get a free ride to and from a football match.

Underground transport is only faster in regions with stupid overground traffic policies. Want to go the first music hall of the Netherlands? Only 45-60 seconds from where you get off your trolley bus. Connections are so much faster here and I have never understood as to why, with so little physical barriers, transport around London is so time consuming.I think you'll find that I already provided the figures for Arnhem and that those figures are for the municipality and the city and surrounding area. As can be seen, Arnhem not only has the smaller population, but its population density is far lower than that of Oxford's. I'm unsure of the population growth rates for Arnhem, but between 2001 and 2004 the population of Oxford grew by 10,852, for Arnhem to have a faster population growth rate it would have had to have absorbed between 2001 and 2006 close to 18,000 people.

Arnhem | 98.25 km² | 142,162 (2006) | 1,447/km²
Oxford | 45.59 km² | 145,100 (2004) | 3,183 / km²

If you want to compare city - city this is what you get above, hence it would be flawed to compare a far larger (and more populated region) to Oxford a city which already has the higher population on a smaller area when compared to Arnhem.

I'm unsure how having consulates and all makes Arnhem significantly better. According to Eurostat, the Berks-Bucks-Oxfordshire area is around 2x more wealthier than the Gelderland area (24,827 > 38,122). Oxford itself is part of the Oxford-Cambridge Arc, the leading knowledge economy and R&D area of all of Europe and I haven't yet spoken about the university!

Also like I mentioned, while Arnhem is a convergence of several international lines, Oxford is not, so naturally it won't have as many routes. Saying that, Oxford is still a busy route for train services taking an alternative route between Birmingham and London rather than the faster and more popular WCML.

http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/1402/a7fw.png

Despite not being on a major intercity route and fairly remote from the major urban corridors, Oxford still has quite high train frequencies - around 8/9 per hour off-peak:
http://www.livedepartureboards.co.uk/ldb/sumdep.aspx?T=OXF&R=1&A=0

Technically Britain has several large convergence points, the largest would probably be Birmingham New Street, of which Oxford is inbetween London and Birmingham. However you forget one very important 'switchboard' between London and Oxford: Reading. Reading Station handles sees 60,000 tickets brought at Reading (in other words this excludes the vast number of people who transfer here - probably as many people who buy a ticket to enter the station), there are 12 platforms at Reading - thats one more than at Amsterdam Centraal.

Also I believe you are referring to the Selby Rail Crash where the closing speed at collision was at 142mph (fastest crash in UK rail history). Also I wouldn't be suprised if something like this could or has happened in France or the Netherlands - the man drove through the motorway barriers, 25m across a field, through the protective fencing and then across the embankment and railway line. He didn't even try to reverse the car, so I wouldn't believe that something like that couldn't happen on the continent or elsewhere. Personally he should have been hung, but all he got was a 5 year jail sentence for killing 10 people.

I should add though that even though the high-speed Intercity GNER hit the car and trailer it actually remained on the tracks for sometime and it was cruel fate that at the same time of the accident a 17 carriage long freight train collided at the scene moments later. Had there been no freight train nobody would have died.

How was it a planning error? There was enough protection, but how many railways anticipate speeding drivers who haven't gone to sleep for hours who then crash into railways and then don't do anything to get their car out of the way of the tracks! It should be impossible, but I'd suspect that such a scenario could happen in the Netherlands - only needs a sleepy speeding driver and all the barriers in the world wouldn't stop you from crashing onto railway lines. Fortunately for the Netherlands the limited size of the network (half the size of the route km of London and its surrounding area) would mean such an incident happening would be unlikely, but never say never.

Using your logic presumably we should sack the urban planner instead of sending a killer to jail who used a street to kill someone.


I should add that while trolleybuses work for low-density Arnhem, they would not be suited for the more densely populated areas of London (or other cities in the world). Trolleybuses and heavy rail systems are also completely different serving greatly different geographical areas in scope, capacity and scale.

Considering the low-density and low population catchment of Arnhem and the surrounding region a 'tube' would be economically unfeasible. To have an underground railway you need high density along a specific corridor and the necessary or probable movement of people along this corridor. Arnhem couldn't sustain one, nor could Oxford (which has a very good bus system).

Your other points about connections probably has to do with London having a population 52x larger than that of Arnhem. big cities will always have big connection problems because there are so many lines, routes and people using them - happens in all big cities.

..... there are 12 platforms at Reading - thats one more than at Amsterdam Centraal.


You will find that Amsterdam Centraal has 14 platforms Nick! New (narrow) bays on the north and south sides have been added in recent years.... I know this as fact: I use the station every time I'm there in the city - which is twice yearly and they're currently still in the process of redeveloping it of course.

Don't be sad, Nick. I know London's much bigger, I've often been in your country and you know absolutely nothing about the NL. Googling won't help. Oxford doesn't compare. Arnhem has weekend services at night from other cities TO Arnhem; not from the capital or somewhere TO Arnhem. Doubledecker trains, secutiry personel on board, clean trains, you hardly notice you travel, they're that silent and smooth.

Travelling by tube is something I can compare, and I don't need to look around - I know my way and walk rather quickly, I am a somehow a regular visitor. And I used to want a metro for the Arnhem-Nijmegen cluster but now with the imporvements over the past 10-15 years, I much prefer the trolley bus because - again I need to stress from experience - it is the fastest door-to-door transport. All nice and fine what you can find on the internet but in reality, those trolleys travel quicker and more frequently as well. These timetables are indications. Just like busses can depart earlier than indicated. Just like train doors close at about 10-15 seconds before the actual time of departure.


Anyhow, here's the Arnhem station U/C:

http://www.prorail.nl/NR/rdonlyres/CEDA8DDA-16D5-4CCF-8A61-43F2CD7F5C4B/0/ImpressieOVTerminalArnhemCentraalUNStudio.jpg

Nick-
Don't be so ignorant. The railway company should reckon with accidents near motorways, so that's why I suggest to hang the planner. That's why the infrastrcture in NL is far superior to that of the UK. The planning is done so much better with far greater risk calculations. Same accounts for insurances as well by the way. The Brits are clumsy happy-go-lucky "ah, we'll see, fancy a brew?" planners while the CLogs try to eliminate each and every risk, no matter how tiny. Want some coffee?

MartinG - I should add also that Reading will see another 4 platforms construted and the entire station replaced to be more efficient, convenient and modern. That would mean Reading would have 16 platforms.




Don't be sad, Nick. I know London's much bigger, I've often been in your country and you know absolutely nothing about the NL. Googling won't help. Oxford doesn't compare. Arnhem has weekend services at night from other cities TO Arnhem; not from the capital or somewhere TO Arnhem. Doubledecker trains, secutiry personel on board, clean trains, you hardly notice you travel, they're that silent and smooth.

Travelling by tube is something I can compare, and I don't need to look around - I know my way and walk rather quickly, I am a somehow a regular visitor. And I used to want a metro for the Arnhem-Nijmegen cluster but now with the imporvements over the past 10-15 years, I much prefer the trolley bus because - again I need to stress from experience - it is the fastest door-to-door transport. All nice and fine what you can find on the internet but in reality, those trolleys travel quicker and more frequently as well. These timetables are indications. Just like busses can depart earlier than indicated. Just like train doors close at about 10-15 seconds before the actual time of departure.

Don't be so ignorant. The railway company should reckon with accidents near motorways, so that's why I suggest to hang the planner. That's why the infrastrcture in NL is far superior to that of the UK. The planning is done so much better with far greater risk calculations. Same accounts for insurances as well by the way. The Brits are clumsy happy-go-lucky "ah, we'll see, fancy a brew?" planners while the CLogs try to eliminate each and every risk, no matter how tiny. Want some coffee?How can you claim that I know nothing when clearly you started comparing the smaller city of Arnhem to Oxford which had a larger population on a smaller area. You didn't even try and do research into an extended Oxford area in relation to Arnhem.

The reason they probably are so silent and smooth is because the trains are in sidings. Like I said though, Oxford isn't on an international corridor, Arnhem is - there is your answer. Still doesn't detract from the point that Arnhem is smaller and that you've been proven incorrect on numerous other points in relation to Britain's railways.

Well trolley buses would simply not work in a far denser urban environment like London, so please stop going on about them in relation to London.

Indeed the companies should maintain a relative level of safety and this was apparent - protection on both the railway and motorway. Reinforced concrete wouldn't have stopped this guy and I suspect that such a scenario could happen in the Netherlands - care to test this for me?

So what about the urban planners that built the blocks in Bilmer and the crash of El Al Fight#1862? Surely they should have ensured that every situation could be counted so that no lives could be lost. I mean they should have built the buildings to withstand a full-on collision from B-747 and to ensure that all occupants could survive from any subsequent fires and release of hazard chemicals. Presumably all that concentration on the railways neglected such air scenarios which unfortunately led to far more deaths and of course long-lasting problems (don't forget the uranium of course!).

http://www.airdisaster.com/photos/elal1862/1.jpg

<sigh> Arnhem is about 5 times bigger than Oxford. The agglo is around 400k, the metro well over a million and the province it rules over is on 2,000,000 people. The cluster/metro whatever is from 800k upto well over a million. World Trade Center, multinational companies, 4 at the Dow.

Oxford may be a well known university city but doesn't compare to Arnhem in size or importance. It's beyond me why you persevere. Think of Arnhem as London divided by the factor 5 or 10.

You're completely losing it with your mention of the crash of an Israeli airplane in the Bijlmer. Let's compare numbers of fatalities in NL and UK then.

I suggested this once before and I thought it would be wise to repeat it: see a doctor. You're autistic, Nick. Because of some abberation in your brain, you bring up the one and only disaster the Netherlands has faced; only trying to win a battle on a stupid little website.

The worst in safety numbers remains to be in the UK. The people killed in the Bijlmer were at home and not using any form of transport. And they weren't near to Arnhem at all.

You're an idiot and with our rules you'd be receiving care rather than wasting time on this board or on an university. I suggest you start sweeping streets and shut up for good.

1 Tennet Toren telecommunications completed 1969 - 149.00
2 Eusebiuskerk churchtower completed 1965 - 93.00
3 Roermondspleintoren residential never built - 23 80.00
4 Ohra office completed 1997 17 78.00
5 Stadstoren Eusebiusbuitensinge... office never built - 21 77.00
6 Rijkskantoorgebouw Presikhaaf... office completed 1968 21 74.00
7 Parktoren office completed 2005 16 70.00
8 Rijntoren office completed 2005 16 70.00
9 Akzo-Nobel Center Gebouw Kernh... office completed 1966 13 70.00
10 Postbank office completed 1969 13 68.00
11 Eusebiushof office development 2007 16 60.00
12 Sint Martinuskerk churchtower completed 1875 - 60.00
13 Rooms Katholieke Eusebius churchtower demolished 1865 - 60.00
14 Zorgflat Stadseiland Zuid residential development 2008 17 55.50
15 Sint Walburgiskerk churchtower completed - - 55.00
16 Kasteelflat I residential completed 1975 17 54.00
17 Kasteelflat II residential completed 1975 17 54.00
18 Rijnstate Kantoren office completed 1974 15 50.00
19 Kroonbastion office completed 2003 12 49.00
20 Kleefseplein residential completed 1971 13 45.00
21 Brandenburgseplein residential completed 1973 13 45.00
22 Gelderseplein residential completed 1973 13 45.00
23 Keizershof residential completed 1973 13 45.00
24 Rijnpoort office completed 1975 11 45.00
25 Hulkestein residential completed 1964 13 44.00
26 Gelredome other completed 1998 - 43.00
27 Parktoren Stadseiland-Noord... residential construction 2007 8 42.00
28 Cityflat residential completed 1953 11 41.00
29 Monchy State residential completed - 12 40.00
30 Lutherse Kerk churchtower completed 1897 - 40.00
31 Sterflat Schipholplein residential completed - 12 39.00
32 Sterflat Driemondplein residential completed - 12 39.00
33 Croydonplein residential completed - 12 39.00
34 Flat Kromwijkplaats residential completed - 12 39.00

I don't think, Oxford would have any to measure anything up to this.

<sigh> Think of Arnhem as London divided by the factor 5 or 10.

You're completely losing it with your mention of the crash of an Israeli airplane in the Bijlmer. Let's compare numbers of fatalities in NL and UK then.

I suggested this once before and I thought it would be wise to repeat it: see a doctor. You're autistic, Nick. Because of some abberation in your brain, you bring up the one and only disaster the Netherlands has faced; only trying to win a battle on a stupid little website.

The worst in safety numbers remains to be in the UK. The people killed in the Bijlmer were at home and not using any form of transport. And they weren't near to Arnhem at all.

You're an idiot and with our rules you'd be receiving care rather than wasting time on this board or on an university. I suggest you start sweeping streets and shut up for good.

Bikkel - Arnhem being a fifth or tenth of London, come on you must be joking. Amsterdam and Rotterdam may be, but give me a break about Arnhem. It is great to see how much you love your home town, but we need to keep some perspective into the discussion.

If you throw Apeldoorn, Nijmwegen and Arnhem together, you get indeed a big agglo with a fantastic natural park in the middle, the Veluwe. Your could do the same for Oxford and Reading. Yet if you define a city as the people living inside a continuously built up area, then Oxford is slightly larger than Arnhem (to bring in another source than just Google/Wikipedia I went to the Larousse). Oxford is clearly better known around the world thanks to its University. Both are really nice towns though, so I fail to see what your frustration is about. Arnhem is twinned with Croyden, which is one of the 33 boroughs of London.

On planning, let me give you another example...

13 May 2000... a fireworks factory located in a residential area of Enschede.

Deaths: 22
Permanently disabled: 68
Homeless: 4163 people living in 2400 houses
Evacuated: 10,300 people
Area destroyed: >42 ha

One of the conclusions of the investigation was that not only the management of the firm that exploded, but also the local government is to be held accountable for the failures in planning enforcement.

This is getting weirder and weirder. People reply to your arguments and you just ignore that and bring some more irrevelant stuff into this thread, which then again gets debunked. The list of scrapers out of nowhere is the highlight so far for me! :)

Maybe you should look at ehm, stats and facts, stuff like that. And reply to what's actually being said.

<sigh> Arnhem is about 5 times bigger than Oxford. The agglo is around 400k, the metro well over a million and the province it rules over is on 2,000,000 people. The cluster/metro whatever is from 800k upto well over a million. World Trade Center, multinational companies, 4 at the Dow.

Oxford may be a well known university city but doesn't compare to Arnhem in size or importance. It's beyond me why you persevere. Think of Arnhem as London divided by the factor 5 or 10.

You're completely losing it with your mention of the crash of an Israeli airplane in the Bijlmer. Let's compare numbers of fatalities in NL and UK then.

I suggested this once before and I thought it would be wise to repeat it: see a doctor. You're autistic, Nick. Because of some abberation in your brain, you bring up the one and only disaster the Netherlands has faced; only trying to win a battle on a stupid little website.

The worst in safety numbers remains to be in the UK. The people killed in the Bijlmer were at home and not using any form of transport. And they weren't near to Arnhem at all.

You're an idiot and with our rules you'd be receiving care rather than wasting time on this board or on an university. I suggest you start sweeping streets and shut up for good.You're comparing a city to an agglomeration of several towns and cities. Fact: Oxford is a larger city on less land.

I'd think the importance of Oxford as part of the largest R&D and knowledge economy pathway in Europe kind of holds a bit of weight. Now if we are to start expanding Oxford to a comparable multi-town/city agglomeration guess what - we also get a significantly large 'area'.

Why - it was poor urban planning in Bijlmer that meant the apartment blocks couldn't take a direct hit from a B-747! It would also appear that and JGG has produced another accident that caused far more damage. Are non-railway planners exempt from your harsh treatment Eusebius?

Selby isn't close to Oxford, either! It was merely a counter-attack to your accusation that its down to planners...apparently all the attention in the Netherlands has led to some very unfortunate disasters. Maybe the entire government should resign in light of this blatant concentration on the railways?

And while I would suspect that UK railways aren't as safe as those in the Netherlands (simply due to the far larger size and spread of the network), you still havent produced figures to affirm your position.

As for those buildings - why would Oxford need to build towers when it has some of the most graceful architecture around. Tall buildings can be built in other cities; not Oxford.


Arnhem
http://home.hetnet.nl/~thelog3/15arnhem1.jpg

http://home.hetnet.nl/~thelog3/17arnhem3.jpg


Oxford
http://www.ehgp.com/aeropic/photo_database/aeropic_20040523_oxford_9_w800c.jpg

http://www.e-cesko.cz/userdata/staty/fotogalerie/Oxford_Aerial.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9e/Hitachi_A-train%2C_CTRL_domestic_%26_Olympic_Shuttle.jpg

I like them alot. When are these coming into service?

Delivered in 2007 for testing, coming into service in 2008.

At least some insight!
First of all, agglo Arnhem is about 4-5-6 the size of Oxford. the www.kan.nl is about 800 thousand and secondly, because the trolley network is very well thought out - we're good at thinking, with them Germans we're the smartest, remember - travelling time makes the trolley transport faster than the tube.

It's simply from experience that I can state this. It's not 'little time extra'; it's substantially longer. On a few lines, it's 10 trolleys an hour. With diesel busses running on the same traject as well.

I used to fancy a tube for this region but perfecting flexible bus routes - the electric wiring can be changed for little money; I've seen 4 makeovers around my neighbourhood in the past decade - is far superior.


Bikkel, when you start to try and tell us that tram systems are faster than tube trains, I feel like totally giving up on you.

I live in a city which has both trams and tube. From where I live, I have a choice between both tram and tube to the main station (hauptbahnhof). The tram is a direct route (no change) but the tube requires a change in the city. Despite having to change trains, the tube still beats the tram in half the time. In fact. I have three options from my station (südbahnhof). As well as the tube and tram, there is also an S-bahn (suburban railway). The S-bahn is a direct link to the Hauptbahnhof but starts off going in the opposite direction, passing through East Frankfurt before ending up in the West. Despite going the wrong way, it is still twice as fast as the tram which goes direct.

And these are German trams and tube, which for some reason you think are so much smarter than anyone else besides the Dutch.

I have seen this in countless other cities. I have been in Amsterdam and the metro there is much faster than the trams.


Sorry Bikkel, stop talking bollocks. I would never suggest the Netherlands doesn't have a brilliant transport system - which it does. But it hasn't somehow broken the basic laws of physics and made trams faster than underground metro services.

<sigh> Arnhem is about 5 times bigger than Oxford. The agglo is around 400k, the metro well over a million and the province it rules over is on 2,000,000 people. The cluster/metro whatever is from 800k upto well over a million. World Trade Center, multinational companies, 4 at the Dow.

Oxford may be a well known university city but doesn't compare to Arnhem in size or importance. It's beyond me why you persevere. Think of Arnhem as London divided by the factor 5 or 10.

You're completely losing it with your mention of the crash of an Israeli airplane in the Bijlmer. Let's compare numbers of fatalities in NL and UK then.

I suggested this once before and I thought it would be wise to repeat it: see a doctor. You're autistic, Nick. Because of some abberation in your brain, you bring up the one and only disaster the Netherlands has faced; only trying to win a battle on a stupid little website.

The worst in safety numbers remains to be in the UK. The people killed in the Bijlmer were at home and not using any form of transport. And they weren't near to Arnhem at all.

You're an idiot and with our rules you'd be receiving care rather than wasting time on this board or on an university. I suggest you start sweeping streets and shut up for good.

You can't be serious! Very few people outside of Europe, and a great deal in Europe have never heard of Arnhem. It simply doesn't count on the world stage. Oxford is so much more well known.

5 times less than London!??? That is simply your mind working overtime.

If Arnhem is so popular, so important, and so magnificient, the world would be talking about it. Well, let's see how it stacks up... Google search results

Arnhem: 15.5million pages
Oxford: 352million pages
Auckland: 57million pages
Christchurch (one of the worlds most remotest cities): 23million pages
Frankfurt: 199million pages
Luxembourg: 303million pages
Strasbourg: 50million
timbuktu: 5million
London: Over a billion pages
Manchester: 202million pages
Slough: (remember "The Office") 12.8million pages
Amsterdam: 261million pages

Ah yes, Arhnem as far as global focus is concerned, has a lot more in common with Slough or Timbuktu than Oxford.

And before you start to whine that I used the English version of Google, here's what the dutch version reports:

Arnhem: 12million pages
Oxford: 284million pages

Arnhem is simply not as important as you say, and it certainly doesn't have the worlds fastest tram network.

German railways are far far better.
i think the danish networks are fantastic.. the spend so much money on constantly updating their network and its rare for their trains to be more than a decade 15 years old before theyre replaced.. in britain we seem to keep them running until the wheels fall off before the government decides it needs updating

Call me ignorant but before reading this thread I'd only heard of Arnhem because of Operation Market Garden in WW2.

Call me ignorant but before reading this thread I'd only heard of Arnhem because of Operation Market Garden in WW2.
But, but... It's the tenth biggest city in the Netherlands man. And it has trolleybuses! ;P

I'm half-kidding obviously, it's a lovely city. But not exactly world famous or incredibly important.

^ "Lovely"? Are you sure? It doesn't look all that lovely from the photos posted by Nick..... ;)

i think the danish networks are fantastic.. the spend so much money on constantly updating their network and its rare for their trains to be more than a decade 15 years old before theyre replaced.. in britain we seem to keep them running until the wheels fall off before the government decides it needs updatingAlthough naturally British Railways have a long way to go, we are making improvements.

In 2000, the average age of all rolling stock on British railways was 20.67 years. By last year this had reduced to 14.68 years (and is still falling). With greater compliance with disability laws even 5 year old stock is being scraped, so the age is falling - ideally 15 years is what should be maintained. 15 years with one or two refurbishments over the lifetime of the stock is economically sound for Britain. Japan I believe runs on average rolling stock ages of around 18years.

^ But to be fair Japanese trains are several decades ahead of us :|

In regards to Arnhem I hadn't heard of it until Bikkel mentioned it a while back. You learn so much from this site.

^^ Are they? We moan about over-crowding here, but in Japan and other Asian cities, over-crowding is a way of life. Over-crowding is such a problem, that some carriages are standing only, simply because seats would take up too much space for standing. There is noway that such carriages would be in use in this country. On the other end of the scale however, you have seriously spacious carriages with reclining seats - two extremes almost.

I'll add that we also don't have to worry about chikans and hence female-only carriages because over-crowding is that bad.

Now if we're talking about in-carriage TV's then yes we're lagging there, but is that really a priority?

^ Japanese trains are better than ours Nick. They're the best in the world - also much better than any European train system.

^ Japanese trains are better than ours Nick. They're the best in the world - also much better than any European train system.I am not disputing that, infact the thing we should be attaining more is the pin-point frequencies that Japan attains in heavy urban areas - but that has more to do with the actual network, the co-ordination of the train operators and the excellent maintenance and capacity of the tracks and stations.

Apart from the Shinkansens, the average train in Britain and Japan however are just as good.

I'm really surprise by the thread title, as train has been one of the finest pride of the French for decades now, whereas train for English people was always regarded as something........embarrassing maybe?

Little example, I recently took the train from Winchester to Portsmouth, and I had to travel in "something" which I don't know at the time, was called a train. This thing had plenty of doors that are not locked when travelling, and to open your door basically you have to open the window, and reach the handle from the outside with your arm!!! This stuff was horrible, noisy, not comfortable, slow and didn't look safe at all.
You won't find such garbage in France for sure.

I can hardly imagine people seriously stating that British train are better than French ones only because no major crash happened recently.

I agree some trains are really nice looking and comfortable (virgin ones), and that the network is improving quickly, but you had so much to catch up compared to French or Germans trains/network.

The network remains still slow compared to TGV lines that are still expanding day by day in France, as I believe only a portion of the Eurostar line is a high speed track isn't it?

I'm really surprise by the thread title, as train has been one of the finest pride of the French for decades now, whereas train for English people was always regarded as something........embarrassing maybe?

Little example, I recently took the train from Winchester to Portsmouth, and I had to travel in "something" which I don't know at the time, was called a train. This thing had plenty of doors that are not locked when travelling, and to open your door basically you have to open the window, and reach the handle from the outside with your arm!!! This stuff was horrible, noisy, not comfortable, slow and didn't look safe at all.
You won't find such garbage in France for sure.

I can hardly imagine people seriously stating that British train are better than French ones only because no major crash happened recently.

I agree some trains are really nice looking and comfortable (virgin ones), and that the network is improving quickly, but you had so much to catch up compared to French or Germans trains/network.

The network remains still slow compared to TGV lines that are still expanding day by day in France, as I believe only a portion of the Eurostar line is a high speed track isn't it?

well only whilst the eurostar is operating out of waterloo.. from next year it will be on its own high speed line (which means the u.k. leg of the journey should be as fast as it is when it gets over to the other side of the channel

Although naturally British Railways have a long way to go, we are making improvements.

In 2000, the average age of all rolling stock on British railways was 20.67 years. By last year this had reduced to 14.68 years (and is still falling). With greater compliance with disability laws even 5 year old stock is being scraped, so the age is falling - ideally 15 years is what should be maintained. 15 years with one or two refurbishments over the lifetime of the stock is economically sound for Britain. Japan I believe runs on average rolling stock ages of around 18years.
yes its true that the stock on londons network is modern.. but the further away from london you go to (particularly on suburban rail) the worse it tends to get

well only whilst the eurostar is operating out of waterloo.. from next year it will be on its own high speed line (which means the u.k. leg of the journey should be as fast as it is when it gets over to the other side of the channelActually the Eurostar already operates at 300km/h in Britain. Phase I of the CTRL has been in full service use since 2003. Once phase II of CTRL opens to St Pancras the jounrney time will reduce by a further 20 minutes but the Eurostar already operates at 300km/h in Kent. :)

Apart from the Shinkansens, the average train in Britain and Japan however are just as good.No they're not. Japan's trains are universally good - not just the Shinkansen. Here again Japan's trains are better than Britain's or indeed any other systems in Europe.

Japans are the best by a mile, than Germany by a mile, than France's intercitys but Britain isnt so far behind you know, maybe just to Spain but 6th 7th in the World isnt so bad.

You can't be serious! Very few people outside of Europe, and a great deal in Europe have never heard of Arnhem. It simply doesn't count on the world stage. Oxford is so much more well known.

5 times less than London!??? That is simply your mind working overtime.

If Arnhem is so popular, so important, and so magnificient, the world would be talking about it. Well, let's see how it stacks up... Google search results

Arnhem: 15.5million pages
Oxford: 352million pages
Auckland: 57million pages
Christchurch (one of the worlds most remotest cities): 23million pages
Frankfurt: 199million pages
Luxembourg: 303million pages
Strasbourg: 50million
timbuktu: 5million
London: Over a billion pages
Manchester: 202million pages
Slough: (remember "The Office") 12.8million pages
Amsterdam: 261million pages

Ah yes, Arhnem as far as global focus is concerned, has a lot more in common with Slough or Timbuktu than Oxford.

And before you start to whine that I used the English version of Google, here's what the dutch version reports:

Arnhem: 12million pages
Oxford: 284million pages

Arnhem is simply not as important as you say, and it certainly doesn't have the worlds fastest tram network.
:hilarious:
Google hits? How twisted a criterion is that? Any Oxford company that employs 60-70thousand people? How come Arcadis (Arnhem) and Haskoning (Nijmegen, branch in Peterborough) as engineering and consultancy companies have many assignments in the UK whereas the counter for Oxford (and probably the entire UK) stands at nill. A WTC in Oxford? Insurance companies employing thousands in 87m office towers? Consulates? Are soldiers in Iraq prosecuted in Oxford like they are in Arnhem? How come last year's exhibits (Frida Kahlo, Joseph Beuys) in London that Nick Taylor plightfully advertised, were held in Arnhem at least 21 years earlier (both artists had already died at that mo'). I could make this as tedious as you'd want, only because of Justme drawing in that Oxford-London and Arnhem-Amsterdam train service, which he even didn't get from www.ns.nl
How come the UK's public transport has no comprehensible websites like www.9292ov.nl and www.ns.nl

I agree with Sweek that this has thread has gone silly but there's truth in what people might perceive as sillyness.

I find the planning of LU silly. In 2006 it is apparently impossible to dig out tubes in South-London. Aw, c'mon. Tunnels through the Alps and a bit of rock would then prove to be the problem in London :laugh:

From experience: door-to-door public transport in Arnhem is quicker, smoother, quieter, cleaner and cheaper than in London. Experiences shared by at least dozens of Londoners residing in Arnhem. There's a total of 1-2000 britons here.

Oxford is arguably the best known university in the world and beyond that means little. Arnhem doesn't ring bell with you, well, so what. Transport is so much better, than even in a big metropole, so why should I care at all?

Justme picked Oxford and that's no use since there's trains and busses running from Arnhem, as Arnhem is the centre, to the suburbs and surrounding towns and villages. My last train to reach Velp leaves at 12.45, in the weekend extra services during the night, plus busses running at night.

A single bus trip is €1 for the entire city which as Nick Taylor duefully found out is a large one with scattered neighbourhoods. Plus it has 4 railway stations.

As for the travel from Presikhaaf: when you're in Presikhaaf and you need to be at the central station, you won't take the bus, you'd take the train from Presikhaaf. No use in comparing a service no one uses. I find these posts rather useless since I know my way around in both Arnhem and London and most, if not all of you, do not. Accept it or not but in Arnhem your shopping by using public transport simply takes up much less time. You can't argue with a watch.

With your seasonticket (Vitesse) you have free PT to and from matches. Near the Gelredome and at other places there are huge parking lots from which you also have free transport into the city. Arnhem is the #5 shopping city of NL by the way. From Arnhem the railway taxi to Velp is only €6 with a valid train ticket. There always was tailor cut transport. When house music was kicking off, trains ran from Arnhem to Amsterdam from 3.40 in the morning to bring home the Amsterdam party people after their fun in Arnhem.

The amount of platforms is irrelevant, to the opposite: again it adds to the travelling time when a small town with few services like Oxford has a zillion platforms.

My switch at Arnhem takes about 20 seconds. Trains arrive at either the same platform or sometimes even at the same side of a platform, oh how efficient: during your trip you walk to the head of the train and then you board onto the next one at the tail ... just 20 steps. Yes, you will find lesser switches. Those are the least to frequent.

What's the use of extra platforms with few trains running? 8-9 an hour at Oxford is nothing compared to Arnhem, or any other city in NL.

Nijmegen-Arnhem is at least 6 an hour alone. And there's another 7 services heading to Arnhem. A poor service in NL would mean twice an hour. In Velp I have only 2 trains to Arnhem but also some 12-15 bus services each hour. The trolley bus is now by far the quickest means of transport, the bike used to be fastest before. Dieren in the same municipality as Velp but further away with less busses already has 4 trains an hour. 16k village of little importance ...

And I should stress this, Arnhem is not the best connected at this moment. The grand works started in 1996 and should be finished around 2012, so in the NL, Arnhem does not count (yet) as a good hub at all but it's better than almost anywhere in The UK.

On the NL forum I actually do little else than fulminate against present and past governments because of the neglect for Arnhem. The first NL railway was Amsterdam-Haarlem, a testing track as it were, of only 10 miles. The first big track was Amsterdam-Utrecht-Arnhem. Maria Callas performed in Arnhem because by then it had a music hall (first of the nation) and a railway to reach Arnhem.

It's not like that Arnhem now is the most advanced. As a matter of fact, the railway company mentioned Arnhem to be the most likely location for delays. The co. published a guarantee that 80% would arrive with delays less than 5 minutes. Still: NL railways are the most punctual after Japan. In case of a delay, you will either have a touring bus instead, a refund or perhaps both ;)

And at least you get your money back with delays in the NL ... As a regular custumer you're also entitled to days of entirely free transport around the country and to huge discounts.


PS Nick: blame the Bijlmer crash on the designer with Boeing. It was a technical failure of the airplane. Could happen to London as well. ElAl has flights to LDN I guess.

That railway track should have a gully or a ditch alongside to prevent a car or anything else from hobbling down onto the track. There was a similar accident near Arnhem yesterday. Two main differences: the railway track isn't being used as yet and the security levels were already estimated to be insufficient and that motorway will see major overhauls before freight trains start running the track. If there'd still be a crash, no trainpassenger would be killed as it's not a track for passenger trains.

While the major difference remains: NL traffic is a few times bigger than the UK's. Germany is exporter #1 and NL is only marginally smaller an exporter than the UK. And if you were to reason that the UK exports services rather than goods, well, sorry NL again easily beats UK per capita.

PS2 on that wild comparison to the fireworks explosion in Enschede. Let's do that very unwholesome fatality score then. Hillsborough anyone? I'm out.

Actually the Eurostar already operates at 300km/h in Britain. Phase I of the CTRL has been in full service use since 2003. Stop at Ashford though. And you ought to substitute 'already' with 'only until 2003' actually. London is supposed to be ever so important and only by 2003 one train service to London started to speed. Tosser country really :laugh:

It's not as if a train to LDN speeds at 300km/h all the way. Slowdown to a few miles at the end of the Chunnel, speed up and slow down near Ashford, followed by just a couple of seconds where it actually reaches 300km an hour. And then you're still only in London, one of the least interesting cities in terms of architecture anyhow (/bait).

Compare to France, eh? Well, go on, make a complete fool of yourself :laugh: The Uk's still at least 20 years behind.

Japans are the best by a mile, than Germany by a mile, than France's intercitys but Britain isnt so far behind you know, maybe just to Spain but 6th 7th in the World isnt so bad.Britain is very far behind. Services inbetween a 90k to a 180k city way up north in the least populated part of NL have very modern trains and regular services. Britain can only drink, sorry dream o(n)f that. In Arnhem I have more night trains than around LDN, cheaper taxis, more busses etc. You simply have no idea of so-called peripheral regions on the continent.

Britain is piss poor away from London. NL is sophisticated, even in areas like Fryslan and Groningen.
Britain isn't 6/7th in the world. Make that #50 or something. In smell it's the worst on the globe for starters. You don't even get fined for pissing in the street. Such a filthy country.

Bikkel you have clearly lost the argument on absolutely every front. Oxford is much more famous and much more beautiful than Arnhem. It's also far more sophisticated. Sorry but Arnhem looks like a shithole. Is there a single worthwhile building there? And the fastest Eurostar services don't even stop at Ashford. CTRL phase I is 70km long - that's 70km more of operational high speed rail than the Netherlands has. You lose.... again.... ;)

Bikkel get te' fuck, I dont always agree with Monkey but we're sharing a common bond and I will fight side by side with my brother if youre going to claim Arnham is even comparible with Oxford, more like Aylesbury, me thinks youve been tooting on one too many crack pipeys mate.

:laugh:

Arnhem is way bigger than Oxford, only fools would disagree. Arnhem: oldest music hall of NL, oldest cinema of NL; first liberal newspaper of NL; first trade union of NL; first shopping mall of NL; first multi-functional stadium of NL; etc etc

Happy to oblige; I know that Oxford is a grand university but you simply have no idea whatsoever.

Should you be bothered at all. The grandest castles in NL are all around Arnhem. The year 1500 skyline around Arnhem region included several plus 300 ft buildings :laugh:

On the skybar someone just suggested I should back off mentioning the piss poor education in Britain. Your disdain for Arnhem is only further proof of the stupendously poor education and knowledge.

Go on.

I'm loving this.

:lol: Bikkel, you really have lost it :rofl:

Seriously. You can rave on about Arnhem as much as you like, but no one here is believing a word you say. Your are entitled to your fantasies, but no need to try forcing them onto others.

Hey, ain't you the cucumber guy or was that some other joker?

Indeed, and well, aren't cucumbers dog food in NL, and don't these get sold cut in halves in Britain = "market demand". Did you ever get the point of that thread? Seems not.

Again, I can't be that bothered with the majority opinion, as long as my rides into Arnhem consume much less time than that tube :laugh: why should I bother replying on a forum with a full score of those who've never even been to the place they think can be measured and valued?


Ever been to Arnhem? I'm not raving about Arnhem at all. I'm using the worst example of an important city (Arnhem, admitted to by the national railway co.) in the NL to compare to anywhere (frankly) in the UK. Even the worst example comes off better than the prime showcase in the UK.

None of you actually reply to the mentions of companies in Arnhem. The economy around Arnhem is bigger than that of many Eu-member states. Latvia, Slovenia etc would all shrink in a comparison to the "Arnhem" metro. This province is around half of Denmark or Norway, Scotland whatever.

Please do continue your ignorance. I thrive on it.

:rofl: You are the guy who spent months trying to convince everyone at SSC that the reason Supermarkets in the UK also sell half cucumbers, was not for those that only feel like buying half, but because the UK was so poor, people couldn't afford a whole cucumber! :lol:

And now you are trying to tell us that tramways in Arnhem are faster than metro systems.

Oh, and don't try to pretend you didn't try and claim that Arnhem was more important and more well known than Oxford. It's in your text above.

Where do you get your ideas from?

That cucember argument is a classic

He who laughs last, laughs best.

Yes, cucumbers are so cheap that these became dog food, and yes, even in a city you don't even know of, public transport is much better than in a reputedly big metropole.

Only I am in the position to compare. You're not.

Again, please do continue this petty struggle, I'm enjoying it.

You're also quite slow in replying. Must be the pace set by those slow underground escalators.

Come on lads and lasses!

Hmm, terribly slow. Justme, I never put up a claim Arnhem is better known than Oxford. I never even brought in that comparson as Arnhem compares to Amsterdam as say Birmingham or Manchester compares to London.

You seem entirely incapable of seeing a country's economy as important as the NL - an exporter nearly as big as the UK at almost a quarter of the size of the population - having cities you never heard of before. The 4 main cities in NL comprise 13% of the total population. I bet you won't believe NL is the largest exporter of food stuffs after the US and France, ahead of Canada and Australia.

Kids, you have so many things to learn from yer Dutch uncle :laugh:
</pratmode>

Lol cucumberman

http://connections.smsd.org/nieman/cucumber.JPG

By the way, this tram system in Arnhem right. We're talking your trolley buses right? Buses faster than the tube. :lol:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Trolleybus_Arnhem.jpg

I'm really surprise by the thread title, as train has been one of the finest pride of the French for decades now, whereas train for English people was always regarded as something........embarrassing maybe?

Little example, I recently took the train from Winchester to Portsmouth, and I had to travel in "something" which I don't know at the time, was called a train. This thing had plenty of doors that are not locked when travelling, and to open your door basically you have to open the window, and reach the handle from the outside with your arm!!! This stuff was horrible, noisy, not comfortable, slow and didn't look safe at all.
You won't find such garbage in France for sure.

I can hardly imagine people seriously stating that British train are better than French ones only because no major crash happened recently.

I agree some trains are really nice looking and comfortable (virgin ones), and that the network is improving quickly, but you had so much to catch up compared to French or Germans trains/network.

The network remains still slow compared to TGV lines that are still expanding day by day in France, as I believe only a portion of the Eurostar line is a high speed track isn't it?I don't think it would be correct to term our railways as have been always embarassing, infact its only been a recent phenomena from the 1970's (when the Beeching Axe took its toll) up to the late 1990's (where infrastructure was literally crumbling away after years of under-investment).

Also your example can't have been recent - because the trains you talk about (ie slam door trains) were replaced by Siemens Desiro Class 450's which can reach speeds 100mph (160kph) on the non-intercity routes. I know this because:
a) I've been living in Portsmouth for the last three years and actually got the chance to ride one of the last slam-door trains in 2003.
b) I've taken the Portsmouth-London Waterloo (via Basingstoke) route a few times and its Class 450's or in a rare case in early 2004 it was a Class 444.

The irony with the slam door trains was that boarding times were half that of the current rolling stock, simply because you had doors all over the place.

The point that I've made however is that such changes have been pretty rapid, the shift from old stock to new stock hasn't been patchy like it had been in the 90's, but across the board. The rapid introduction of thousands of carriages over the last five years is testament to the management of the railway infrastructure being drastically improved which has decreased accidents and delays and aided efficiency and cutting of costs while providing a better and more adaptable service. These changes are continuing, hence my positive outlook.

A comparison with football hooliganism ironically holds much ground with this debate. For many years, Britain was tarnished by racism and fighting at home and abroad...but we cleaned up our attitude and although there are a few problems, the situation is far better than it was say 10 years ago and infact many of our continental friends have a far more problems due to an over-reliance on targetting British fans rather than domestic fans (eg Ultras in Italy, racists in Spain, etc...).

The same was said of our economy, whereby after several decades of being the wealthiest country in Europe, we fell behind Italy, France and Germany post-1960. We became the sickman of Europe and everyone thought the gap would get larger as everyone else got richer and we got poorer. The reality today is that the tables have turned - Britain is now storming ahead as the likes of Italy, France and Germany are mirred in economic problems and feeble protectionist economies that hold back innovation and economic growth.

And infact I will agree that we lack an extensive inter-city HSR network, this country is again working to try and rectify this problem - maglev is an option and if we went for that, it would be the icing on the cake. I think someone once mentioned that Britain has more 100mph+ tracks than any other country, but I haven't seen a source for that.

Currently under the CTRL, Phase I is open. Phase II opens next year which will see Eurostars dive underneath London to pop out at the future Olympic site (and Stratford City) and terminate at London St Pancras.




yes its true that the stock on londons network is modern.. but the further away from london you go to (particularly on suburban rail) the worse it tends to getThe figure I showed previously was for all operators.

Rolling Stock Age by 2001 > 2005 = (Decrease in Rolling Stock Age over Period)
Long Distance Operators: 25.74 > 16.92 = -8.82
London & South East Operators: 20.51 > 14.29 = -6.22
Regional Operators: 17.61 > 15.67 = -1.94
ALL OPERATORS: 20.87 > 14.68 = -6.19

(Source: National Rail Trends 2004-05)

As you can see the greatest drop in rolling stock age was seen by long-distance operators, while the smallest was by regional operators. Note however though that it was the long-distance and London & SE operators that had the far older stock back in 2001 than the regional operators. Now all operators are in-line with average age of rolling stock (more rolling stock is coming online as disability acts are forcing even new 5 year old stock out of service, eg Junipers so the actual figure will decrease further). Either way the national average is one of the youngest of any nation.




No they're not. Japan's trains are universally good - not just the Shinkansen. Here again Japan's trains are better than Britain's or indeed any other systems in Europe.I disagree, it is the infrastructure that is far superior and not necessarily the actual rolling stock. Like I mentioned, congestion is bad on trains to the extent that there is no seating because the space is too valuable - that would never work in the UK simply because when we buy a ticket we im to get a seat (although we might not necessarily always get one). People in this country wouldn't pay to stand.

Hence while the trains themselves might not be too different (ie some are cleaner, but some don't have seats, etc...), it is the infrastructure which is what lets Britain down. Thankfully this is the area that has and continues to see the largest amount of investment efficient management and thoughtful planning.




Google hits? How twisted a criterion is that? Any Oxford company that employs 60-70thousand people? How come Arcadis (Arnhem) and Haskoning (Nijmegen, branch in Peterborough) as engineering and consultancy companies have many assignments in the UK whereas the counter for Oxford (and probably the entire UK) stands at nill. A WTC in Oxford? Insurance companies employing thousands in 87m office towers? Consulates? Are soldiers in Iraq prosecuted in Oxford like they are in Arnhem? How come last year's exhibits (Frida Kahlo, Joseph Beuys) in London that Nick Taylor plightfully advertised, were held in Arnhem at least 21 years earlier (both artists had already died at that mo'). I could make this as tedious as you'd want, only because of Justme drawing in that Oxford-London and Arnhem-Amsterdam train service, which he even didn't get from www.ns.nl
How come the UK's public transport has no comprehensible websites like www.9292ov.nl and www.ns.nl

I agree with Sweek that this has thread has gone silly but there's truth in what people might perceive as sillyness.

I find the planning of LU silly. In 2006 it is apparently impossible to dig out tubes in South-London. Aw, c'mon. Tunnels through the Alps and a bit of rock would then prove to be the problem in London

From experience: door-to-door public transport in Arnhem is quicker, smoother, quieter, cleaner and cheaper than in London. Experiences shared by at least dozens of Londoners residing in Arnhem. There's a total of 1-2000 britons here.

Oxford is arguably the best known university in the world and beyond that means little. Arnhem doesn't ring bell with you, well, so what. Transport is so much better, than even in a big metropole, so why should I care at all?

Justme picked Oxford and that's no use since there's trains and busses running from Arnhem, as Arnhem is the centre, to the suburbs and surrounding towns and villages. My last train to reach Velp leaves at 12.45, in the weekend extra services during the night, plus busses running at night.

A single bus trip is €1 for the entire city which as Nick Taylor duefully found out is a large one with scattered neighbourhoods. Plus it has 4 railway stations.

As for the travel from Presikhaaf: when you're in Presikhaaf and you need to be at the central station, you won't take the bus, you'd take the train from Presikhaaf. No use in comparing a service no one uses. I find these posts rather useless since I know my way around in both Arnhem and London and most, if not all of you, do not. Accept it or not but in Arnhem your shopping by using public transport simply takes up much less time. You can't argue with a watch.

With your seasonticket (Vitesse) you have free PT to and from matches. Near the Gelredome and at other places there are huge parking lots from which you also have free transport into the city. Arnhem is the #5 shopping city of NL by the way. From Arnhem the railway taxi to Velp is only €6 with a valid train ticket. There always was tailor cut transport. When house music was kicking off, trains ran from Arnhem to Amsterdam from 3.40 in the morning to bring home the Amsterdam party people after their fun in Arnhem.

The amount of platforms is irrelevant, to the opposite: again it adds to the travelling time when a small town with few services like Oxford has a zillion platforms.

My switch at Arnhem takes about 20 seconds. Trains arrive at either the same platform or sometimes even at the same side of a platform, oh how efficient: during your trip you walk to the head of the train and then you board onto the next one at the tail ... just 20 steps. Yes, you will find lesser switches. Those are the least to frequent.

What's the use of extra platforms with few trains running? 8-9 an hour at Oxford is nothing compared to Arnhem, or any other city in NL.

Nijmegen-Arnhem is at least 6 an hour alone. And there's another 7 services heading to Arnhem. A poor service in NL would mean twice an hour. In Velp I have only 2 trains to Arnhem but also some 12-15 bus services each hour. The trolley bus is now by far the quickest means of transport, the bike used to be fastest before. Dieren in the same municipality as Velp but further away with less busses already has 4 trains an hour. 16k village of little importance ...

And I should stress this, Arnhem is not the best connected at this moment. The grand works started in 1996 and should be finished around 2012, so in the NL, Arnhem does not count (yet) as a good hub at all but it's better than almost anywhere in The UK.

On the NL forum I actually do little else than fulminate against present and past governments because of the neglect for Arnhem. The first NL railway was Amsterdam-Haarlem, a testing track as it were, of only 10 miles. The first big track was Amsterdam-Utrecht-Arnhem. Maria Callas performed in Arnhem because by then it had a music hall (first of the nation) and a railway to reach Arnhem.

It's not like that Arnhem now is the most advanced. As a matter of fact, the railway company mentioned Arnhem to be the most likely location for delays. The co. published a guarantee that 80% would arrive with delays less than 5 minutes. Still: NL railways are the most punctual after Japan. In case of a delay, you will either have a touring bus instead, a refund or perhaps both

And at least you get your money back with delays in the NL ... As a regular custumer you're also entitled to days of entirely free transport around the country and to huge discounts.


PS Nick: blame the Bijlmer crash on the designer with Boeing. It was a technical failure of the airplane. Could happen to London as well. ElAl has flights to LDN I guess.

That railway track should have a gully or a ditch alongside to prevent a car or anything else from hobbling down onto the track. There was a similar accident near Arnhem yesterday. Two main differences: the railway track isn't being used as yet and the security levels were already estimated to be insufficient and that motorway will see major overhauls before freight trains start running the track. If there'd still be a crash, no trainpassenger would be killed as it's not a track for passenger trains.

While the major difference remains: NL traffic is a few times bigger than the UK's. Germany is exporter #1 and NL is only marginally smaller an exporter than the UK. And if you were to reason that the UK exports services rather than goods, well, sorry NL again easily beats UK per capita.

PS2 on that wild comparison to the fireworks explosion in Enschede. Let's do that very unwholesome fatality score then. Hillsborough anyone? I'm out.I'll answer your less crazed points....

I think the website that you'll be looking for is something like this:
http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/

Its not impossible, but it is far harder not because of rock but the absence of rock - its highly unstable for tunnel digging and hence very costly and time-consuming. I'm not sure though how that is silly planning....most tube lines were built decades ago, while most of the overground routes were built long before then.

Arnhem is around 50x smaller than London, so you can't really compare the two. I could for instance use a village with a cornershop next door - that doesn't mean that its more efficient than Arnhem or London, its just that the scale is far different.

Just because you might not know more about Oxford other than the university doesn't automatically mean that nothing else happens. The vast biotechnology sector in Europe is for instance concentrated on the Oxford-Cambridge Arc - that might be a sector that you can't grasp, but it exists, employs thousands in high-paying exclusive jobs and contributes significantly to the UK economy.

Actually by the looks of it Arnhem is an isolated city connected to other close towns and cities. Oxford is similar.

While it might cost €1 in small Arnhem, in London (far larger city), an adult bus ticket can cost €1.1.

So we should now blame the makers of the vehicle that went onto the railway and also the manufacturer of the train?

A vehicle driving onto the tracks in the Netherlands is just as possible.

Actually it had more than just a ditch (railways in the UK have this due to water-logging issues) as its raised. It still didn't stop the vehicle though and the only way you could have, is if you encased the entire motorway and railway lines in reinforced concrete boxes which would never happen because such an incident is so rare. Just as rare as a plane crash.

What do you mean that Netherlands traffic is several times larger? By number of rail journeys, Britain is second only to Germany (and will due to higher growth actually overtake Germany). By railway journeys per head of population, Britain was at 17.2, the Netherlands at 19, Germany at 20.5 and France at 15.7.

Brits made 1,030mn passenger journeys (all figures I should add exclude metro systems and other light rail systems). Germany on the other hand made 1,694.1mn, France 942.2mn and the Netherlands 309.8mn. If we were to include metro systems then that alone would lead to well over 2bn - that would be just under 2x more than all heavy rail journeys in the Netherlands, ie more heavy rail usage in Britain than in the Netherlands.

I'll take this time to point out that Britain's railways are also amongst the fastest growing in Europe (40.1% compared to 29.1% for France, 16.4% for Germany and -1.0% for the Netherlands in regards to passenger kms). Basically while Britain is experiencing a boom, the Netherlands is experiencing a decline. This is good news for Britain because it shows that the investment is paying off as more people shift to the railways more frequently, while the added revenue will spur on more developments, more stations, more lines, more trains and higher frequencies. The Netherlands will however have to struggle with declining ridership which could actually mean either higher ticket prices across the board or greater subsidisation by the Dutch taxpayer to bail out the struggling operator. Tough luck I presume ;)


Britain is very far behind. Services inbetween a 90k to a 180k city way up north in the least populated part of NL have very modern trains and regular services. Britain can only drink, sorry dream o(n)f that. In Arnhem I have more night trains than around LDN, cheaper taxis, more busses etc. You simply have no idea of so-called peripheral regions on the continent.

Britain is piss poor away from London. NL is sophisticated, even in areas like Fryslan and Groningen.
Britain isn't 6/7th in the world. Make that #50 or something. In smell it's the worst on the globe for starters. You don't even get fined for pissing in the street. Such a filthy country.:laugh:

Looks like someone is getting upset ;)


None of you actually reply to the mentions of companies in Arnhem. The economy around Arnhem is bigger than that of many Eu-member states. Latvia, Slovenia etc would all shrink in a comparison to the "Arnhem" metro. This province is around half of Denmark or Norway, Scotland whatever.Considering the size of the EU member states you listed, its not suprise that a whole swathe of cities and metros have larger economies. However I should note that according to Eurostat the entire Gelderland (ie Arnhem and everything else) has an economy of €48,746mn. Thats significantly smaller than Scotland (€130,492mn) or Denmark (€189,641). Even if you used the Oost Nederland you'd still end up with only €84,209mn.

Interestingly, London with a €298,657mn economy is around two thirds the size of the entire Netherlands economy. Factor in that the growth rate per capita is lower than that of London, then it could be feasible for the London economy (excluding metro area) could within a few years be larger than that of all of the Netherlands. If you include the metro area, then London is already larger than all of the Netherlands.

:laugh:

Also your example can't have been recent - because the trains you talk about (ie slam door trains) were replaced by Siemens Desiro Class 450's which can reach speeds 100mph (160kph) on the non-intercity routes. I know this because:
a) I've been living in Portsmouth for the last three years and actually got the chance to ride one of the last slam-door trains in 2003.
b) I've taken the Portsmouth-London Waterloo (via Basingstoke) route a few times and its Class 450's or in a rare case in early 2004 it was a Class 444.

The irony with the slam door trains was that boarding times were half that of the current rolling stock, simply because you had doors all over the place.

The point that I've made however is that such changes have been pretty rapid, the shift from old stock to new stock hasn't been patchy like it had been in the 90's, but across the board. The rapid introduction of thousands of carriages over the last five years is testament to the management of the railway infrastructure being drastically improved which has decreased accidents and delays and aided efficiency and cutting of costs while providing a better and more adaptable service. These changes are continuing, hence my positive outlook.


I'm sorry to disagree but I can assure you that this kind of train are still operating as I took it a year ago!! Anyway I'm going to Portsmouth this summer to grab my ferry, so I'll see if they've been replaced by proper ones.
To come back on the boarding time, something you forget to mention is people getting in the train through your door every time it stops, which is really annoying!!!

I'm sorry to disagree but I can assure you that this kind of train are still operating as I took it a year ago!! Anyway I'm going to Portsmouth this summer to grab my ferry, so I'll see if they've been replaced by proper ones.
To come back on the boarding time, something you forget to mention is people getting in the train through your door every time it stops, which is really annoying!!!Well they clearly aren't - because South-West don't use slam-door trains between Winchester and Portsmouth (and that is the train operator that you must have used). Infact the only usage of slam-door trains anywhere in the UK now are on heritage lines! I lived in Portsmouth and used the same route you used several times to know whether or not they were in use or not!

^ I think they kept one or two of the slam door trains until last year. I remember reading that they were all supposed to be replaced by 2004, but they extended the deadline for a year or something and one or two trains remained. Anyway, there was a news report last year that the last slam door train was finally replaced.

Basically Jutcho, consider yourself lucky to have travelled on one of these. Many people loved them and missed them when they finally went - which is why a few have been kept for heritage lines.

The reason you have to open the door from outside the window, is that if the latch for the door was on the inside, it would have been too easy to open accidentally as people sit right next to the doors.

I havn't seen one myself for more than 15 years, but I loved them when I did travel on them. Every seat had their own doors and access, it was great. Sure, people had to squeeze a bit past you, but this no different than any seats that face each other, and on modern trains, when they are packed, far more people have to squeeze past you when you're standing.


By the way. Just because something is old, doesn't mean it's bad. The Routemaster bus was kept in service for over 50 years and their loss is a great loss to London. Neraly everyone misses those buses! Hell, if the UK destroyed everything that was old, it would look like Houston. Now, do we want that? Some older trains were of bad design, others were loved.

^ "Lovely"? Are you sure? It doesn't look all that lovely from the photos posted by Nick..... ;)


it has a nice cemetary

childish :blahblah:
I never wrote a trolley is faster.

I specifically mentioned the door-to-door transport using trolley busses compared to that by tube.

It's simply a fact. At many tubestations it takes ages before you're outside, and it's only taking longer with more check-ups now.

:D From that national railways "website"

http://content.yieldmanager.com/2326/2595/52024670842dd0f925809a.gif

By Jove, is that really necessary? I can't even get info on London Waterloo - Arnhem; whereas on www.ns.nl.

A decline in NL :hilarious
Free wifi on 30 stations, highly accurate train services, several languages spoken on board, clean, and a frequency people in Oxford with only 8 trains an hour can only dream of.

:happy:

Just check these services, with no changes, check the amount of rush hour services. British railway services? :hilarious

http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/5584/nijm7gg.jpg (http://img152.imageshack.us/my.php?image=nijm7gg.jpg)

http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/8113/tiel6ro.jpg (http://img152.imageshack.us/my.php?image=tiel6ro.jpg)

http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/3853/edew5ge.jpg (http://img97.imageshack.us/my.php?image=edew5ge.jpg)

http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/6863/zutp4xe.jpg (http://img97.imageshack.us/my.php?image=zutp4xe.jpg)

http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/2073/doet1ys.jpg (http://img87.imageshack.us/my.php?image=doet1ys.jpg)

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/5766/emme5sr.jpg (http://img91.imageshack.us/my.php?image=emme5sr.jpg)

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/1890/ffm5tn.jpg (http://img91.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ffm5tn.jpg)

Great connection there with Tiel. :) One train two minutes after the other that does it in 38 minutes more time, after which you can wait for 58 minutes for the next one. So really, an hourly service.
The number of trains to Nijmegen is also going down as of next year because they still haven't doubled the tracks and those two can't handle it anymore. Don't forget that the service to Emmerich has just been cancelled completely, and that they were only running on Saturdays in the first place. Not sure why you showed that example?
And the number of ICE's is getting cut back all the time. Arnhem is also pretty much the worst station in Holland when it comes to delays.
Oxford - London and Arnhem Amsterdam both have about five trains an hour, same distance, yet the Oxford route is about 15 minutes faster.

Oxford - Reading: 5 an hour as well, 45 miles in 22-25 minutes.
Trains to Birmingham twice an hour, twice an hour to Worcester, three times an hour to Banbury... it's not that bad really.

And most tube stations are above ground. The ones underground are there because traffic above ground wouldn't be possible there. It's a busy city you know, ad it really doesn't take that long to use your oyster card and go down the escalator fastly, something you shouldn't try in our country because people don't stand on the right. :P

I never wrote a trolley is faster.

I specifically mentioned the door-to-door transport using trolley busses compared to that by tube.

It's simply a fact. At many tubestations it takes ages before you're outside, and it's only taking longer with more check-ups now.

What a load of rubbish.

For a start, the central London stations are underground, and underground transport in the central part of the city is far faster than road transport by a bus.

2nd, it still only takes a couple of minutes to walk to the exit from the platform in most stations. This short time is made up for by faster journey times.

3rd, as already pointed out, many of the suburban platforms are above ground anyway.

Your imagination really does make me laugh.

A thread that was originall about how French trains were all there cracked up to & how we found that hard to believe as we were always led to believe they were quite good & nows its turned into one man with a fixation about Arnhem rant against the rest.

Yes the Netherland has a good transport system & yes the UK's been massively underfunded for decades, hence why its not how we would like it to be which only now is improving- Just get over it :)

Just different services to avoid further delays and no cuts. Like Zutphen - Nijmegen will become Zutphen - Ede-Wageningen, or Amersfoort as it was before.

Works on a railway viaduct; demolition of the 1949 railway station and a fourth gate are the reasons for some drastic changes of the schedule but as the railways these days employ quite a bunch of mathematicians, I trust their proposals to be the most practical whilst Arnhem Central gets a new station.

The new Arnhem-Zuid station will be upgraded with the extension of a trolley bus service and several extra train stops in the rush hour. Obviously there will be no cut of services between Nijmegen and Arnhem. Did you ever travel on those trains? They're packed to the fullest. This is just a bunch of towns around 2 cities with well over 750 thousand. Sooner to be compared with Brum than with "Coevorden".

There is already an extra track being constructed, to be halted in Elst for the time being. You wisely don't mention the heap of trains that arrive at Arnhem around 8.45. Oxford simply doesn't compare, not just by a bit.

The service to Emmerich is to be extended rather than cancelled actually, and well this one train from Tiel which leaves 2 minutes later after a good service, isn't really worth mentioning. It's how computers work, they give you all options.

You don't get it, and besides you're wrong. The Second Chamber objects to many of the changes proposed by the railways and it has the last say in train transport, unlike the entirely privately run services of England where people have no say at all.

After midnight, in the weekend there are services FROM Arnhem to surrounding cities, towns and villages. That's why you shouldn't go by this silly comparison that Justme (what does he know?) drew. Arnhem is an Amsterdam in its own right. I gave you the example of the Luxor house train for clubbers that needed to go back to Amsterdam FROM Arnhem.

Right now, Arnhem has trains leaving for Nijmegen, Zutphen and Doetinchem around 2.30 in the weekend. London doesn't even have trains running that late, let alone Oxford. And busses leaving Arnhem as well ... On working days, last trains leave inbetween 0.40 and 1.30 to these destinations, and when I'd arrive in Arnhem with no connection remaining I'd still have a train taxi at €6 - frontdoor delivery :happy:

Twice an hour from Oxvorden looks pretty pathetic compared to services as those shown above, doesn't it? That's trains leaving for Arnhem every five or ten minutes. Around many parts of the NL you can just walk up to a busstop, get to the station and take the next train. You'd never have to wait for hours like in so many parts of Britain.

It's no wonder that you can find many articles on the websites of The Guardian and The Independent on schemes for traffic, designed and thought out by Netherlands companies and municipalities, and which are now being copied around Britain. Even the way how roads are being redesigned is an insight that England reluctantly copies from the NL. We also copy quite some from Denmark to be honest. In Velp streets have sensors and the computer programme running the traffic lights is designed to give priority to bikers. Designed by a Danish company. And it works. When you cycle towards a junction and there's less than 3 cars approaching from the same direction as well, it's the one biker who gets priority. Still we have loads of numbheads driving SUVs though. But when you fine them when they go wrong, they'll respect the red traffic light next time.

Right now, Arnhem has trains leaving for Nijmegen, Zutphen and Doetinchem around 2.30 in the weekend. London doesn't even have trains running that late, let alone Oxford. And busses leaving Arnhem as well ... On working days, last trains leave inbetween 0.40 and 1.30 to these destinations, and when I'd arrive in Arnhem with no connection remaining I'd still have a train taxi at €6 - frontdoor delivery :happy:


Again, talking total rubbish. London doesn't have trains at 2:30am. You live in your own fantasy world.

London to St. Albans: Trains, trains leaving at 2am, 3am, 4am...
http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en?ld=212.55&seqnr=3&ident=j6.01442113.1151066762&REQ0HafasScrollDir=1

What fantasy world do you live in?

Maybe you should read "Dienstregeling 2007" and see what they are actually doing? http://www.rover.nl/nieuws/berichten/ber060622bijl1.pdf

And London does have services running at night. Thameslink for example, and overnight sleepers all the way to Scotland.

And no, this is what Syntus is doing on the Emmerich service:

Datum: 12-06-2006
Treindienst Arnhem-Emmerich stopt per 1 juli 2006
Op 1 juli a.s. komt er een eind aan de weekendtrein tussen Arnhem en Emmerich. Dit heeft het College van Bestuur van de Stadsregio Arnhem Nijmegen (KAN) besloten. Er zijn te weinig reizigers die gebruik maken van de treindienst. In het afgelopen half jaar lag de top in het paasweekend, toen er niet twee, maar drie dagen gereden is en er in totaal 89 mensen meereden. Gerekend werd gemiddeld op 270 reizigers per weekend. Dit was niet de enige reden voor het college om een punt achter de weekendtrein te zetten. Er zou ook op korte termijn flink geïnvesteerd moeten worden om de capaciteit op het baanvak te verbeteren en aan alle veiligheidsnormen te voldoen. Dat is mede gezien de geringe belangstelling niet haalbaar.

De weekendtrein tussen Arnhem en Emmerich, die door Syntus werd verzorgd, heeft ongeveer een half jaar gereden. Ondanks de nodige publiciteit zijn er weinig reizigers die op de trein stapten.
Tot 1 juli a.s. verzorgt Syntus de verbinding met bussen zodat reizigers naar behoren op de hoogte kunnen worden gesteld van het beëindigen van deze OV-dienst.
In bijgaande folder vindt u de busdienstregeling voor de laatste 2 weekenden.

www.syntus.nl, right on their front page.

Maybe you should at least check your facts before making assumptions.

Londonlad; it's not a fixation. It struck me how slow traffic in big cities has become, and Arnhem also went through that stage whilst admittedly it doesn't compare. I used the transport time around Arnhem to indicate how much of public transport around many metropoles is being handled stupidly. Including LDN as I know LDN much better than most LDNers know any place on the continent.

And, sorry, I simply can't get over that underachievement. I paid for my rides and around Britain my rides have the been far the worst. I simply don't accept such piss poor services. It's 2006 and British railways still think they have Thatcher backing their fumbling.

:hilarious


So, justme, you're comparing one service to Saint Albans from London to services from Arnhem, a city you've only shown complete disrespect of :laugh:

Do remember that when I tried to toss in an Arnhem - London comparison, you all went completely wild. Now that you're checking these very same comparisons, you don't even realize that Arnhem is about a fifth or tenth the size of London, and you still come up with these petty facts of London transport. I was merely using Arnhem as an example.

O, how funny.

Sweek, allow me to stress once again. What you'd find on rover.nl is not the blueprint for rules. These complaints have a much farther stretch than any organisation in Britain would ever reach at present. You shouldn't read messages on rover.nl as being the definitive answer. It's not an autocracy around here, unlike Britain; passengers complain, contact their local politicians and ultimately, the shared wisdom of both passengers and onlookers - no matter the position they hold - will lead to the best solution. Hence why this very busy little country offers solutions. The NL receive no solutions or anything remotely similar from Britain.

You should at least look at who actually wrote it, you know. This is not a document by Rover, but by the National Railways. It's also a new and revised version after the revisions made after complaints from the state and Rover, and dates to june 21st. You can expect some minar changes, but nothing much.

And I seem to be living in some kind of utopia according to you! How nice! Too bad I don't really notice that in the Netherlands myself.

Again, it's not the railways who have the last say but the Second Chamber. If you'd care about it, FD, volkskrant and NRC all have extensive reports on what the railways suggest - which ultimately not builds the final word.

As a further illustration of the extent of power by the people: the staff of the railway company has been sacked before. Holding a high position with Netherlands Railways simply doesn't compare to holding the equal position in England or Britain. There aren't any underachievers sacked in England at all, in the Netherlands the bosses in charge of the railways have been sacked. Mark the difference (on top of all of those which I previously mentioned).

Londonlad; it's not a fixation. It struck me how slow traffic in big cities has become, and Arnhem also went through that stage whilst admittedly it doesn't compare. I used the transport time around Arnhem to indicate how much of public transport around many metropoles is being handled stupidly. Including LDN as I know LDN much better than most LDNers know any place on the continent.

And, sorry, I simply can't get over that underachievement. I paid for my rides and around Britain my rides have the been far the worst. I simply don't accept such piss poor services. It's 2006 and British railways still think they have Thatcher backing their fumbling.

Yes but you miss my point, this thread has been totally highjacked- Yes I know the Netherlands has good transport connections as I have in-laws over there. As I said it was underhand government policy for decades to underfund public transport which is only now being reversed- Theres a lot of investment going into transport now that will pay of in the middle & long term. The UK has some catching up to do but its not as bad as made out.

Arnhem's a shit town and its' transport system is even shitter. ;)

It would appear that you failed to actually look at the website. Had you clicked on 'Stations & Destinations', gone to Station Facilities and typed in London Waterloo you would have got this:
http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/stations/WAT.html

Had you gone back to the front page you could check journeys across the entire rail network, while putting in London Waterloo in the Live Departures & Arrivals section would have provided you an up-to-date live account of all arrivals and departures to London Waterloo:
http://www.livedepartureboards.co.uk/ldb/sumdep.aspx?T=WAT

Funny how you go on about nationalrail.co.uk, when ns.nl provides neither!

I'd add that GNER have wifi on their trains, while Virgin are implementing the service, while Eurostar are trialing the service. Eventually by 2012, swathes of commuter lines could have wifi. I'm unsure how many stations have wifi.




ARNHEM
Arnhem - Nijmegen
0805 0815 0822 0829 0835 0845 0852 0859

Arnhem - Ede-Wageningen
0808 0812 0823 0838 0842 0853

Arnhem - Zutphen
0800 0811 0830 0841

Arnhem - Doetinchem
0805 0835

Arnhem - Tiel
0819

Arnhem - Emmerich
0801

TOTAL: 22tph (0800-0859)[b] includes all stopping and express services as according to timetables from ns.nl


[b]OXFORD
Oxford - Reading
0803 0815 0830 0838 0843 0856

Oxford - Banbury
0802 0834

Oxford - Worcester
0805 0848

TOTAL: 10tph (0800-0859)

Yet like I've noted, Oxford isn't an important international rail corridor. Its not even an important intercity railway line. Now a more interesting comparison would be with a railway hub like Reading:


READING
Reading - London Paddington
0801 0808 0809 0815 0821 0824 0829 0834 0839 0846

Reading - Oxford
0800 0805 0818 0827 0835 0852 0857

Reading - Swindon
0811 0826 0841 0847 0856

Reading - Wokingham
0804 0812 0820 0834 0842

Reading - Twyford
0808 0820 0830 0836

Reading - Basingstoke
0808 0838

Reading - Newbury
0805 0835

TOTAL: 35tph (0800-0859)


Ouch, not even an international rail corridor, but Reading offers nearly 2x the rush-hour services. Shall we compare something like Amsterdam Centraal to Clapham Junction?

I think you'll find that Britains railways aren't entirely private run. The TOC companies only lease the trains and stations, while Network Rail (the government company) leases out stations, maintains the largest stations and operates the actual infrastructure (rails, signals, etc...).

Surely some people in the Netherlands Railways should be sacked, what with the Netherlands railways seeing a 8.5% decline in passenger journeys and a 1% decline in passenger km (in comparison London saw gowth of 38.1%and 40.1% respectively - indicating the strong resurgence of Britain's railways and) possibly showing the decline of the Dutch Railways? Afterally falling passengers when the Netherlands is actually seeing its population grow must be troubling for you Bikkel. ;)

Even more interesting is the fact that in all of the Netherlands there are just over 400 heavy rail stations. Thats less than the total number of heavy rail stations in London (600 within London, 1,200 in the metro area)!

While although the entire Netherlands has 2,808km of route km track, London and its metro has close to 5,000km (despite the Netherlands having roughly as large a population but double the land area)!


And to top things off, I only just found out that in November 3rd, last year in Wijhe a train collided with a vehicle which had no barrier between the road and the intercity tracks! Only one person died (a truck driver who got stuck on the tracks) and the intercity train was fortunately not travelling at full speed as seen at Selby (and also a lack of a freight train coming in the opposite direction); but it turned out that although there were flashing lights to indicate that a train was approaching to all road traffic, there was a complete lack of barriers (mandatory at all crossings in Britain).....so much for all that safety and excellent planning talk!

http://www.netherlandsrailways.co.uk/Images/foto2006accident1.jpg

http://www.netherlandsrailways.co.uk/Images/foto2007accident2.jpg

So much for that idea that something like Selby couldn't happen on the Dutch railways....because it already has and could very well happen again in the near future! Graffitti to match the trains as well!

Cucumber man simply won't give up

bikkel suck my nippel

I also love the looks of the Gatwick Express:

http://www.paulpettitt-photographs.co.uk/460007_Gatwick_Express_Salf.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/Trains/GatwickExpress.jpg

Is there still the possibility of that being scrapped in favour of higher frequency on the Brighton-London line?

Arnhem's a shit town and its' transport system is even shitter. ;)

Almost every Holland town is completely shite....what a discartable country, my God...
I find Englands rail-transport system fascinating...specially the way old infrastructure survives beneath layers of new technology....the old stations have a kind of patina that make sensible people very nostalgic!
Wouldn`t you prefer a termini like Paddington over a new anodin one like Waterloo Eurostar?

Is there still the possibility of that being scrapped in favour of higher frequency on the Brighton-London line?Not scrapped, just re-used for a Brighton - Gatwick Airport - London Victoria service. Bit annoying considering the Gatwick Express is the worlds first and longest running airport express rail service.




Where has Bikkel run off to now?

People like Bikkel make me feel ashamed of my country. I geuss there are people like that everywhere tho'.

And the Dutch railwaysystem really isn't that great. But in general the trains are really comfortable (if you have a place to sit that is :P), quiet and reasonably fast with trains even at night between the largest cities of the country. Plus as a student I can travel with them for free during weekdays :).

About Arnhem: It's a nice city I think, but when I went to a concert in Arnhem a while back I had to leave halfway through to catch the last train to Amsterdam :( That sucked.

A question about the English railways: do most trains travel at 200kmph? It's a shame trains only go at 140 over here (although I know new tracks between Amsterdam and Utrecht will be able to allow 200kmph).

I was in Bremen at the weekend, travelled from Hamburg on a regional train and to Hannover after,both were 6 carriage double deck affairs with a whole carriage of first class upstairs and cycling space downstairs, vending machines, tv's, lots of space, fast, quiet, clean.... if only we had these sort of trains linking our regional cities.

People like Bikkel make me feel ashamed of my country. I geuss there are people like that everywhere tho'.

And the Dutch railwaysystem really isn't that great. But in general the trains are really comfortable (if you have a place to sit that is :P), quiet and reasonably fast with trains even at night between the largest cities of the country. Plus as a student I can travel with them for free during weekdays :).

About Arnhem: It's a nice city I think, but when I went to a concert in Arnhem a while back I had to leave halfway through to catch the last train to Amsterdam :( That sucked.

A question about the English railways: do most trains travel at 200kmph? It's a shame trains only go at 140 over here (although I know new tracks between Amsterdam and Utrecht will be able to allow 200kmph).

Don't worry about him, every country has them and they're just idiots.

Most of us here also appreciate the excellent services available in the Netherlands and admire the country for many reasons.

There's nothing better than a good old fashion England-France war!

This thread is hilarious!
Just love it :applause:

Where can I find that cucumber discussion? :rofl:

People like Bikkel make me feel ashamed of my country. I geuss there are people like that everywhere tho'.

And the Dutch railwaysystem really isn't that great. But in general the trains are really comfortable (if you have a place to sit that is :P), quiet and reasonably fast with trains even at night between the largest cities of the country. Plus as a student I can travel with them for free during weekdays :).

About Arnhem: It's a nice city I think, but when I went to a concert in Arnhem a while back I had to leave halfway through to catch the last train to Amsterdam :( That sucked.

A question about the English railways: do most trains travel at 200kmph? It's a shame trains only go at 140 over here (although I know new tracks between Amsterdam and Utrecht will be able to allow 200kmph).
The railway system in NL is the busiest ànd the most punctual. Trains can ride much faster but risk calculation (ask anyone working for an international insurance company) is on a superior level in the NL and prevents speeding up. Britain is honestly piss poor. It's not that I derive any pleasure from this; it's an embarrassing fact.

And Amsterdam is a shithole. The first music hall was in Arnhem anyhow. When you're going to a music concert in Arnhem just don't expect a hub to suburb Amsterdam. There was a hub in the heyday of house music but their own clogs decided otherwise.

O, I was on holiday. It's what we have whilst you get blind drunk and have a weaky wank.

None of you have actually argued against my findings that the tube isn't much of a quick and smooth mean of transport.

How come?

Have you run out of arguements and are you too keen to bring back the cucumber impoverement of Britain?

Ultimately, only with the British Movement and similar monkey taylor businesses you would hear voices that would put infrastructure in England on top.

What's with those 9 million of litres of water that get wasted in England each day? Even the prestigious Wimbledon tournament is affected by England's failure.

^^^^^^

What a sad bloke- goes on holiday ( what was it a train tour of Arnhem??) & the first thing he does when he gets back is check this thread so he can start off with antagonistic comments again.

^^^^^^

What a sad bloke- goes on holiday ( what was it a train tour of Arnhem??) & the first thing he does when he gets back is check this thread so he can start off with antagonistic comments again.

I bet those poor sods that have to work with him were chuffed while he was away on holiday ;)

This thread has now provided the funniest thing I've read yet on this forum:

'O, I was on holiday. It's what we have whilst you get blind drunk and have a weaky wank.'

Back to work, gentlemen.

^^^^^^

What a sad bloke- goes on holiday ( what was it a train tour of Arnhem??) & the first thing he does when he gets back is check this thread so he can start off with antagonistic comments again.
No, love. I've been to England dozens if not hundreds of times. Family, friends. The worst services in my 35 years of travelling by train throughout what builds the EU are those in England.
I bet most of you silly twats don't even know what trains in NL, Belgium, France or Germany look like. Let alone what it is to have safe and regular train services for decades.
Even Arnhem trolley busses provide faster door-to-door transport than London - pointed out to me by a Londoner actually.
OK, go on, enjoy your misplaced banter and then just improve your pathetic public transport. Speak again in ten years time, shall we?

Bikkel
COMPLETE IDIOT


Yeah let's just leave it at that.

No, love. I've been to England dozens if not hundreds of times. Family, friends. The worst services in my 35 years of travelling by train throughout what builds the EU are those in England.
I bet most of you silly twats don't even know what trains in NL, Belgium, France or Germany look like. Let alone what it is to have safe and regular train services for decades.
Even Arnhem trolley busses provide faster door-to-door transport than London - pointed out to me by a Londoner actually.
OK, go on, enjoy your misplaced banter and then just improve your pathetic public transport. Speak again in ten years time, shall we?I think you'd better stick to this kind of vague proclomation of superiority based on zero supporting evidence - because every time you do make a reference to anything extant and specific in the real world you get proven wrong by the sour facts!! :laugh:

:laugh:

I posted time tables and no one came up with a conclusive answer that might have put British Railways just above Latvia's.

If you really think British Railways - or any of its privatised branches - are of any good, you will win the Daft Idiot Award.

The facts that trolley busses provide quicker transport than the tube were actually hinted at me by former Londoners now living in Arnhem :laugh:

Looking forward to further examples of complete ignorance :hilarious

Look, you numb freaks; the trolley bus and the tube share a same top speed. With the tube you need to go down and up. One has to be really poor at arithmetics not to understand why a trolley bus would offer the faster connection. It travels overground at the same speed and drops you off where you need to be without climbing up and going down at a tube station.

Sour facts, eh? :laugh:

Almost every Holland town is completely shite....what a discartable country, my God...
I find Englands rail-transport system fascinating...specially the way old infrastructure survives beneath layers of new technology....the old stations have a kind of patina that make sensible people very nostalgic!
Wouldn`t you prefer a termini like Paddington over a new anodin one like Waterloo Eurostar?
:laugh:

Yeah, like 30 railway stations in NL offer free wifi which is only available in London's financial district or NY's Central Park. You're just an extremely misinformed grumpy little emigrant.

Just for your information: NL Railways are the busiest ÀND the most punctual in Europe. Shite towns? Well, at least social housing is the best in the world and the poorest people live the best lives. Arnhem can't be shyte with those trolley busses that bring you to your destination quicker than London's tube :laugh:

Just how come so many schemes from the Netherlands are now being implemented in England? Obviously because these NL schemes are shyte and of course England loves shyte.

Bikkel that's not true. A trolleybus wont neccesarily take you to where you want to be and if you are implying that it's better because there are more stops and places to get off and on from than that means it has to stop more frequently. The tube combined with buses does a good job of getting you around. As for trains outside of London, I agree they're pretty shit in comparison to many countries.

Look, the trolley bus does take you where you need to be. The rule in Arnhem and its neighbouring towns and villages - the total being around 10-15% of London - is that there is a stop every 400 metres or less; overground; next to where you need to be.

It's not really the Arnhem trolley versus the London tube but rather overground streetlevel public transport versus underground public transport.

:laugh:

I posted time tables and no one came up with a conclusive answer that might have put British Railways just above Latvia's.

If you really think British Railways - or any of its privatised branches - are of any good, you will win the Daft Idiot Award.

The facts that trolley busses provide quicker transport than the tube were actually hinted at me by former Londoners now living in Arnhem :laugh:

Looking forward to further examples of complete ignorance :hilarious

Look, you numb freaks; the trolley bus and the tube share a same top speed. With the tube you need to go down and up. One has to be really poor at arithmetics not to understand why a trolley bus would offer the faster connection. It travels overground at the same speed and drops you off where you need to be without climbing up and going down at a tube station.

Sour facts, eh? :laugh:

The fact you still claim this shows how your brain works. You have never came close to proving that. The real fact is, is that trolley buses are still just buses, and in the city center they are affected by traffic. The tube is not.

If you really insist, please show timetables for these bus lines. Post them here!

The fact you still claim this shows how your brain works. You have never came close to proving that. The real fact is, is that trolley buses are still just buses, and in the city center they are affected by traffic. The tube is not.

If you really insist, please show timetables for these bus lines. Post them here!
Maybe we should tell them that I posted one already and that the average speed was about half of the tube's average speed? No faster boarding is going to cover up for that. The trolleybus network isn't that big/complex and not that frequent either.

Also the Netherlands doesn't have the most punctual system in Europe at all. Switzerland, Belgium, Sweden and quite a few others beat it.

PS: The hotspots aren't free at all, I don't know where you keep getting this stuff. I can't link directly but go to ns.nl and search for "hotspots" in the 'vraag/antwoord' thingy, and you'll see what I mean.
Have a look at Sweden for a country with hotspots on most stations, and on the high speed trains themselves as well!

Social housing the best in the world... have you looked at the waiting lists? And the amount that's being built? And again, you're bringing up something completely irrevelevant here. I can just as well start to argue that England produces the best comedy in the world for all that matter.

:laugh:

I posted time tables and no one came up with a conclusive answer that might have put British Railways just above Latvia's.

If you really think British Railways - or any of its privatised branches - are of any good, you will win the Daft Idiot Award.

The facts that trolley busses provide quicker transport than the tube were actually hinted at me by former Londoners now living in Arnhem :laugh:

Looking forward to further examples of complete ignorance :hilarious

Look, you numb freaks; the trolley bus and the tube share a same top speed. With the tube you need to go down and up. One has to be really poor at arithmetics not to understand why a trolley bus would offer the faster connection. It travels overground at the same speed and drops you off where you need to be without climbing up and going down at a tube station.

Sour facts, eh? :laugh:What planet are you living on? Look back at this thread. Whenever you produced timetables, Nick or Justme produced comparable timetables in Britain, and proved your ludicrous claims to be 100% wrong. I myself produced the stats proving that the Tube has a much faster top speed and average speed than your Arnhem trolleybus (Arnhem trolleybus' average sped is 19km/h to the Tube's 33km/h - rising to 39.4km/h on the Victoria Line). You have been proven wrong by the sour facts at every stage. How you can deny the manifest contents of this thread is beyond me!! :laugh:

Look, the trolley bus does take you where you need to be. The rule in Arnhem and its neighbouring towns and villages - the total being around 10-15% of London - is that there is a stop every 400 metres or less; overground; next to where you need to be.

It's not really the Arnhem trolley versus the London tube but rather overground streetlevel public transport versus underground public transport.

Which means that they stop more frequently and are thus slower than the tube. It's not rocket science.

Monkey:
Nick didn't include all trains from Doetinchem, Frankfurt. Trains depart each 15 minutes during the rush hour from Doetinchem for example. And still in Nick's port it reads: Oxford 10 trains, Arnhem 22. That's quite a defeat, eh? He draws in Reading, well shall I drag in Utrecht then :laugh:

Yes, JDRS:
More stops, hence why you reach your destiny quicker by foot when using public transport. Trolley busses are powerful around here. What you call guided buslanes has no exact equivalent around here but there are parts of the routes that trolley busses use which are similar. The bus speeds up (70-80km/h). One of the reasons as to why the Gelredome is so successful is because of the trolley bus transport. Alas, we get all those crap artists like Madonna, U2 and Radiohead - though in the case of the latter Asian Dub Foundation was a good support act.

Surely some people in the Netherlands Railways should be sacked, what with the Netherlands railways seeing a 8.5% decline in passenger journeys and a 1% decline in passenger km (in comparison London saw gowth of 38.1%and 40.1% respectively - indicating the strong resurgence of Britain's railways and) possibly showing the decline of the Dutch Railways? Afterally falling passengers when the Netherlands is actually seeing its population grow must be troubling for you Bikkel.

:hilarious
Yes, the president of the railways got sacked. Good, eh?

I don't know where you got your figures from but they are incorrect. Maybe we just travelled less miles as we have less platforms now closer to one's destination? I bet you never thought of that :laugh:

Look, with 10 trains an hour why on earth would Oxford have so many platforms?? I'm not surprised the Netherlands is way ahead of Britain in terms of intelligence :laugh:

As a consumer, how much of a say do you have in how your railways are being run? In NL, the railways have been compelled to do what consumers want, via the second chamber and amendments forced on the Secretary of Transport.

Lastly yet late: someone posted the timetable for a bus trip from Presikhaaf to Arnhem Central Station. Well, Presikhaaf is a railway stop. No need to take a bus ...

That's quite a defeat, eh?Thy only defeat here has been yours - humiliating, recurrent, and enjoyable. :)

That's odd, 22-10 is not a defeat in your book? And do you get a refund with delays like we do? No, you don't.
Love putting you down by the way :laugh:
You desrve so.

^ But you never put me down because you're always wrong. Always! You have been proven wrong repeatedly on this thread by several forumers. For you it has been humiliating. For everyone else it has been enjoyable. :)

The people you refer to are wrong, no matter how many they are :laugh:
Just prove me that connections in the UK are better and more smooth than in NL. Just prove, what former Londoners now residing in Arnhem have found out after using the trolley busses, was wrong :laugh:

Ernst & Young recently proved my right again. The UK isn't getting any richer. The average household has less to spend than before :laugh: Obviously you won't post that survey. Your entire existence on SSC depends on stupid patriotism.

^ So the UK isn't getting richer is it? So how come the UK has some of the highest growth rates in Europe? The FT published an article showing that Britain's growth rate in the last decade has matched that of the United States - and is far ahead of the western European average. Once again you widen the debate. Once again you are proven wrong by the sour facts. :)

Tell me something Bikkel. Were you born a loser or did you have to work at it? ;) :laugh:

Nick didn't include all trains from Doetinchem, Frankfurt. Trains depart each 15 minutes during the rush hour from Doetinchem for example. And still in Nick's port it reads: Oxford 10 trains, Arnhem 22. That's quite a defeat, eh? He draws in Reading, well shall I drag in Utrecht thenUnfortunately I did, and going by the timetable dates of my analysis I included the 0805 and 0835 Doetinchem services leaving from platform 9B and arriving at platform 3. So no they don't leave every 15mins at rush-hour. You could be right and there might very well be trains every 15mins....but that isn't what the Dutch Railways website is telling me and I think I'll take them a bit more seriously than you. ;)

How is it a defeat - Oxford isn't a comparable convergence of railway lines like Arnhem, Reading however is and both are relatively the same size.

You could bring in Utrecht, but Urecht has a population of 282,000, compared to Reading with its popuation of 144,000; so technically as its a settlement with a population nearly double that of Reading it should have twice as many rail services.....


UTRECHT
Utrecht - Arnhem
0803 0806 0820 0833 0842 0850

Utrecht - Gouda
0801 0804 0813 0831 0834

Utrecht - Amsterdam
0802 0816 0832 0846

Utrecht - Hilversum
0814 0824 0844 0854

Utrecht - Breukelen
0806 0836

Utrecht - Geldermalsen
0823 0853

Utrecht - Rotterdam
0819 0849

Utrecht - Veenendaal
0823 0852

TOTAL: 27tph (0800-0859)


READING
Reading - London Paddington
0801 0808 0809 0815 0821 0824 0829 0834 0839 0846

Reading - Oxford
0800 0805 0818 0827 0835 0852 0857

Reading - Swindon
0811 0826 0841 0847 0856

Reading - Wokingham
0804 0812 0820 0834 0842

Reading - Twyford
0808 0820 0830 0836

Reading - Basingstoke
0808 0838

Reading - Newbury
0805 0835

TOTAL: 35tph (0800-0859)


....Obviously not, despite Reading have nearly half the population of Utrecht, Reading has 8 more services during the 0800-0859 rush hour period.

So much for dragging Utrecht in, it went out the backdoor in shame. Want to bring Amsterdam and :laugh:




I don't know where you got your figures from but they are incorrect. Maybe we just travelled less miles as we have less platforms now closer to one's destination? I bet you never thought of thatThe figures are based on a report by the ATOC from information collected by the International Union of Railways.

So over the last 10 years the entire Dutch railway network has seen platorms shifted to account for the decreased figure in passenger km? :laugh:

By the way in 2003, the average passenger length in km was:
Netherlands: 45.9
UK: 40.1

:laugh:




Look, with 10 trains an hour why on earth would Oxford have so many platforms?? I'm not surprised the Netherlands is way ahead of Britain in terms of intelligenceKeep telling yourself that! :laugh:

Talk about being destroyed.

Bikkel- stop being a knob- You dont like the UK- fair enough - this thread if u remember was originally pointed out was about a report that french trains were not as great as we assumed. We all agreed the UK train system was behind most of Europe due to decades of underinvestment & that it was gradually getting better- You have then , being the sad bloke taht you are spent the last few weeks banging on about Arnhem & its trolley buses - no body gives a shite about your beloved trolleybuses in arnhem & im sure most people in the netherlands dont give a toss about them either.

And now your digging up wrong statistics on the UK economy (whats that got to do with trains or trolleybuses in Arnehem??).

Get a life or why not start a thread on the dutch forums about the wonderful trolley buses of Arnhem on the dutch forums.

Nobody seems to really like him on the Dutch forums either I'm afraid. :(

I thought London was planning Trolley buses, Trams, Cross Rail, New Olympic Trains and a whole host of other stuff - as part of it's intergrated transport vision.

http://www.lcacc.org/access/index.html#Bridges

Thames Gateway Transit

http://www.lcacc.org/access/access25.jpg

Transport for London (TfL) have two such schemes of interest to the Airport. Together they are know as the Thames Gateway Transit

(a) East London Transit
Using state of the art buses or trolley buses with their own road space, or with priority over other traffic, this project would link the main town centres in Barking, Ilford and Romford and also connect National Rail, Underground and DLR stations. There is the prospect the new system will in due course include a link between Barking and the DLR at Gallions Reach and the plans in a TfL 2001 consultation paper on the project show a possible onward link to the Airport.

At the time of the 2001 consultation airport staff surveys showed that slightly more than half of those employed at the Airport came to work by car and that a large percentage live to the east of the Airport from where public transport links to the Airport are generally poor. For this reason the Consultative Committee, following its January 2002 meeting, told the Mayor they strongly support the project which should include the suggested link from Gallions Reach via North Woolwich and Silvertown to the Airport.

The project is to be implemented in to phases:

Phase One will run from Ilford to Dagenham Dock via Barking town centre and the Thames View Estate. Detailed design is underway. Formal consultation is planned for early 2006 with construction starting early in 2007 with completion later that year. The new route is expected to carry four million passengers in the first year of operation.

Phase Two will run from Barking to Gallions Reach. Phase Two is expected to be operational by 2012, providing a link to the Greenwich Waterfront Transit scheme via the Thames Gateway Bridge. TfL ran a consultation exercise on the route of Phase Two in mid-November 2005

(b) Greenwich Waterfront Transit
This project for a segregated busway is being developed in phases:

Phase One: between Abbey Wood Station, Thamesmead Town Centre and Woolwich Ferry Roundabout

Phase Two: from Woolwich Ferry Roundabout to North Greenwich Station

Phase Three: from North Greenwich Station to Greenwich Town Centre

There is more information about the GWT project, and a map, on TfL's Website

The proposed service would be designed to integrate with train, underground and DLR networks while local bus services would be revised to fit in with the transit scheme. Important to the Airport would be an interchange with the proposed DLR Station at Woolwich Arsenal. This would put the Airport no more than one interchange away from all stops on the Transit. It is thus very important that the interchange between the two schemes is very good and this is an important factor in the consideration of alternative alignments for the Transit through Woolwich Town Centre

On 13 September 2005, the London Borough of Greenwich endorsed TfL's recommendation for a route in West Thamesmead via Western Way and Pettman Crescent. Their decision protects this section of the GWT route as part of local planning policy.

It is proposed that the East London and Greenwich Waterfront schemes should be linked via the Thames Gateway Bridge.

http://www.tbus.org.uk/tbus2320neu.jpg

Here's another site

http://www.tbus.org.uk/green.htm

Proposed London Routes

http://www.tbus.org.uk/routes.htm

http://www.tbus.org.uk/diagramatic%204.jpg

http://www.tbus.org.uk/5min%20map2.jpg

http://www.tbus.org.uk/civis7.jpg

Nobody seems to really like him on the Dutch forums either I'm afraid. :(

:rofl: I'm not surprised.

you know, I have so much respect for the Netherlands, and this idiot certainly won't sway that.

What amazes me, is that despite how alone he always stands on his rants, he just won't give up.

The grass is always greener on the other side. I was surpirsed when a friend of me told me he had to spend 8 hours to get from Amsterdam to Antwerp (154 km) a good week ago. No airco, no water, complete chaos... All a result of poor maintenance of the track which buckled under the heath. Insufficient stressing of the rails or inadequate ballast have led to problems all around the Netherlands (Amsterdam, Heerlen, Utrecht-Leiden, Zwammerdam)... Anyway, no consolation to my friend who was fuming! Certainly we still can learn lot from Dutch railways but it is clear it has its own problems as well.

http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/2726/zwammerdamap1.png

poor maintenance of the track

That is becoming a real problem in the NL at the moment... It causes many delays and cancelled trains. Well, at least at the region I come from from. Another problem is the voltage, I don't know the technical details, but the voltage is so low that it already becomes problematic to have two trains leave at the same time from Utrecht Central Station (the busiest station in the NL)

How come the UK's public transport has no comprehensible websites like www.9292ov.nl and www.ns.nl


This thread is getting a bit ridiculous but need to answer this.
Mr Bikkel, The governments website www.transportdirect.info covers buses, trams, tubes/metros, trains, coaches, ferries & internal flights nationwide. A comprehensive door-to-door journey planner covering all modes of public & private travel with live updates, maps, links, tips&tools. Aslo has a mobile version http://mobile.transportdirect.info/

All this in addition to www.nationalrail.co.uk (which some have mentioned) and various local authority websites & helplines. Just 2 examples Londons www.tfl.gov.uk & Birminghams www.centro.org.uk

OK, how come you give a link to traffic information? On the fron page of www.9292ov.nl you see the latest on public transport, which this thread is about, right?

Transport Direct does not inform me on the delays of trains, or extra services. And believe me, in the UK you have far more delays (with much more time lost) than in the NL, plus we get warned in advance ...

And believe me, in the UK you have far more delays (with much more time lost) than in the NL, plus we get warned in advance ...

How come then my friend was not warned in advance of the fact he would have to spend 8 hours on a 154 km trip because of inadequate stressing or poor bedding of the track? See my message above. I agree there is a lot the UK can learn from the Netherlands when it comes to public transport, but to argue everything in the UK is crap and everything in the Netherlands is perfect is in complete disregard of reality.

Golly, let's get these misconceptions straight:

Risk calculation in the NL exceeds that in the UK by the factor of 100-1000. Which means that we feel our tracks are sooner unsafe than in the UK the companies responsible for safety would feel the tracks are unsafe.

This stark difference you will also find with insurance companies. You are comparing different parameters and values.

Yes, Justme. The trolley bus has special rights and exclusive lanes right into the middle of the city. That's why it could achieve such a tremendous gain. Roads and squares have entirely been redesigned to make the trolleybus travel this fast.

There is a trolley bus service on line #5 each six minutes, plus a couple of diesel bus services. Besides, what you find in a timetable is an indication. In reality, during the rush hour, there are several busses that offer ad hoc services. Nothing wrong with frequency. The speed from the central station to the dome (Madonna and all that trash) is 70-80km with just 1 stop ... Where it counts, where there are many people travelling, they get a good service (often free, or at just €1), and a very quick and smooth one!
It's no use to come up with that ride from Presikhaaf to the station again, Presikhaaf has its own station to reach the central one, by train, saves time you see. The train comes to a halt at just ten footsteps from many connections ... handy, eh? Much better than 14 platforms and only 10 trains arriving.


Nick, your method is wrong, you've posted outgoing trains. Utrecht and Arnhem are central cities where the commuters go to, rather than leave from. A bit daft how you've googled some erratic figures. And you forgot the IEC, and the new services from Utrecht to Schiphol airport. Like Heathrow is not connected to the national railway network whereas there loads direct services from Schiphol.

What a petty argument...

A very petty argument....

One of the tracks that buckled up under the heat was not just a regional line, it was on the main connector of Amsterdam and Rotterdam to Antwerp, Brussels and then Paris. Imagine this happened on the West Main Line in the UK... Metronet failed to stress some of their tracks properly on the overground tube network in London before the summer, leading to some local speed restrictions, and see how much flak they already got in the press.

On the whole issue of risk calculation, the UK and the NL work within the same tight framework set by the EU. If anything, a pretty dogmatic implementation by the UK means that the construction of new track in the UK is excessively expensive.


Where there may be difference I believe is that track has been continuously welded in the NL more extensively (as a percentage) than in the UK, therefore you do have a higher derailment risk in the Summer if the stressing/bedding hasn't been done properly. Yet I still prefer continuously welded track as it so much improves comfort. I personally think that this should be set a clear objective for Network Rail and the Tube companies. Are there any stats on this?

Well, as Martin G posted in the skybar, railway traffic in the UK is also and equally affected by the heat. It's not an exclusive of the NL. You simply can't deny railways on the continent are safer, smoother and quicker.

I'm unaware of EU regulations for railway tracks, so kindly elaborate. As for the welding, that's correct. My local railway track has finally been upgraded and the ride is much smoother I've been told - less noisy at least. I took the trolley bus before - as it's sometimes an even quicker ride than the train, but now I'll test the new railway tracks. Oh, the luxery of choice ;)

You simply can't deny railways on the continent are safer, smoother and quicker.

No your absolutely right Bikkel. I recently took a Virgin Pendolino service from Plymouth to Paddington. The ride is so bad that we all had to be strapped in like on a rollercoaster. In fact im told that at least 50 % of all journeys result in 70 % fatalities. It was also so noisy that we were all issued with megaphones, which made it noisier. It was also so slow that it took 3 days to arrive in London.

a typical British commuter service below:

http://parish.ashtead.org/harv00/train.jpg

:crazy:

The Dutch are usually laid back and nice peiople - at least the ones I have met - Don't know what happened to this guy.

The main Difference between the UK and Dutch Railways is that the Netherlands has 2,600 Km of Track - whilst the UK has 17,186 km of track.

:)

I'm unaware of EU regulations for railway tracks, so kindly elaborate. As for the welding, that's correct. My local railway track has finally been upgraded and the ride is much smoother I've been told - less noisy at least. I took the trolley bus before - as it's sometimes an even quicker ride than the train, but now I'll test the new railway tracks. Oh, the luxery of choice ;)

A good place to start is Directive 2004/49/EC or also called the EU Railway Safety Directive. It in turn refers to a bunch of other related safety and railway directives. If you ever wondered what they are doing in Brussels. :) Beware, it is quite recent and some EU countries may not yet have adopted it, but the UK seems to have.

http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/pri/en/oj/dat/2004/l_164/l_16420040430en00440113.pdf

The UK has a special regulator dealing with it. Here you find their internet site:
http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/index.php. According to the directive, every country must have one, so the Netherlands which is like the UK usually pretty quick in implementing those EU directives should have one as well by now.

The UK department of Transport explains the EU Railway Safety Directive in common terms:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_railways/documents/page/dft_railways_611448.hcsp

With regards to continuous welded rail or CWR, it is hard to come by any statistics. I think in the UK all main lines are CWR, but I have no idea for regional lines. The tube is in the process of moving to CWR as track gets upgraded but it is extremely slow. For the tube it is quite important, because the jointed track makes an enormous amount noise inside the tunnels and causes a lot of vibration.

OK, how come you give a link to traffic information? On the fron page of www.9292ov.nl you see the latest on public transport, which this thread is about, right?

Transport Direct does not inform me on the delays of trains, or extra services. And believe me, in the UK you have far more delays (with much more time lost) than in the NL, plus we get warned in advance ...Project-D already illustrated the core website that you really are looking for (and I pointed out earlier):

http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/

Not only a route planner for every conceivable journey, but also:
- Service updates across the entire rail network and any information on strike action and planned engineering works including maps of affected areas and other routes that can be taken, eg:

Planned Engineering Routes on Hoylake and West Kirkby route
http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/download/managed_files/Hoylake_and_West_Kirby-20060706144317.JPG


- Every map illustrating city, national, and train operator routes throughout the UK
- Information on everything from train spotter guidance, photography advice, disability users and detailed information for all of Network Rail stations in the UK (luggage, lifts, first aid, contact numbers, tickets, cabs, etc...)
- And the best for last: instantaneous updates for all stations in the UK showing all departing and arriving services across the entire network showing everything from the individual route description of arriving and departing trains, and any updates on the status of the train (late or early).




Nick, your method is wrong, you've posted outgoing trains. Utrecht and Arnhem are central cities where the commuters go to, rather than leave from. A bit daft how you've googled some erratic figures. And you forgot the IEC, and the new services from Utrecht to Schiphol airport. Like Heathrow is not connected to the national railway network whereas there loads direct services from Schiphol.If you had actually bothered to go over my figures you would note that I do figures for all Dutch and British cities with services leaving from the towns/cities in question. The reason? Its a good illustration of the connectivity these cities have. You could check these figures yourself and do the reverse - it will still show the exact same thing. I also didn't google the erratic figures - they are from the ns.nl travel planner that you sourced for me, while the British figures are from national rail! All services were included. It would have been easier if Dutch Railways provided a real-time update of all arriving trains into Arnhem, but alas that technology is amiss as of yet.

Heathrow indeed isn't like Schipol, but then again Schipol is similar to say London Gatwick or Birmingham International Airport: why divert the train services south when its quicker to by-pass the airport. Technically however Heathrow is connected to the national rail network by the Heathrow Express, while the immense Crossrail project will allow trains to travel from Essex and Kent into Heathrow airport. The future Airtrack to Heathrow will also eleviate most problems.

Then again Schipol lacks a dedicated airport express service from airport-Amsterdam Centraal (intercity express services don't exactly count for dedicated airport expresses) and the Amsterdam Metro currently doesn't reach Schipol, while the London Underground does.


Much better than 14 platforms and only 10 trains arriving.I think you'll find that Oxford Station has 3 platforms.

Well, chaps, I'm afraid I remain unimpressed. The UK has no website equal to either www.9292ov.nl or www.ns.nl .

Just for your information: Schiphol Airport is the global #9 or #10 airport, not really like Brumsomething.

Any more pathetic protests? I'd happy to oblige.

No your absolutely right Bikkel. I recently took a Virgin Pendolino service from Plymouth to Paddington. The ride is so bad that we all had to be strapped in like on a rollercoaster. In fact im told that at least 50 % of all journeys result in 70 % fatalities. It was also so noisy that we were all issued with megaphones, which made it noisier. It was also so slow that it took 3 days to arrive in London.

a typical British commuter service below:

http://parish.ashtead.org/harv00/train.jpg

:crazy:
Merely exposing the fact you're not in the position to pass a judgement. Try again.

Trains like you've been on, have been in use here before you were even born :hilarious

The Dutch are usually laid back and nice peiople - at least the ones I have met - Don't know what happened to this guy.

The main Difference between the UK and Dutch Railways is that the Netherlands has 2,600 Km of Track - whilst the UK has 17,186 km of track.

:)
Only serves as proof that UK railways are highly inefficient :laugh:

You honestly have no clue how utterly stupid your replies read :laugh:

Only autistic 13-year olds care about the amount of kilometres. Commuters are solely interested in getting from A (their front door for example) to B (the office). And yes, your average speed in Arnhem does top that in London. Told you before. Stop whining, please.

How much the Dutch government paying you Bikkel?

Also there are tons of websites for UK transport. Here's a good one:

http://www.transportdirect.info/Web/Templates/Home.aspx?NRMODE=Published&NRORIGINALURL=%2fTransportDirect%2fen%2f&NRNODEGUID=%7b9B2CEBBB-B2D4-4022-A0D1-5B939541864D%7d&NRCACHEHINT=Guest&repeatingloop=Y

Yes, Justme. The trolley bus has special rights and exclusive lanes right into the middle of the city. That's why it could achieve such a tremendous gain. Roads and squares have entirely been redesigned to make the trolleybus travel this fast.

There is a trolley bus service on line #5 each six minutes, plus a couple of diesel bus services. Besides, what you find in a timetable is an indication. In reality, during the rush hour, there are several busses that offer ad hoc services. Nothing wrong with frequency. The speed from the central station to the dome (Madonna and all that trash) is 70-80km with just 1 stop ... Where it counts, where there are many people travelling, they get a good service (often free, or at just €1), and a very quick and smooth one!
It's no use to come up with that ride from Presikhaaf to the station again, Presikhaaf has its own station to reach the central one, by train, saves time you see. The train comes to a halt at just ten footsteps from many connections ... handy, eh? Much better than 14 platforms and only 10 trains arriving.


Still waiting for the timetable cucumberman

And yes, your average speed in Arnhem does top that in London. Told you before. Stop whining, please.The Tube has a much faster average speed than your Arnhem trolleybus. The Arnhem trolleybus' average speed is 19km/h to the Tube's 33km/h - rising to 39.4km/h on the Victoria Line. :laugh:

Well, chaps, I'm afraid I remain unimpressed. The UK has no website equal to either www.9292ov.nl or www.ns.nl

Just for your information: Schiphol Airport is the global #9 or #10 airport, not really like Brumsomething.

Any more pathetic protests? I'd happy to oblige.Read my last post - the national rail website offers more information than both of those websites combined. :laugh:

And Heathrow is the leading international airport in the world with an actual airport express and underground railway connection unlike Schipol. ;)




Only serves as proof that UK railways are highly inefficientSo surely French and German railways are inefficient also then - because they are far more track? Fact: coverage is far smaller and the fact that there are more stations and more route km in London and its environs kind of illustrates this.

:laugh:

Dutch & Belgian Railway Network

http://bueker.net/trainspotting/maps/benelux-network/benelux-network.gif




London Railway Network (excluding London Underground)

http://bueker.net/trainspotting/maps/london-area/london-area.gif




Interestingly, although Belgium is about a third smaller than the Netherlands, the Belgian railway network is around 25% larger. The Netherlands actually has one of the smallest railway networks in regards to population and area, meaning poorer coverage and probably why the Dutch railways are in decline. ;)

Its a pity though that both maps don't show all of the network (ie all stations).

Bikkel you really do need to get a life- you must spend far to much time on your beloved trolleybuses to make any actual friends otherwise you wouldn't keep coming on the UK thread & making an idiot of yourself. Did they chuck you off the dutch forum or something so you have to spend all your time on this thread. All the other dutch posters on this thread mention your not the most popular person on their as well.

Perhaps you should continue your fascinating arguement on one of the other forums.

The point wasn't that there are alternative routes from Perikshaaf to the station. The point was that the average speed on that route can be calculated using the length and the amount of time according to the timetable, which shows you what the average speed of that trolley bus line is. It's not about those specific places.

Here's another one:

Geitenkamp - Central station > Line 7 (5.9 km according to trolleybussen.com)
Takes 19 minutes according to 9292ov.nl.
That's about 18.6 km/h on average.

:hilarious @ the sad Dutchman

What a surprise thread, I'm almost surprised!!!

Now, the sad is that you just react without reading. I never wrote the average speed of the trolley bus is higher than that of the tube.

It's the door to door hub that makes the trolley bus a quicker means. Reaching the central station is only of use to those who'd want to travel further by train, yet the majority of the people just need a ride to the shops and cafés.

And that ride is very handy and very quick. The central station is not where you need to make your switch, that is possible at the many new bus stations. Drivers call each other to tell of passengers in need of connection.

Compare that to the radio system on LU which is outdated and reneweal is 3½ years behind schedule. Now, who'd be sad? You standing in your tube at 40 degrees, delays, 19th century communication, or me with a seat, €1 ticket, very frequent services to each and every corner, no noise, no sweat.

Guess why the amount of passengers grew by 20% in a city that hardly grows in population. People switch from cars to busses, not because of a congestion charge, simply because (trolley) busses are being made the superior alternative. Learn from it, trying to ridicule Arnhem's schemes is really sad.

No wonder many cities in the UK look to the NL with matters like these. We're far ahead of the UK here. Like even silly nowhere town Arnhem has quicker hubs than London.

Nick-

Because Reading and Oxford don't compare to Utrecht and Arnhem makes such a comparison useless. These cities draw tens of thousands of commuters (Arnhem: pop. 142k/96k full time jobs), the mileage of tracks makes no sense, it's about service and convenience; electric trains use up more energy so new trains are sophisticated diesels; the Schiphol station is underground, just what do you know. But you can't travel directly from Heathrow to Manchester. You can travel directly from Schiphol to Groningen, Enschede wherever.

And again I'm not impressed by those clumsy websites that make you click further. On 9292ov.nl you get all hubs too by the way, plus all the latest information at one glance.

How many railway stations in the UK offer wireless internet by the way? Any Tesco's at the platforms? And what's the price of half a cucumber? Sad bunch of halfwits :laugh:

Nick-

Because Reading and Oxford don't compare to Utrecht and Arnhem makes such a comparison useless. These cities draw tens of thousands of commuters (Arnhem: pop. 142k/96k full time jobs), the mileage of tracks makes no sense, it's about service and convenience; electric trains use up more energy so new trains are sophisticated diesels; the Schiphol station is underground, just what do you know. But you can't travel directly from Heathrow to Manchester. You can travel directly from Schiphol to Groningen, Enschede wherever.

And again I'm not impressed by those clumsy websites that make you click further. On 9292ov.nl you get all hubs too by the way, plus all the latest information at one glance.

How many railway stations in the UK offer wireless internet by the way? Any Tesco's at the platforms? And what's the price of half a cucumber? Sad bunch of halfwits :laugh:So hang on here....you're attempting to say that Utrecht and Arnhem are more important and have many more people commuting in.....but that both cities have far fewer services than Reading. Sounds like you've just painted Utrecht and Arnhem to be far worse off. Nice one! :laugh:

You can indeed travel around from Schipol, but you don't have a direct dedicated express service into Amsterdam, nor do you have any metro connections.

Clumsy :laugh: If that is how you describe websites with bundles more information then fine by you!

The only halfwit it would appear would be yourself - even your own countrymen believe you're an idiot..let me guess they're all halfwits as well. :laugh:

Guess why the amount of passengers grew by 20% in a city that hardly grows in population. People switch from cars to busses, not because of a congestion charge, simply because (trolley) busses are being made the superior alternative. Learn from it, trying to ridicule Arnhem's schemes is really sad.

The Buses in London have experienced the same type of growth, not because of the congestion charge but because they've improved so much and the network is probably one of the best in the world.

Stop making sweeping generalisations and trying to paint two very opposite pictures of the two cities. Someone else from the Netherlands has already posted things on here contrary to your claims and you ignored them.

So hang on here....you're attempting to say that Utrecht and Arnhem are more important and have many more people commuting in.....but that both cities have far fewer services than Reading. Sounds like you've just painted Utrecht and Arnhem to be far worse off. Nice one! :laugh:

You can indeed travel around from Schipol, but you don't have a direct dedicated express service into Amsterdam, nor do you have any metro connections.

Clumsy :laugh: If that is how you describe websites with bundles more information then fine by you!

The only halfwit it would appear would be yourself - even your own countrymen believe you're an idiot..let me guess they're all halfwits as well. :laugh:

I saw a few pages back that there are 4 connections per hour between Utrecht and Amsterdam. Those are probably the 'intercity' trains (which don't stop inbetween the two cities). There are trains going between these cities every few minutes or so tho'.
In fact, the tracks can't cope with the amount of trains anymore, which is why they are expanding from 2 tracks to 4 tracks. They wouldnt have to do that with just 4 trains an hour.

But then again this is a densely populated area, train services are quite good.

Schiphol is really huge :P It's the 4th largest airport in Europe. A dedicated express service would make no sense at all for Schiphol. It's underground train station has excellent connections tho'. With trains going every 10 minutes in multiple directions.
It does not have acces to the metro indeed. But an extension of the Metro is planned :)

cheers :cheers:

The Buses in London have experienced the same type of growth, not because of the congestion charge but because they've improved so much and the network is probably one of the best in the world.


I think both trolleybuses and normal buses each have their drawbacks. Normal buses are very noisy, just goes into Oxford or Regent street these days. it is one noisy bus after the other. With trolleybuses you have the overhead cables that would disgrace the historical centre of London. I would be all for replacing the buses with trolleybuses or trams if the electricity could be taken from some kind of slit in the road. Once I saw a picture of such a system that was used decades ago but I do ot know whether there are any modern versions?

^ I agree in a way. I'd prefer a renaissance in trams in London. They can look very good and I actually like the overhead cables in most instances. Looks good in Manchester. Or how about this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdHwcEu69Lo&search=london%202012

^ I agree in a way. I'd prefer a renaissance in trams in London. They can look very good and I actually like the overhead cables in most instances. Looks good in Manchester. Or how about this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdHwcEu69Lo&search=london%202012

Monorails look wonderful in open spaces, going over bridges like in the video, or on wide streets. However, they destroy the landscape in dense urban area's, especially historical cities like London. The trains will pass right next to windows causing massive problems for tennants (and financial loss for those who own the buildings) They also look ugly in that way.

Well, if London busses are noisy, Arnhem's trolley busses are nearly silent, that's why there's a little alarm running near its new lanes because people would otherwise not hear the busses, which sadly has happened with fatal consequences.

I think Toulouse has a system where electricity is fed via the rail. Not like Britain's rails with continuous voltage but with voltage supply at the exact spot where the tram/lightrail whatever runs.

The overhead cables look ugly in digital photography, to the human eye though it's not much of a disgrace.

Nick, stop it! Arnhem and Utrecht are cities bustling with traffic. Utrecht has trains 24 hours a day, Arnhem only on Saturdays. How many double decker trains run to and from those cities in England?

Can you buy your ticket from your mobile in England by the way?

Just me, all your objections should serve as incentives to the designers of such a system. I don't want to be too sarcastic but guess why we have such smooth public transport in NL? Just put thought into those projects.

Many motorways in NL are fairly silent too, just because of the way they're constructed. In terms of perfection, in countries like Austria, Switzerland and Denmark you will find a same if not higher level of sophistication than in NL. In my town of Velp, cycling is promoted by this computer programme that uses sensors in the roads and the bikes get priority - up to a certain level. At a junction in Velp one bike gets priority over 3 cars approaching. Splendid Danish stuff.

Loosen up, man! You suffer from rigid thinking!

Well, if London busses are noisy, Arnhem's trolley busses are nearly silent, that's why there's a little alarm running near its new lanes because people would otherwise not hear the busses, which sadly has happened with fatal consequences.

I think Toulouse has a system where electricity is fed via the rail. Not like Britain's rails with continuous voltage but with voltage supply at the exact spot where the tram/lightrail whatever runs.

The overhead cables look ugly in digital photography, to the human eye though it's not much of a disgrace.

Nick, stop it! Arnhem and Utrecht are cities bustling with traffic. Utrecht has trains 24 hours a day, Arnhem only on Saturdays. How many double decker trains run to and from those cities in England?

Can you buy your ticket from your mobile in England by the way?Bustling with overcrowded trains you mean....what with the more commuters you talk about.....but fewer train services. :laugh:

No double decker trains....instead we make longer trains with more carriages; hence why Eurostar is the longest passenger train in Europe.

Considering train tickets are either in the paper ticket format or contactless card like Oyster, mobile phone and trains are restricted to up-to-date travel updates, news on current status of your train, etc... If you want to book your ticket in advance you can get it delivered to your house on-line or get a ticket thanks to fluid system of payment at stations. That or use ticket machines.

Doesn't the Netherlands have a contactless payment card like Oyster?

http://karen.mmdc.net/albums/shambolic/oyster_on_a_gate.sized.jpg

1/ So you don't have equal services. In Britain you apparently can't buy tickets for your cross european travels.

2/ More trains, I've proven you so. Only ten arriving at Oxford, 22 arriving at Arnhem. 22-10 is quite a defeat. I somehow need to remind you about the relation of numbers :laugh:

3/ A contactless payment? Will it get me killed if I look Brazilian, or Bangla Deshi? What's good about this gadget? I was talking of using another method of public transport and ordering a ticket from the competitor of the transport company that I was using at the time of ordering said ticket.

4/ Post timetables from Heathrow to Manchester, Bristol, Exeter; the lot and prove Heathrow is better connected than Schiphol!!

Waste your time. You do so many times on this forum :laugh:

Erm, Nick, many railway platfroms in the NL have been extended as trains got much longer. Then we complained and thus double deckers were more frequently used. Did any complaint from an UK railway customer actually achieve anything?

You've not answered the question about wireless internet - a global standard and instead you cough up this oyster :laugh:

Just what, repeat just what, could you hold up as being prime and British? I'm afraid in today's Europe, Britain is quite far behind.

4/ Post timetables from Heathrow to Manchester, Bristol, Exeter; the lot and prove Heathrow is better connected than Schiphol!!


Ok, let's have a look. Of cause, you would have to take distance into context - it's pretty obvious, as Manchester is 262km away from Heathrow, and most people would naturally fly Manchester or Liverpool's airport.

So in context, we have to look at a city equivalent distance away from Amsterdam Schiphol - anything else has no relevance.

Heathrow to Manchester: (262km)
2 Trains an hour: 1 change: approx 3 hours. link (http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en?ld=212.56&seqnr=3&ident=n6.02912914.1153554938&REQ0HafasScrollDir=1)

Schiphol to Maastricht (and this city is far closer to Schiphol than Manchester is to Heathrow) (133km)
2 Trains an hour: 1 to 2 changes: approx 3 hours.

Ok, so what does this tell us. Manchester, despite being twice as far away from Heathrow as Maastricht is to Schiphol, it has the same frequency of service, and the same journey time (despite Maastricht being half the journey time)

Heathrow to Bristol (119km)
3 Trains an hour: 1 to 2 changes: approx 2hr 10min link (http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en?ld=212.56&seqnr=3&ident=49.0414314.1153555812&REQ0HafasScrollDir=1)

Schiphol to Groningen (126km)
2 Trains an hour: 0 to 1 changes: approx 2 hr 20min link (http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en?ld=212.60&seqnr=3&ident=3z.0565118.1153555772&REQ0HafasScrollDir=1)

Conclusion. Bristol has a more frequent service, but requires at least one more change (though at no loss to the speed of the service), Groningen has a less frequent service, although some services offer direct transport.

I don't see anything that indicates there is a worse network in the UK than the Netherlands. Maybe you should do your homework first and rely on facts.

3/ A contactless payment? Will it get me killed if I look Brazilian, or Bangla Deshi? What's good about this gadget? I was talking of using another method of public transport and ordering a ticket from the competitor of the transport company that I was using at the time of ordering said ticket.

That has nothing to do with the public transport system and everything to do with the government and Met Police. And Oyster is a very advanced ticketing system that saves time, money, paper and makes it so much easier when using public transport in London. Most people have one these days. I'm suprised that the NL doesn't have one, seeing as your public transport is according to you the future of transportation where everything arrives on time, with not a problem in sight etc!

1/

4/ Post timetables from Heathrow to Manchester, Bristol, Exeter; the lot and prove Heathrow is better connected than Schiphol!!



Why bother we have more than one airport in the UK- Why would somebody bother getting the train to Heathrow when they could go to Manchester, Exeter or Bristol airport.

Boy your a strange one- go make some friends on the dutch forum- oh yes they dont like u much there either ;) still maybe you could make some on your trolleybuses they must be soo popular you could meet loads of people. Maybe there all on there way to Schipol airport!!

Ok, let's have a look. Of cause, you would have to take distance into context - it's pretty obvious, as Manchester is 262km away from Heathrow, and most people would naturally fly Manchester or Liverpool's airport.

So in context, we have to look at a city equivalent distance away from Amsterdam Schiphol - anything else has no relevance.

Heathrow to Manchester: (262km)
2 Trains an hour: 1 change: approx 3 hours. link (http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en?ld=212.56&seqnr=3&ident=n6.02912914.1153554938&REQ0HafasScrollDir=1)

Schiphol to Maastricht (and this city is far closer to Schiphol than Manchester is to Heathrow) (133km)
2 Trains an hour: 1 to 2 changes: approx 3 hours.

Ok, so what does this tell us. Manchester, despite being twice as far away from Heathrow as Maastricht is to Schiphol, it has the same frequency of service, and the same journey time (despite Maastricht being half the journey time)

Heathrow to Bristol (119km)
3 Trains an hour: 1 to 2 changes: approx 2hr 10min link (http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en?ld=212.56&seqnr=3&ident=49.0414314.1153555812&REQ0HafasScrollDir=1)

Schiphol to Groningen (126km)
2 Trains an hour: 0 to 1 changes: approx 2 hr 20min link (http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en?ld=212.60&seqnr=3&ident=3z.0565118.1153555772&REQ0HafasScrollDir=1)

Conclusion. Bristol has a more frequent service, but requires at least one more change (though at no loss to the speed of the service), Groningen has a less frequent service, although some services offer direct transport.

I don't see anything that indicates there is a worse network in the UK than the Netherlands. Maybe you should do your homework first and rely on facts.

Do those trains to Manchester travel at 200kmph?

Do those trains to Manchester travel at 200kmph?I think they go at 225km/h now.

Poor Bikkel is being destroyed by the hard facts again.... :laugh:

1/ So you don't have equal services. In Britain you apparently can't buy tickets for your cross european travels.

2/ More trains, I've proven you so. Only ten arriving at Oxford, 22 arriving at Arnhem. 22-10 is quite a defeat. I somehow need to remind you about the relation of numbers :laugh:

3/ A contactless payment? Will it get me killed if I look Brazilian, or Bangla Deshi? What's good about this gadget? I was talking of using another method of public transport and ordering a ticket from the competitor of the transport company that I was using at the time of ordering said ticket.

4/ Post timetables from Heathrow to Manchester, Bristol, Exeter; the lot and prove Heathrow is better connected than Schiphol!!

Waste your time. You do so many times on this forum :laugh:1/ Incorrect, you can buy tickets from Eurostar. Thats despite there being only one international rail connection (thats if you exclude connections between England and Wales, England and Scotland, which you can buy tickets for without any hassle). :laugh:

2/ Infact you'll find that it was I that showed the entire breakdown and indeed Arnhem has more trains going through than Oxford, but then again as I pointed out - Oxford isn't on any major line, nor is it a rail hub like Arnhem. Hence why I used Reading which also not only had more services than Arnhem, but Utrecht as well. :laugh:

Perhaps we ought to start comparing Reading to say Meppel?

Reading 35 - 22 Arnhem
Reading 35 - 27 Utrecht
Reading 35 - 7 Meppel

Even better lets compare London's 13 termini to Amsterdam Centraal. Largest city of the Netherlands Vs Largest city of Britain :laugh:

3/ If you look like who I think you are then probably. I think you'll find the correct term for a person from Bangladesh is Bangladeshi - no need to be racist in the face of defeat my clog wielding adversary!

4/ Well that would appear to have been done. I suspect if we did a tph for Heathrow and Schipol, we'd find that Heathrow would be many lengths ahead. :yes:




Erm, Nick, many railway platfroms in the NL have been extended as trains got much longer. Then we complained and thus double deckers were more frequently used. Did any complaint from an UK railway customer actually achieve anything?

You've not answered the question about wireless internet - a global standard and instead you cough up this oyster

Just what, repeat just what, could you hold up as being prime and British? I'm afraid in today's Europe, Britain is quite far behind.I somehow doubt railways complaints led to the introduction of double decker trains, but more a combination of being unable to lengthen platforms further and appropiately high enough clearences. I suspect you don't have such a source for such a statement. ;)

Actually wireless technology is still in at an early stage of development (hence the variety of formats), but I did indicate several posts back that there were hotspots not only at dozens of stations, but also in the trains themselves. Surely you would be welcoming the Oystercard - its a step towards flexible pay-as-you-go payment that only a few countries offer...excluding the Netherlands it would appear as well. So wireless networking + contactless cards for transport. You were saying? :laugh:

Britain is only far behind in your tiny little world...come out of that clog and learn...that or start delivering my post!

1/ Incorrect, you can buy tickets from Eurostar. Thats despite there being only one international rail connection (thats if you exclude connections between England and Wales, England and Scotland, which you can buy tickets for without any hassle). :laugh:

Also you can buy tickets from any uk rail station to any station in the Irish Republic via any of the ferry routes from your local UK rail station.

This site (http://www.seat61.com/index.html) is very useful for info on rail travel to/from the UK from/to all of Europe and even as far as Marrakech or Tehran!

BTW, that London trolleybus plan looks pretty good, although I think it would be more suited to 3rd and 4th tier provincial cities rather than London.

Just lovely, the stupidity of the replies:

@Justme

Maastricht and Groningen also have airports.

Those 11 mln living close to Schiphol also have direct services to and from. Neither Maastricht nor Groningen count amongst those 11 mln.

In Maastricht for example, you'd catch the HSR link to Brussels and London ...

I think they go at 225km/h now.

Poor Bikkel is being destroyed by the hard facts again.... :laugh:

Poor Monkey is so obsessed that he incorrectly assumes Bikkel is this other forumer.

Besides Martin G has posted on the travelling time from Manc to LDN actually having become more rather than less. And there are no direct services. All those connections are very iffy. Connectivity in NL is also much higher than anywhere else in Europe.

Nick, your reply is so poor that you even lost the archetypical quality of the autist boy, which is being able to count. The NL railway network is the busiest outside Japan. You've only counted a few that you could find on the web. During the rush hour Utrecht has about a hundred trains arriving and departing.

Anyway, because most of those replying react like such little pricks, I say goodbye and enjoy your misery.

Well, Nick, which stations offer wireless internet then? Reading? Oxford? Broadband is anyhow much wider spread in NL than in the UK.

The equivalent to your Oystercard was introduced around 1997 by one Pim Fortuyn nationwide. Combining methods of payment is nothing new here :laugh:

For busses there's one system (strippenkaart) and for railways it's one and the same payment system too. The oystercard is no superior to what we have here nationwide. On many tracks, the strippenkaart is also valid in trains and metros.

Just lovely, the stupidity of the replies:

@Justme

Maastricht and Groningen also have airports.

Those 11 mln living close to Schiphol also have direct services to and from. Neither Maastricht nor Groningen count amongst those 11 mln.


??? And what is that supposed to signify? You were the one who tried to claim that people in Manchester should have direct trains to Heathrow. Why would they need direct trains? After all, they have their own airport and it's quite a busy one as well. They also have access to other closer Northern airports rather than having to go down to Heathrow such as Liverpool.

The fact is also that London and the South East have five international airports. The busiest city hub in the world as far as passengers go. So those 11 million within the sphere of Schiphol are equivalent to the 18million+ within London's sphere of five airports.

That is also, keeping in mind that Maastricht and Groningen airports are extremely small with limited services, Maastricht (http://www.clearchannelairports.com/assets/downloads/Maastricht_Overview.pdf) has only 356,000 passengers annually, and Groningen (http://www.clearchannelairports.com/assets/downloads/Groningen_Overview.pdf) only 159,000. These are tiny compared to Manchester (http://www.manchesterairport.co.uk/Web.nsf/alldocs/3981E79C3178865980256E220058C4F8/$File/Annual+Report+and+Accounts+9899.pdf) Airport with over 17million (22million last year) and Liverpool John Lennon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_John_Lennon_Airport). Even Bristol's (http://www.bristolairport.co.uk/upload/statement_of_intent.pdf) airport has over 4.6million passengers.

Despite having larger and busier airports with more connections (flights) than Maastricht and Groningen, the rail connections to Heathrow, which are not as important are still equivalent to what the Netherlands offers.

No, you are still living in your fantasy world here.


In Maastricht for example, you'd catch the HSR link to Brussels and London ...


What exactly was this thrown in for? To get a train from Maastricht to London is with two or three changes? So what?

Just lovely, the stupidity of the replies:

@Justme

Maastricht and Groningen also have airports.

Those 11 mln living close to Schiphol also have direct services to and from. Neither Maastricht nor Groningen count amongst those 11 mln.

In Maastricht for example, you'd catch the HSR link to Brussels and London ...

Poor Monkey is so obsessed that he incorrectly assumes Bikkel is this other forumer.

Besides Martin G has posted on the travelling time from Manc to LDN actually having become more rather than less. And there are no direct services. All those connections are very iffy. Connectivity in NL is also much higher than anywhere else in Europe.

Nick, your reply is so poor that you even lost the archetypical quality of the autist boy, which is being able to count. The NL railway network is the busiest outside Japan. You've only counted a few that you could find on the web. During the rush hour Utrecht has about a hundred trains arriving and departing.

Anyway, because most of those replying react like such little pricks, I say goodbye and enjoy your misery.Yes of course connectivity is far higher....which is probably why the journey times are slower and more changes are required in a far smaller nation (poorer network routing you might say). ;)

I don't think you should be calling me autistic when there is no such word as autist...the correct word you should have used my challenged little friend is: autistic, here I corrected your insult of my apparent mental capacity....

"Nick, your reply is so poor that you even lost the archetypical quality of the autistic boy, which is being able to count."

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

No the Dutch Railways are not the busiest railways outside of Japan, my passenger km, number of journeys or any other sort of measure.

That would depend on how you define rush-hour, but by trains leaving between 0800-0859 it is 27 trains. Now you could do the research yourself as to the exact trains leaving throughout rush-hour and for all trains arriving and departing, but considering a place like Reading has even more trains (35), then I would find it hard to somehow fudge the figures to show that Reading had less than say 130trains arriving and departing at rush hour.

Also I clearly showed the breakdown of all services during that 0800-0859 period for departing services by route - all from the ns.nl website. Naturally the Dutch railway website could be flawed, have corrupted timetables but that wouldn't go to well did it.

I should go back to your comment about autism however....because the actual condition of autism is that of (and I quote the Oxford Dictionary):

"a mental condition characterized by great difficulty in communicating with others and in using language and abstract concepts"

Quite....quite indeed! :laugh:




Well, Nick, which stations offer wireless internet then? Reading? Oxford? Broadband is anyhow much wider spread in NL than in the UK.

The equivalent to your Oystercard was introduced around 1997 by one Pim Fortuyn nationwide. Combining methods of payment is nothing new here

For busses there's one system (strippenkaart) and for railways it's one and the same payment system too. The oystercard is no superior to what we have here nationwide. On many tracks, the strippenkaart is also valid in trains and metros.To my knowledge they don't.

According to the OECD you are indeed correct, more people in the Netherlands per 100 people do have broadband, but only by 15% and the gap is rapidly decreasing. I should also add that the average speed purchased was higher in the UK than in the Netherlands. In other words it shows that while the Netherlands due to its smaller geographical area had access to broadband services quicker than the UK, up-take has been quicker in the UK and that the technology and capacity of exchanges is far higher.

The irony, shouldn't have bothered trying to bring anything in should he. ;)

The Oystercard came first, because the technology RFID wasn't implemented until late 2003 in co-operation with Hong Kong's Octopus system. Considering London and its environs are as populous as the Netherlands its no suprise there.

Also the Oystercard (ie the same card) can be used on:
- London Underground
- London Rail
- London Trams
- London Buses
- London DLR

Probably the most flexible of the RFID card systems in Europe.

- The OV card can be used on all public transport throughout an entire country (twice the size of LDN. Don't mention the so-called 'metro' as your Oyster card can't get you any ride in this "metro" :laugh:

You don't speak a word of any foreign language Nick and, still, autistic is the adjectiv. If I were to use the noun, I'd call you an autist, which you are by the way. See a doctor or a GP. Learn some grammer and then get back to me, I'm proving your wrong in your native tongue. You just try the same in my native tongue :hilarious

No, just me, I mentioned direct connections at few steps from your check out desk at Schiphol as opposed to an express link of some sort - it's British remember, anything could go wrong - with changes to "undergo" (travelling by train in Britain is quite some torture you see) at some station.

Schiphol has smooth, silent, double decker trains (yes Nick, platforms have been elongated too, we run very long double decker trains you see) to many destinations with no changes to be made.

Transport from Heathrow doesn't even compare. Schiphol has won many awards as the smoothest airport (-get on your job, Nick, find the proof, I can't be bothered) in the past.

I've given you www.ns.nl many times but the tossers that care to reply seem not to visit that site at all. The English section is written by native speakers. You can find out about commutes and connections at great ease even when you don't speak Nederlands.

British trains might be better than say Spanish or Italian and still I'd demand good evidence of that. In the meantime, railways in the 4 Scandinavian countries, Benelux, Germany, France, Switzerland and Austria run better.

I think they go at 225km/h now.

Poor Bikkel is being destroyed by the hard facts again.... :laugh:
:hilarious

As if trains in Britain run any faster than on the continent.

Poor little sod. Trains in France ran this quick ages ago. Just how daft can you be to bring on the speeds!!

You remind of this trumpeteer in a Peter Sellars movie where he was shot to bits yet kept blowing his trumpet :laugh:

Boer war or something.

And I heard they eat babies in Britain...

Grow up.

Just lovely, the stupidity of the replies:
Maastricht and Groningen also have airports.

In Maastricht for example, you'd catch the HSR link to Brussels and London
And that HSR link isn't there at all. I'd notice if there was really.
They are thinking of making the trains actually connect to the Belgian HSL trains, that's all. That's something that should've been done ages ago anyway, and something that's done by the Belgian NMBS railways, not the Dutch NS.

And we do not have the OV chipkaart yet, and implementation has been going very badly. I hope we do get it though. I'm not sure why you are arguing for it now, while you said the Oyster card was just a stupid gadget. Change of mind now we're talking about the Dutch system?

-

British trains might be better than say Spanish or Italian and still I'd demand good evidence of that. In the meantime, railways in the 4 Scandinavian countries, Benelux, Germany, France, Switzerland and Austria run better.

Ok then - If we accept that UK trains aren’t as good as Benelux, Germany, Switzerland & Austria, even though we never disputed anything about the German, Swiss & Austrian or most of the Benelux system. The thread was originally (if you go back 12 pages) about UK & French trains & we agreed French trains were better the UK trains but the UK train network wasn't that far behind & improving.

Can you promise to go away & be annoying on some other forum now. May I suggest you go on the spainish or German forums & start a thread about how superior the dutch trolley buses & trains are ;)

I think British trains are about 30 years late on the french trains

:hilarious

As if trains in Britain run any faster than on the continent.

Poor little sod. Trains in France ran this quick ages ago. Just how daft can you be to bring on the speeds!!I think British trains are about 30 years late on the french trainsThe 300km/h service speed on Britain's Channel Tunnel Rail Link is much faster than anything in the Netherlands and as fast as any service in France too. The 225km/h tilting Pendolinos operating Britain's WCML (the busiest trunk line in Europe) are, to my knowledge, as fast or faster than any trains anywhere in Europe running on non-dedicated HSR lines. The ECML is also one of the fastest trunk lines in Europe in terms of average speed - faster, for example, than Italy's Eurostar service that operates stretches at up to 300km/h. Only the fully dedicated HSR lines (of which there are relatively few in Europe) are faster than these. London Tubes are also much faster than the Paris Metro and, needless to say, orders of magnitude faster than the Arnhem Trolleybus. ;)

I think British trains are about 30 years late

They are unreliable but not that bad!!

Little example, I recently took the train from Winchester to Portsmouth, and I had to travel in "something" which I don't know at the time, was called a train. This thing had plenty of doors that are not locked when travelling, and to open your door basically you have to open the window, and reach the handle from the outside with your arm!!!

I have encountered this aswell when I traveled to Oxford from London.
Basically I wanted to get out of the Train in the station but couldnt figure how as there was no door handle.
First I thought that I was useless but then some girl went past me, routinelly rolled the window down and then reached outside with the arm to open the door with the outside handle.

I just stood there in amazement as I couldnt believe it.
Apart form the fact that its damn uncomfortable its also very dangerous.
Why dont they put a door handle inside?
How difficult can it be?

Here in Germany we have small flat buttons with small lights inside that you "tip" with your finger and the door automatically opens.
I see no reason why these same trains shouldnt be running in Britain aswell.

^ Those are very old and very hard to find these days. You were lucky! :)

I think they are locked when the train is moving. The handles were put on the outside for safety reasons - so that children can't play with the doors and open them.

Poor Monkey is so obsessed that he incorrectly assumes Bikkel is this other forumer.No - I answered Fugara and then offered the additional comment that you are, as per usual, being utterly destroyed by the hard facts posted by other forumers. :D

I have encountered this aswell when I traveled to Oxford from London.
Basically I wanted to get out of the Train in the station but couldnt figure how as there was no door handle.
First I thought that I was useless but then some girl went past me, routinelly rolled the window down and then reached outside with the arm to open the door with the outside handle.

I just stood there in amazement as I couldnt believe it.
Apart form the fact that its damn uncomfortable its also very dangerous.
Why dont they put a door handle inside?
How difficult can it be?

Here in Germany we have small flat buttons with small lights inside that you "tip" with your finger and the door automatically opens.
I see no reason why these same trains shouldnt be running in Britain aswell.

These slamdoor trains are no longer in service. The last was discontinued last year. 2004 was supposed to be the end, but four remained in service until the end of 2005.

Many people have actually been sad to see these trains go, much like the famous routemaster buses, the slam door trains were found by many to be very comfortable and reliable. Although others didn't like them when the trains were full for access to the door from the furthest seat.

Many of the slam doors had a door for each row of seats, so you opened the door and sat straight down. I always thought these were cool. It was clear in these types of trains why the latch was on the outside, as the door was right next to your seat.

To be honest, you were quite lucky to have travelled on one of these trains before they were decommissioned. I used to love them, and it is clear that they were popular by many by the number of fan sites on the internet. Like the fantastic routemasters, they are now a thing of the past.

http://www.transportdiversions.com/publicationshow.asp?pubid=5599

Oh, and not all German trains have electronic doors. The regionalbahn from Ulm to Kempton runs some pretty old sets as well, where the door is opened by a hefty mechanical lever.

These slamdoor trains are no longer in service. The last was discontinued last year. 2004 was supposed to be the end, but four remained in service until the end of 2005.

Many people have actually been sad to see these trains go, much like the famous routemaster buses, the slam door trains were found by many to be very comfortable and reliable. Although others didn't like them when the trains were full for access to the door from the furthest seat.

Many of the slam doors had a door for each row of seats, so you opened the door and sat straight down. I always thought these were cool. It was clear in these types of trains why the latch was on the outside, as the door was right next to your seat.

To be honest, you were quite lucky to have travelled on one of these trains before they were decommissioned. I used to love them, and it is clear that they were popular by many by the number of fan sites on the internet. Like the fantastic routemasters, they are now a thing of the past.

http://www.transportdiversions.com/publicationshow.asp?pubid=5599

Oh, and not all German trains have electronic doors. The regionalbahn from Ulm to Kempton runs some pretty old sets as well, where the door is opened by a hefty mechanical lever.Most of the old slamdoor trains had handles on the inside of the doors. The ones with the handle outside were even rarer.

I have encountered this aswell when I traveled to Oxford from London.
Basically I wanted to get out of the Train in the station but couldnt figure how as there was no door handle.
First I thought that I was useless but then some girl went past me, routinelly rolled the window down and then reached outside with the arm to open the door with the outside handle.

I just stood there in amazement as I couldnt believe it.
Apart form the fact that its damn uncomfortable its also very dangerous.
Why dont they put a door handle inside?
How difficult can it be?

I haven't seen one of those for at least ten years, even the crappy old trains that I sometimes get on my route have electonically operated doors.

- The OV card can be used on all public transport throughout an entire country (twice the size of LDN. Don't mention the so-called 'metro' as your Oyster card can't get you any ride in this "metro" :laugh:

You don't speak a word of any foreign language Nick and, still, autistic is the adjectiv. If I were to use the noun, I'd call you an autist, which you are by the way. See a doctor or a GP. Learn some grammer and then get back to me, I'm proving your wrong in your native tongue. You just try the same in my native tongue :hilarious

No, just me, I mentioned direct connections at few steps from your check out desk at Schiphol as opposed to an express link of some sort - it's British remember, anything could go wrong - with changes to "undergo" (travelling by train in Britain is quite some torture you see) at some station.

Schiphol has smooth, silent, double decker trains (yes Nick, platforms have been elongated too, we run very long double decker trains you see) to many destinations with no changes to be made.

Transport from Heathrow doesn't even compare. Schiphol has won many awards as the smoothest airport (-get on your job, Nick, find the proof, I can't be bothered) in the past.

I've given you www.ns.nl many times but the tossers that care to reply seem not to visit that site at all. The English section is written by native speakers. You can find out about commutes and connections at great ease even when you don't speak Nederlands.

British trains might be better than say Spanish or Italian and still I'd demand good evidence of that. In the meantime, railways in the 4 Scandinavian countries, Benelux, Germany, France, Switzerland and Austria run better.Infact I think you'll find that some routes, eg Metropolitan Line exist outside of the London boundaries - so yes they do operate in the metro.

You have no idea what languages I have an understanding of, defeating you is rapidly becoming a language in itself - I call it defeatbikkelite. Many other forumers (including Dutch forumers) would also appear to be highly capable of learning this new language as well :yes:

If I were autistic I wouldn't be the one alone on these forums and this thread. ;)

Same with Heathrow, Stansted, Gatwick....

Of course, many destinations without change - care to list all these services say during the mid-day (1200-1259) period between Schipol and Amsterdam Centraal?

Yes no trains with no stops - very convenient - how many of these trains don't stop then! :laugh:

Schipol has won awards, but not for the transport connections linking it to Amsterdam or elsewhere.

Enough evidence has been proven, but what you have managed to show however is the actual state of the Dutch Railways: slower comparable services which are far less frequent. Depends on what you measure by, but you don't measure so its not to hard to brush off your concerns. ;)

Any luck on doing that work on all the rush-hour services departing and arriving at Utrecht...no cause they'd be too low for you to boast about. :laugh:

The last Front Line Assembly, Artificial Soldier, is awesome if you like industrial music.

Oh I did the work myself, it would appear that between 1200-1300 (tomorrow), there are only two services that are non-stop to Amsterdam Centraal (the closest major Dutch city to Schipol):
- 1218
- 1248
They are also intercity train services meaning after getting off a flight, you'll have hassle to find space from those using the intercity train.

Compare that to the every 15min services on say the Heathrow Express which is non stop from Heathrow to London Paddington. Trains dedicated to airport travellers and no intercity travellers to move amongst to carry your bags on board.

So from that perspective it would appear that Heathrow offers more services that are more direct (quicker as well) and dedicated to airport users and not intercity travellers.

Ouch ;)

Many of the slam doors had a door for each row of seats, so you opened the door and sat straight down. I always thought these were cool. It was clear in these types of trains why the latch was on the outside, as the door was right next to your seat.


No it wasnt one of those.
The last time I used one of those was a few years back when I had a quick visit to England. (And yes they are cute)
Since then I havent seen them though.

It was however a normal Diesel engined train.
Just a normal train with doors for each carriage.
But you had to open the doors externally.
There were no handles inside.
You have to roll down the window and then use your arm to find the door handle and open it.
The train wasnt modern but it wasnt very old either (maybe 15 years old). Therefore I was quite surprised to find out that you have to open the doors that way.

^ Sorry but I don't believe you. There's no way that a train built in the last 15 years (ie from 1991 onwards) would have external doorhandles as you describe.

French trains? They're worse than ours
By Henry Samuel in Paris
(Filed: 25/05/2006)


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/images/new_hed_story.gif
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/05/25/wrail25.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/05/25/ixnews.html


France's railways, traditionally a source of national pride, are falling into a ruinous state, according to a leading expert.

Britain has saved most of its network through an "enormous catch-up effort," but vast tracts of the French system are being ruined by a short-sighted repair policy, said Robert Rivier, a Swiss professor.

Mr Rivier, the author of a damning audit on the railway ordered by the French government, said track needed to be renewed and ageing or underused lines closed, rather than patching up infrastructure.

While the TGV network remained the envy of the world, the high-speed system only ran on 1,000 miles of track from a total of 19,000 miles. The smaller regional lines have been left by the wayside, Mr Rivier said.

He estimated that two thirds of the national network would be unusable by 2025.

The amount of track on which trains are forced to slow down due to security concerns has doubled in the past year to 900 miles. A recent series of derailments has been blamed on ageing and faulty infrastructure. More serious accidents could follow, he said.

"In Great Britain, it took dozens of deaths, after which the British took remarkable action," he said.

"They made choices, set out a long-term strategy and chose to scrap parts of the network. The French have that ahead of them."

Britain spends £140,000 per kilometre of track on maintenance and renovation compared with France's £35,000. Italy, Spain and Switzerland spend somewhere in between.

The French transport minister, Dominique Perben launched a rail rescue package on Monday but ruled out closing any lines.

Mr Rivier said it focused more on repair than renewal and would not be enough.

How can you make such a dumb article??? What's the point in Britain to make an article about an audit on French railways? How can you say "French trains? They're worse than ours" when nothing in the actual study of this swiss professor is comparing French and English railways?

As always, there's nothing objective in those articles. Pathetic, as everything in the shitty british press... I'm getting sick of it.

And comparing the money spent on track maintenance in the 2 countries is dumb. I'm working with a lot of Network Rail engineers on CTRL, and all of them told me how much money is wasted in any work on the British railways...

British railways are just like everything else in Britain: the trains look brand new, but the system is old and ruined. I've never seen or lived in a country relying more on patch than Britain. Everything seems to be patched here and it's obvious when you take the tube everyday like I do...

Of course, everything is not perfect in the French railways, a lot of old, small, useless lines should be closed, the only problem is that as always in France, 2 persons will say that it's a "public service" and nobody will be able to close them...

BTW, Eurostar is running at 270kph in Kent, not 300kph. 300kph is the commercial speed of Eurostar in France, but the design speed of Eurostar on CTRL is only 270kph.

^ Sorry but I don't believe you. There's no way that a train built in the last 15 years (ie from 1991 onwards) would have external doorhandles as you describe.

Dunno when exactly it was built.
It can also be quite older but it looked like most of the other trains.
Blue coloured with a Diesel engine.
Inside it had brown interior if I remember correctly.

Dunno when exactly it was built.
It can also be quite older but it looked like most of the other trains.
Blue coloured with a Diesel engine.
Inside it had brown interior if I remember correctly.

Could it be this?

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/pictures%5C1395%5C3.jpg

Anyway, as far as I know, all slamdoor wagons have been replaced now. The stock was as old as 40years.