Just wish they’d make these things a bit more affordable. Taking the train to Paris or London with my family is literally twice the price of flying and god knows how many times driving. I’d much rather take the train.
The train takes you right in the city centre though. If you fly you usually have to buy an extra train ticket to get to your actual destination.
Fair point. But it would still be way better if it was cheaper.
Oh yes, of course. You would think operating a train would be cheaper than flying if you excluded the initial capital investment costs of actually building the line.
Yes, but it doesn’t double the cost. We usually end up just driving which is even cheaper than flying, even including the crazy parking costs. And relatively low carbon compared to flying. Taking the train would make it very hard to justify the cost.
If you think of it in terms of carbon footprint and what your children’s future is worth to you, then the train wins no contest.
Sure but they may also think in terms of what’s possible. Perhaps they can’t afford to pay double for a vacation.
Great news.
They should honestly just skip stopping at Hilversum and Deventer, too.
From Hilversum there are enough other trains to Amersfoort and Amsterdam. And from Deventer it is easy enough to go to Apeldoorn or Hengelo.
And they are getting trains that can go 230 km/h, so Amsterdam to Berlin in five hours could be feasible.
And after that a properly fast Amsterdam - Hanover - Berlin high speed rail in 3 hours… That would be amazing.
The Deventer stop is not there primarily for locals in Deventer. It’s there to service the entire eastern half of the Netherlands. Scrapping it would mean those in e.g. Groningen would first have to travel for 3h to Amsterdam.
Fair enough, I looked it up and you are right.
Deventer is the eastern hub (I thought it was Apeldoorn), so keeping Deventer and scrapping Apeldoorn and Hengelo would be more logical.
The regular service between Amsterdam and Berlin already has some trains not stopping in Apeldoorn. The European Sleeper between Brussels and Berlin (via Amsterdam) does not stop in Apeldoorn nor Hengelo already.
Scrapping Hengelo would be a pretty bad idea too.
As someone living in Magdeburg I always envy Hannover for how well connected that city is not just east to west but also north to south
Feels like 90% of the good connections go though that main station while my city doesn’t even get ICEs as a state capital…
Magdeburg has less than half the population of Hanover though…
I know - but small villages in Bavaria have a better train access because the local Bavarian party controlled the traffic ministry for decades
Also Hannover gets all the east-west connections and a city like Erfurt gets none even though they are on a similar trajectory south of the harz
Erfurt gets none
What? Erfurt has direct ICE connections to Leipzig/Berlin, Dresden, Frankfurt, and Nürnberg/München. It’s pretty well connected for a city of just 200k.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Intercity-Express-Linien
Ah so it’s just really shitty to reach from Hannover/Braunschweig/Wolfsburg/Magdeburg - also it seems that there is no good connection to the whole Ruhr area
Well, it’s located in a basin and has lots of mountainous areas north, south, and west, so it’s kind of expensive building rails through there. It’s annoying as fuck to get there by car as well. I used to drive that a lot, Cologne – Erfurt, sucks big time.
I guess you could get a route via Kassel and Hamm. I mean, I’m all for it, but I don’t think that’s economically feasible for DB.
Improving the route Hannover – Leipzig would make sense, especially if they could finally upgrade the route Dresden – Prague (one of the most important cargo routes).
Hannover is just lucky. It sits on a giant plain right in the middle of the two axes Hamburg – „the South“, and Berlin – Rhein-Ruhr.