TrainBlog by Marcel Marchon

Markus Bawidamann, on October 23, 2006 @ 1:15 pm

Hi Marcel, long time no see.. remember me from Namics? I was a friend of Markus Koller, working on Notes, being an external at that time.

I have been here in California for the last 4 months and will be going back to Europe in 1 week. I have been touring the valley a little and it is totally impossible to get a visa job here without any kind of university diploma, no matter how much experience it seems.

Anyway, to the subject:

I am stationed in San Diego and have been driving up I 5 several times to get to San Martin, visiting a friend there and the drive is LOOOOONNNNGGG…
High speed rail would be so cool and efficient… Unfortunately, Americans are pretty much addicted to cars and planes and have no Rail tradition the way Europe and Japan has. It seeme to be always easier to stick with things you have always done, add a freeway lane here, build another highway there… There is really no way to get fast anywhere with a car, especially with the slow speed of 65 or 70 mph here and raising it would come at a high death toll.
I guess America could benefit tremendously from a high-speed train system, but I wonder if it would also ail from the same problems that we have in Europe, namely too high prices and non-competiton due to monopolistic train structures… Planes are much more deregulated and multi-company on contrast… I wonder if you could run trains of several companies on rails to ensure competiton, while maintaining security and coexistence on the tracks.

Just my 5 cents.

Markus

Marcel Marchon, on October 23, 2006 @ 10:07 pm

> I wonder if you could run trains of several companies on rails to ensure competiton, while maintaining security and coexistence on the tracks.

I think that is possible - yes. Just look at all the various freight railroad operators that have sprung up all over Europe and that operate on the tracks of the various state-owned railroads - it seems to work pretty well.

Markus Bawidamann, on October 31, 2006 @ 3:31 am

Well, good to hear that. I was not aware of that fact.. Well, something has to be done.. I was driving down from Palmdale through LA on a sat morning and the trip was supposed to be 2.30 hours, but the traffic jams that developed added at least another hour on it, which is crazy.. It was not even rush hour or anything. I wonder what is going to happen in 10 years, I am affraid that all productivity is going to be drowned by jams and congestion. If everybody is sitting 4 hours daily in traffic jams, and EVERYBODY has to drive a car to get around in LA, then this is going to take a BAD impact on the economy. We have this thing also in Switzerland, there are these looneys that travel to Zürich city in a car and spend an hour for a distance of 10 miles or so, but they choose to do so, any normal person can take the train and arrive there on time and without delay. Here in California, you do not have the choice, you have to drive a car, there is nothing else really, exept flying, which does not help for local jams… and with security checks, one spends more time in the overhead then really traveling…

bartje, on November 19, 2006 @ 10:49 am

I work for such a state-owned track regulator, Infrabel in Belgium. And competition is there already, but is kicking of slowly. Also, because for the time being, every country still has it’s own safety system, another overhead wire tension, and is still responsible for the approval of locomotives. A French locomotive isn’t just allowed to run on Belgian tracks, and vice versa.
So still much work has to be done, to make it a truely free market.

Anonymous, on December 4, 2006 @ 2:15 pm

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