transport

On Wednesday afternoon one of Lisbon's funiculars slide down Glória killing 16 and injuring 21 others. It's a horrendous affair and I wish I was writing about these 19th century funiculars during a better time. Portugal declared Thursday a national day of mourning and have halted operation of all funiculars until an investigation is completed.

On the morning of 24 June, the first day of the NATO summit, a fire was put out by the fire brigade and ProRail contractors disrupting trains to and from Schiphol Airport and between Amsterdam and Utrecht. Roughly 30 cables were damaged on the Oeverlandeweg rail bridge which took the better part of the day to repair.

Later that day, the Dutch police released a notice asking for witnesses who may have been in the area when the fire started around 03:45. We also learned the report came in at 05:41, which is roughly two hours of burn time. Last week, the police put out another call for witnesses mentioning three cyclists and a taxi driver with a passenger who may have seen the crime. Along with the report were images of the fire and charred cables.

I saw the Metroboard Kickstart from design rules go around earlier this year. It's an LED board that displays the real-time location of trains at stations for several cities in the US. Through Tom Scott's newsletter, I discovered that they released a video showing the manufacturing process, including circuit board assembly, aluminium CNC machining, woodworking, and certifications.

I love the European Sleeper for what it does: takes you from Brussels (and a bunch of other stops in The Netherlands) all the way to Prague, overnight. No planes, no airports. You arrive in the centre of Prague and you’re good to go. Excellent.

But what I really disliked about the European Sleeper - and what Seat 61 really doesn’t make very clear - is that it’s an extremely basic service. So basic, that it fails to live up to some pretty low expectations.

Giles Turnbull writes about his experience on the European Sleeper from Brussels to Prague and back. The lack of cleanliness popped up a lot. In fact, I remembered the outside of the carriages being dirty on their inaugural ride.

Jon Worth comments on a Berlin-based startup, Nox, with their goal to "operate Europe-wide overnight trains with a fully personal rooms for one or two people at the price of a flight".

While Nox, like its predecessors, faces an uphill struggle, in a few ways it is different. Its plan to rethink the layout of a night-train carriage, making it more appealing to modern travellers – and safer for women – makes sense. Standardisation - all the carriages will be the same - keeps operations simple. One of the founders previously worked for FlixBus’s rail arm, FlixTrain, in Germany, so there is genuine railway experience.

Seeing this quote coming from Jon it seems promising. The co-founder Jon is referring to is Janet. The other co-founder is Thibault, or Simply Railway from YouTube, they've also created a video announcing the start-up. Jon further comments on Mastodon about his optimisim.

2027 is a date for some trial operations. Real routes are not going to start then [...] unlike European Sleeper they're NOT making do with ancient carriages saved from the scrap heap. And unlike Midnight Trains and GoVolta they do have an understanding of the railway industry, and getting around the hurdles is not impossible.

NS will stop offering travel information and customer service on social media platform X from June 1. Fewer and fewer travelers are using X to ask NS questions. The chat function on NS.nl is much more suitable for that. In addition, the work on X has become much less pleasant for NS customer service employees in recent years because the tone on the platform has hardened.

Translated from Dutch by DeepL.

NS is also using this opportunity to pull the plug on the community forum as well. Something I'm disappointed by. The form of communication will be through phone calls of chat through their website. There are plans to bring chat to the NS app as well.

Anyone interested in a DAF B1600 bus or a replica of a Fokker F.VII?

The Nederlands Transport Museum has put up some of their stuff for auction after unfortunately being unable to find a new location. They officially closed in 2023.

Discovered via Treinenweb.

I wanted to track down a 53ft shipping container used to transport goods to the USA, that's when I came across "Matt's Place". A website with a huge collection of intermodal containers, sorted by type; documenting images, markings, and current owners.

The FAQ describes the site's purpose is to act as a photo gallery for "transportation historians, scale modelers, and people in the transportation industry". Always fun finding little corners of the web like this.

Jon Worth on Trenitalia's plan on competing with the Eurostar:

Having expanded into France first, then to Spain, it now has London in its sights – and should in no way be underestimated.

Coming from Jon this means a lot.

The Vervoerregio Amsterdam has proposed changes to the Amsterdam Metro network to accomodate a growth in the number of passengers by 2027. Outlined are four options which the public can vote on, the mainly target changes to the Oostbuis (what I called the central trunk) to reduce the number of lines increasing reliability and frequency. The first three options allows for at least 10 trains per hour during peak, and the fourth option at least 8 trains per hour, both of which are good improvements. Reducing the number of lines does mean changes for some passengers at Van der Madeweg when travelling towards and away from Centraal Station.

I had updated my blog entry for Amsterdam's metro in March but hadn't got around to sharing this update here.

I shared this in a toot, last weekend, it only makes sense to post it here too.

While looking for a bridge's name, I found this website that lists all of the bridges in Amsterdam, with pictures!

https://bruggenvanamsterdam.nl/

The bridge I was looking for was unnamed and unnumbered at Van der Madeweg and Buitensinge but still listed on the site. The bridge had 1991 etched into it, from when it was constructed as part of the Southern branch of the Ringspoorbaan around Amsterdam, which opened in 1993.

https://bruggenvanamsterdam.nl/madespo.htm

Scans of 1980s Japanese station passes that are aesthetically pleasing, discovered via Nicolas Magand While reverse image searching the second ticket I found a fun story about a visit to the Horyuji Temple.

I also came across some more fantastically designed commemorative tickets for railway lines from the 50s-70s.

I knew something was a little off yesterday morning while I traveled into Amsterdam but didn't realize it at the time . The train departure screens were set back by 15 minutes starting around 07:00, just in time for the morning peak. You'd think it an April Fool's joke but no, it was a failed system upgrade by NS. The issue was resolved around 11:30, later that morning.

This made matters a little worse around Amsterdam as rail works at Centraal Station, over the weekend, planned to be completed by 06:00 Monday morning took longer than expected. This resulted in a number of delayed trains and confused passengers. What's slightly funny to me is that ProRail decided to start work a day early, on Friday, to ensure there won't be a delay. To add to this, NS is currently running rail-replacement buses between Weesp and Amsterdam Muiderpoort this week, with an adjusted timetable until 23 April, to accommodate rail works in the area. It's going to be a fun month.

Taras Grescoe writes about the SNCF's new TGV M, based on the Alstom Avelia Horizon, that will be the successor of the TGV Duplex. One thing I hadn't put much thought into, until reading the newsletter, was the the amount of space saved while still increasing leg room and increasing capacity from 630 to 740 passengers. Impressive!

Though the [TGV M] is the same length as its predecessor, about 200 metres (656 feet), it manages to fit nine cars where the previous duplex TGV fit just eight. How? The length of the power cars at each end of the train has been reduced by 4 metres, while one metre has been shaved off each passenger coach. Unlike the airlines, they've done this without compressing legs. Somewhat magically, each seat on the TGV M has five centimeters more space at knee-level than seats on the old Duplexes.

Team Watchdog, a group of individuals using OSINT to build tools for investigative journalism, have recreated Colombo in Cities: Skylines.

Why would anyone do this? In their own words:

While there is professional expertise out there, that expertise tends to be usually in academic papers and reports, and visualizing things is often quite difficult. If we want everyday citizens to understand some of the problems that we face and to be better able to judge the impact of different decisions, then we need to build something that is a little bit friendlier and more visual.

I don't have a working install of Cities: Skylines to test this out but the amount of effort shows through the documentation and impressive screenshots.

Discovered via Andrea Bergia's links list.

My YouTube recommendations have done well once again. On 20 January, an Intercity VIRM-6 train collided with an excavator pulling a trailer at a protected level crossing in Bunnik. The excavators engine failed while on the crossing, and the train couldn't brake in time travelling roughly an additional 500 metres after the impact. The driver of the excavator was not hurt, the driver of the train came out with minor injuries, and no passengers were harmed.

The video recommended to me, filmed by Tinovr6, was of the train being rescued by one of ProRail's four unimogs. The vehicle demonstrates great traction given the wet conditions that day.

Yesterday we saw the new ICE-L from Talgo enter the Netherlands being pulled by a RailAdventure operated Siemens Vectron. They've entered the Netherlands for testing and approval. This is to be the new Intercity Berlin passenger carriages as early as December 2025, but I don't have my hopes up. Treinreizigers.nl reports that we may see ICE 3 Neo temporarily used if the ICE L is not admitted by then. There's nothing more permanent than a temporary fix, at least it would be fun to see the ICE 3 Neo service this route.

Back to the ICE-L, the video from Dylans Depot shows 21 carriages being pulled by the Vectron. We know the ICE-L is usually used with 17 carriages, that's 21 carriages * 13.8m = 290m long! That makes this longer than the current IC Berlin (9 carriages * 26.4m = 238m). I don't expect them to use 21 carriages in normal passenger service and have seen it mentioned online that using 21 carriages is potentially to test at the maximum possible length. If 17 carriages are used it would be closer to the length of the current IC Berlijn rijtuigstam at 235m (17 carriages * 13.8m = 235m).

Chick-fil-A's distribution centre at Union Pacific's Prime Pointe Industrial Park in Dallas, Texas, is ready to receive hash browns, waffle fries and other tasty potato products via rail from Oregon. According to Union Pacific's press release, the distribution facility will serve 200 stores in the area, receiving an average of size rail cars a day, offsetting the equivalent of "100 long-haul trucks off the road each week."

The potato products I assume are produced by Lamb Weston's located by Union Union Pacific's Portland Subdivision railway line that runs along the Columbia River in Oregon.

The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) launched the Railroad Crossing Elimination Grant Program to fund projects that improve safety around level crossings. This $1.1 billion grant program aims to create grade separation through tunnels or bridges over railways, close crossings, relocate track, protect or improve protection at existing crossings, and plan works involving the crossings. Since opening for applications in September of 2024, 123 projects have been accepted, covering over 1,000 crossings.

These goals are very similar to those of the Dutch National Level Crossings Improvement Program (LVO) started in 2014 to improve safety and traffic flow at crossings, and the NABO program, launched in 2018, aimed at eliminating all passively protected level crossings in the country. While the funding mechanisms for these projects are slightly different—where the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management funds up to 50% of the project, the US FRA fund up to 80%—the outcomes are the same.

Adam Jacobs writes about switching from flying to travelling by rail for conferences and other work-related travels to be more sustainable. In doing so they also comment on the benefits of being able to work while on the move and the ability to explore new places but also that purchasing tickets can be complicated especially if it involves a missed connection. It was good to read someone else's perspective as I also travel by train for work, not as much or for as long as the author, and have written about my fair share of experiences. The same themes arise, good use of work time, but also trouble with ticketing and delays.

I originally discovered Adam's article on Mastodon.

On 6 January, Dirk-Jan Pasman, a Product Owner and Project Manager at NS, posted on LinkedIn that the first VIRM train, number 8742, has been taken to the workshop to begin installation of ETCS equipment. To the quote the entire post, translated from Dutch to English using LibreTranslate:

Nice start of the new year, proud and big milestone!

Today, the first VIRM train will roll into the workshop that we are going to provide with ETCS (European Train Control System). Over the past period we have worked hard together towards this beautiful moment.

By installing ETCS in the VIRM, we make the largest intercity fleet of NS ready for the future.

With fresh energy we will work together during this next phase of this beautiful project!

In 2022, Siemens Mobility was awarded the contract to equip 176 VIRM trains with ETCS Level 2 technology and maintenance of the system which the Dutch Railway, NS, plans to extend to the SLT and FLIRT trains in the future. At the time drivers were planned to start simulated training using the system in Q4 2023.

Isochrone maps can be used to depict travel time from a specific point in a given region. Václav Volheijn takes this a step further and creates a spacetime map that distorts based on travel time. In their YouTube video, I made maps that show time instead of space, they go over the development process. The source code is also available on Github.

The Transit Costs Project (discovered by Pedestrian Observations) aims to collect cost details of transit infrastructure projects around the world from researchers at NYU Marron Institute of Urban Management. In their own words:

Why do transit-infrastructure projects in New York cost 20 times more on a per kilometer basis than in Seoul? We investigate this question across hundreds of transit projects from around the world. We have created a database that spans more than 50 countries and totals more than 11,000 km of urban rail built since the late 1990s... The goal of this work is to figure out how to deliver more high-capacity transit projects for a fraction of the cost in countries like the United States. Additionally, we hope that our site will be a useful resource for elected officials, planners, researchers, journalists, advocates, and others interested in contextualizing transit-infrastructure costs and fighting for better projects.

There are some visualizations and case studies released based on the data.

A look into the mash-up of Slovak train design by Dalibor Itze and their proposal to fix some of its flaws.

Thibault Lapers reports on some interesting rumours that an announcement of the EuroCity Brussels is not far away. We saw this service during the Olympics this summer between Brussel-Zuid and Paris Nord. Thibault mentions that in addition to a stop at Mons, we can also expect stops Aulnoye-Aymeries and Creil with an overall trip time of approximately 3 hours. The rolling stock would be the HLE 18 locomotive and I11 carriages.

Extending the RE13 to Eindhoven has been in discussions for many years now. In 2021, the concession was awarded to Start, a subsidiary of DB, to work together with Arriva Nederland who is responsible for the Dutch portion of the service.

This hourly service, scheduled to starting in December 2026, will use 20 new Stadler FLIRT3 XL train sets. They will be capable of three power systems, 15kV DC, 15kV AC and 25kV AC, according to the presentation with three train protection systems ATB, PZB, and ERTMS. It seems the first train has already been constructed with three more scheduled for 2024 and the rest to started by Q4 2025.

Title and all quotes translated from Dutch to English by Google Translate, minor edits for readability made by me.

As ProRail employees are on strike in different regions of the Netherlands this and next week. Even though these strikes are bound to various ProRail control centers, they affect traffic much broader than their region. Since NS runs a lot of 'long lines' across the country which may cross strike affected areas. NS has even started using new digital signage earlier this year to help passengers navigate these long routes. Tim van Leeuwen, Director of Operations Control at NS, explains why these long lines are needed:

[Long line services] are a direct consequence of how our small country is structured. In contrast to other countries, the Netherlands does not have one dominant urban area where employment and education are concentrated. Think of Paris in France, for example. Everyone has to go there in the morning and leave again in the evening. The French railways (SNCF) therefore base their timetable on this.

What you sometimes hear is true: the Netherlands is more of a large city than a small country. Not all residents of Den Bosch work in Rotterdam and not all residents of Groningen want to go to Amsterdam. You could actually say that everyone in the Netherlands has to go everywhere. And that is what NS is setting up its network with long lines for.

A major advantage is that NS is making optimum use of both the infrastructure and the train equipment. Due to the long lines, few trains have to turn around in Utrecht and that saves platform capacity and therefore space at Utrecht Central, a place in the middle of the city where space is limited. It also ensures that 80 percent of our passengers do not have to change trains.

Mark Wagenbuur, from Bicycle Dutch, writes about forever ongoing discussions about building bridges over the IJ, a river that now has seven ferry lines taking passengers back and forth. A quote from the blog:

In the 2015 version, I reported that there were six ferry lines, and now there are seven. The most important one of those, behind Central Station, is the F3 Buiksloterweg ferry. The earliest mention of this ferry dates back to the year 1308, but it is probably much older. Two ships operate on this line during the day, which means a ferry crosses the river every six minutes. During rush hour, a third ferry is added, reducing the waiting time to four minutes. At the busiest times, there is even a fourth ferry in operation.

I was reminded for an incident in January this year when the Metro M52 was closed towards Amsterdam Noord because of a flooding in a tunnel at Sixhavenweg. This was paired with the F3 Buiksloterweg ferries being taken out of service because the platform used to cross when docked had collapsed, the ferries ran to IJplein instead. To make matters works, a number of ferries from the 60 series were taken out of service because of technical problems resulted in cancelling the F9 route between Sporenburg and Zeeburgereiland.

This paper written by nine researchers talk about how the presence of bicycles lanes have a traffic calming effect for motor-vehicle users at intersections. That is to say it not only makes the street safer for cyclists but micro-mobility users and pedestrians as well.

we found that the effect of the delineator-protected bicycle lane (marked with traffic cones and plastic delineators) was associated with a 28 % reduction in average maximum speeds and a 21 % decrease in average speeds for vehicles turning right. For those going straight, a smaller reduction of up to 8 % was observed. Traffic moving perpendicular to the bicycle lane experienced no decrease in speeds. Painted-only bike lanes were also associated with a small speed reduction of 11–15 %, but solely for vehicles turning right. These findings suggest an important secondary benefit of bicycle lanes: by having a traffic calming effect, delineated bicycle lanes may decrease the risk and severity of crashes for pedestrians and other road users.

The paper also mentions that the road width decreased slightly when adding the temporary bicycle lanes which in itself is considered a traffic calming measure by the Federal Highway Administration.

Discovered via Taras Grescoe.

Ivan Rivera writes about the derailed Renfe S-411 near Chamartín in which both occupants where safe. It's most likely that a train drifted downhill across two tight curves with speed limits for 45 km/h.

Quotes from Alan Levy on deciding between tram or metro for ring roads around cities, in this case specifically the Bundesstraße 4 R in Nuremberg.

In favor of light rail, there’s the issue of speed. Normally, the advantage of subways over tramways is that they’re faster. However, on a circumferential route, the importance of speed is reduced, since people are likely to only travel a relatively short arc, connecting between different radials or from a radial to an off-radial destination. What are more important than speed on such a route are easy transfers and high frequency.

In favor of metro, there is the cost issue. The same factors that make speed less important and frequency more important also make it easier to build a metro. If the road is wide enough, which I think the one in Nuremberg is, then cut-and-cover is more feasible, reducing costs.

As usual with the blog there's great comparisons drawn from other cities like Paris and Cologne and other points made on trading capacity for frequency.

NS train driver Stefan uploaded a new video of the 'Airport Sprinter' equipped with cameras and software that enable the driver to close the doors before the train departure. A task that is typically done by the train conductor during the departure procedure. Each carriage is equipped with external cameras allowing the driver to see passengers during the departure procedure visible at 8:20 in the video. This system, according to the video description, saves 10-15 seconds on average at each stop.

I've written about tests that were conducted back in 2022 on these sprinters, it seems the timed saved will be worked into the 2025 timetable to improve reliability.

An interesting side effect since the train conductor is no longer in charge of beginning the departure procedure if they move between trainsets at a stop they must notify the driver so as to not be left behind. This is seen at 16:18 in the video.

While reading the latest post on PedestrianObservations called Tradeoffs in Reliability and Shutdowns about the state of the German railway in the summer I re-discovered a toot from Jon Worth. I think it aptly describes what it means to have a reliable and trustworthy public transport system.

That 5am train with a dozen building workers on it, or the last train home in the evening matter for the trust and reliability of the system, even if those individual trains make heavy losses and are largely empty

Our car-centric cities and towns rob people of their independence. People who would otherwise be perfectly capable of going out on their own to meet friends, or grocery shop, or go to the library are prevented from doing so because they can’t drive. Maybe they’re too young to drive, as I was at 14; or maybe they’ve gotten old enough that it’s no longer safe for them to drive; or perhaps they have a disability that prevents them from driving. Sometimes people can’t drive simply because they can’t afford a car, because these things are really expensive.

From Evan Sheehan.

This article from the South China Morning Post covers the Iran-China railway link between Almaty in Kazakhstan through to Tehran in Iran. At the time this was published, I assume 2017, it had been a year since the first the first freight train connecting Iran and China ran through neighbouring countries Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan in February of 2016. Traveling along the Silk Road taking only 14 days it provided a quicker route than ships between the two countries.

The arrival of this train in less than 14 days is unprecedented,” said President of the Railways of the Islamic Republic of Iran (RAI), Dr Mohsen Pour Seyed Aghaei. “The time spent by this train” to reach Tehran “has been 30 days shorter compared with the maritime route, which starts from China’s Shanghai port and ends in Iran’s Bandar Abbas” port city, Dr Pour Seyed Aghaei noted. He added, "This is an important step for the revival of the Silk Road and the train has travelled 700 km per day, saving 30 days compared to normal time that takes to go this distance.”

Part of this route towards Europe became a "life channel" during the COVID-19 pandemic as it required fewer health checks than road transport since the train uses local crews in each country. Halting flights and increasing maritime freight prices put this rail alternative in a good spot.

Interestingly, the UIC in another article.

It's clear there's a lot of activity in this area I'm not familiar with but it is interesting to learn more.

India has accelerated its rate of electrifying railway lines in the last few years, this article covers some of the numbers and current progress.

“The pace of electrification has been the highest in the last 15 years: between 2011 and 2020, about 20,000rkm of railway lines were electrified, and another 20,000km of route kilometres have been electrified between 2020 and November 2023,” says Sharif Qamar, associate director at the Energy and Resources Institute, a Delhi-based research institution.

As of 1 September 2023 91.49% of the railways have been electrified according to the Indian Railways.

Having just shared the Eisenbahn-Planer, I have to post about the Treinposities rail agenda. This is a curated list of rail events in the Netherlands that gets updated regularly by the site administrators. The site has many more interesting pages, with details on rolling stock in the Netherlands and other countries, live map of trains in the Netherlands, details on train routes with expected rolling stock, and much more.

Eisenbahn-Planer tracks events with a focus on historical and/or heritage railways. There are quite a number of filters you can apply with multiple language options.

An informative @Reuters graphics article on the Houthi rebel attacks at the Bab al-Mandab straight with detailed plots on the attack types, context on the political situation, and how it affects the crew, shipping companies and global shipping.

Switzerland is often referenced when discussing good public transit systems, Jokteur does a good job describing of the country uses clock-face scheduling to reliably connected different locations together. A good read with clear examples illustrating the concept along with follow-up reading in case you’re interested in the subject.