What causes this?
>>2013432The existence of buses and cars, probably
use of trains to transport raw material and workers declined is my guess
>>2013448Liquidating over 1/4 of your rail infrastructure virtually overnight doesn't happen because cars (which already existed) suddenly become more available. Especially when you factor in the 1980s being convergent dates.
china
>>2013452That's literally the reason they done itBritish government isn't known for well thought-out policieshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_cuts
>>2013448Wrong.>>2013450Half-truth.https://youtu.be/Ar_kJNIDonE
>>2013432I wonder what happened in poland some time between 1920 and 2020who can say
>>2013512Those service cuts took place between 1980s and the 2010s though.
building is easy, maintainance is hard.
>>2013512>i know one thing about poland
>>2013512Ah, the famous Great British Civil War of 1974
>>2013432for some reason anglos think only the UK cut their branch lines.
these maps are kinda naff when talking about the actual reality of a decline in rail service in some countries. a lot of lines are gone because they are branches for various industries that may no longer exist or closed mines and not passenger service. the actual lack of service can only be shown with pure passenger routes, schedules and average transit times. there has been actual decline in passenger service in places like england, US, canada, parts of eastern europe etc. but these maps are misleading.
>>2013613Indeed. France, by a considerably-sized margin, experienced Europe's first planned, systematic destruction of railway lines in 1938, back when the half-dozen mostly-independent 'big' railway companies merged to form the SNCF. This merger was accompanied by a massive, rapidly-implemented withdrawal of passenger services on lesser and not-so-lesser lines, coming to about 10,000 route-km in total. This was euphemistically called 'co-ordination', where (in theory) the withdrawn railway services were substituted for bus services, while the meagre freight services left on the lines simply withered away. Likewise, the more local narrow-gauge networks also fell on hard times and closed during the 1930s ... some were temporarily reopened during the Occupation, but with nearly all such wartime passenger reopenings, the services were withdrawn shortly after the end of the war.
>>2013432with buses, the affordable car, and in more recent history the regiotram as well as the expansion of metro networks into the suburbs, as well as the steady urbanisation and suburbanisation of cities all over the western sphere of influence, there is no need for spur lines serving villages combining for maybe 3000 people over a stretch of a dozen km or more. reactivations are luckily happening in some places in germany again, but almost all of these are happening in urban or suburban areas
>>2013432Urbanization. Rural areas become sparser, and it becomes even more economically unfeasible to keep them connected by rail.
>>2013512Poland is a special anomaly imo as far as beeching acts go that should really be studied. It feels like a massive black swan event where just about everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong. And the Poles know this, and are wise to PKP's and their ministers antics.
>be Switzerland>lots of branch lines and narrow-gauge lines kept>even quite a few "roadside tram"-type lines survived closure>the one narrow-gauge line in my region was closed with no interest in rebuilding itREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
>>2013432Poland ruin legacy of Germany
>>2013432Everything. Economic geography shifted so that demand heavy industrial/bulk commodity producers and users decreased and consolidated.Many of the lines were overbuilt for actual levels of demand, even before mass motorization. The urbanization trend continued, sending many rural areas into dire straits. Motorization scales down better than rail does, and so took a lot of the marginal market share off line. There was no longer the desire, or the capacity to use whatever was high-traffic to subsidize the low-traffic lines.
>>2013872>the Berlin terminal in questioncope
>>2013432Buses and cars are generally better.
>>2013432Legacy, mostly.>1875ish>Steam exists, short line rail lines are cheap enough to install>Small-ish locomotives are relatively inexpensive to operate>Only way to move more than a horse's cart's worth of shit is with said locomotives>(over?) build rail lines so that every town can have a box car load of crap into town and reload it with the same value of shit out>internal combustion is invented a few years later>Fast forward to post-WWII>Suddenly trucks are cost competitive for short hauls>Nobody bothers to rip out legacy rail lines>Seriously, these rail lines haven't been used as a major transit or freight network since the First World War>They're completely fucked and it would cost more to refurb them into something usable than to just put in fresh construction somewhere sensible>Someone with a sense of understanding what that land is worth finally decides to either repurpose the land (rails to trails baby), auction the tracks off, or just flat out gift it to neighboring landowners>Rail network has been consolidated to the current map
>>2013432It costs money to operate railways, and if the rail line isn't profitable, there's no reason to keep it around instead of selling the rails for scrap and the land to whoever wants to redevelop it.
>>2013703it costs more to run fucking roads out to those towns than it does to run a rail line..the real problem is that they never innovated with rail usage to bring them into the 20th century so it just fell out of use
>>2013432The 2nd one? Fear of Germans coming and taking the land back.Also leaving it under the management of p*les.
>>2013962>>>/pol/Also, read a book to properly educate yourself about the railway industry.
>>2013953The cost of running rail lines being cheaper is moot. Does it get enough ridership to pay for the operating cost of the line, or not?
>>2013432Simply put, most of what is shown on the left was built when your choices of transport were train, horse or walk.Any are that had no train-access was absolutely screwed. They could run no industry, could not easily recieve or send goods and traveling to or from there was a huge pain in the ass.Often also the military stepped in (at least in Germany) and demanded another line so they had a chance to move troops and material in that area should they need to.So a very fine grid of railways was built out of sheer necessity. Many of those lines were never 'profitable' in the sense of revenue carrying the cost. They made sense because without them the whole area was economically bankrupt.Now a few years later trucks, buses and cars had become very viable modes of transport and roads had been built to make them usable. And they were improving steadily.Increasingly the one or two cars of loose cargo that would be pushed into some little village became less full, fewer people bothered traveling with the sparse rail service. The dire need for these lines was gone. The absence of automation led to a lot of people being needed to operate these lines at any kind of effectiveness.They would certainly not have been built again. Some were closed already in the '50s due to being ridculously expensive to run for no purpose, others made enough sense at least to keep them running while the material would work without major invest.Additionally, small factories that used to be everywhere along the lines were increasingly closing. Manufacturing of various goods was consolidating into a few major factories and/or relocating overseas. This further killed of freight customers out in the boonies.For Germany, many lines were kept alive with cheap railbuses, but as major investments became necessary, and neither freight nor passenger service justified even the operating cost anymore, lots of lines were abandonned throughout the second half of the 20th century.
>>2013914>and the land to whoever wants to redevelop it.That's retarded and short-sighted though because then it'll cost gorillions more if you want to re-establish connections or it will be impossible to do so. And you will still suffer from the lower ridership.
>>2014056That really depends on what the rail enables and whether or not you actually need it. When the short-sightedness is only apparent on timescales measuring centuries and through wildly unequally distributed development by unforeseen industries or neighborhood developments, how are you supposed to sensibly bank on it eventually being useful?Purposefully ignoring cases of economic-national suicide.
>>2013432capitalism
>>2013914Educating children, taking care of the elderly, policing, and firefighting aren't profitable either.
>>2014271No, those are things you pay for to have a functional society. If you want to extend the argument that transportation should be public too, prove that spending an equivalent amount of money on automobiles would be a worse use of money.
>>2014276Addendum: $40 billion dollars buys ~1.1 million automobiles.
>>2014276Traffic jams, wider roads, higher pollution, more accidents causing injury and death, all significantly lowering quality of life and health of people.
>>2013432Ignore what most anons are saying in this thread and do yourself a favor to read some of the books and reports on the subject matter, they provide unique and valuable insight through insider knowledge. So stuff like the reports by Beeching himself (The Reshaping of British Railways and The Development of the Major Railway Trunk Routes) and books like the one by Karol Trammer (basically a must-read for rail autists in Central Europe) in pic related. Armchair urbanists and breadtubers often just don't understand the situations in different countries (or even their own).
>>2014327>Armchair urbanists and breadtubers often just don't understand the situations in different countries (or even their own).Too right. They've never had responsibility over anything significant and therefore don't grasp the inescapable nature of cost pressures and democratic blowblack. I've always thought "here's why it was done in the first place and here's how I think we can go from here" is a more convincing style of argumentation than NJB et al's "car-satan crushed our children's organs thanks to mind control from Alfred Sloan, nothing can be done, praise the Netherlands", but what do I know.
>>2014327there's no english version sir
>>2014269this>>2014327its just corpogreedhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail>allow your rail transit network to be privatized>be surprised lines get closed because muh profitstime and time again
>>2014342I just bought a physical copy for myself out of curiosity since I couldn't find a pdf online, might force feed my Xerox or translate some pages by hand when I have time.
>>2013432De-industrialisation The UK used to have a lot of industry outside london, now it's just london, and outside of a few other cities the uk is legit third world.You don't need lines that go from irrelevant shithole A to irrelevant shithole BDon't know about Poland
>>2014373That's incorrect.
>>2013432communism
>>2014363>>2014327>>2014057>>2013512>>2013627>>2013914There is way more to this than most people realize, way more than one post can summarize.The 1980s were the dance on the titanic for Polish railways. Massive investments into modernization were made before the PZPR's collapsse into new stations, upgrades, maintenance, and new connections.Electrification being prioritized above all else in the 1970's and 1980's resulted in non-electrified lines being written off as a loss.PKP, the state railway company (called a state within a state) was broken up into smaller enterprises directed economically and also beheld to influence from local governments. Ridership decreased from a billion yearly to less than a quarter after 20 years. Smaller countries like Czechoslovakia and Austria see higher per capita and overall ridership respectively despite being arguably worse off.The total amount of railways was also cut by more than a quarter. No new lines have been built since the 1980s, more had been closed than highways and roads built.Politicians, managerial elites, journalists, and economists spread ad-nauseum propaganda about trains carrying air even though every time they closed up a line, the last rides were always full of people (to the point where a police presence was set up incase people protested against the railway closure) whilst foreign ridership continued to rise.These towns, villages, factories, and other places were effectively cut off from the world and socioeconomic activity afterwards. The largest being a 100,000 strong city, and a total of over 2 million people missing their trains (some just 10 years after operations began, see Jasztrzębie Zdrój or the Morcinek mine).That's just the tip of the iceberg though.
>>2014373In a sane country, ideally no city above 10,000 people should have the absence of a rail connection. Czechia only has one, the largest cities without a rail connection in Hungary and Slovakia are 12-16k. Poland has around 100 now. This is not an unfeasible operation to scale.
>>2013613I suspect most of the left hand map was pruned from the air during the Second Great Unpleasantness.
>>2014379If it ends in more centralized population less communist, minimum infrastructure, good.
>>2013432You can see the old German borders in the 1920 Polish one
>>2014504>minimum infrastructureidyllic village life doesn't exist in modern society, the american attempt at getting this while still having benefits of centralized economies and cities leads to far more expensive infrastructure to sustain spread out population centres that aren't self sufficient.
>>2014363All the lines closed in Britain and France were done while they were nationalised. The simple answer is just buses. They're cheaper and more flexible. And cars of course.
>>2014377which part?
>>2014834Buses were unreliable much like their drivers in EE until recent years. The car hype washed over multiple places without a measurable impact. What we're seeing is a vicious circle of service cuts breeding service cuts, lack of proper rolling stock (Czech rail buses come to mins), too much emphasis on electrification at any cost, or just outright deliberate anti-rail propaganda and sabotage of the schedules/offers by the railway companies. Oh, and at times insufficient safety precautions.
>>201345220 years isn't "virtually overnight" and I'm sure that lines were already being cut by then. A mothballed, neglected line to the rural hamlets of Sheepshire, Farmingham, and Porridge Hill aren't going to be viable especially if urbanized areas need the resources.
>>2014334>I've always thought "here's why it was done in the first place and here's how I think we can go from here" is a more convincing style of argumentationUrbanists showing up at town hall meetings don't go over well because they forget it's not their echo chamber.- Formulate an argument that summarizes what you know, in reality you can't tell people to watch a 10-minute YouTube video- Threats and name-calling will most likely get you kicked out or get you laughed out of the room.- People don't like to be inconvenienced, so expect to get pushback when you propose tearing out parking for bike lanes.- Bike lanes and transit tend to hit resistance when it actually comes to implementation. You can get people to vote for more bike lanes but that doesn't necessarily mean "yes, take away street parking/lanes/turning ability". Remember all the hoopla over Gov. Hochul delaying the congestion pricing indefinitely? A poll of Democrat voters in NYC indicated 50% approved of the delay, 30% disapproved. (Those are bad numbers.)
>>2013953>it costs more to run fucking roads out to those towns than it does to run a rail line..Irrelevant since you need a road anyway, regardless of whether there's a rail line or not.
>>2017633>i don't even know the absolute basics of british railway history
>>2014271Private schools, retirement homes and police exist, retard
>>2013914>if the rail line isn't profitable, there's no reason to keep it aroundor is it?a single line is operated by multiple trains. some might be unprofitable, but you keep them on the schedule to keep the line alive.a rail network consists of multiple lines. some might be unprofitable, yet you keep them to keep the network alive. people use the less profitable ones to travel to hubs and then travel using more profitable ones. if you start axing the connections, even more lines can go to shit, it all just falls down like a house of cards.not to mention that people in the 1990s had way less cars. a huge car ownership boost happened after PL joined eu, in 2004.and some profit is hard to measure. how exactly would you value the fact that a granny can travel to see a doctor in the neighboring city? or kids going to/from school without waiting 4h. public service means a bit more than just +- balance in excel spreadsheet
>>2013914most rail lines are unprofitable and subsidised by governments
>>2014421Only the North was heavily involved in the fighting, the South was mostly unscathed aside from the harbors. Also aerial raids were focused on major hubs and strategic lines, not the countryside lines that got wiped pre- and post-WW2 to cut costs.
>>2013811Switzerland used to be so comfy, not its just globohomo inc. without a soul
>>2013432>1920Originally German land
>>2019121German occupied*
>>2014327I'm halfway through this book. Really puts things in perspective.
>>2019276>been 31 days since i bought it>been reading it mostly on trains>been procrastinsting for the last few weeks after bike accident >note taking has resulted in barely getting through the book, only gotten to page 75Looks like I have suffered a 45 minute delay, I better hurry up.
>>2014819We're not going to live in the fucking pods, Hans.
The train is where I am always able to focus and read a book or just sit and think about life. It's such a nice place to be in. I really wish railways had priority over highways.
>>2013914how profitable are road maintenance and bus lines?
>>2019412Neither one is profitable, which is why they're paid for with taxes. Railways were very profitable once, and much of the mindset for public transportation funding disfavored railways.
It's not a state service kept up a running as such even on a loss.I works like a company so if the people in unimportant town 254 don't ride the train 50 times a day each or otherwise pay enough for their line so it can be kept running and make a profit it gets cancled of course.
>>2019476>why can't rail compete with completely subsidized roadsmakes you think
>>2019513Drivers more than pay for road upkeep through fuel duty (not to mention vehicle tax, and VAT). It's drivers who subsidise railways. Chart doesn't show local authority road spending I think, but that's a few billion. Fuel duty raises £25 billion a year. Passenger rail fares is like £9 billion, with £25 billion in expenditure.
