this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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This is the wrong statistic! It doesnt matter how often you take the train, but how far you go. There is something called a passenger kilometer. Someone traveling one kilometer by train makes one passenger kilometer, 6 people on a train going 10 kilometers makes 60 passenger kilometers. The same can be done for other modes of transportation. The modal split (the right statistic) then shows how much each mode of transportation is actually used. Here you can find the statistic for each country of the EU: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/daviz/passenger-transport-modal-split-2#tab-chart_1
A few examples why modal split is better than frequencies:
It isn't necessarily wrong, it's just two different metrics meant to measure two different concepts.
Thanks for your comment. Not wrong in the sense that the data is wrong or faked, but that the metric is not useful. Especially when better metrics are readily available for that region. Can you name me one prediction or result which you can infer from the frequency of train travel other than βfun factsβ? (I am actually really curious :) ). With the modal split you can for example calculate CO2 emissions or estimate needed capacity increases if you want to replace one mode with another and much more.
I think the number of trips says a lot about the role trains play in people's everyday lives, maybe even more than the kilometers travelled. Sure, that's not a "metric", but it does give us an idea if people use trains just for vacation a few times a year, or for their commute to work or other daily trips. For someone taking a train just once a year, even if that is for hundeds of kilometers, we know that they will use a different means of transportation for most trips.
Some trains may have the same function as buses or trams in other places (and metro... is metro a train here?), so the everyday commute of people in city A may not be that different than commute in city B, when first uses trams, and the second one has a local rail network with light trains. Actually the trains would probably have bigger negative impact on environment and life conditions in this scenario.
The environmental impact is gonna depend a lot on how the trains are powered. Some European countries are nearly 100% electric now. Others way less.
I really like when I can just show up at the station and jump of a train without the need to consult a timetable beforehand. Not sure what you can infer, but I value frequency!
That unfortunately is the other kind of frequency, an not the one depicted in the graph
Ah, right. I misunderstood the graphicβ¦
Yes, absolutely a game changer. Maybe comparable to having your car parked in front of your house vs the need to rent a car for each trip.
Switzerland is also on top for person-kilometres.
Model split also has it's downsides. For example:
Not every trip is the same in every country. Denmark commutes 22km on average, the Netherlands does 3km
Not every country travels as far. Someone who does 10km by train out of 100km has a much greater share than 20km out of 10.000.
Germany, would be better in Case you would measure the time that it takes to travel.
Danks ju fΓΆr traffeling Wiss Deutsche Bahn ...
Even that has problems. German railways might not be on time, but most of the main lines are upgraded to 200km/h and some new lines are even faster. So compared to for example Switzerland that means higher speed, but it is much more likely to be delayed.
The main reasons of which the German trains are mostly to late are Not enough Tracks for all the trains and Not enough people who works at Deutsche Bahn.
If we would like that more people taking the train, we need also more acces to trains, that means more trainstations in villages Connected to the railway systhem
Interesting! For example, while Switzerland and Turkey appear on opposite sides of the spectrum in OP, they are close to each other in the modal split. And Turkey has even much less car use than Switzerland! 61.6% vs 77.7%. Apparently, taking the bus is very common in Turkey. With 36.6% more than any other country has in train and bus combined.
And while Germany looks literally green in the upper half in OP, modal split shows it's car dependency with 85.4%.
Sweet link! These stats are really cool. Low car and high bus usage seem to be very linked to poorer (relatively) countries. High train usage in general seems to be much wealthier countries, yet those countries also have way more car usage. Also this is very incomplete without looking at bicycle usage, and walking of course. This makes the percentages even more misleading because it's a percentage among sampled transportation modes
Thanks, and good observations. Many countries (Germany and the Netherlands for example) have statistics for every mode of transportation, which as you said is way more informative. I just quickly grabbed the first statistic I could find for the EU to be honest :D
Here is the data for Germany: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/daten/verkehr/fahrleistungen-verkehrsaufwand-modal-split#undefined
For the Netherlands they have the data split by county which is very interesting. In the bike capital Utrecht still 50% of all passenger kilometers belong to car travel. I cant find the government website right now.
Wow, those are still way too high for car travel. I wonder how that'd compared to turkey, as they have 61% car travel but that's not counting biking or walking.
Most people have far more km to work every day than the longer trips to visit distant relatives. Thus how often you take the train is a useful metric.
Plus someone who drives to work.already has a car so the marginal cost of the longer trip is insignificant. While someone who normally doesn't drive has to make up the costs of a car for rare trips only and that makes the marginal cost of a car very high. So people who don't drive daily are more likely to figure out how to take those long trips without a car.
This pattern is true and passenger kilometers represent it just fine. There is no need to use the how often you use the train metric. Note that my two examples were there to explain the metric, not actual factual examples.
As an actual example: I take my bike to work and dont own a car, so my modal split is mostly trains because of longer distance trips, but I use the bike far more often. Frequencies only make sense if each occurrence is very similar (in quantity). For example: How often does one eat meat? Each meal roughly contains the same amount of meat (may be factor two or three difference). Here frequencies make more sense as more detailed statistics dont actually give more insights.
The most useful metric for a transit system is % of people who are on a monthly unlimited rides pass. So long as the pass is priced well that measures who useful transit is.
Of course for people who bike an unlimited rides pass may not be cost effective, but I still like it as people who are on the pass won't hesitate to use transit for odd trips.