Being from the EU for me all trains are electric (except many in Germany only) so I do not feel any special excitement but observe a thing: the idea of all wagon individually powered is ancient, very ancient, like monorails. Both ideas never get spread simply because they are too expensive instead of cheap, in practice.
Electric motors are not expensive as diesel one, they are much more compact etc etc etc but are still much more expensive than a simple wagon without any engine. Meanwhile a larger electric locomotive it's still fast (for instance France TGV, Japan Shinkansen etc) and hyper-fast accelerations are not much welcomed by passengers, so it sound extra added complexity for little to no return. Something not different than some modern tram projects (city buses with electric motors, no battery, and a special trolley to allow get dedicated aerial electricity while rolling on wheels) that in theory sounds good (much less expensive in capex than create new rails in cities) but in practice have so much problems and costs that they are abandoned or will not be replaced because of that.
For my little experience USA rails are much older than most EU ones (meaning, they are much less upgraded) and while that's might sound bad from some "modern" people actually IMVHO it is not much because so far ALL RAILS prove too be simply too costly for most usages, only some freight-only rails are effectively interested, passengers ones can't survive without big public contributions while offering a good service. The Swiss choose to waste an immense amount of resources to keep the service level high, pushing nearly empty trains around, all other countries tend to scale back (while formally state the contrary).
> the idea of all wagon individually powered is ancient, very ancient, like monorails. Both ideas never get spread simply because they are too expensive instead of cheap, in practice.
> it sound extra added complexity for little to no return
What on earth are you going on about?
The vast majority of all current and new passenger trains in the EU are multiple units with no power car, because they are pretty much better in every possible way. They are cheaper to build and cheaper to operate(mainly due to being lighter overall) and can be shorter without reducing passenger capacity. Only a couple of the wagons are powered, more is not needed.
> hyper-fast accelerations are not much welcomed by passengers
Passengers want to get where they are going quickly. No train accelerates at a speed which causes discomfort to passengers.
Maybe it's a translation issue: I simply say most trains in the world are not self-propelled wagons but one ore two with motors and the others pulled/pushed by them. And no, in the EU most trains have a single or two locomotive, only metros have SOME all powered trains.
> Passengers want to get where they are going quickly. No train accelerates at a speed which causes discomfort to passengers.
Maybe you haven't used Milan's red lines where accelerations are enough to catapult anyone standing distracted at every start or stop. Remember that sometimes trains are crowded and nowadays it normal to have toilets always open because trains collect anything instead of freely discharging in nature, since more than two decades, so it's normal to have people standing while in start/stop phases.
That's just not true. The most exported high speed train is the Siemens Velaro which has motors along the whole train. And multiple units are very common in regional and suburban trains, S Bahn style services.
>the idea of all wagon individually powered is ancient, very ancient, like monorails. Both ideas never get spread simply because they are too expensive instead of cheap, in practice.
>Meanwhile a larger electric locomotive it's still fast (for instance France TGV, Japan Shinkansen etc)
What are you talking about? The shinkansen doesn't have any locomotives: all the cars are powered.
>all other countries tend to scale back (while formally state the contrary).
Japan is constantly scaling up their train service. The shinkansen is usually at full capacity, or more, which is why they're busy building the new maglev line from Tokyo to Nagoya (and later Osaka). The shinkansen system is quite profitable.
> The shinkansen doesn't have any locomotives: all the cars are powered.
Maybe it's a translation issue: for locomotive I mean a both a dedicated wagon with no passengers and a single or two wagons with motors and passengers while all the others have no motors are just pushed/pulled by the "locomotive".
> Japan is constantly scaling up their train service.
Japan is not Tokyo, Osaka alone, it's much vast than that and economically it's passengers rails get MUCH from the State to be sustained. The issues with passengers is that you need to move them everywhere at every time, and a country is not few large (and unsustainable) cities sucking the entire country resources just to stand. You might have specific paths at specific times running at full/nearly full/overfull capacity, but we have 24h/day, 365 day/year. Or a system can satisfy 99% of the people needs or it's wasted resources, that's why https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/19/european-gover... and anyway take a look at http://carfree.fr/img/2015/06/sncf.jpg as a good dimension. I bet the situation in Japan it's not much different in that historical perspective.
Consider a thing: having cars, buses, metro, trains means under-utilizing all, it's very expensive. Having a single tool that scale means efficiency. That's why in the past we have decided the "convergence toward IP" even if IP it's not the cheaper signaling protocol, not the simplest, the point is that we need it anyway, so for scaling it's better doing next-to-anything with it. For similar reasons we choose a convergence to electricity because we need it anyway so it's logic to try using it for all. Despite all the claims and the so far little tangible progress the transportation future is by air, because not needed to maintain large and fragile and hyper-expensive to evolve ground infra it's much cheaper than the energy we still need to flight especially with chopper-alike devices (like drones).
>Maybe it's a translation issue: for locomotive I mean a both a dedicated wagon with no passengers and a single or two wagons with motors and passengers while all the others have no motors are just pushed/pulled by the "locomotive".
That's exactly what a locomotive is. The shinkansen trains don't have them. All the cars have motors and propel themselves.
>The issues with passengers is that you need to move them everywhere at every time, and a country is not few large (and unsustainable) cities sucking the entire country resources just to stand.
What are you talking about? Cities are very sustainable, that's why humans have been building them and living in them for thousands of years now. Cities are the engines of any modern economy. And no, you don't need to move passengers 24x7; most people sleep at late hours so you can shut things down at those times and let the few people who need to travel use other means.
>Consider a thing: having cars, buses, metro, trains means under-utilizing all
What are you talking about? Trains and buses here in Japan are not under-utilized at all. Cars are, but that's a problem everywhere and one of many reasons people shouldn't use them so much.
>the transportation future is by air
No, it really isn't, thanks to basic physics. Maybe if someone invents a low-energy anti-gravity device.
Anyway, WTF is your point with all this? You just seem to be rambling with no point.
My point is simple: in a future of resource scarcity due to overpopulation, needed mass relocations and supply chains reorganizations due to climate changes there is already and there will be no room for cities and trains. What's there will remain of course for longer, becoming a bit at a time a receptacles of poor and desperate who do not see nothing outside their bar-less prisons, a thing we can already witness in vast part of the world.
Specifically:
> That's exactly what a locomotive is. The shinkansen trains don't have them. All the cars have motors and propel themselves.
Ok, shinkansen have self-propelled wagons, I do not know for sure but TGV definitively not and I'm pretty sure most trains in Japan are not self-propelled for all wagons, as in the EU.
> Cities are very sustainable, that's why humans have been building them and living in them for thousands of years now.
Things changes, are have always changed. We have had urbanization and deurbanization cycles but what's different was the tech, now we have TLCs, IT, fast logistic a thing we haven't had in the known past. Meanwhile we are more and more, too much for high-resource intensive big stuff like cities.
> Cities are the engines of any modern economy.
Yes, but less and less. With the first globalization factories pull out of rich cities to go to cheap countries, with remote works there is no need for offices and as a result there is only a kind of unsustainable economics in cities: service industry to humans that are poorer and poorer. Cities are need by modern financial capitalism because you do not want self-driving taxis, uber, just eat and so on outside the city, but such form of economical and social development is at the end, being oppressive and unsustainable, consuming way too much resources for the planet.
> And no, you don't need to move passengers 24x7; most people sleep at late hours so you can shut things down at those times and let the few people who need to travel use other means.
That's what happen today and that's one of the reason of cities inefficiencies. BTW just imaging how ABSURD and inefficient is in modern times having big buildings which demand big infra around to use them for less than 12h/day commuting between them just to consume services and being exposed to physical ads in various forms.
> Trains and buses here in Japan are not under-utilized at all. Cars are, but that's a problem everywhere and one of many reasons people shouldn't use them so much.
To be tied to someone else service, right? So enslaved by conformism and other services will and design. A notorious tract of any dictatorship notoriously ending in deep sufferance and disruption. Cars are needed because collective transportation means can't substitute them, BUT, cars can substitute collective transportation means, that's why a SANE economy choose to ditch other transportation means.
> No, it really isn't, thanks to basic physics.
That's not what WEF say and not the path we really took mostly silently preoccupied by people reaction not by technical feasibility https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-... and if you really think despite the name it's clear that there is nothing "urban" in density and tall buildings terms for such mobility, if you go further you'll notice there is no possible green new deal future for dense area because we must re-made them from scratch a thing possible with big issues for a single building or a small area but not more and you might know that all future city projects, like Neom, Arkadag, Innopolis, Telosa, Prospera, are failed as the original Fordlandia because their model in untenable.
For Japan: do you remember the Shinkansen blocked in a plane fully exposed to the tsunami due to it's central command model? Do you remember Tokyo emergency coordination failed due again to a central design? Japan is in deep trouble as we are, because of the city-centric development, it's about time to try a totally different model possibly before the WWIII witch we will loose anyway.
> due to climate changes there is already and there will be no room for cities and trains.
This idea is simply stupid, for lack of a nicer word. Seriously stupid. You think having everyone live in suburbs and drive everywhere is better for the climate? Really, really stupid.
> I'm pretty sure most trains in Japan are not self-propelled for all wagons, as in the EU.
Again you're totally clueless. All passenger trains here have self-propelled cars. Locomotives are only used for freight trains.
>too much for high-resource intensive big stuff like cities.
Again, this shows you stupid you are. Cities use fewer resources per person than any other lifestyle: smaller homes, shared walls, less motorized transport all add up to far less resource consumption. Of course, idiotic rural Americans don't see it that way because they can't imagine a world without big gas-guzzling trucks to drive around in and just see the large number of people in cities without being able to think about anything in a per-capita sense.
>A notorious tract of any dictatorship notoriously ending in deep sufferance and disruption. Cars are needed because collective transportation means can't substitute them, BUT, cars can substitute collective transportation means, that's why a SANE economy choose to ditch other transportation means.
Ok you're obviously a complete lunatic. I give up.
Electric motors are not expensive as diesel one, they are much more compact etc etc etc but are still much more expensive than a simple wagon without any engine. Meanwhile a larger electric locomotive it's still fast (for instance France TGV, Japan Shinkansen etc) and hyper-fast accelerations are not much welcomed by passengers, so it sound extra added complexity for little to no return. Something not different than some modern tram projects (city buses with electric motors, no battery, and a special trolley to allow get dedicated aerial electricity while rolling on wheels) that in theory sounds good (much less expensive in capex than create new rails in cities) but in practice have so much problems and costs that they are abandoned or will not be replaced because of that.
For my little experience USA rails are much older than most EU ones (meaning, they are much less upgraded) and while that's might sound bad from some "modern" people actually IMVHO it is not much because so far ALL RAILS prove too be simply too costly for most usages, only some freight-only rails are effectively interested, passengers ones can't survive without big public contributions while offering a good service. The Swiss choose to waste an immense amount of resources to keep the service level high, pushing nearly empty trains around, all other countries tend to scale back (while formally state the contrary).