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Comment by verdverm | Hacker News Reader

The turnover in the truck fleet is longer

For trains, we would have to build out the transmission lines, not sure this works as well for passenger trains vs freight (much heavier), also an even longer turnover time. Curious what the situation in the EU is, they are generally ahead of the US on this front, China even more so.

> I'm not taking about trump for sanity sake...

That may be a wise personal choice, however his impact is immense, so I personally prefer not to ostrich. We need to find ways (how we talk with each other) to discuss the issues in terms of civic participation instead of as "politics" that turns people off too quickly. We the people are the only solution to the mess we find ourselves in. One of the hardest to resolve issues we face is the loss of a shared reality, which I blame mostly on our social/news media ecosystem and our consumption patterns therein.

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>transmission lines ... situation in the EU

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Europe

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

"whereas 39.9% of all railway lines in the EU were electrified in 1990, this share increased to 57.6% by 2024"

https://alternative-fuels-observatory.ec.europa.eu/transport...

"Regarding main lines, 60% of the European rail network is already electrified and 80% of traffic is running on these lines."

> For trains, we would have to build out the transmission lines, not sure this works as well for passenger trains vs freight (much heavier), also an even longer turnover time.

It's just money, really.

In practice, you tend to build overhead lines once it becomes economic. This is pretty much just based on line usage; I think the normal rule is that anything over two to three passenger trains an hour per direction, the economics favour electrification.

Some DMUs and diesel locomotives can be economically converted to electric; most diesel trains these days are actually diesel electric anyway, so it's a matter of removing the engine and adding pantographs.

For shortish lines, you can even electrify before you roll out the overheads! Dublin's remaining diesel commuter lines are currently being electrified, and one of them (or possibly two) will use battery-electric trains until the overheads are fully in place (expected to take a while due to old bridges etc); they'll operate on overheads where they exist and battery elsewhere.

(The first one should start running mid next year; I'm really curious to see how it goes.)

This can be taken to ridiculous extremes. The new trains for the Dublin<>Belfast route will have diesel engines, _and_ batteries, _and_ will support running on 1.5kV and 25kV overheads. 1.5kV while they're on the Dublin suburban network, then diesel to Belfast, then battery within Belfast; the 25kV is to support the future Irish intercity standard.

All that said, battery electrics are probably unsuitable for freight; you'd really have range issues there.

The US regularly does studies on this. https://railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.dot.gov/files/2025-01/CB... is the latest I can find - from 2025. It is long and I ended up skipping a lot, but perhaps you want to read more.

My interpenetration is it not only costs a lot, there are years while you are building the wires but not using them. For the busy main routes it would save a ton of money, but for the less used secondary routes the cost of wires is more than the savings across the whole US. Thus they suggest we should focus on a practical battery locomotive which could change on the fly with short section of wire once in a while, thus bringing the costs of wire down. Then we electrify the main routes and partially the less used routes, and just accept for the least used routes we will have to switch to a diesel locomotive.

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