Not visible in the map, but interesting to note, is that in France the trains normally drive on the left, except in Alsace where they drive on the right as a legacy of the time the province belonged to Germany.
Train noob here, what does the “20% of multi-track operation” line mean?
An affordance to allow this maneuver:
Multi-track meaning two “lanes” of track laid side by side to allow for bi-directional operation.
soooo does the difference between x-handed and x-handed 20% multi-track mean that the x-handed colouring has >80% single lane tracks?
i live in australia (left-handed), and… that seems… implausible
That seems to be the insinuation.
Based on what I know, lengths of track with a single line of rail typically have periodic sections with sidetracks to allow trains to “pull over” and let an oncoming (usually the faster) train pass them before returning to the main track.
Hmmm I mean I guess we’re a very big country for our population so maybe the mining and interstate rail overwhelm the metro and Sydney-Melbourne networks… I’m just surprised it’s by more than 80%
If you go by length instead of ridership it seems extremely plausible. Australia is a big place and building 2 lanes for mostly freight trains is an unnecessary expense.
Sidings/loops/passing tracks, allow trains to pass on a single track, and since things can be more regular scheduled (ideally anyway) with trains, they can work well enough and with much less track building needed.
All of our trains in Lebanon have been ripped out in the 60s and 70s so we can siphon our money more efficiently to the patron class by buying cars and gas through their companies. Granted cars make sense for the topography but trains should have stayed in operation, especially for freight.
Not sure how recent some of these data points are, unless it just describes the law for some of these if less data is available
The terminology of this map confuses me quite a bit. Austria has mostly right-hand traffic nowadays, the Franz-Josefs-Bahn being the only exception I am aware of; it used to be a lot more mixed until the early-to-mid-2010s.
Are the legend markers not ordered? Or is ‘Left-hand traffic with exceptions’ really more ‘left-hand’ than ‘Left-hand traffic’?
I think it is less. And more than 20% share is more. As in, we do left handed, and we also have a significant portion of our network that is multi track and therefore abides by that convention. As opposed to somewhere that is just left handed, but doesn’t have a mature/extensive use of that convention because their network is smaller/sparser
“Welcome to France. Be prepared to change trains regularly.”
I thought all trains were only from and to Paris, so you’d have to change trains at most once, whether you’re going from Marseille to Toulon or from Caen to Le Havre.
Paris has more than one terminus.
That sounds highly inefficient.
