The fleet of Arlanda Express trains, providing the non-stop service betweeen Stockholm Central and Artlanda Airport, is to have an interior refurbishment. This is deemed necessary to maintain its image and its positioning as a preferred means of travel between airport and city.

Arlanda Express is a premium product with a premium fare, and clearly feels the need to stay ahead of the market.

Visit the Arlanda Express website

The local rail service in Berlin, the S-Bahn, has been badly disrupted by technical problems with wheel-sets on many of the trains.

The regional (Regio) services - in particular the half-hourly Airport Expresses serving Schonefeld Airport - are not affected. Neither are the underground trains, the U-Bahn - although both of these are running with additional trains and additional passengers.

Because the S-Bahn at Schonefeld Airport is badly affected, additional bus services are being provided to connect the airport with the parts of the Berlin region not served by the regional trains.

Up to date information can be found on the Berlin Regional Transport Authority's website. Visit the English-language page of the BVG website

In the second part of their discussion paper, the Stockholm Environment Institute look at measures of non-CO2 emissions.

They conclude that there is no one metric available to assess the emissions load one individual adds by flying on a specific segment. This means that it is difficult to judge how bad your flight is for the environment.

However, reading this short and relatively non-technical report will give you a grasp of the metrics available and what they do - and where they might be improved. Like the previous report, it's available on their web-site.

Visit the SEI website

It is claimed in some quarters - recently for example in Network Rail's Draft Route Utilisation Strategy (RUS) for Sussex - that using double deck trains would increase station dwell times and therefore reduce line capacity.

Less contentiously, they also say that many railway lines in Great Britain, built to a tighter loading gauge than those on continental Europe, would be too expensive to modify for double deck trains. Enlarging bridges and tunnels would be just uneconomic.

Do double deck (bi-level) trains increase station stop times? I was in Switzerland recently and timed a few at three stations in the Zurich area. This was totally unscientific: it was just that I was there, was able to do it and did it. I made no attempt to count passengers on and off: clearly this would impact on station stop time. Equally, it was mid-morning and not during the peak.

I timed a number of double-deck S-Bahn (suburban) trains, two double-deck InterCity trains and a few single deck InterCity trains: the stations were the low level (suburban) platforms at Zurich Hbf, Oerlikon Main station and Zurich Airport.

Of the double deck suburban trains, 2 had a station stop time of less than 30 seconds, 1 between 30 and 60 seconds, 2 less than 1 minute 30 seconds and one more than 2 minutes.
The two double-deck InterCity trains both stopped at the airport station for more than 2 minutes. One of the single deck ones stopped for between 1.5 and 2 minutes, one for just over 3 minutes and one for just over 4.
There were no single deck suburban trains.

It should be noted that the double-deck suburban trains were - to my eyes - by no means ideal for the purpose. In particular, when the Door Open button is pressed the bottom step deploys and only then do the doors open. Nominally this happens when the train has come to a stand, but in practice the doors start to open several seconds before! Similarly before the train re-starts, the doors close and then the bottom step is retracted (it actually folds up to lie more or less flush with the doors).

An alternative to double-deck trains is longer trains. This might not be a solution - and would also necessitate investment in infrastructure (ok, less than would be needed for double deck train clearances) and rolling stock.

Why isn't it a solution? The problem is that at so many London termini, the exits are at the front of the train. So that's where everyone wants to go, for a speedy getaway!

Some years ago I recall an ironic comment after one line was equipped - at some cost - with 10-car trains and 10-car platforms. The comment was to the effect that the solution wasn't trains with 10 coaches - it was trains with 10 front coaches! I also recall a survey done after the Clapham Junction accident where a morning peak train into Waterloo had more passengers than seats - but over 200 empty seats!

From my observations, I am not convinced that double-deck trains generally have longer station stop times than single deck trains.

Does anyone know of a more scientific survey of stopping times of double- and single-deck commuter trains, please?

In May 2008, the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) published a discussion paper, "Carbon offsetting and air travel - Part 1: CO2 emissions".

This discusses a number of systems whereby people can evaluate the amount of CO2 their flights are responsible for. It draws attention to the shortcomings of some of them: this revised paper includes some of the discussion by the organisations responsible for the calculators.

If you look at all of the calculators for the same flight, you can get quite a wide range of figures! The discussion highlights why this might be, and may motivate something better.

The paper, and part 2 dealing with non-CO2 emissions, can be found on the SEI's website. Visit the Stockholm Environment Institute website. It is also available to IARO members in the IARO library.

On 25 May 2008, a Boeing 747 of Kalitta Air crashed on take-off from Brussels Airport. The wreckage ended up quite close to the Brussels - Leuven railway line.

The final report of the Belgian Air Accident Investigation Unit has been published (in English - merci & Dank u Wel!).

It can be accessed on their web-site by following this link to the Federal Public Service Mobility and Transport Air Accident Investigation Unit

I rode from Geneva airport to Zurich airport - bottom left to top right of the country! A nice ride.

My meeting in the airport ended at 15:45: I caught a train at 16:05 and was in my hotel near the airport at 20:00. The journey would have taken much the same time by air, although a lot of it would have been spent in Geneva Airport waiting for the next flight! By contrast, the trains run every half hour.

The train made 11 stops. Station stop time was 35 minutes, of which 14 minutes were at Zurich Hbf where the train reversed. Apart from this, three stops each took 1 minute, two 2 minutes, two 3 minutes and one 6 minutes.

I didn't have the scheduled time at two of the stops, but apart from these we were on time at 5 stations, a minute late at 3 and a minute early at one.

A previous post commented on anomalies in the fares system on my commuter line to London.

A complaint was that the single fare is significantly more than half the return - penalising people who can't buy a return for one reason or another.

A new example of this is between St. Albans and West Hampstead, a major interchange point.

The return fare from St. Albans is £15. The single fare from St. Albans is £8.80 - 59% of the return. And the single from West Hampstead is £9.10, 61% of the return fare.

An explanation is being requested.

The Zurich S-Bahn has a nice format in its timetables, and one I have not seen before.

The network has 28 separate lines, each with a basic service running between 2 and 4 times an hour and calling at all stations.

The stations are listed in geographical order down the centre of the page, with the standard departure times each hour from each station in the columns on each side. The direction of the trains is indicated by arrows - one way on the left hand side of the page and the other way on the right hand side.

Going out from the centre of the page, the next columns show the first and last trains (with times at key points only).

Finally - the nice point - are columns with exceptions. These show additional peak-hour trains, trains with a different stopping patters, special late-night trains which run off-pattern and the like.

At the end of the timetable booklet are the night services - and to highlight that these ARE night services, the station names are in white on black rather than black on white as elsewhere in the timetable.

It conveys information without too much detail - I liked it!

This is the title of an excellent report by Colin Buchanan and Partners published in January 2009.

It looks at the economics of the high speed line between London and the Channel Tunnel and evaluates costs and benefits. This is a very useful model for people evaluating high-speed rail, because it goes deeper than just the fare revenue and the direct costs.

One issue it discusses, for example, is that of house prices. There is a relationship between house prices, accessibility and deprivation - social equity. As accessibility increases (through, in this case, a high speed line) so do house prices (as the area is more attractive to commuters).

What this does to deprivation is not fully discussed - and a full discussion would be fascinating. Does the increase in house prices lead to locals having to move out - to cheaper areas? Does it mean that some locals can commute further to higher-paying jobs, leaving the lower paying jobs they were doing locally to less well qualified people living locally? Is there a trickle-down effect as more houses and more people lead to more jobs locally?

All in all, a very useful report.

At one time, the return fare on a train was twice the single - sometimes a bit less, as an incentive to commit to a return journey, but not a lot. Now my single fare to London is £9.30 - and the return is £16. So the single is 58%, rather than 50%, of the return. There are times when I have to buy a single - I'm not coming back the same day - so I get penalised. If a return costs £16, is a single costing 58% of this good value for money? Does it feel like it?

Similarly, at one time a 7-day travelcard was worth buying if I was travelling for at least 4 days out of 7. No more: I have to be travelling for 5 days out of 7 for it to be worth-while. I almost never do this - I work from home at least 2 days a week, travel a lot and take weekends off!

Have some train companies tweaked discounts too much in order to raise money? Is this fair? Reasonable? Is there a solution?

I've sometimes discussed the optimal use of main-line railways with American friends, and put across the concept of trains with different stopping patterns sharing the same tracks.

The one which used to work nicely was on the Midland Main Line, running north from London St. Pancras. The pattern was that a semi-fast train would leave for Nottingham (180 km) and call at principal stations to Leicester (160 km). At Leicester, it would wait a few minutes for the following train (going to Sheffield, 270 km from London, via Derby, 200 km from London). This ran non-stop from St. Pancras to Leicester and then stopped at the adjacent platform to the Nottingham train.

Passengers from intermediate stations going to Sheffield could make a simple cross-platform interchange at Leicester. Passengers wanting a fast service from London to Nottingham could catch the non-stop train to Leicester then cross the platform to the train which had left London before theirs. The service was pretty optimal for all concerned.

A similar concept is used today by Eurostar. Their big constraint is the Channel Tunnel: their optimal speed is higher than that of Eurotunnel's shuttles so it's best to run the Eurostar trains close together - a technique known as flighting.

At 10:57, a Brussels train leaves St. Pancras. Just over 15 minutes later it stops at Ebbsfleet for passengers from south-east London. While it's standing in the station it is overtaken by the 11:00 non-stop train from St. Pancras to Paris. The two trains then travel some 3 minutes apart through Kent and the Channel Tunnel to Lille, where the Brussels and Paris routes separate.

A very nice use of scarce infrastructure!

Yesterday I left the College of Europe, in central Bruges, at 15:50. I got to my house 30 km north of London at 20:00 - just over 5 hours later, allowing for the change of time zone between Belgium and the UK.

What time would I have got there if I'd flown instead of using Eurostar?

I was in Brussels Midi at 17:25, so I could have been at the airport by 18:00: I could then have caught the 19:15 flight arriving Heathrow at 19:30. I would probably have made the 19:55 Heathrow Express and been in Paddington at 20:10. I could have been at St. Pancras by 20:40 and been indoors by 21:20 - 80 minutes later than I actually arrived.

Moreover, using the train I had 2 hours of very valuable working time - I would not have been nearly as productive on the flight, partly because the journey is so split into segments and partly because of lack of space.

A real live example of the time saving possible using a high speed train rather than a plane for a journey which was not city centre to city centre. I'll watch out for others!

A high speed rail link between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore was proposed some years ago, but has made little progress. A new article is arguing for it to be revived: now is the right time, with low contract prices and a need for productive employment.

It could cut travel times to 90 minutes - well below what it takes, centre to centre, by air.

The air route is a very busy one: the new rail route would free up valuable slots at Changi.

It is likely to be a privately funded railway.

Transport for London has published Issue 1 of "Travel in London", an excellent statistical description of what's going on in London on the transport and travel front. It replaces the former "London Travel Report".

At 224 pages, it's not something I've completely finished reading yet. However, on Page 186 there is an isochrone map of travel times by public transport to Heathrow Airport which I found particularly interesting. It's part of a short section on "Passengers using London's Airports."

I look forward to reading the rest.

Travel in London (report 1)

The Air Transport Action Group, in collaboration with CFM, Airbus and Boeing, has produced a booklet, "Beginners guide to aviation biofuels" which I thought was a clear introduction to the subject. For more details, see www.enviro.aero/Biofuels.aspx.

While - obviously - it is an aviation industry publication, it does try not to overstate its case. For example, it admits that describing biomass-derived fuel as "carbon neutral" is not strictly true - while carbon absorbed during the growing stage of a plant equals the carbon emitted when the resultant fuel is burnt, there are also carbon emissions during production, harvesting, transportation and creation of the fuel. So biomass for aviation will only lead to an 80% reduction in overall CO2 emissions compared with the equivalent fossil fuels.

The booklet explores things like the technical challenges (the specifications the new fuels need to meet in order to be safe and usable) and the timescales (50% of commercial flights may be bio-fuelled by 2050).

A valuable resource, available from the website or from doddh@atag.org

A good friend of mine criticises the station at Newark Liberty International Station for having platforms numbered 0, 1, 4 and 5. Well, there is a reason for it, but one only obvious to the railway-minded. It is not the most helpful system for passengers to understand!

However, I found one even more confusing at Büchen, in northen Germany. Platforms are numbered 4, 1, 401 and 41 .

Does anyone know of anything odder?

One of the stunning aspects of KLIA Ekspres, the Airport Express between Kuala Lumpur and its international airport, is the VIP service, e-XKL. You have to pre-book and pay a premium fare, but it's well worth it!

As you walk out of immigration at the airport, someone is waiting for you with your name on a board. They take you through Customs and down to the train, and put you in charge of a porter who rides with you to the city. At Sentral station, the porter takes your bag and escorts you up the escalator to the station concourse, where a driver is waiting to show you to a limo: this takes you to your hotel or office. It's wonderful!

One reason it can work as it does, I imagine, is that Malaysia is a relatively low-wage economy. Could such a system work in the higher-paid west? How?

There are bits which could be cut back - the porter escort isn't needed as long as the passenger is properly met at the downtown terminus, for example.

How much would a system cost in Rome, Vienna or London? How much would it need to be used - how many customers would it need - to pay its way? At what price?

These are hard times, financially, but people are showing they appreciate value for money. And now is a good time to be assessing this kind of value-added service for when the upturn comes.

Your ideas would be appreciated.

I've heard a lot about plans for better train services to Madrid's Barajas airport - but what is the status of these plans?

One plan is for a regional link - a fast service between Chamartin and Atocha, the main line stations in the city, and the airport. The existing metro line 12 is good and well connected, but the planned regional link (which I'm told is under construction) would serve a different market.

Another is for a high-speed connection using an eastern bypass to the city, the belt line. Under this, AVE trains between Barcelona and Madrid would serve the airport: they would run alternately Barcelona - Airport - Chamartin - Atocha and Barcelona - Atocha - Chamartin - Airport.

Information would be much appreciated.

You can imagine that, as Director General of IARO, I have a Google Alert set up for IARO - so when we are mentioned on the web, I am told.

Just recently there's been a flood of mentions - but not about us!

A company called International Aerospace Industries seems to have launched recently, and its code is IARO!

You have been warned!

The real one remains where it always has done - look at the IARO website! IARO's main web-site

Someone once said that a sneeze was difficult to define - you knew when it happened, but defining it was difficult!

So it seems sometimes with airport expresses.

There are, I reckon, 16 of these around the world. Why these 16? Well, they all meet criteria I have informally defined to myself and which seem to be generally accepted. They do exclude some trains which are sometimes described as airport expresses: they do admit one which calls itself an airport express but some think isn't.

So - it's a high quality train service between a city and an airport, primarily serving the needs of the airport (so if it stops between city and airport, it does so for airport purposes - primarily for air passengers). It can run beyond the city but again, primarily for airport purposes (and the classic example is Flytoget in Oslo, running to Asker and shortly to Drammen, in the western suburbs of Oslo, but only carrying passengers to and from Gardermoen airport). An airport express is a business class experience, fast, reliable and comfortable, designed for the air passenger. It sometimes charges a premium fare, but always gives value for money.

Is that adequate? What have I missed out?

Russian Railways published some interesting statistics about the usage of its Moscow - Western Europe train services.

Briefly, in their first year of operation, services to 4 destinations carried 27,000 passengers - 1500 on the Paris service (which has a 12 hour stop in Berlin in one direction and a 7 hour stop in the other); 6200 on the Munich service; 7000 on the Basel service and 12000 on the Amsterdam service.

There is much debate about the demand for train and plane on short haul trips: statistics like these show there is alos a demand for the very long train journey too.

There is local pressure in Virginia to electrify the rail connection between Richmond and Washington DC, and therefore to Amtrak's Northeast Corridor (NEC) serving Boston, New York and Washington. At the same time - and given plans to extend electrification to places like Charlotte and even Atlanta - it could be renamed the Atlantic Coast Corridor (ACC).

My ambitions are a little smaller. Why not extend it the few miles beyond Richmond to Richmond International Airport (RIC)?

Two railways get very close to the airport - one on the southern boundary and one on the northern boundary! It can't be difficult to connect one or the other - can it?

If done, the railway would then serve Newark Liberty International Airport, Baltimore Washington Thurgood Marshall International Airport and Richmond International Airport.

IARO stands ready to help, as much as it can. For more about us, visit IARO's main web-site.

The point has sometimes been made that security on systems like the London Underground cannot be too intensive or London would stop. People say you cannot screen or search the bags of passengers going into the underground.

Yet it is done on the New Delhi metro.

When you go into the paid area of the station, you have to pass through a detector arch. If you are carrying a bag, you are usually directed to a side table for it to be searched. And because of the large Muslim population, there are separate searchers for male and female passengers.

It works, although it can cause horrendous queues at times. But people know it's going to happen and allow for it.

OK, London Underground carries nearly 3 million passengers a day, compared with 800,000 on the Delhi metro - but that has a smaller network and fewer stations.

You can have security checks at major stations!

Conventional wisdom for some years has been that, if a rail journey is less than three hours, it will attract more passengers than the parallel air service.

This is because most air journeys take at least three hours. You've got to get to the airport (say 30 minutes), check in and pass through security (an hour), wait (very few people cut it absolutely fine, so say up to 30 minutes), board, fly (at least 30 minutes), disembark and get to where you want to go (30 minutes).

If where you are coming from or where you want to go is at the airport - if you have a meeting there or are changing planes - then of course you can reduce the time: this changes the time equation and probably explains why people still fly between London and Paris or Brussels.

Equally, if the timetable doesn't match yours, you'll use the mode which suits you best - which is why there are two markets where rail carries more than air despite a 4.5 hour rail journey time.

I suspect that the 3 hour limit is growing. Why? Because rail travel time is much more useful time, much more usable time, than air travel time. Look at the calculation above - you are travelling for 3 hours but how much of that time can you actually use? Compare that with train travel time - once you are in your seat you are there, undisturbed, to do what you will. You can work (and many trains have lap-top connections): you can read, sleep, think, eat. You can use your phone (although it would be nice if you didn't share your conversation with the rest of the carriage!). You can talk to people. All of these are useful functions.

Indeed, I believe that in future calculations of generalised cost by different modes will need to account for the fact that while air travel time is a cost, with a negative value, rail travel time is a benefit, with positive value.

What do you think?

The editorial in June's International Railway Gazette commented that rail might be an old mode of transport, but it has clearly demonstrated its ability to change, adopt new technology and push out the boundaries. This is one of the reasons why the industry has a bright future - as long as it does not become complacent, because competing modes are also advancing rapidly.

The conclusion was supported by two developments - the ability of a Brazilian metre-gauge railway to haul 320-wagon trains of 44,160 tonnes, and developments of different systems of catenary-free electric light rail (very clearly written up later in the magazine).

I agree entirely. The more I travel on airport railways (and others), the more I see interesting developments which I try to bring to IARO members through our newsletter, "Air Rail Express", and the industry news page of our web-site, www.iaro.com/industrynews/

At the end of each issue of the newsletter are two good ideas. When I come across one, I put it in a file - and despite using one a month, the file just keeps growing!

IRJ's website - recently upgraded - is www.railjournal.com, and I commend it and the magazine to you!

If you go to one of the stations on Line S1 in Hamburg, you will see that the overhead signs on the airport-bound platform tell you that the front three cars of the train go to the airport. Helpfully, they tell you this in both English and German .

However, until a train actually comes in it's difficult to tell where the front is!

How could this be made clearer- while retaining the simplicity of the signage as it is?

About a year ago there were plans by DHL to run an air-rail cargo service into Leipzig-Halle airport.

The trains would serve 6 DHL destinations in Germany (Hamburg, Kassel, Frankfurt and so on): they would use the high-speed passenger network to shuttle between these cities and the airport in less than 3 hours. This would avoid road and air congestion in Germany.

Converted high speed passenger rolling stock was to be used so that passenger train speeds could be attained.

A line was created into the airport from the railway to the south of the airport - the Schkeuditz line. It is being used to bring fuel into the airport: the new tank farm is just beyond DHL's terminal.

A trial of DHL's cargo service was to be started last October - but I don't know what has happened since!

Do any of my readers know, please?

I arrived in Salt Lake City from London just before 20:00 one Saturday evening recently. I knew there was a UTA bus which would take me downtown: having found it I got on and asked for a ticket. I told the driver which hotel I was going to, and was given comprehensive instructions on how to reach it – he was apologetic because on Saturdays I had to change onto the TRAX light rail in the city centre.

Having found my seat, the driver then came up with a system map, an airport bus timetable and a TRAX timetable.

As I got off, he gave me comprehensive directions on how to catch the right light rail train, where to get off, and the route from the stop to my hotel.

I was impressed. The driver recognised that I needed a bit more help than usual, and went out of his way to give it. It really brought home the point that anyone can do their job: it takes thought and imagination to do that job well in a way which really satisfies the customer. Congratulations, UTA, in delivering excellence!

Do you have any good stories like this to share?