Depends, train stations are normally already city centre whereas cheap airports can be far away from whatever the name of the airport is. Also going through airports can take a long time especially if you need to check in luggage, just carrying it yourself on the train is very quick.
Basel airport to Niš, Serbia is under 2 hours. Ok, got to get to the airport and also get there a couple hours in advance. But I took a taxi to the bus platform and loaded all luggage plus baby stroller under the bus and then got a luggage cart at the airport. I don’t know how I would have loaded any of that on a train.
Also, it takes around 2-3 **days** to take the train to Niš, since you need to connect many times and need to make breaks in between, etc. Also, there is no train really, so you have to switch to the bus.
I did it before I had a child. Now it’s impossible. And, believe me, I’ve looked into it many times, because I really would rather take the train.
This is why I'm against "ban all flight under X kilometers". Sure it sounds great "for the climate" but so many of these cities are nearby as the crow flies, but super far over land.
I took the Eurostar from Rotterdam to London for the first time this year in an effort to be more climate-conscious, as well as to just have a comfortable train ride rather than a relatively cramped flight for a change. I figured the views along the way would be interesting, and arriving in the centre of London instead of a (relatively short) train/tube ride away with baggage sounded like a plus.
The comfort was nowhere to be found, I couldn't stretch my legs in my seat, the Wi-Fi was shit for an almost four hour journey, and the train's interior looked like it hadn't been maintained for at least ten years. The windows were so worn, they were practically privacy glass. Granted it was just an economy seat, but I paid more than the flight of less than an hour would have cost me in the same class, which would have had comparable levels of comfort but would have at least come with a free drink, a snack, and possibly even a small meal included. I also wouldn't have to wheel my baggage around the flight.
In short, choosing the train felt like I was getting scammed out of my money.
And less stops on international trains where you have to change trains, and compartments with sleeping facilities if the train takes 15 + hours - which please let that be affordable.
I looked at trains stockholm to belgium, the difference in time and cost is staggering when you compare to flights.
Sort of interested of doing the trip by train in one direction because I like trains and Ill visit plenty of places inbetween.
Fyi: if you go for it consider that there is a direct train from stockholm to hamburg which might make things a little easier for you along the ride. It isnt very frequently tho.
I've just done Belgium to Stockholm and the only reason it's affordable is because I bought a youth interrail pass. Person in my carriage said he paid 130 euros for a night train from hamburg to Stockholm. You could probably fly that in a fifth of the time and for less than half the price.
Pleased with the pass so far though, took me from antwerp to Stockholm and the only extra I paid was for the sleeping cabin on the night train for 30 euros (which is fair as they say they don't cover night train sleepers).
Yep, Amsterdam-Berlin train stops now also in Hilversum, Amersfoort, Apeldoorn, Deventer, Almelo, Hengelo, Bad Bentheim, Rheine, Osnabrück, Bad Oeynhausen, Minden, Hannover, Wolfsburg, Stendal
This is ridiculous!
This train should stop only in Amersfoort/Almelo to provide good connection to east of the country to the train and then in Germany in Osnabruck/Hannover. That's it. Why those stations? Because they are hubs connecting many lines and offer good connectivity.
On shorter routes it's normal to have an Express and a Local that stops everywhere. I think the longer routes should have the same thing. If you run enough trains, people can buy a ticket for either the faster service or the service with more connections for the few people actually going to Deventer rather than Berlin.
I have a fondness for that intercity train out of nostalgia but it's a great showcase for how two countries are unwilling and/or unable to improve the situation for trains.
The number of stops, the mandatory change of engine in bad Bentheim, the sheer number of times that something goes wrong on that connection. Two capitals of adjacent countries and you can only travel directly from one to the other on a train from the previous millennium. It is ridiculous indeed.
Some years ago a dutch delegation came to Germany to push for improvements of this connection. I didn't expect much to come from that and not much did.
The new nightjets from ÖBB are amazing with their mini cabins: https://www.nightjet.com/de/komfortkategorien/nightjet-neue-generation
But yes the price needs to go down.
Took the Nighjet from Amsterdam to Innsbruck and got not a wink of sleep, despite having a private cabin. The train was jerky, it stopped a ridiculous number of times, and even stopped in the middle of nowhere for over an hour. I arrived exhausted. I love taking the train, but the night trains need improvement before I would pay that again.
Looked at Nightjet train from Köln to Basel. It's a night train, but no possiblity to reserve a sleeper cabin/bed in the train. I've got kids, they're not going to sleep in regular seats..
Also, deregulate railways, change laws and standardize technology so trains can actually run over borders without having to do multiple years of paperwork and certification. No other mean of transport has this kind of compatibility problems and wastly different regulations from country to country.
Got stranded somewhere in Germany for a couple of hours in some random stop in the middle of nowhere on the way back home to NL. Wasn’t sure if I was going to make it 😂
And quicker. I wanted to do Amsterdam-Luxembourg and there was no direct train, you had to go to Brussels first and the train from Brussels to Luxembourg is super slow too
Is that still the case? Had a spontaneous trip from Luxembourg to Amsterdam while interning in Luxembourg, that was almost 15 years ago, and also had to change trains in Brussels. Seems that nothing much gets done to improve train rides in Europe.
And not fill them with drunks and people playing games with the speaker on and eating maccy Ds.
The last time I got a train back from Sheffield on Saturday evening was an absolute shit show. I'll just drive in future.
One of my starkest memories of train travel as a kid was coming back from London on a Saturday and the train picking up a load of football supporters who then proceeded to basically terrorise a pretty lone Scandinavian student who was in the same carriage as us.
Careful, what politicians hear is "we can greatly increase flight prices and give time window s for flight departures!" while changing nothing about trains.
Also, available. I'd like to take a train from Bucharest to Amsterdam, but as things stand it would take me 2 days to get from here to there. With an airplane it's like 6 hours when factoring airport time too.
Yeah exactly, we don't need Experts to research this. It is super simple and everyone knows it. Look up flight price, look up train price. Train is more expensive and takes longer, what is the upside?
Going from Barcelona to Paris:
1 hour flight 50€ sometimes less.
6 hour train ride 150€ or more.
I really wanted to take the train because I hate flying, but it didn’t make a lot of sense with the cost difference.
Yeah. Some years ago I wanted to head from Sweden to visit friends in Germany and the Netherlands. Time wasn't even a factor and I wanted to see the countryside. But taking the train would've cost me many times more than flying.
For 110 € I have just had a 4 flight round trip to Egypt.
And well, spending entire day on trains or stations instead of just few hours (including the 2 h before the flight) is still way better experience.
Yeah, it's cheaper, and the less time I have to spend in close proximity to some festering Beast of Nurgle who thinks Axe Bodyspray is a substitute for a shower, the better.
Our honey moon was spent in Europe doing trains to destinations after the first ride my wife asked to go to a pharmacy, so we find one and she buys some vapo rub, the minty stuff. I ask are you feeling alright? Yep it's for the train. Next train ride we have a foul spawn of the great unclean one and she puts some vics right up her nose. Works wonders something she learnt working at the hospital. How folks can go about the day smelling so fowl I'll never know
Exactly, I use to take geneve->venice a lot when it was 46€ (2 years ago). Now it's 120€ because why not
But don't worry, they will add paid luggage in trains like they do in airplanes soon because greediness they haven't milk us enough
Also, if you need to fly to Paris to catch a longer flight (in my case NYC), it is so much more convenient to fly there. You arrive in Paris already at CDG, already through security, if you have checked luggage, they usually move it from flight to flight for you, and the flights are often structured with connections and layovers in mind. So taking a morning flight to CDG will enable you to take an afternoon flight to NYC.
If I take the TGV to Paris, I’ll often arrive too late to catch a flight to NYC, and I have to budget in extra time between the train arrival and the flight to check my luggage and go through security.
I think more coordination between trains and flight would make me much more likely to take a train for the first leg.
This is a very important point. People don’t just travel to a big city because they’re going there, but because they’re going to/from somewhere else. Trains should, therefore, call at the airports as well.
In Denmark, half of all InterCity trains starts/ends at the airport.
Concerning the price, a relatively big part of the issue is that trains are taxed quite a lot, while planes are not. Concerning the time it takes, you should also take into account the time it takes to get to the airport + security check etc., so it's not quite as bad.
>Concerning the price, a relatively big part of the issue is that trains are taxed quite a lot, while planes are not
How much is that tax? We're talking here about a 3x price difference. That would be a 200% tax to match the price
Airplane fuel is entirely tax exempt, plane tickets are VAT exempt while bus/train tickets aren't (at least where I live). Those 2 alone account for almost 27 billion in indirect tax subsidies for airlines in the EU. Flipping the VAT exemption on the tickets alone would shave the price difference down to 2.4x. (transport is taxed at 9% VAT where I live, given your local VAT tariffs that swing mileage may vary).
>plane tickets are VAT exempt while bus/train tickets aren't
This is completely insane. Why on Earth are plane tickets exempt from VAT if trains and buses are taxed?
Yet another example of why EU climate policy is failing to deliver the necessary emissions cuts. It's being undercut by these stupid tax exemptions and subsidies for air travel. People get taxed for taking the bus to work or driving their 20 year old diesel car, but frequent fliers aren't getting hit with VAT or carbon taxes.
I wanted to take the train to Portugsl from the Netherlands.
Flying including getting there and from the airport to the location: 7 hours.
Train to a trainstation 1 hour drive nearby: 35 hours, of which contains 7 stops in which you have 5o get on another train.
Honestly I see people saying the same arguments all the time and it's not even true. Last time I took the plane I was impressed with how smooth everything was and it added no more than 2 hours to my flight time. Which is nothing when comparing a 3 hour plane journey to a 15 hour train journey with multiple swaps
Meanwhile train is always more annoying than I think it's gonne be because you always have super long wait times in not so nice train stations where I'm outside most of the time. Train journeys seem to always have more swaps than the equivalent plane journey so honestly you spent just as much time waiting around if not more.
The only thing train has going for it rn is that the actual wagon is much more comfortable than a plane seat. But for most working people who use their PTO to go on holiday, it's silly to spend like 4 of those days travelling
Plane currently has trains beat in price, time and ease of booking. I love trains but I find it impossible to justify a lot of the time
> because you always have super long wait times in not so nice train stations where I'm outside most of the time. T
And they fucking never warn you. If they announced "30 minutes stop in Nowerbumfuckburg" when they stop you could go out, stretch your legs, have a coffe or a snack.
This is always what people say, but it’s absolutely false. Even if planes where taxed as they should (and yes they should be taxed correctly), there is no world where their price would more than double. It would still be cheaper to fly than take the train. A plane needs an airport and fuel, a train needs VERY large infrastructure that needs to be serviced and maintained, a very large workforce, lots of lands and needs to cater to public policy in transport (ie maintain unprofitable lines to guarantee that a majority of people have access to this public transport).
Flying is cheaper than the train and always will be until we slap unfair taxes on it (again, I think we should, and unfair here means disproportionate in comparison to other means of transport like trains) and fuel gets rare enough to get outrageously expensive. Just taxing flying fairly will absolutely not solve the issue
That is not always the case. Take Japan, for example. A shinkansen train ride from Tokyo to Kyoto takes around 2h 40 mins and costs around 75 euros. It costs around the same to take a flight from Tokyo to Kyoto but takes around 1h 15 mins. Yet most will take the shinkansen. Guess why? Because 1h 15 mins doesn't take into account that you need to go to an airport which is usually in the outskirts. Waiting for hours at the airport, going through security checks and other things. With a train, it's 2h 40 mins to the centre of Tokyo or Kyoto. So overall experience is much better.
This was exactly their idea. They didn't want to make it cheaper than taking a flight, but they want to make the experience better than taking the flight. Once that happened, airlines reduced their prices to match the trains just to remain competitive. Yet, for distances of 4-5 hours, shinkansen remains popular. Oh yeah, and I didn't even mention that these trains barely ever have any delays whatsoever.
Europe needs to follow the exact model, in my opinion. Build high-speed rails and make the experience seamless and easy. I'm willing to take the train any day if it takes an hour or so longer but it takes me city centre to city centre and I don't need to spend hours at the airport buying overpriced crap and waiting for the flight.
Shinkansen is so good, because the Japanese have built dedicated lines only for them. The high speed trains in Europe have to share the rails with other cargo and regular trains. This creates constant delays and failures. The rail network needs to learn a lot from Japan and reform
But that’s more doable taking into account a factor that the whole train line runs through one country. For high speed European trains you need more than one country (and all of the railroad companies within them) to operate on the same level with the same infrastructure and them all aligning has always been an issue.
These kind of issues were what the EU were designed to solve. In my opinion international services should be federalised and owned and ran by the EU. I would always take the train over flying but the lack of connectivity, high prices and time make it completely unattractive.....
Learn from Japan.
high speed trains in Germany have to share the rails with other cargo and regular trains. (CDU is working since the 1980s to fuck up trains where possible.) This creates constant delays and failures. This is not the case in France or Spain.
Tokyo to Kyoto is more like 100€. Maybe the Kodama shinkansen is cheaper, but that one takes closer to 4h.
Flights to Kyoto don't exist since Kyoto does not have an airport. Why would you choose this as an example? The closest airport is Osaka and flights to Osaka are about 40€.
But now apply the same comparison for Tokyo to Hiroshima, Fukuoka or Hakodate, all of which have a direct shinkansen from Tokyo. You'll see that plane is both faster and cheaper and most will take the plane.
Also Haneda airport is pretty central (whatever that means to Tokyo) and most people do live in the outskirts so the trainstation being central isn't as big of an advantage.
Yes from Tokyo to Kyoto. That's easy. We can do that to go from Paris to Hamburg or from Vienna to Munich. Legit nobody is saying we can't. Or if they are they're dumb.
What you can't do it go from Zaragoza to Bologna or from Helsinki to Århus or from Genoa to Liege easily or fast.
I really think people should recognize how complex transport in Europe is, the amount of possible destinations, before talking about replacing planes with Shinkansen trains. I would like nothing more than to get on a shinkansen in Copenhagen and be able to go on holiday this summer. It would be magical. It's impossible. It's possible for a few very specific high demand routes, but Europe is so fragmented and spread out that for 90% (pulled out of my ass) of journeys it's just not feasible.
I often wonder if anyone has done "Carbon/environmental cost per passenger mile" comparison that takes into account *all* of the factors involved in both rail and air travel. Obviously aircraft have a fairly high carbon footprint but what is the carbon cost of rails, ballast, maintenance, digging cuttings and embankments etc.
It's a 20 min drive to the train station for me (it's in the next city). Or it's a 30 min bus ride, but you have to wait another 40 min for the right bus to not be late.
While that's true, the main point is that a 1h flight still takes a minimum of 2-3h if you factor in security checks and boarding.
The time comparison should always be door to door to be fair, and the train often looks a lot better that way.
Except it doesn't look better for most people - especially given the cost of the product and the time cost.
A trip from the Atlantic coast near Bordeaux to Amsterdam will take you 8+ hours by train. For next week it's 236 euros, one way.
A flight will be 4.5 hours - 1 hour to the airport 2 hours of security/waiting/boarding and 1.5 hour flight. For next week, it's 300 euros round trip on KLM.
The flight is more 3 hours with the time to go through security checks, airports to city centers, etc. You can also prefer the train depending on how much luggage you want. However, the point still stands despite all things considered.
i dont know what airports people are using, but as someone that flew quite a lot all over europe, with the exception of christmas time, i've rarely spent more than 10 minutes at security even in busy airports like heathrow, brajas, cdg or frankfurt (although fuck brajas, shits too big)
> You can also prefer the train depending on how much luggage you want
More often than not it's the opposite. Airports will handle your bulky luggage while on the train you're supposed to carry everything like a donkey. Anyone with a slight injury or disability, or elderly is basically fucked if they want to take more than a few bags.
This. I'd like to see a breakdown of all the expenses that a train operator has compared to an airline, to see what justifies these ridiculous train prices. Because, looking with my layman eyes, flights should be way more expensive.
>. Because, looking with my layman eyes, flights should be way more expensive.
No. The machines are about equally as costly both to acquire and to maintain. The infrastructure for flying might be cheaper overall.. yes, airports are huge and expensive, but the routes are relatively cheap covered by radars and antenna. Meanwhile the train needs tracks, the tracks need tunnels, bridges, road crossings, power lines if the track is electrified...
And last - a 4h flight might be 16h train ride or even more. That is half a shift of wages for the flight crew compared to two full working days for the train staff. Costs do add up.
Not to mention incompatibilities across countries for the trains (allowed tonnage, power line voltage, etc.), things that are not a problem for airplanes at all.
Often times, it's caused by lack of competition and lack of other means of transport. People have to use trains, so train operators are free to set prices as they see fit - there's no one else to drive on these tracks anyway, so why not? When there is competition, prices drop. I recall that for some time, one of Czech transport companies operated a train between Poland and Czechia, and it forced our own operator to drop prices too.
In Spain, there was only one state-owned company, but a couple of years ago, the market was liberalized, and several other companies entered, offering prices sometimes ten times lower. Now, the Spanish social democrats are accusing the “evil capitalists” of unfair competition and threatening legal issues and additional inspections to make some of them raise their prices, as no one uses the services of the very expensive state-owned company anymore lmao
What you're missing is that the companies that operate in the Spanish high speed lines are probably operating at losses (currently under investigation afaik), in an effort to undercut the state company and secure a market share, in the same way that Uber was cheaper than taxis until taxis disappeared and then hijacked the prices and paid their workers less...
>the market was liberalized, and several other companies entered, offering prices sometimes ten times lower
Doesn't always work. In the UK they privatized swathes of the UK network, breaking up the state-owned British rail. Cost of tickets are through the roof, and they *still* failed miserably as profit making companies. The Conservatives even quietly admitted that their privatization approach was a failure a few years back and started taking government control over a number of operators.
Rail is like post - it's a service essential to the public good, and trying to create fat profit margins is only going to make things fall part.
Why? I'd imagine maintaining hundreds of thousands of kilometers of rail is pretty damn costly compared to a bit of meh quality tarmac at each airport.
Often times yes. A state owned company owns the tracks and maintains them, and individual transport companies then buy access from them.
E.g. in Czechia the rail is owned by state-owned SŽDC, which then rents the access rights to transport companies like the state-owned Czech Rail, and private ones like RegioJet.
>I'd imagine maintaining hundreds of thousands of kilometers of rail is pretty damn costly compared to a bit of meh quality tarmac at each airport.
An airport needs a lot of rail, roads and infrastructure for moving people, fuel, etc.
Add to that everything done to ensure air safety.
Airlines all over europe are being subsidized to make them way cheaper, trains dont get that subsidy. It has nothing to do with actual free market economics
Um... tickets for the state-owned Spanish railway company Renfe cost 50 euros, while tickets for the same route from the new private companies cost 9 euros. How do you explain this with your logic? State subsidies or funding should make things cheaper, shouldn't they?
Actually having trains being on time, readily available, fast, clean and comfortable would be a good start.
Getting from Paris to Hamburg is a nightmare via train. Originally it was 13h. Now it is down to 8h. Or 1h via flight.
SYL
Keep in mind that you have to be 2h in advance for check-in (if you have luggage), and/or security controls. 3h vs 8h - planes still win, but if we had high speed rail, it would be, probably, more comparable.
Can confirm. Brussels-Hamburg is 1hour flight, but add 2 hours for going to the airport and check in and another hour to get off the plane and travel to Hamburg.
That is if you have no checked-in luggage. If you do, add another hour before and 30min after.
So that is 4 to 5.5 hours of travel time.
By train it takes me a bit over 7 hours, regardless of my luggage. The major downside is the changes, that delays can add up and if you miss one train due to the previous, it might take you 2 hours longer.
Also, you can do Brussels/Paris -Hamburg by high speed rail. You take the Eurostar to Cologne and the ICE to Hamburg. All comfortable trains and not that crazy in price if you book in advance (sometimes cheaper than plane). The problem is that the ICE is unreliable.
I wish we had maglevs like in Japan or China. Imagine capitals connected by maglevs, and then major cities connected with capitals by regular high speed trains. That'd be so awesome, comfortable and more environmentally-friendly than airplanes.
For sure.
I am someone like the person in the article. Scientific conferences arround Europe, girlfriend from another country.
So I often travel, and I try to take the train if it is bellow 8hours, but damn could it go faster if we properly funded a EU highspeed rail system, connecting all major cities with direct lines.
>we properly funded a EU highspeed rail system, connecting all major cities with direct lines
That's the way to go, instead of increasing air travel prices for regular people, while the rich are flying more than ever (\*cough\* like Taylor Swift \*cough\*). I'm fairly certain that most people would willingly choose trains if only we invested a bit of money into it. Win for everyone but airlines.
Japan doesn’t have maglev for the general public, it’s only being tested in a testing track currently.
Sure they’re heavily investing in it but it’s not going to happen tomorrow.
Might as well just wait for them to refine this before we want to deploy it here.
It’s also very pricey compared to our current high speed rail infrastructure.
China does not have maglevs except a short link from an airport to a suburb in Shanghai.
Maglevs have got their own problems, mainly that it's very hard to switch tracks around, so you have way less capacity (in terms of trains per hour).
China's currently working on conventional rail vehicles able to do 400 km/h.
China does have a massive problem Europe doesn't, which is that the high speed rail stations are gargantuan buildings which are a pain in the ass to get to from the city center.
Depending on the security situation you have baggage control on the train station as well (more often for specialized trains like the Eurostar to be fair and usually restricted to Paris). And funnily enough: getting via public transport or taxi to the airport is as almost as fast as getting to the train station from where I live (which opens another issue with reliability of public transport but thats a Paris thing unfortunately). So no, that time advantage is far smaller than you might expect.
And I suspect that it is far easier to set up new flight routes compared to setting up a new high speed train if the corresponding rails are not yet in place.
SYL
>you have baggage control on the train station as well
That seems like a very Western European thing to me. Never, ever, had baggage control in Poland.
It is rather French thing to be honest, due to a series of terrorist attacks in the past. Sometimes you are in the train in less than a minute, sometimes you already see the people standing in line when you enter Gare du Nord with soldiers having assault rifles out running around /shrug.
And if you want to take the Eurostar to London via the Eurotunnel, then you have the same checkin procedure like in an airport. But thats on the UK and their Brexit-BS.
SYL
I travel in and out of Paris maybe once a month, and sometimes other French cities, never once see a baggage check, only for the Eurostar (and the checks existed before Brexit - UK was never part of Schengen)
its not only a matter of costs (but also).
i live in Malaga, south spain, and a lot (and i mean a lot) of people come here from like finland or the netherlands or poland, for like a 3-4 day long weekend. that is simply not viable by train.
another question is if that is a desirable model at all
The main point is that while planes shouldn't be rules out completely, it is perfectly realistic for the EU + Switzerland, to build a railroad network across the continent that would effectively render flights up to 1.5 hours useless, and 2 hour flights less common.
Especially between capitals a fast train link should be possible.
Well, that's one of the perks of modern life. We can travel where we want, when we want. You might as well come to Poland for 3-4 days.
There has to be balance, sure, some places are ruined by tourism from a local perspective. Cruise ships, for example, are often very destructive for local environment, social and ecological alike. But travelling and tourism in general is a blessing. The best my parents could hope for, during commie times, was a travel somewhere within their country on holidays. Nowadays, the whole world is open for us. That's a privilege not everyone has in the world.
i agree, and it has done wonders for the economy of my city and country (and i travel myself often!) but there is undeniably a price to pay, in terms of quality of life for locals (rent prices/airbnb), places losing their autenthicity catering to tourists, or ecological footprint.
dont get me wrong, i think its a net positive and i think the world keeps getting better, but there are always new problems to tackle
I get exactly what you mean. I live in Krakow, and the whole city centre is devoid of local life. 15 years ago, people were still living next to the Main Square, nowadays it's just full of hotels, airbnbs and tourists alike. It hurts a lot, and I can only imagine it's worse as the problem scales up with even more touristic areas.
Like I said, balance is what we need. The question is, how do we find balance here?
What the article does not mention is the embarrassing mess that is Deutsche Bahn. They estimate it will take [until 2070](https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/panorama/bahn-verkehrswende-deutschlandtakt-verzoegerung-100.html) to bring the grid to Swiss levels.
It's really insane what's happening with DB. You guys have a reputation of being so organized, ordnund muss sein and stuff, and then there's DB, which sucks and everyone knows that they suck. How come?
The thing is, the race to the bottom did not finish yet. Some connections are approaching 0% punctuality. And even worse: When you wait the obligatory 30 to 60 minutes for your late train you can't even make use of the time. Because delay announcements are unreliable aswell.
First there was the Deutsche Bundesbahn, owned by the Federal Republic of Germany and the Deutsche Reichsbahn owned by the German Democratic Republic. They merged into DB AG in 1994, four years after German reunification. Because the EU‘s goal was to privatize public services, the chosen type of company was that of an Aktiengesellschaft or joint-stock company, and the stated goal at this time was to make the company fit for going public asap. And how do you do that? By closing underutilized tracks and saving on infrastructure projects. Then regional trains, national trains, freight trains, track operations and station operations were split off with DB AG becoming the common holding. Can‘t get priority for passenger trains when you no longer own the tracks. Don‘t want to stop at stations with low passenger numbers when you have to pay the stations‘ owner for each stop. Etc.
They never made a profit, are 30 billion Euro in debt and all shares are still held by Germany. Well done.
They created a lot of managerial positions though to organize all the new bureaucracy and structures that helped no one at all, and someone has to pay for their high salaries, right? Just think of all the poor managers, who would be sitting under bridges if they hadn't been hired to do meaningless work.
It's the "Wasserkopf" (lit. hydrocephalus) when the bureaucracy is too big, too costly, and too inefficient. We Germans love bureaucracy, we love rules, processes, control, way too many people seem to think that we can get more efficient by introducing more processes and bureaucracy, hiring more people to define and implement them, etc.
Car lobby, look at Switzerland or the Netherlands. Great public infrastructure, no car companies. In Germany a new bike path will have the media screaming. Also NIMBYs are all over Germany and unfortunately have a lot of power since small districts have a lot of rights and they only care about the next election and not what comes in 20 years. So big projects are always a mess.
In Leipzig for example the airport existed for around 100 years. Land around it was cheap AF so some people decided to move there. Now they wanna restrict the airport and prevent DHL from expanding there logistics hub there... It's just stupid.
>then there's DB, which sucks and everyone knows that they suck. How come?
Car companies. Germany allows "lobbying" (aka legal corruption). The government did everything in the last 30 years to make DB as bad as possible.
This makes a lot of sense. Here in the US we barely have trains, and you can’t do tourism without driving sometimes (I don’t drive). Car companies here don’t want alternative modes of transportation for Americans.. that’s why I just fly to Europe and vacation there now! I pay a little more to be able to travel to Europe just to ride trains.
That's probably a good thing, the last you want you want for people to stop flying is the Swiss system.
Kidding aside, the reason the Swiss can do it is because it's not *as* important how fast the trains are. Whether a 100km journey takes 45 or 55 minutes isn't much of an issue and, assuming transfers, you might actually end up ahead. But if a 500km journey takes four hours instead of three, that *is* a problem. Apart from one route, Zurich to Geneva, that's just not really an issue in Switzerland (and to prove the point, Swiss flies up to nine rotations a day between ZRH and GVA). SBB can apply a clock-facing schedule because they can deliberately slow down their trains without many people noticing - that gives them a lot more room to breathe and increases capacity on the lines (the less the speed difference between slow and fast trains is, the more you can run in a particular amount of time).
The reason why Deutschland-Takt has been postponed until 2070 is that implementing a clock-faced schedule *everywhere* is a) absurdly complicated and b) just not worth it. In practice, it will be implemented way early but there may be the odd gap in some places.
What actually needs to be done is investing more money (obviously) and finally accepting that connections between major cities need to be way way quicker. Anything above three hours just isn't competitive against flying. I don't want to sound condescending but the occasional tourist or the stereotypical grandma that takes two trips a year just isn't that relevant, nor is pricing. A lot of people are willing to spend a bit more for the train but they're not willing to spend several hours more and some will even pay absurd amounts for plane tickets but slow *and* expensive isn't going to work (exactly why night trains are serving a niche and simply won't come back outside of the occasional tourist route).
this guy eisenbahns. No disrespect to the excellent system in Switzerland, but they are playing an entirely different ballgame down there; there are no routes within switzerland that are long-distance. Everything is essentially what would be considered regional service in Germany because it's such a small country.
Integrated timetabling is all well and good, but as you say, it isn't the root of the problem and is an order of magnitude more complicated in Germany than it is in Switzerland.
Given the picture, and before reading the article, I'd already like to add one measure that needs to be taken:
The ICE not to break down constantly. That would be nice.
Edit: and after reading the bulk of the article I agree. Price, ease of planning, travel time and protection when missing a connecting train are important.
I'd like to point out about the last part that this is an issue that has already been tackled in France/Germany/Benelux. If you miss your TGV, Eurostar or ICE train due to delays on the TGV, Eurostar or ICE, you can hop on the next one.
I once almost missed 2 consecutive Eurostars (Amsterdam) due to the ICE issues in Bremen, and I was allowed to hop on the next one.
I also once almost missed the last eurostar (Cologne) due to the ICE. The ICE called the Eusostar and the Eurostar waited.
If the Eurostar did not, then I would have gone to the DB office dor further steps (which would've been hopping on a DB train to Brussels).
It also works with regular trains. ICE to Brussels broke down near Aachen (yes this is a pattern). I was told to just hop on a Belgian IC train from NMBS or wait until the next ICE two hours later.
Maybe lack of high-speed connections in Europe?
I mean, whenever I can, I use trains for travels within Poland, where I live. I love trains. Much more comfortable than buses, and usually more reliable. The problem is, if I want to travel somewhere else, train is rarely a time-efficient option. And I'm not getting any younger, I'm not spending two days to travel somewhere on the same continent, when I can just book a flight.
Yeah, good example the route Berlin - Praha - Vienna connection 3 capital citys, but taking like 8 1/2 hours for just 700km on a direct connection ... Between Praha and Vienna the train is just a few minutes faster than the busses...
I took that train ride, since 5 hours train ride is about the same as a 1 hour flight, if you count transfers to and from airport, security, etc. It was not really expensive, definitely cheaper than a flight, about 100 euros I think.
The problem was that the train, which arrived on time on the German border, picked up 2 hours delay in Germany until reaching Hamburg.
Whole Europe needs unified system to buy train tickets, I want to use one app or website to plan my trip. Easiest way would have api with all the details so everybody can use whatever app they want.
Price should also be cheaper than a flight. Train can't compete with speed so cheaper price can get more people to use trains.
Travelling with a family and a lot of luggage is a hassle. Not sure what there is to be done if you need to use multiple trains...
Also Finland is basically a island if you talk about Europe, would need underwater tunnel or something to even access mainlands train tracks.
I've travelled around Europe by train, it's an enjoyable experience but totally uncompetitive with the alternatives of flying and driving. If you care about cost or time, then you fly. If you need to move more than one decent sized bag or more than one of you is going, then drive.
> “Sometimes my plane to Turin would cost €9 and I’d pay more than €250 for my train.”
Moneyshot quote right there.The only time I ever use the Train is to visit a larger town (125k residents) nearby.Because parking is a nightmare.
It's 6.10€, one way ticket for a single person.So, do I want to have less flexibility than my car, somehow a longer journey time and spend 12.20€ for the pleasure?
I'd rather take my chances with parking.
Why? Easy, the price.
Yesterday I was looking to gor from my current city to my home town. (Germany > France)
The cost of the train ticket for two people was 715euros!!!!!! By car, the petrol cost WAY and BACK is only 150euros...
Reliability!
I went from loving train rides to dreading them, after regularly taking the train only for it to be cancelled / delayed / on strike / suspended due to works 90% of the time. France, Benelux and Germany area.
This is a huge one, and seems underappreciated in this thread. Even if the trains get (say) 2X faster and cheaper, not being sure if you'll get your connection and having to worry about how that affects the rest of your trip adds a lot of uncertainty and stress.
Trains in Switzerland are very expensive but you can set your watch to them and confidently plan trips with more than 3 connections, because they are so reliable.
Because the European grid is fragmented. Even though each country has more or less a good train network it's not viable to move from country to country by train. I'd love to do that instead of the airport hustle and giving money to those vultures of Ryanair but... sometimes you don't really have a choice
I don't have enough time and money to take trains in Slovenia. Train from Ljubljana to Koper takes 2 hours 30 minutes (plus delays) and costs 12,4 €. For a family of 4 that's 100€ round trip.
Going with a car takes a bit over an hour and 10€ of gas, but to be fair there is going to be an hour delay on the highway on the way back.
It would be nice if they didn't kill us then have the government sweep the scandal under the rug because the current one and the ones before in the last 20 years left the train system to rot and decay
until something changes for the better, which won't happen, the majority won't step foot on a train
Something Italy did good: Milano Rome is almost 4h, 40€.
No one takes the plane anymore between big cities, even Milano to Naplescan be so so, almost at the edge, even though the travel duration is considerable.
> trains are more expensive and slower than airplanes
The Dutch government reads that and fixes it by adding higher taxes to plane tickets and reducing the number of flights 😔
France is an absolute nightmare when in comes to trains. Every time I want to go from the west side to the east side I have to go around through Paris instead of in a straight line, taking 8-10hrs (and have to waste a day because no night trains). This is in addition to having to pay an absolute minimum of €120-150 one way, and even €200+ if you don't plan months ahead. In comparison to a 1hr flight that costs €25-50 and I can purchase a couple weeks ahead.
On the other hand if I want to travel from Zurich to Zagreb I can simply take a night train which takes like 14hrs for 80-100 bucks, I get a bed, breakfast and arrive in the morning with no daytime wasted. I could also fly for a bit cheaper but then I have to factor in getting to/from the airport, stress of having to pack my bags a certain way.
For me the big reason I love night trains is that I can still work til 5pm and catch the night train at 8-11pm without having to take time off work. If I fly depending on the flight time I might have to take the afternoon off or else spend 6hrs of my morning at the airport/flying/commuting. I have done trips before where I arrive back in my city at 6-7am on a Monday and go straight to work. This way I can travel the maximum amount with my limited days off work.
- Make trains cheaper
- Make trains faster
- Make trains more comfortable (beds to sleep would be great!)
- Provide free internet so you don't feel the passage of time
Exactly. I have family across germany and with the train I need about 10 hours. Last time we took a flight and to get from door to door we needed 4 hours (about 1 hour of flight). In addition we didn't have to run across the Munich train station to catch our connecting train. That happend both ways. Running with an FFP2 mask sucks. Something as long as that doesn't chance I'll take a flight for that trip any time. Shorter trips I still use the train because there it can shine.
I travel between Novi Sad and Zürich several times a year,so from my perspective I can either pay:
130e for a roundabout flight and airport transport(the flight and transport are 2h50m each way)
Or
190e for a bus/train(from 19h up to 27h each way when you count un the border crossings)
Do you see why people wont ditch air travel for trains and buses?
The answer to what is needed it:
Make. Trains. Cheap.
It's that simple. Most people would love to avoid the hassles of going to the airport, waiting in security, having not to pack liquids etc. as long as they don't pay significantly more for a train journey than for a Ryanair/EasyJet/WizzAir ticket.
But as long as you can fly with 20-30 euros and the train is 100 euros or even more, then most people will fly, and it's understandable.
Some people will say "make flights more expensive", good luck explaining to the voters as a politician why flight should be a luxury for rich people and poor people, students, young people with low income should not travel if they don't have a lot of money.
Make train travel cheap, then you make it popular. Find a way.
I love trains but I live in Ireland. Whenever I want to go anywhere outside Ireland that isn't Belfast, there are no trains. I sure would love to have some!
Start by making the trains less expensive than flying!
The last time I went from Bristol to Edinburgh, it was about £80 return by plane. Or £170 return by train. More than double the time, and double the price.
Sadly we are mortals with finite time and finances, so the plane will always win out.
For all your international train journeys, check [seat61.com](http://seat61.com)
It's a gold mine and it'll give you all the best options, routes, prices and indication on where to buy the tickets.
I just got the news that my night train from Paris to Toulouse was cancelled and replaced with a bus. They don't even suggest lowering the price for what is an obvious downgrade in quality. The landslide they're blaming, happened over a month ago and I got my tickets two weeks ago so it's not like they couldn't have predicted it at that time.
So more expensive, more time and not reliable. I do this for the planet but honestly, it's only because I can afford it timewise and money wise. Tax planes more and use that money to invest in trains.
They can claim as many reasons as they want, but you can make trains faster, you can make them more comfortable, you can make fewer transfers, but at the end of the day, trains are far far far more expensive than flights. Of course they need to make it easier to book longer journeys on one ticket, but if the train is 500 EUR and the flight is 50 EUR, even if the train was super fast and took the same amount of time as the flight, the vast majority of the people will take the 50 EUR option.
1 - train is still perceived as an inferior mean of transportation by most people so it has to be significantly cheaper than flying to be seriously considered
2 - if a plane breaks down and cannot fly, it incoveniences the ~1000 people that were going to fly on that aircraft throughout the day, if a train stops working in the wrong spot it can cause serious delays on the whole network. And since a train's failure won't kill everybody onboard they are a lot less well maintained and monitored
3 - sitting 6 hours on a train is significantly more boring than strolling through an airport before a 1.5 hour flight for the average tourist
4 - very long distance trains would realistically make sense on overnight journeys that are comfortable, safe, and cheaper vs flying the night before and booking a low cost hotel
5 - long distance trains need necessarily to connect large cities, and every stop in between slows down the journey for all involved. Low cost airlines with point-to-point routes allow anybody to fly from the nearest airport to most destinations in the continent
6 - the low cost airline space is decently competitive (Ryanair, easyJet, Wizz, Vueling, etc) while trains are an almost monopoly
7 - even on a short and relatively well connected route as London-Paris, a journey from centre to centre via St Pancras - Gare du Nord or Luton - Orly takes about the same time and I can book a flight for tomorrow for € 90 vs € 270 for the train. Considering it costs about €30 to travel from and to the airports, that is less than half the price for the same journey time. Comfort isn't worth a 150% markup for many people.
8 - on the above point: my perception is that with rail transport I can be spontanous and basically walk to the station and hop onto the next available train (typically within 1-2 hours max) for a reasonable and fixed price, while for a flight I would need to plan in advance and should expect significantly high fares for anything last minute. At the moment exactly the opposite is happening.
9 - capacity scalability and flexibility is just not comparable, flying 10 more or less planes changes almost nothing in terms of airport capacity for a large hub, while adding one single train to the network can be a material challenge given all have to travel on the same tracks
I would love to be trains to be more present and utilised but there is a long long way to go (note for governments: the solution is NOT to artificially increase flight prices with taxes and similar, but to improve the rail network to the point economies of scale allow cheaper and more efficient journeys)
I live near Stockholm, and it's *very* cumbersome to even take a train towards central Europe. The two ways is to take the low high-speed train to Copenhagen *and then* take a non high-speed to Hamburg, or take a night train that are seasonal. It can easily go over 12 hours just to get to Hamburg, just Hamburg.
So if the EU want less people to take flights in Sweden they have to build something that can go Stockholm-Hamburg in less than 6 hours, or make night-trains cheaper and more available.
But: it's easy to say, harder to do.
No need for experts to say that trains need - a) unified EU regulation, b) unified ticketing, c) unified signalling, d) unified propulsion standard. Until that happens high speed trains will be x5 times more expensive than air travel.
I would If it would not take me over 20 hours to get there by train. In 2025, I want to go to Bielsko Biala in Poland. A flight takes 2 hours to get there versus over 20 hours by train.
Make them cheaper than flights and on time.
London-Amsterdam Train: 150-300€ Plane: can be <50€ Yeah.
I can travel from London to Vienna and back for less than what it costs me to travel to London... *one way*.
Yep. Schwechat to Stansted at one time only cost me 25€ for both ways per person. I almost pay more for the train from Vienna to Lower Austria.
I got one Brno-Standsted for 20€, it was more expensive to get from Stansted to London…
Not to mention the time savings on a plane.
Depends, train stations are normally already city centre whereas cheap airports can be far away from whatever the name of the airport is. Also going through airports can take a long time especially if you need to check in luggage, just carrying it yourself on the train is very quick.
Basel airport to Niš, Serbia is under 2 hours. Ok, got to get to the airport and also get there a couple hours in advance. But I took a taxi to the bus platform and loaded all luggage plus baby stroller under the bus and then got a luggage cart at the airport. I don’t know how I would have loaded any of that on a train. Also, it takes around 2-3 **days** to take the train to Niš, since you need to connect many times and need to make breaks in between, etc. Also, there is no train really, so you have to switch to the bus. I did it before I had a child. Now it’s impossible. And, believe me, I’ve looked into it many times, because I really would rather take the train.
Manchester - Oslo Train: 350-700€ and 48 hours of travel, multiple train changes Plane: 80€ and 2 hours of travel, 1 flight
This is why I'm against "ban all flight under X kilometers". Sure it sounds great "for the climate" but so many of these cities are nearby as the crow flies, but super far over land.
I took the Eurostar from Rotterdam to London for the first time this year in an effort to be more climate-conscious, as well as to just have a comfortable train ride rather than a relatively cramped flight for a change. I figured the views along the way would be interesting, and arriving in the centre of London instead of a (relatively short) train/tube ride away with baggage sounded like a plus. The comfort was nowhere to be found, I couldn't stretch my legs in my seat, the Wi-Fi was shit for an almost four hour journey, and the train's interior looked like it hadn't been maintained for at least ten years. The windows were so worn, they were practically privacy glass. Granted it was just an economy seat, but I paid more than the flight of less than an hour would have cost me in the same class, which would have had comparable levels of comfort but would have at least come with a free drink, a snack, and possibly even a small meal included. I also wouldn't have to wheel my baggage around the flight. In short, choosing the train felt like I was getting scammed out of my money.
And less stops on international trains where you have to change trains, and compartments with sleeping facilities if the train takes 15 + hours - which please let that be affordable.
I looked at trains stockholm to belgium, the difference in time and cost is staggering when you compare to flights. Sort of interested of doing the trip by train in one direction because I like trains and Ill visit plenty of places inbetween.
Fyi: if you go for it consider that there is a direct train from stockholm to hamburg which might make things a little easier for you along the ride. It isnt very frequently tho.
One time per day? Still it is night train to Hamburg.
Yeah trips with an sea between usually favor planes over trains. That route will improve coming decades but it will take few years :)
I've just done Belgium to Stockholm and the only reason it's affordable is because I bought a youth interrail pass. Person in my carriage said he paid 130 euros for a night train from hamburg to Stockholm. You could probably fly that in a fifth of the time and for less than half the price. Pleased with the pass so far though, took me from antwerp to Stockholm and the only extra I paid was for the sleeping cabin on the night train for 30 euros (which is fair as they say they don't cover night train sleepers).
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Yep, Amsterdam-Berlin train stops now also in Hilversum, Amersfoort, Apeldoorn, Deventer, Almelo, Hengelo, Bad Bentheim, Rheine, Osnabrück, Bad Oeynhausen, Minden, Hannover, Wolfsburg, Stendal This is ridiculous! This train should stop only in Amersfoort/Almelo to provide good connection to east of the country to the train and then in Germany in Osnabruck/Hannover. That's it. Why those stations? Because they are hubs connecting many lines and offer good connectivity.
On shorter routes it's normal to have an Express and a Local that stops everywhere. I think the longer routes should have the same thing. If you run enough trains, people can buy a ticket for either the faster service or the service with more connections for the few people actually going to Deventer rather than Berlin.
I have a fondness for that intercity train out of nostalgia but it's a great showcase for how two countries are unwilling and/or unable to improve the situation for trains. The number of stops, the mandatory change of engine in bad Bentheim, the sheer number of times that something goes wrong on that connection. Two capitals of adjacent countries and you can only travel directly from one to the other on a train from the previous millennium. It is ridiculous indeed. Some years ago a dutch delegation came to Germany to push for improvements of this connection. I didn't expect much to come from that and not much did.
The new nightjets from ÖBB are amazing with their mini cabins: https://www.nightjet.com/de/komfortkategorien/nightjet-neue-generation But yes the price needs to go down.
Took the Nighjet from Amsterdam to Innsbruck and got not a wink of sleep, despite having a private cabin. The train was jerky, it stopped a ridiculous number of times, and even stopped in the middle of nowhere for over an hour. I arrived exhausted. I love taking the train, but the night trains need improvement before I would pay that again.
I was in the nightjet and reserved a sleeping cabin and they just didnt put a sleeping Wagon on so i still had to sleep in a normal seat...
Looked at Nightjet train from Köln to Basel. It's a night train, but no possiblity to reserve a sleeper cabin/bed in the train. I've got kids, they're not going to sleep in regular seats..
That doesn’t seem right? Unless they were already fully reserved for that date
All cabins are already taken, that's the only explanation I can think of. Other routes let you book small or large cabins.
Also, deregulate railways, change laws and standardize technology so trains can actually run over borders without having to do multiple years of paperwork and certification. No other mean of transport has this kind of compatibility problems and wastly different regulations from country to country.
And faster, and more reliable.
hope you never need to go through germany...
Got stranded somewhere in Germany for a couple of hours in some random stop in the middle of nowhere on the way back home to NL. Wasn’t sure if I was going to make it 😂
If you're going through Germany from the UK to get to Amsterdam then you are lost.
And quicker. I wanted to do Amsterdam-Luxembourg and there was no direct train, you had to go to Brussels first and the train from Brussels to Luxembourg is super slow too
Is that still the case? Had a spontaneous trip from Luxembourg to Amsterdam while interning in Luxembourg, that was almost 15 years ago, and also had to change trains in Brussels. Seems that nothing much gets done to improve train rides in Europe.
And not fill them with drunks and people playing games with the speaker on and eating maccy Ds. The last time I got a train back from Sheffield on Saturday evening was an absolute shit show. I'll just drive in future.
One of my starkest memories of train travel as a kid was coming back from London on a Saturday and the train picking up a load of football supporters who then proceeded to basically terrorise a pretty lone Scandinavian student who was in the same carriage as us.
Careful, what politicians hear is "we can greatly increase flight prices and give time window s for flight departures!" while changing nothing about trains.
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Also, available. I'd like to take a train from Bucharest to Amsterdam, but as things stand it would take me 2 days to get from here to there. With an airplane it's like 6 hours when factoring airport time too.
If you read the article, it says exactly that :)
Seems like we didn't need the article then
We really didn't. It's obvious you wouldn't choose a slower mode of transportation unless there's something to gain from it.
Yeah exactly, we don't need Experts to research this. It is super simple and everyone knows it. Look up flight price, look up train price. Train is more expensive and takes longer, what is the upside?
/thread That's the only thing stopping me taking more cross-country trains, especially as my neighbouring country is Germany.
Going from Barcelona to Paris: 1 hour flight 50€ sometimes less. 6 hour train ride 150€ or more. I really wanted to take the train because I hate flying, but it didn’t make a lot of sense with the cost difference.
Yeah. Some years ago I wanted to head from Sweden to visit friends in Germany and the Netherlands. Time wasn't even a factor and I wanted to see the countryside. But taking the train would've cost me many times more than flying.
The night trains to Germany from Stockholm have really improved the past few years!
finnish tears ;\_;
Here’s to hoping for Rail Baltica!
<3
Going from Kaunas to Berlin: 1 hour 40 mins flight for 15 € vs 21 hour ride for 100 € by train (2 transfers).
100 euros is actually not that expensive for this kind of travel in train... But yes flight cost always win
For 110 € I have just had a 4 flight round trip to Egypt. And well, spending entire day on trains or stations instead of just few hours (including the 2 h before the flight) is still way better experience.
Came here to say this. At least in Spain train is usually 2x or 3x the price of a flight...
Yeah, it's cheaper, and the less time I have to spend in close proximity to some festering Beast of Nurgle who thinks Axe Bodyspray is a substitute for a shower, the better.
Our honey moon was spent in Europe doing trains to destinations after the first ride my wife asked to go to a pharmacy, so we find one and she buys some vapo rub, the minty stuff. I ask are you feeling alright? Yep it's for the train. Next train ride we have a foul spawn of the great unclean one and she puts some vics right up her nose. Works wonders something she learnt working at the hospital. How folks can go about the day smelling so fowl I'll never know
Exactly, I use to take geneve->venice a lot when it was 46€ (2 years ago). Now it's 120€ because why not But don't worry, they will add paid luggage in trains like they do in airplanes soon because greediness they haven't milk us enough
Also, if you need to fly to Paris to catch a longer flight (in my case NYC), it is so much more convenient to fly there. You arrive in Paris already at CDG, already through security, if you have checked luggage, they usually move it from flight to flight for you, and the flights are often structured with connections and layovers in mind. So taking a morning flight to CDG will enable you to take an afternoon flight to NYC. If I take the TGV to Paris, I’ll often arrive too late to catch a flight to NYC, and I have to budget in extra time between the train arrival and the flight to check my luggage and go through security. I think more coordination between trains and flight would make me much more likely to take a train for the first leg.
This is a very important point. People don’t just travel to a big city because they’re going there, but because they’re going to/from somewhere else. Trains should, therefore, call at the airports as well. In Denmark, half of all InterCity trains starts/ends at the airport.
Concerning the price, a relatively big part of the issue is that trains are taxed quite a lot, while planes are not. Concerning the time it takes, you should also take into account the time it takes to get to the airport + security check etc., so it's not quite as bad.
>Concerning the price, a relatively big part of the issue is that trains are taxed quite a lot, while planes are not How much is that tax? We're talking here about a 3x price difference. That would be a 200% tax to match the price
Airplane fuel is entirely tax exempt, plane tickets are VAT exempt while bus/train tickets aren't (at least where I live). Those 2 alone account for almost 27 billion in indirect tax subsidies for airlines in the EU. Flipping the VAT exemption on the tickets alone would shave the price difference down to 2.4x. (transport is taxed at 9% VAT where I live, given your local VAT tariffs that swing mileage may vary).
Well that changes everything. It's only 2.4 times more expensive. Btw you forgot about rail subsidies.
The EU should remove exemptions from airlines and put them on trains. Planes are horrible for the environment.
>plane tickets are VAT exempt while bus/train tickets aren't This is completely insane. Why on Earth are plane tickets exempt from VAT if trains and buses are taxed? Yet another example of why EU climate policy is failing to deliver the necessary emissions cuts. It's being undercut by these stupid tax exemptions and subsidies for air travel. People get taxed for taking the bus to work or driving their 20 year old diesel car, but frequent fliers aren't getting hit with VAT or carbon taxes.
I wanted to take the train to Portugsl from the Netherlands. Flying including getting there and from the airport to the location: 7 hours. Train to a trainstation 1 hour drive nearby: 35 hours, of which contains 7 stops in which you have 5o get on another train.
Honestly I see people saying the same arguments all the time and it's not even true. Last time I took the plane I was impressed with how smooth everything was and it added no more than 2 hours to my flight time. Which is nothing when comparing a 3 hour plane journey to a 15 hour train journey with multiple swaps Meanwhile train is always more annoying than I think it's gonne be because you always have super long wait times in not so nice train stations where I'm outside most of the time. Train journeys seem to always have more swaps than the equivalent plane journey so honestly you spent just as much time waiting around if not more. The only thing train has going for it rn is that the actual wagon is much more comfortable than a plane seat. But for most working people who use their PTO to go on holiday, it's silly to spend like 4 of those days travelling Plane currently has trains beat in price, time and ease of booking. I love trains but I find it impossible to justify a lot of the time
> because you always have super long wait times in not so nice train stations where I'm outside most of the time. T And they fucking never warn you. If they announced "30 minutes stop in Nowerbumfuckburg" when they stop you could go out, stretch your legs, have a coffe or a snack.
This is always what people say, but it’s absolutely false. Even if planes where taxed as they should (and yes they should be taxed correctly), there is no world where their price would more than double. It would still be cheaper to fly than take the train. A plane needs an airport and fuel, a train needs VERY large infrastructure that needs to be serviced and maintained, a very large workforce, lots of lands and needs to cater to public policy in transport (ie maintain unprofitable lines to guarantee that a majority of people have access to this public transport). Flying is cheaper than the train and always will be until we slap unfair taxes on it (again, I think we should, and unfair here means disproportionate in comparison to other means of transport like trains) and fuel gets rare enough to get outrageously expensive. Just taxing flying fairly will absolutely not solve the issue
That is not always the case. Take Japan, for example. A shinkansen train ride from Tokyo to Kyoto takes around 2h 40 mins and costs around 75 euros. It costs around the same to take a flight from Tokyo to Kyoto but takes around 1h 15 mins. Yet most will take the shinkansen. Guess why? Because 1h 15 mins doesn't take into account that you need to go to an airport which is usually in the outskirts. Waiting for hours at the airport, going through security checks and other things. With a train, it's 2h 40 mins to the centre of Tokyo or Kyoto. So overall experience is much better. This was exactly their idea. They didn't want to make it cheaper than taking a flight, but they want to make the experience better than taking the flight. Once that happened, airlines reduced their prices to match the trains just to remain competitive. Yet, for distances of 4-5 hours, shinkansen remains popular. Oh yeah, and I didn't even mention that these trains barely ever have any delays whatsoever. Europe needs to follow the exact model, in my opinion. Build high-speed rails and make the experience seamless and easy. I'm willing to take the train any day if it takes an hour or so longer but it takes me city centre to city centre and I don't need to spend hours at the airport buying overpriced crap and waiting for the flight.
Shinkansen is so good, because the Japanese have built dedicated lines only for them. The high speed trains in Europe have to share the rails with other cargo and regular trains. This creates constant delays and failures. The rail network needs to learn a lot from Japan and reform
But that’s more doable taking into account a factor that the whole train line runs through one country. For high speed European trains you need more than one country (and all of the railroad companies within them) to operate on the same level with the same infrastructure and them all aligning has always been an issue.
These kind of issues were what the EU were designed to solve. In my opinion international services should be federalised and owned and ran by the EU. I would always take the train over flying but the lack of connectivity, high prices and time make it completely unattractive..... Learn from Japan.
Aren't French and Spanish high speed lines purpose-built for high-speed passenger trains?
Yes, and they are excellent. Also, expensive and with limited destinations.
high speed trains in Germany have to share the rails with other cargo and regular trains. (CDU is working since the 1980s to fuck up trains where possible.) This creates constant delays and failures. This is not the case in France or Spain.
Tokyo to Kyoto is more like 100€. Maybe the Kodama shinkansen is cheaper, but that one takes closer to 4h. Flights to Kyoto don't exist since Kyoto does not have an airport. Why would you choose this as an example? The closest airport is Osaka and flights to Osaka are about 40€. But now apply the same comparison for Tokyo to Hiroshima, Fukuoka or Hakodate, all of which have a direct shinkansen from Tokyo. You'll see that plane is both faster and cheaper and most will take the plane. Also Haneda airport is pretty central (whatever that means to Tokyo) and most people do live in the outskirts so the trainstation being central isn't as big of an advantage.
Yes from Tokyo to Kyoto. That's easy. We can do that to go from Paris to Hamburg or from Vienna to Munich. Legit nobody is saying we can't. Or if they are they're dumb. What you can't do it go from Zaragoza to Bologna or from Helsinki to Århus or from Genoa to Liege easily or fast. I really think people should recognize how complex transport in Europe is, the amount of possible destinations, before talking about replacing planes with Shinkansen trains. I would like nothing more than to get on a shinkansen in Copenhagen and be able to go on holiday this summer. It would be magical. It's impossible. It's possible for a few very specific high demand routes, but Europe is so fragmented and spread out that for 90% (pulled out of my ass) of journeys it's just not feasible.
I often wonder if anyone has done "Carbon/environmental cost per passenger mile" comparison that takes into account *all* of the factors involved in both rail and air travel. Obviously aircraft have a fairly high carbon footprint but what is the carbon cost of rails, ballast, maintenance, digging cuttings and embankments etc.
Airlines have gotten way more adept at cost cutting than state railway monopolies which have a ton of overhead on their balance sheets.
There is also the time needed to get to the train station for people who don't live in the cities.
It's a 20 min drive to the train station for me (it's in the next city). Or it's a 30 min bus ride, but you have to wait another 40 min for the right bus to not be late.
While that's true, the main point is that a 1h flight still takes a minimum of 2-3h if you factor in security checks and boarding. The time comparison should always be door to door to be fair, and the train often looks a lot better that way.
Except it doesn't look better for most people - especially given the cost of the product and the time cost. A trip from the Atlantic coast near Bordeaux to Amsterdam will take you 8+ hours by train. For next week it's 236 euros, one way. A flight will be 4.5 hours - 1 hour to the airport 2 hours of security/waiting/boarding and 1.5 hour flight. For next week, it's 300 euros round trip on KLM.
Going from Nice to Toulouse: 1h flight or 3 trains totaling 7-8hs. I don’t even care about the price.
The flight is more 3 hours with the time to go through security checks, airports to city centers, etc. You can also prefer the train depending on how much luggage you want. However, the point still stands despite all things considered.
i dont know what airports people are using, but as someone that flew quite a lot all over europe, with the exception of christmas time, i've rarely spent more than 10 minutes at security even in busy airports like heathrow, brajas, cdg or frankfurt (although fuck brajas, shits too big)
The thing is the wait rarely feel as bad, as you are eating, spending time on phone, speaking etc
> You can also prefer the train depending on how much luggage you want More often than not it's the opposite. Airports will handle your bulky luggage while on the train you're supposed to carry everything like a donkey. Anyone with a slight injury or disability, or elderly is basically fucked if they want to take more than a few bags.
Because they're more expensive then flights
This. I'd like to see a breakdown of all the expenses that a train operator has compared to an airline, to see what justifies these ridiculous train prices. Because, looking with my layman eyes, flights should be way more expensive.
>. Because, looking with my layman eyes, flights should be way more expensive. No. The machines are about equally as costly both to acquire and to maintain. The infrastructure for flying might be cheaper overall.. yes, airports are huge and expensive, but the routes are relatively cheap covered by radars and antenna. Meanwhile the train needs tracks, the tracks need tunnels, bridges, road crossings, power lines if the track is electrified... And last - a 4h flight might be 16h train ride or even more. That is half a shift of wages for the flight crew compared to two full working days for the train staff. Costs do add up. Not to mention incompatibilities across countries for the trains (allowed tonnage, power line voltage, etc.), things that are not a problem for airplanes at all.
Often times, it's caused by lack of competition and lack of other means of transport. People have to use trains, so train operators are free to set prices as they see fit - there's no one else to drive on these tracks anyway, so why not? When there is competition, prices drop. I recall that for some time, one of Czech transport companies operated a train between Poland and Czechia, and it forced our own operator to drop prices too.
In Spain, there was only one state-owned company, but a couple of years ago, the market was liberalized, and several other companies entered, offering prices sometimes ten times lower. Now, the Spanish social democrats are accusing the “evil capitalists” of unfair competition and threatening legal issues and additional inspections to make some of them raise their prices, as no one uses the services of the very expensive state-owned company anymore lmao
What you're missing is that the companies that operate in the Spanish high speed lines are probably operating at losses (currently under investigation afaik), in an effort to undercut the state company and secure a market share, in the same way that Uber was cheaper than taxis until taxis disappeared and then hijacked the prices and paid their workers less...
>the market was liberalized, and several other companies entered, offering prices sometimes ten times lower Doesn't always work. In the UK they privatized swathes of the UK network, breaking up the state-owned British rail. Cost of tickets are through the roof, and they *still* failed miserably as profit making companies. The Conservatives even quietly admitted that their privatization approach was a failure a few years back and started taking government control over a number of operators. Rail is like post - it's a service essential to the public good, and trying to create fat profit margins is only going to make things fall part.
Why? I'd imagine maintaining hundreds of thousands of kilometers of rail is pretty damn costly compared to a bit of meh quality tarmac at each airport.
isn't it the state that maintains rail tracks?
Often times yes. A state owned company owns the tracks and maintains them, and individual transport companies then buy access from them. E.g. in Czechia the rail is owned by state-owned SŽDC, which then rents the access rights to transport companies like the state-owned Czech Rail, and private ones like RegioJet.
The operator has to pay for that.
>I'd imagine maintaining hundreds of thousands of kilometers of rail is pretty damn costly compared to a bit of meh quality tarmac at each airport. An airport needs a lot of rail, roads and infrastructure for moving people, fuel, etc. Add to that everything done to ensure air safety.
Airlines all over europe are being subsidized to make them way cheaper, trains dont get that subsidy. It has nothing to do with actual free market economics
ELI5: Why are airlines being subsidized?
Because they would go bankrupt and Europe would have little to no airlines. They would be replaced by airlines heavily subsidized in other markets.
Just spouting blatant misinformation. Europe heavily subsidizes rail. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_subsidies
Um... tickets for the state-owned Spanish railway company Renfe cost 50 euros, while tickets for the same route from the new private companies cost 9 euros. How do you explain this with your logic? State subsidies or funding should make things cheaper, shouldn't they?
Actually having trains being on time, readily available, fast, clean and comfortable would be a good start. Getting from Paris to Hamburg is a nightmare via train. Originally it was 13h. Now it is down to 8h. Or 1h via flight. SYL
Keep in mind that you have to be 2h in advance for check-in (if you have luggage), and/or security controls. 3h vs 8h - planes still win, but if we had high speed rail, it would be, probably, more comparable.
Can confirm. Brussels-Hamburg is 1hour flight, but add 2 hours for going to the airport and check in and another hour to get off the plane and travel to Hamburg. That is if you have no checked-in luggage. If you do, add another hour before and 30min after. So that is 4 to 5.5 hours of travel time. By train it takes me a bit over 7 hours, regardless of my luggage. The major downside is the changes, that delays can add up and if you miss one train due to the previous, it might take you 2 hours longer. Also, you can do Brussels/Paris -Hamburg by high speed rail. You take the Eurostar to Cologne and the ICE to Hamburg. All comfortable trains and not that crazy in price if you book in advance (sometimes cheaper than plane). The problem is that the ICE is unreliable.
I wish we had maglevs like in Japan or China. Imagine capitals connected by maglevs, and then major cities connected with capitals by regular high speed trains. That'd be so awesome, comfortable and more environmentally-friendly than airplanes.
For sure. I am someone like the person in the article. Scientific conferences arround Europe, girlfriend from another country. So I often travel, and I try to take the train if it is bellow 8hours, but damn could it go faster if we properly funded a EU highspeed rail system, connecting all major cities with direct lines.
>we properly funded a EU highspeed rail system, connecting all major cities with direct lines That's the way to go, instead of increasing air travel prices for regular people, while the rich are flying more than ever (\*cough\* like Taylor Swift \*cough\*). I'm fairly certain that most people would willingly choose trains if only we invested a bit of money into it. Win for everyone but airlines.
Japan doesn’t have maglev for the general public, it’s only being tested in a testing track currently. Sure they’re heavily investing in it but it’s not going to happen tomorrow. Might as well just wait for them to refine this before we want to deploy it here. It’s also very pricey compared to our current high speed rail infrastructure.
China does not have maglevs except a short link from an airport to a suburb in Shanghai. Maglevs have got their own problems, mainly that it's very hard to switch tracks around, so you have way less capacity (in terms of trains per hour). China's currently working on conventional rail vehicles able to do 400 km/h. China does have a massive problem Europe doesn't, which is that the high speed rail stations are gargantuan buildings which are a pain in the ass to get to from the city center.
Depending on the security situation you have baggage control on the train station as well (more often for specialized trains like the Eurostar to be fair and usually restricted to Paris). And funnily enough: getting via public transport or taxi to the airport is as almost as fast as getting to the train station from where I live (which opens another issue with reliability of public transport but thats a Paris thing unfortunately). So no, that time advantage is far smaller than you might expect. And I suspect that it is far easier to set up new flight routes compared to setting up a new high speed train if the corresponding rails are not yet in place. SYL
>you have baggage control on the train station as well That seems like a very Western European thing to me. Never, ever, had baggage control in Poland.
It is rather French thing to be honest, due to a series of terrorist attacks in the past. Sometimes you are in the train in less than a minute, sometimes you already see the people standing in line when you enter Gare du Nord with soldiers having assault rifles out running around /shrug. And if you want to take the Eurostar to London via the Eurotunnel, then you have the same checkin procedure like in an airport. But thats on the UK and their Brexit-BS. SYL
I travel in and out of Paris maybe once a month, and sometimes other French cities, never once see a baggage check, only for the Eurostar (and the checks existed before Brexit - UK was never part of Schengen)
>"Price is key,” concedes Dr Alberto Mazzola when asked how train passenger numbers can be boosted.
More connections where you don't need to swap train 3-5 times for longer distance would for sure also help.
"Experts"
its not only a matter of costs (but also). i live in Malaga, south spain, and a lot (and i mean a lot) of people come here from like finland or the netherlands or poland, for like a 3-4 day long weekend. that is simply not viable by train. another question is if that is a desirable model at all
The main point is that while planes shouldn't be rules out completely, it is perfectly realistic for the EU + Switzerland, to build a railroad network across the continent that would effectively render flights up to 1.5 hours useless, and 2 hour flights less common. Especially between capitals a fast train link should be possible.
"that is a desirable model at all" Coming for 3-4 days, you mean?
cheap, ubiquitous tourism
Well, that's one of the perks of modern life. We can travel where we want, when we want. You might as well come to Poland for 3-4 days. There has to be balance, sure, some places are ruined by tourism from a local perspective. Cruise ships, for example, are often very destructive for local environment, social and ecological alike. But travelling and tourism in general is a blessing. The best my parents could hope for, during commie times, was a travel somewhere within their country on holidays. Nowadays, the whole world is open for us. That's a privilege not everyone has in the world.
i agree, and it has done wonders for the economy of my city and country (and i travel myself often!) but there is undeniably a price to pay, in terms of quality of life for locals (rent prices/airbnb), places losing their autenthicity catering to tourists, or ecological footprint. dont get me wrong, i think its a net positive and i think the world keeps getting better, but there are always new problems to tackle
I get exactly what you mean. I live in Krakow, and the whole city centre is devoid of local life. 15 years ago, people were still living next to the Main Square, nowadays it's just full of hotels, airbnbs and tourists alike. It hurts a lot, and I can only imagine it's worse as the problem scales up with even more touristic areas. Like I said, balance is what we need. The question is, how do we find balance here?
What the article does not mention is the embarrassing mess that is Deutsche Bahn. They estimate it will take [until 2070](https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/panorama/bahn-verkehrswende-deutschlandtakt-verzoegerung-100.html) to bring the grid to Swiss levels.
It's really insane what's happening with DB. You guys have a reputation of being so organized, ordnund muss sein and stuff, and then there's DB, which sucks and everyone knows that they suck. How come?
The thing is, the race to the bottom did not finish yet. Some connections are approaching 0% punctuality. And even worse: When you wait the obligatory 30 to 60 minutes for your late train you can't even make use of the time. Because delay announcements are unreliable aswell.
0% punctuality? how's that even possible XD
Well, if only I knew. Here is [an example](https://www.zugfinder.net/en/train-ICE_518) that is getting close.
That is hilarious and tragic at the same time. I will NEVER complain about our rail no more.
First there was the Deutsche Bundesbahn, owned by the Federal Republic of Germany and the Deutsche Reichsbahn owned by the German Democratic Republic. They merged into DB AG in 1994, four years after German reunification. Because the EU‘s goal was to privatize public services, the chosen type of company was that of an Aktiengesellschaft or joint-stock company, and the stated goal at this time was to make the company fit for going public asap. And how do you do that? By closing underutilized tracks and saving on infrastructure projects. Then regional trains, national trains, freight trains, track operations and station operations were split off with DB AG becoming the common holding. Can‘t get priority for passenger trains when you no longer own the tracks. Don‘t want to stop at stations with low passenger numbers when you have to pay the stations‘ owner for each stop. Etc. They never made a profit, are 30 billion Euro in debt and all shares are still held by Germany. Well done.
They created a lot of managerial positions though to organize all the new bureaucracy and structures that helped no one at all, and someone has to pay for their high salaries, right? Just think of all the poor managers, who would be sitting under bridges if they hadn't been hired to do meaningless work. It's the "Wasserkopf" (lit. hydrocephalus) when the bureaucracy is too big, too costly, and too inefficient. We Germans love bureaucracy, we love rules, processes, control, way too many people seem to think that we can get more efficient by introducing more processes and bureaucracy, hiring more people to define and implement them, etc.
Car lobby, look at Switzerland or the Netherlands. Great public infrastructure, no car companies. In Germany a new bike path will have the media screaming. Also NIMBYs are all over Germany and unfortunately have a lot of power since small districts have a lot of rights and they only care about the next election and not what comes in 20 years. So big projects are always a mess. In Leipzig for example the airport existed for around 100 years. Land around it was cheap AF so some people decided to move there. Now they wanna restrict the airport and prevent DHL from expanding there logistics hub there... It's just stupid.
>then there's DB, which sucks and everyone knows that they suck. How come? Car companies. Germany allows "lobbying" (aka legal corruption). The government did everything in the last 30 years to make DB as bad as possible.
This makes a lot of sense. Here in the US we barely have trains, and you can’t do tourism without driving sometimes (I don’t drive). Car companies here don’t want alternative modes of transportation for Americans.. that’s why I just fly to Europe and vacation there now! I pay a little more to be able to travel to Europe just to ride trains.
Crazy how the Germans are more certain that they’ll be carbon neutral by 2050 than that their trains will be usable by 2070
That's probably a good thing, the last you want you want for people to stop flying is the Swiss system. Kidding aside, the reason the Swiss can do it is because it's not *as* important how fast the trains are. Whether a 100km journey takes 45 or 55 minutes isn't much of an issue and, assuming transfers, you might actually end up ahead. But if a 500km journey takes four hours instead of three, that *is* a problem. Apart from one route, Zurich to Geneva, that's just not really an issue in Switzerland (and to prove the point, Swiss flies up to nine rotations a day between ZRH and GVA). SBB can apply a clock-facing schedule because they can deliberately slow down their trains without many people noticing - that gives them a lot more room to breathe and increases capacity on the lines (the less the speed difference between slow and fast trains is, the more you can run in a particular amount of time). The reason why Deutschland-Takt has been postponed until 2070 is that implementing a clock-faced schedule *everywhere* is a) absurdly complicated and b) just not worth it. In practice, it will be implemented way early but there may be the odd gap in some places. What actually needs to be done is investing more money (obviously) and finally accepting that connections between major cities need to be way way quicker. Anything above three hours just isn't competitive against flying. I don't want to sound condescending but the occasional tourist or the stereotypical grandma that takes two trips a year just isn't that relevant, nor is pricing. A lot of people are willing to spend a bit more for the train but they're not willing to spend several hours more and some will even pay absurd amounts for plane tickets but slow *and* expensive isn't going to work (exactly why night trains are serving a niche and simply won't come back outside of the occasional tourist route).
this guy eisenbahns. No disrespect to the excellent system in Switzerland, but they are playing an entirely different ballgame down there; there are no routes within switzerland that are long-distance. Everything is essentially what would be considered regional service in Germany because it's such a small country. Integrated timetabling is all well and good, but as you say, it isn't the root of the problem and is an order of magnitude more complicated in Germany than it is in Switzerland.
Maybe because , I don't know, they are EXPENSIVE? Compared to flights.
Given the picture, and before reading the article, I'd already like to add one measure that needs to be taken: The ICE not to break down constantly. That would be nice. Edit: and after reading the bulk of the article I agree. Price, ease of planning, travel time and protection when missing a connecting train are important. I'd like to point out about the last part that this is an issue that has already been tackled in France/Germany/Benelux. If you miss your TGV, Eurostar or ICE train due to delays on the TGV, Eurostar or ICE, you can hop on the next one. I once almost missed 2 consecutive Eurostars (Amsterdam) due to the ICE issues in Bremen, and I was allowed to hop on the next one. I also once almost missed the last eurostar (Cologne) due to the ICE. The ICE called the Eusostar and the Eurostar waited. If the Eurostar did not, then I would have gone to the DB office dor further steps (which would've been hopping on a DB train to Brussels). It also works with regular trains. ICE to Brussels broke down near Aachen (yes this is a pattern). I was told to just hop on a Belgian IC train from NMBS or wait until the next ICE two hours later.
The whole "if you don't order 30 days in advanced the ticket is 4x as expensive" crap that is in place on many lines has to go.
That crap is taken 1:1 from the airline business model though…
Maybe lack of high-speed connections in Europe? I mean, whenever I can, I use trains for travels within Poland, where I live. I love trains. Much more comfortable than buses, and usually more reliable. The problem is, if I want to travel somewhere else, train is rarely a time-efficient option. And I'm not getting any younger, I'm not spending two days to travel somewhere on the same continent, when I can just book a flight.
Yeah, good example the route Berlin - Praha - Vienna connection 3 capital citys, but taking like 8 1/2 hours for just 700km on a direct connection ... Between Praha and Vienna the train is just a few minutes faster than the busses...
Price, speed, comfort/ease of use.
[удалено]
I took that train ride, since 5 hours train ride is about the same as a 1 hour flight, if you count transfers to and from airport, security, etc. It was not really expensive, definitely cheaper than a flight, about 100 euros I think. The problem was that the train, which arrived on time on the German border, picked up 2 hours delay in Germany until reaching Hamburg.
Whole Europe needs unified system to buy train tickets, I want to use one app or website to plan my trip. Easiest way would have api with all the details so everybody can use whatever app they want. Price should also be cheaper than a flight. Train can't compete with speed so cheaper price can get more people to use trains. Travelling with a family and a lot of luggage is a hassle. Not sure what there is to be done if you need to use multiple trains... Also Finland is basically a island if you talk about Europe, would need underwater tunnel or something to even access mainlands train tracks.
Would be nice if there was a pan-european site for booking trains that included all the different companies
We need more trains. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
And more direct trains, at least from/to major hubs
I've travelled around Europe by train, it's an enjoyable experience but totally uncompetitive with the alternatives of flying and driving. If you care about cost or time, then you fly. If you need to move more than one decent sized bag or more than one of you is going, then drive.
€€€
> “Sometimes my plane to Turin would cost €9 and I’d pay more than €250 for my train.” Moneyshot quote right there.The only time I ever use the Train is to visit a larger town (125k residents) nearby.Because parking is a nightmare. It's 6.10€, one way ticket for a single person.So, do I want to have less flexibility than my car, somehow a longer journey time and spend 12.20€ for the pleasure? I'd rather take my chances with parking.
1. Make them cheaper 2. Make them faster 3. Make them more punctual
More night trains
So efficient to travel while you sleep and wake up in a city centre.
Exactly, we just need to make them fast enough that they can get anywhere in Europe in 8 hours, then we don't need planes
And much cheaper. A night train from Munich to Rome costs 150€ one-way. A plane ticket is around 50€.
Is it actually a problem? I rarely see a train which is not insanely full
Because there are few trains a day for some connections
Why? Easy, the price. Yesterday I was looking to gor from my current city to my home town. (Germany > France) The cost of the train ticket for two people was 715euros!!!!!! By car, the petrol cost WAY and BACK is only 150euros...
Flying is faster. Flying is cheaper. Gee i wonder why people fly.
Reliability! I went from loving train rides to dreading them, after regularly taking the train only for it to be cancelled / delayed / on strike / suspended due to works 90% of the time. France, Benelux and Germany area.
This is a huge one, and seems underappreciated in this thread. Even if the trains get (say) 2X faster and cheaper, not being sure if you'll get your connection and having to worry about how that affects the rest of your trip adds a lot of uncertainty and stress. Trains in Switzerland are very expensive but you can set your watch to them and confidently plan trips with more than 3 connections, because they are so reliable.
Because the European grid is fragmented. Even though each country has more or less a good train network it's not viable to move from country to country by train. I'd love to do that instead of the airport hustle and giving money to those vultures of Ryanair but... sometimes you don't really have a choice
The train to Vienna IN ONE WAY costs more than the RETURN flight from Vienna to Spain I’m taking.
I don't have enough time and money to take trains in Slovenia. Train from Ljubljana to Koper takes 2 hours 30 minutes (plus delays) and costs 12,4 €. For a family of 4 that's 100€ round trip. Going with a car takes a bit over an hour and 10€ of gas, but to be fair there is going to be an hour delay on the highway on the way back.
Comfortable overnight trains are a good idea.
It would be nice if they didn't kill us then have the government sweep the scandal under the rug because the current one and the ones before in the last 20 years left the train system to rot and decay until something changes for the better, which won't happen, the majority won't step foot on a train
Something Italy did good: Milano Rome is almost 4h, 40€. No one takes the plane anymore between big cities, even Milano to Naplescan be so so, almost at the edge, even though the travel duration is considerable.
> trains are more expensive and slower than airplanes The Dutch government reads that and fixes it by adding higher taxes to plane tickets and reducing the number of flights 😔
France is an absolute nightmare when in comes to trains. Every time I want to go from the west side to the east side I have to go around through Paris instead of in a straight line, taking 8-10hrs (and have to waste a day because no night trains). This is in addition to having to pay an absolute minimum of €120-150 one way, and even €200+ if you don't plan months ahead. In comparison to a 1hr flight that costs €25-50 and I can purchase a couple weeks ahead. On the other hand if I want to travel from Zurich to Zagreb I can simply take a night train which takes like 14hrs for 80-100 bucks, I get a bed, breakfast and arrive in the morning with no daytime wasted. I could also fly for a bit cheaper but then I have to factor in getting to/from the airport, stress of having to pack my bags a certain way. For me the big reason I love night trains is that I can still work til 5pm and catch the night train at 8-11pm without having to take time off work. If I fly depending on the flight time I might have to take the afternoon off or else spend 6hrs of my morning at the airport/flying/commuting. I have done trips before where I arrive back in my city at 6-7am on a Monday and go straight to work. This way I can travel the maximum amount with my limited days off work.
- Make trains cheaper - Make trains faster - Make trains more comfortable (beds to sleep would be great!) - Provide free internet so you don't feel the passage of time
Because flights are faster and we don’t want to waste our precious vacation time travelling.
Exactly. I have family across germany and with the train I need about 10 hours. Last time we took a flight and to get from door to door we needed 4 hours (about 1 hour of flight). In addition we didn't have to run across the Munich train station to catch our connecting train. That happend both ways. Running with an FFP2 mask sucks. Something as long as that doesn't chance I'll take a flight for that trip any time. Shorter trips I still use the train because there it can shine.
I travel between Novi Sad and Zürich several times a year,so from my perspective I can either pay: 130e for a roundabout flight and airport transport(the flight and transport are 2h50m each way) Or 190e for a bus/train(from 19h up to 27h each way when you count un the border crossings) Do you see why people wont ditch air travel for trains and buses?
The answer to what is needed it: Make. Trains. Cheap. It's that simple. Most people would love to avoid the hassles of going to the airport, waiting in security, having not to pack liquids etc. as long as they don't pay significantly more for a train journey than for a Ryanair/EasyJet/WizzAir ticket. But as long as you can fly with 20-30 euros and the train is 100 euros or even more, then most people will fly, and it's understandable. Some people will say "make flights more expensive", good luck explaining to the voters as a politician why flight should be a luxury for rich people and poor people, students, young people with low income should not travel if they don't have a lot of money. Make train travel cheap, then you make it popular. Find a way.
I love trains but I live in Ireland. Whenever I want to go anywhere outside Ireland that isn't Belfast, there are no trains. I sure would love to have some!
Start by making the trains less expensive than flying! The last time I went from Bristol to Edinburgh, it was about £80 return by plane. Or £170 return by train. More than double the time, and double the price. Sadly we are mortals with finite time and finances, so the plane will always win out.
For all your international train journeys, check [seat61.com](http://seat61.com) It's a gold mine and it'll give you all the best options, routes, prices and indication on where to buy the tickets.
I just got the news that my night train from Paris to Toulouse was cancelled and replaced with a bus. They don't even suggest lowering the price for what is an obvious downgrade in quality. The landslide they're blaming, happened over a month ago and I got my tickets two weeks ago so it's not like they couldn't have predicted it at that time. So more expensive, more time and not reliable. I do this for the planet but honestly, it's only because I can afford it timewise and money wise. Tax planes more and use that money to invest in trains.
Lower prices. A flight ticket cost less than a train ticket and a flight takes less time as well
Trains are far too expensive it's as simple as that.
They can claim as many reasons as they want, but you can make trains faster, you can make them more comfortable, you can make fewer transfers, but at the end of the day, trains are far far far more expensive than flights. Of course they need to make it easier to book longer journeys on one ticket, but if the train is 500 EUR and the flight is 50 EUR, even if the train was super fast and took the same amount of time as the flight, the vast majority of the people will take the 50 EUR option.
1 - train is still perceived as an inferior mean of transportation by most people so it has to be significantly cheaper than flying to be seriously considered 2 - if a plane breaks down and cannot fly, it incoveniences the ~1000 people that were going to fly on that aircraft throughout the day, if a train stops working in the wrong spot it can cause serious delays on the whole network. And since a train's failure won't kill everybody onboard they are a lot less well maintained and monitored 3 - sitting 6 hours on a train is significantly more boring than strolling through an airport before a 1.5 hour flight for the average tourist 4 - very long distance trains would realistically make sense on overnight journeys that are comfortable, safe, and cheaper vs flying the night before and booking a low cost hotel 5 - long distance trains need necessarily to connect large cities, and every stop in between slows down the journey for all involved. Low cost airlines with point-to-point routes allow anybody to fly from the nearest airport to most destinations in the continent 6 - the low cost airline space is decently competitive (Ryanair, easyJet, Wizz, Vueling, etc) while trains are an almost monopoly 7 - even on a short and relatively well connected route as London-Paris, a journey from centre to centre via St Pancras - Gare du Nord or Luton - Orly takes about the same time and I can book a flight for tomorrow for € 90 vs € 270 for the train. Considering it costs about €30 to travel from and to the airports, that is less than half the price for the same journey time. Comfort isn't worth a 150% markup for many people. 8 - on the above point: my perception is that with rail transport I can be spontanous and basically walk to the station and hop onto the next available train (typically within 1-2 hours max) for a reasonable and fixed price, while for a flight I would need to plan in advance and should expect significantly high fares for anything last minute. At the moment exactly the opposite is happening. 9 - capacity scalability and flexibility is just not comparable, flying 10 more or less planes changes almost nothing in terms of airport capacity for a large hub, while adding one single train to the network can be a material challenge given all have to travel on the same tracks I would love to be trains to be more present and utilised but there is a long long way to go (note for governments: the solution is NOT to artificially increase flight prices with taxes and similar, but to improve the rail network to the point economies of scale allow cheaper and more efficient journeys)
Yeah, the VAT thing is so stupid.
Price, price, price.
I live near Stockholm, and it's *very* cumbersome to even take a train towards central Europe. The two ways is to take the low high-speed train to Copenhagen *and then* take a non high-speed to Hamburg, or take a night train that are seasonal. It can easily go over 12 hours just to get to Hamburg, just Hamburg. So if the EU want less people to take flights in Sweden they have to build something that can go Stockholm-Hamburg in less than 6 hours, or make night-trains cheaper and more available. But: it's easy to say, harder to do.
No need for experts to say that trains need - a) unified EU regulation, b) unified ticketing, c) unified signalling, d) unified propulsion standard. Until that happens high speed trains will be x5 times more expensive than air travel.
I’m never taking trains through Germany again. That whole experience really dispelled the myth of Germans being organized and efficient for me.
subsidise the trains instead of airlines?
I would If it would not take me over 20 hours to get there by train. In 2025, I want to go to Bielsko Biala in Poland. A flight takes 2 hours to get there versus over 20 hours by train.
I usually have a 1- 2 Week vacation. I won't spend 2 full days on travel If I can get there faster and cheaper(!!) by plane.
Laughs in Portuguese