Amid concerns about climate change, Europe is investing heavily in trains. The idea is to make rail more appealing, especially as an alternative to short-haul flights.
The UK has the worst and most expensive railways in Europe flying abroad is actually cheaper and some cases quicker than going across the country or even town to town
I go to Paris in May. 1.30h flight or 7 hour train that is more expensive. Go figure
Makes total sense if the journey can be done in a feasible time. Japan is a good example for that as well. However if the train takes 2 nights and costs as much as a 5 hour flight I also understand not taking the train – looking at you Vancouver to Toronto <.<
Well, yeah. I’m willing to put up with longer travel time if it means I don’t have to put up with any of the bullshit of air travel.
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No security theatre, no losing my luggage, no overpriced cabs into wherever from the airport.
​
Stockholm to Copenhagen takes 5 hours no stops by train. 1 hour+ by plane. But I’m more comfortable the entire time, just step onto the train and chill. Go get food whenever.
So many railway lines have been disbanded in Eastern Europe it’s a crime… in Poland there was a huge report of mismanagement of Polish Railways with little to no consequences as is tradition. Horrible, shortsighted corruption.
Spending too much time in miserable “non-places” known as airports and onboard stuffy budget flights will leave you a neurotic misanthrope.
Rail travel is the only antidote.
Well, on short and medium distances trains are better than planes: with first ones (at least in Italy) you arrive on city center without problem, with second ones you have to take shuttles from airport to city center (40-60 minutes for Malpensa-Milan and Bergamo-Milan).
Then there are controls at airports, and you have to pay in order to carry more than one luggage (it doesn’t happen for trains).
About delays… well, there are delays for both.
We have to check about prices: in Italy, for instance, we have only one company (Trenitalia; then there is Italo, but only for high speed and determined routes) and this doesn’t help competition and lower prices.
In Germany Rail will never be efficient and low price unless they massively reform the railway company. Currently it achieves to have at the same time:
* low coverage and schedules outside of big cities
* horrible punctuality
* high prices
* taxpayer graveyard of billions of Euros
* bad soft factors like lack of WIFI in all trains
There are calls to get more traffic onto trains for like 50 years but it has never been a viable alternative to cars outside of a few big cities and key routes. It won’t happen without destructive reforms and changing the status quo in GER is almost impossible. So they probably will just give massive subsidies to make it more attractive price wise. Meanwhile the horrid zombie company won’t be changed and the general taxpayer and car users will pay for it. At some point we might realize we can’t solve all of our problems with the state just pumping billions of money into it nor can we afford that.
The last hindrance is that tickets are generally still as expensive, or even more expensive than flights.
This said, I used the train for my last 3 vacations, and its been an overall pleasant experience. Mostly because you can bring food and drinks, or buy them at the trains restaurant. Internet connection is there, and mostly stable. It takes a bit longer, but thats ok. On the other hand you often arrive smack in the middle of a city, instead of the outskirts.
Hurry up! I have tried many times to take the train over airplane, but travelling by train in Europe is absolute garbage. Terrible connections between major cities and unreliable service. And on top it’s often more expensive.
Just invest heavily in a unified European train system already and stop subsidising airlines. I cannot believe how far we are behind on this. It’s an absolute no-brainer that a strong European railway system would be fantastic for the environment and make for faster and less stressful travel. Have our politicians never been to Japan?
Going from Amsterdam to Paris by Thalys is an absolutely wonderful experience. Center to center in no time, just wonderful.
But try going from Amsterdam to Berlin and it’s a total shitshow. Old and slow train that stops in every village. They need to switch locomotives at the border. No Internet as soon as you reach the German border.
Millions of Europeans have been ready to ditch planes for many years now, but we are sooo behind. Infuriating!
And they want to build HST in California for the sake of it
Not thinking that trains are expensive
I’d love to live someplace where rail travel was a reasonable option. It’s a right mess over here.
Yeah no, trains are so expensive here it’s not worth it, it’s actually cheaper and faster for me to take my car and go to Paris, even with the price of gas above 2 euros
Love a good train ride.
If Germany could finally do something about their shitty rail service this would actually be true. The connections are a sad joke if you can even make them due to systematic delays, so you best plan for 50% longer travel times. You often have to switch trains or the rail company has to switch locomotives because Germany still hasn’t electrified large parts of their tracks and still runs on diesel engines.
All of this while being more expensive than traveling by plane or car. It’s not a real choice.
I live in Finland and I’d love to take more trains to go around, but it takes millennia to go anywhere and they’re expensive as hell. The day someone will decide to make some high speed train is the day I’ll be happy, but I assume there aren’t enough people to make it a worthy investment.
I took the night train from Paris to Rome ten years ago. It was ridiculously cheap, I could watch picturesque Italian landscape in the morning and arrived downtown at Termini station.
Sadly this train does not exist anymore.
Tbh any flight shorter than – lets say 400km should be taxed hard enough to become inviable.
My sister lives in France, she came home by plane during Christmas break and by train during Easter break and there’s just no comparison. The train picked her up in the city center (Gare del Lyon) and dropped her off 5 hours later in another city center (Turin Porta Susa), almost 0 thought and effort required of her lol. Back in the winter however the whole journey to the airport plus being there 2 hours earlier for check-in and security checks and all that made the whole thing quite stressful If you consider going to and from the airport polish check and security it took her roughly 5/6 ish hours.
So yeah frol now on it’s gonna be train only, also she traveled on the new Paris-Milan line operated by Frecciarossa and it was actually cheaper than the plane.
Fun fact: Alitalia, Italy’s ex-flag airline, was partly crippled by Trenitalia’s “Frecciarossa” high-speed service. One of the most profitable air routes in Europe, Rome-Milan, has been completely taken over by rail. When Alitalia started going in trouble, the final blow was dealt when the routes stopped being profitable. The non-stop service takes 2h 50 to cover a distance of (if I’m remembering this right) almost 650 km, and usually costs less than 100 euros round trip.
Well, if you live in e.g. Finland, you don’t really have option since majority of population lives in the South, South-West and “Central West” of the country and the only country whose land border with Finland is not >1000km away from those regions is Russia, which doesn’t have rail connection to Finland since the end of March and probably won’t have it until some serious changes in Russia. Sweden and Norway border Finland but do it in the North, where not that much people live, and also they use different rail gauge width system. So for all other countries, plane is basically the only way unless you want to spend more than couple of days and three times as much money to travel by train to somewhere.
But it all could change when (or if) there will be Helsinki <-> Tallinn tunnel under the gulf of Finland.
Unless I desperately need to be in the opposite end of the country within the next hour, I’ll take the trains..
Denmark isn’t very big.
I’ve been living in Europe for last two years, excited about finally traveling after all this COVID disaster. Had been waiting to take train rides all across Europe and explore this beautiful continent! Turns out, it’s 10x cheaper to take a flight than it is to take a train. If I want to fly to Berlin to visit my friend, it is roughly 20-30 euros except during holidays. If I want to take a nice scenic train ride, it’s like 200+ euros. I’m sorry I am going to take the flight. I am not wealthy enough to spend 10x more on *things* in general.
Travelers decide based on ticket price and time, not planes vs. trains.
I would really like to see an EU initiative to bring cross-country train travel costs down low enough to be price-competitive with flying.
I have no issue taking a long train journey to Barcelona from my home in Amsterdam. It would be a lovely time to work on a project or craft. I do have issue paying €300 for this because I have to end up paying Thalys, SNCF, and/or Renfe at least €100 per ticket. I can take a plane for under €80!
I love to take the train and hate to take the plane.. If it wasn’t for those prices. It’s ridiculous how much cheaper flights can be.
I regularly (like once a week) travel between Switzerland and Poland and trains are the way to go. Sure, it’s a whole day. But I can work remotely, so that’s a day of work, the time well spent. With Interrail subscription, the price is also very competitive (adds up to 50EUR tor Zürich-Warsaw in first class).
It’s cheaper for me to fly to basically any major city in Europe than it is for me to buy a train ticket for a city 3h in a car away.
Clearly never been on a long train journey in the UK. It’s very expensive.
It’s cheaper to get the plane to Spain for the day than get the train some places here in the UK
30 comments
Amid concerns about climate change, Europe is investing heavily in trains. The idea is to make rail more appealing, especially as an alternative to short-haul flights.
The UK has the worst and most expensive railways in Europe flying abroad is actually cheaper and some cases quicker than going across the country or even town to town
I go to Paris in May. 1.30h flight or 7 hour train that is more expensive. Go figure
Makes total sense if the journey can be done in a feasible time. Japan is a good example for that as well. However if the train takes 2 nights and costs as much as a 5 hour flight I also understand not taking the train – looking at you Vancouver to Toronto <.<
Well, yeah. I’m willing to put up with longer travel time if it means I don’t have to put up with any of the bullshit of air travel.
​
No security theatre, no losing my luggage, no overpriced cabs into wherever from the airport.
​
Stockholm to Copenhagen takes 5 hours no stops by train. 1 hour+ by plane. But I’m more comfortable the entire time, just step onto the train and chill. Go get food whenever.
So many railway lines have been disbanded in Eastern Europe it’s a crime… in Poland there was a huge report of mismanagement of Polish Railways with little to no consequences as is tradition. Horrible, shortsighted corruption.
Spending too much time in miserable “non-places” known as airports and onboard stuffy budget flights will leave you a neurotic misanthrope.
Rail travel is the only antidote.
Well, on short and medium distances trains are better than planes: with first ones (at least in Italy) you arrive on city center without problem, with second ones you have to take shuttles from airport to city center (40-60 minutes for Malpensa-Milan and Bergamo-Milan).
Then there are controls at airports, and you have to pay in order to carry more than one luggage (it doesn’t happen for trains).
About delays… well, there are delays for both.
We have to check about prices: in Italy, for instance, we have only one company (Trenitalia; then there is Italo, but only for high speed and determined routes) and this doesn’t help competition and lower prices.
In Germany Rail will never be efficient and low price unless they massively reform the railway company. Currently it achieves to have at the same time:
* low coverage and schedules outside of big cities
* horrible punctuality
* high prices
* taxpayer graveyard of billions of Euros
* bad soft factors like lack of WIFI in all trains
There are calls to get more traffic onto trains for like 50 years but it has never been a viable alternative to cars outside of a few big cities and key routes. It won’t happen without destructive reforms and changing the status quo in GER is almost impossible. So they probably will just give massive subsidies to make it more attractive price wise. Meanwhile the horrid zombie company won’t be changed and the general taxpayer and car users will pay for it. At some point we might realize we can’t solve all of our problems with the state just pumping billions of money into it nor can we afford that.
The last hindrance is that tickets are generally still as expensive, or even more expensive than flights.
This said, I used the train for my last 3 vacations, and its been an overall pleasant experience. Mostly because you can bring food and drinks, or buy them at the trains restaurant. Internet connection is there, and mostly stable. It takes a bit longer, but thats ok. On the other hand you often arrive smack in the middle of a city, instead of the outskirts.
Hurry up! I have tried many times to take the train over airplane, but travelling by train in Europe is absolute garbage. Terrible connections between major cities and unreliable service. And on top it’s often more expensive.
Just invest heavily in a unified European train system already and stop subsidising airlines. I cannot believe how far we are behind on this. It’s an absolute no-brainer that a strong European railway system would be fantastic for the environment and make for faster and less stressful travel. Have our politicians never been to Japan?
Going from Amsterdam to Paris by Thalys is an absolutely wonderful experience. Center to center in no time, just wonderful.
But try going from Amsterdam to Berlin and it’s a total shitshow. Old and slow train that stops in every village. They need to switch locomotives at the border. No Internet as soon as you reach the German border.
Millions of Europeans have been ready to ditch planes for many years now, but we are sooo behind. Infuriating!
And they want to build HST in California for the sake of it
Not thinking that trains are expensive
I’d love to live someplace where rail travel was a reasonable option. It’s a right mess over here.
Yeah no, trains are so expensive here it’s not worth it, it’s actually cheaper and faster for me to take my car and go to Paris, even with the price of gas above 2 euros
Love a good train ride.
If Germany could finally do something about their shitty rail service this would actually be true. The connections are a sad joke if you can even make them due to systematic delays, so you best plan for 50% longer travel times. You often have to switch trains or the rail company has to switch locomotives because Germany still hasn’t electrified large parts of their tracks and still runs on diesel engines.
All of this while being more expensive than traveling by plane or car. It’s not a real choice.
I live in Finland and I’d love to take more trains to go around, but it takes millennia to go anywhere and they’re expensive as hell. The day someone will decide to make some high speed train is the day I’ll be happy, but I assume there aren’t enough people to make it a worthy investment.
I took the night train from Paris to Rome ten years ago. It was ridiculously cheap, I could watch picturesque Italian landscape in the morning and arrived downtown at Termini station.
Sadly this train does not exist anymore.
Tbh any flight shorter than – lets say 400km should be taxed hard enough to become inviable.
My sister lives in France, she came home by plane during Christmas break and by train during Easter break and there’s just no comparison. The train picked her up in the city center (Gare del Lyon) and dropped her off 5 hours later in another city center (Turin Porta Susa), almost 0 thought and effort required of her lol. Back in the winter however the whole journey to the airport plus being there 2 hours earlier for check-in and security checks and all that made the whole thing quite stressful If you consider going to and from the airport polish check and security it took her roughly 5/6 ish hours.
So yeah frol now on it’s gonna be train only, also she traveled on the new Paris-Milan line operated by Frecciarossa and it was actually cheaper than the plane.
Fun fact: Alitalia, Italy’s ex-flag airline, was partly crippled by Trenitalia’s “Frecciarossa” high-speed service. One of the most profitable air routes in Europe, Rome-Milan, has been completely taken over by rail. When Alitalia started going in trouble, the final blow was dealt when the routes stopped being profitable. The non-stop service takes 2h 50 to cover a distance of (if I’m remembering this right) almost 650 km, and usually costs less than 100 euros round trip.
Well, if you live in e.g. Finland, you don’t really have option since majority of population lives in the South, South-West and “Central West” of the country and the only country whose land border with Finland is not >1000km away from those regions is Russia, which doesn’t have rail connection to Finland since the end of March and probably won’t have it until some serious changes in Russia. Sweden and Norway border Finland but do it in the North, where not that much people live, and also they use different rail gauge width system. So for all other countries, plane is basically the only way unless you want to spend more than couple of days and three times as much money to travel by train to somewhere.
But it all could change when (or if) there will be Helsinki <-> Tallinn tunnel under the gulf of Finland.
Unless I desperately need to be in the opposite end of the country within the next hour, I’ll take the trains..
Denmark isn’t very big.
I’ve been living in Europe for last two years, excited about finally traveling after all this COVID disaster. Had been waiting to take train rides all across Europe and explore this beautiful continent! Turns out, it’s 10x cheaper to take a flight than it is to take a train. If I want to fly to Berlin to visit my friend, it is roughly 20-30 euros except during holidays. If I want to take a nice scenic train ride, it’s like 200+ euros. I’m sorry I am going to take the flight. I am not wealthy enough to spend 10x more on *things* in general.
Travelers decide based on ticket price and time, not planes vs. trains.
I would really like to see an EU initiative to bring cross-country train travel costs down low enough to be price-competitive with flying.
I have no issue taking a long train journey to Barcelona from my home in Amsterdam. It would be a lovely time to work on a project or craft. I do have issue paying €300 for this because I have to end up paying Thalys, SNCF, and/or Renfe at least €100 per ticket. I can take a plane for under €80!
I love to take the train and hate to take the plane.. If it wasn’t for those prices. It’s ridiculous how much cheaper flights can be.
I regularly (like once a week) travel between Switzerland and Poland and trains are the way to go. Sure, it’s a whole day. But I can work remotely, so that’s a day of work, the time well spent. With Interrail subscription, the price is also very competitive (adds up to 50EUR tor Zürich-Warsaw in first class).
It’s cheaper for me to fly to basically any major city in Europe than it is for me to buy a train ticket for a city 3h in a car away.
Clearly never been on a long train journey in the UK. It’s very expensive.
It’s cheaper to get the plane to Spain for the day than get the train some places here in the UK