
More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights - edward
https://back-on-track.eu/more-emphasis-on-trains-in-europe-to-replace-flights/
======
IkmoIkmo
I really don't get why trains can be so expensive and what we need to do to
fix that.

To an extent, flying is just way too cheap. I mean, I was looking at a
roundtrip london/barcelona just last week, it was $25. By train I'm looking at
at least 10 hours, likely more like 15, and $300.

Both the $25 and the $300 just seem wrong. Flying is way too cheap, but I also
don't get how $300 per person is competitive against something like a bus or
shared car. The economics of trains should be able to be better than just
about anything.

~~~
Shivetya
Because politics. Trains are very national in the EU and even after this many
years that still gets in the way of effective train based transportation. Plus
heavy rail is flat out expensive to put down and maintain and the cars are and
engines themselves all contribute the initial cost of establishing a line as
well as maintenance. Then the kicker compared to airline travel, you cannot
simply reroute a train. It is stuck to its rail line, as in you cannot simply
move a train to service a route that needs it now.

You could tax the airline industry into the ground but it will not fix the
reality that trains simply are not flexible, similar to how light rail in
cities is not ideal for the majority of cities that employ it; for many city
transportation systems light rail eats away a disproportionate amount of the
budget impacting bus availability as well - it is a money pit

A previous financial times article [0] explains some of the political problems
but far too many still do not understand the logistical side of rail lines.

[0][https://www.ft.com/content/e77dc48e-7894-11e8-8e67-1e1a0846c...](https://www.ft.com/content/e77dc48e-7894-11e8-8e67-1e1a0846c475)

~~~
radicalbyte
Privatized trains are worse, in the UK they've just given the go ahead for a
$140 billion high speed rail project, HS2.

A decade ago we build HS1, a 67 mile track between London and the Channel
Tunnel, for a total of $7.6 billion ($112m / mile).

HS2 is longer but its 330 miles of tracks will cost $400m / mile.

The project costs make absolutely no sense: London is a special weird place in
the UK where everything you build is twice as expensive as in the rest of the
country. Considering most of HS1 was in London and most of HS2 is outside of
London, this budget makes absolutely no sense.

What makes the whole thing even more insane is that the endpoints are not
connected to the rest of the infrastructure. You have a 30 minute trip between
HS1 and HS2. So if you're travelling from Birmingham to Paris you'll have to
switch trains in London. For the money they're spending on this it's crazy
that you're not getting it.

~~~
captainbland
My understanding is that basically HS2 is massively over-specced compared to
HS1. It wants high throughput and extremely high speed (80-100mph faster than
HS1). I guess you could probably shave a few tens of billions off just by
slowing the line down a bit - using ballast rather than concrete slab and
such.

See:
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51415590](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51415590)

The only other thing I'd add is that Euston is easily within walking distance
of St Pancras. But given all this already extraordinary cost it seems like you
might as well connect St Pancras and Euston HS lines and have the odd Eurostar
service run from Birmingham.

~~~
radicalbyte
The Euston - St Pancras thing is OK if you're commuting for work distance wise
- it's just adding 15 mins to your journey when it should be 30 seconds.

For travellers who don't know London, who have to lug around baggage and small
children it's a massive pain.

It's well worth the effort to connect it. It would already be way better even
if you had to switch train in one station.

------
chrisseaton
I think an issue for trains is a lack of an international unified system for
routing, timetabling, booking, ticketing, labelling and so on. Planes are the
same everywhere. Flight number, gate number, time, and destination, everything
available in English. Easy. I can catch a plane in Japan no problem. When I
fly into a foreign city and try to take the train into the city it’s always a
whole big mess. Inconsistent systems for referring to routes, express trains,
stopping trains, multiple ticketing options, travel cards, peak and offpeak,
is my train at platform 9 1/4 or 9 3/4, often no reservation system,
announcements and signs not in English, no help available. Each city seems to
go out of their way to do things completely differently to everyone else.
Busses are even worse than that.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
This so much. My biggest gripe with trains is that I am never able to actually
get the logistics right.

I can hop on google flights and book a multi-city trip, I get a single price,
and it's basically going to steer me towards roughly the cheapest option,
within a set of parameters (e.g. trip time) that I can set.

With trains? Just nearly impossible. You get directed to different websites
for price/departure/arrival/amenities information. It becomes a logistical
nightmare to plan anything. When booking flights you sometimes get directed as
well to multiple sites, but only for final booking, not the search stage.

And then indeed, the websites are not in English.

Or they have pricing which requires a national discount card which you don't
have and can't get online, and makes the trip otherwise extremely expensive.

Or you can book your train ticket, but you have to pick up the tickets at the
station, which gives anxiety because googling half of these options gets you
to forums which say the ticket service is closed until 10AM, while your train
arrives at the station with the service at 8AM, and the next train (for which
you need to pick up the ticket) leaves at 9AM. And the only reason you know
this, is because of some underground travel forum with 3 posts in the past 5
years about this train station.

Or you can only look up train tables online, but you can't even reserve
tickets online, you have to buy at the station, but they can get sold out, and
you're looking to buy tickets for a summer trip in 4 months, so there's
literally just no way to plan any other trips or hotel reservations because
you have no clue if you can be on that train, until in 4 months.

And then you have to go to a travel company which literally sends employees to
buy a hundred tickets in bulk, then resells them online to you at a huge
markup. But these are just 3-man companies that come and go, lots of scams,
lots of markup, and they may sell only some tickets, but not others, meaning
to plan a long vacation by train, you're depending on lots of these little
companies.

At that point I just think, screw that, I'm just going to browse on google
flights and be done with planning in 1 hour, it's cheaper, no anxiety, no
stress, no dependencies, no scams, lots of insurance and assurance, all in
English, mostly through reputable companies with normal UI/UX design.

------
Darmody
As a European I love this.

Not only because it's better for the environment but I really like trains.
They are confy, fast and cheap. There's no need to pay extra for your baggage,
you just hop in with your stuff, take a seat, read, watch a movie, listen to a
podcast or sleep for a while and you're already at your destination.

~~~
dzhiurgis
They are not that comfortable. Sure you've got slightly more leg space than
Ryanair, but difference is minimal. The only train I've really ever liked was
Amtrak, but unsure whether I was somehow upgraded to their premium seats.
Taking Canadian train after that was a torture.

Also they are much more expensive. Which makes sense as tech itself is legacy.
The cost of maintaining, lack of competition (especially with buses) is
killing them.

Honestly I don't see how we can't replace trains with electric buses...

~~~
yulaow
I don't know which trains you took but here in europe even the less costly
trains (regional trains) are far far far more comfy than any ryanair airplane
(saying this as a 193cm man), especially if you want to stand up often or just
want to have more than two bathroom every 150 people. If you take a fast train
the experience is not even remotely comparable, they are more spacious,
cleaner and offer more optionals. Yeah they cost more but not really a lot
more. If you have to put some extrabaggage the ryanair airplane is gonna be
the loser even in the cost side.

Also, personally, I prefer trains even just for the fact I have not to lose 2
extra uncomfortable hours between checkin and security checks.

~~~
dzhiurgis
As a 187 I hate pretty much every piece of transport (even most cars miss my
femur length)...

I used to travel Southampton to London a lot (that's like 150km or so). IIRC
renting a car used to be cheaper.

~~~
Freak_NL
At 200cm, I will choose trains whenever possible. Aeroplanes are a nightmare
for me.

~~~
himlion
I'm 196cm and airplanes are actually not as bad as fellow tall people always
complain. I think I might have relatively short legs for my height.

------
pr0duktiv
Glad that they’re working on it, right now flying is just cheaper on many
cases. Need to go from Zurich to Paris? The TGV Train will cost you almost
twice as much as a short direct flight. Berlin to Munich? Also cheaper by
plane. Being a student with a limited budget, this very much affects my
decision.

~~~
pjmlp
Thing is, not only it is cheaper, it is much more effective regarding use of
time.

Zurich to Paris just takes too long by train, and doing night trains isn't
always an option.

~~~
dbmueller
4 hours isn't that long, is it? plane cannot beat that by much

~~~
input_sh
Especially when you account boarding, navigating the airport, having to show
up at least half an hour before the flight, security checkups... All time-
consuming tasks related to boarding the actual aircraft that you don't have to
go through to hop on a train.

~~~
pjmlp
No, you have to run like crazy hoping not to lose the connection train, being
stopped in the middle of nowhere without any information, stuffed into wagons
without air conditioning and possibility to open the windows, cramped with
more passengers than available seats, without any place to stuff luggage, out
of order toilets,....

~~~
cranekam
The train from Zurich to Paris is a TGV with included (mandatory?) seat
reservations, air conditioning and plenty of bag space.

~~~
pjmlp
TGV is the exception.

German trains pack as much people as possible and occasionally you can
consider yourself lucky if you manage to reach your seat, if the wagon is
still available to start with.

------
Out_of_Characte
This is an easy promise to make but remains empty without mentioning the
difficulties of such undertaking. Europe has the most splintered incompatible
mess of a railway system in the world. They barely managed to run high speed
trains between fairly local and established big cities (Paris to Amsterdam).
Then there's the problem of routing and adding stops. With a plane you can
almost always get a direct flight or a single transfer inbetween. With trains
you end up stopping several times wasting energy and time at stations
completely irrelivant to you. I applaud the effort and hope it comes to
fruition but i'm sceptical wether this is going to be a terrible political
undertaking or a well thought out plan for inter European travel.

~~~
neoeldex
It's also the only place with such amount of trains. It is quite involved of
making the infrastructure, and still it's managed. From april onwards you can
travel from Amsterdam to London for 40 euro in 3 hours. There's a lot to
align. Doesn't take away from the things that could be improved. Trains from
Amsterdam to Germany stopping in small towns doesn't help.

~~~
4d617832
Do you mean Utrecht and Arnhem or those on the German side? Or are you talking
about using regional trains? I feel like the worst thing about the route is
the lack of High Speed Lines but on the other hand these regions are densly
populated so it does make sense to stop at some places.

------
deugtniet
Last weekend, I took the night train from Briancon to Paris, step in at
~21:00, step out at 07:00 the next morning. My first time in a night train,
pretty surreal but pleasant experience. I had to take a semi connecting train
from Paris to the Netherlands (where I live), so it would be so awesome just
to wake up on destination.

I'm considering if it's a good idea to tax air travel inside the EU to help
the trains move forward. I believe air travel is not taxed at all. The
resulting money could be spent on climate change reducing policies.

~~~
fogetti
While I like the idea of traveling by train, and I even took a night train
from Munich to Budapest in the past, but on that specific route I had to share
my cabin with a guy who just got released from jail a day earlier so I was not
pleasantly relaxed. The fact that the cabin only had 2 bunk beds and I was
pretty much isolated from other passengers and I had no way to keep my money
and other important things in a safe, made me worried a lot.

The big advantage of air travel is exactly this, you don't need to spend much
time in the actual plane. And the passengers are by definition under full-time
supervision by other passengers, so stealing or attacks are not so easy to get
away with.

Having said that, I would still prefer to take the train when it's possible.
Central railway stations are usually pretty much in the best locations of most
European cities, where the connections are really good.

But there is one more thing that even the article mentions: > In general,
there is strong demand for reliable and frequent services between large cities

I second that: even in Germany the I.C.E is notorious for the delays and the
poor passenger experience. So there is a lot to improve for the rail
operators.

~~~
deugtniet
> While I like the idea of traveling by train, and I even took a night train
> from Munich to Budapest in the past, but on that specific route I had to
> share my cabin with a guy who just got released from jail a day earlier so I
> was not pleasantly relaxed. The fact that the cabin only had 2 bunk beds and
> I was pretty much isolated from other passengers and I had no way to keep my
> money and other important things in a safe, made me worried a lot.

>The big advantage of air travel is exactly this, you don't need to spend much
time in the actual plane. And the passengers are by definition under full-time
supervision by other passengers, so stealing or attacks are not so easy to get
away with.

There are also drawbacks to air travel that you're not mentioning. I was in a
sleeping segment with 5 other people and felt more safe than in an airplane.
The important thing though is: we need to cut down on carbon, and travel by
train is an important way to do it.

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
> travel by train is an important way to do it.

Traveling less is even more effective.

With all the debate about transport modes, it still boils down to distance -
the emissions per passenger kilometer of all powered modes of transport are
within one order of magnitude.

------
rcarmo
As a former weekly train traveler, I fully support this. Plane travel has
become a loathing, humiliating nuisance that absolutely nobody is excited
about (sometimes not even airlines, considering the kind of service they
provide).

------
eddhead
As someone in the UK, this won't happen until they lower the prices by a
tenth. It's insanely expensive and not feasible depend on it.

It's so bad that the train companies themselves ask their employees use
flights instead of the network railways to save costs. They're all owned by
european governments, so they have no incentive to make things cheaper in the
UK.

------
postingawayonhn
Aviation only makes up about 2% of total global C02 emissions. Hardly even
worth worrying about. Results will be much better if resources are focused on
the big emitters (road transport, electricity/heating, and manufacturing).

~~~
ced
_Aviation only makes up about 2% of total global C02 emissions._

Because the majority of humanity has never flown at all. What fraction of your
CO2 emissions came from flying last year?

~~~
postingawayonhn
Fair point, though I don't see any major problem even if air travel was to
increase by 2 or 3 times, so long as we make significant reductions in other
areas.

I took 6 flights (~3,000km each).

I would start with the immediate implementation of a tax (10%?, 20%?) on all
new ICE vehicle sales. Revenue from this tax would be used to subsidize the
purchase of EVs.

~~~
morsch
At approximately 1000 kg COeq per 3000 km trip[1]. Your budget for the whole
year was 2300 kg.

[1]
[https://www.atmosfair.de/en/offset/flight](https://www.atmosfair.de/en/offset/flight)

~~~
postingawayonhn
Where is 1,000kg coming from?

I looked up one of my flights (actually only about 2,400km) using that
calculator and only got 230kg (83kg of C02 and 173kg of "contrails, ozone
formations, etc."). This flight was on a A321neo.

~~~
morsch
I took a random 7000 km flight and extrapolated. Sorry if that ended up off by
such a large martin.

------
alkonaut
Cross border rail travel is a mess. We had online booking of flights across
countries and airlines since forever, and thousands of booking sites seem to
be able to hook into the booking backends like Amadeus and provide multi hop
booking. Doing the same for train travel isn’t nearly as easy. This should be
priority one.

The second priority should be cost. Train travel should never be more
expensive than even low cost airline tickets. Within the EU this would seem
fixable by taxing and subsidies to just move money from air travel to train
ticket subsidies. Tax funded subsidies is a clumsy instrument but it’s needed.

~~~
nothrabannosir
Trainline.com does this very well in (north west?) europe, IME. Across borders
and different providers.

------
mhandley
We should mandate that aviation fuel is 10% carbon neutral. And then steadily
up that fraction yearly. How they satisfy that is up to them - synthetic fuels
generated using solar/wind, biofuels, or whatever. The point is that we're not
going to be able to replace liquid fuels for long-haul aviation, so we both
need to factor in the increased cost of carbon-neutral fuels and at the same
time provide a market that stimulates investment.

For many routes, if we did this, aircraft would perhaps not be price-
competitive with rail. So be it.

~~~
neoeldex
We should mandate taxes are paid on fuel, they dump fuel before landing. Which
has a worse impact on the greenhouse effect.

~~~
mhandley
They don't dump fuel, except when they need to land in an emergency and don't
want to risk landing overweight. This is a tiny fraction of the greenhouse
effect caused by aviation, so taxing it wouldn't make any real difference.

------
cranekam
I am a big fan of rail travel within Europe but I have to admit that at times
it feels like playing on hard mode. I live in Switzerland now and travel to
London somewhat often. Here's a list of things that have sucked by train:

* French rail strikes this winter caused:

a) my Zurich to London TGV to be cut short (it started from a later station),
3 days before departure b) my connecting Eurostar to be cancelled, so I had to
no-show the TGV and cancel the Eurostar to fly c) my return Eurostar was not
cancelled, but d) my TGV was, 4 days before travelling, so again I had to
cancel the Eurostar and the TGV and fly e) I filed claims for the
disrupted/cancelled trains. Eurostar refunded me immediately but I waited 7
weeks for a reply from SNCF before calling them a few times to get my refund

Sure, strikes affect other modes of transport but the hassle here was the
amount of coordination I had to do to fix my travel.

* I booked a Zurich -> London roundtrip on oui.sncf but later needed to change my return. I called SNCF because the site wouldn't let me change the ticket online. SNCF told me they couldn't change my Eurostar -- I had to call Eurostar for that, then call SNCF again to change the TGV. They didn't know what would happen to the fare. I gave up and bought new single returns. Next time I'll by Eurostar tickets from Eurostar and TGV from SNCF.

* Changing trains in Paris is a nuisance. It's not hard (2 stops on the RER) but it adds significant extra time, particularly on Paris -> London where there is passport control. I've taken bikes from the UK to France a lot and hauling them on the RER sucks.

* It's often pricier, at least for Eurostar. The TGV prices are often cheap (from €29 Zurich->Paris) but Eurostar gets expensive fast unless you book way in advance.

Travel within Switzerland and the surrounding countries is great but in
general making long trips with connections between systems is harder and
problems have greater consequences. There's no form of alliance or easy
rebooking or anything like that -- a lot of problem solving is down to you.

But! When it works travel by train is relaxing, enjoyable (for me), can be
more convenient (less bag hassle, train stations generally central), not to
mention less bad for the environment.

------
mateo1
Trains can't replace flights. You can't get from Munich to London in 2 hours
with a train. Trains are often much more expensive than flights too.

~~~
koonsolo
Going from Brussels to London is great with the Eurostar. It's fast, you can
walk around to the bar, and don't have to show up too early.

So it depends, but obviously there are cases where they do offer a better
alternative.

------
paul_f
If you are travelling inside of one country, France or Germany for example,
it's great. However, if you want to take the train from Barcelona to Milan,
it's 11 hours and 40 minutes. If you fly, it is 1 hour and 40 minutes.

------
tiawaven
Well, High speed trains don't run 300 km/h. At least not in Europe. Most of
the time they run slightly above 100 km/h. Source? Experience.

We would need a European infrastructure project for:

* major new transnational lines

* separation from passenger and cargo lines

* self coupling/decoupling wagons

And when you are on it, build some Thorium reactors to power them.

Relevant:

[https://www.thelocal.se/20200116/sweden-reveals-plans-for-
ov...](https://www.thelocal.se/20200116/sweden-reveals-plans-for-overnight-
trains-to-several-european-cities)

[https://www.cargobeamer.eu](https://www.cargobeamer.eu)

------
ReptileMan
Central and South Europe have a shitload of mountains. Traversing them will be
a total pain as infrastructure to build for high speed rail.

North of the alps and south of the Scandinavian is doable, but a lot of that
territory is Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.

You have a natural corridor that can connect france with finland - which maps
nicely with the hanseatic league territories. But from Athens to Amsterdam
there is no way to build competitive train service compared to flights.

------
maxcbc
It all comes down to cost vs convenience. I don’t think rail is the answer
long term. Trains are generally slower and less comfortable than air travel.
Not to mention often similarly priced or more expensive.

I’m more excited by the prospect of electric/hydrogen powered regional air
travel. IMHO that is what will start to make a real difference.

------
Hamuko
I'm not sure if I can even take a train from Helsinki, Finland to anywhere
else in Europe. There's a sea between Helsinki and most of Europe and the
track gauge is only compatible with Russia.

~~~
Arnt
Happily there's a world wide web that'll help you inform yourself.

Or I can tell you: You have to take the train to St. Petersburg and change
there. Going to someplace like Paris you'd have to change one more time, and
of course the trip would be long.

~~~
Hamuko
Does that mean that if I want to get between two cities inside the Schengen
area, I need to get a visa?

~~~
Arnt
Probably, at least if you really want to go by train all the way.

You can find other weird routes if you try, too. Teheran to Bangkok by train
is a weird one. You have to go west via Istanbul, then northeast to Moscow,
then take the Transsiberian, then south through China, finally westwards to
Bangkok. All possible but very convoluted and hardly something you'd do in
order to reach the destination.

In one way it reminds me of some friends of mine who went on a trip around the
world for two months — on one airline ticket. The ticket was to New Zealand
and back, with quite a few longish stopovers. Not the itinerary one would
choose just to get to New Zealand.

------
znpy
Taxation of air travel alone might not be a solution in my opinion.

The thing is, you have to make trains an actually viable solution for people
(speed, comfort). High speed all across the Europe would help a lot.

------
bonoboTP
Sure, if you fly Düsseldorf - Stuttgart (companies do such things often), by
all means switch to trains. For most of us it's not a reasonable alternative.
My usual flight takes around 2 hours (7 hours door to door) but the train
takes 16-17 hours including e.g. a two hour wait for transfer at 2 AM. The
train also costs about 3 times as much. The climate's fate is not based on my
4 flights per year, so I refuse to have flight shame. Pushing the guilt onto
normal people from industry is an appalling thing. (like fix your dripping
tap, you're wasting fresh water... Ever heard how industry deals with water?)

------
j7ake
If trains can be as cheap as flights then there will be no need to coerce
people to choose flying over train through carbon footprint arguments.

------
lazylizard
Ppl can only commute maybe 2 hours max. High speed rail between big cities a
few hundred kilometers away may work to replace planes?

------
ajot
This [0] 13 year old article seems relevant to the discussion. Night trains
should get much more love from Europe!

[0] [https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2007/04/High-speed-
trains-...](https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2007/04/High-speed-trains-
planes-on-wheels.html)

------
WilliamEdward
Public transportation is eventually going to have to replace both cars and
planes. Yes, it will cost a lot. Yes, it probably wont make profit. This is
fine, it's a moral duty we have as a society and at the end of the day
railways are far safer than roads. In the long run a densely populated city
benefits tremendously from trains, as seen in any major city.

~~~
chrisseaton
> Public transportation is eventually going to have to replace both cars and
> planes.

...but commercial airline planes are public transportation.

~~~
WilliamEdward
No, public means public owned and operated by government, ie: not private.

~~~
chrisseaton
No, in the UK, for example, the busses and trains are owned and operated by
private companies, not the government. But no reasonable person would call
them anything but public transport.

