PrinzKasper
pizzaioloTrain fares are up to 30 times more expensive than planes in Europe
Completely crazy. I can’t wait till they fix this.
Luckily we’re on the right track with Germany’s 49€ ticket. Now these types of tickets just need to spread and maybe one day we’re gonna have a unified EU ticket.
Sure hope so. Meanwhile, in The Netherlands, we’re raising train ticket prices once again.
Recently, I was thinking about a hypothetical trip to the Netherlands and looking for the train prices. I was suprised how expensive they really are. As I understand it, a day ticket costs more than the DeutschlandTicket for a month, and relatively even more if you consider discounted DeutschlandTickets.
It’s really unfortunate yeah. The other day I saw some tips on saving money by booking international train tickets via the foreign rail operator vs NS International. Saving 50% on your ticket price was pretty much guaranteed.
But that also only works for short distance trains. And the distances you would go by plane are not really feasible like this.
Sure, but most train journeys you would replace a flight with are way too long and arduous with the 49€ ticket because that only allows regional trains and not the high speed IC/ICE trains. Those are the ones that need to get cheaper if we want people to stop flying.
If we had an inter-european ticket it could be more expensive and allow you to take high speed trains. It would be silly to give it the same restrictions that the German ticket has.
Yeah I’m just saying there are already flight journeys within Germany that could be replaced by train and there the same problem applies. I wasn’t suggesting that a hypothetical European ticket would have similar restrictions.
In austria we have a ~1000€ ticket for all public transport for a whole year. I think thats a great start, being able to use whatever bus/tram/train for 3€ per day is pretty awsome.
There is interrail for EU tickets.
Monkey paw: they rise the price of plane tickets so both cost the same
Don’t worry, they sort it so airline tickets are as expensive as train tickets shortly.
Doesn’t really go into the reasons for the price difference?? I doubt kerosene subsidies counts for everything?
Btw I like trains and think we should ban a lot of flights that can be serviced with quick alternatives
There was something about France banning domestic flights that take less than 2(or 3?) hours by train.
Which makes a shit ton of sense. The same stretch is not gonna be shorter by plane when you factor in the extra ceremonies you have to attend both before and after the flight, and the time it takes to get to and from wherever the airport is.
Such short flights would be mostly connecting flights, so the check-in and customs overhead is a fixed constant anyway.
think we should ban a lot of flights that can be serviced with quick alternatives
Doing that without actually bringing down the train fares would be frustrating. Budget airline tickets in Europe are ludicrously cheap.
Good point, because we rely on what little competition there is to get reasonable pricing.
Without bringing down train fares, people will drive. Better than a plane, but not great either.
In the past I've found it's faster to drive 600km or even more than take a flight. Cheaper than the train too.
We need to tax kerosene at the EU level. Would be a good way to have an independent revenue for federal institutions
But also subsidize trains at the same time. Otherwise we just forbid poor people from traveling
Trains are already heavily subsidized but I agree, fares have to go down for people to use it more.
Cars are subsidised more than trains, so while trains are heavily subsidised they’re still at a significant disadvantage compared to both cars and planes.
I don't think the problem here is the low price of (some) flights... It's the high price of (most) train rides...
I used to think as a child everyone in Europe is super rich. Because they always travel by planes
iDunnoBroDon’t wanna be that guy but this article is a tad bit misleading. 13 euros for a plane ticket is an anomaly and probably due to governments funding airlines to encourage tourism to their countries.
That said, a couple hours on a rickety Ryanair for <13 euros beats buying a bunch of train tickets and the stress involved. Downside is missing out on getting to stop in some cool places and see some pretty sights with comfy leg room. (Also trains are more efficient due to the amount of people boarding)
€13 is cheap for Ryanair, but it's not some absurd anomaly. I went from Dublin to Rome for €18, and took a bunch of other flights for <€30.
It was certainly a click bait headline. But still a fair point that train fare averages are double airfare. Although we have to question, did Greenpeace throw out the outliers before compiling the stats?
ImFresh3xThey definitely didn’t throw out the outliers for cheap airline flights.
Booked a flight from Vienna to Tallinn for 16€ quite literally 5 minutes ago.
I think the discussion is just misdirected: There are distances, even within Europe, that are so large a train won’t do it, no matter how cheap it is. Most people will not sit in a train for 10 hours when they can fly for 1 1/2. It turns out, going 800 km/h in a straight line is just more convenient. Who knew.
Now, do I think trains should be cheaper? Yes, most fares do not reflect at all the level of service you receive.
Do I think inter-european rail connections will ever catch on? lolno, bar the few train aficionados.
There are really only two options: Either we all stay within a radius in our lives that resembles that of let’s say the 1960’s - or we fly.
Yeah that’s the unfortunate side. Given the situation it makes way more financial sense for the consumer to take the plane ticket unless they enjoy the novelty of a long train journey.
Also had a situation recently where just a 1.5 hour train trip became 6 hours due to it breaking down in a town with few bus stops and no other trains, probably due to summer tourism. It would be nice if the rail infrastructure were even further expanded and tickets made cheaper to make it more competitive.
talI'm not very bullish on long-term potential for passenger train travel, but I don't know if I'd reduce it to "flight or 1960s travel radius" either. A few points:
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High speed rail doesn't push the radius out as far as air travel does, but it does extend it. The biggest issue for HSR, I think, is not passenger time, but cost -- if passenger train travel is already uncompetitive on price, faster train infrastructure is considerably more expensive relative to that. I am not sure whether that cost is fundamental or not -- maybe it's possible to find ways to build HSR infrastructure more-cheaply.
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Self-driving vehicles. Some of the objections I've seen to use of sleeper trains -- one way to mitigate the issues of trains being slower than planes is by having travel happen when asleep -- is people who dislike having shared sleeping environments. Maybe it's possible to do, oh, a self-driving car with a sleeper trailer or something like that.
All traffic is expensive.
Germany alone subsidises it’s flight sector with billions of € by making kerosene tax free, there’s no VAT on international flights, etc.
The total direct cost of German road traffic to the public are estimated at 70 billion € per year, of which only 25 are being paid by people driving cars.
A couple of notes;
if passenger train travel is already uncompetitive on price, faster train infrastructure is considerably more expensive relative to that. I am not sure whether that cost is fundamental or not – maybe it’s possible to find ways to build HSR infrastructure more-cheaply.
Fair, but it’s not like passenger rail is uncompetitive when taking everything into account. Cars are subsidised far more, and both cars and planes have far more negative externalities (i.e. real future costs) than trains. Plus, there’s a very real cost to being dependent on oil states for the bulk of our transportation options, one that has somewhat been demonstrated by the war in Ukraine.
I do agree on your point about high speed rail compared to normal rail, although I do think there is a lot of value in them being top of the line services to make rail as a whole more attractive.
Self-driving vehicles. Some of the objections I’ve seen to use of sleeper trains – one way to mitigate the issues of trains being slower than planes is by having travel happen when asleep – is people who dislike having shared sleeping environments. Maybe it’s possible to do, oh, a self-driving car with a sleeper trailer or something like that.
Cars straight up suck and are less efficient than trains. Why you’d think of a car with a caravan but not, idk, private sleeping compartments in trains, is beyond me.
Well, 1960s had cars and people were using these for long distance travel due to the lack of other options. My dad, for example, drove his shitty car from Berlin to the south of Spain and back.
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I think the issue may be split in two - for some, the younger and poorer, cost is the limiting factor - they are willing to put up with longer travel times but cannot stem the additional financial burden. For older and more settled people (which I am transitioning to slowly) and my parents are in, comfort trumps price at all times. They will take the fastest, most direct route. They would fly even if it cost 2-3x more (which, for them, it does since they will take the premium airlines over budget).
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Going back to individual vehicles is, in my opinion, not a great solution. I am hopeful that we will find ways to have short distance air travel use more green options (electrical?) in the near-to-mid future, therefore eliminating the need to curb the undoubtably huge demand.
Nah, cheap flight tickets are not an anomaly. Not the norm, perhaps. But at any given time you could easily find plane tickets for less than 50 EUR, which is less than you’ll ever pay for an international train journey.
I mean it really depends on where you want to go and what kind of (how much) luggage you want to carry. A couple of years ago I flew to Stockholm from Berlin. Plane ticket plus luggage price was around 75€ or so. On the way back I took the train. 65€, unlimited luggage (I didn’t need to throw away my cooking gas) and a really nice landscape on the way back, including a ferry ride.
My point is that the cheapest flights are currently always cheaper than the cheapest train rides - not that plane travel is always less expensive.
ikiddThey’re just filling the seats at the last minute. THis has happened forever. Most of those seats would have been much more expensive, thought probably not as much as rail. I’ve never found long-distance rail travel to compete with air.
Yeah 13€ for a flight is like my current cross Germany train ticket for 15.99€, super rare and not a honest discussion basis.
In my experience price is more between 20-60€ for flights in europe if you want to travel on a specific date and less if you’re free to choose.
13 euros for a plane ticket is an anomaly and probably due to governments funding airlines to encourage tourism to their countries.
Governments subsidizing airlines over rail is one of the criticisms levied in the article:
The group has urged governments on the continent to introduce long-term, affordable “climate tickets” for public transport, including cross-border ones. They suggest these should be funded by a “phase-out of airline subsidies and a fair taxation system based on CO2 emissions.”
This is the report:
greenpeace.at/…/report-ticket-prices-of-planes-vs…
While undoubtedly the train fares are unreasonably expensive in several routes specially in UK, the comparison is mostly for longer routes like London to Barcelona or Madrid to Brussels, where you need to change several trains from different operators. Few would be willing to try such a route.
These kind of routes are not much favourable to trains and also the quoted Ryanair fare, I doubt 12.9€ is a last minute fare, it probably doesn’t include airport fees and extras you might want like a luggage and so on.
I’m looking at going from Barcelona to Paris, both plane and train has direct connections and on the dates I am considering, it’s about 50 eur for the plane and 130 eur for the train each way. Both the airport and trains station are close to me and the trains also has a security check and the queue that comes with that, so I’m still not sure what I’m going to pick.
funny, I was looking at the same connection in autumn and the price difference was similar. I have no problem with the longer trip, but the cost is prohibitive. for two people the train tickets from Germany to Paris and then onwards to Barcelona are ~700€ round trip. flights are less then 400€, and that’s a regular airline not Ryanair…
The difference will not be as big as it seems, 50 Euro is perhaps Ryanair basic fare. I am sure they will charge you for even the carry-on luggage and they fly you far away from Paris. If you go to CDG it will be around 100 euro which is still less than the train but not much more.
Milan Paris is served by TGV InOui and Trenitalia and the prices were nowhere near that different. Trenitalia is somewhere between 80-120 Euro each way which is the similar price you would pay for EasyJet on this same route. When I took this train last week (both ways) they tended to be full, you normally cannot find last minute tickets, so the demand is there it seems.
Don’t get me wrong there is a lot of room for improvement (really a lot) try to go a bit further maybe to go to Venice instead of Milan and you are looking at 150-200 Euro fare and that’s with the same operator.
hubobesPrice is not even the issue for me, it’s availability. I tried to book a ticket from Zurich to London for December. There are apparently not connections available anymore. I would gladly pay more than if I would be taking a plane, just give me the option…
There is Europe problem with integrated universal ticket system. There is lots of lobbing against it mainly from France, Italy, Spain. Then there would be some accountability for late trains, connections made… They just don’t want to do it.
Yeah…sad to hear that. I did it before a few years ago, really nice experience. Sad to see it go.
Political will isn’t there for this. Main issue is that all companies operate independently or nationally. There are rare cases where it somewhat works. I can take train to Vienna or Berlin from here and it is pretty much painless experience.
There is Europe problem with integrated universal ticket system. There is lots of lobbing against it mainly from France, Italy, Spain
I'm not sure whether a common ticket is a good idea, but I also don't see why this needs to be a barrier. Other than Portugal, and the UK, which need to connect through those countries, no other countries in Europe need France, Spain, or Italy onboard to agree to a common system. You just can't travel in those countries with it.
More than accountability is likely prices. Train in Italy is much more expensive than switzerland or Germany. A single ticket would force them to lower prices
I couldn’t reply to kbin comment but this outlines lots of issues with train network in Europe.
investigate-europe.eu/…/european-governments-are-…
It is little bit outdated now EU wants to make it more feasible by 2026.
Awesome thanks, yeah I can’t choose a plane if there is a reasonable train connection available. I will never set foot in a plane that is run by a company that can someone afford < 60 euro tickets.
Up to you. I never understood that attitude, people act like air travel is the only one subsidized, meanwhile (at least in Germany), everything from tracks to new vehicles, tickets (like the 49€ ticket) to covering of losses is subsidized by our taxes. And they are still way too expensive.
Meanwhile, airplanes are actually shockingly efficient per kg/km travelled - the train is just even more efficient. Most of the airlines even give you an option to offset your CO² footprint for the flight. Taking the difference between train and air travel and donating it to a worthy cause would likely be the most valuable option from a world saving standpoint.
But that’s neither here nor there.
#Trains are mostly dead to me. Not just because of price, but also price inconsistency¹, the exclusive info systems² & payment shenanigans³.
Train fare from country A to country B can by bought in either country via the national rail provider. Each quote different prices for the same train.
Tor users are blocked from even seeing which trains are available, and if that exclusivity doesn’t stop you sometimes there are extra hoops to see the prices.
Cash payers often have to pay much more than online payers (#warOnCash). Complex promos also make a game of it. E.g. there will be a cross-border weekend fare, but you cannot buy that ticket from your departure point. You have to take a train to the bordering town, get off the train, and buy the cheap cross-border ticket in that station, then get the next train.
Buses are:
- cheaper most of the time
- have open platforms (no blockade against Tor users or CAPTCHAs)
- ironically have lowere GHG than trains according to British research
I_Miss_DanielI wonder what it costs to maintain rolling stock and railway lines with their associated infrastructure.
Planes don't have to maintain bridges and level crossings on their entire route.
Kerosene should be taxed by an EU-wide tax.
As of 2023, commercial kerosene consumption is currently tax exempt under the legislation of all member states of the European Union.