"Why are flights in the UK so often cheaper than taking the train?"
Some of the reasons are nonsensical:
for trains:
"The fuel is subject to VAT at 5% on diesel and 20% on electricity.".
this should be the reverse?!?
for planes:
"Fuel accounts for a much bigger part of airlines’ costs, but they do not have to pay VAT or duty on it.".
#SaveThePlanet and tax planes in proportion of the damage they do to their environment!
@elduvelle @albertcardona Moreoever, why is it that there are direct flights between cities in the UK that I need eight changes on the train and a dozen little bus trips for?
With each change likely to fail at a rate of 10% that gives me a less than 50% change of reaching my destination…
Airplane it is.
This summer I have to go from Barcelona to Berlin. The non-flight options are ... insane. I wouldn't mind a 24-hour trip by train, but it's not even that*. Many legs, no coordination between providers, subways and buses included. I am not a XIX century naturalist crossing uncharted territory, I am crossing the European Union from South to somewhat North. It's embarrassing.
* I was hoping for a 2-leg train, i.e., Barcelona-Paris and Paris-Berlin in the same day, but no, that would require me sleeping in Paris! The lack of coordination is as astonishing as it is appalling.
@jonmsterling @albertcardona @elduvelle I kind of enjoy the vibe of public transit where it's like these are migrating beasts and by careful divination and ritual offering you can harness their primal energy to speed you in a particular direction, like a raptor riding thermals. Of course there isn't going to be a migration going precisely from A to B, but with a bit of cleverness you can stitch together something.
It's pretty magical and unprecedented in human history that I can cross so many different countries by land safely and relatively quickly. Sure, OK, it could be faster. But like, thank you migrating beasts you are wonderful creatures.
@tml @olynch @albertcardona @elduvelle I think it's pretty easy to tell by the fact that it is not a major plot point in books and movies of the 20th century that it is impossible to get from one point to another without several missed trains, replacement busses that don't show up, etc. In those days, people made plans that required them to arrive at a certain time, and those plans generally worked.
The 20th Century would have been impossible without functional rail transit. Today, plans that involve travelling by train must necessarily involve arriving a day early and paying for a hotel if you need to guarantee an on-time arrival.
@tml @olynch @albertcardona @elduvelle I mean, the balkans is one thing.
But it is impossible to get from Cambridge to Oxford for a daytime meeting without staying overnight.
If I wanted to go to Glasgow, I would have to use four different train companies and none of the different train companies coordinate with each other — meaning that what ought to be a simple fix (as in the case of missed flights, where it just gets fixed without your intervention) becomes a huge ordeal that you are fully responsible for.
@jonmsterling @tml @olynch @albertcardona
You can do Cambridge (if that's where you're starting from) to Glasgow with 1 change (see trainline screenshot).
for the rest I agree: the coordination between multiple UK train companies is a pain, the trains are generally slow, somewhat unreliable (at least it's easy to get reimbursed if they are late) and they are expensive. Lots to be improved!
@jonmsterling @olynch @albertcardona @elduvelle "The Balkans is one thing" sounds like "No True Scotsman".
- No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.
- But my uncle Angus is a Scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge
- But no *true* Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge
- There was no major book or film in the 1900s where delayed trains are important
- Heard of Murder on the Orient Express?
- Yes but that doesn't count because it was the Balkans
The OP made a valid point, amounting to: it's not infrastructure if one can't rely on it, if one can't use it without making alternative plans. Nothing more and nothing less. The flying experience is atrocious for many reasons but being late by a day is a rare event (particularly when normalized by volume of passengers), and incurring in outrageous accidental expenses is also rare, not so with rail.
Rail used to work better and offer more services; flying became reliable and easy by riding on government subsidies. All we are saying is, let's revert that: flying should be expensive, even forbidden by law for short range when a train is clearly advantageous, where "short range" is pretty large considering high-speed trains, like the whole length of France.
@jonmsterling @tml @albertcardona @elduvelle I'm all for improving the train system, but I worry that this is unnecessary FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) w.r.t. people making transit decisions. I've traveled between Southern England and Scotland probably four or five times now (and other long distances in the UK) and sometimes it takes longer than advertised, but the magic of a train ticket being "any permitted route" means that Google maps can just route me around missed trains. And Oxford<->Cambridge is annoying but certainly doable for a day trip with an early morning start.
Perhaps I'm less optimized for reliably getting places on time than you, but I think there's a strong case to be made for not refusing to use infrastructure until it's perfect.
@olynch @tml @albertcardona @elduvelle I don't have many trips where it is not extremely important that I arrive on time.
I'd take the comment about FUD seriously if it came with a commitment to personally pay for my hotel, taxi, etc. when I end up eating shit.
@jonmsterling When I’m in the UK I have often done (suburban) Glasgow to Nottingham as a day trip for work. It’s long, but not particularly stressful, I get several hours at the destination, and when things go wrong you are well looked after.
Cambridge to Oxford is straightforward, too.
@jonmsterling @olynch @albertcardona @elduvelle The oldest Cook's timetable I have is from 1984, and then just going from Barcelona to Paris would take a whole day. Leave Barcelona at 07:40, arrive in Paris Austerlitz at 21:35. And that includes changing trains at the Spanish-French border. Different gauge, you know. (You knew that, I hope?) Nowadays there is a high speed railway in standard gauge between the border and Barcelona (and onward in Spain).
From Paris there was a night train to Berlin, the Ost-West Express, but it left already at 16:20. Oops.
Sure, it might have been a better idea in those days to not do the detour through Paris, and instead start with the Catalan Talgo to Genève, leaving Barcelona at 09:50 and arriving in Genève at 19:44. But is there any night train after that from Genève to Berlin? Nope, don't think so, can't see it.
(Of course, in those days Berlin was not as important as it is today after German unification, and it would make more sense to check for instance Barcelona–Frankfurt. But that doesn't change the fact that in 1984 there was no high-speed rail in Spain, in France a single line Paris–Lyon, and none in Germany. 60 years ago there was no high-speed rail anywhere.)
So I hope you see why I am a bit sceptical about your claim that "60 years ago, it was 10X better".
@erwaks @jonmsterling @elduvelle
An European-wide network organized around hubs that coordinate arrivals and departures, with single-ticketing, is all it would take. The regional trains and buses do the rest.
So it doesn't matter which route one takes as long as inter-hub arrivals and departures were coordinated.
@jonmsterling @MonniauxD @albertcardona @elduvelle I wonder what happened in the 80s that caused much of our public infrastructure to start getting shittier lol
Speaking of which, looking at inequality indices during the 80s is also quite revealing
@MonniauxD @albertcardona @jonmsterling @elduvelle Tell your agent to switch to Railfinder once they graduate from the beta? 😉
I feel that there's quite a self-fulfilling prophecy about long business travel by train. The booking experience & timetable coordination is poor so everyone books flights instead. So the railway companies & travel agencies assume that business travelers don't want trains longer than 2h and don't try to improve the status quo. Mix in a US-centric mindset and voilà!
I was invited to a potential symposium in a big conference in my field in Portugal this year.
I live in Scotland, technically not that far away really, but I would have had to do something like 7 changes and dozens of hours to do the trip by train, and at a huge cost. I do not fly because flying destroys the planet, so I had to pass out on the conference opportunity.
To be fair, this is also a problem with the conference itself, which does not allow hybrid talks... IMO all the conferences should be online or at least hybrid until we've fixed the problem of saving our planet.
#Cosyne2026 #AcademicConferences #AcademicChatter
@quixoticgeek @albertcardona @jonmsterling @elduvelle Barcelona-Berlin is not one I’ve done. But the canonical way is to do Barcelona-Paris and the take the European Sleeper to Berlin. That being said, it only runs three times a week.
There is a theoretical route that is Barcelona-Lyon-Genève-Zürich and then a sleeper to Berlin, but it’s a little on the tight side, and definitely not one change.
@moof @albertcardona We also have a few options in our journey planner involving catching Nightjets in Karlsruhe of Offenburg: https://www.railfinder.eu/search?from=35790&to=716&date=2026-07-07&p=A
@quixoticgeek @jonmsterling @elduvelle
Edit: posted at the same time as @cycling_on_rails 🤓
@stefanlindbohm @moof @quixoticgeek @jonmsterling @cycling_on_rails
Indeed, there are options. And with more time, I would have chosen them. But I am constrained by children's school schedules and a conference schedule where I have to deliver a talk. I do have about 24 hours for the trip, but on the date that I have to do so (from a Saturday late afternoon to a Sunday evening) none of the options seem viable.
Flights, on the other hand, despite the absurd transfer times to airports, within-airport waiting times, security theatre, and appalling externalities re. pollution, deliver on the transport service and there are even protections in place in case of cancellations or rescheduling, in addition to abundant within-EU coordination. That's where the pan-European rail network should be, but alas, isn't.
@stefanlindbohm @albertcardona @quixoticgeek @jonmsterling @cycling_on_rails I keep forgetting about the Strasbourg crossing in those options, because at that point I’m in Paris anyway, might as well catch the e.s.
That being said, if the nightjet has mini cabins, it’s a much nicer option as far as I’m concerned.
I’d recommend timing it to cross with an ICE if you can, a much nicer train than the TGV, if nothing else cos it’ll get you a decent supper aboard.
Good to keep in mind…
@dubiousblur I was joking 2 years ago during my trip to Malaga that one could do Malaga-London in one day if the stars align, and likely beyond due to the favorable timezone change: https://mastodon.social/@cycling_on_rails/113338759404620938
I took a safe option from Zurich though, with 1 stop on each way to explore Barcelona and Montpellier. I could afford that as I had the privilege to be able to spend 3 days travelling each way.
@moof @quixoticgeek @albertcardona @jonmsterling @elduvelle There is also a very convenient direct train Frankfurt-Marseille via Lyon. And in theory there is a connection from it to Lyon-Barcelona, but it's IIRC ~10 minutes interchange, with Barcelona-bound train on some days departing a few minutes before the train from Frankfurt arrives.
Were they coordinated, that could be a relatively easy ~13-hour daytime journey with only two changes (and not having to pass through Paris).
There are other theoretical daytime routes via Mulhouse though...
@moof @quixoticgeek @albertcardona @jonmsterling @elduvelle ah no, either I'm mistaken or this was a whole ago. Now, AVE departs Lyon at 14:31, while TGV from Frankfurt arrives at 19:58. And in the opposite direction, AVE arrives at 13:21, while TGV to Frankfurt leaves at 10:01. And of course TGVs between Barcelona and Paris pass Lyon without stopping.
There is still 20-hour route bypassing Paris (and avoiding real night trains) available, but that one is with three changes: https://int.bahn.de/en/buchung/start?vbid=3a68b351-3ca6-4a41-ba7b-40b526aad207
And only southbound, northbound one would have to do a change in Paris in order to avoid real night trains (but then it's only 16.5 hours if all goes well): https://int.bahn.de/en/buchung/start?vbid=373210ab-d83a-4a38-9a95-d0b1d7ae806c
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