Im sorry but 12$ for a plane ticket. Anywhere. That sounds either a lie or fishy.
Maybe its 12$ and then 100 for “fees Of 70$ for any bag. Or something
Or the air company is trying to destroy trains and is flying at a loss.
The sad part is that even with the fees the plane remains cheaper than the train.
In Germany, it’s greed. I remember 18 years ago a train ride to the next city to go to the movies was 1.30 euros. Today it costs 5.80 euros. That’s not inflation, that’s just greed.
They gotta finance their infrastructure somehow.
Oh, right. They’re incentivized to not do exactly that. So they can cry to the government for even more funds.
This article is a load of bullshit. They basically only compared train prices from the UK to Europe and said it was more than flying. Sure, but that’s because train prices in the UK are ridiculous, not because train prices in Europe are ridiculous. The UK is the outlier, always has been.
Taking a train in the UK, even across the UK, is sometimes more expensive than driving - it usually is when you factor in getting from a station to somewhere else. Meanwhile, taking a train within Europe is generally very affordable. The difference is the governments in the mainland actually regulate and ensure investment.
In Germany you can get a train to anywhere in the country for about €20, and children up to 14 are free. There’s also Interrail tickets you can get across Europe that cover regions or countries, when the UK was a part of this system the UK-wide ticket cost roughly the price of 3 EU countries, even though the UK is much smaller.
I’m from Germany, and none of the things you said are true. For example, to get from Aachen Central station to Hamburg Central station the cheapest option is 23,90€, but that connection is from 8pm to 3am. If you want to ride in the day, your cheapest price is the Quer-Durchs-Land-Ticket (“Cross-Country Ticket”) at 44€. But that way you are only allowed to use regional trains, which will make it a 7 hour train ride. If you want to use intercity trains (still a 5 hour ride), you will pay around 70-90€. And all of that is for 2nd class.
The age cutoff for children to travel for free is 6 years, children from 6-14 and 15-27 years travel at variously reduced prices (39€ for regional-only, 42€ for intercity).
I don’t know where you got your information, but here in Germany, we are in the same situation as the UK. And while trains in the UK may be painfully slow on cross-country travel, I have felt that they were much more comfortable to travel on, given the absolutely abysmal state of a lot of our trains.
In Germany you can get a train to anywhere in the country for about €20
While this is true, there’s a big asterisk attached to the statement.
DB adjusts the ticket price based on how many seats are still empty (asking other things).
Which means the earlier you book the cheaper the tickets are. But prices can ramp up quickly.
For an unpopular connection (mostly through the night) it can be enough to book 1 week in advance.
However for popular connections at prime times you gotta book at least a month in advance.
Depending on circumstances, it’s nice and it sucks at the same time.
This is definitely a bullshit comparison because there’s no way that flight doesn’t come with a ton of airport and processing fees and taxes, making its final price many times what’s listed here:
the cost of the train was 384 euros (about $430) compared to 12.99 euros for the Ryanair flight – making the train 29.6 times more expensive than the plane.
Yeah they’re taking the first price Ryanair advertise, rather than the final price you end up paying. Also, you can’t bring anything with you at that price, just your carry on bag.
Meanwhile, cutting out the UK, a train from Paris to Barcelona can be had for €45 if you book well in advance (2 months), maybe even less than that.
you can definitely fly at just the advertised price. been there, done that. paid 16 € for a ticket, no extra fees.
Die DB vereint das schlechte von Zentral- und Osteuropa, aber auch Westeuropa: Teuer UND Scheiße.
This is the report:
https://greenpeace.at/uploads/2023/07/report-ticket-prices-of-planes-vs-trains-in-europe.pdf
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…
I think their business model is ripping off tourists by charging excessive bag fees while EU residents with small bags get to fly cheaply.
It’s not just bag fees, there are also fees for choosing a seat, ticket changes, insurance, email or txt notifications, …
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, 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.
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.
Don’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)
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.
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 13€ for a flight is like my current cross Germany train ticket for 15.99€, super rare and not a honest discussion basis.
Price 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…
Use thetrainline.com for international train travel. I found these for you as an example. 144€, 8 hours, change in Paris. Meanwhile, flying is <60€, under 2 hours.
I know what I would choose, haha.
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 somehow afford < 60 euro tickets.
Edit: I see, it seems to be the date I want to travel, December 20. does only return a bus connection.
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, I understand it’s about feeling good as much as it is about efficiency.
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.
Why not rather do something to make trains more affordable? People need and want to travel, making air travel more expensive will just cause people to get stuck at home.
It’s especially odd since trains inside countries tends to be affordable (and subsidised), but internationally it can get super expensive very quickly.
While those same tracks are used for cargo, so it’s not like the whole European track network needs to be maintained just for a few passenger trains.
I don’t think train can compete with a long distance means of transportation that is
1- equally or less time consuming.
2- works very similarly across countries.
3- only needs infrastructure at the start and end stops instead of for the whole journey.
What we need is to figure out a way to use less polluting, carbon neutral or non-polluting fuel for airplanes, and less of it with more efficient designs.
The plane is not that fast. You have to factor in travel to the airport (outside the city), check-in, security gates, boarding, baggage claim on the destination, which can add up to 3h or more per trip. With a train, you start in the city center and just hop on board.
To your last point, believe it or not, but planes are getting significantly more efficient. Huge wide-bodies like the 747 are retiring in part because airlines don’t want to lug around 4 engines, when the 787 can do the same trip with 2.
The a320 neo has a much better engine than previous generations, and same thing with the 737 max (crashing problems aside).
crashing problems aside
Ok but that caveat is doing a lot of work there
Oh don’t worry, planes crash no more than once in their lifetime…
In a comment about efficiency? No, it doesn’t.
it’s relevant. the worldwide 737-MAX fleet had very low carbon footprint for like a year or a bit more!
Right, so the 737-MAX are very fuel efficient. No argument there. But saying “the parenthetical about ignoring the crashing problems is doing a lot of work in this comment about fuel efficiency” is just nonsense.
I mean, the entire fleet was very efficient while it was grounded
I don’t think train can compete with a long distance means of transportation
That’s true. Trains can compete mid-range, or should be able to compete. With better infrastructure and organization (high speed rail, coordinated timetables, unified booking, …), this range can be extended. There will always be a certain distance after which planes are the better choice.
But we still should invest to push this point further into the distance, to make planes as obsolete as possible. Trains should be the cheapest option between short distance (bus) and long distance (plane). If they are not, we are doing something wrong in creating incentives.
I want to see long distance high speed night trains. I want to see trains riding bumper to bumper. I want to go overnight from Berlin to Oslo. Or Paris up Bucharest. Porto to Utrecht.
