Why not take the train? Experts on what’s needed to get more Europeans to ditch flights

04.06.2024 - 08:41 / euronews.com / Ian Smith

Anna Pagani is no stranger to long journeys. She has spent thousands of euros and countless hours criss-crossing Europe’s train tracks since pledging not to take flights a couple of years ago.

A decision that has been “harder than it should be”. 

“Planning train rides takes time, patience, and money,” she tells Euronews Travel.                                       

She lives in London but frequently travels back to her native Italy and to Austria to see her partner’s family.

On top of that her job as a researcher requires her to go to conferences scattered across the continent.

“Overall, it’s a lot of learning by doing,” she confides. “Sometimes my plane to Turin would cost €9 and I’d pay more than €250 for my train.”

It’s an experience that many can relate to when looking into whether to take a train or a plane.

A Greenpeace report published last year found that train tickets are on average twice as expensive as flights. The analysis looked at 112 routes in Europe and discovered that for some routes like London-Barcelona the train cost a whopping 30 times more.

“Price is key,” concedes Dr Alberto Mazzola when asked how train passenger numbers can be boosted. He is the executive director of the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER), an advocacy group representing European train companies.

Mazzola believes trains are treated differently than the road and aviation sectors. He says they get preferential tax arrangements, pointing to examples like airlines not having to pay taxes on kerosene and tickets for international flights being exempt from VAT.

To address these disparities, CER wants the EU to create rules that ensure fair competition between trains, planes, and other types of transportation. 

Mazzola also wants to see trip durations tackled. “If it takes 18 hours very few will take the train,” he says. He is pushing the EU to provide more funding for infrastructure to create high-speed rail links between major European cities.

Despite these challenges, trains are undergoing something of a renaissance in Europe. Passenger numbers increased by 10 per cent in the decade leading up to the pandemic, night trains are making a comeback and travellers are yearning for more sustainable travel options. 

A post shared by Euronews Travel (@euronewstravel)

However, a report by the European Commission found that the total number of long-distance passenger cross-border services in the EU remained the same from 2001 to 2019, and overall they make up only about 7 per cent of train journeys in Europe.

To help boost these numbers, Victor Thévenet, rail policy manager at sustainable mobility NGO Transport and Environment, insists that planning a train journey needs to be much simpler.

“People need to be