Five tasks for European Rail companies to get more tourists to travel by train
In previous posts, I’ve pushed people to travel using the train or coaches where possible, and this is because, as we know, trains emit far less CO2 per passenger per km (or mile, if you will) than air travel. There is this now famous infographic that I believe most people have seen.
But realistically, there are several reasons for people to continue travelling by plane, even for shorter distances. That is, until the train offers a similar or superior experience at a comparable (or cheaper) price-point. In high school economics, we learnt about perfect and imperfect substitute goods. A perfect substitute is a product that’s identical to the original in functionality, while an imperfect substitute can have similar elements but is noticeably different from the original. If we consider, for the sake of argument, air travel as the ‘original’, I wanted to see how perfect or imperfect a substitute train travel is.
To conduct this experiment I planned a mega-route and enlisted my wife and a close friend and his wife to accompany me. Of course, for them it was a holiday through Europe, not an experiment. We planned for several weeks until we came up with the final itinerary, with some assistance from Instagram and a lot of inspiration from The Man in Seat 61. Honestly, I blame him a little for what followed. But only a little.
So how did it go? Overall, very average. There were several twists and turns along the way, and I chronicled all of it in a soon to be released blog post on our own website. I’ll link it in here once ready.
But the point of this article is not to whinge or moan about my trip. After some reflection, I’ve instead distilled it down into five key things European train companies and governments need to tackle to incentivise more people to travel by train and eliminate short-haul air travel.
- Significantly improve the ticket booking process
I’m not saying that booking on every airline website is easy (ahem KLM) but in general there are armies of people at each airline that optimise their websites and apps to convert impressions into bookings. Aggregators like Skyscanner or Google Travel definitely help with this as well, especially in the ‘search phase’. There are some well-performing train aggregators — Trainline and RailEurope come to mind, but the first is still focused on the UK and the second is still finding its feet after significant corporate changes in 2022.
But if we talk about individual countries’ train booking systems, it can be very tough for a first-timer to navigate the litany of station names and ticket types. Payment options are usually very limited and some websites (Renfe) don’t work outside Europe.
Furthermore, every train line has a different time for opening up bookings. Some, like Eurostar, open six months in advance, which is similar to local European flights. But there are several that open only 2–3 months in advance, and often without warning or notice.
There’s also no way to book tickets for anything other than point to point journeys, meaning that planning in advance is usually impossible, unlike with air travel, where people can plan holidays or family visits months in advance, and can book multi-leg journeys through travel agents or even directly.
A final confusing aspect, especially when booking trains from one country to another is that you can sometimes book the same train on the national train website of either country. And it’s usually a different price on both, with different names for the ticket types. That’s just intensely confusing.
In late 2022, the EU claimed it was pushing train operators to come up with a better ticketing system in the face of frustration and complexity like the one I went through above. In typical EU fashion, the debate is still ongoing, so watch this space.
2. Incentivise travellers to trade emissions for time.
It’s sometimes tempting to disregard a train journey that seems very long. For example, we took the TGV from Paris to Barcelona, which took us 7 hours door to door. The flights are around an hour and a half, but after adding in the time you need to get to and from the airport, it comes in at around 6 hours. The emissions of flying this route are 15 times those of taking the TGV, not even counting the non-CO2 emissions. This seems like a great trade-off: an hour for a large CO2 emissions reduction. But that was not reflected in the price. The price was quite a bit higher than low-cost flights, which doesn’t seem right at all.
In May, France ‘banned’ short haul flights where train journeys could be made in less than 2 and a half hours. Since connecting flights are not banned, this is more of a symbolic gesture, and critics argue that it will cause train fares to spike. This is not an incentive to take the train, it’s simply an incentive to fly farther away. It might be time for lawmakers in Europe to directly subsidise train travel instead of continuing to subsidise air travel. According to clean transport campaign group ‘Transport & Environment’,
Plane tickets sold are exempt from VAT. These subsidies total tens of billions of euro each year, money which could be reinvested in greening the economy or lowering labour taxes. In addition, Europe’s carbon market for aviation — the Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) — exempts the majority of flights departing from Europe and provides generous free allowances to airlines
While that has changed more recently in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, there’s a lot of space left to fund train subsidies by taxing air travel more heavily.
Rail companies and governments also need to do a better job of marketing the emissions savings from travelling by train.
According to research commissioned by the rail industry, almost half of Brits (46%) do not know that travelling by train is the most sustainable form of transport, with one in eight (13%) believing that motor vehicles are better for the environment.
Across Europe, at least half of the population know and plan to use public transport as they do their part to fight climate change.
Let’s get this number up by making it very clear just how much better for the environment train travel is over flights.
3. Improve station facilities significantly
One commonality of all the stations we went to on the trip was that they were not designed for international or long-haul travel. Usually there’s a couple of generic gift shops and a restaurant (a McDonalds or something) and when it’s time to board the train there is one door that hundreds of people funnel through at the same time. Check-in procedures feel like an airport in the early 90s and luggage screenings are a woeful mess (more on luggage shortly). I understand that people aren’t meant to show up very early for their trains but because of airport training, people inevitably do. There are never enough seats and minimal step-free access to the platforms. While that might be ok for backpackers and younger people, those that are older really struggle.
In terms of refreshment options, more stations should take the lead of St. Pancras in London, which boasts several restaurants, shopping and a supermarket and pharmacies. To really compete with air travel, the train stations need to design around the needs of their customers much, much better.
4. Create a less terrible experience for people with luggage
One of the main draws of train travel over air travel is the fact that you can usually take as much luggage as you want on the train, within reason. Sometimes on the trip I felt like train companies were disincentivizing people from bringing a lot of luggage by making it really awkward for them to travel with heavy suitcases. Our friends had 9 bags between the two of them and every train journey was a nightmare. It started with checking in, when large heavy suitcases needed to be lifted onto an unnecessarily high baggage belt. Then, of course, finding a place to sit or stand with your luggage was near impossible. Getting it up to the platform was also a challenge with lifts and escalators out of order, and those that did work smelling of all sorts of funky stuff. Then, walking up and down looking for your coach with hundreds of other people. Next, getting the suitcases on through the train’s steep stairs was like practising for the shot put. This process needs to be repeated when getting off the train, of course. Finally, finding space for the bags in the luggage racks was an exercise in Tetris I didn’t know I needed.
It’s hard to say exactly what train companies could do to make this better but lower baggage security belts could help (Paris had one), as could ensuring there are enough escalators and working lifts for people to comfortably get up or down to the platforms without needing to rush. Might it be too much to suggest the return of the luggage compartment? Maybe.
5. Dealing better with unexpected events
Almost all of the trains we took ran into an issue, either with the train itself, another train ahead or the line. Apart from that, strike action and weather issues also affected us. I should say that the one flight we took also suffered from strike action and as a result we didn’t have our luggage for 24 hours. But when trains go bad, it can be more stressful, not least because you have all your luggage with you and are usually in the middle of nowhere.
All this comes from an underfunded train system in recent years while air travel took off (no pun intended). Don’t even get me started on the decrepit state of the Night trains that we took. No one is getting any sleep on those! Yes there are plans for improvements here with more funding and honestly , that can’t come soon enough. If not, I would be embarrassed to tell someone to take a train instead of flying, because of the high chances of the frustrating experience they would have.
What’s more, compensation for delays is poor and confusing and recently that’s been ‘simplified’ even further. The process for claiming compensation can be cumbersome for the amount of money you end up getting back. In my opinion, compensation should always be based on the time you lost, not the price you paid.
Summary
It might be a while before I attempt another European adventure by train, at least if its for a longer time and I need luggage. But I will be following the news closely, awaiting those much needed improvements to really justify my evangelisation of train travel. We know that you will have to give up some convenience — the more sustainable option is always less convenient — but it does not have to be this bad.
