My exposure to European travel is 100% based on television and movies, but it seems as though it’s much more common to take a train to another city within your country than to hop on a plane.
Furthermore, do people in Europe take trains more often than driving? Is it easier to, say, take a train from Manchester to London than it is to drive? It’s really easy to drive from Cleveland to Pittsburgh (50 miles less than the distance from Manchester to London), but on TV shows and in movies set in the UK that journey is usually done via train.
Over the last few years, several ultra-low cost airlines (Ryanair, EZ Jet) have sprung up to serve Europe, with flights often at INCREDIBLY low prices.
They sometimes fly into smaller airports on the outskirts of major cities, and then run a shuttle bus (which you have to pay extra to take) into the heart of the city itself. This keeps their prices down, and adds an extra revenue stream for them.
A couple of years ago I flew from Brussels to Barcelona for $9 (nine!!!) dollars, though with the shuttle bus added on it wound up being closer to 30 bucks all told. I also flew from Prague to Berlin for right around 20 dollars (the flight was only about 45 min.) when the same train ride would have been close to 75 dollars and over 5 hours in length.
That said, riding trains in Europe is generally a pleasure, though not always the best way to go if you are trying to economize.
It’s not easy for me to accurately answer the question from a European perspective, but I do have some specific figures for the Manchester-London trip, which I’ve made relatively frequently.
By car: about 3½ hours depending on traffic and roadworks, cost in petrol, probably about £80 for me, but then I don’t have a very efficient car.
Train: walk on fair, peak time (eg 6am) is up around £250 and I’d only ever pay this if work required it. Otherwise, off peak fare is £60 or so for a return ticket, time is 2½-3 hours.
Fly: flights can be cheap, I’ve flown for about £100, but £150-200 is more common I think. The downside of course is transport to the airport, 90 minutes or so security/check-in, 30 minute flight which is fine, then 30 mins into London (£3-10).
Domestic air travel certainly exists but it’s relatively rare, especially in the smaller countries. This has not really changed with Easyjet or Ryanair, which really offer flights to other countries most of the time. Most of those, such as Brussels to Barcelona, would have been a plane ride in most cases anyway, that’s more than a 1000 miles. You’d have to take a train to Paris, than go across Paris to take a night train to the border. I know, cause I’ve done that. Most people who take those trips now would just not have gone otherwise - they have no business in Barcelona other than tourism. In some cases they now take the plane out of laziness: Prague to Berlin could easily have been a train ride or a car ride (I personally think it’s ridiculous to do that on a plane, from an environmental pov).
As far as domestic connections go, the Manchester-London example is not a very representative one for Europe - the train system in the UK is comparatively expensive and also qualitatively not very good (or so I’ve heard). So that might be a drive for most people (though not a plane ride, presumably); In Germany, many people might take a train because their system is pretty fast. In other places (France and Spain come to mind), lots of connections are not very well served, maybe only one or two trains a day as opposed to one every hour, and the network is slightly more sparse. Here people might be more likely to drive.
There are not many people I know (in Europe or elsewhere) who would rather pay $75 dollars for a 5 hour train trip VS paying 20 dollars for a 45 min. flight.
Both cheaper and shorter by 3X? Yeah, I will take the plane, thanks!!!
ETA—I have also taken the train from Berlin to Prague, stopping in Dresden for a few days along the way—Absolutely beautiful trip…
Passengers, short-distance public transport: 10.55 billion (average trip 9.3 km)
Passengers, long-distance coach: 2 million (average trip 450 km)
Passengers, long-distance rail: 123 million (average trip 283 km)
Passengers, domestic air: 24 million
Passengers, international air: 135 million
Fair enough. What matters to me is that it’s also probably more polluting by three times. besides, the 45 minutes thing is not exactly fair because you’re going to have to spend time getting to the airport, checking in and boarding, which in Berlin I think should account for an hour and a half, then taxiing, getting your stuff, getting on a bus to the center, which in Prague might be as much as another hour. It’s still less than a train ride, but not three times less.
I live in Prague sometimes and will fly if it is further than roughly Frankfurt… have flown to Paris, Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam, Milan, Barcelona, Zurich, Geneva, Malta, Istanbul.
For Bratislava, Budapest, Brno, Vienna, Salzburg, or Warsaw I generaly take the train.
I take the train much more than anything else except for my bicycle. I don’t even have a drivers license. When I’m doing on and off work in Amsterdam I always take the train and take a folding bike to get into the city.
When visiting Germany or Belgium I usually take the train. If friends are coming with me we sometimes share a car, since it’s convenient and cheaper. The only destination that I regularly take a plane to is the UK - but there I usually share a car (the over-night ferry from Rotterdam to Hull is a pretty nice way to travel).
For destinations that are further away, planes become much more attractive and - if you plan ahead - ridiculously cheap compared to any other transportation.
ETA: also take that the cost of train tickets is extremely variable between countries; the UK is notoriously expensive for long distances, but Belgium is cheap, and in the Netherlands you can get a 40% reduction on all after 9 am routes for an annual fee of about 45 euros.
Train more often than not, Especially when you consider the high speed network is continuing to expand. Train travel in the UK is good, compared to the US. But on the continent it is an absolute breeze. And when you mix the two you can end up getting some absolute bargains.
An example, We recently flew Easyjet to Munich (£250 for two adults and two children) then took the train to a small skiing village near Zell am See.
From the airport train station to our apartment door cost £65…for all of us, and that included £20 for the taxi taking us the last 10k. And none of those train tickets were pre-booked.
No wonder they rack up so many train miles over there, it was an absolute pleasure making that journey.
I live in Manchester and often travel to London and the south. Driving this can be a real pain, roads here are far more crowded than I’ve ever seen in the US or Australia, you would be very lucky to be able to make it without being stuck in a jam at some point.
Trains are much more relaxing and usually faster, though as pointed out they can be ridiculously expensive.
For many pairs of cities in Europe, frequent rail and air services are available.
Which one is more attractive in any given case is largely down to the preferences of the customer, who weighs up the cost, “pleasantness”, time, hassle, and environmental impacts of the two options. The longer the journey, the more likely that air travel will win out. 400 km is a rule of thumb I’ve heard quoted, but it will vary from person to person depending on their circumstances and preferences.
What is short-distance public transport? Mostly busses, mostly taxis, or both? The web site you linked to is in German
I didn’t realize train travel in the UK was so expensive. The impression I got from movies/TV is that it’s as simple and cheap as taking the subway. Ignorance fought!
Just checked what it would cost to go from Manchester to London tomorrow morning at 8am, returning at 6pm. Distance is 200 miles, journey time 2h 10m, cost is £262 return (about $400).
Rail other than tram - 2.206 billion passengers; average trip 20.8 km
tram - 3.725 billion passengers; average trip 4.5 km
bus - 5.275 billion passengers; average trip 6.8 km
Taxi journeys are not included in the statistics but as there are about 50k taxis in all of Germany the number of taxi trips is probably much lower.
If you’re buying a ticket for tomorrow morning, that’s basically walk-up prices at peak time, and very expensive. I won’t pretend that it is an economical mode of travel at the best of times, but it is is significantly cheaper if you book in advance and don’t travel in rush hours.
Can the discount airlines actually make money doing this, or are they just loss-leader affiliates of more established carriers? It doesn’t make sense that a railroad running reasonably full trains has to charge so much more money than an airline. It’s been a truism that air travel is always the most costly, except maybe for private automobile when the hidden costs are factored in.
I have a stepdaughter living over there, and she seems to prefer air travel as well. Europe, you are losing your mettle! What happened to sitting up all night in a second-class compartment? That built character, I tell you!
It is NOT shorter; often, specially if it’s in-country, it is both longer and more expensive. You are forgetting to take into account the time and expense involved in getting from the departure point to the airport, the time spent at the airport and the time and expense involved in getting from the ariport to the point of arrival. Oh, and the cost of parking at the airport, if you’ve driven your car there.
Going from Pamplona to Barcelona by plane would require changing planes in Madrid. There’s a direct train. Only one, but if the time happens to be convenient, I’d definitely take it over taking the plane. Actually, going from pretty much any provincial aiport in Spain to about any other will require changing planes in either Barcelona or Madrid, which kind of screws up the whole idea.
Last March I had to go from southern Navarra to Murcia for a week. My client insisted that I was not to drive or take trains but to fly (the ticket was cheaper than the mileage would have been). Driving time would have been about 9 hours; on the way back, I would have been able to stop midway and spend the weekend on holiday; both ways, I would have been able to stop and stretch as needed. Flying time:
1 h to get from the town where I was to the airport,
1 h at the airport,
45m flight,
4h waiting to connect,
45m flight,
cab downtown (45km trip).
Way back:
work ended at noon. Problem is, this was Murcia: the only things that are open between 12am and 5pm are supermarkets and one department store. So,
cab to the airport (45km),
try to exchange my ticket for one in the earlier flight (would have cost 400€, no way) so that at least I’d be able to spend time in Barajas, which has decent shopping,
wait until 6pm, did I mention there wasn’t even a bookstore or newsstand?
45min flight to Madrid,
land in one end of the airport, by the way everything is already closed oh GOOD there is a place there that’s closing please sell me a sandwhich blagh all they have is cheese, ok, I’ll take cheese, hurry hurry hurry, 30 min to go from one end of the airport to the other,
45min flight to Pamplona,
take the car and drive home.
And by the way, with the cab trips, the parking and the highway, it was more expensive than the mileage would have been. O-o-p-sies.
The same trip by train would have been a pain, too many exchanges. By bus, one exchange in Tarragona.
Dahu, there’s people who live in Madrid but work in Barcelona and viceversa. The “puente aéreo” is closer to being a subway on wings than a regular air route. They look at you sideways if you’re carrying anything bigger than a laptop case.
I wouldn’t say that Ryanair uses “smaller airports on the outskirts of major cities”. They are usually very remote from the city they are supposed to serve compared to the “regular” airports.
