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馃殑鉁堬笍 Why is it still so hard to choose a train over a plane?
On many long-distance routes in Europe, choosing the train can feel like a borderline heroic decision. It鈥檚 often more expensive, takes longer, and can be less reliable when connections are tight.
This week we spoke to cross-border rail advocate @jon about what Europe would need to change to make rail the obvious choice, not a moral gesture.
Here鈥檚 his recipe. THREAD:
1. Better, more interconnected timetables.
One early morning train from Berlin to Paris is not a serious offer on a continent of this size. Sparse frequencies and poorly aligned connections make cross-border travel stressful. If you cannot arrive in Berlin at a reasonable hour and reliably continue to Paris the same day, rail loses to aviation by default. Frequency and coordination matter as much as speed.
2. More night trains.
In the short term, night services are the only practical way to cover very long distances without losing an entire day to travel.
3. Long-term: faster lines.
The comparison is sobering. A train from Beijing to Shanghai, roughly 1200 km, takes around 4 hours 40 minutes. A train from Warsaw to Berlin, just 571 km, takes around 6 hours 30 minutes. Who wouldn鈥檛 take an Amsterdam to Vienna train if it took 5h? Or Copenhagen Brussels in under 4h?
None of this is about romance or nostalgia. It is about system design. As long as trains are slower, more expensive and less predictable than planes, people will continue to fly. The structural conditions have to change first.
What would make you switch?
@europeanspodcast One thing I would love new trains to lean in on more heavily are dedicated compartments whether it's child playground areas, a nice cafe/restaurant, sleeping areas (sleeper trains are nice but is there maybe a daytime lounge version of it?), or dedicated call booths for people travelling for business. These things partially exist already but reliable internet still appears to be a utopia. If they can be fixed, train as default means of transport might become an inevitability.
