New long-distance train connections between European countries offer an option for flying, and demand is rising quickly for this green way to get around, but a lot can still be done to improve the tracks.
Since it started running in December 2021, 70 per cent of all tickets for the Paris-Vienna night train have been bought; this means that each of the three weekly return trips is almost full.
The Nightjet service, run by the Austrian national provider OBB, leaves Paris’s Gare de l’Est at 7:30 pm and lands in Vienna, the capital of Austria, at 10 am the next day. The cheapest tickets start at just €29.90.
It is one of many new lines connecting important European cities with direct train routes, and more are on the way.
TrenItalia wants to open a direct line between Paris and Madrid by the end of 2024. This is because of the “incredible” success of its lines between Paris, Lyon, Turin, and Milan, which opened in 2021.
At the end of 2023, a sleeper train will start running between Paris and Berlin. In 2024, a new high-speed connection will open between the two cities, cutting the current 10-hour trip time to seven.
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The natural reasons for taking the train are strong. OBB’s estimates show that a two-hour flight from Paris to Vienna releases 419.6 kg of carbon, while a trip on the Nightjet releases only 41.5 kg.
But the government needs to do more to prioritise the eco-friendly way of getting around. Even though a French law passed in May banned short-haul flights if a train route took less than two hours, only three lines were affected because the law had so many loopholes.
Even though there are high-speed train connections between Paris and Lyon or Bordeaux, you can still fly there, and it doesn’t cost too much. Greenpeace found in a study from 2023 that cross-border train tickets in Europe are, on average, twice as expensive as flight tickets. This is because airlines get tax breaks that train tickets don’t get.
In the 1990s, the rise of low-cost air travel gave people the idea of quick, cheap trips that could be done over a weekend. This meant that Europe’s night trains, mostly thought to be useless, went out of business.
In the meantime, it has become harder to fly.
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, airport security became much stricter, and tourists had to wait much longer at airports worldwide.
“The former head of SNCF, Guillaume Pepy, said that in the years after 9/11, the “magic three hours,” which is the amount of time it takes to travel by train so that it can compete with flying, had grown to four or even five hours,” says Smith.
For example, a flight from Paris to Nice that took an hour and a half was no longer much faster or more convenient than a train ride that took five and a half hours; this is especially true when you consider that train stops are usually in the centre of cities and that you can bring a lot of luggage on trains.
Smith says that 20 years later, “trains can have power outlets and Wi-Fi so you can work on them for business travel, and leisure travellers who aren’t in a hurry are willing to go even further.”
That means that taking a long-distance train in Europe can be challenging. If you want to cross one or more foreign borders by train, you may have to book with more than one national rail company and accept that each leg of the trip has its insurance coverage.
