Down the track, national rail gauges need to be harmonized with neighbouring tracks. Nonetheless, Ferrari believes that "simple improvements" can be made in terms of time-tabling coordination across borders, or adding extra services to limit waiting times between connections. ![]() This includes the fact that few airports have a direct train to other cities. Lorenzo Ferrari, a researcher at OBC Trans-Europa and co-author of the report, said "a lot of bottlenecks" in terms of cross-border travel were limiting rail's ability to outcompete flying. ![]() This means that 81 million annual air passengers in Europe could instead travel by train in a time comparable to even the shortest flight - when travel to the airport and waiting time is included. Looking at flights under 1,500 kilometres (900 miles), the study found that journeys on 34% of high-traffic routes can be made by train in under six hours. The 150 busiest flight routes in the European Union could be predominantly serviced by train, according to a 2021 report by the Italian think tank OBC Trans-Europa commissioned by Greenpeace. The European Union is also revitalizing cross-border night trains, which were scaled back because of competition from budget airlines.īut the challenge remains to create a more robust and integrated cross-border rail network that currently has a strong domestic focus. The German Green Party also called to outlaw shorter flights in the lead-up to last year's federal election, and promised to make rail cheaper than a budget flight. Seventy percent of Germans want to ban short-haul flights and instead use trains, according to a 2021 survey. It already makes sense to travel Paris to Lyon, for example, on a high-speed TGV train - from the city centre, the train is 40 minutes quicker than a plane and often cheaper. Right now, however, rail has a long way to go, with Greenpeace noting that less than 7% of passenger transport in the European Union is happening by train.Īs part of the European Green Deal, there is a push to make high-speed trains the dominant form of transport between select European cities.Īfter rail passenger numbers dropped in the wake of the pandemic, the EU used 2021, the European Year of Rail, to announce plans to double high-speed rail routes across the continent by 2030 and create a seamless single connecting network.Īt the same time, the French government bailed out Air France on the proviso that it ban domestic flights on routes where the train journey is less that 2.5 hours. It's time for trains, which emit a tiny 0.4% of the European Union's transport emissions - planes produce more than 10 times as much CO2 - to provide a better alternative. With the industry planning to return to pre-COVID capacity by 2024, air traffic is set to double worldwide by 2037. Meanwhile, the aviation industry has the fastest-growing greenhouse gas emissions in the EU, rising 29% between 20, according to Greenpeace.ĭespite the airline business's post-pandemic crisis, flights are expected to burn up over a quarter of the allotted carbon budget for holding global heating to 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 F) by 2050. (Also Read: Canada to resume Covid-19 mandatory random testing for air travellers )Ī typical rail journey between European cities emits up to 90% less CO2 than an equivalent flight. We would have been dropped at a station a few stops from home and might have got some rest in a carriage that is way more comfortable than a thrombosis-inducing economy flight cabin.īest of all, we would have saved a lot of carbon emissions, doing our little bit to put a brake on the runaway emissions in the transport sector. ![]() In the six hours we initially spent queuing at the help desk after the first cancellation, we could have travelled to the German capital by rail. The moral of the story: We should have just taken the train. After several cancelled flights and many hours queuing, I made it home with my family via Paris, burning double the amount of CO2 along the way. I recently spent nearly two days trying to fly around one hour from Amsterdam to Berlin.
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