Train travel still pricier than flying on most European routes – report
Clean Energy Wire
Train journeys across Europe remain more expensive than flights on most routes, according to a Greenpeace report. The environmental organisation compared cross-border and domestic one-way ticket prices on 142 routes measuring less than 1,500 kilometres across 31 European countries, and found that flying was cheaper than taking the train on 54 percent of the connections.
“It is absurd that travellers in Europe are being pushed into climate-damaging planes with generous subsidies and tax exemptions, while climate-friendly railways are burdened with countless taxes,” said Greenpeace transport expert Lena Donat. “Anyone who travels by train in a climate-friendly way should always pay less than for flying, everywhere.”
The price differences are particularly striking on cross-border routes. While trains were cheaper on 70 percent of the 33 domestic connections examined, this was only true for 39 percent of the 109 cross-border routes. In France, Spain and the United Kingdom, trains were more expensive than flights on up to 95 percent of cross-border routes, Greenpeace said.
In some extreme cases, such as bookings between Cologne and Manchester or Barcelona and London, taking the train was up to 26 times more expensive than a flight.
Among connections involving Germany, flights with Western European destinations are mostly cheaper than trains, while train journeys to Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria and Belgium, on the other hand, are almost always cheaper than flying.
Greenpeace pointed to tax privileges for airlines as the main reason for the price disparity. Aviation fuel is exempt from taxation across the EU, while international flight tickets are not subject to value-added tax. Rail operators, by contrast, face high track access charges and taxes on electricity and energy use.
The organisation said it was a “small glimmer of hope” that price differences have shrunk slightly over the last two years. While trains were cheaper on only 27 percent of the 111 connections it compared in 2023, that share has risen to 41 percent on the same routes.
