James Arnold-Baker
Train Fares in Europe
24 Nov 2009
Book budget airlines on the web, and you get a cheap point-to-point fare at the click of a mouse, up to 12 months ahead.
European railways have no such coordinated system. One cannot book long-distance fares more that 90 days ahead, and there is no real price incentive for early booking. The train companies are not maximising their load factors, nor are they making any real attempt to compete with the budget airlines.
Yet every one knows that the train's fuel cost per passenger kilometer is a fraction of that of airlines. If the EEC is serious about reducing global warming, a sensible first step would be to modernise and coordinate their railway booking systems. An excellent high-speed rail network is developing - it's just such an expensive pain to use it.
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