Europe wants you to travel by train. But why is it so complex and expensive?

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/2024 ... -expensive
Taxing airline fuel and fares would be the easy first step .
Except , no politican would risk it anywhere near an election. with multiple countries involved , that is much of the time.

They already have ecologolical driven taxes on air travel in FR, DE and the UK... and you want to tax it more? In the UK it's GBP14 to GBP202 depending on distance and class of service... in Germany it's EUR15 to EUR70. France's rate is similar to Germany's.

Each mode of transport can afford pay it's fair share. You don't need to subsidize one at the expense of another.

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First hand, last month:

Berlin- Hamburg; 255 klicks(159mi) each direction, 2.5hrs, round trip First Class €99,98 ($112.79).

Cheaper than Amtrak; what's the beef?

22 hours to go 159 miles?... Ouch.

The real beef is that thru ticketing (or code share) seems to not be implemented , so it's not possible to book a single trip that requires multiple carriers in one go, and some services appear to sell out of advanced tickets the day those tickets go on sale, 6 months in advance, so you wind up managing to book only half a trip before finding you have to cancel what you've done and start over.

eolesen wrote: ↑Wed Nov 13, 2024 6:16 pm 22 hours to go 159 miles?... Ouch.

Yes; 2.5 hours would be more like it. Typo?

Article on inter-country ticketing
https://www.euronews.com/travel/2024/11 ... -adventure

Tis strange in the continent of standardized bananas that they haven't already done this.i suspect in the push to provide competition between govt owned railways, it didn't fit the dogma

On a related note Air Canada expands through ticketing to railways.