Tracking the ups and downs of cross-border train travel in the EU

EU Untangled

News, Politics

5 • 3 Ratings

🗓️ 27 July 2023

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Let's be honest, how often do you take the train when crossing borders in the EU? We know flying is anything but sustainable. Yet, the prospect of jetting to our family, friends, or holiday destination fast and (ahem) cheap is all too tempting. Trains have a hard time competing against planes: booking is complicated, trips often take longer, and prices can be irrationally high. We join forces with Philipp Cerny to untangle the complexity of EU cross-border train travel. After all, Europe has one of the densest railway networks in the world, but markets, policy and incentives seem to move like a slow train coming...

Transcript

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0:00.0	So, Vic, tell me about your last trip in Europe.
0:03.1	Sure.
0:03.6	So last time I traveled in Europe, I went to Warsaw from Brussels, and I took a plane.
0:09.8	It took me one and a half hours.
0:11.4	It was fast.
0:12.0	It was smooth, comfy.
0:13.1	I even had snacks on board.
0:14.6	Wow.
0:15.1	Yeah, it was great.
0:16.1	The problem is afterwards, I realized that it was quite polluting.
0:20.0	My return trip, Brussels,Warsu by plane,
0:23.0	emitted a total of 466 kilos of CO2 emissions versus 15 kilos of CO2 emissions that I would have
0:30.3	emitted if I had traveled by train, according to a CO2 calculator that I found online.
0:35.3	Great that you calculated this afterwards, not before. Yeah. Now, I have to
0:41.0	admit that I also took a plane the previous time I traveled. I went to Nice, and I'm also going to be
0:46.6	taking the plane in my next two trips that I have planned for this summer. I'm going to Prague in July,
0:51.7	and then I'm going to the south of France in August. I also have to say that I did consider booking a train ticket to go to the south of France to
0:59.5	Nantes from Brussels. But first of all, it wasn't really clear where I could get the tickets for this
1:04.8	trip. And then when I finally managed to navigate the SNCF, the French Railways Company website,
1:10.7	I realized that the prices for a one-way
1:13.0	train ticket were a lot more expensive than flying and that they included a couple of layovers,
1:18.7	one in Lille and another one in Paris where I even had to go to a different train station.
	...

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