What’s actually holding again prepare journey? – DW – 09/05/2025

Transcript: 

Mark Smith: If it is the beginning of a journey that I’m occurring, there’s a sense of anticipation. additionally a way of risk. The potentialities are in all probability extra bounded by your creativeness than by the precise prepare service. I imply, if it wasn’t for the state of affairs in Russia, you will get so far as Hong Kong and even Singapore by prepare in case you put your thoughts to it.

Narrator: That’s Mark Smith, a prepare journey fanatic from the UK. Right now, he is ready to board a prepare from Berlin to Warsaw, and we’re becoming a member of him for this stretch of his journey throughout Europe. His last cease, Estonia, the place he’ll be talking at a mobility convention about the advantages of rail journey. Mark’s journey started in London, and he will want 4 days and eight completely different trains to achieve his vacation spot. The ticket value is about €420, or $90 by aircraft. He may have made the journey in underneath three hours for as little as €21. Even driving would have been faster and cheaper. So why go to all this hassle? And extra importantly, what would wish to vary to make prepare journey extra aggressive and extra interesting for the remainder of us?

Nacima Baron: There is a fairly broad notion that the standard of prepare journey is deteriorating.

Peter Dyson: For too lengthy, individuals have been handled like cargo. But we’re all human. There are many issues that may very well be carried out rather a lot higher.

Narrator: You’re listening to Living Planet, I’m Neil King. Time to hop on the prepare with Mark. The seats in our coach are divided into compartments of six. Marc shortly finds his reservation and will get comfy on a blue upholstered seat by the window. He’s carrying a gray full beard and is clearly dressed for practicality a brown gentle waxed jacket, trousers with massive pockets and trekking footwear.

Mark Smith: Friedrichstrasse a bit completely different from beforehand.

Narrator: He appears outdoors because the prepare slowly makes its method by Berlin. There’s a mum together with her son within the compartment visiting household in Warsaw. An aged couple from Switzerland is on a vacation journey by Germany and Poland. A businessman walks up and down the hall, talking into his cellphone to not disturb anybody with our dialog. We moved to the restaurant coach proper subsequent door. Some fellow vacationers are having breakfast. Scrambled eggs with ham, judging by the odor. The pink seats within the coach matched properly with the tie of the waiter, who’s strolling as much as us from behind the bar.

Mark Smith: Well, on these Polish eating automobiles. I just like the Zurich soup and the schnitzel. The Zurich is completely pretty.

Narrator: The journeys that acquired Mark hooked on worldwide prepare journey had been the college journeys he did when he was 17 years previous, he says. To the south of France to spend three weeks with a French household. And later the identical 12 months he went on the college Russian journey, the place he took an previous Russian turbine steamer from the UK to Oslo, Stockholm and Leningrad. It was a watch opening expertise for him.

Mark Smith: You uncover what a good way of seeing Europe it’s. There are not any seatbelts, there is not any tense airports, there’s surroundings, there’s individuals, there’s it has a actuality that at present’s air journey does not.

Narrator: Mark made it his actuality. Soon after, in his pupil job issuing European prepare tickets. And he already knew concerning the trains as a result of he’d travelled on them London to Rome, Berlin, Budapest, Moscow, Istanbul, Lisbon, you identify it. He would get a name or a letter from a journey agent, take a clean paper ticket and bullet level pen, fill within the vacation spot and route and calculate the fare based mostly on the gap.

Mark Smith: I used to be doing what I liked, I used to be studying I had all of the gross sales manuals. I learn all of them. fairly one prepare journey the place I acquired greater than I bargained for was my first journey on the luxurious classic Venice sampler Orient Express. So I assumed if I took my Dutch girlfriend of six months, it would not really value that rather more. And she hadn’t been to Italy, which I used to be, which horrified me. I do not know who mentioned what to whom, however someplace within the Brenner Pass, on the second day, we acquired engaged. and right here I’m over 20 years later with them two children, a spouse, 4 cats and a canine.

Narrator: Apart from his personal travels, Marc had fairly a profession in railways. He managed stations himself in London and finally ended up within the British Department for transport, the place he regulated fares and ticketing for all prepare journey within the UK sometimes writing briefings for the minister till at some point in 2001.

Mark Smith: I used to be commuting to him from London. I went into the newsagents at Marylebone station in London to search for one thing to purchase to learn on the prepare house. I spent £2.95, about €4 on a guide. It wasn’t within the guide, it was extra {a magazine} about HTML, about getting a web site on-line. And it labored. It was in all probability one of the best £2.95 I’ve ever spent in my life.

Narrator: Marks web site seat 61, named after his favourite seat on the Eurostar prepare, quickly grew to become his full time job. Over the years, he has constructed what is basically a Wikipedia for prepare journey. The web site explains routes in nearly 100 international locations, from the US to Nepal, on the Trans-Siberian railway or the Orient Express. It has summaries of what to anticipate, maps, timetables, ticket info, guides for the stations and all kinds of little life hacks and loads of footage from these stations, trains, coaches, even the meals on the prepare.

Mark Smith: It will get as much as 1,000,000 visits a month. When I began the web site in 2001, if someone advised me why they wished to go by prepare, they’d usually say they’ve a phobia of flying, they’re afraid to fly, or they have a medical restriction, an operation on their ear. Problem with the center. Or they like trains. And what they are saying now’s two issues. They’re fed up with the airport and airline expertise. In different phrases, they need a greater expertise that rail guarantees to provide them and so they need to journey, maintain and sustainably lower their emissions.

Narrator: And speaking of emissions, let’s take a better take a look at Mark’s route from London to Tallinn. The direct flight takes lower than three hours and omits about 380kg of carbon dioxide per passenger. By automobile, it is much more relying on the gasoline and whether or not you are going alone. The prepare journey produces solely about 110 to 140 kilos of CO2. That’s roughly 70 to 75% lower than making the identical journey by aircraft or automobile. And the hole will develop even wider by 2030. The final diesel trains on this route are set to get replaced with electrical ones working on renewable vitality. Our selections actually matter relating to lengthy distance and worldwide journey. A examine from the University of Leeds discovered that whereas lengthy distance journeys of greater than 80km or 50 miles make up simply 3% of journeys of a resident within the UK, they’re answerable for 70% of their journey associated emissions.

Looking simply at worldwide journey. The disparity is even larger. International journeys are solely 0.4% of whole journeys, however are answerable for 55% of emissions. And if we take a look at the larger image globally. Air journey is answerable for about 2.5% of whole human precipitated CO2 emissions. Private automobiles for just below 10% and rail for 0.2 6%. So to be clear, the mode of transport we select for lengthy distances makes an enormous distinction. And on that entrance, trains are the clear winners. But after all, there’s at all times a commerce off. We want to bear in mind.

Mark Smith: I’m having to in a single day in Berlin, in a single day in Warsaw and in a single day in Vilnius, however it does promise to be fairly a visit.

Narrator: Sounds like extra problem and it is definitely dearer and time consuming for Marc, who loves prepare journey and in a method makes his residing from it. That’s okay. But for many of us, it is a robust alternative. A visit that is fast and handy however polluting or one which’s sustainable however extra difficult. And that is not all.

Train journey additionally faces different hurdles that make it much less easy than flying or driving.

Peter Dyson: Yeah, I feel management is a significant situation or locus of management within the sense of, that brings is linked to different ideas as effectively, like belief.

Narrator: Peter Dyson is a behavioral scientist on the University of Bath within the UK and co-author of the guide transport for people. He researches why individuals journey the best way they do. Take the instance of the Eurostar, the prepare connecting the UK with mainland Europe by a tunnel underneath the ocean.

Peter Dyson: It may come to a cease, however that cease is not defined. when it is darkish, you, the shopper cannot really inform whether or not they’re in a tunnel tons of of meters underneath the ocean or whether or not they’re within the countryside. and you may see how a lot of this results in a degree of hysteria and concern. Being stranded with respect to coach journey that you simply in all probability get a bit much less of with automobile journey. And for air journey the place they really feel just like the airline has a duty. My argument is that, for too lengthy, individuals have been handled like cargo.

It’s like imagining that the service being supplied is merely the underside of the hierarchy of wants, the place the precedence is merely to get individuals from A to B, as if you’re a package deal to be delivered.

Narrator: The hierarchy of wants is a well-liked idea from the psychologist Abraham Maslow, pictured as a pyramid. It ranks what we want from staple items like meals security or shelter, to belonging and self-worth as much as self-actualization that’s changing into one of the best model of your self. Travelling by automobile ticks various bins. It sits proper outdoors your home or flat. You drive when and the place you need to with out strangers sitting subsequent to you, you are feeling protected. A automobile may also make for a pleasant standing image, one thing to shine with. The identical goes for flights going to that one island or one world metropolis you at all times wished to see. In distinction, in case you’re stranded at some random prepare station since you did not catch your connecting prepare, you may’t neglect about comfort or glamour. But we would not be speaking about prepare journey right here if it did not have good sides.

Peter Dyson: Authenticity is basically necessary to individuals. People discuss concerning the comfort and pleasure of a prepare journey, the comfort of a desk, a giant window, the flexibility to stroll and stretch your legs. But additionally they discuss a way of nostalgia and, historical past, the best way wherein it engages with the panorama that it passes by in a method {that a} aircraft clearly does not, flying, 30,000ft. And in the identical method {that a} automobile does not as typically undergo a panorama that has a scene scenic because the railway, in order that embedded nature of feeling linked to your journey has been stronger for rail.

Narrator: As our prepare makes its method from Germany to Poland with 157km/h. The panorama outdoors is slowly altering from the outskirts of Berlin, by forests of pines and birches onto fields filled with yellow rapeseed, wheat and fruit timber. Every couple of minutes we move by villages or all cities. It’s a clean journey. No sudden drops, no stress on our ears. No indicators that inform us to lock your seatbelts. Nobody weighed or scanned our bags.

And it is typically fairly simple in Europe to journey by a number of international locations in a day with none main holdups on the border. But the sleek journey covers up an issue that worldwide prepare journey does have.

Mark Smith: Fragmentation is the most important situation, which ends up in every part else. It results in needing to purchase a number of tickets to finish one journey. It results in not figuring out the place to guide a specific journey. It results in not understanding how you can put collectively an extended journey that requires a number of bookings on a number of web sites. It results in differing requirements.

Narrator: On this journey, Mark depends on six completely different rail operators, every with its personal ticketing system, passenger rights, web site, language, even forex, and someday the identical route is priced in another way relying on the place you guide. For instance, our cross-border journey from Berlin to Warsaw was really cheaper on the Polish Rail web site than on the German one. For a lot of his journey, Marc makes use of an Interrail move, his favourite journey hack for Europe. It’s an multi function ticket that lets him hop on and off trains throughout a number of international locations with out reserving each connection individually, saving him loads of time and problem.

But even that may’t compete with flying with planes. You simply seek for a connection on platforms like Google Flights, Skyscanner or Kayak. Pick your flights, fill in your particulars, select your seat and meal and also you’re off. It’s quick, easy and nearly easy in comparison with the patchwork of rail choices. And then there is a distinction between air, street and rail journey that is nearly invisible however massively necessary. We’ve touched on one draw back of flying being excessive up within the air. Disconnected from the world beneath. And that is the purpose. Air within the skies. There’s no infrastructure to construct or keep. But trains, they depend on tens of 1000’s of kilometers of metal tracks, electrical wiring and all of the supporting methods to maintain them working. Highways to require fixed maintenance. But rail networks take it to a different degree.

Nacima Baron: So that is why the construction of prices between air and rail is so completely different.

Narrator: Nacima Baron is a professor for transport and mobility insurance policies on the Gustave Eiffel University in Paris, significantly for railway community growth. And these bodily networks, she says, are sometimes in a nasty state.

Nacima Baron: High pace Apart, which is possibly youthful when it comes to age of building. The remainder of standard traces are structurally getting old and being out of date, and being much less and fewer sturdy.

Narrator: Lines in Europe specifically generally is a little antiquated.

Nacima Baron: Some components of the infrastructure could be so far as 100 years in France or elsewhere.

Narrator: 200 years in the past, one thing exceptional occurred in northern England. On September twenty seventh, 1825, the world’s first public steam railway carried passengers alongside the Stockton and Darlington line. The journey stretched about 26 miles, and whereas the prepare solely moved at round 15 to 30mph, it marked the start of a revolution in transportation. Fast ahead to at present and the image could not be extra completely different. The quickest passenger trains now are attain speeds of about 250mph. And from that single line in England, rail networks have expanded to cowl greater than 1.3 million kilometers of observe worldwide. Building and sustaining this infrastructure is dear. There is not a world common, however to construct excessive pace railway and international locations of the EU on common prices €25 million per kilometer, one kilometer of freeway prices half of that at most.

Maintaining the railway community is dearer as effectively due to all the electrical wiring and signaling alongside the routes. And for air journey, the bodily infrastructure prices are restricted to only airports. On the floor, comparisons like these could make rail journey appear to be a poor funding. But here is what they omit. Flying and driving include hidden prices. The carbon they pump into the ambiance fuels international warming. And with it, extra droughts, floods, hurricanes and different excessive occasions. And in accordance with scientists, these disasters will carry a really actual price ticket within the years to come back.

Nacima Baron: So, it must be transport mode that’s supported and co-financed by, the general public realm, by, the politicians, no matter degree and establishments.

Narrator: In reality, it is aviation that enjoys the political perks in lots of international locations. Like tax breaks on gasoline and exemptions from VAT. That’s why on the exact same route, you may pay tax in your prepare ticket, however not in your aircraft ticket. And that is a sore level for rail advocates like Marc, which is.

 

Mark Smith: Like you or me filling up our automobile for half value. It’s not that we have to make air journey much less enticing, it is that we have to cease intentionally making it extra enticing than it must be.

Narrator: Despite all of the challenges, rail journey is on the rise. Both the size of the networks and the variety of passengers continue to grow. In reality, 2024 was the primary 12 months that greater than a billion individuals worldwide took a protracted distance or cross regional prepare. Leading the best way are Asian international locations India, Indonesia, Taiwan and particularly China, the place a lot of the new traces are being constructed. At the opposite finish of the dimensions are the Americas, the place prepare journey nonetheless lags far behind.

Mark Smith: I’ve crossed America coast to coast six instances by numerous completely different routes. It’s completely pretty. Although ridership of the prevailing community has grown and grown and grown and achieved information yearly, it is nonetheless a skeleton community by worldwide requirements, and the United States merely hasn’t had the infrastructure, the rail infrastructure investments in passenger rail that different international locations have had.

They determined that the airliner and the motorcar had been king, however trains had been previous hat, and so they ran down their infrastructure and everybody had to purchase a automobile or go to a aircraft, go to an airport.

Narrator: We’ll be proper again after this brief message.

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Narrator: Five hours after leaving Berlin. We arrive in Warsaw as scheduled and Marc is in work mode once more.

Mark Smith: Now the place do we have to go? I’ve seen the worldwide ticket workplace photographed. I’ve seen the primary ticket workplace. I’ve seen the primary corridor.

I’ve seen the grocery store. I’ve seen the left baggage. They’ve acquired platforms. I’ve acquired the passageway above the platforms. Both this one and the opposite one. But that’s the different aspect.

Narrator: There is out of ten factors. How was the journey?

Mark Smith: Oh, that prepare journey was a superb 9. Classic old-fashioned consolation with a vase, restaurant automobile. I did not get to strive the Zurich and Schnitzel this time, however subsequent time.

Narrator: So the place does that depart us on the finish of this journey? For most individuals, flying or driving nonetheless looks like the apparent handy alternative for lengthy distances, however each include a heavy carbon footprint at a time when chopping emissions is extra pressing than ever. Trains are the inexperienced choice, little question. Still, as our interviewees identified, rail must turn into extra seamless each in infrastructure and within the passenger expertise. Not essentially sooner or cheaper than planes or automobiles, however extra gratifying.

Nacima Baron: I actually love going by industrial or post-industrial areas in Europe.

Peter Dyson: In Switzerland, there’s each a holiness to it and a nostalgia.

Mark Smith: We should not be telling individuals they cannot fly. They’ve acquired to journey by prepare. It’ll be horrible. You’ll hate it. You’ll undergo. But it’s important to. I’ve come throughout this phrase punitive sustainability. Sustainability is a few type of punishment. It’s not a punishment. Actually, it is a greater expertise. It takes a bit extra to seek out out about prepare journey. It takes a bit longer. But hey, it is such a greater, extra rewarding expertise. You’re doing your self a favor in addition to the planet.

Narrator: Today’s episode of Living Planet was researched and written by Jonas Yohannes Maya. It was narrated and edited by me, Neil King. Our sound engineer was Juergen Kuhn. To obtain this and previous episodes of Living Planet, go to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You’ll additionally discover some bonus materials on our YouTube channel, DW podcasts. If you want what we do, make certain to hit the subscribe button and depart a ranking or evaluate. Thanks for listening and sharing Living Planet with family and friends.