> For some reason, public transport is always priced in a way that makes it really expensive for occassional usage. If you go everday, then an annual pass is a good value.
At €1.32/l for gas in Vienna and 10l/100km this trip would cost you €63 in gas alone with an ICE car. This doesn't account for wear and wasted time so it's actually not that unreasonable at all and actually pretty cheap if you're going by yourself. With a family, I agree, it's more expensive. Although I'm starting to see the appeal that traveling by train has with a family, being able to walk around, entertain the kids more easily, etc.
> So the only thing it offers is being cheaper than renting a car for one extra day for long journeys
Nope. It also offers not having to drive. I can read a book on a train, which I can't do in a small car even if I don't drive because I'll get car sick. I can even walk around and have luch in the train restaurant, go to the bathroom without having to stop.
> There are really people who are willing to spend five hours, six hours, seven hours on a train
Yeah! I have no problem spending 6, 7 hours in a train if I have a comfy seat, Wifi and someplace where I can get a coffee and some food, like a dining car or a nice vending machine. A clean WC would also be a plus. There is no comfier way to travel, IMO, and you can be productive if you want to, too.
As someone who used to use the Munich - Paris TGV regularly, I'm a bit sad that they will use German ICEs, as the french trains are a bit nicer food-wise :D
> You mention Swiss train service for example which seemed pretty great as a visitor--but it sure wasn't cheap as is true of a lot of European train service.
The thing is, if you're not a visitor, you'd buy an AG or a demi-tarif (perhaps with a contribution from your employer). The former gives you free unlimited use on almost all public transit (including trains and busses), or alternatively, the latter gives you approximately a 50% discount on the price you paid as a tourist. The latter is quite commonly sponsored by your employer – and even if not, both types pay off very quickly if you actually commute by public transit.
> So the DB sells a 250 Euro card that gives you a 50% discount on tickets for a year.
A nitpick that's so small as to almost be irrelevant: For people up to (and including) the age of 26, it's actually 60€/year. This makes going by train a financially pretty attractive travel method.
> but most of the passengers are just weirdos who enjoy wasting their time taking the train cross-country in 2018 (like me).
If you waste time while you're travelling with public transport you're doing it wrong. For example, something like an e-reader is pretty thin and weights a few hundred grams and can hold thousands of books. Noisy? I bought half decent earplugs the other day for just 12 EUR. All you gotta do is take them with you. But you'd do that in an airplane as well. Add to that, airplanes are terrible for the environment; trains are less bad.
> Does anyone have any advice for finding cheaper train tickets?
What I did:
- got a DB Bahncard 25 (25% reduction on all prices)
- use the DB site or app to find the lowest-cost connections (enable "Show our best prices", only works 2 days in advance or later)
- select the lowest-price connection which has a bearable number of changes and waiting periods, for me this ends up between 6 and 10 changes for the trip from Sweden to the Netherlands which I make quite often. The price tends to end up about half of what it would cost to fly, sometimes a bit more, sometimes even less. I sometimes travel first class when the price difference between first and second is less than ~20%.
- as soon as there is a delay or reschedule - which seems to be "nearly always" - I reschedule to a route with fewer changes which normally would be sold for 3 or 4 times the price I paid. I then get reservations on the new route (easily done online, not always available though).
I just returned from a trip to the Netherlands where my original 10-change route ended up being a 4-change route including the NightJet to Bonn, ICE from Bonn to Hamburg through the night (train nearly empty so I could stretch out between the seats), Hamburg to Copenhagen followed by Copenhagen to Gothenburg. This is a long trip, about 22 hours. Travelling by car it would take around 16 hours but then I'd (a) have to have a car (which I don't) and (b) would have to drive while I can sit and walk and talk and work and rest in the train. Compared to a flight the train takes much longer (including travel to and from airports) but it is cheaper and I can take much more luggage and have much more freedom since I'm not treated as cattle to be herded. When I have the time I take a train, when not I either wait until I have the time - i.e. I change my plans - or I take a plane.
> So 3 to 6 hours we take the train. More than that we tend to fly.
Yep. I could tolerate the longer travel times, but long distance train travel gets really expensive really quickly. For the price of a round-trip train ticket across Germany (Berlin to Cologne, around €100), I could also fly to London, Paris, Amsterdam, etc.
> That sounds intuitive to me but the fact that train tickets are so expensive on long distances (more than twice than if you travel alone in a car) makes me think it's not the case.
Have you factored in all the costs associated with owning a vehicle (e.g. cost of purchase, maintenance, etc)?
> The train from Frankfurt to Basel alone is that price
No? Maybe if you’re trying to book tomorrow, or at a very specific time, but looking on RailEurope for an arbitrary date (September 1), I see plenty of tickets for under $50.
On the other hand, trying to go the whole way from Amsterdam to Rome does get a lot more impractical, because of all the transfers making the trip take around 24 hours, but you can get tickets for only around $150. I do agree that if you live in Amsterdam, it’s probably worth it to just fly to Rome because of a lack of good direct routes.
Other routes that are about the same distance are a lot more feasible though. Paris to Rome can be done with only one stop, for example.
>Eg you pay 29 EUR minimum for a Hamburg-Berlin ride, compared to 9? for a bus.
Long distance bus are much cheaper, but also much less comfortable and less reliable. DB gets a lot of flak for one hour delays on the first snow, my bus was delayed 3 hours at the start of winter. In general delays seem much more frequent with the bus. The concept of connecting to a different bus also doesn't exist (probably because of unreliable travel times), meanwhile with the train I can travel from anywhere to anywhere.
I would love cheaper trains, but they are already cheaper than traveling long distance by car and much more enjoyable and reliable than long distance bus. They lose badly to cheap flights though.
> I think a valid criticism is that it would still be good value at, say, 99 euros, or whatever
At 99€ it would have massively lower user numbers. It's already to a large degree a commuter ticket at 49€ - at 99€ alternative tickets would be the better choice for many.
Rail is heavily subsidised in many European countries. But a well-run and affordable rail service is such an essential motor of economic well-being that subsidies are generally accepted as essential by governments and most of the public.
For an example of what what happens when more and more of the cost of a ticket is shouldered by the commuter, look at the UK. We have some of the highest rail fares in the whole of Europe.
Below is research from the TUC (Trades Union Congress) in the UK who campaign against rail privatisation. Whether or not you agree with their stance on privatisation, the cost of a monthly season ticket in the UK is enormous.
Monthly season ticket comparison: UK vs Europe:
UK: Luton to London St. Pancras (35 miles) £387
UK: Liverpool Lime Street to Manchester Piccadilly (32 miles) £292
That's 4 hours by train or 6 hours by car. The train costs 160 Euros without any reductions. I wonder what you paid for the car rental and fuel costs etc. A random calculator I consulted estimated about 60 Euros for fuel alone.
(Much of this is moot, of course, if you did other stuff than just do a single-person straight Munich-Berlin trip.)
> we use practically 0 Swiss trains. They are super expensive
I guess you know that, but if you live in Switzerland you're supposed to have the discount card ("demi-tarif") which makes the train way more affordable. It's still not cheap, especially if you compare with a car trip not taking the price of the car and maintenance into account (which is reasonable if you need the car for other reasons anyway). But in my case at least, without kids, it's really worth being able to use my time to do something productive rather than driving.
Also curious about the Chamonix example: I've never lived in Geneva, but aren't there a ton of other options in Switzerland that are way more connected than the French side? Why choose this example over Swiss resorts?
> Cramped trains will rarely win politically but electric cars that go fast and look cool do win.
That's unfortunate, since trains would surely be the more efficient form of transportation, at least when dealing with regular commute, like going to work and back. Over here, a train ticket costs a few Euros, you don't have to worry about driving or traffic jams, gas/charging, or parking. Of course, if you need to go to a specific rural area or transport some heavy items, then the equation changes, but that's not the majority of the cases.
I'm actually rather sad that they closed down a train route to a city next to my countryside residence, since buses aren't as comfortable in most cases. Either way, public transportation feels like an obvious necessity to me, though many might disagree.
> To an extent, flying is just way too cheap. I mean, I was looking at a roundtrip london/barcelona just last week, it was $25. By train I'm looking at at least 10 hours, likely more like 15, and $300.
That's because you are comparing standard railway companies with low-cost airlines. I believe that it would also cost around $300 to fly from London to Barcelona and back with British Airways or Iberia.
The era of low-cost railway companies in Europe is just beginning: FlixTrain[1] (Germany), OUIGO[2] (France), RegioJet[3], and LeoExpress[4] (both Central Europe) are now all offering long-distance train tickets from 10€.
Also, at €9 for a ticket that lasts a month, you're going to save an awful lot of money compared to taking the car.
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