Since his brother moved to Berlin three years ago, Yann Moszynski had got into the habit of visiting him by plane. At 29, this resident of Yvelines says he is part of a generation “who has taken advantage of low cost flights”. But this summer, he decided to take the train: “With the heat wave, the IPCC reports coming out one after the other and the fact that climate change is undeniable, it’s a fact, I feel more and more guilty about flying”. So far he had been discouraged by “pretty negative feedback that said it was long, complicated, unreliable and expensive.”
On the contrary, Yann draws a positive balance from this first experience. Comfortable wagons with “stable Wi-Fi”, no luggage limit as in airplanes. And then “there is not all the stress and waiting for security” from the airport, he points out. It also retains the arrival “directly in the city center” from Berlin, enough to put the eight-hour train journey into perspective (with a connection in Frankfurt), knowing that the two capitals can be connected in less than two hours by plane. By booking three weeks in advance, the 30-year-old got a one-way ticket for 130 euros. A price that some will probably consider dissuasive even if, “of memory, he specifies, the plane was a little more expensive, around 180 euros”.
I just did Paris > Berlin by train rather than by plane for the first time in my life
I’m still delighted to tell myself that I crossed half of Europe in silence and without polluting – am I the only one who finds it magical? pic.twitter.com/6RoIlokdSg
— Mozilette (@mozilette) July 8, 2022
If we look at its carbon footprint, the figures speak for themselves: a Paris-Berlin flight emits 111 kg of CO2 equivalent per person, compared to only 4.5 kg for the same distance by TGV, according to the comparator of the Ecological Transition Agency (Ademe). Yann has therefore divided his carbon dioxide emissions by 25. On average, explains Ademe, the train pollutes eight times less than the car and 14 times less than the plane. While transport accounts for a quarter of the greenhouse gases emitted by the European Union and the objective of the 27 is carbon neutrality by 2050, the development of rail therefore appears to be an essential lever.
Florence Baron is well aware of this: she has only flown once in the last ten years. By ecological convictions, she chooses holiday destinations accessible by train, in France and in Europe. This summer, the 30-year-old is going to Copenhagen, Denmark, with friends. They will be nine in total on departure from Paris: “It’s a bit of an expedition, she smiled. About 15 hours of travel with several connections. You have to cross all of Germany and so it takes a day’s journey there, a day’s journey back.”
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Two days of transport over two weeks of vacation and 250 euros of tickets per person… A significant investment, even if everyone was convinced by the approach from the start of this trip: “It meant that we were going to agree on the fact that we put more into transport than a journey that we could have made by plane. Let’s say it’s part of the vacation. It’s another way to travel.” summarizes Florence.
“The rates are less and less advantageous for the plane”, temperate Cloé Chevron, co-author of the Réseau Action Climat report for the revival of rail in France and expert for the firm Egis Conseils. Although kerosene is still not taxed – despite the will of some European countries – the cost of this fuel is increasing and “air travel will become more and more expensive, she says. And I believe, that the railway companies understood that it was necessary to limit, on their side, the prices of the tickets.
Still, nothing seems to be done to facilitate reservations for European travelers. “The SNCF site, I believe that it is not yet fully optimized for international travel”, understatement Yann Moszynsky, which praises the merits of the Trainline site. Some companies aremore attentive than others“, advances, for her part, Coraline Brabander. To travel with her 9-year-old son and their two bicycles between Berlin and Budapest, the Lyonnaise benefited from the telephone assistance of the Deutsche BahnGerman public railway company: “There is a person who speaks French and who is really very attentive. I spent several hours on the phone with him to find the right routes that allow you to put the bikes on the train without dismantling them”.
Fifty years after the creation of the interrail pass, there is still not, strictly speaking, a European pricing policy, nor a single reservation platform. The infrastructures are there but the offer remains fragmented, explains Cloé Chevron: “The French and European rail markets are not very well interconnected.”
“Today we are on very domestic markets with a few exceptions of international lines but we do not ultimately have a European rail travel network”.
Cloé Chevron, rail market expertat franceinfo
Fans of rail, and in particular sleeping cars, have nevertheless had something to celebrate in recent months: the opening of the Paris-Vienna night train on 13 December last with three journeys (of 14 hours) per week in each sense and the announcement, on March 24, of the launch by thea SNCF and Deutsche Bahn of a direct TGV between Paris and Berlin (7 hours journey) in December 2023. A new company called Midnight Trains, promises for its part “hotels on rail” from 2023 by relaunching in particular the Paris-Venice line abandoned by the Italian company Trenitalia.
Getting on a train after dark and opening your eyes to another country… that’s the charm of Europe night trains To allow you to travel far while controlling your impact on the environment
— SNCF (@SNCF) January 17, 2021
“Marketing stunts, judge Cloé Chevron. Dbehind, there is no profitability”, for lack of sufficient demand. For these lines to become profitable, continues the expert, it will be necessary to convince the regulars of the air to switch to the rail: “I think that we really need to send messages on ratios of ecological footprint train versus plane.” Cloé Chevron even believes that the authorities and the media should praise the slowness: “People have to stop wanting to connect point A to point B in two hours, that’s all.”
“Once we have convinced people that, in fifteen days of travel, two days of transport are needed, then they can take the train.”
Cloé Chevron, rail transport expertat franceinfo
But apart from the epinal image of the famous Trans-Siberian or the mythical Orient-Express, do long train journeys still make holidaymakers dream? “It’s true that in the common imagination, it’s something less sexy than flying over the seasays Yann Moszynsky.We will see all our friends post stories at the airport, on the plane, through the window. And it’s true that we see few people highlighting the train journey”he acknowledges.
And this is precisely what prompted him to share his experience on social networks: “I think the more of us can do this, the more we can hope to change behaviors.” An approach initiated in 2019 by Gwenaëlle Michels and Victor Gérard, creators of the VoyagerEntrain website. The couple distills practical advice, anecdotes and photos collected during their rail routes accompanied by their two daughters. The French rail network is the second largest in Europe in length, with 27,594 kilometers, according to a 2018 census. It is preceded by Germany with 38,416 kilometers and Poland (19,235 kilometers).