Key Findings
● In the majority (79 out of 112) of routes analysed, flights are less
expensive than rail. Rail trips are on average twice as expensive as
flights, despite the fact that the overall climate impact of flying can be
over 80 times worse than taking a train.
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● On the 112 routes analysed, only 23 of them are (almost) always
cheaper by train than by plane. And only half of them are decent train
trips, the others having really bad or slow train connections, such as
Tallinn–Riga and Warsaw–Ljubljana. 16 of these 23 routes are not
served by low-cost carriers, such as Zurich–Vienna and Brussels–
Hamburg, 6 of these 23 routes do not have any direct flight at all, such
as Berlin–Prague and Ljubljana–Milan.
● With a train ticket costing up to 30 times the price of the flight for a
trip on the same day, Barcelona–London is the route showing the
highest price dierence in this analysis. Some of the routes between
major European cities, such as London–Bratislava (15.5 times),
Budapest–Brussels (12.5 times), Madrid–Brussels (15 times), Valencia–
Paris (12 times) or Rome-Vienna (10.2 times) show high price
dierences as well.
● Countries with the most expensive train tickets compared to flights are
the UK, Spain, Belgium, France and Italy. Whereas in Central and
Eastern Europe
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, trains are more often cheaper in relation to flights
than in Western Europe. However, train frequency, speed, connections
and services are usually worse than in western countries.
● Some really eective train routes such as Amsterdam–London,
London–Edinburgh and Toulouse–Paris (4 to 4.5 hours by train each)
are still among the Top4
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most popular short-haul flights in Europe. On
these routes, flights remain much cheaper.
● Low-cost carriers are all over Europe: they operate 79% of all routes
analysed. For another 12% of the routes analysed, transfer flights
operated by these companies are the cheapest flight option.
● These transfer flights are also by far the most polluting options,
causing up to 10 times more greenhouse gas emissions than already
polluting direct flights according to our calculations. This
climate-wrecking practice suggests travellers go from Budapest to
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The Top3 flight is London–Barcelona (10h by train).
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Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries in this report refer to: Poland, the Baltic
countries, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria.
Austria, despite being geographically part of this region, is not considered as CEE in this
report.
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The overall climate impact of flying can be over 80 times worse than taking a train. Planes
emit on average 4.84 times more greenhouse gas emissions than trains according to data
from the European Environment Agency, which is a conservative low estimate. Figures vary
by country, railway company, route and type of train, and national data is available for most
countries.
/ Trains vs. Planes Price Analysis
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