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Comment by jdasdf | Hacker News Reader

>what could be more pleasant than being able to criss-cross Europe in night trains that are affordable, comfortable and sustainable?

Doing it by plane at a fraction of the time and cost.

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For the distances where night trains are feasible "a fraction of time" is not really true if you take into account the time costs associated with air travel:

* airports are usually far at the outskirts of a capital (45m travel there)

* you need to get to the airport 2h before to checking-in/passport control, etc.

* you need to wait to pick up your baggage (30m)

* travel into the city again (45m)

Not to mention the stress and high friction of every step of this journey, opposite to going to the main train station, which usually is pretty central, getting in the train, and sleeping the full night in a decent cot.

Drinking water. But you can buy 500mg of water for 5 Euros of course, right? Traveling as a family with with children, and when your departure is delayed, you can spend quite a bit just to stay hydrated.

Fortunately, many airports have taps with drinking water available. I don't understand why not all (e.g. no drinking tap & warm water only is available on the toilets), it feels like a conspiracy by the 5-Euros-water sellers.

The cost of flying is externalized on the environment; time can vary depending on actual distance, after you consider getting to/from the airport, or the last 100km to your destination. I think the two options are fairly competitive with one another.

The cost of trains are externalized on the taxpayer. If air travel received the same level of subsidies as rail, it would be essentially free of charge.

I'd rather pay the taxes this year, than have us continue digging ourselves into our environmental debt hole. Money is fungible, climate change isn't.

The interesting thing is that it that night trains can be quicker if you consider the waking. e.g. Zurich to Berlin - the train leaves at 8pm and gets in at 7am. So it is 2-3 waking hours spent.

(Does of course depend on how well you sleep on trains)

Copenhagen to Berlin overnight. You go to bed in the train around midnight and wake up in Berlin around 8 or 9. Nothing can be more convenient.

It's too close of a distance for a night train. It should take maybe three hours on properly developed railways that do not go around.

It has to go around because there's water in the way no?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fehmarn_Belt_fixed_link

Air travel is cheaper in part because it is subsidized [1].

Nothing wrong with optimizing for cost - if all externalities are properly priced. Otherwise its just egotistical behavior (don't mess with my habits) that passes as "common sense".

[1] https://www.transportenvironment.org/challenges/planes/subsi...

Train is also subsidized. In fact, while air transport benefits from tax exemption, train receives substantial infrastructure subsidy. The following report puts rail subsidy to be around 75B EUR, whereas air within 27B to 35B. The study is from 2007, but I doubt it has changed much.

https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/technical_report_2007...

Very informative report. But as per its conclusion: "subsidies could be justified to balance the existence of external costs of competing modes, e.g. when an internalisation of the externality, for whatever reason, encounters strong political opposition from vested interests. This applies to some of the subsidies for public transport, especially rail, since its competing modes, particularly road and air, have significantly higher external costs".

In other words, it makes sense to subsidize rail, it doesn't make sense to subsidize modes with higher externalities.

It may very well be that rail subsidy makes sense and air subsidy doesn't. I'm not arguing for or against it. The original question pertains to why air ticket is cheaper than train. You and a number of posters here attributed that to subsidy, and I just wanted to point out that rail transport in Europe receives even larger subsidy than air transport.

There are many factors affecting pricing, for example occupancy rate. Load factor of aircrafts are in the 80 percentage - [0], whereas it's often under 60% for long distance Deutsche Bahn's trains in Germany - [1]

Another possibility is that train operators are often state owned and therefore face less competition and are less efficient than airliners, who are used to operate in a cutthroat environment.

Note that I don't claim either of the above cause train's pricing disadvantage, merely they are factors to consider. OTOTH attributing pricing advantage to subsidy is a lazy take of a complex issue.

[0] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/658830/passenger-load-fa...

[1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/654973/long-distance-tra...

At a fraction of the cost because air travel doesn't pay it's real costs in terms of environmental damage (or even taxes...).

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