It was certainly a click bait headline. But still a fair point that train fare averages are double airfare. Although we have to question, did Greenpeace throw out the outliers before compiling the stats?

Nah, cheap flight tickets are not an anomaly. Not the norm, perhaps. But at any given time you could easily find plane tickets for less than 50 EUR, which is less than you’ll ever pay for an international train journey.

€13 is cheap for Ryanair, but it's not some absurd anomaly. I went from Ireland to Italy for €18, and took a bunch of other flights for <€30.

Luckily we're on the right track with Germany's 49€ ticket. Now these types of tickets just need to spread and maybe one day we're gonna have a unified EU ticket.

But also subsidize trains at the same time. Otherwise we just forbid poor people from traveling

A checked bag can be had for as little as €20 sometimes. Or just travel with a backpack as "personal item". Definitely possible to fly for €10. €30-€50 is more common though.

It's ridiculous.

Lot of budget airlines sell cheap tickets for the last seats of short hauls in that price range.

In Eastern Europe, it's a whole thing, people buy a cheap ticket for under 30 EUR there and back anywhere. Think like Budapest to Milan, spend a weekend, maybe not even booking a hotel.

It's bad for the destination as well, because if you can't pay for the plane ticket, how are you going to pay for anything else? But you still take your space in the crowd.

It's real, many flights are dirt cheap, especially flights to Amsterdam via KLM from neighbouring countries. I remember waaay back in the day when I was trying to get to Russia from Ukraine to see my then online girlfriend, I had an option of going by bus directly or flying through Amsterdam for the same price but a long layover. Like, literally, across all Europe and back on a flight was the same price as a direct bus ride.

The sad part is that even with the fees the plane remains cheaper than the train.

Why not rather do something to make trains more affordable? People need and want to travel, making air travel more expensive will just cause people to get stuck at home.

It's especially odd since trains inside countries tends to be affordable (and subsidised), but internationally it can get super expensive very quickly.

While those same tracks are used for cargo, so it's not like the whole European track network needs to be maintained just for a few passenger trains.

Kerosene should be taxed by an EU-wide tax.

Yes, or price carbon according to scientific recommendations, and remove exceptions like for Kerosene.

I'm from Germany, and none of the things you said are true. For example, to get from Aachen Central station to Hamburg Central station the cheapest option is 23,90€, but that connection is from 8pm to 3am. If you want to ride in the day, your cheapest price is the Quer-Durchs-Land-Ticket ("Cross-Country Ticket") at 44€. But that way you are only allowed to use regional trains, which will make it a 7 hour train ride. If you want to use intercity trains (still a 5 hour ride), you will pay around 70-90€. And all of that is for 2nd class.

The age cutoff for children to travel for free is 6 years, children from 6-14 and 15-27 years travel at variously reduced prices (39€ for regional-only, 42€ for intercity).

I don't know where you got your information, but here in Germany, we are in the same situation as the UK. And while trains in the UK may be painfully slow on cross-country travel, I have felt that they were much more comfortable to travel on, given the absolutely abysmal state of a lot of our trains.

There was something about France banning domestic flights that take less than 2(or 3?) hours by train.

Which makes a shit ton of sense. The same stretch is not gonna be shorter by plane when you factor in the extra ceremonies you have to attend both before and after the flight, and the time it takes to get to and from wherever the airport is.

think we should ban a lot of flights that can be serviced with quick alternatives

Doing that without actually bringing down the train fares would be frustrating. Budget airline tickets in Europe are ludicrously cheap.

There is Europe problem with integrated universal ticket system. There is lots of lobbing against it mainly from France, Italy, Spain. Then there would be some accountability for late trains, connections made... They just don't want to do it.

I’m looking at going from Barcelona to Paris, both plane and train has direct connections and on the dates I am considering, it’s about 50 eur for the plane and 130 eur for the train each way. Both the airport and trains station are close to me and the trains also has a security check and the queue that comes with that, so I’m still not sure what I’m going to pick.

I don’t think train can compete with a long distance means of transportation

That's true. Trains can compete mid-range, or should be able to compete. With better infrastructure and organization (high speed rail, coordinated timetables, unified booking, ...), this range can be extended. There will always be a certain distance after which planes are the better choice.

But we still should invest to push this point further into the distance, to make planes as obsolete as possible. Trains should be the cheapest option between short distance (bus) and long distance (plane). If they are not, we are doing something wrong in creating incentives.

The plane is not that fast. You have to factor in travel to the airport (outside the city), check-in, security gates, boarding, baggage claim on the destination, which can add up to 3h or more per trip. With a train, you start in the city center and just hop on board.

To your last point, believe it or not, but planes are getting significantly more efficient. Huge wide-bodies like the 747 are retiring in part because airlines don't want to lug around 4 engines, when the 787 can do the same trip with 2.

The a320 neo has a much better engine than previous generations, and same thing with the 737 max (crashing problems aside).