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In my near future I see multiple one hour flights around the UK, France, Spain and Portugal.

This is because the rail service, while the track exists, is not fit for purpose.

Dear Europe, stop fucking about with fascism and sort the bloody trains out. euronews.com/green/2024/07/02/…


Lack of direct trains in Europe is pushing people to take flights, campaigners say

Greenpeace is calling for more investment in European railways to create more direct train routes and encourage people to fly less.
Ian Smith (Euronews.com)
in reply to Sarah Brown

Rachel Greenham
Rachel Greenham
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(and a reminder that mussolini making the trains run on time was a myth)
in reply to Rachel Greenham

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
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@Rachel Greenham Yeah. My GCSE history teacher explained that when we were covering the period, nearly 4 decades ago. More people should have good history teachers.
@Rachel Greenham
in reply to Sarah Brown

Rachel Greenham
Rachel Greenham
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was just an unquestioned aphorism for me until recently, and then only heard the opposite in passing, so vague enough i still had to check with a few sources before posting that reply just now 😀
in reply to Rachel Greenham

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
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@Rachel Greenham The way it was explained to me was that it was so unremittingly shit that they had to create fake nostalgia about SOMETHING to erase the trauma.
@Rachel Greenham
in reply to Sarah Brown

Richard Gadsden
Richard Gadsden
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@StrangeNoises There were a group of American and British journalists who went on a tour in the mid-1920s and they set the station clocks forward so their trains appeared to have arrived exactly on time and several of them wrote that their trains always arrived on time in their stories writing up how great Fascist Italy was.
@Rachel Greenham
in reply to Richard Gadsden

Rachel Greenham
Rachel Greenham
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@po8crg ooh, my confirmation bias likes that story 😉 because i bet every one of those journalists had watches on their wrists. (it being, perhaps, a little late in the day for fob-watches)
@Richard Gadsden
in reply to Rachel Greenham

Richard Gadsden
Richard Gadsden
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@StrangeNoises I can't find the source for that story, but I can find several saying that the Italian railway was organised under Mussolini to have the diretissima (fast expresses; the Florence-Rome line is still called that to this day) having priority over local and commuter trains that normal people used so tourists found the service good and locals didn't.
@Rachel Greenham
in reply to Rachel Greenham

FeralRobots
FeralRobots
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@StrangeNoises
I mean if stuff actually works, then what have you got to blame on dirty foreigners?!
@Rachel Greenham
in reply to Sarah Brown

FeralRobots
FeralRobots
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this makes me sad, as one category of things I've had on my retirement list was using some of the extensive European rail networks I've been reading about my whole life.
in reply to FeralRobots

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
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@FeralRobots Spoiler: They're actually shit, and the experience is slow, byzantine, and about ten times as expensive as "just buying some carbon offsets (which may be a scam) and fucking taking Ryanair"
@FeralRobots
in reply to Sarah Brown

FeralRobots
FeralRobots
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have they always been that way, & just had better PR in the past?

(My token experience is that at least British rail service has gone downhill in recent years. We were in England/Scotland for our honeymoon c2007, then again for a conference in 2019, & took a train north from London both times (Edinburgh in '07, York in '09, so same line). In just those 12 years, the experience degraded really strikingly.)

in reply to FeralRobots

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
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@FeralRobots I think it’s that the comparison people often make is with North America, which is the lowest of low bars.

The comparison they should make is China.

@FeralRobots
in reply to FeralRobots

bovine3dom
bovine3dom
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@FeralRobots imo interrail/eurail are pretty fantastic for exploring Europe.

A couple of weeks ago I needed to get to Vienna from Nice, so I took some trains down to the Cinque Terre, explored those for the day and then took a night train from La Spezia to Vienna. I could have flown direct with WizzAir instead and it would have been quicker, a lot simpler and a little cheaper, but much less memorable.

@FeralRobots
in reply to FeralRobots

Richard Gadsden
Richard Gadsden
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@FeralRobots For touring around on holiday, they're fine, especially because you can get an Interrail/Eurail pass and tickets become much cheaper then. But if you just want to travel from A to B, flying is a lot cheaper.
@FeralRobots
in reply to Sarah Brown

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
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Here’s what I would regard as a minimum viable standard to even start to be some sort of competitor for air travel: low season, if I can travel from Faro to London, including a sleeper berth, for 150 euros, and buy the ticket on Trainline dot com in 10 minutes.

It doesn’t even start to come close, and is never projected to.

in reply to Sarah Brown

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
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By the way, Faro to London off season on Ryanair is 20 euros and takes 2 minutes to book, so I’m already lowering my expectations a LOT.
in reply to Sarah Brown

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
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And here’s how the experience by rail currently starts:

From Faro: take a bus to Seville. Book a hotel.

Faro is connected to the European rail network, but there are no tickets available to any other country.

Miguel Arroz reshared this.

in reply to Sarah Brown

Ian Douglas Scott
Ian Douglas Scott
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American rail experience: there's a rail line that goes where I want to get to, but the branch lines are all freight lines only these days, so I'll have to pack myself into a crate or take multiple buses.
in reply to Sarah Brown

Adam Jacobs 🇺🇦
Adam Jacobs 🇺🇦
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Yeah. I went to Madrid last month. I went by train, because I feel sufficiently strongly that it's the right thing to do, but the difference in price between the train journey and flying was not funny.
in reply to Sarah Brown

Sasha
Sasha
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I have To travel regularly to Copenhagen. Bed to office chair is about 6 hrs by plane and 18 hrs overnight by train or driving, and a lot more expensive.
in reply to Sasha

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
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@Sasha And that's the tragedy. You want to do the right thing, but the people who are supposed to be managing our infrastructure aren't interested in facilitating that.
@Sasha
in reply to Sarah Brown

Anders Norén
Anders Norén
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On the other hand: while direct trains can be nice, it's often just as good to have frequent trains with timed connections. gruene.social/@jon/11271632597…

Jon Worth

2024-07-02 10:04:01


Agh

Greenpeace has a new report about missing *direct* connections between European capital cities

PDF:
greenpeace.de/publikationen/Gr…

This is somehow right and wrong simultaneously. Sure, some routes we need are missing. *But* for example I’d prefer a Frankfurt-Paris every hour than a Paris-Berlin once a day…


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