friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

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

mastodon - Link to source

FeralRobots

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

mastodon - Link to source

Oliver Blanthorn

@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 Sarah Brown

mastodon - Link to source

Richard Gadsden

@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
Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source

Richard Gadsden

@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
⇧