Europe’s Experiment: Treating Trains Like Planes

There is literally no proper railway connection between Madrid and Lisbon - this is mind-blowing. In Portugal it is faster to drive from Porto to Lisbon, than take train...

An American criticising the rail network in Europe, when the rail network doesn't exist in the US, what hypocrisy !

No wonder you are a Yankee pro-airplanes xD

Break up of national railway in companies that handled infrastructure, rolling stock and passenger services based kn the directices of the eu caused massive problems to Greece. Yes of course this works in most eu countries but in Greece we mostly is to blame our government for the management but train cannot be improved further in Europe more that France

Nice video, but it's mistakenly described being about Europe, but it's talking generally mostly about three-four countries, the topic is far wider

St Pancras to Euston isn't even close to a 20 minute walk - more like 5 minutes

It surprises me The UK hasn’t built an underwater tunnel or above ground bridge to connect the UK and Ireland.

germany lol
maybe we had such a good network, but not anymore bud
not anymore

Eu= fail= corruption

Germany has th most inefficienbt train network at all. Japan is the benchmark

InOui is fucking expensive to be budget, it's more expensive than a normal fare in Spain or Italy , and InOui is shit, SNCF it's expensive, bad , dirty on strike at least once per week, usually not to say always late, and the service it's horrible

There is one Problem, Germany is in the middle and the GDL is stopping the trains now. Because they don´t want to work anymore, like normal people do.

In the 70's there was an european train network calle "TEE" Trans Europ Express..... It was a network between France-the Netherlands-Belgium-Germany-Switzerland and northern of Italy....
It was an excellent train network...

When deciding on plane or train you must always include the cost and aggravation of getting from city to airport and vice versa at either end, plus the inevitable time factor of both journeys. Additionally, you are usually required to present yourself at any airport some time before your flight to deal with luggage check in and security. The time varies from 1 hour minimum up to just short of 3 hours. All of this ancillary nonsense is still part of your journey time. In my personal experience and in various trials which have taken place it is usually quicker by train for up to 5 hours and just about equal up to 7 hours, plus train is way less stressful.

propaganda video.

Talking about rail privatization and not mentioning the drama in the UK that happened while they were still EU is crazy

The real issue is international trains that stop 40 times on the way to pick up enough passengers to pay for it's national costs. The ICE travelling from Amsterdam to Berlin for example makes it's penultimate stop in a station West Berlin before arriving at the destination of berlin central station... National governed railways don't want to skimp on their mandatory stops without a guarantee the other countries wouldn't either promised in advance, that makes it a game of chicken....

Liberalisation of the rail market is turning out to be very bad. The big lines were the most profitable of all, while smaller lines were using that money to run. The competition goes to the bigger lines, as it can make more profit there, and prices are driven down there. The national operator therefore loses money on its most important lines, loses a ton of money there, and therefore has to stop services in smaller lines, which further isolate these places.

"not enough competition" Bro the EU really is just a neoliberal shill, privatisation in the UK has decimated the investment and reliabilty of rail and bus transport. The EU loves austerity and hates nationalisation, neither of these bode well for public transport.

Seems rather one-sided. Yes there are plenty issues and it does need competition.

But the part of International being bad is rather strange:
High speed rail from Germany to Amsterdam works well.
Same to Brussels.
The EuroCity Munich to Italy is good
There are German ICE going to Vienna.

How easy it must be to compare europe's passenger transport by rail when in your own country this is still an exotic phenomenon!!!

The way comparisons are made here, these standards and views do not belong here either! If the airlines had to pay taxes and environmental levies in the countries they fly to, a flight would cost much more. So it is logical that consuming the planet is cheap!!! There is also europe between the cities!

We had this model in Poland for long time with the main company ICC, and cheaper alternatives to the same routes: Interregio, Polregio and regional trains.

Want to stop global warming ? Trains that are ultra low cost and run as a not for share holders profit would pull billons of car journey off the roads.

I’ve traveled Madrid-Barcelona twice. In 2013 I flew, but in 2023 taking the high speed train was the obvious and cheaper option. What was missing (or maybe I just l didn’t find) was a third party site that would give me the combined options for the route such as plane and train to compare. Booking was also more difficult than flying. Having an airline’s app can be somewhat helpful for flying, but skipping it is no big deal. But I found having Renfe’s app to be much more important. So still a bit of missing third party interoperability.

At 1.20 this video says Great Britain is the geology term. Sadly, no. The island is called Britain and Great Britain is the union of two kingdoms, Scotland and England. As in the act of union of 1706.

Dystopian Freudian so ever read Aldous Huxley?

The biggest problem:
Rail connections are not public to third parties. Means I can not enter Departure and Arrival and get a connection involving multiple rail operators and book it in one booking.
Booking flights is much simpler and more transparent.

I don’t know connections between Germany and France are really good for example. I can go to Paris much faster than I can go to Munich from where I live even though Munich is a lot closer. The real pain is just going to any place in France that is not Paris. Just the fact that the Guard de Lyon for example has no direct link to the Guard de l‘Est is really annoying. I took a train to Barcelona last year which was OK and under 10h but with the whole added Paris trouble which annoys me greatly I‘m taking a plane next time.

Great video. I wish you'd taken a look at what Turkey is doing.

The trouble with long distance rail is the different width of trains passing through tunnels.
Another important issue you only can realise from personal experience (rather than in studio video productions) -
most of the passengers riding long distance trains, only travel segments.
You see them getting on and off at every station.
And another matter - the staff themselves only do segments.
As an example -
On one long distance route in the UK which lasts about 12 hours (and covers getting on for 1000 miles), the only really busy period is for about 2 to 3 hours -
at the early day end, and the later day terminal end, the train is fairly quiet.
And there's no way the staff do more than one quarter of the route.!!!
ALL including the drivers then return with the next train back.

Some good points, but i dont think deregulation is some sort of quick fix to rail. The only reason that European railways are even remotely interoperable is a direct result of EU regulation (although there is still some way to go). only very specific things should be liberalised, otherwise we end up in a UK type situation where privatisation wrecks the railways

Watching this on the Shinkansen really shows how impressive it is even if it is way more expensive than most people think

Manchester the 2nd largest english city haha need to get the facts correct im afraid! London, Birmingham and leeds have the highest inner city populations and area altho greater Manchester does cover a greater area

Your Paris to Machester point is a blatant contrivance and it's hardly France's fault the UK's got one of the worst rail networks in Europe. Furthermore, the entire airline industry is extremely subsidised (through the disgusting bribery politicians call 'lobbying") to the point where plane tickets are 2-3x cheaper than they should be.

We'll have rail standardisation and high-speed routes across borders sooner rather than later — the EU's pushing for it and I'm absolutely here for it.

Manchester is not second largest city

You fail to mention that Ryanair, with it's low prices as you point out, charges you for everything else through the nose. Even your carry-on is not free anymore, neither is water etc...Oh, and they were even considering a scheme where you would be standing all the way and another one where you would pay extra if you were overweight. Please, next time before you make bold statements and misinform those that do not live in Europe, triple check your facts.

Amsterdam-lyon. Airplane: 1,5h+2h(airport time).
Train: 8hour.

Meaning the whole working day is gone. I understand it for holidays. But for work. Airplanes are stil king. Where time is worth more than money sometimes.

Quick railways trips in Europe in my opinion is total oxymoron or misunderstanding. Despite organizational, technical and investment scale problems. Railways' authorities in each country usually are burocratic, ineffectiv and badly organized. Technical management systems are so different that first of all should be uniformed in UE scale, that requires time and money. Infrastructure's investments require tremendous amounts of money and after finishing additional permanent serious costs of maintenance by public sector. No one private train operator will be interested in covering costs of maintenance of track.

You're forgetting baggage fees on airlines

crying in UK with the monopoly train market and high prices

You forgot the euro city munich to Italy the Germans were the problems though forgot the Swiss they build infrastructure while there is a northern neighbors can’t get anything done

the first minutes are already are full of mistakes, the prices are just not right. Travelling by train can be super cheap. Parking tickets at the airport alone are often as expensive as train tickets.

There are several big flaws in this semi-complete analysis: Aircraft carriers and train operations grew be creating a new demand. Not sure in which world this guy is living, but I guess burning more fossile fuels and wasting more valuable energy on addition leisure travel is not exactly a short or middle term plan to achieve a sustainable use.
The public hand spent billions on new (local) airports all over Europe where carriers likes Air Berlin, Ryan Air and all the others operated from cheaply, mostly causing millions of debts for the communities owning the air field. Aircraft gasoline is free of taxes, you should make a complete video about the 1001 ways of international companies to avoid taxes in Europe.
The DB tried to move to stock market selling a lot of shares to private investors hoping for fresh private money. To please the market and the stupid rules valid there they cut all investments over a long, long time frame. Low costs, high ticket sales, freshly tampered numbers. The end was nothing but a disaster. After delaying the maintenance for trains and cars for a long time the local operator in Berlin had to stop operations - no more trains were usable in the numbers needed. All the virtual cost savings hit back like a Tsunami. Before the track and the train operations had been divided into two parts. The track maintenance is still paid by tax payers money.
We have to decide if we want a public transportation or one where cherry picking operators privatize the win and socialize the losses. Another common pattern when talking about private operations on public behalf.
One should start with adjusting time tables across boarders, allow international online ticked sale, probably founding a virtual European operator owning no trains to do only this. The money has to go back to the train operating companies .

Try to book a cross boarder ticket from Hamburg to Girona and include a road bike - you are better off with riding the bike to your destination. And it does not matter which destination your are heading to.

It should be pointed out that France chose the TGV over the need to build a third airport for Paris. The TGV network effectively reduced internal air travel, thereby allowing more international flights to use the existing Paris airports, and as a by product improved rail travel within France, at a lower cost than a new Airport for Paris.

Idk as an American the two experience I had with trains in Europe was absolute shit.