Traveling through Europe by train to and from the Netherlands is on average one and a half times more expensive than by plane. This is shown by calculations by Greenpeace.
Greenpeace compared the plane and train tickets of more than a hundred different European routes. Only 23 of the 112 routes studied were (almost) always cheaper by train than by plane. The route with the largest price difference is the one between London and Barcelona: here the train is sometimes thirty times more expensive than the plane. Train travel is also the most expensive in the United Kingdom and Spain.
“This report shows to what extent European citizens are encouraged to fly,” says Herwig Schuster, mobility expert at Greenpeace. According to Schuster, airlines benefit from tax breaks. “Low-cost airlines in particular crawl through all the loopholes to offer flights at outrageously low prices.”
Grants
Flights of a few tenners as offered by budget flyers can only exist, according to the environmental organization, because other parties pay for the costs. For example, customers would pay a lot of extra costs and local governments give subsidies with tax money.
Low-cost airlines offer cheaper transfer flights, sometimes with stopovers, with which they emit up to ten times more greenhouse gases. “This gives travelers the absurd option of flying cheaply from London to Brussels, with a stopover in Denmark,” says Schuster. “In the interest of the planet and all of us, politicians must take action to reverse this trend.”
Climate tickets
To make rail more affordable, Greenpeace is calling on national governments to introduce climate tickets. “These are affordable and simple tickets that are valid on all forms of public transport in a country or region, including all trains and cross-border transport,” Schuster said.
According to Greenpeace, climate tickets can be financed, among other things, by taxes on the excess profits of oil and gas companies, the phasing out of environmentally harmful subsidies or by a fair tax system based on CO2 emissions. “At the same time, subsidies to airlines and airports must end, starting with the abolition of tax exemptions for kerosene.”
Check out our most viewed news videos in the playlist below:
Free unlimited access to Showbytes? Which can!
Log in or create an account and don’t miss a thing of the stars.
#Train #travel #Europe #Netherlands #times #expensive #plane