More Germans would travel by train but it's too expensive, some residents say
While some people prefer this mode of transport, experts have said that reducing tax breaks for airlines and subsidies was needed to make it more affordable.
Transcript
00:00 Erich Stegemann's love of trains started young when he worked at this model train store
00:07 in Berlin. Now, as a railway engineer, he's choosing trains to go across the continent.
00:14 An airliner seat just isn't as comfortable and you don't have the leg room and you've
00:20 got that on a first class train, certainly. I like the landscapes. It's just more relaxed.
00:27 He's not the only one that feels that way. A German NGO promoting train travel says there
00:33 was a big uptick in demand in recent years as night trains were being fully booked well
00:39 ahead of schedule. National rail operators and companies are adding new routes this year
00:45 and next with more direct trips connecting Germany to cities across Europe. Germany's
00:51 Deutsche Bahn says there were record sales for long distance transport this year.
00:56 This is where one of the more highly anticipated new routes will be, Paris to Berlin. But that
01:00 doesn't mean everyone's going to be jumping on board. A study by Greenpeace compared prices
01:05 between train and plane tickets for certain routes. It found that flying was cheaper,
01:11 more than 50 percent of the time. The EU is aiming to double high speed rail by 2030.
01:18 This train travel analyst says passenger numbers can massively increase, but that's being hampered
01:24 by airlines getting tax breaks. You should subsidize the mode of transit that you want
01:30 more of, not the one that you actually want to reduce. This is no level playing field
01:37 where the different modes of transit can really compete against each other. And this is the
01:42 reason why air travel is so cheap at the moment. Price is an obstacle even for Eric, despite
01:49 his preference for trains. So it's just so energy efficient compared to flying and it's
01:56 also of course motivation. Then again, it's so expensive that I cannot omit flying completely
02:05 unfortunately.
02:05 (whooshing)