My European friends stare in wonder at the attachment. It seems to be true in most of Europe, and given the orders of magnitude greater fuel economy of rail they wonder how this can be. Due to the fact that it is illegal in the relevant European nations to explain the econegrics of the situation, I would like to explain to the European citizen why train tickets are costing them more than plane tickets.
The majority of expense regarding passenger transport is not related to the medium by which it occurs on. It is cleaning up after the passengers, and managing belligerent and criminal ones. Dealing with people will always be more expensive than fuel. Trains compound this not only because you have far more passengers, but because there are no consequences for the categories of misbehaviors that rapidly escalate the cost of service.
In most countries, unless you are having a bad reaction to lawfully acquired Ambien, you are generally going to catch a felony charge for engaging in what we might describe as “wilin’ out” or “chimping” on a flight. There are always specific statutes, generally mandated by various international conventions and concerns of the insurance companies that insure the owners of the jets, written to ensure that people who are criminally disruptive on a flight face extreme penalties. But there are no such statutes on a train.
Passenger rail operators are now self-selecting for the most undesirable, riotous, behaviorally antisocial, criminal, and expensive passenger possible. So it costs more to transport them.
European countries without significant diversity still have cheaper train tickets than plane tickets domestically.
