Plane vs Train

I spent the whole morning scouring the internet in search of cheap and fast ways to get to France. Strasbourg is only around 750km from here, and back in the day when I first regularly visited my friend and godson, I would take the train. It's a long 7hr journey, with a transfer in Brussels, but nonetheless journey that takes you through some beautiful regions of the Ardennen, Luxembourg and Northern France.

Then I was still under 25, but this year for the first time I must buy an "adult" ticket :( And since I last went to Strasbourg in 2008, a 'new' high speed rail network has come into being in this part of Europe, which is supposed to connect all the major cities within hours.

So I checked the price and train connections. What used to take 7hrs and only two connections will now take 6.5hrs and have three connections on this so-called high-speed network, routing me through Brussels and Paris as well. Whatsmore, what used to cost EUR130 for a return (which I found expensive then), will now cost EUR180 for a single journey on the high speed network! Sure, you get to ride some of the fastest and slickest trains in Europe (the Thalys, TGV-Est), but why is it so expensive? What about people who can't afford to travel or limited means to do so? And I thought the European high speed network was all about ease of travel and connectivity.

So I turned my search to planes, and as expected, flying is not only cheaper but much faster, taking only about 1hr20min from airport to airport, costing around EUR180. I managed to find a connection from Amsterdam to Basel on Swiss, and so avoiding the horrible and unfriendly airline that is KLM altogether. (though, on Easyjet, I found a ticket for the same journey for only EUR120, but the travel times are not flexible).

Being environmentally concerned, as I clicked "book" online, I thought to myself what world have we come to if flying is cheaper than training? I'm sure the economic costs, including externalities like pollution, fuel etc of flying cannot be cheaper than riding the electrified train.

And yet in terms of price it actually is... I'll have to offset some of my carbon footprints sometime soon...