Why Train Travel Is Too Expensive for Many Germans, According to Residents

While some people prefer this mode of transport, experts have said that reducing tax breaks for airlines and subsidies is needed to make it more affordable.

Erik Stiegemann’s love of trains started young when he worked at a model train store in Berlin. Now, as a railway engineer, he’s choosing trains to travel across the continent.

“An airliner seat just isn’t as comfortable, and you don’t have the legroom you’ve got in a first-class train,” the railway engineer and train enthusiast said. “I like the landscapes. It’s just more relaxed.”

He’s not the only one who feels this way. Germany’s national railway company, Deutsche Bahn, reported record sales for long-distance transport this year.

This uptick means operators are adding new routes this year and next, with more direct trips connecting Germany to cities across Europe. More broadly, the European Union aims to double high-speed rail travel by 2030.

But that doesn’t mean everyone’s going to be jumping on board. A study by Greenpeace compared prices between train and plane tickets for certain routes and found that flying was cheaper more than 50 percent of the time.

“It doesn’t make sense if you look at the goals,” train travel analyst Bernhard Knierim told Euronews.

“You should subsidize the mode of transit that you want more of, not the one you actually want to reduce.

This is not a level playing field where the different modes of transit can really compete with each other. And this is the reason why air travel is so cheap at the moment.”

Erik said price was an obstacle, despite his love and preference for this mode of transport.

“It’s just so energy efficient compared to flying, and it’s also, of course, a motivation,” he said.

“Then again, it’s so expensive that I cannot omit flying completely, unfortunately.”