‘Stone age’ system of booking cross-border rail tickets holding back climate action by consumers, says thinktank
Europe’s “stone age” system of booking train tickets makes it needlessly difficult for travellers to avoid polluting flights, a report has found.
Booking equivalent train tickets is “difficult or impossible” on almost half of the EU’s busiest international air routes, analysis from the Transport & Environment (T&E) thinktank shows.
Popular flight paths such as Lisbon-Madrid or Barcelona-Milan could not be booked from any rail operator’s website, the report found, while connections such as Paris-Rome and Amsterdam-Milan could only be booked from one of the operators.
Georgia Whitaker, a rail campaigner at T&E and author of the report, said it “almost feels a bit silly” that a clunky and outdated system was holding back climate action.
