With Europe opening up domestic train lines to competition next year, low cost high speed rail connections are on the way—if not here already.
In France, the low-cost ouigo trains have been on the rails since 2013. They’re still trains from the state railway company, but are acting as a kind of protective force against new entrants entering the market from next year onwards.
And customers win.
And planes lose.
Spain is about to launch its low-cost high speed Avlo trains for the same reason (the French and Italians are already lined up to take on Spanish domestic routes).
Spain has more than 3000 km of high speed track in action, second only to China!
Some of these new low-cost trains have seats slightly closer together than typical European trains. I’d still prefer a normal train, but I can see these low-cost ones appealing to many people who simply refuse to even consider the train while low-cost airlines remain stupidly/criminally cheap.
I wonder what the time-cost trade-off works out to be between taking Ryanair vs taking a low-cost train? How many hours more would people be willing to travel from A to B in a civilized train rather than in a navy blue Ryanair nightmare?
By the way, all these ongoing high speed developments mean some pretty cool stuff, like that you can already get from Paris to Seville in one day by train! I don’t mean 24 hours, I mean one “day” day. You just have to be brave with the 7 minute connection in Barcelona.
(I’m sure at some point they’ll clean that connection up to make it a more relaxing possibility. What an epic trip, especially in summer when it would be almost entirely in daylight.)
What’s more, when Spain finishes its new high speed line up towards the border with France on the Atlantic side, this might provide an even faster through-route to the south of Spain (maybe closer to 10 hours than 13). Another fantastic scenic trip down the continent.
Here’s a 2020 challenge for all of my European friends: how about a year of train-only European travel?
Are you up for it?