<
https://english.elpais.com/climate/2024-09-01/europe-jumps-on-the-train.html>
"Rébecca Hagège, a 33-year-old from Paris, made a decision some time ago: she
would cut down on her air and automobile journeys as much as possible — only
making them when it was unavoidable — in order to reduce her carbon footprint.
Faithful to her bicycle for her daily commute, the train has become her best
ally for travelling further afield, across her own country and, more recently,
across the rest of Europe as well. Or at least as far as the infrastructure
will allow: on one of her last getaways, a few months ago, her preferred train
ran aground in Madrid, and with no viable alternative to continue her route to
Lisbon, she was forced — much to her regret — to opt for the bus.
Her case is by no means unique. “Many of my friends practically only travel by
train,” says this documentary production manager. She sees, however, much room
for improvement, especially in terms of offering more frequent night trains,
which, after a time in the back burner are now growing like mushrooms in Europe
(with the exception of Spain) and, above all, with lower prices. “It is a pity,
but on many European routes, such as between Paris and London or between Paris
and Barcelona, the train is still more expensive than the plane or the bus,”
she laments. “More incentives are needed.”
Hagège meets us on board a low-cost train between Madrid and Barcelona, a
two-hour-plus route inaugurated in 2008 shortly before the housing crisis, and
which has great symbolic power: this is the route that completely changed the
Spanish map of passenger transportation. At the expense, of course, of
everything other than high-speed trains, which have been the sacrosanct
priority in Spain, almost the only one, for several decades. This meeting point
is also the beginning of a 26-hour, 3,000-kilometer journey between Madrid and
Prague. A journey from west to east of the European Union in which we aim to
use practically all existing railway lines — high and medium speed, traditional
and low cost, night trains and day trains — with no other goal than to narrate
an increasingly widespread desire: to get on the train and prove that, with its
many shortcomings, train travel is no longer just an option for short
journeys."
Via
Fix the News:
https://fixthenews.com/273-cathedral-thinking/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
