Something revolutionary is happening in Germany.
The country’s aviation business wants millions more domestic travellers to use the train rather than the plane in order to reduce emissions, reports IRJ (registration needed).
A joint plan issued by DB and the German aviation industry wants to boost rail transport at the expense of domestic air travel in order to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions https://t.co/0qsPFzgQKq
— IRJ (@railjournal) April 19, 2021
Germany’s aviation industry (BDL) and rail operator Deutsche Bahn (DB) hope an additional 20 per cent of domestic air travellers (pre-Covid) will switch to rail.
But haven’t we seen this already in France? Yes we have but on a more limited scale as we explain here.
In Germany the aim is to encourage all domestic travellers whether point-to-point or making connections to opt for the train.
One might argue that this has already started.
Last month we reported on rail-air expansion between Lufthansa and DB which will encourage more travellers to take the train to the national airline’s Frankfurt hub.
However not everything in the garden is lovely. For a start Lufthansa has two hubs and its second one at Munich is not linked to mainline rail (hence the above rail-air expansion is limited to Frankfurt).
Secondly there is no high-speed line all the way between Berlin and Frankfurt airport.
Because Lufthansa mainline does not operate international flights from Germany’s capital city it means business people, politicians, government officials and so on route via Frankfurt.
In normal times Lufthansa would operate a shuttle service on this route. It would feed many thousands of travellers to those airlines operating at Frankfurt.
Why not use the train instead? I am sure some do but most would find the train journey (at least 4.5 hours with one or two changes involved) too awkward.
So in Germany more travellers will switch to rail but the train is not always ideal as some would have you believe.
