INSIDE AIR TRAVEL
Air Travel Versus High-Speed Rail
For Short Trips Is the High-Speed Train a Better Choice?The new generation of high-speed trains is setting the pace for business travel within Europe. Why fly when you often can get more comfortably, conveniently and faster by high-speed train, sometimes for a third of the of the cost of a business-class air ticket?
The train can beat the plane and the automobile from center to center on trips up to 650 km/400 miles. On short flights, flying time can be as little as 20 percent of the total journey time. The time-distance equation is shifting in favor of high-speed rail versus air travel, but bear in mind that comparisons usually cite departure to arrival times for air travel but does not include the time it takes you to get to the train station and then to your final destination for rail trips.
But as high-speed trains become even faster, business travelers will be able to save time on longer trips, which may make the airline option less attractive. What counts with rail travel is the quality of the time. Going by plane, the time is fraught and fragmented, allowing more time that you need to get to the airport, checking in an hour before, standing in line, getting on and off the plane, taking a taxi at the other end. And high-speed trains offer superb comfort, especially first class where you can expect airline-style seating and service worthy of long-haul business class, with wide seats, plenty of legroom and meals and drinks served at your seat, plus the run of executive lounges at major terminals, all in the price of your ticket. Take your laptop and mobile phone and do a pile of work in peace.
The patience span for the business travelers seems to be about three hours for train journeys; if it is much longer than that they will struggle out at the airport according to travel agents dealing with corporate travelers. Eurostar, which takes three hours from London to Paris is a roaring success. But London-Brussels which takes over three hours is not seen to be worth it. Three hours seems to be the critical cutoff point. People catching Eurostar from work or go to work on Eurostar. If they start their journey from home, they are more likely to go to the airport. There is an enormous temptation for people in the City of London who need to go to Paris just to go to Waterloo and get on the Eurostar rather than trying to get out of Heathrow.
Eurostar with services between London and Paris and Brussels has proved a winning formula since it ran the first trains through the Channel Tunnel in 1994. More than 25 trains a day among the three cities will carry 6 million passengers this year. Eurostar claims that its market share between London and Paris is 60 percent of air and rail travelers. The London-Brussels share of 50 percent is expected to rocket with the opening of a new high-speed line between Lille and Brussels las Sunday, which cuts the trip time between London and Brussels by 30 minutes to two hours and 30 minutes.
Other high-speed links in Europe and city center to city center time:
Destination: Train/Air:
Geneva-Paris 3:36 /3:05
Geneva-Zurich 3:00 Regular train 2:50
Geneva-Milan 3:40/3:15
Paris-Brussels 1:26/2:50
Brussels-Amsterdam 2:40/2:50
London-Cologne 5:30/3:35
Paris-Cologne 4:00/2:55
Brussels-Cologne 2:30 soon will be 1:45
By 2003:
London-Paris 2:20
London-Brussels 2:00
Eurostar has pitched fares to compare with airlines. Premium First is interchangeable with British Midland business-class tickets between London and Paris or Brussels. So your can take the train one way and fly back or vice versa. If you take the train both ways, you get a free Standard Class ticket. The round trip from Paris to London costs a little less than the air fare. You are allowed a 10 minute check-in, a limo transport from Waterloo station to central London, a taxi from Gare du Nord to any central Paris address, and other frills. A regular first-class and Second Plus budget business round-trip fares cost up to 40% less than full-fare economy round-trip airline ticket.
It's not easy.
Rail travel, however, is not always easy to book. The problem is that travel agents find it hard to call up railway schedules on their screens. Even rail experts have problems. One can book airlines around the world on a screen, but you can't do that with rail. The rail reservation systems do not have their act together, especially for cross-border travel. Airlines computer reservation systems are not displaying rail schedules, at least not at a place where you can easily find them. So they don't come up as an option to agents on the screen. We can issue about 60 percent of rail tickets across Europe on the screen, but it is a nightmare.
One of the best features in favor of rail travel remains the fact that one has ample undisturbed time to work or to rest. If the total travel time from city center to city center is three hours, the train gives you as much as 2:30 minutes of undisturbed time, where on a similar trip by air will only give you thirty minutes to one hour due to the fact that the traveler has to take several modes of transport to get to the airport and also walk quite a bit to get the aircraft. Even though air travel gives the impression of speed, it seems doubtful that is as rapid and comfortable as a high-speed train for trip of three hours or less.
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