Why is booking rail tickets more difficult than booking air tickets?

A shocking new report from the think-tank Transport & Environment (T&E) has discovered that almost half of EU’s most traveled flight routes are “difficult or impossible” to traverse by train for the most surprising of reasons: issues with booking train tickets. 

While physical transport capacity exists all over European Union, with high quality rail networks connecting even unexpectedly small towns and minor regional hubs as well as major international routes, booking these journeys can be a highly frustrating experience.  

Landmark study on factors hindering rail adoption in European Union 

This conclusion has been reached as part of the latest research by T&E, a pan-European network of 57 NGOs in 24 countries across Europe working to promote smarter, cleaner transport.  

T&E’s study analyzed ticketing methods and availability on the most popular air routes in European Union for which an equivalent rail connection exists and found that on almost half of the EU’s busiest international air routes, booking the same journey by train ranged from “difficult” to downright “impossible”, or involved locating and purchasing multiple separate tickets in separate transactions. 

Stone-age booking systems  

The primary cause of this difficulty is a “stone-age” booking system in which tickets are, according to the statement quoted by T&E’s rail campaigner and report author Georgia Whitaker in The Guardian, often simply unavailable: 

“Too often passengers trying to book low-carbon international train journeys are faced with headaches due to opaque and complicated booking systems,” adding that it “almost feels a bit silly” that a clunky and outdated system was holding back climate action. 

Indeed, as a company whose existence literally depends on maintaining meticulously updated routes and pricing for private airport transfers all over Europe (as well as transfers to and from numerous railway stations), in coordination with thousands of local partners with their own shifting schedules and availability, we are also finding it silly that a continent-wide transportation system is held up by a reservation system. 

So, what does this mean in reality and how does it affect travelers?
  

Southern Europe train trip? Not so fast! 

Imagine if you want to take a scenic, leisurely (or overnight) train trip from Rome to Barcelona - which is one of the most popular air routes during the summer season but unfortunately does not have a single direct connection between them – you are faced with the following: 

A website that offers 4 overnight changes, including a bus: 

A website that does not acknowledge Barcelona (Spain) as a destination: 

And a website that does not acknowledge Rome as a destination: 

Of course, you could travel the entire route from Rome to Barcelona (or, more reasonably, just a section of it) with Connecto Transfers, but that would defeat the point of encouraging train travel, so instead we are forced to recommend a reliable Barcelona airport transfer or a reliable Rome airport transfer as you board or disembark from your plane instead. 

What is breaking rail travel? 

Other rail routes, even if short or with international destinations located almost next to each other, can have even more bewildering or impossible combinations for various reasons, such as: 

• Absence of data sharing between national authorities 

• Absence of data sharing between private companies 

• Unstructured and non-exportable data with poor API connections 

• Intentional exclusion of competitors 

• Unintentional exclusion of competitors 

• Presence of routes but absence of prices 

• Lack of standardized logic when calculating connections and changes 

• No possibility of booking online 

• No possibility of boking in person 

Unsurprisingly, a recent YouGov poll for T&E found that 61% of long-distance rail travelers have at least once avoided train journeys because the booking process was a hassle. 

Another problem is deceptive pricing – whether intentional or not – which has the cascading effect of making air travel seem cheaper simply because a cheaper train route may exist, but it’s simply not visible. A Greenpeace report found in 2025 that trains beat planes on price on only 39% of routes, a number that may actually be higher in reality but inaccessible to consumers who may never be aware that these cheaper options exist. 

EU Single Ticketing Package 

EU has introduced a new initiative called “EU Single Ticketing Package” which tries to systematize the chaos found in the international railway system, mainly by forcing rail operators and agencies to adhere to the FRAND principle (Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory terms) during their operations.  

How many years could it take until the massive snarl of train travel is untangled and streamlined enough to become the preferred means of international travel instead of flying? We will follow these developments with great interest.