How Europe is trying to get people moving by train
A number of European countries are trying to get people to embrace lower-emission trips, write Rick Noack, Meg Kelly and Sandra Mehl. So how well is it working?
Waiting on a train platform in Hassleholm, Sweden, Manni Elfborg is both poetic and practical in explaining why his family is taking a 24-hour rail trip, rather than two short-hop flights, to their holiday destination in Slovenia.
Elfborg, 61, talks about the experience of the train – watching landscapes pass by outside the windows. He says he appreciates disembarking in city centres, rather than at airports on the outskirts.
But his son, 27-year-old Theodor, acknowledges they are an exception among their family friends: “We’re usually the only ones who say: ‘we took the train.’”
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