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?

On the platform at Bordeaux station (The Washington Post by Sandra Mehl)

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.’”