Greenpeace compared ticket prices on 112 routes across Europe, including 94 international and 18 domestic routes. It found that the prices of train tickets on these routes were on average twice as high as those of flight tickets. The biggest price difference was observed in the United Kingdom and Spain, where travel by train is four times more expensive than by air.
The most significant price difference was reported for the Barcelona-London route, where the price of a train ticket is 30 times higher than the price of a flight ticket (€384 versus €12.99).
Flights are cheaper on 71 per cent of the routes analysed, and 79 per cent of the routes are served by low-tariff airlines.
Croatia: Most expensive train route from Zagreb to Rome
Croatia is connected by rail to all its neighbouring countries, but the frequency of international trains is very low, Greenpeace says.
Despite the small number of international routes, all include a night train. Night trains are relatively cheap, but connecting trains are often much more expensive, making flights cheaper than rail on many of such routes.
Since Zagreb became a hub for Ryanair, flying is a cheaper option than taking the train in Croatia.
The most expensive train route in Croatia is the one one from Zagreb to Rome, while flying on this route is as much as four times cheaper.
On average, on all routes analysed from and to Croatia, flying is twice as cheap as taking the train.
Kerosene tax
To encourage travel by train as an environmentally-friendly mode of transport, Greenpeace called on governments to introduce long-term affordable climate tickets for public transport, impose a tax on extra profits and phase out subsidies to air carriers.
Greenpeace travel expert Marissa Reiserer called for a Europe-wide kerosene tax of 50 cents per litre, saying that this would generate about €46 billion in revenue annually. She said that that money should be invested in rail infrastructure.
"More and more people want to travel by train and do without flights, but the lack of a kerosene tax and other climate-damaging subsidies for the airline industry are distorting prices," Reiserer said.