Which European country has the most frequent train travellers? : europe

[–] [email protected] 75 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (9 children)

This is the wrong statistic! It doesnt matter how often you take the train, but how far you go. There is something called a passenger kilometer. Someone traveling one kilometer by train makes one passenger kilometer, 6 people on a train going 10 kilometers makes 60 passenger kilometers. The same can be done for other modes of transportation. The modal split (the right statistic) then shows how much each mode of transportation is actually used. Here you can find the statistic for each country of the EU: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/daviz/passenger-transport-modal-split-2#tab-chart_1

A few examples why modal split is better than frequencies:

Environmentally CO2 is emitted per kilometer. Someone may bike a short distance everyday to work, but visits his parents who live far away every weekend by car.
On the way to work someone could take the car and the train on the same commute.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It isn't necessarily wrong, it's just two different metrics meant to measure two different concepts.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Thanks for your comment. Not wrong in the sense that the data is wrong or faked, but that the metric is not useful. Especially when better metrics are readily available for that region. Can you name me one prediction or result which you can infer from the frequency of train travel other than „fun facts“? (I am actually really curious :) ). With the modal split you can for example calculate CO2 emissions or estimate needed capacity increases if you want to replace one mode with another and much more.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I think the number of trips says a lot about the role trains play in people's everyday lives, maybe even more than the kilometers travelled. Sure, that's not a "metric", but it does give us an idea if people use trains just for vacation a few times a year, or for their commute to work or other daily trips. For someone taking a train just once a year, even if that is for hundeds of kilometers, we know that they will use a different means of transportation for most trips.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Some trains may have the same function as buses or trams in other places (and metro... is metro a train here?), so the everyday commute of people in city A may not be that different than commute in city B, when first uses trams, and the second one has a local rail network with light trains. Actually the trains would probably have bigger negative impact on environment and life conditions in this scenario.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

The environmental impact is gonna depend a lot on how the trains are powered. Some European countries are nearly 100% electric now. Others way less.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I really like when I can just show up at the station and jump of a train without the need to consult a timetable beforehand. Not sure what you can infer, but I value frequency!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That unfortunately is the other kind of frequency, an not the one depicted in the graph

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

Switzerland is also on top for person-kilometres.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Model split also has it's downsides. For example:

Not every trip is the same in every country. Denmark commutes 22km on average, the Netherlands does 3km

Not every country travels as far. Someone who does 10km by train out of 100km has a much greater share than 20km out of 10.000.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Germany, would be better in Case you would measure the time that it takes to travel.

Danks ju för traffeling Wiss Deutsche Bahn ...

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Sweet link! These stats are really cool. Low car and high bus usage seem to be very linked to poorer (relatively) countries. High train usage in general seems to be much wealthier countries, yet those countries also have way more car usage. Also this is very incomplete without looking at bicycle usage, and walking of course. This makes the percentages even more misleading because it's a percentage among sampled transportation modes

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thanks, and good observations. Many countries (Germany and the Netherlands for example) have statistics for every mode of transportation, which as you said is way more informative. I just quickly grabbed the first statistic I could find for the EU to be honest :D

Here is the data for Germany: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/daten/verkehr/fahrleistungen-verkehrsaufwand-modal-split#undefined

For the Netherlands they have the data split by county which is very interesting. In the bike capital Utrecht still 50% of all passenger kilometers belong to car travel. I cant find the government website right now.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Interesting! For example, while Switzerland and Turkey appear on opposite sides of the spectrum in OP, they are close to each other in the modal split. And Turkey has even much less car use than Switzerland! 61.6% vs 77.7%. Apparently, taking the bus is very common in Turkey. With 36.6% more than any other country has in train and bus combined.

And while Germany looks literally green in the upper half in OP, modal split shows it's car dependency with 85.4%.

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I fully understand not wanting to use a train in Greece.
https://www.dw.com/en/greece-train-crash-government-admits-decades-of-failure/a-64864913

A probe into the tragedy would focus on the "chronic delays in implementing railway works, delays caused by chronic public sector malaise and decades of failure," government spokesman Yiannis Economou told reporters in Athens.

That said, I feel all European countries, maybe except of Switzerland, have failed to proper care for their rail infrastructure and missed the chance to convince more people to travel with trains instead of cars. :(

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Correction: trains in Greece are no longer public sector. They are all owned by Ferrovie dello stato italiane, the failure of setting up failsafes and maintenance are because it wasn't profitable enough to do so.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

At least not in urban areas in Austria

I mean no country could afford to build a trainstation in every village

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Railway

The Vatican Railway (Italian: Ferrovia Vaticana) was opened in 1934 to serve Vatican City and its only station, Vatican City (Città del Vaticano [tʃitˈta ddel vatiˈkaːno], or Stazione Vaticana [statˈtsjoːne vatiˈkaːna]). The main rail tracks are standard gauge and 300 metres (980 ft) long, with two freight sidings, making it the shortest national railway system in the world.[1] Access to the Italian rail network is over a viaduct to Roma San Pietro railway station, and is guaranteed by the Lateran Treaty dating from 1929. The tracks and station were constructed during the reign of Pope Pius XI, shortly after the treaty.

Beginning in 2015, one passenger service runs each Saturday morning with passengers for Castel Gandolfo. Most other rail traffic consists of inbound freight goods, although the railway has occasionally carried other passengers, usually for symbolic or ceremonial reasons.[2][3]

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Where is The Netherlands? We have loads of trains. Covid ok, but ??

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I travel by train sometimes yet i've never seen a train remotely full here in my life. I've seen fuller trains going to the alpes than than those going to Amsterdam. This may be different during rush hours but outside of the rush hours trains are quite empty.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I'm literally sitting on a train from Utrecht to ams. The previous one was so full that security needs to tell people to stop pushing. This one is also so full there are 0 free spots and the middle of the carriage is full too. Maybe it is you who don't travel by train that much over here, no?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It has been an absolute shit show this evening though. Just spent two hours at Amsterdam Centraal trying to get back to Utrecht. Got on about 8 different trains and they all ended up cancelled.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Oof, I feel you, came to see the champions league at a friend's house, hope the trains have normalized by the end of the games

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

My experience is quite the opposite, but then again I'm always taking the train during rush hour

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Seem's fair. I just think the fact that the non rush hour traffic is so low is making the Netherlands be lower on the list. I wasn't exaggerating when I said that I saw fuller trains going to literal mountains.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The Netherlands is very much missing from this

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

My thoughts as well. There is a ton of train commuting within the Randstad for example. My girlfriend's company has a surprising number of people who do a daily commute from Rotterdam to Amsterdam as well as places like Den Haag and Haarlem.

If you look at the stats here, The Netherlands ranks 7th nationally for % of trips taken by rail and only Austria and Switzerland are ahead of it out of western European countries.

It also ranks very highly for passenger kilometers which is saying a lot because the country is small as shit, most of the people are packed into an area about 1/3 the size of Belgium, and the overall population is fairly small when compared to places like Spain, France, Italy, and Germany.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usage

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Feel like the title could just as easily have been “countries with the best train infrastructure”

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Nah, that would be inaccurate. The country with the densest train infrastructure in the world (Czechia) is missing altogether from the image. I call bullshit.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago (2 children)

2021 has got to be a bad sample year with COVID lockdowns differing from country to country, right?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The news source has 2019 for comparison because of Covid.

https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/09/22/riding-the-rails-which-country-travels-the-most-by-train-in-europe

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Oh great! Seems like the data is at the very least comparable, although the numbers are a bit deflated.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Yeah in Belgium if I’m not mistaken I didn’t go much to the office in 2021… I think I dropped my abonnement for the train that year.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I'd use the train if we had one

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

Had to check which countries don't have trains in Europe. Andorra, Cyprus, Iceland, Malta and San Marino seem to be the options.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Name checks out

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/09/22/riding-the-rails-which-country-travels-the-most-by-train-in-europe

Here's the article this image arms to be based on, which includes many more counties.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That looks like bullshit. Or it's at least missing some data. Czechia, by the very nature of being in the middle of Europe, we have the densest train network which in turn means our trains go even to the smallest of shitholes and it's very common to take a train somewhere.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

This does not seem to be true. According to Wikipedia the Czech Republic has 9567 km of railways. This leaves them with a density of 0.121299336891 Railway/km².

Switzerland, which was listed as the densest in the Article, has 5317 km of railways. This leaves them with a density of 0.128787695288 Railway/km².

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_transport_network_size

Keep in mind, that the dates of the data collection are 3 years apart (Czechia 2017, Switzerland 2020).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Finland is missing

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Well sure but that’s because Switzerland has a pretty awesome and geographically-appropriate-for-its-size train system.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Also, the flag’s a big plus

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

As a train traveler in Bulgaria (absent from this statistic but present in the one posted in the comments), I can vouch for our low rates of train commute (still 3 times higher than Greece) The car culture is going strong with everyone using their own vehicle. A lot of places are barely reachable by bus and unreachable by train. It takes longer and there are delays. The security is questionable with creeps causing trouble fairly often, despite police always being present. It's rather dirty, the trains are mostly Soviet era. We can't talk about air conditioning, only open windows (which you prop open with an item that you're not afraid to lose) and scorching radiators.

Despite all that I love commuting by train. I can sit comfortably, stretch, walk around, use the (very poor) toilet if needed. I can cross stitch when creeps don't try to talk to me, I try to sit around grannies that take interest at most. It's cheap, you can go from the coast to Sofia in about 7 hours for 15 euros, half if you have a card. It's easier to talk with the person I'm traveling with. The scenery of rural Bulgaria is absolutely beautiful, and best of all - No motion sickness!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

My country has 0 trains.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Is the EU a country

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

Might be an EU average.

Europe

Rules