Thanks to faster travel times, new services, upgraded on-board comforts and environmental impact, train travel is definitely on the rise.

European trains in particular, the service is increasingly chosen over air travel as the preferred choice to make a journey for both leisure and business travellers.

In recent years, the length of rail trips have been dramatically reduced by extra high-speed services, while airport check-in lines have lengthen due to security matters. There is such an extent to the switch from air to rail that flights had to be reduced or cancelled from key connections such as Paris-Brussels.

According to Rail Plus chief executive David Stafford, flying becomes obsolete once a rail journey becomes less than 3 hours.

He said that a Madrid-Barcelona train trip I now just two hours and 40 minutes, a real competition for the flights. He added that as of this coming December, the Paris-Amsterdam rail link will come down to three hours and 18 minutes, a time which weights heavy on the shoulders of the air industry.

Rail Plus and other train travel experts are saying that sales are up over last year, during a period when other sectors of the tourism industry are suffering. While the rail growth is especially obvious in Europe, Japan and Canada are also experience a jump in rail popularity.

Stafford claims that Japan has gone rail crazy this year, with the 2009 bookings expected to pass the 2 million mark. He says America is still a relatively small market in regards to leisure rail journeys, although Canada, thanks to the scenic Rocky Mountaineer ride and point-to-point travel, is gaining in popularity.

Rail Europe, which controls 95% stake of European rail, is scheduled to play a larger role on the Australian rail market, with a proposal to become a one-stop international rail journey shop. The organisation is set to take Amtrak (the system in America) bookings and will expand its offering to include the same for Canada, Japan, India and Trans-Siberian journeys.

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Filed under Europe News, Travel News, World News

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under Europe News, Travel News, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.