The British organization rail-leaders.com published an interesting report that focuses on the possibility of switching short-haul flights from air to rail. Because the dual focus is ‘within the UK & from the UK to Europe’ it is important for people across Europe.
From the executive summary
If all domestic mainland Great Britain airline passengers transferred to train, they would fill around 20 trains per day each way, and save a huge amount of carbon emissions, and free up scarce runway
capacity at London’s main airports.
Between Britain and continental Europe high speed rail has already succeeded, now dominating London–Paris and London–Brussels travel markets. The new London-Amsterdam Eurostar service is already doing just as well. It takes only 3h52 minutes, and there are 10.5 million air passenger journeys from Britain (nearly half of them from London) to go for. HS1 across Kent and the channel tunnels has capacity for more.
Using the continent’s high speed network, a train can go from London St Pancras direct to Marseille, 1000km away, and back, in a single operating day, making for efficient fleet utilisation. London rail services can be extended to other cities within the same distance band for single-day travel—Berlin,
Vienna, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Zurich, Geneva, Bordeaux, Nice, Barcelona. Services to these additional city destinations could address a market of 26 million airline passengers annually, providing a sustainable travel alternative for a total of 44 million airline passengers between Great Britain and the area within one day’s rail travel of London.
Find the Executive Summary here: How to Win Air Travellers to Rail – Executive Summary
Find the full report here: How to Win Air Travellers to Rail – Full Report