The rails are there, but where do we find the European train? – VG
Railway tracks connect our country with all holiday destinations in southern Europe. At Oslo S, it is still Flytoget that rushes in and feeds us on to another flight holiday.
This is a chronicle. The chronicle expresses the writer’s attitude. You can submit articles and debate posts to VG here.
SIGRID ELSRUD, communications consultant and blogger
For a long time, the spirit of the times has promised that this is how we want it.
Even for the railway, aviation has become such a natural part of both everyday life and holidays that last year space was cleared for Flytoget on track 10, in the middle of Oslo S. «This is how we can become both more visible and accessible», as Flytoget itself reports its website.
In this well-oiled machinery that effectively takes us out into the world and back home – whether we have actually traveled or not – it is still something that gnaws at more and more of us. Some of us have flown so much that we have actually gotten a little bored. In addition, more and more people are putting their own holiday habits into a larger context. Does it make sense to choose the most CO₂-intensive form of travel every time?
Another trend is also pointing in the direction of other tracks on Oslo S: Slow journeys have experiences in them that fascinate and excite. Before the pandemic put most travel plans on hold, we could increasingly read and hear that train holidays had become trendy.
However, the railway itself has done little or nothing to follow up on this new interest.
At Oslo S we have to get as far out on the flank as possible to find Vys train to Gothenburg. This train could have been marketed as the European train. It is not.
Our only trip south to the continent is only marketed as the train to Gothenburg and is a fairly large offer with three to four daily departures and a kiosk vending machine on board. When we get off the train at Gothenburg Central Station, the «next» train south to Copenhagen has already left. We get, whether we want to or not, plenty of time for well-deserved Swedish «fika» before the European journey by train continues towards Copenhagen and a new train change.
It is still the train passengers themselves who pave the way for the train holiday. This is most visible in the Facebook group Togferie (approx. 40,000 members) where itineraries and ticket purchases are discussed daily and good advice is shared. In other words, the trend comes from below. But why does it get so little help from the railway’s own actors and from the politicians who govern and set the framework conditions for the sector?
The financial interests of the train companies never extend beyond the routes they run at any given time. If our holiday habits are to change in a more climate-friendly direction, political action is therefore needed. For politicians, however, some of the fruits hang so low that they may oversee that reason.
It is not large infrastructure projects that are needed to make more holiday trips go smoothly. If we have first decided to take a holiday trip along the hill, we do not count minutes in the same way as when we go to and from work or job meetings.
But even when we go on holiday, we want it easy!
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The most banal problem that needs to be solved is to make it easier to find together. Even more annoying than waiting for the next train in Gothenburg, is to look for the tickets for this train.
In 2020, user surveys were conducted in both Norway and Sweden to map travel abroad by train (commissioned by the Norwegian Railway Directorate and the Swedish government, respectively). In both, test persons were to seek out train tickets to Europe.
The striking thing is that while most things were «complicated and difficult» for the Norwegians, the Swedes thought that many of the train journeys were «fairly easy to get in».
In my book «Holidays by train – Travel pleasure along the tracks», I show why it is much easier to start in a Swedish city. The “secret” is the search service for Deutsche Bahn where we can buy tickets from Gothenburg to all German cities and also to cities in other countries. With the Germans’ train-friendly pricing policy, we can e.g. find trips from Gothenburg to Berlin, Dresden, Amsterdam and Prague for approx. 555 kroner. On such a ticket, a child under the age of 15 can also accompany free of charge.
Well, this is a tip as daily parts between train enthusiasts, but which none of the railway’s own actors show us on to. Why is Norway not connected to this network of the country the German train company cooperates with, when countries such as Croatia, Slovenia and Slovakia – and thus Sweden – are?
It may be a naive thought, but a simple solution would also be if the state-owned companies, Vy and Entur, which both sell train tickets to Gothenburg, could show us directly on to Deutsche Bahn in its search services.
The breakthrough would still come with a good direct route between Oslo and Hamburg. Then the train company itself could come up with the idea of marketing the European train, and finally the Flytoget would get the competition it deserves.
In the first instance, the best we can hope for is a night train between Oslo and Copenhagen, as the government has launched an investigation into.
The Interrail ticket is the pan-European train ticket everyone knows. Used in this way, it is a great deal for many. Perhaps it has nevertheless become a sleeping pad for a sector that will soon have to wake up and compete with aviation in earnest.