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European trains used to work like that, but don't anymore, and as much as I miss it as a customer – it just makes sense economically, as it helps seat occupancy
by lxgr 2y ago
European trains used to work like that, but don't anymore, and as much as I miss it as a customer – it just makes sense economically, as it helps seat occupancy rate greatly.
That's not to say that train seats should ever be more expensive than airplane seats at the same time to departure, obviously.
- alexey-salmin 2y agoIn France if you travel often it makes sense to buy Carte Liberté. You get fixed price for tickets all year, even for last minutes departures + free exchange of tickets including up to 30 mins after departure.
- Freak_NL 2y agoThat's overly generalizing it. In most European countries you have a variety of train types, and only high speed lines always have variable prices. Intercity trains can sometimes be booked in advance with varying prices depending on the country, but often have normal prices too. In the Netherlands there are only a handful of international trains which have variable prices; you can just hop in any local, regional express, or intercity train, and the only price variance is the fixed peak hours surcharge; no seat reservations, no demand based pricing.
- lxgr 2y agoInternational/high speed trains are the closest European comparison to Amtrak. The distances their trains span are enormous. But yeah, a lot of European rail also still has a fixed-price fare you can buy on the day of departure – although that fare is usually much higher than the (dynamically priced) saver fare, if available. So functionally, it's just a cap of the maximum dynamic rate, at this point.
- weberer 2y agoAll intercity trains in Finland are ran by the state monopoly VR, which has variable pricing.