At one time, for many travellers the journey was almost important as the destination. Tales of ocean voyages and horse-drawn vehicles vied with accounts of what people saw when they arrived. Even when the wider population began to travel for their annual holidays the train ride, and then the familiar car trip, were a part of the excitement.
It may be hard for younger people to appreciate it, but even air travel once had glamour. Now, just about the only mode of travel where you could say that travelling is as important as arriving is the ocean-going liner.
Crossing the Atlantic by liner – a very different beast from a cruise ship, whose purpose is not so much to go anywhere as to be a village at sea, with all of the shopping and entertainment that goes with that label – is, for some people at least, a sophisticated way of moving from one continent to another without having to worry about the weight of the luggage you are carrying.
It is a long time since air lines could sell sophistication or excitement. Budget air lines have never been able to pretend to luxury; it is the exact opposite of their business model. And any attempt to present air travel as a luxury does so knowing that most travellers who take the bait do so at someone else’s expense.
If we are, for the sake of the planet, to wean people off of flying and on to “more sustainable,” whatever that means, modes of transport, then the alternatives need to buck their ideas up. In particular, long-distance rail travel could move into the 21st century.
In Europe at least, intermediate distance journeys, as far as, say, from the UK to the edges of France and Spain, popular holiday destinations, are getting there. Rail has effectively killed off flying to Paris and Brussels from London.
Go further and air travel still has the edge. But make the train a part of the experience, begin to charge fares that recognise the true impacts of air travel, and this could change. After all, the Orient Express still operates as the railway equivalent of the cruise ship, where the journey itself is the holiday. What about reviving the rail equivalent of the ocean-going liner?
To see how not to do it, travel from London to Italy. Two overnight train journeys in recent years, one to Florence the other to Venice, show that it would not take a lot to transform the service. Just make it as comfortable and well appointed as Europe’s high-speed trains. Add some decent marketing and train operators might receive more positive responses to the questionnaires they now thrust before passengers travelling these routes.
It would be nice to be able concur when asked to give as reasons for travelling: “To live a new experience/ Curiosity/Adventure [their capitals]”; or “For the travel comfort;” especially “It's a pleasant/romantic way to travel”.
In reality coaches made in the 1950s, with sanitation and food from a similar era, make it hard, even for those who can honestly pick “I don't like to travel by plane” or even “I can use my sleep time to travel”.
So people pack themselves into sardine cans and have a miserable time at airports for a few hours, knowing that they will reach their destinations quickly and the climate can go hang in the vapour trails.
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