More than 5,000 European flights per year could be replaced by rail journeys by 2030, according to the latest forecast by the Netherlands Institute for Transport Policy Analysis (KiM).
The report, published this week, estimates that some 850,000 air passenger journeys – the equivalent of 5,600 flights – between Amsterdam and 13 European cities could be replaced by trains as early as 2030.
By 2040, this is expected to increase to some 1.6 million passenger journeys on routes from Amsterdam to London, Bristol, Birmingham, Paris, Basel, Brussels, Berlin, Hannover, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Munich and Copenhagen.
KiM estimates that 6 per cent of air transfers on these routes will be replaced by trains by 2030 and is set to increase to 10 per cent by 2040, when, according to KiM, connections from Amsterdam to London, Frankfurt, Paris and Berlin will together account for two-thirds of the calculated air-to-rail shift.
The institute said its forecast is based “as much as possible” on published plans by governments, infrastructure managers and transporter operators, including “various developments” in rail supply and an expected increase in the number of daily rail connections on certain routes – such as a faster rail connection to Berlin by the end of 2023 and the planned increase in faster intercity trains to Brussels from 2025.
KiM added that the percentage of passengers shifting from air to rail could potentially increase further – to approximately 2.4 million air journeys in 2030 and 3.4 million in 2040 – if train fares are reduced by 20 per cent and barriers to multi-modal transfers at Amsterdam Schiphol airport are removed, such as the lack of combined air-rail tickets and the absence of multi-modal baggage handling.
With the addition of transferring passengers, KiM expects the air-to-rail shift to affect 18 per cent of flights in 2030 and 22 per cent in 2040.
“Reducing transfer barriers does require significant efforts from managers and carriers in the rail and aviation sectors,” KiM said in a statement.