A Germany-style subscription could save travellers hundreds of pounds, remind us of our scenic routes and boost domestic travel
I’m feeling nostalgic. Autumn does that, but it’s different this year. I think it’s the Oasis reunion. Sitting 111,000th in the queue to buy tickets for one of their gigs the other week, I pined for the simpler times they provided the soundtrack to; the days when you stood in real queues with other fans outside music venues; when £150 meant £150, not £350, because an algorithm changed the goalposts.
Its authors recommended excluding intercity services from the offer , claiming that doing so would spread demand across the network, easing overcrowding on busy services. The report added that it may be possible to extend the offer to Northern Ireland . There is, of course, the inevitable question of funding. Germany announced on Monday that it will increase the price of its Deutschlandticket to €58 per month from January 2025. While it remains to be seen how the state subsidised scheme will be financed long-term , one obvious solution that more people should be talking about would be to tax kerosine, which is used by the aviation industry and exempt from fuel duty everywhere.
Greengauge 21 – the non-profit behind the Greenpeace report – reckons a British version would save around 378,000 tonnes of carbon annually. For context, England’s last remaining coal power plant – Ratcliffe-on-Soar, which closes for good next week – belched out 2.7m tonnes of CO2 in 2023. It all begs a question: what would you do with such a pass? This summer, I fled Blighty via Eurostar’s £39-a-seat summer sale, which was cheaper than taking the train to Devon. My work takes me all over the country by train, but a cheap rail pass would tempt me to explore at leisure, too. In fact, since the Greenpeace report landed, I’ve thought about the scenic railways I’d ride, the friends and family I’d visit.
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