How and where can passenger rail steal a significant chunk of the travel market away from aviation.

Before we know how big a chunk of the transportation market share that fast frequent passenger rail service could grab, we must understand the existing travel market for a particular corridor. A good place to start is what the existing auto traffic, bus and air passenger numbers are between two cities or metropolitan regions. 

This short article is not intended as a detailed or thorough analysis of future rail passenger ridership. However, a look at the existing size of the air travel market on a specific corridor does give one a general sense of the market potential (for lack of a better term) of faster and frequent passenger rail service between two cities. Once we know how many people fly between two cities, we can see the size of the pie from which we wish rail to take a slice. 

The environmental benefits of getting people out of planes, and onto trains instead, are well known. According to 2022 UK government statistics, the carbon footprint of different transportation modes is as follows:

• Domestic flight [within UK]- 255 g CO2(e)/ passenger-km 
• Gasoline car [single occupant]- 170 g
• Short-haul flight [UK to continental Europe] (economy) – 151 g
• Long-haul flight (economy) – 148 g
• Electric car [single occupant] – 47 g
• National rail (UK rail network ~40% electrified, 60% diesel)- 35 g
• Eurostar (electrified international rail)- 6 g

As can be seen above, the carbon footprint for someone on a domestic short-haul flight is over 60 times that of someone taking the same journey on an electric high-speed train. It must be acknowledged that many ‘short-hop’ flights, even along these major corridors, are connecting flights to longer air journeys, so not quite the same market as travelling just between the same destinations by train or car. Flights of 2,000 to 3,000 miles in length are generally the most energy efficient overall for jet aircraft, and of course most trips longer than this are only practical by plane. 

So what makes a person choose a train over a plane, for the same journey, or vice versa? Aside from any difference in overall travel time, service frequency, and ticket cost for a particular route, convenience is also a major factor. The hassle of getting to and from the airport (particularly from city centers), getting through security, etc., adds substantially to total trip time, lengthening even the shortest airplane journey. Train stations are not just more convenient because they are more likely to be city centers, but because they exist in so many communities where airports do not. Besides the travel time advantages of rail on many routes, other advantages include having more space (both to sit and walk around in without worrying about turbulence), being more productive if you are doing work (as the seat tray table can be down the whole journey, unlike on a plane), and being able to walk at any time to the café car for a wide variety of food and drink. Trains are also less affected by severe weather than planes.

Research has shown that potential high speed rail (or HSR, generally defined as having top speed of 150 mph or greater) travel time advantage is greatest between 200 and 500 miles (compared to planes and automobiles). For most intercity trips in that range, HSR is virtually guaranteed to be faster than both flying and driving. Thus, for trips between 200 and 500 miles, HSR reigns supreme.

However, truly high speed trains going 150 mph or faster are not necessarily needed to compete successfully with airplanes. For example, overall trip times on the existing Amtrak Cascades and Northeast Regional (though especially the faster Acela) are already very competitive with flying on their respective corridors. 

Here are several successful examples from around the world of specific corridors where trains have taken a serious bite of the market away from planes.

Northeast Corridor

Amtrak’s competitive threat to the airlines for short-haul flights along the Northeast Corridor has long been well-documented. In the early 1980s, the upstart (and short-lived) Newark-based no frills airline People Express famously undercut Greyhound bus and Amtrak ticket prices for the same city pairs as a promotion. Such antics could not save People Express from financial ruin. Facing liquidation, it was absorbed by Continental Airlines in 1987.

 In particular, airlines dropped flights between the Boston New York and Washington metropolitan areas after the higher-speed Acela service started in 2000. According to Amtrak, after the launch of Acela in late 2000, Amtrak’s share of the air-rail market grew from 37% in FY2000 to 83% in FY2022 between New York and Washington—carrying more than four times as many passengers as all of the airlines combined. Amtrak mode share grew from 20% to 75% between New York and Boston over the same period. 

Europe

Passenger rail’s intercity mode share is far higher in Europe overall than North America’s. While very extensive, Europe’s train network still has significant limitations in need of improvement, particularly in some regions and across many borders. An issue particularly prevalent in Europe is that train tickets can be more expensive than planes for the same city pairs, especially between different countries. Airlines can be more flexible to fill niches in travel demand. This drives travelers toward air travel, and makes it difficult for European Union member states to meet the environmental goal of reducing total emissions. So, in response, France is proposing an EU-wide ‘minimum airline ticket price’. This shows that more public investment is still needed in expanding the European rail network. This is especially urgent with the rise in total emissions from European low-cost airlines, and the financial woes of the airline industry generally with the increased oil prices due to the Iran War. 

France

France’s short-haul flight ban, introduced in June 2023, states that flights are to be suspended on a route that meets the following criteria:

• The route must be domestic (within metropolitan France).
• A train journey must take 2.5 hours or less each way.
• Trains must allow same-day round trips with adequate time (minimum 8 hours at destination).
• The rail option must operate multiple times per day at suitable hours.

While environmentalists criticized the rule for being watered down from 6 hour train journeys, airlines fought it vigorously in court, arguing that the French government were unfairly subsidizing railway companies with this move. However, the ‘open access’ competition of railways in the EU helped convince the European courts to allow the short-haul flight ban, since it did not favor a particular rail operator. In practice, the law only restricts three air routes from Paris-Orly: to Lyon, Bordeaux and Nantes, which were not even operated any more by the time the law came into effect. However, the law could be expanded in the future for longer trips, and across borders into other European countries. This still has the airlines legitimately scared.  

Spain

With the world’s most extensive high speed rail network outside China, intercity mode share in Spain is now dominated by rail, taking huge bites out of trips taken by planes and private automobiles. The Barcelona-Madrid airline route, known as “Pont Aeri” in Catalan or “Puenta Aereo” in Spanish- literally ‘air bridge’, was the world’s busiest until 2008. Just over 300 miles (500 km) flying distance, it had the highest number of flight operations (971 per week) in 2007. This changed dramatically in February 2008, when the Madrid-Barcelona high speed AVE line was opened by Spanish national railway Renfe, covering the distance in 2 hours 30 minutes. The new service became so popular that airlines started dropping flights. Today, about 40,000 passengers per day ride high speed trains between Madrid and Barcelona. HSR service frequency and options have increased in the years since, with several competing HSR services now sharing the same lines. As described in an August 8, 2026 article in The Economist about competition on European high-speed rail routes:  

“In 2020 Renfe launched Avlo, a low-cost brand [though this service was discontinued on the Madrid-Barcelona route in late 2025]. In 2021 came Onigo, the low-cost service of SNCF, France’s state-owned operator, followed a year later by Iryo, which is majority owned by Trenitalia. Between 2019 and 2024 prices fell by 35% on the Madrid-Valladolid route, 33% on the Madrid-Murcia route and 29% between Barcelona and Seville. Frequency on the three main high-speed rail corridors (Madrid-Barcelona, Madrid-Valencia/Alicante and Madrid-Seville/Malaga) rose from 78 to 115 trips a day. The national competition authority estimates that improvements in rail from 2019 to 2024 attracted 4.8[million] passengers who would previously have travelled by road or air. Vueling, an airline, stopped flying from Barcelona to Madrid.” 

All this doesn’t mean people still don’t fly between Spain’s two largest cities. In 2025, there were 1,768,713 airline passengers between Barcelona and Madrid, or an average of about 4,800 per day. It remains Spain’s busiest domestic air route entirely on the Iberian mainland (known locally as la Península)- only several air routes to the Canary and Balearic islands are busier.

Italy

Starting in the 1990s, faster trains were becoming a more attractive option between Milan and Rome than planes, which hurt national airline Alitalia’s domestic revenues. The route, via the major cities of Bolonga and Florence, is a similar flying distance as Madrid-Barcelona: about 320 miles (510 km). The Frecciarossa high speed train between Milan and Rome started in 2009, and the similar Italo service in 2012. These rail options slashed travel time between the two cities to under three hours, and they were often cheaper than the plane as well. So many people started choosing the train over the plane.

China

With an estimated 770 million air passenger trips in 2025, China has the world’s second largest aviation market, only behind that of the United States (which had about 900 million). However, on a per capita basis, Americans made about five times as many airline flights as citizens of China. Of the country’s 1.4 billion people, an estimated 900 million have never set foot in an airplane. There are several reasons for this, including lower average disposable incomes, and a much more restricted domestic airspace for civilian flights. However, a big factor is high-speed rail competition by design. Government policy in China prioritizes trains for domestic intercity travel. 

High speed rail offers a viable alternative to many domestic aviation routes in China, with better punctuality and comfort. It is faster than flying on a huge number of high-demand domestic corridors. According to a 2019 study, launching a high-speed rail route in China has dropped parallel domestic airline passenger numbers by 30% to 50%.

China’s national railways served an astounding 4.59 billion intercity passenger trips in 2025, the majority of which under electric power. This number is close to the estimated 5.1 billion passenger trips served last year by the entire global airline industry. China’s intercity rail network passenger count is on track to exceed the global aviation industry in 2026. For the first half of the year, China’s railway network saw a 5% overall increase in rail ridership, while China’s domestic air passenger demand contracted 6.2% in May from a year earlier. Chinese airlines are cutting flights and raising fares in response the Iran War’s effects on fuel prices. Years of state-backed investment in China’s rail network, along with renewable energy, battery electric road vehicles, batteries and rail electrification, have put it a relatively good position to weather increased prices of fossil fuels.

Part 2 of this article will examine the potential for trains to compete with planes on key West Coast corridors.