Trains & Ground
Rail passes are usually the wrong answer, and sometimes the right one
A pass wins on specific patterns of travel and loses badly on others. The break-even is easy to calculate and rarely calculated.
Trains & Ground
Rail, buses, ferries and the overland routes worth the extra hours.
21 articles · updated August 11, 2026 · page 1 of 2
Trains & Ground
Overnight trains are accommodation, and should be priced that way
Comparing a berth to a seat is the wrong comparison. Compare it to a seat plus a hotel plus a transfer.
More in Trains & Ground
Trains & Ground
Rail fares are set by three different systems at once
A train ticket may be priced like a commodity, like an airline seat, or like a public service, and the three behave nothing alike.
Trains & Ground
Split ticketing works because fares are not priced by distance
Buying two tickets for one journey is legal in many systems and cheaper surprisingly often, for reasons built into how fares are…
Trains & Ground
When a coach beats the train, and when it never does
Long-distance buses win on specific route geometries and lose badly on others, and the deciding factor is rarely price.
Trains & Ground
Ferries run on tides, weather and the vehicle deck
Sea crossings follow constraints that have nothing to do with passenger convenience, which explains most of what confuses…
Trains & Ground
Car hire abroad: the charges that appear at the desk
The headline rate covers the car and very little else, and almost every dispute happens at collection or return.
Trains & Ground
City transport passes are often worse than single fares
Tourist travel cards are priced against a pattern of use most visitors do not have, and the break-even is usually higher than it…
Trains & Ground
Airport transfers fail in predictable ways
The journey between the airport and the city is where most itineraries actually break, and the reasons repeat.
Trains & Ground
Left luggage is the cheapest way to buy back a day
The gap between checkout and departure is dead time only if you are still carrying the bag.
Trains & Ground
Land borders are a different queue from an airport
Crossing by road or rail involves different documents, different timing and different failure modes from arriving by air.
Trains & Ground
Bike, scooter and moped hire has one expensive clause
Two-wheeled hire is cheap, convenient and the single most common way travellers discover their insurance does not cover them.