Railways join forces to compete with airlines

European rail operators threw down the gauntlet to low-cost airlines yesterday, launching a continental alliance that aims to get passengers off planes and on to trains by offering them sweeteners such as train miles and appealing to their green credentials as well as their wallets.

Budget airlines such as Ryanair and easyJet have transformed travel, with Britons regularly nipping away for mini-breaks. But train operators hope to create a rail revolution, capitalising on the public's growing fears about climate change and frustration with lengthy airport checks.

The Railteam alliance - which includes Eurostar, France's SNCF, Germany's Deutsche Bahn as well as Austrian, Belgian, Dutch and Swiss operators - will create one system to book international train fares. So instead of purchasingtickets from separate operators for the various legs of a London to Amsterdam journey, for example, there will be a one-stop shop that will issue passengers one ticket for the whole trip. And because prices will be more easily comparable, fares are likely to drop.

"For the first time, we can promote and sell Europe's high-speed rail network as an integrated whole," Richard Brown, chief executive of Eurostar, said at the launch in Brussels. "Railteam can highlight gaps in the current prices and then it's up to individual operators to decide what to do."

Deutsche Bahn board member Karl-Friedrich Rausch agreed: "It's got to be our objective to make sure our fares by train are competitive with those by air. We're principally targeting leisure journeys below six hours and business journeys below four."

The days of bargain-basement high-speed rail tickets are still a little way off. Railteam's online booking system, which cost £20m to set up, will not go live until 2009. But by 2010, the umbrella group wants to have increased the number of international passengers by almost 70 per cent to 25 million.

According to Eurostar, the appetite is already there. The cross-Channel operator saw a 39 per cent jump in ticket sales in the first three months of this year for those trains that arrive with good connection times for local French high-speed services that go on towards the Mediterranean and the Alps. And eventually, officials say, timetables can be co-ordinated to create good transfer times in the same way as planes.

As EU governments fret about reducing carbon emissions, rail executives are eager to point out that high-speed cross-border rail journeys within Europe release about 10 times less CO2 than flights to the same destinations. "People can go anywhere on the network and get there more quickly than by air. Train journeys ... are more environmentally friendly," Mr Brown said.

Like frequent flyers, Railteam regulars will be able clock up train miles. And if passengers miss a connection, they willbe able to hop on board the next alliance train, even if it is run by a different operator.

High-speed rail networks are being extended like never before across Europe. More than 5,000 kilometres of track links 100 major destinations across the Continent, and that is set to triple by 2020.