In Italy, to book and buy a ticket to travel by train, you go to the Trenitalia.it website and pay online with your credit card, very quickly. To find an excellent offer to travel by plane, however, you can consult the websites of low cost airlines and find the lowest price of air flights.
But the subject of this article is not so much the online search for a seat on the train or on the plane, which, I believe, everyone can do.
Instead, I would like to point out another way, excellent, to understand, with a comparison and an aggregate calculation, which type of travel costs less and which means of transport take less time, to get from one place to another, considering all the possibilities, between plane, car and train .
The search for means of transport leads us to compare the price of the train ticket, the cost of the trip if it was done by car, the cost of the plane and the sum of the expenses if all three were to be taken.
In the cost comparison, the total travel time is also indicated, including transfers to the station or airport and, as a further and important indication, the consumption of CO2, the journey by train, that by plane and that by car.
If you have ever wondered if, to go to a city, it is better to take the car, the plane or the train for the business trip or vacation, the Omio website (which can also be used as a mobile app on Android and on iPhone ) is perfect for comparing prices and costs .
The site scans all the means of transport available to get to the destination, trains, buses or coaches and planes, to let us know which is the least expensive and which is the fastest.
As for trains and buses, the rates of public transport and also of private companies such as Flixbus are taken into account.
A rather innovative travel search engine checks all travel options and allows you to find the most convenient travel directions to get from one point to another in the world .
Rome2Rio then takes the information on the stations, ports and airports and combines the data of all possible means of transport available to go to a place .
By accessing the Rome2Rio.com site, the search opens in which to write the city of departure and the destination.
Rome2Rio scans air flights, trains passing through Italy, Europe, China, India and the USA, driving directions and ferry information.
The data to find the routes and the means of transport are taken from different sources (for example, the driving directions are those of Google Maps).
For example, looking for a way to go from Rome to Milan Rome2Rio finds 7 possible alternatives: one with driving directions to travel by car, one with train, plane and taxi and so on, also considering the distances of the airports from the city.
Looking for Rome-Cagliari you can choose whether to go by ferry.
Basically you get a summary of travel times for each means of transport and the comparison of costs depending on what is chosen.
For planes, the company that provides the described route and the cost provided by the Kayak.com site, one of the best sites for traveling at low prices, is also indicated.
For the trains instead all the stations are listed and it is possible to look at travel times and prices with direct links to various websites to book the ticket
Unfortunately when for trains in Italy there is no direct link to the Trenitalia website to proceed immediately with the booking.
For each journey the travel time and the CO2 consumed are written.
Another site, less complete but interesting for other reasons, is RouteRank, an automatic calculator that estimates travel times, plane or train ticket costs and petrol costs if you travel by car.
The search for planes and trains is based on the normal available companies.
For planes, therefore, the low prices made by low cost airlines such as Ryanair will be highlighted, while the Trenitalia website is used for Italian trains.
The online service displays all the results ordered for the lowest possible price and shows, in the other columns, the estimated travel time and the CO2 consumption.
Thus, if it is more important for a person to arrive earlier than to spend less, the results can be sorted by date and time of arrival at the destination.
The site leaves nothing to chance: before making the calculation, by clicking on the items on the right of the search bar, you can in fact select the methods with which you intend to move .
For example, you can choose to make the comparison by setting what type of car you intend to use, whether diesel or petrol and whether large or small, if you think you will use a taxi for transfers to and from the airport or the station and if you plan on using public transportation .
An interesting aspect is that RouteRank takes into account the fact, often underestimated, that, if you use one of the low cost airlines, you usually do not arrive at the main airport of destination, but to another airport that is sometimes poorly connected with the main city.
So the most classic example for an Italian is the Rome-Milan journey.
The calculator showed that:
- the most ecological and environmentally friendly way, with lower CO2 consumption, is to travel by train while the most expensive way is to travel by car.
This highlights how road traffic, so fashionable in Italy, is a really bad way of respecting the environment.
- The cheapest type of combination is still the train journey which takes six hours and, in second place, the one by plane with Ryanair which takes about 5 hours considering also the transfers, the arrival at the airport two hours before and the Classic time that passes from when the plane arrives at its destination to when it comes out with baggage in hand.
- The fastest journey is by fast train with the Frecciarossa which takes less time than any other means of transport.
In second place is the journey by plane, not with Ryanair which arrives in Bergamo but with Alitalia which leads directly to Linate (unfortunately, however, this combination is also the most expensive).
