Why Slow Travel by Train Is Making a Comeback

Somewhere along the way, travel became synonymous with efficiency. Get there faster. Minimize layover time. Optimize every hour. And for a while, that made sense---or at least nobody questioned it much. But a growing number of travelers are pushing back, and trains are at the center of that shift.

The numbers back it up. Amtrak reported record ridership in 2024, and European rail bookings have climbed steadily since the post-pandemic years. In Sweden, the word flygskam---flight shame---entered the lexicon and stuck around. But reducing this to environmental guilt misses the larger picture. People aren't just choosing trains because flying feels wasteful. They're choosing trains because the experience itself has value.

The Case for Going Slower

When you fly, travel is a gap between where you are and where you're going. You board in one place, endure a pressurized tube, and arrive somewhere else. The journey is something to survive, not savor.

Trains flip that. The landscape changes gradually outside your window. You eat meals at a proper table. You read, or you don't. You strike up a conversation in the observation car with someone from a town you've never heard of, and by dinner you know half their life story. The hours don't feel wasted---they feel full.

There's also a practical side. Train stations sit in city centers, not forty minutes outside of town. There's no security theater, no removing your shoes, no anxiety about overhead bin space. You show up, you board, you sit down. The simplicity of it is hard to overstate once you've experienced it.

It's Not Nostalgia---It's a Correction

Critics sometimes frame the train revival as romantic nostalgia, as though choosing rail is a quaint affectation. But wanting to actually enjoy the trip isn't backward-looking. If anything, the obsession with shaving hours off every journey is the thing that deserves scrutiny. What exactly are we doing with all that saved time?

The slow travel movement isn't really about trains, though trains happen to be the best vehicle for it. It's about reclaiming the idea that how you get somewhere matters. That the in-between hours count. That staring out a window while the world scrolls past at ground level is not a waste of a day---it might be the best part of the whole trip.

Rail travel won't replace flying for every route or every traveler. Nobody's arguing it should. But for the journeys where time allows, trading speed for presence is a trade worth making.