FREQUENCY, CONNECTIVITY, DEPENDABILITY.

The Germans get it.  "The Green party has proposed to make rail travel in Germany so attractive over the coming decades that passengers turn their back on domestic flights."  Yes.

The goal must be to reduce the travel time between as many places as possible in Germany and neighbouring countries to "a maximum of four hours", the Greens said. The authors singled out the routes from Cologne and Düsseldorf to Berlin, Hamburg or Munich as well as the connection between Frankfurt and Berlin.

In many places, bottlenecks would have to be eliminated quickly. In addition, more trains are needed in the morning and evening rush hours to make train travel more attractive to commuters as well.

Up to a point.

But if you're putting in high-speed service between Stuttgart and München, one of the audited routes, is part of your strategy to shave 36 minutes off that trip to skip stops at Ulm and Augsburg? Are you more likely to attract nine million passengers onto your trains if passengers riding Stuttgart - Augsburg, Augsburg - München, Stuttgart - Ulm, Ulm - München usw. are occupying some of the seats in addition to the seats held by the full-route passengers.

Yes, and pay attention to those taxes.

The paper also provides for a "step-by-step introduction of the Kerosene tax for domestic flights". This should gradually align with the tax rate on petrol which currently stands at 65 cents per litre, the party argues.

Yet for trains, the VAT should be reduced from 19 to seven percent. The Greens also want to lower route prices and the electricity tax.

Meanwhile, the party is also thinking about how to improve trains to make people think twice about taking longer or international flights.

They proposed a "European night train network" that they hope would attract more passengers to the railways.

"It is unacceptable that the airplane, as the most climate-damaging mode of transport, is still being subsidized with billions, while the environmentally friendly railway is chronically underfinanced," said Daniela Wagner, one of the authors of the paper.

The extension to the road network, and to the United States, is straightforward.