Can a train or electric car replace a flight to the alps?

We’ve gone from London to the alps by electric car and by train to see if they are viable alternatives to flying. It’s true the alternatives are primarily viable options from around London and the Southeast. From this region the biggest surprise is how similar the timings can be when you look at real door to door times. So how did it go?

I prefer to take alternatives to flying when they are available, especially after seeing this note on a ski holiday advert in a London tube train. It’s an irony of the ski business that it depends on snow and low temperatures to produce artificial snow but all these are put at risk by climate change. If we keep burning fuel to get to the alps we actively bring forward the day when snow seasons will be too short and unpredictable to sustain ski resorts through a winter season. Skiing, and especially how we get there, could end skiing as a large scale sporting activity.

So what are the alternatives to flying and what are there pros and cons. In 2025 I took my electric car to Morzine in France and in 2026 I again went to Morzine in the EV in January and then by rail to Zermatt in Switzerland in February. So how did it go and what are the pros, cons and pitfalls.

Common features however you get to the alps

• Losing a day when travelling
  Everyone has their own experiences and I know some people will say they grab an early flight from UK and get on their skis by lunchtime. While it can happen in my experience that’s not generally been the case.
  My flights were mostly between 8am and 9am. That means by the time you allow for getting to the airport (an hour to LGW for me), parking and getting to the terminal and checking in I was usually leaving home around 5am. Then, on average I was arriving in resort around 5.30pm to 6.30pm hoping to make it to a ski rental shop before closing time. So door to door around 13 hours.
• poor reliability and delays
  It doesn’t matter how you travel, you’ll regularly run into delays because of your reliance on aircraft, railways or the Eurotunnel or ferries. When there is a delay, 3 hours is not unusual. My longest ever journey was a delayed flight.. around an 8.30am departure from Meribel that took around 19 hours door to door to home in London via Gatwick. The issues on my 2026 return legs by car and train both got me to London around 11pm from a 9am departure after a 3 hour delay.. so around 15 hours door to door after accounting for time changes.

Plane

CO2 – 390-740kg

• 15kg with a diesel vehicle to Gatwick airport
• 700kg for business class flight
• 350kg for economy including the non CO2 climate effects of burning fuel at altitude.
• 25kg London to Morzine.
• Business class Total 740kg CO2 return or 1,480kg for 2 people
• 390kg for economy per person inc tranfers both ends.

Cost

My friends who flew to Morzine at the same time as my drive took a business class flight. In comparing costs it’s not entirely unfair as we are comparing below with a rail journey that was first class.

• Taxi to airport £120 (£60 each way)
• Business class London to Geneva flight – £400 per person
• Transfers Geneva to Resort £100 per person return
• baggage supplements – none but many cheaper fares would require additional payments baggage
• Total £620 for 1 person or £1,020 for 2

Time

• Waiting for transfers
• Flight delays

Advantages

• When it works well flying can be a comfortable experience
• Once you enter an airport your wheely bags will be in their element with no stairs and trolleys available when needed

Disadvantages

• Sadly comfort and ease is less likely at peak ski departure times like early weekend departure. Security and bag check can be more congested, exacerbated by the bigger than average baggage demands for alpine sports including winter clothing, helmets, boots and sometimes skis. Some airlines also charge more for taking winter sports gear and checked bags.
• that also slows baggage retrieval on arrival and means longer waits before you can begin transfers to resort

Electric Car

CO2 60kg – an 85%-92% saving

• My Tesla Model 3 is relatively efficient and used 383kWh for the return trip
• Trip was 1,279 miles return
• All but 75kWh was charging used the French grid which is cleaner than the UK resulting in an overall EV driving CO2 of 35-40kg
• Plus 18kg for the Eurotunnel return trip
• 60kg total with single occupancy is 85% less than an economy flight and 92% less than business
• With 2 passengers that is 30kg each so a reduction compared to business/ economy flight of 93% and 96%.
• Put another way 2 skiers travelling in this EV could 14 holidays to the alps before their CO2 equalled an economy trip in a jet. Even single occupancy it’s nearly 7 trips compared to a flight.
• If I had taken a Dover Calais ferry the CO2 would have been 260kg so more than 10x higher until battery electric car ferries arrive in UK.
• It’s worth noting that while jets have only achieved small reductions in CO2 in the last decade electricity used by EV’s produced 64% less CO2 in 2025 in the same period.

Cost

• Eurotunnel £417.00
• Tolls EUR 176.30
• Charging £102.39
• Parking free at chalet
• Total £679
  2 people £339.50 each
  3 people £226 each
  4 people £169 each

Charging

• Outbound – Total 2hrs 4 mins
  5 stops inc 10 mins while at a toilet break at Le Shuttle then 26 mins, 19 mins, 26 mins then 41 mins at my hotel on Tesla Superchargers
• Return – Total 2hr 23 mins
  4 stops including 54 mins at Calais which wasn’t needed but made use of cheap French power while waiting for the delayed Eurostar.

Advantages

• Provided you are a good driver with experience of driving in Europe) and have enhanced cruise control to make motorway drives less tiring it is not particularly demanding.
• Flexibility in baggage
  Car travel allows you to choose as many bags or passengers as you like. The costs are broadly fixed so the more people in the car the less it costs per person
• Flexibility in trip
  While you could do this with trains or planes the car makes it super easy to travel out the day before your ski holiday commences, pick a hotel near the road up to the resort and drive up in the morning giving you an extra days skiing. Having parked, got my bags in the chalet and hired boots and skis I was on the first run before 1200.
• Door to door
  means no additional charges for travel to an airport or station and no transfers from airport to ski resort. Likewise using the same vehicle is a doddle for handling luggage.
• Eurotunnel
  Offloading is faster than the ferry and connects straight to the motorway network at both end and if you look at CO2 compared to the ferry you’ll see the it’s more than 10x more environmentally friendly before you even look at the toxic air pollution from fuel burning ferries.

Disadvantages

• Tolls and Swiss Vignette
  In France you’ll be paying motorway tolls (easy via the automatic Bip and Go) while in Switzerland you pay a one off fee for that calendar year. if you do need one for skiing it is valid till December of the same year making it better value
• Winter Tyre requirement
  You need to be confident that your car has tyres than can manage snow and ice and in addition carry either snow socks or chains as they will sometimes be required. You need to check whether either winter tyres or all season tyres with a mountain logo are a legal requirement on winter trips. They certainly are in Switzerland and Austria. If your car does not meet the requirements then an alternative mode of travel may suit better.
• Finally some lower and closer resorts like Morzine offer an easier journey and less chance of snow covered roads especially for daytime arrivals. Some higher resorts will be more difficult or treacherous especially at night when ice has refrozen on access roads and during heavy snowfalls. Do the necessary research especially if you have not driven out before and follow advice.

Eurotunnel – Le Shuttle disadvantages

What should be an easy good value 35 minute journey across the channel is far from it. Getting across the channel at any time of year is fraught with unpredictability in terms of journey time. The only predicable element is the service and cost will be what you would expect of a monopoly business.

• The cost have risen steadily – £417 return for a departure in January!
• Inadequate investment in equipment so you’ll be travelling in the same trains and rolling stock as when they launched 32 years ago. The result is worsening reliability.
• Same goes for capacity. Despite having the same equipment as when they launched in 1994 capacity has declined. Eurotunnel only transported 2.1 million vehicles in 2022 and 2.2m vehicles in 2024. By comparison in 1998 Statista reports Eurotunnel carried 3.448million cars.
• From memory when I travelled outbound there was at least an hour gap between bookable train services so it seems they cut 2 out of 3 services to keep queues and delays long.
• Customs and passport queue delays are just as unpredictable as airports like Geneva and from arrival you are sent round a vast twisty “Disney queue” and an attempt to further slow you by forcing you to stop at their retail facilities while waiting for your designated train to be called. If you wait till your train is called you have a 50:50 chance you’ll be stuck in the passport queue so long you’ll miss that train anyway.
• On the outbound trip I ignored waiting around for my scheduled departure and actually managed to squeeze onto the train before my booked one.
• When there are delays even at off peak times there is no attempt to run extra services to get people back on schedule. On my return journey a broken down train blocked the tunnel before I arrived and and even though the broken down train was removed before I arrived the delays just got longer and longer.
• When I complained about the (3hr) delay and poor service on the 1st February there was no response for over a month. On the 5th March I followed up asking if anyone was going to reply. I did finally receive an offer of a discount of £115 on my next trip valid for a year which was better than nothing.
• It was the families stuck for hours in mammoth queues and competing for seats in the Calais terminal that I felt sorry for. Once I got some food the Tesla was able to fire up some Netflix shows to pass the time in comfort.
• In terms of what this does to journey times when heading into Europe a 3 hour delay means you will likely be around 242 miles away from where you would have been with an on schedule service. As a result of a 5 hour delay a few summers ago I always build in some flexibility on my first night stay – usually 3 or 4 hours travel from Calais.
• Essentially the Eurotunnel is still the best and most environmentally friendly way to cross the Channel but it really could do with some more love, more competent organisation and investment in the future to improve things for customers and staff.

Train

CO2 – 90-95% saving

35-45kg is the estimated return CO2 by rail. That’s 90% less than a trip involving an economy airline seat or 95% less than business. It’s also a third less than a single occupant in an electric car although the EV can win with 2 or more passengers.

Cost

• London to Paris £38.25 1st class seat reservation)
• Paris to Strasbourg £19.17 (1st class seat reservation)
• Basel to Paris £37.25 (1st class seat reservation)
• Paris to London £38.25 (1st class seat reservation)
• Interrail 4 day first class flexi pass £288.55 (Eur 330)
  The pass includes all standard trains inc Strasbourg to Basel and Basel to Zermatt
  Total 421.27

Changing trains

• Outbound
  6.03am London St Pancras to Paris Gare du Nord
  Short walk to
  Paris Gare de l’est to Strasbourg TGV at up to 200mph
  platform change to Basel
  platform change to Visp
  platform change to Zermatt where I arrived at 17.52pm
• Return
  9.06am Zermatt to Visp – train derailment (see below) meant had to rebook rest of journey. Instead of going via Lausanne to Paris with a London arrival at 8pm I had…
  platform change to Basel
  platform change to Paris gare to l’est at up to 200mph
  station change via single very delayed RER train in Paris
  Paris to London arrived 22.30
  Piccadilly line 23.19pm arrival at home

Advantages

1st class is a mixed bag rail

• Eurostar plus gives you bags of space with coffee and juice and pastry at Breakfast. Evening services offer a complimentary light meal and drinks inc beer and wine.
• TGV to Strasbourg gives extra space and good wifi
• TGV Lyria from Basel to Paris gives modern double decker train, poor wifi but option of ordering food or drinks to your seat at extra cost.
• For regular trains you get more space and less busy carriages. Handy when you have luggage. The Strasbourg to Basel train is old, has some charm but the dirtiest windows I have ever seen on a train anywhere.
• Even Swiss trains can be disrupted and cause delays but using the inter rail pass meant cancelling and rebooking was easy.
• trains nearly all had power sockets (except Strasbourg TGV and Strasbourg to Basel)

Disadvantages

• Changes were fine but did involve changing platforms via stairs. Paris interchange from Gare de Lyon to Gare du Nord had big delays and was ghastly. Overall you need to keep your luggage under control in terms of ease of carrying and weight. With skis and boots I wouldn’t use regular services but Eurostar direct snowtrains to the Alps might be fine if there is enough space on the train.
• I used 2 apps… The Inter-Rail app is called Rail Planner. It is ok but could be so much better. Loading up the pass is easy enough but it doesn’t list all available trains so some have to be manually added. Also seat reservations link to a web page that generally crashes. As a result for the seat bookings I used the UK based Rail Europe app. This listed all trains but kept asking me for my inter rail pass number for each leg of the same trip. Also although it easily plans all the sections of a route from London to Zermatt there is no link from the trains it finds to the seat reservation. You plan the journey then look for the same trains individually in order to reserve seats. So close to being easy to use.
  On the plus side after the Zermatt trained derailed I was able to replan quickly on a completely different route and receive refunds on the journeys I had to cancel.

CO2 summary

• There is a big CO2 difference between economy and business flights.
• On single occupancy fuel burning cars are broadly the same as flying
• On single occupancy an EV is much less lower than flying
• train has lowest CO2 for a singe passenger but higher than an EV carrying 2 or more people or a petrol 40mpg car carrying at least 4 people.

Verdict

Yes you can get to the alps without flying. It can also be fun but it really depends where you leave from in the UK and which resorts you travel to. Many resorts have rail connections including Zermatt and St Anton. I guess my advice is you don’t always have to be a flight dodger but if you check the options you may find the train or driving is actually a handy alternative.