Contents
In a new episode of the Trends Green Podcast, we explain why traveling by train is sustainable, and which route to choose for a vacation or weekend
.
In order not to miss new releases, subscribe to the podcast and listen to us on Apple Podcasts, CastBox, Yandex.Music, Google Podcasts, Spotify. And also subscribe to our telegram channel.
We’d love to hear from you – write to us at [email protected], answers to which questions you could not find and which of the experts you would like to hear from us in the podcast.
The guest of the issue is Elena Rakova, First Deputy Head of the Passenger Transportation Department. Elena told how to manage to go to Lake Baikal in seven days and how Russian Railways ensures the safety of passengers during a pandemic.
Hosted by Anastasia Chizhevskaya, founder of the environmental education bureau Sustainble.
Conversation timeline
01:30 — Why traveling by train is more environmentally friendly than by plane
02:34 — The most interesting tours and routes in our country
08:08 — Where to find locomotive-powered trains
10:11 — How RZD raises environmental awareness among tourists
12:33 — How the pandemic has affected travel in our country
14:08 — Security measures inside the trains
15:14 — New travel destinations in Siberia
18:50 – How to make the route more environmentally friendly if you are not ready for a long drive?
19:43 — The most radical act in favor of the environment
Why train?
The train is the most environmentally friendly mode of transport: the emission of carbon dioxide, for example, when flying from St. Petersburg to Moscow is about 130 kg per person, and in the train this figure is almost three times less – 40 kg.
Where to go for domestic tourists
For travelers who do not want to burden themselves with route planning, but want to reduce their carbon footprint, Russian Railways has launched tours that are built according to the “train-hotel” format. At night, the train moves between cities, and the day is for traveling and discovering new places. For such tours, the joint work of Russian Railways, local communities and regional authorities is important, which organizes the entire infrastructure of the trip: meetings at the station, trips to cafes and excursions.
The most popular existing route is the Ruskeala mountain park, which can be reached from St. Petersburg, Petrozavodsk, Sortavala, and more recently from Moscow. Karelia attracts more and more travelers every year, so work on this direction continues every day. The retro train “Ruskeala Express” is stylized as the Nikolaevsky Express: green curtains, a piano in the dining car. There are other locomotive-powered trains in our country – such, for example, carries tourists to Veliky Ustyug.
Another interesting tour is the Silver Route, which runs through Moscow, Pskov, Veliky Novgorod, Rybinsk and Yaroslavl. For those who want to discover the Volga region, there is also a direction – from Moscow to Sviyazhsk and Yoshkar-Ola.
The most popular routes among tourists are two-three-day ones, for which you do not need to take a vacation. There are also those that last a week, for example, the “Pearl of the Caucasus”. In seven days you can visit Mineralnye Vody, Grozny, Makhachkala, Derbent and Novorossiysk.
Recently, Russian Railways launched the Baikal Fairy Tale tour, which involves several types of transport: a double-decker modern train, an airplane, a bus, and even a boat. In addition to Lake Baikal with “living” water, tourists pass the pink lake Bursol with salty, “dead” water, where the train runs along rails that are located right on the surface of the lake. Such tours combine convenience and environmental friendliness. Passengers do not have to completely abandon the aircraft and thereby increase the travel time by several days, but they have the opportunity to reduce COXNUMX emissions2 at least for part of the journey.
How the pandemic has changed travel in our country
Ecotourism is a new trend that is attracting more and more followers, partly due to closed borders. One example of an eco-route is a trip to Kalmykia with its unique places where wild tulips bloom once a year. This route is gaining popularity, but sometimes it is impossible to prepare for such tours in advance, because you need to accurately predict the time of flowering.
The pandemic has brought its own adjustments to train travel. In 2019, the number of passenger traffic was greatly reduced, but in 2020, the direction of railway tourism began to develop actively, many new routes appeared. Transportation has almost recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Now the main directions are Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh, Sochi, Anapa.
Many are stopped from traveling by train by the need to interact with other passengers, but there is nothing to be afraid of – Russian Railways regularly complies with the requirements of Rospotrebnadzor for sanitary treatment. The new trains have an air purification system, and workers regularly take PCR tests and measure their temperature.