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Hack 09 of 15 · Beyond flights

Trains, buses and ferries instead of flights

On the pairs where the ground beats the plane — city centre to city centre, no airport, no bag drop — the planner treats a train, bus or ferry as just another way to fly the leg.

Low risk~60 city pairsAlways badged est.Competes in the optimizer
How the planner finds it
  1. A hand-built table covers about sixty city pairs where surface transport is genuinely competitive: Eurostar and the TGV network, Frecciarossa and Italo, AVE and Iryo, ICE and Railjet, FlixBus and ALSA overnight coaches, and the Mediterranean, Adriatic and Baltic ferry routes.
  2. Each entry carries a mode, an operator, a duration and a US-dollar fare band for one adult booked a few weeks out.
  3. Ground options enter the optimizer as itineraries, so a train competes with a flight on identical terms and can simply win the leg.
  4. The midpoint of the fare band is what the optimizer uses. The band itself, the operator name and a Rome2Rio link go on the card so you can see live prices.
  5. Ground fares are always badged “train · est.”, “bus · est.” or “ferry · est.” and never “verified”. They are a band from our table, not a live quote.
  6. Ferries are a separate switch, because an eight-hour crossing is a different kind of day out from a two-hour train.
Worked example
London → Paris, chosen as a coach
from the example plan
Overnight coach, on the example plan
$45 per person, 8h 20m
Eurostar on the same pair
$60–$180 band, 2h 20m
Why the coach won
It also removes a hotel night
Badge on the leg
bus · est. + overnight

The optimizer picked the bus over every flight and over the train, on price plus the saved night. The card still shows the Eurostar, because two hours against eight is your call, not ours.

When it does not work
  • The table is finite. A city pair that is not in it is only ever priced as a flight, even when a great train exists.
  • Fare bands approximate a booking a few weeks out. Rail fares in the UK, France and Spain move enormously with how early you book.
  • Ground legs are never “verified”. Follow the link and see the real price before you count on it.
  • Ferries get cancelled by weather and rarely have a same-day alternative.
  • The time cost is real. A coach that saves $60 and eats a day has not necessarily saved you anything.
Risk
Low risk

The worst case costs you time, not the trip.

On your plan: Inline on any leg it wins, with a train, bus or ferry badge and a Rome2Rio link for live prices.Setting: Advanced → allow ground legs (on), and Hacks → Ferries (on).train instead of flightEurostarFlixBus
Keep reading

The rest of “Beyond flights”

The worst case costs you time, not the trip. Every hack on the list gets the same treatment: how it is found, a worked example, and the catch.

Overnight legs as saved hotel nightsA red-eye flight, a night train or an overnight ferry is a hotel night you never book. The planner prices that night and lets the leg spend it.Rail passes versus point-to-point faresWhen a trip has several train legs, a Eurail or Interrail Global Pass can beat buying the tickets one at a time — or not, and the plan tells you which.
See it on a real trip

Give it your cities.

Two trips free. It runs all 15 of these, tells you which ones found nothing, and stamps every price verified, cached or estimate.

Plan a tripSee it on a finished plan