Train travel in Italy: Railpasses versus point to point tickets
 

Given that this is always such a hot topic, I thought I'd actually do the maths:

I've divided the cost of a Eurail Flexi pass by the number of days for which it is valid, converted $ into euros and added a 10 euro Eurostar Italia passholder surcharge to get a 'price per trip' using a railpass, assuming you make 1 trip per day using your pass on a Eurostar Italia high speed train. Adult Eurail passes only come as 1st class, so I'll assume you actually want 1st class travel so we'll compare like with like:

Eurail 15-day Global Flexi pass, adult, 1st class + fast train fee: approx 79 euros per day.
Eurail 4-day Italy pass, adult, 1st class + fast train fee: approx 65 euros per day

Full price train fare Rome-Florence, 1st class inc reservation: 63 euros
Full price train fare Florence-Venice, 1st class inc reservation: 60 euros
Full price train fare Rome-Venice, 1st class inc reservation: 104 euros.

'Mini' train fare Florence-Venice, 1st class inc reservation: Varies, maybe 42 euros
'Mini' train fare Rome-Florence, 1st class inc reservation: Varies, maybe 44 euros
'Mini' train fare Rome-Venice, 1st class inc reservation: Varies, maybe 61 euros.

Conclusion: Even staying flexible by buying tickets at the station on the day, a Eurail pass ONLY saves money if you travel from Rome to Venice or the equivalent every single day. If you only travel Rome-Florence in a day, or Florence to Venice, the pass loses money.

Further conclusions: If you pre-book at www.trenitalia.com, 'Mini' fares (no refunds, no changes) save you even more over a pass. If you're happy travelling 2nd class (perfectly acceptable) you save even more over a pass.

The maths for Eurail youth passes (which are 2nd class) versus 2nd class full-price and Mini tickets works out almost identical to the calculation for adult 1st class, i.e. you save money with a railpass ONLY if you do the equivalent of Rome to Venice every single day you use the pass.

Obviously, you can get Eurail 'Saver' passes which cut the pass cost if two people travel together, and longer-period Eurail passes also work out slightly cheaper on a per-day basis, but you get the drift...

Good stuff---grazie !

When I first started reading I assume you were the poster from the Rick Steves' site who has been on a rant that rail passes are cheaper and folks should not recommend p2p tickets over rail passes. Good comparisons.

Thank you. It's great to have up-to-date comparisons.

And, fmpden, the man_in_seat_61 has a website www.seat61.com with very valuable information for train travel all over the world.

I think this is a good example of why an actual computation is needed to do a comparative evaluation.

Many of my acquaintances have gone to Europe and got burned by following rules they assumed would apply to their cases without actually analyzing their usage models. The train pass here is one example. Others I have seen are assumptions such as; round-trip fare is the cheapest, therefore it lowers the total travel cost; renting car is always the cheapest and the faster way to travel; not reserving hotels gives the most choice of affordable hotels.

Thank you!! I will copy and paste this into my Italy information folder for the future.
Thanks again for all your work at helping us all.
betsy3