Sustainability

6.48 million kilometers fewer roads

In 2025 alone, the vehicles transported by the Urlaubs-Express were estimated to have kept approximately 6.48 million vehicle-kilometers off the road. This calculation is based on our actual vehicle transports on the UEX routes in 2025, as well as the respective road distances between the departure and destination points. 6.48 million km of road distance that were not driven in 2025 by vehicles transported via the Urlaubs-Express.

What does this mean for the carbon footprint?

Shifting vehicle-kilometers from road to rail also has an environmental dimension. When it comes to CO₂ figures, however, we make a conscious effort to distinguish between a comparative value and an actual calculated CO₂ reduction. According to data from the Federal Environment Agency, an average passenger car in passenger transport generates approximately 230 grams of CO₂ equivalents per vehicle-kilometer when the value reported there per passenger-kilometer is converted to the average passenger car occupancy rate. Applied to 6.48 million kilometers of road travel avoided, this corresponds to a calculated comparative value of approximately 1,490 metric tons of CO₂ equivalents.

This figure does not mean that the Urlaubs-Express will have demonstrably saved 1,490 metric tons of CO₂ by 2025. To calculate a complete net balance, factors such as the actual emissions of the trains used, types of traction, energy sources, load factors, and the composition of the cars and motorcycles transported would need to be taken into account. We therefore use this figure exclusively as a comparative value to illustrate the emissions that would be associated with an equivalent distance traveled by an average passenger car.

Why rail instead of long stretches of highway?

In general passenger transportation, railways produce significantly lower average greenhouse gas emissions per passenger-kilometer than passenger cars. However, a car-carrying train cannot be directly compared using these general average figures: in addition to passengers, it also transports cars and motorcycles. For this reason, we do not simply apply general emissions figures for rail travel to our own trains. What can be clearly calculated, however, is the number of kilometers on the road that the vehicles being transported do not have to travel themselves during their journey on the Urlaubs-Express.

Environmental Information: Specific and Transparent

Directive (EU) 2024/825, known as the EmpCo Directive, significantly tightens the requirements for environmental and sustainability claims. The relevant regulations will take effect in Germany on September 27, 2026, and are primarily intended to prevent blanket or insufficiently substantiated environmental claims.

For us, this means: We rely on concrete, verifiable information, explain the basis for each calculation, and clearly distinguish between our own data and general comparative figures. We avoid using blanket statements such as “climate-neutral,” “emission-free,” or “100 percent environmentally friendly” unless they can be substantiated with reliable evidence.