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Comment by fridek | Hacker News Reader

Currently the shortest LGW-CDG flight is 1h. There is LCY-CDG lasting 1h 20m. For both cities it takes 30 - 60m to get to the airport from central location and you should be there at least 1h before the departure (for a total of 2-3h non-flight time). This makes total travel 3h - 4h30m.

For comparison, the fastest train is 2h 25m. I guess you need to travel to and from the train station too, but it's definitely more central (2x15 min) and you can easily hop on train even five minutes before the departure - although I usually plan at least another 15 min buffer. That is a total of a little over 3 hours.

I don't pretend to know enough about economy of future trains vs future electric flights, but it looks like short distances will always be a tough sell for airplanes. Personally I also find trains more comfortable and I was never given a free massage for carrying scissors in my pocket when boarding one.

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Not to mention that taking the train between London and Paris is actually very pleasant, unlike taking a flight. When I worked in London I often used to go to Paris over the weekend, and it felt so luxurious to be able to wake up in Paris on Monday morning and be at my desk just after 9am in London (due to the time difference). The time on the train is all quality time that you can spend working, reading or eating a nice meal.

That sounds incredibly nice. I'm envious

I do the same between Paris and Essen in Germany. There is a direct Thalys train connection. Door to door, it takes me the exact same time to reach Paris La Défense with the train as with flying from Düsseldorf. In the Thalys I have a good meal and place to work productively on my code or simply relax and read a good book.

The better idea for the first electric flight is probably LCY-AMS. It's a 35-40 min flight but there's no alternative to it (train 4+ hours, ship 8+ hours). There's a lot of demand for that route, you have more than 15 flights per day across all London airports.

I was just looking for a route London - Rotterdam and found exactly what you mention - no good alternative to flights :)

The ferry is OK if you're travelling overnight, I've done it a couple of times.

It's possible to buy a train ticket which includes the ferry, and trains at both ends. (e.g London to Rotterdam.) The ferry itself is from Harwich to the Hook of Holland.

I wonder why there is no fast London - Amsterdam train. It's not that much farther than Paris.

UK border security. On Eurostar journeys all border checks are done at the departure station, and only Paris, Brussels and Lille have the facilities for that. That said, it should be coming this year.

Ok, good. It seems it will make a 30 min stop in Brussels for the border check though. Unfortunate.

Interesting. I assumed there was one! I regularly take the train between Berlin and Amsterdam and it's awesome. door-to-door it's actually only slightly longer than a flight, but so much more comfortable. I usually get either a ton of work done, or I relax with a movie in the restaurant area. Flying, on the other hand, is about 50% just waiting in line and/or being uncomfortable in some way.

Not really, Eurostar's about to start running direct trains http://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/eurostar-to-offer-d...

In the US, I travel between Boston and New York City fairly regularly and its the same deal. Even with the less frequent and relatively slow US trains, its still faster because the transit is city-center to city-center.

Definitely agree with this, although I'm not sure where you get the '5 minutes' before departure for the trains. The only train between the two is the Eurostar and you need a minimum of 30 mins. The Thalys was exactly this '5 minutes' before between other European cities, although I think this has been slowed down because of security.

Never-the-less, taking the train is wonderful. It is a much more 'natural' travelling experience in that you're not going to some artificial out-of-city place.

In terms of pleasure of travelling, St. Pancras is a joy to behold, a beautiful building that has been wonderfully converted for use of the Eurostar.

Also anecdotal evidence, but I've struck up conversations multiple times on the Eurostar that lasted the entire journey and even turned into friendships after, but never talked to someone on a flight.

When you take the Eurostar, you have to go through border controls, so you have to been there 30 minutes or 1 hour earlier. (Probably because London is not in the Schengen area)

30 minutes is the cut-off for the non-business tickets; the business tickets have a 10 minute cut-off. (That said, they're not always totally strict with this, especially if it's quiet.)

I presume you meant CDG for Paris Charles de Gaulle. CHG is Chaoyang, China ;)

Thanks, corrected :)

Yeah, why not say the name?

>short distances will always be a tough sell for airplanes

Glancing at Skyscanner for this Sunday there are about 35 flights a day from London to Paris starting from £39 vs 14 trains starting from £151 single. The flights look like they are doing ok.

What you're saying. The only reason to take a plane vs taking a train for this distance is the price. Usually planes are way cheaper. But the hassle of taking a plane is really making it a tough sell as you say.

By "economy" he meant economy of a system which accounts for all resources, not only the ones in a given buyer's pocket.

Train tickets are anywhere between 60 and 300 pounds for this route. The cheapest plane tickets for the same route I've found were 80 pounds and there is no upper limit. I don't see much difference in price to be honest (+ getting to the airport is usually way more expensive).

I did a quick search for both April and June, and found the prices very similar. EasyJet is cheaper when buying well in advance, but it's not a massive difference.

Of course, budget airlines will also take you all over Europe for low prices. But for the narrow case of just London-Paris, the Eurostar is competitive, which is quite a bit cheaper than I'd remembered.

I paid 60 euro to take Easyjet from Lyon. I would think Paris being closer it is cheaper?

Depends where you are going to and from. Not everyone lives near St Pancras and is going to Gare du Nord.

Short distances re great when you _have_ train options, but you can't do a train from Dublin to London, or from London to Amsterdam.

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