Europe’s flight-shame movement has travelers taking trains to save the planet | Hacker News Reader

Europe’s flight-shame movement has travelers taking trains to save the planet

washingtonpost.com

21 pointspseudolus21 comments

To put it in perspective: The only country where this has even a measurable impact is sweden. It's not huge. And sweden has an excellent train system compared to many other european countries.

I live in Germany. This discussion is all over the news. But it's not changing the statistics.

In the end what will change habits is changing incentives. Conscious choices for the climate will have a minor impact at best.

As someone living in Europe, the truth is they don't do that to save the planet, those who do that do it because they can't afford car ownership or they can but flying or driving is too inconvenient(security delays, baggage restrictions, traffic, parking, etc.)

Anecdotal evidence: I moved to Switzerland after uni and was sold on the idea that everyone there is super green and on bikes all day. Hard truth on the ground was that all the locals were driving luxury German cars and only students, expats, thrifty youths and the poor(for Swiss standards) were on trains/bikes. Everyone I know with a solid income only commutes by car.

Still, public transport in most European cities is good enough that we can live without cars and I'm thankful for that.

Edit: The article is paywalled for me. I'm commenting on what's only written in the header.

Usually flying is cheaper than the train for any travel ~> 300km.

The article isn't about taking the train instead of the car, but about taking the train instead of the airplane. Taking the airplane is way cheaper and more convenient than taking the train at the distances the article is talking about.

Flying is cheaper and faster, but not necessarily more convenient. To find cheap flights you often have to get to inconveniently located airports (the great exception being London Stansted) at odd hours, often having to change transport on the way, and lose a lot of time due to checkin and security (which are in themselves massive inconveniences). And even when paying for a better ticket the flight is often too cramped to do anything effectively. All in all, you’d often not save all that much time by flying, and the time actually spent in transit is mostly wasted, whereas a train ride affords you the opportunity to work, read or watch movies.

Some people manage to read or watch movies at least on the flight itself but personally my head hits the pillow before the plane even leaves the runway. I’m not sure what soporific magic is at play here. Anyway, I avoid flying as much as possible as a consequence.

> the great exception being London Stansted

Do you mean "London City". Unless you're an incredibly rich footballer Stansted is far from convenient to anything.

I did mean Stansted but admittedly it’s probably the least convenient airport from Central London unless you live close to the Liverpool Street line — personal bias led me astray. London City is of course closer from many points within London but is much smaller. That said, London’s other airports are also relatively convenient, e.g. Gatwick and Heathrow via tube, Thameslink or dedicated trains.

Flying is only cheaper if you get lucky. For example, you can pay €40 for a 3 hour international flight and then have to pay €300 for a 1 hour intranational flight. And it's not very predictable.

As for convenience, if you fly budget, there's always baggage restrictions and you always have to waste 2 plus hours at the airport.

I was poised to make a similar comment when I saw the article title. It's no secret that trains are popular in Europe because they are cheap and convenient.

But upon clicking through to the article I see this is specifically about people opting for longer, much more expensive and inconvenient train journeys as an alternative to flying, and purely for environmental reasons.

What do you mean? Car travel and train travel are two completely different ways of traveling. If you go by car you will have to drive it yourself. Additionally you are not confined by the rail system and station but most instead always have a place to leave your car. All of this adds up to making the way you plan and realize your trip completely different and in my mind not really comparable in terms of what kind of trip they are used for. Because of this I find it much more suitable to compare, as the article does, train traveling to aviation.

(I live in a large city in Germany and use public transport for everything that's beyond walking distance.)

Anecdotally, I briefly considered getting a driver's license just because it gives me more options how to spend my vacation. Going to a certain place and driving around to explore the countryside is much more convenient with a car (either self-owned or rental) than by train. I ended up deciding against it because of the high upfront cost of getting a driver's license, and because I would probably not be a good/safe driver if I would not be driving routinely.

This makes absolutely no sense as an argument - the train is almost always the more expensive option.

I don't downvote for saying the truth, but I do downvote for complaining about downvoting (not in this case because it's compensated by your complaint about the paywall).

In any case, many people certainly do take trains to save the planet. Also because of convenience, but there are multiple reasons why people can choose the train.

I take the train because I find train travel to be much more comfortable than car travel. I can read in the train, and don't have to pay attention to the road.

But especially for longer distances, even with ridiculously cheap budget flights, I do everything I can to avoid taking a plane for travel within Europe. I took the Eurostar to London, take the Thalys to Paris, and this year even took a Thalys to the south of France. My wife, who went to Cannes with a friend, took a 9 hour train trip on the way there, and only took a plane because the return trip would have been 17 hours by train. (My trip was only 5 hours because in the summer there's 1 direct Thalys per week from Amsterdam to southern France; I'd like it if they increased that frequency.)

My brother takes the train to all corners of Europe, almost never taking a plane.

Of course not everybody here cares about the environment; there are still plenty of short-distance low-budget flights. But a lot of people care enough to accept slightly longer journeys and more expense in order to not add to more air travel.

I would absolutely take the train if it was somewhat comparable in time to flying, but that's only true for very short trips. For example, so go from SLC to SF takes ~2.5 hours by plane, but around 18 hours by train. If it was under 8 hours by train, I would take that instead so I wouldn't have to deal with airport security.

I don't know about Europe generally, but I know the train system there is much better than in much of the US, so I'm not surprised that it's a more popular mode of transportation.

I remember my first trip to USA, in 1993, I was with a friend in Boston, and we wanted to go to Montreal in Canada.

There were 3 possibilities :

By bus for H1 hours and C1 cost By plane for H2 hours and C2 cost

Of course H2 was way less than H1, and C1 than C2 (I don't remember the exacts values as it was, you know, 25 years ago).

But what astounded us, as Europeans, was that by train it was H1 hours for C2 cost !

It was as long by train than by bus !

So we took the bus...

In France, for doing Paris - Marseille (south east, around 800 kms), it takes around 3h30 by train and 1H30 by plane.

But by train, you start from inside the city and arrive inside the other city.

By plane, you have to go out of the city, go through security, and then the destination airport is really out of town in Marseille too (you have to take a bus then a train).

So it makes absolutly no sense taking the plane, unless you live near the airport.

Tomorrow I will be traveling all the way from southern Germany to northern Netherlands. 6 hour drive. If I go by train it's 220€ with return. If I fly from a nearby airport to a nearby airport (so with limited train use) it's 700€ to 900€ with return. If I rent a car it's 120€ plus 90€ petrol, return journey.

I doubt the price of 700euro for a plane ticket. I just checked and got Munich-Amsterdam for 98 euros.

https://www.google.com/flights?lite=0#flt=/m/02h6_6p./m/0k3p...

Which puts it around the same price, but with a train, you don't need to deal with airline security. I'm sure the situation in Europe is less ridiculous than the US, but it's still an extra process.

It depends. For the euro tunnel train from Paris to London you have to go through the same security checks like at the airport. But this is not the rule and rather an exemption. However, there have been voices in the EU Comission to perform security checks at train stations, too.

It's absolutely insane that we have to pay 19% VAT on train tickets in Germany while kerosine is tax-free. I think the Greens are now calling to reverse this situation, and I fully support that proposal.

I'm from Europe. It's not to save the planet, it's all a matter of incentives.

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