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Comment by Sharlin | Hacker News Reader

France has one of the best and fastest train systems in the world. There's really no reason for people to fly, but they still do.

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Clearly there's a reason if they're doing it! People are asking what that reason is.

The only answer is price in France, that's it. Time-wise that's about the same, trains are very fast and planes have a longer travel from the city center so that's even it out.

Any source on this or it's just your assumption that trains are faster and more reliable? I doubt that would be the case in France especially when it comes to trains.

If you're thinking about strikes, airplanes also have their fair share of strikes in France.

If you’re lucky, the train conductors and the air traffic controllers won’t be on strike at the same time though!

Faster yes.

Reliable certainly not.

On time even worse.

No it does not.if it is faster to fly most people will choose to fly.

Not if the speed comes with a price tag that properly accounts for externalities. Cheap flights are a market failure, plain and simple. Besides, on short flights the relative overhead of getting to/from the airport, and spending time on the airport waiting, is especially high, whereas with trains the overhead is minimal.

>Cheap flights are a market failure

Could you explain this? I'm struggling to understand how something becoming very cheap can be considered an (economic) failure? Isn't that something the market optimizes for?

EDIT: Perhaps you mean expensive rail is a market failure?

The same way as cheap gas is a market failure. Externalities are not properly paid for (or they're paid by the public rather than the parties of the transaction). To be fair, things like jet fuel being VAT free is a policy failure rather than market failure.

Then the solution would be to price the externality, not to ban things one by one.

What does it even mean to account for externalities?

The relative time on the airport is not high.You can literally come to the airport just a few minutes before your departure (and many people in fact do this). Also most airports are in my opinion much better organized than train stations.

Well, the most topical externality right now is CO2 emissions, of course. Airlines don't have to pay for their emission rights – indeed, jet fuel is artificially cheap because it's VAT free because of reasons.

The amount of carbon emitted on domestic flights in France has about 10€ in carbon cost per seat. I believe you are attributing too much to it

Assuming the train workers aren’t on strike, as they are wont to do at least once per year.

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