France to ban some domestic flights where train available due to climate measure | Hacker News Reader

France to ban some domestic flights where train available due to climate measure

theguardian.com

The benefit is transfers. Walking down the terminal without luggage to another gate vs leaving the airport with luggage and getting on a train. Especially if it's the difference between going through the baggage claims area in a major international airport (usually the transfer point) and a small regional one (usually final destination).

Plus if you're driving home, train stations are usually in city centre (expensive/difficult parking).

This ban will just make travel more of an ordeal for frequent (esp. business) travellers in some smaller towns/cities in France. It may or may not be a worthy tradeoff, I don't have an opinion on that.

Is there a barrier to integrating the rail network with the airports for seamless transfers? I've long thought how nice it would be to fly from London to Oakland, then get straight on Amtrak to Sacramento. I do this already but baggage can be annoying.

At least in Germany this is done in some places. I often buy flights out of Frankfurt since the ICE train goes stops in the airport.

On Amsterdam Schiphol Airport the transfer to train is probably quicker than to another plane _if_ you only have carry-on bags. I've seen quite a few other international airports like this, maybe it's the density of Europe that promotes this kind of layout?

Baggage is an issue for sure. I've long felt that the baggage belts system provides a great generic (flexible) solution but blocks a lot of ideas that require tighter integration.

Anything that replaces it would be orders of magnitude more complex and fragile. We'll probably have belts for quite a while.

In the case of France, there are some low hanging fruits. The two main airports in Paris, which are also the country's main hubs, are connected to the train network. But to transfer from most of Paris's train stations to the airport train, you have to navigate a maze of tunnels and staircases, and bus and metro lines. I would seriously have to think about how to transfer from Montparnasse to CDG, and I've lived there. Having better, clearer connections between the main train stations in Paris would benefit all train travelers, not just those going to the airports.

There is a planned dedicated express train from Gare de l'Est to one of the airports: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDG_Express

Seems like an additional tax on flights where a train is available would be a more sensible measure; especially if the tax revenue were earmarked for climate change mitigation.

If the problem is that the full social cost of burning fuel is not captured by the price, then tax the fuel itself. No-brainer.

There's an upper limit to how much you can influence using that lever, at which point it's cheaper for them to just overfill the planes and make a border hop to another country without similar fuel taxes. I don't believe any country charges import tax on fuel already in vehicle fuel tanks.

That’s an interesting evasion, but it seems no more difficult to tax on the burn or estimated burn than it is to tax the flight itself. I guess my point is to keep it simple and tax the actual problem at the root of it rather than the related activities. There has to be market incentive for innovation in providing the service without causing the problem. That is the only way I see of moving toward environmental sustainability.

>> I don't believe any country charges import tax on fuel already in vehicle fuel tanks.

They do. Entering the EU you can only have 600 litres(400 if entering through Finland) of fuel in your tanks, anything above that must have a duty paid on it. Obviously it's only a limit relevant for trucking, but yes, there is a limit.

https://truckfocus.pl/nowosci/53145/wwoz-paliwa-zza-wschodni...

> especially if the tax revenue were earmarked for climate change mitigation.

You meant bureaucrat's pension funds right?

Will the ENArques be able to use private plane or helicopters to circumvent this ban?

What was the benefit of these flights anyways when you have a good rail and highway system?

I see that pre 9/11 security was fast and easy but now just the worst case security checkup time makes me shrug at short-distance flights.

I know one such — the connection between Munich and Nuremberg, which is half an hour by plane (airport to airport) and an hour and a half by train (from railway station to railway station).

Most air passsengers were transit passengers. If you wanted to go from Nuremberg to Madrid, say, then flying via the hub in Munich made sense, and the train wasn't much of a competitor for that case. The train is good if you want to go to the city of Munich, not so good if you want to go to the airport and check in for a long-distance flight. By air you check in in Nuremberg, hand over your luggage, take a half-hour flight, arrive not very long before your flight to Madrid, go to gate, and fly on. If there's a problem before Munich it's the airline's problem. By train (or car) you leave longer in advance, and even longer because you leave a buffer against delays on the way to Munich airport.

Lufthansa also sells tickets to connecting train rides to flights and as far as I know, they take the responsibility for delays (which is common occurrence with Deutsche Bahn unfortunately). I'm not 100% sure though.

Still, as you've said, it makes more sense to book a connecting flight than a train ride, because of the ease of checking in.

Not just Lufthansa. I’ve done it with Emirates’ rail and fly option too from Berlin to Frankfurt.

As far as I understand, this (as offered by many airline) is "just" a discounted rail ticket and the airline will not assume any responsibility on delays. The Lufthansa offer goes beyond that: the trains have an LH flight number, and you get a single ticket. They rebook you in case of delays and there is a dedicated luggage droppoff/collection point right at Frankfurt airport train station.

Lufthansa at least has Rail & Fly where for €60 return you can add a DB train ticket to the flight. The ticket gets you from anywhere to the airport and back. Since the train and flight are booked on the same ticket, if there is a train delay (or flight delay returning) you will get rebooked on the next flight as if you had taken a flight. It's pretty great, I would recommend it.

https://www.lufthansa.com/de/en/rail-and-fly

>What was the benefit of these flights anyways when you have a good rail and highway system?

Didn't read the article but might they just be repositioning the planes for flights elsewhere?

This would be the only legit reason

I remember reading the story below where a man in England buys a flight from Newcastle to Spain to London because it was cheaper than the train.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/metro.co.uk/2017/06/27/man-flie...

Connecting to international flights at CDG is the most common example. These are still allowed BTW.

The french greens appear to be objecting to the changes in the measure since its proposal for this reason. From the article, the original proposal was four hours and by reducing into 2.5 hours you've got out a lot of flights which people would seriously consider taking rather than going by rail. Even as someone who happily shows up for European flights with 40 minutes to go, if I could take a train rather than go through airport security for a trip under 2.5 hours I think I'd rather take the train.

The question is that if trains are so good, why are people still preferring flights?

...works for a small country

Can as well work for parts of the US East Coast and US West Coast :-)

Just 35 hours from Seattle to Los Angeles. And we've already established that high speed rail from San Francisco to Los Angeles is beyond our capacity as a civilization.

French rail network superimposed at true scale on the US midwest.

https://i.redd.it/8g59yft1lfs61.jpg

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