In typically tax-happy Europe this always struck me as odd, agree it is sad when you find out an airplane ticket is cheaper than a corresponding train.
Domestic use is taxed, and at rather steep rates (look at the US!); however, because most flights in the EU are international, it would require both nations ok'ing a tax on flights between them. No one has gone through with this, and it's doubtful any one ever will, for a variety of reasons.
I guess planes might just fill up their tanks in non EU countries and then carry the extra load around and be more polluting.
What about a really complicated solution, since a global solution is not going to happen:
1. Tax local fuel in EU. Everyone who fuels in European airports, must pay more
2. Tax European airliners fueling abroad - in countries that are not in the EU airline fuel tax agreement.
3. Tax inbound airliners according to the amount of fuel onboard
This would probably violate all sorts of treaties, would be hard to enforce and would have lots of all kinds of leaks... but food for thought anyway.
If every country in the EU agreed that every other country in the EU could impose tariffs on flights between them, then this should work.
>barring a specific agreement between those to nations
An EU wide agreement would be an agreement between nations.
Now imagine we slap a tax on jet fuel similar to the one on vehicle gasoline. This would mean that the price of jet fuel would go up by 50%. The round trip ticket Madrid - Paris now costs 170 eur instead of 140 eur. Would it make Madrid - Paris train route competitive? No, not at all.
Truth is, you can make anything competitive with anything else if you put heavy enough finger on the scale, but the reason flights are much cheaper than trains, despite being faster, is not because of lack of jet fuel taxes.
If you buy a train ticket in advance, you definitely are in that price scale. I looked up train rides one month in advance [2] and a ride from Madrid to Spain is now 175€ to 210€, right in the range of the train ride.
But hopefully, Europe-wide CO2 taxes will start to price in externalities and remove the finger from the scale in favor of flights.
[1] https://taxfoundation.org/gas-taxes-in-europe/ [2] https://www.raileurope.com/en/journey/madrid-paris-14skjpm
How is this a good thing?
And don't tell me it's important for planning loads: The schedules are mostly fixed anyway, and the usage doesn't fluctuate that wildly. In some countries, like the Netherlands, this is not a thing, and the national train (NS) behaves just like a city metro: You wave your pass walking on to the platform, and wave it again on the way out.
Also, CDG-MAD flight isn't really between Paris and Madrid but between CDG and MAD, which have some additional costs associated with transfers (assuming you are actually going beteween the city centers). So to be competitive a train ride might not need to have the flight price exactly, but can be a bot more expensive.
But a sensible policy would be that when trains are more expensive, taxes should be put on flying until they aren't (taxes directed to trains through subsidies, infrastructure investment and so on).
Just to provide some data points:
Madrid-Paris by train takes about 17-20 hours and costs between 261 and 350 Euros. By plane, it takes about two and a half hours and costs (in your example) around 170 Euros.
Also take into account that for many international travellers, the time saved aspect is more relevant than the money saved aspect, as lifetime is a very limited and non-regenerating resource, and planes will win pretty much always. The idea of Europeans going from Madrid to Paris by train happily is a green pipe dream outside train enthusiast circles (for our American friends: How often would you say you take Amtrak from Chicago to New York, roughly the same distance, before you get bored of it?)
Furthermore, to make a fair comparison you need to:
- Include all the costs of the air ticket in the price comparison, in particular transport to and from the airports. Public transport is sometimes not available, or may not be convenient (e.g. with luggage or small children), and due to the large distance to many airports taxis can be very expensive
- Include all of the time involved in the flight — depending on the cities involved, your two and half hour flight could easily be 5+ hours city-centre-to-city-centre once local transport, check-in deadline, time padding for uncertainties etc is considered.
- Compare to a rail ticket for a specific train at a specific time, which is usually cheaper. The more expensive rail tickets often give you the option of multiple trains on a given day, which is a level of flexibility no air ticket gives you.
If we want to really make it a fair comparison you should also probably compare the price to the business class flight ticket, considering that even the lowest class of train ticket gives you a comparable level of comfort to a typical intra-Europe business class airplane seat.
If you need to get there as quickly as possible, the airplane is going to win on most (but not all) routes. But for many people, having fewer steps in the journey and being able to comfortably work during the journey can actually make the longer train option more convenient.
> - Compare to a rail ticket for a specific train at a specific time, which is usually cheaper. The more expensive rail tickets often give you the option of multiple trains on a given day, which is a level of flexibility no air ticket gives you.
Virtually any airline outside of the no-frills-Ryanair sector happily sells you flexible tickets (often for price).
> If we want to really make it a fair comparison you should also probably compare the price to the business class flight ticket, considering that even the lowest class of train ticket gives you a comparable level of comfort to a typical intra-Europe business class airplane seat.
You must not have had the DB ICE4 experience. I'd rather jump off an office building than to sit in one of their second-class cars ever again. They are extremely space-constrained, and now they build the window walls slightly round (and rounder so than e.g. mid-range aircraft cabins), so you sit in there with an arm folded to the inside, like Ötzi. On my ride back, I shredded the already-paid ticket and bought a new one for First Class, which was only slightly better. No European airline even comes close to that awfulness (and yes, I've had non-Business Ryanair experiences).
Planes may be more uncomfortable, but at least they don't make you sit down for half a day.
> But for many people, having fewer steps in the journey
Are you aware how often you have to switch trains if you are doing point-to-point travel? Even within Germany, I have 4 switchovers between where I live and Berlin (that is, if I am lucky). With the plane? Sit down, stand up, Berlin.
> being able to comfortably work
Unless you travel First Class AND get a seat with a table AND somehow are able to work without internet, I don't see how that argument (which comes up every once in a while) works out for you. YMMV, depending on which country you are in.
> Virtually any airline outside of the no-frills-Ryanair sector happily sells you flexible tickets (often for price).
This is not the same thing. I do not need to tell anyone that I have decided to take a later train using my open train ticket.
Yeah and the amount of space is not really anything specific to the train. You can vary the amount of space in planes, buses and cars as well, and the price will follow, just as in trains.
There is no reason why space is "cheaper" in a train really, it's only the scheduling of few trips that make more space available, if you have more trips on the tracks, similar to a road, space becomes constrained, like you see in subway trains.
This also ignores the speed: if the prices were the other way around, with airfare twice as expensive as rail, I expect most people would still take the plane.
Airlines also typically charge for luggage, RyanAir charge extra for anything they can think of, including choosing a seat, and people booking at shorter notice subsidise those who book in advance. The cost difference for most passengers is probably smaller.
10.5 hours is still longer than 2.5 (or maybe - if you include security checkpoint time - 3.5 hours) by plane.
Also, and this may be related to the airports I fly out of, but I have hardly ever had planned more than an hour of time from entering an airport terminal to the gate. In TXL (sadly closed now for the much inferior BER), I averaged 25 minutes. At Stuttgart, I once managed to get there in 20. It all comes down to being prepared for security, knowing which security controls are often underused and picking up the right departure times. rel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnNyUGhXTsw
This is the saddest part of flying, that it really can take only 20 minutes, and instead of making it as efficient as possible, there's the opposite development, where the recommended time has gone from 1 hour to now at least two hours.
The federal government spends $2BN/year on Amtrak and people lose their damn minds.
Meanwhile, at the FAA, nearly $12BN/year...and that doesn't account for all the local and state funds used to subsidize airports. Or Department of Transportation spending...
I recall a figure from MIT's microeconomics textbook (Pindyck et al.) where they showed the aggregate profits of all industry since its inception were negative.
In EU, subsidies to airlines are an indirect subsidy to the tourism industry.
probably this counts for at least a few billions
Another consideration may be the consequences of possibly diverging tax rates for kerosene: if it's much cheaper to fill up in, say, Spain, than it is in France, it might become cheaper to carry the fuel for the return leg, even if the increased weight increases fuel consumption.
I'm not saying that any of this justifies the state of affairs. But it's possible to arrive at it even with mostly good intentions.
Surely, the actual costs calculations will need to include the infra and operational costs however if you check the energy consumption per passenger per distance[0], rail transport is always on the more efficient side of things.
Unless the infrastructure and operational costs of trains are higher than airplanes, I don't see how airplanes can be more competitive. Is the rail infrastructure that much expensive?
Maybe the argument can be made about convenience but on efficiency, trains look more efficient.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport
It makes flying seem more competitive then it actually is, as trains usually aren't booked relative how much your transportation cost and instead the overall cost to also enable these almost empty routine runs
The people with only outlying routes nearby would be stuck without public transport, which is unacceptable. Commercial train companies only get contracts for the busy intercity routes if they also provide service on the outlying routes.
Building and maintaining one runway at point A and one at point B is obviously much easier than building and maintaining a railroad between them.
Airports also tend to be at the middle of nowhere, IMHO you need to incorporate the cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure needed to get somewhere from that nowhere.
If you have ten airports, you have 10 * (10 + 1) / 2 = 55 airlines. If you have 10 train stations, you have only as many rail lines as you're willing to build, which means countries end up spending most of the effort and money on lines connecting major city centers.
Also, if you have an international airport, you're connected to every capital city of the world.
The logistic advantages of air travel are huge. Kerosene will need to get a lot more expensive before these advantages lose out.
Also, trains can switch lines, disconnect, run on the same line back to back etc.
Just look at the Europe railways map: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:High_Speed_Railroad_...
I suspect, with some standardisation and automation, you can end up having very good point-to-point travel options by train. Even better than airlines maybe. The current inefficiencies could be due to poor management and weak integrations. Can you imagine how great could be to have Europe and Asia wide rail network where automated carriages and rail switching systems coordinate to achieve travel from any train station to any train station?
The usual tracks either connect big cities or they run between urban centers and less populated areas. IOW run between every seat taken and almost empty.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraftstoffverbrauch?wprov=sfti...
Let's cut out the 96.5% first, then reduce travel.
The same with cars. Automobiles amount for a small portion of total gas emissions. All in all, passenger cars+ passenger aviation is about 10% of total emissions. Yet we heard complaints about these more than anything else. And not only complaints, but policies that want to fix this problem.
Why not focus on the 90%? Industry lobbyists love this state of affairs, we auto-flagellate for 10% and nobody says a peep about the elephant in the room.
Single plastic usage is such a red herring...every time you load up your car with gas, you put in 15 gallons, that is ~50 kilograms. A plastic straw is 0.4 grams, 125,000 plastic straws to amount to the same hydrocarbon footprint. This is a very rough math, but you get the idea. You can compensate for all your life consumption of straws and forks by not filling up once. Plates are heavier, but still marginal compared to everything else.
Another one: plastic grocery bags are 5 grams, that means one tank of gas is like 12000 grocery bags.
You could say: but at least use less single use plastic! Have you considered the alternatives? Would stainless plates weigh much more on a plane, and induce a higher CO2? Would food non-wrapped in plastic spoil more? (We throw away about 50% of all fruits and vegetables anyway).
GHG is a tough problem. Focusing on some token issues like plastic straws and plane travel for ordinary people does not solve it, it only makes it harder for people to accept it.
Also, trains (in large parts of Europe anyway) run on electricity only of which a significant chunk is from nuclear power, which doesn't emit anywhere near as much CO2 to move as many people as a plane would.
And the noise. trains are so quiet compared to planes.
Then when it come to bigger hitters, like industry, building insulation, agriculture etc. you will get exhausted and poorer people that just can't take it anymore. And then you end up with people thinking this is all so futile and so scared of the future that they don't want to even have kids anymore.
I think one of the reasons that aviation is so often in the spotlight in discussions about climate change is the existence of greener alternatives. Of course, those can't replace all flights, but they don't have to. Add to that the fact that air travel has exploded in recent years before Corona, and you certainly have to ask yourself whether taking five weekend trips a year from Zurich to Hamburg really improves our standard of living so much that we should put up with the downsides of it.
Personally, of course, I also like to travel and I think flying is a great invention that brings countries and people closer. Nevertheless, you have to be a bit critical about whether every flight is really necessary.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200218-climate-change-h...
not so relevant for the shorter trips intra-EU, but still a factor
There would be rules around a fuel flight vs a legit passenger/cargo service, assuming they don't want to tax the extra fuel left in a plane at the end of a flight.
But that seem like a pretty straightforward problem to solve.
I'm Swiss and at least in Switzerland such a rule would automatically apply unless the population would do a referendum. And that would lead to a public vote that would almost certainty lose.
They aren’t going to russia for the Paris London flight.
I think your new point is optimistic at best. You would have to switch trains quite often and the time it takes would probably weigh heavier than the price. Especially between EU countries, within country flying is not really that big in EU.
> I love trains and take them over airplane when it's an option. However, trains are often around twice as expensive as flying for may routes.
But I agree that switching trains is also an issue.
Example: From Amsterdam Airport to Palermo, there are 2 flights per week (Friday and Monday). That is 300 passengers per week. It is a profitable to fly planes between these two cities, but a direct rail route including maintenance of the railway system would be far to expensive. This is partly resolved by stops along the way, but definitely not completely. The busiest direct railway routes (AMS-PARIS, AMS-LONDON, PARIS LONDON) in Europe are far from full, with one train an hour.
So the problem is not insufficient capacity, but rather that the scale is to small. I see electric buses playing a big role in the future to allow for better point-to-point connections.
Much like the idea of separating ISPs from the last mile infrastructure by the way.
Timetabled connections are likewise impossible to set up with too much uncoordinated competition, because without making the connection times unattractively long they cannot really be set up between more than one train per relation (maybe sometimes two at a stretch).
Plus connections that aren't ridiculously padded (and therefore result in absolutely uncompetitive journey times) really only work with some sort of through-ticketing so passengers aren't left stranded if they do miss a connection after all.
In Europe. But not in the US.
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/railroad/us-and-european-f...
http://www.mapattacks.com/2015/01/who-owns-americas-rail-inf...