France bans short haul domestic flights in favour of train travel
euronews.com
euronews.com
Paris - Lyon by airplane: 1h15 plus travel to and from airport, plus security, boarding etc
Paris - Lyon by train: 2h30, city center to city center, no security checks. This might actually be faster!
Personally when traveling between London and Paris I choose the high speed train. It's usually more expensive but just the fact it removes traveling to and from airports (especially in London!) adds so much comfort that you realize the extra £50-70 are totally worth it. The overall travel time is also comparable.
Government induced free market distortion under pretense of ecology concerns is just what it is, bullshit, and a bad French habit.
edit: I know France Switzerland trips aren't affected by these laws, it's just an example.
Yes, the evil government is propping up BIG TRAIN because they hate planes!!!
Dude, instead of mocking me and sounding like an ass, learn your history. 20 years ago in that country, it was impossible to go from Region to region by bus, you had to take the train. You couldn't do Le Mans Paris by bus because bus operators were not allowed to sell inter regional trips. It's the EU that forced France to allow these. You're damn right the french government is once again rigging the game in favor of the SNCF.
This instance is just a weak law intended for greenwashing purpose, nothing else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerosene_tax
However, as of 2018, commercial kerosene consumption is currently tax exempt under the legislation of all member states of the European Union.
Also, are the externalities of jet exhaust taken into account? Is there any kind of carbon pricing in EU/France?
For the high-speed trains, yes.
In terms of time, the train is a direct TGV that takes 3¾ hours, while the plane route means taking a train for ¾ hours, waiting at the airport for at least an hour because of security, flying for 1¼ hour, wait for another half hour at least to get out of the airport, and then spend at least half an hour getting to where you actually want to be in Paris. It takes just as long, but probably longer if you want a decent safety margin on the airport.
And that excludes the simple fact that we all have a responsibility in reducing our carbon footprint, and that for most us who have the means to travel taking a route that may be (but isn't in this case) slightly more expensive and take slightly longer is the least we can do if it is the greener alternative by far.
1: Just an example of a journey I took myself, by train.
That's a difficult personal choice to push on people when the super rich are traveling by private jets, fuel for international air travel isn't taxed (because bought in duty free zone technically), etc...
People want legislation for all, not just fake moral that only applies to the middle class and lower. I believe the fact that this law will affect private jet trips is a reflection that politicians are aware of this and starting to feel the pressure.
Reminds me of Caroline Lucas, when asked about her air travel, saying there should be a focus on taxing aviation fuel.
What this all amounts to is travel should be restricted to the wealthy.
What do you propose?
So, if you're refueling an A380 super-jumbo or a 777, your fuel tax is very low, because those planes need a LOT of fuel. If you're refueling a 737, it'll be significantly higher, to penalize short routes. If you're refueling a small private jet, it'll be huge.
Basically, big jets that carry hundreds of passengers will get the lowest fuel tax this way, and airlines will be forced to prioritize moving people as efficiently as possible.
My whole point here was to devise a taxation strategy to discourage passengers and airlines from flying short routes, and leave those to trains instead, reserving airplanes for the much longer routes where they're much less avoidable, and also to encourage more centralization of air travel from large cities and their airports, so that larger numbers of passengers are funneled onto a smaller number of very large jets for those intercontinental trips. Passengers would then just have to take trains to/from the smaller cities. Larger planes are far more efficient in terms of fuel per passenger per mile; much of the fuel burned in a flight is used on take-off and getting to altitude anyway, so maximizing distance and plane size means minimizing fuel per passenger-mile.
If we want to fight pollution big time, ultimately we have to reduce amount of traveling. At least till we get nuclear fission working and batteries with good energy density. Entirely new ways to make trains and planes themselves.
You know there's lots of things to do outside without flying tens of thousands kilometers, right?
This is often true. But - not always. Depends on which endpoints. Sometimes it's speed, sometimes convenience, sometime price.
> free market distortion
1. Markets are not free. They are based on violent coercion of private ownership of land, factories, service providing corporations etc.
2. Markets are always "distorted", in the sense that they don't just occur naturally.
3. I can't say for certain whether this specific measure is appropriate or well-intentioned, but - emissions need to be reduced drastically over the next several years; and not just in one sector of the economy. So in _some_ way, people do need to change their habits in favor of using more carbon-frugal modes of travel.
Paris-Zurich is very different from Lyon-Geneva
The overriding market distortion, which trumps every other variable here, is the zero value given to any environmental externalities coming from air travel.
In addition, both CH and FR have massive governmental subsidies for their national carriers and the operation of their airports.
Which is to say:
you’re swimming in free market distortions so deeply you’ll never come up for air … and you’re decrying this one ?
Seriously: grow up.
It used to be that you had to be at the airport 2h in advance though.
Reminds of when someone says "this recipe only takes 20 minutes to make!" and they fail to mention you have to spend whole day shopping for ingredients, do some prep the day before and then spend half a day cleaning the kitchen afterwards... oh and then if you actually cook it for 20 minutes, chances are it will be barely safe to eat and would need much longer time.
Or, keep essential ingredients for good and favorite recipes on hand generally, clean pots and utensils in the middle of cooking (usually very possible during pauses and wait times) and cook properly. Most foods can indeed be cooked perfectly in 20 minutes and with a bit of practice it's easy to create great 20-30 minute meals without any of the hassles you describe,unless you're one of those people who barely bothers to ever cook or keep a thing at home and even scrambled eggs with toast require a trip to the grocery store and bakery first.
Sure, you may have an easy access to the airport outside the city centre, but people in the city centre, which constitute a bigger number, have a worst access. And people who are not in the city centre but on the other side also have a worst access to the airport than the city centre.
The comment you answer to is still very relevant: it is true that in average using the train is not as disastrous as one could think (so the disadvantages are compensated by the advantage with regard to environment). The fact that it is not advantageous for every one is trivial and not really relevant.
Also, this should not be decided by the "market", because the market is crap as evaluating mid- or long-term consequences.
In this case France could alternatively levy a hefty tax so that your air travel costs fully reflect the environmental damage it causes. Would that be your preference?
My suspicion is that you actually have not given any thought to this, have no idea about the actual cost of the externalities, and you don’t really care about that either. Instead, you just want to push your personal preference for trains over planes, while clothing this as if you were just appealing to objective facts and principles.
'Better' doesn't make people want to use something if they can save money. The main reason airlines like EasyJet and RyanAir thrive is because they're cheaper, not better.
Traveling by train vs. via one of those planes with minimal legroom and non-relciming seats?
Always better for short haul.
But the prices of trains (or rather: the subsidizing of air travel) make this a non option for many people in Europe. It is literally twice as expensive.
For example, Berlin--Munich. This is a one hour flight. Average price when booking in time is less than $90, I'd say.
By train its over $180. Go figure.
Right now solving the problem means natural gas, nuclear and carbon capture.
"Presumably if factories that don't employ children were better there should be no need for a law."
If I would have just hung out in the airport for 4 hours and caught the 50 minute connection it would have been a much more pleasant experience.
Trains are better in some ways, and they're wayyyyy better than someone traveling by private jet cause they don't want to ride with the bourgeoisie.
The public transportation too the city center is better in european cities than driving. Sample route is charles de gaul to the train station.
https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-...
https://siecledigital.fr/2021/10/28/laeroport-de-nice-souhai...
Why take away a choice from people?
If they did want to do something for the environment and fairer competition between transport modes they should tax aviation fuel and airline tickets. Regardless of distance and destination.
However, if we want to be impactful then we need to start building massive storage infrastructure and grow renewable sources so that we can curb down emissions from energy production using coal and gas.
Everything else is a drop in a bucket comparatively speaking (even ICE to EV transition is relatively small in comparison with Electricity related emissions). More so if EVs are charged up from Coal/Gas Electricity sources.
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sect...
they pick the most miniscule and most visible / inconveniencing regulations so that they look like they care about the environment, while actually doing nothing.
As a personal anecdote. My family decided to drive instead of fly over Thanksgiving. We saved about 1200 kg of CO2 even though we had to drive 12 hours. Clearly some savings can be made by forcing alternate means of transportation.
Does anyone know what's going on with no nonstop flights anymore?
It's possible that in the US you're seeing that as a consequence of few available pilots and their resistance to change (hub and spoke has been around forever in the region)
I took that flight several times earlier in the year and it was always pretty close to capacity, so sort of hard to understand. I guess the most likely thing is that they were trying to eliminate the direct flight to the middle airport while maintaining service there, but screwing over the majority of your customers seems like a bad way to go about that.
400 mile drive, no trains.
I live on the east coast and within 45 minutes of 2 major airports. I just did some quick checking. Following are examples of the number of daily non-stops available from them:
San Francisco - 11 Las Angeles - 13 Dallas - 17 Seattle - 9 Portland - 4 Chicago - 33 St Louis - 9 Denver - 14
I fly to Little Rock, AR a couple of times a year. There are no non-stop flights but a quick search showed over 40 1-stop options from just the airport closest to me. Not all of those are going to be combinations most people want to do or are cost effective but if you throw away 1/2 if them that is still over 20 options. I also fly into Albuquerque, NM a couple of times a year. From my closest airport there are 58 1-stop options. If I drive 75 minutes to a further airport there are 4 non-stop flights to Albuquerque per week.
If you live in or near a smaller city served only by regional flights and are flying to another smaller city served only by regional flights than 2 stops will be necessary but 4 seems excessive.
I too am curious as to the shift.
The time difference and regional/hopper flights catering to "commuters" who need to fly early morning and late evening doesn't play well with the time zone changes, so you can either have a bunch of hopper flights with full day layovers at each airport, or you can catch an early morning long haul flight from a major hub airport to another major hub airport.
In fact I think I just saw an article (can't find the source) that talked about post pandemic the US domestic flights were much more focused on large volume hub-to-hub flights as a way of serving pre-pandemic customer levels despite understaffing.
Another thing to consider is the airports themselves. It's impossible for new carriers to introduce new routes in many instances because the airports cannot accommodate any more planes. Air traffic has gone from around 2B travelers per year in 2004 to 4.7B in 2019 [2]. I'm willing to bet terminals, gates, and runways have not gone up 250% in the same time period (it's likely air traffic has increased more in developing nations relative to the US, but I'm sure the US still accounts for a fair amount of this growth).
Personally speaking, I have never had more than 1 connection each way to anywhere in the US. I only fly major carriers and live near a decent sized international airport. I also travel any day or time, depending on which flights I like best, not necessarily the cheapest flights. It might be a worse experience if you're always shopping for the cheapest flight.
1: https://www.businessinsider.com/airline-mergers-and-acquisit... 2: https://www.statista.com/statistics/564717/airline-industry-...
*except the rich
So this is another measure to widen the gap between the rich and the pleb - when the pleb's travel gets restricted further, the rich can enjoy private jet hopping undisturbed - which gives them advantage over the pleb as they can get to places even quicker.
If we are serious about climate, then there should be no exceptions for the rich, in fact they should be leading by example.
” France is also cracking down on the use of private jets for short journeys in a bid to make transport greener and fairer for the population.”
”Transport minister Clément Beaune said the country could no longer tolerate the super rich using private planes while the public are making cutbacks to deal with the energy crisis and climate change.”
I'm sure this is a misunderstanding. With a small donation for the party, everyone will be happy.
This is a soundbite designed to calm people down. If there was a "crackdown", they would have listed steps taken to ensure the transport is "fairer".
When government is saying they are "cracking down" - using quite emotionally loaded word - is precisely to cover up the fact they do nothing.
If they really wanted to make transport fairer, they would have banned short private jet trips too. There is no excuse to not do that. None.
They do nothing. Words have no bearing if they are not backed by actions. There was no excuse why they shouldn't ban short private jet trips too.
Back to the topic though, a ban on short flights doesn't sound right to me. I'd feel better if the flights were made more expensive with higher taxes or perhaps even a new tax altogether
France bans short haul domestic flights in favour of having to prop up SNCF
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerosene_tax
However, as of 2018, commercial kerosene consumption is currently tax exempt under the legislation of all member states of the European Union.
We french are really kings for disturbing markets because of ideology. used to be socialism, now it’s eco-bullshit ()
() eco bullshit looks just like environmental activism, except it makes 0 environmental impact, is 100% about politics and can destroy economies in less than 10 years.
Sorry, but you've been massively overtaken by the Germans. Better luck next time.
I can't understand how wind and solar will provide power 24 hours day.
"the gray building in the northeastern German city of Schwerin looks innocuous enough — and so does its tenant, the Foundation for the Protection of the Climate and Environment. Yet this regional foundation, created 23 months ago by the local state government, has done little for the climate. Instead, it served as a conduit for at least 165 million euros from the Kremlin-owned energy company Gazprom to build one of the world’s most contested gas pipelines: Nord Stream 2."[1]
I believe it is now time for citizen to ask a little more than just a "it's good for the environment" slogan, whenever state are starting to highly regulate and destroy parts of our economies. Such as serious scientific assessment on the real, numbered impact expected. Hint: it's not going to happen, because this airplane traffic obviously is totally negligible compared to the country CO2 emissions.
I'm a bit sensitive myself, and apologies if I sound harsh, but HN has a permanent anti-regulation erection and seems to attract know-nothings who love to argue that all regulation is bullshit and the free market will fix everything, every time an article on a government intervention or policy is posted. It drives me bananas.
Just like anytime you disrupt a well established market ( like public transport in france), with arbitrary decisions based solely on politic games.
Interfering in a market and destroying an economical activity requires proof. Simply claiming "it's good for the environment" isn't enough.
It's a purely symbolic gesture, and has 0 impact on climate.
I'm the first one to criticize pseudo-environmental policies, and Germany was indeed a mess due to pseudo-environmental policies. But the state of french nuclear infrastructure is not due to ecologists, it is very stupid to think it is, because it does not make any sense.
The different french government were all way more pro-nuclear than than in other countries, and french nuclear technology was always considered by them as a source of pride. The state of the nuclear infrastructure is a mix of plenty of things: short-term vision from the french politicians (as usual: results of investment take time and they will not be in power when they will come, so what's the point), overconfidence ("we have the best tech, I'm sure it will still be the case in 10 years, let's invest in other stuffs instead"), privatization (the picture would not be as it is today if EDF was not struggling economically because of the shoe-horned privatization that forced them to sell at loss), loss of know-how, ...
One example of how ridiculous it is to blame it on ecologists is when we talk about running nuclear plants. Their situation is very dire. Yet, how can it be the results of ecologists? If they were able to influence the decisions regarding the power plant, they would close it, not pass laws that say "let's decrease checks, let stuffs get corroded, let make the worker condition even worse". Obviously, if the ecologists were able to influence things that led to the situation of running power plants, they would have done things totally differently in order to reach their goal way faster.
But more importantly, the idea that the "renewable energies" had to be pushed forward aggressively, despite all data showing it couldn't replace nuclear or fossile, is a general gospel spread by green activists throughout the world.
Political parties saw that the population were becoming brainwashed by this ideology and adapted, as a way to gain election.
The situation for Fessenheim is in fact more complicated (the condition to close Fessenheim was to open Flamanville, proof that the government was pushing to maintain nuclear and was not at all anti-nuclear).
Well, you seem to not know the data. I'm a pro-nuclear, and yet, nowadays, nuclear is just too expensive (you cannot do a small project, you can only invest very huge amount for project that will take years) and is sometimes not the solution (increasing the nuclear share is really the exception in scientific studies, not because of "green brainwashing", just because nuclear is just way more complicated to put in place than solar and wind. Solar and wind have the problem of variability of production, but this problem is not as big as other pragmatical problem with nuclear). Not all the decisions that imply choosing something else than nuclear means it's "pseudo-environmental policies", sometimes, it's just the result of science. I also remember that in France, pseudo-science and incorrect data was used to pretend that solar was bad for nuclear. These data were bullshit at the time, but now are even less credible as the facts demonstrate it was not the case.
There are stupidity in the side of the greens, but trust me, brainwashing is as important from the pro-nuclear who just refuse every scientific facts that don't go their way. And there is pro-nuclear brainwashed people in France for a long time, as long as the brainwashed greens. It's very sad to see those people thinking they are smarter when they are just as stupid and bad for the environment.
Solar and wind projects were made interesting only through a high level of market-rigging legislation, forcing edf to buy back electricity produced at a much higher cost than nuclear.
Our current abysmal state of energy infrastructure is the result of very politically oriented policies. not science. Hard facts never showed one could replace nuclear power plants with anything else. We actively made ourselves a net importer of electricity.
The working nuclear infrastructure was destroyed, but not because of the Greens.
In the case of Fessenheim, the closing was part of a reshuffle of the system to replace it with the more efficient Flamanville (which failed because Flamanville is having big delays, which is one aspect of the failing of the french nuclear infrastructure, still not due to the Greens). You have to understand that the electricity grid is a complex puzzle: you cannot just add an important power plant in the middle without closing other plants (if you supply more electricity than the demand, you have a blackout). I don't agree with the choice of closing Fessenheim, but the arguments behind it are way smarter than the brainwashed "it's the evil Greens". For example, when you build a new nuclear power (which costs A LOT), you need to prove it will makes profit. If at the same time, someone says "Fessenheim, planned to run for 40 years (and therefore close in 2010) will, surprise, run for more years, and will supply the electricity to the same region", then the investors of Flamanville realize that their margin will drop, and the project itself can end up being cancelled.
Closing Fessenheim was both a good politic move to calm down the Greens and the anti-nuclear population while also helping the nuclear sector by boosting the chance of success of Flamanville (removing the old tech of Fessenheim to replace it by Flamanville is a clear gain for the sector). And it was also very good for the brainwashing of the pro-nuclear who were able to pretend that they were victim of the Greens.
> Solar and wind projects were made interesting only through a high level of market-rigging legislation,
Except that nuclear is even more heavily subsidized and that there are a lot of market-rigging legislation to support a market that, normally, should fail. The nuclear market is really crazy: you need to put a lot of money based on predictions of how the electricity will look like in 10 years, crossing your fingers that all the very sensitive elements have no defect, and that you will find competent workers by then (it's not the case for renewable, which does not need huge initial investment, very sensitive elements, high training). This is basically just flipping a coin. No one wants to invest in nuclear, it's just not a good market, and it was able to exist in France only because the government was distorting the market.
> forcing edf to buy back electricity produced at a much higher cost than nuclear.
And again, this is certainly not because of the Greens. The reason is because the pro-nuclear but also pro-private sector french government decided to privatize the electricity sector in France. EDF, while public, had a lot of strong asset, so the government distorted the market by kick-starting possible competitors with this kind of non-sense. The french government idea was that if it's a free market, private competitors will magically stop draining the government money. Except that the nuclear market is way less attractive that they thought it was, and at the same time, the renewable energy market was also very unattractive in France, because the government was so pro-nuclear. So France had the worst of the two sides: no new nuclear, not much new renewable, still having to pay a lot to maintain the sector, and the owner of the nuclear power plant, EDF, now losing a ton of money and not being able to invest to maintain the quality of nuclear.
But, yeah, "it's all the Greens fault". It would be funny if such stupidity was not coming with brainwashed militants who do all they can to stop rational decisions.
There was no natural markets there anyways, the airports are paid for by local taxpayers, only really big airports make money.
But that's not how we french like do it, because it sounds too much like "laisser faire". Politicians want to show that they've acted, they like to spend money and regulate, it makes them feel warm and fuzzy inside.
https://truecostblog.com/2010/05/27/fuel-efficiency-modes-of...
Flippancy aside, in most cases the transportation mode has a relatively similar rate of emission. The problem is the number of miles travelled.