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Comment by BulgarianIdiot | Hacker News Reader

So now it's faster to take a longer flight and travel back to your real destination by cab.

Or take two connecting flights passing through a city not connected by train from the two endpoints.

You know some people will do that. Enforcing policies in spirit is not as easy as banning things in letter. That's always the issue.

Also what happens to medical patients, say after surgery? Travel by train? That would've probably killed my grandmother. Only time she travelled by airplane in her life by the way.

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Not really. If I want to travel from Paris to Lyon (300mi - like San Jose to Los Angeles) via TGV, it take 2 hours. A flight would take a similar amount of time.

If I want to travel from Paris to Marseille (500mi - like San Jose to San Diego) via TGV, it takes 3.5 hours.

When factoring flight prices and time to commute to the airport, it evens out. The only way you're trying a €40-50 flight ticket from Paris to Marseille is driving an additional 1.5 hours north of Paris to BVA, at which point the entire travel time is the same as TGV, with the added downside of dealing with Ryanair.

France is the perfect size to leverage rail transit nationally.

Edit:

Why the salty downvotes? Transit in France is different from Transit in the US.

Trains can be a lot more comfortable also, like seat space. Just curious. Is there a TSA (long messy security checks at airports) equivalent for trains in France?

No reason to downvote your comment btw.

No.

Eurostar services do though (but they are mostly international services).

No TSA in france for trains no. You just show up on the platform and board. Recent TGVs have a gate to get on the platform to ensure you have a ticket, but they don't do anything but scan your ticket.

Adding to comfort: trains don't have a maximum bag size nor liquid limits.

Also the same beyond France in Schengen space when travelling by train.

Example: no security check when taking the train from Paris to Amsterdam.

Fun fact: you have a security check to go from Paris (France) to Calais (France). This is because the train continues in the tunnel to UK.

Also trains in America are very poor. So Americans reaction to trains is expected.

The issue is that you are neglecting inter-modal inefficiencies. It's (with rare exception) far more time efficient and less hassle to change planes in than it is to change to a train at a physically distinct location.

Also at a higher level view, the intercity flights presumably existed because some rational actors found them to be the best choice for their situation -- it shouldn't be a surprise that people are pissed off about being regulated into sub-optimality.

Yes. Thinking about what factors make people choose plane over train and address those would have been better. People will freely choose the better option.

They could've raised the price, and made the flights more rare (say not every day, but every 3 days, or not every 3 days, but once a week etc.).

Unfortunately we're talking about primitive politicians, trying to virtue signal in primitive ways.

I would have preferred to see the shortcomings of train addressed. There has to be some if people prefer flying e.g Make train cheaper, can take long distance train straight from airports, more frequency, can book an itinerary that includes plane and train, airline reward programs apply…

> neglecting inter-modal inefficiencies

The nodes are integrated in France.

Regional rail lines, the TGV, and subways all have shared nodes to allow you to transfer between lines.

As I pointed out in a couple other comments

1. This is a solved problem already - the downsides pointed out were already considered and optimized against in the 1970s-1990s

2. France =/= US. North American public transit experience cannot be applied to that within Europe and Asia.

The one negative case I see here is it's forcing multi-mode transport for connector flights.

Lyon to Paris, I agree with you that the train trumps the plane. The problem comes from Lyon to New York. Now they have to add a connection in Paris from the train station to the airport as well as have multiple tickets which always risks a misconnection.

> problem comes from Lyon to New York. Now they have to add a connection in Paris from the train station to the airport

It's a solved problem.

Most of France's international airports have TGV (high speed rail) stations with TGV trains every 10-30 minutes.

All this was already considered back in the 60s and 70s when France began embarking on the TGV and Rail Modernization project.

It's a non-issue because the new law exempts connecting flights. All these comments about how dumb the regulators are because they overlooked connecting flights are flamboyant displays of ignorance.

Agreed! Also the fact that this regulation is only for rail commutes that can be done within 2.5 hours or less. So I can still fly from Paris Charles de Gaulle to Toulouse.

It is almost certain that shorter air routes were subsidized by government. No way it was economical. I read somewhere that many smaller airlines have gone bust.

> So now it's faster to take a longer flight and travel back to your real destination by cab.

Unlikely. You've got to beat 2½ hours (the original citizens’ assembly recommendation was 4 hours) by train. There can't be that much area where it's faster to fly over 2½ out and backtrack.

The best example I could find was Paris-Orly to Lyon, at 2½ hours by train (airpor to center of town). It's 3½ by connecting flight, according to Google Flights.

The alternative is to fly to Geneva (1 hour 10 min) then drive (1 hour 50 min), so at least three hours, assuming you could get a taxi right when the plane arrives.

And that's weighted in favor of the flight. If you leave from Paris-Gare de Lyon instead of the airport, it's only 2 hours to Lyon.

> You know some people will do that.

Laws are adjusted and even improved based on experience.

> what happens to medical patients, say after surgery? Travel by train?

I am glad that her recovery went well. I don't know the French exceptions for medical issues, but France has an excellent health care system, so I'm surprised she would be discharged so quickly if doing so would almost certainly endanger her life.

Is this something you are comfortable discussing further? Or, based on your user name, was it in Bulgaria, where the trains and medical system are rather different than France? If so, perhaps your experience isn't so easily transferable?

I've also heard it the other ways around - a diver with decompression sickness who wasn't allowed to fly and had to take the train.

According to the tweet, the ban is only for destinations where the travel time by train is less than 2.5 hours. I doubt flights save more than that with security and time buffers.

Exactly this!

> Also what happens to medical patients, say after surgery? Travel by train? That would've probably killed my grandmother. Only time she travelled by airplane in her life by the way.

Indeed, and this rule is so ham-fisted that there basically can't even be exceptions, since there wouldn't be enough of them to make a flight economical to fly.

It's not like travel by car is outlawed. You can't travel by air anywhere unless you happen to live right next to an airport; there is always travel to and from the airport.

If a medical condition mysteriously doesn't allow for train travel, but going by car and plane is fine (odd), than travelling for 400km by car is fine too. Most people live quite a distance from the nearest commercial airport in any case (200km in my case, and that's in the tiny Netherlands).

Medical conditions that preclude train travel also preclude long-haul car travel.

But somehow you can magically teleport to a commercial airport?

Out of genuine curiosity, which medical conditions preclude train travel but are fine for commercial air travel?

Rail has pretty smooth acceleration, no sudden pressure changes, more accessible in case of emergency and no risk of turbulences

What medical condition precludes trains but permits planes??

> Also what happens to medical patients, say after surgery?

Flying is probably worse since you don't have much space. Also you have to walk a lot more in airports vs train stations, security checks, etc.

> Flying is probably worse since you don't have much space.

Because people really want to place about after a major surgery?

> Also you have to walk a lot more in airports

Have you heard of wheelchairs?

I'm unsure if there is a more optimal solution. If you make exceptions, people would abuse them. If you made it cost more, people would argue it's only a rule for the poor. There will be edge cases, and they are unfortunate, to be sure.

Could you make train travel more comfortable and convenient for folks with medical circumstances? If so, how? If not, why not?

> I'm unsure if there is a more optimal solution.

Not doing this at all, and letting everyone continue to be allowed to fly regardless of wealth or medical conditions?

> Could you make train travel more comfortable and convenient for folks with medical circumstances? If so, how? If not, why not?

I'd guess that maglev instead of conventional rail would probably do it.

> Not doing this at all, and letting everyone continue to be allowed to fly regardless of wealth or medical conditions?

If climate change is a collective action problem, this doesn't work. Only changes at scale move the needle. This is a change at scale, although iterating when improvements can be made should be considered (wrt the discussed situation).

This, for sure. I gave up flying 7 years ago, and all that has achieved for climate change is a miniscule reduction of fuel used - perhaps 8 hours per year transporting 100kg (self + luggage). Perhaps the important impact personally is that I won't feel guilty as things get inevitably worse. At a stretch, maybe one or two people I have interacted with realised that they too could cut down or quit flying. But I don't preach, so it only ever comes up when relevant (someone starts a conversation about holidays abroad, or the company wants me to go to some pointless conference). I don't think I could name one person who I've influenced to quit flying.

> Travel by train? That would've probably killed my grandmother.

I'm... having difficulty imagining how travel by train could _possibly_ be more strenuous than travel by plane; anyone who's going to be killed by a train will be killed by a plane far quicker. Assuming you're talking about commercial flights; if you're talking medevac, that wouldn't be impacted by these rule changes.

> Travel by train?

Yes?

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