France bans short-haul flights to cut carbon emissions
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
This is because the law was pretty much designed to be useless. Flights are banned if you can make the trip by train within 2h30, with no changes, and with sufficient frequency and early/late enough trains to allow for an 8h day trip. Except that in the case of CDG they decided that it's not enough to be able to make the trip within 2h30 from Paris, you need to be able to do so from the TGV station at CDG airport. That's absurd, the vast majority of flights from CDG are from passengers in Paris, not passengers that start at CDG airport.
Because of that, CDG-BOD is still OK even though it's 2h05 by train from Paris. And CDG-LYS is also still allowed because they considered that there aren't early enough trains leaving from CDG airport currently.
It's basically just good PR with no teeth, and the journalists have been eating it up with zero fact checking.
A likely (although not sure) consequence might be for other governments to pick it up. If not directly, then at least as putting some pressure. These who believe the governments work in a mostly reactive way should be happy. Here is something other govs can react to.
After electricity and heating transportation is, by a considerable margin, the second largest source of emissions. And as the article points out, on a per capita basis domestic flights and single person car usage are several times more emission heavy than other modes of transport. So this is certainly one of the most important sectors to tackle.
It's like a one-way valve, and IMHO a good way to go about domestic companies that are still subject to international competition.
Doing so would ban connecting flights.
Imagine instead of just going to the connecting terminal if you had to leave the airport, grab all your stuff, go into a local train, then to the train-station...
The law says that whenever there is a train alternative in the same city, and there are enough trains to spend 8 daylight hours and, come back, the plane must cede its place to the train.
Let's take Paris-Bordeaux as an example. Because Paris has two airports (Orly and Roissy, beth not in Paris like everywhere in the world), alternatives in train are not analyzed from Paris but from the train stations at those airports, which absolutely no one uses as departure or arrival, like everywhere in the world.
So the law now sees that Roissy->Bordeaux takes 3h44, which is higher than 2h30, so is still allowed... Even though the actual leg _everyone_ aoes is actually Paris Montparnasse -> Bordeaux, which _is_ less than 2h30. So the planes leaving from Orly are banned (which they already where, thanks to covid) but all planes from Roissy to Bordeaux, ie all the planes, are still allowed.
MUC is 30 km away from the city, KRK is in a village next to the city, LHR is within "Greater London", Singapore Airport is 20 km away form the city, separated by a forest, etc.
Lisbon's airport is indeed part of the city. So is London City or Gibraltar - but I wild day that they are exceptions.
CDG and ORY are reasonably close to Paris to be called Paris airport.
BVA is a stretch, it is called Paris-Beauvais but is actually in a different region, 120 km away from Paris. But the Paris Airports site does not refer to it.
There are exceptions, and that is good, but it's that: exceptions.
- MUC: outside of the city
- KRK: outside of the city
- LHR: OK, right at the border of Greater London
- OHR: added specifically to Chicago, it was outside before
- BVA: outside the city
- LTN: outside the city
- FRA: inside the city (it is an extension)
Maybe banning certain air routes is a good idea, maybe not. But what is absolutely a good idea is making the already existing low carbon transit options affordable enough to out-compete airfare.
From Amsterdam to London is 99 euro with a plane. With the Eurostar at the date I wanted it was a transfer at Breda to Brussels and from Brussels to the Eurostar. And then it was 200 euro more expensive.
Theoretically, these could be replaced by better integration with the rail network, but practically, that's still a pain: Germany has a similar model, with some trains/operators even getting an IATA airline code and/or flight number assigned.
Sounds great at first, but baggage isn't checked through to the destination, and passengers are liable for any missed connections unless they allow for a buffer of 3 or so hours (whereas flight connections can be as close as 30 minutes, depending on the airport layout, with the airline being liable for making it work if the connection doesn't work out).
Until all of these issues are addressed (or the airline manages to switch to smaller aircraft) – are short-haul connection flights now just running half-empty because it's prohibited to sell the spare seats?
They have a good alternative, another case of "portfolio diversification to be future proof"
TGVs are pretty good!
There's a reason short-haul flights are popular. Somehow, insanely, rail is often more expensive.
A big factor that affects costs both for running airliners and trains is turnaround time. Faster turnaround means more revenue per vehicle, pilot, etc. and planes are multiple times quicker than trains for most city pairs.
Train infrastructure is also very expensive. It's costly to acquire the land and build suitable tracks, then the track maintenance is a very labour intensive task. Thousands of people are employed to inspect tracks, clear foliage, etc. Every city needs to be linked up to the rail network, whereas planes just go through the sky for free.
Of course, you might argue tracks just need to be built once then they continue generating revenue for hundreds of years, which is true (maintenance aside), but as ridership increases and that track reaches capacity, the ticket pricing becomes a way of managing demand since typically building more track is cost prohibitive. With planes, if there is unserved demand, a new low cost carrier will spring up to handle it.
Of course, if you were to factor in emissions fully, that could significantly tilt the tables in favour of rail.
On the one hand, it does seem like aviation has unfair (?) advantages, in that there's no VAT on plane tickets and no tax on aviation fuel.
But on the other hand, laying+maintaining railroad track (and acquiring the land) is quite expensive, while airplanes only need an airport built at either end. Plus train trips just take longer, leading to higher crew costs. And then airlines offset cheaper coach seats with expensive first-class, plus lots of upgrade fees, while the opportunities here are smaller for rail.
Does protectionism also factor in to TGV? I can't find anything on that.
The opportunities for first-class train cars are enormous and precedented. Rail requiring subsidies just makes it politically unpalatable.
(The solution is to let private cars hook up to public trains for a fee. Imagine the Caltrain having a Google car instead of a Google bus on the road. Or the Four Seasons operating a fleet of luxury Amtrak cars.)
You can usually couple two whole sets together.
(also, it allows them to offload some of their own unreliability onto someone else).
I assume you're only talking about time onboard, not door-to-door time (where high-speed rail generally beats short-haul flights), so I won't dispute the time aspect.
But in order to calculate crew costs, you'd have to know crew density, and my impression is that crew/passengers is several times higher for planes than trains.
Also without protectionism, they'd be back to burning coal like germany.. https://www.npr.org/2022/09/27/1124448463/germany-coal-energ...
Without protectionism, ESA wouldn't be able to have their own space missions
Without protectionism, germany wouldn't have his car industry
Calling out "protectionism", is often a weapon used by foreign countries to weaken competition, so they can have their chance without much effort
Without protectionism, what's the alternative?
Also TGV is just the 1st step, hydrogen comming next
You gotta have to keep innovating, otherwise you'll depend on others (germany refused Nuclear because they had a 'cheap' dependency on Russia ;))
Protectionism is great, protecting your interests is great, they should do it, the US is doing it, China is doing it, and it works great for them
Long live ESA, long live the nuclear industry and long live the TGV
I suspect that a large portion of domestic flights in Germany, France, Italy, and other countries with a well-established rail network are used for just that.
There are some places in the world that fulfill both criteria (increasingly, many airports in China do).
That's not nearly enough. Airlines would need to figure out a way to actually integrate trains into their systems, including ticketing, baggage check-through, automated re-ticketing in case of delays/missed connections, liability of missed trains (including getting passengers a hotel and meals), and so much more.
This is the value that connecting flights provide that the "train + plane" combination falls quite short of today: A binding contract making it the operator's responsibility to get you from A to B.
However, in places where trains are reliable and frequent (such as Japan and China), you don't really have to worry about missed connections.
Baggage getting checked through is a luxury, in my opinion, although it should be noted that this service exists in some places as well (in Switzerland, you can get your luggage checked through from your inbound flight to any train station, or from any station to your outbound flight: [1]).
0. https://www.lufthansa.com/ao/en/lufthansa-express-rail
1. https://www.sbb.ch/en/station-services/before-your-journey/l...
> Should there be a delay, our transfer guarantee means that you will be rebooked automatically onto the next flight or train – we will notify you of this in good time.
I wonder which EU passenger rights will apply to this, though: There's different sets of rules for rail and air.
Airports because of noise and the space runways needed are best located far from the city. Train stations are best located in downtown.
> Corporate jets to escape EU’s ‘green’ aviation fuel tax
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/transport-and-tourism/co...
They are better ways for the ultra rich to blow their cash.
Just to name a few: Aerial photography (including checking for insulation leaks of heat/power co-generation pipelines), calibration flights for aviation infrastructure (ILS, localizers etc), training flights (or would you be fine with a commercial airline pilot to have their first training flight with you in the back?)...
It's not as though legislatures are powerless to distinguish between these. If they haven't, it's because they've chosen not to.
Or because they've chosen to spend their limited resources on other, higher-impact policy changes first.
Private jets account for something like 1% of carbon emissions of aviation. That's not nothing, but making it a top agenda item seems like populism more than anything.
You mean their limited supply of ink and office paper? Or their... limited political capital to make laws which inconvenience the rich?
Should we also ban recreational boating? What about recreationally driving a car?
GA pilots generally aren't flying Airbus A320s with like 120 seats, they're flying Cessnas and Pipers with like maybe half a dozen seats. They're maybe flying every couple of days instead of back and forth a few times a day, every day of the week.
Its a pretty major difference.
I am against banning any aviation use btw, this is too unfair to a particular group of people and is not based on any objective standard. Any aviation restriction that doesn't start with not letting the rich have private flights is unfair.
Can you really not see the difference between these two different usages?
I would also class flying in a completely different category to boats and cars, as emissions at altitude are significantly worse.
Chances are that boat pulling some water skiers all day is dumping more emissions in an afternoon than a Cessna flying for a few hours.
What have you personally done to remedy the situation?
All I'm trying to do is share knowledge. I imagine many people on this forum would have thought a Cessna would have used more gas than a speed boat. Chill out.
It's flying for fun, to sightsee. Or learning how to fly in order to get a pilot's license!
If you want to ban them for wasting fuel, you might as well ban people from taking leisurely Sunday afternoon sightseeing drives.
Btw., that kind of approach is one of the components of why climate change policies don't sell so well.
This is all one big slippery slope towards tyrants regulating every aspect of an individual's life in the name of carbon emissions. You don't get to decide what flights are a waste of fuel. You also don't get to evaluate and decide how someone else should spend their hard-earned money.
If there were no more flights at all, of any kind, that would represent 4% of emissions. That's for the entire planet's worth of flights. This change here won't make any difference at all to emissions, but they'll definitely empower bureacrats who are salivating at every prospect of making themselves more powerful at everyone else's expense.
you can split the 100% of total emissions into 25 pieces, apply your impeccable "logic" for freedom of choice to spend hard-earned money (somehow its never ill-gotten money) on all of them and burn the planet to your ideological satisfaction.
the only slippery slope here is the normalization of the "do-nothing because it inconveniences me" mentality.
your freedom of action ends where it conflicts with the collective survival and that is i) not a new thing and ii) is not negotiable.
the details of what to change and how are up for discussion and critique, but talk of "tyrants" and "salivating bureaucrats" indicates you will not be the one contributing anything meaningful to the discussion
Deaths from climate-related disasters have been falling in absolute numbers even as the world population grows. In fact, in the 50 years from 1970 to 2019, humanity more than doubled in number while climate-related deaths decreased threefold. This is due to the increasing ability of people in developing countries to better harness and control their natural environment enabled by industrialization driven by fossil fuels.
All of human progress has been about higher per capita energy expenditure. To stop that now is to condemn the global poor to remain in poverty. We'll know for sure in another fifty to a hundred years, but my bet is that the bigger threat to humanity's collective survival will be from the increasing centralization of power at the hands of the few that things like "fighting climate change" require.
measuring the impact of the fossil-fuel induced climate change as some direct death count is incredibly short-sighted if not amoral. large parts of the world already show significant impact from desertification. people in severely stressed areas will move, peacefully or forcefully. the result will be (civil) wars and mass migration and we already see this in the middle east. the entire modern political system of countries and borders is predicated on stable climate conditions.
> centralization of power at the hands of the few
that's a red herring if there ever was one. why should the sustainability transition be performed via centralized tyranny? If people stop spreading misinformation at the behest of vested interests and we develop reliable measures of environmental impacts a democratic society is perfectly capable to make the rational choices
You don't get to decide what is discretionary consumption. No hall monitor will ever be elevated to such a role over this planet.
Do you actually want workable less-polluting solutions? Then be against this ban and for electric airplanes which will solve this problem very soon.
> large parts of the world already show significant impact from desertification.
If you got rid of all flights globally, this would not be changing as a result. There are also massive reforestation projects undergoing worldwide and those will continue to gain traction as more land frees up for reclamation by nature and park preserves.
> why should the sustainability transition be performed via centralized tyranny? If people stop spreading misinformation at the behest of vested interests and we develop reliable measures of environmental impacts a democratic society is perfectly capable to make the rational choices
They exaggerate the extent of climate woes in order to cement their own power and luxury. That's most of what it is. The real efforts against climate corruption are in renewables and clean transport. Progress is already at breakneck speed and still climbing on these fronts.
It's the same group of people who were insisting that we need to lockdown and drastically change every aspect of society because of the pandemic. Now mountains of evidence are emerging that not only were the lockdowns mostly unnecessary, they may have been actively harmful more than good.
A democratic society making these changes on its own without over-centralization is as simple a matter as people adhering to the United States Constitution and working together at the community level to build more solar, clean up roads, install EV charging stations, etc. That's already happening. So why is it necessary for France to top-down ban short-haul flights in the name of emissions when that action will hurt quality of life without moving the needle? It's because their motives are impure. Some of them are tyrants-in-waiting.
Why should someone be allowed to have emissions just because they are flying a plane?
Unlike cars, the lifespan of an airplane is usually measured in decades. Not saying it's impossible, but you can't demand we redesign airplanes overnight to add a bunch of weight and complexity for a fleet that was mostly built in the 1950s-1970s. I would also note, I am a shade tree mechanic and work on a lot of cars, the #1 source of failures in modern cars is almost always complicated emissions control systems, so it's a harder problem than it looks like.
What does removing emissions devices on your personal vehicles have to do with whether or not someone wants to fly? Advocate for better devices and less invasive devices that do not add costs. That's a separate concern and subject from whether or not someone can fly.
All your argument would do is just justify The Next Ban with flimsy justifications.
* Farmers flying to review and maintain their fields/livestock
* Pilots practicing by taking off, flying around, touch-and-gos on the runway, etc
* Tour flights showing people around an area
* Skydiving
* Flights for shows or other entertainment
There are other means, such as diplomacy, to solve conflicts, btw.
An apt comparison would be removing the possibility of driving by car between two cities that are served by bus.
The problem with that comparison is that people have gone so insanely anti-car that a lot of them will think that's a good idea too!
These don’t yet exist. That said, Paris just took its industry out of the running for building that future.
Setting a low- or zero-carbon threshold for these flights would have been a future-proof solution. (Or an exorbitant carbon tax, to align prices between trains and planes.) Altogether, this looks like protectionism in anticipation of the TGV’s upcoming expansion [1].
[1] https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/travel/article/tgv-m-france-rail-rev...
I'm afraid, no, not "soon".
And when then do (I would probably bet "in 10 to 15 years", and I would absolutely bet "later than you're optimisticly hoping", because that's what the people making the planes are saying [1] [2]), then the bans won't make sense, sure. At some point.
But the emphasis is _AT SOME POINT_, where the commercial fossil fuel propelled planes are travelling and emitting _RIGHT NOW_. The best time to reduce the number of flights was 20 years ago, the second best time is now.
MEANWHILE...
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/are-electric-planes-ready-for-takeoff/...
[2] https://www.airbus.com/en/newsroom/stories/2023-03-electrify...
We have a big plane industry, Airbus is _very_ actively working on EP (no idea if they will achieve anything, but, hey...)
I doubt this law should affect them much - their target is probably to "fix" private jets and very short trips rather than intercities, anyway.
I'm pretty sure that if they ever find a way to make fully electric flights between the _three_ routes that are canceled by this law, then the _three_ routes will re-open.
The question now is whether this is opening the road to banning more routes (the CDG situation is _really_ absurd, and will probably be a political bargaining chip in the future), if other countries will copy the idea, if the overton window will shift to banning private jets, etc...
Fairly symbolic at the moment, but if you believe in the "small steps actually taken vs ever-postponned revolution", that's a thing.
Airbus is (perhaps intentionally) untouched. It's the space below them, which is being aggressively pursued by start-ups, that's being cut off at the knees by Paris.