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There is no reason to fly short distance if you want to go from city center to city center. However, if you're already arriving or leaving on a long distance fl

There is no reason to fly short distance if you want to go from city center to city center. However, if you're already arriving or leaving on a long distance flight, the whole overhead of getting to/from/through the airport disappears and those 1.5 hours start making a difference. I think forcing companies to advertise more honest flight durations and prices could make a huge difference. If the airline tells you that you need to be at the airport 90 minutes before the flight, add it to the flight time. Require airlines to prominently show total time and cost from city center to city center with luggage. If you're comparing a 59 EUR, 2.5 hour train ticket with a 29 EUR, 1 hour flight, the choice seems obvious, even though the flight will likely cost you more time and money in the end. UX matters, and I believe this would be a very powerful nudge. I bet many people would take the train if the flight had to be advertised as "typically 3.5 hours, 82 EUR from city center to city center (fine print: 29 EUR flight, 29 EUR baggage fee unless you fly with hand baggage only, 12 EUR ticket to the airport, 12 EUR ticket from the airport at the destination; 1 hour flight duration, 45 minutes for getting from airport entrance to the gate, 20 minutes boarding, 30 minutes to get to the airport with an average 7 minute wait, 10 min to get out of the airport, 30 minutes to get from the airport with an average 8 minute wait)"

kevindong 6y ago
If you use Google Flights, you can specify the number carry-on/checked bags you want and Google will include the pricing info in its rankings of flights which is handy. I don't agree that airlines (or really any travel provider) should be required to include travel time to/from city centers though because not everyone is going to go into city centers. However, that'd be an interesting feature to implement: a feature that lets users specify their actual destination to get a fuller picture of travel time.
- cycomanic 6y ago
  I think including the travel time to town centre is a good idea. At least it gets rid of the shenanigans that Ryan air does, where they say Frankfurt and the airport is in the middle of nowhere (1.5h from Frankfurt). Also many travellers (except for locals) need to go to the town centre anyway if they need to access other modes of transportation. And if not, they likely would have looked up their itinerary anyway.
Sharlin 6y ago
And flights costing 29 EUR are simply a market (and policy) failure. In no reasonable sustainably operating economy would we ever have gotten into a situation of flights being cheaper than train trips.
- kevindong 6y ago
  Counterexample: in Summer 2019, I took a one way flight from Rome to Lisbon via Ryanair for $57.40 USD / ~€48.77 (current conversion rates, my receipt was denominated in USD). That's a 1,160 miles / 1,870 km / ~2.75 hour flight (distance is as the crow flies). A train cannot compete with that. Not that a reasonable train itinerary between Lisbon and Rome exists. For May 2021 [0], I'm seeing several roundtrip itineraries between Lisbon and Rome for USD$31 / €26 on Ryanair. I think the fact that such a low-priced flight can exist is actually a triumph of capitalism. [0]: https://www.google.com/travel/flights/s/a5Ea https://www.google.com/travel/flights/s/a5Ea
  - verall 6y ago
    It would be more of a triumph if those $30 flights were not using leaded fuel, or if there was at least some lead pollution task to encourage people to take different transit options until the airline industry figures it out. I think, it was much less of a problem, when many less planes were flying. -- Correction in the comment, Jet-A has no lead. Cursory research suggests its nasty products are mostly organics rather than heavy metals, which is much less bad. Thanks! https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15093276/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15093276/
    - coryrc 6y ago
      I don't believe Ryanair flies any piston planes and, thus, does not use any leaded fuel.
  - anodari 6y ago
    I understood that the ban was only for flights within France.
  - 6y ago
Scoundreller 6y ago
I largely agree. One issue with France is that their train system is very Paris-centric. Want to go from the Rennes northwest to the Toulouse in the southwest? Yeah, you’re going to go through Paris in the centre of the country. Same with Bordeaux to Lyon. Takes about the same time driving as high-speed rail takes a horseshoe route.
- Denvercoder9 6y ago
  This is kind of an intrinsic problem with transport that needs infrastructure along the whole route (i.e. trains and cars). You need a minimum amount of travel along a route for it to be worth it to construct and maintain that infrastructure. The system naturally evolves to a hub-and-spoke model. Planes just need infrastructure at both ends, so it's a lot easier to create a point-to-point model.
  - gsnedders 6y ago
    It's far from just the infrastructure, if you're looking at HSR; Bordeaux to Lyon as an aviation route is mostly served by E190's, each seating 100 people, whereas a TGV Réseau seats 377 (which I believe is the lowest capacity of any current TGV). Clearly the train can have the advantage of intermediate stops, but you're starting off with much higher capacity to fill. And sure, you could build a very short train, but a lot of the efficiencies of rail are built on transporting large numbers of people at once.
    - Scoundreller 6y ago
      I'm surprised they're running jets instead of turboprops, but maybe fuel efficiency is too high in my mind. Only Chalair runs a small handful of ATRs.
      - gsnedders 6y ago
        Air France Hop and easyJet, the two operators of the route, only fly jets. In the Hop case, post-pandemic they'll be operating ERJs and E-Jets; in the easyJet case, they'll be operating A320 family aircraft. Note that Hop did have various ATR 42/72s until 2019/20, when they got rid of their (fairly recent) ATR 72-600s. It is perhaps surprising that they now are jet-only, but at least pre-pandemic the plan was for them to long-term be operating only CRJ1000 and E-190s, both of which are notably larger than the largest turboprops on the market. I don't know what their average sector length is, but it's certainly not implausible that the fuel efficiency per passenger isn't that much worse (and easyJet's A320s almost certainly beat any turboprop on a per passenger basis given their average loadings).
nraynaud 6y ago
remember that now you're supposed to be in the train 20min in advance, and connecting across stations in Paris with heavy luggage and kids is a shit show (and a non-starter for foreigners, they just call a taxi, and as the most visited country in the world, this detail should matter) But I hope it increases the frequency of bullet trains to and from CDG TGV, this train station never had a useful train time for my airplane. Lyon Airport is very easy to reach by train, too bad it has almost no airplane.
- ahartmetz 6y ago
  > now you're supposed to be in the train 20min in advance Oh, why is that? Never heard of it or had to do it anywhere. My last train trip starting from France was about 15 years ago, though. And most trains have several stops so you couldn't possibly be so early except at the initial departure, not without slowing down the whole trip unacceptably.
  - nraynaud 6y ago
    So a train driver closed the doors 2 minutes early once, letting a lawyer who could prove he was on time stranded in the train station instead of appearing in court, and now our world has changed. This is a true story, and this is really the beginning of the change. They also hired people from the airplane industrie, so they now control some stuff in the station instead of during the travel, robbing everybody of more time. It just baffles me that I can't rush to the train and buy my ticket inside, where I have nothing better to do anyways.
- kergonath 6y ago
  > remember that now you're supposed to be in the train 20min in advance That is not true. They show the platform on the screens at the station 20 minutes in advance. I think they recommend being 5 minutes in advance, but they let anyone board as long as the doors are open.
  - nraynaud 6y ago
    you are right, they just "advise" you to be there 20 to 30 minutes early. https://www.oui.sncf/aide/presentation-a-l-embarquement https://www.oui.sncf/aide/presentation-a-l-embarquement And they outright write that some people will get an airplane experience, and not in a free drink way.
efwfhfasljd 6y ago
UX is also being neglected by train companies, and especially between train companies. I think it would be a great enhancement if we had a European booking system that'd provide single-ticket journeys no matter which operator, and a Google-Flights-like UX. Right now, the German DB got me into a mindset of adding an extra hour between transits, and assume that the train might skip my destination entirely. And if I file a complaint? Well, that's already part of the price!
ajross 6y ago
> There is no reason to fly short distance if you want to go from city center to city center. In France. In nations like the US (outside the DC-to-Boston corridor anyway) without a well-designed and -maintained rail infastructure, 1-2 hour flights are routine and not really replaceable with other options. Infrastructure investment pays off for decades and decades, and Europe has done really well here. > However, if you're already arriving or leaving on a long distance flight, the whole overhead of getting to/from/through the airport disappears That's an infrastructure problem too, though! There's no reason rail service directly to and from airports can't be integrated with the system. It's true in many places already, though I know nothing about France.
- xalava 6y ago
  The US is pretty exceptional in its lack of rails. There is also a Seattle-San Diego. Enjoyable as a tourist, but probably not suited for business purposes except in the last portions. In France some high speed trains go now directly to airports (CDG,LYO). So it is becoming possible to chain a plane and a train in a few scenarios.
  - pochamago 6y ago
    It's not really that the US lacks rails, we have the largest rail network in the world. The problem for passenger rail here is population density. France is three and a half times denser, and Japan is nearly 10x. I think they would also struggle a bit more to justify rail costs if they were as spread out as the US.
    - ajross 6y ago
      > we have the largest rail network in the world For freight[1]. Putative high speed rail might go to the same places but generally can't share the same tracks with 30mph long haul trains. And the big gap is the plumbing of rail and transit into the urban cores, which in most US cities is highly decayed and in many of the newer metropolises was never built at all. [1] Which is unsurprising, because we have the biggest per-capita need for transcontinental land freight transport in the world. The US has been perfectly fine at building out infrastructure it thinks it needs, it's just been making poor choices about what it "needs".
dmurray 6y ago
"Planes take longer to travel city centre to city centre" always gets trotted out in these discussions, but it's the wrong comparison. People don't all live in the city centre. Airports are usually outside the city, but well served by motorways and public transport. I wouldn't be surprised if more people can reach Charles de Gaulle or Orly within 45 minutes at rush hour than can get to Gare de Lyon.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  But then you need a car, and you need to either deal with rental/pickup/dropoff, or pay something ridiculous for parking.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  The US cities with the best transit have poor transit by world measures. Sure, most people don't live in the city centers, they live in the suburbs. But for much of Europe, suburbia means easy access to high frequency regional rail transit systems that gives you easy 45-60 minute access to city center at all times of the day. Even in the US, where I've lived in cities that had what the US thinks is good transit, getting to an intercity rail station has often been as easy, if not easier, than getting to the airport, even though I'm originating in the suburbs.
- vladvasiliu 6y ago
  > I wouldn't be surprised if more people can reach Charles de Gaulle or Orly within 45 minutes at rush hour than can get to Gare de Lyon. Actually, I would. The highways around Orly (A6 and A86) tend to be extremely congested during rush hour. Add to it that the areas around those airports aren't that densely populated and are sufficiently far out so that public transportation has to go through Paris if you're not close by, and I don't think that more people are able to reach the airports quicker than Gare de Lyon or Gare du Nord. Charles de Gaulle is even further out in the "country" so I think there are even less people able to reach that quickly, especially via the A1 and A3 which are also congested all the time. Then once there, the airport is so huge that just getting around it may take you a good 15-20 minutes. Note that for some destinations south of Paris there are TGVs departing from Massy, which is a couple stops away from Orly. The same applies for CDG and the north. Also, Paris is only one end of the journey. On the other side, the public transit situation isn't always as great. It's either some sort of bus, which takes forever (especially during rush hour), or some taxi which may be somewhat quicker than the bus but will cost an arm and a leg.
ipqk 6y ago
Just put a large tax if the short, domestic flight isn't a connecting flight. Short, domestic flight by itself: 100€ Short, domestic flight part of an international itinerary: +30€ It'll mostly work itself out.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- frosted-flakes 6y ago
  What would stop people from doing split tickets?
  - lentil_soup 6y ago
    If you split it you'd pay more, no?
    - frosted-flakes 6y ago
      Yeah, I don't know how that never occurred to me.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    The above idea specifically discourages split tickets (buying one ticket for each leg). You'd end up with an extra 70€ fee if you buy the two tickets separately. So unless buying a multi-leg tickets adds more than 70€ to the total price it's not worth the trouble.
- ArkanExplorer 6y ago
  Just tax CO2 emissions to a sufficient level and let the market sort itself out.
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    Yes and in this case this could achieved very easily by simply increasing taxes on kerosene, in a way that does not affect existing and future 'green' aviation fuels.
Mister_Snuggles 6y ago
I used to regularly travel from Edmonton to Calgary for work. When you add up the extra time required for flying, it's about a three hour trip (45 minutes in the air, the rest is getting to the airport, checking in, etc). Coincidentally, it's also about a three hour drive. My reasons for driving vs flying were usually to do with how long I'd be there. If I was going for one day then flying was preferable since falling asleep on the way home isn't a big deal. If I was going for multiple days then driving was preferable so that I'd have a car and be able to go places after finishing at the office. Flying was preferable in winter in case the roads were in bad shape. Driving was preferable on Fridays so that I could visit friends afterwards and come back the next day. Flying was preferable during the Calgary Stampede to avoid having to deal with the excess traffic in Calgary (plus WestJet did a cowboy-themed safety lecture during Stampede which was kind of neat).
- publicola1990 6y ago
  In general though flying is much safer than highway driving. If one wanted to minimize risk, one would always fly.
  - lovasoa 6y ago
    Flying is actually much more dangerous than driving. The risk is to destroy the environment that sustains life on earth. This does not even compare with the risk of a car or plane accident.
    - varajelle 6y ago
      I believe it might be better for the environnement to share a full plane than be alone in your car, for equal distances.
      - jeromegv 6y ago
        Quotation needed. All studies show the impact of flying as being much higher than driving, even when shared.
bertil 6y ago
I like your idea of forcing sites selling airline tickets to be honest about their cost and delays, but… after the fiasco of cookie-warning pop-ups, that’s a particularly promising can of worms. > if you're already arriving or leaving on a long distance flight, the whole overhead of getting to/from/through the airport disappears About connecting flights: most major French airports have a high-speed train (TGV) station for that reason. They typically have fewer trains than central stations, but they have good connections to nearby cities with small regional airports.
marcandre 6y ago
The website fromrome2rio includes transfer times, wait times and costs too.
dopidopHN 6y ago
Thanks for getting into the details. The fine prints change everything.
grishka 6y ago
Moscow and St Petersburg are ~700 km apart. It takes 4 hours by high-speed train, 8 hours (a night basically) by low-speed train you can sleep in, or about an hour by plane. And none of these are optimal. You have to spend those 4 hours awake if you're taking the high-speed train, you might get annoying neighbors if you take the low-speed one (and some people also don't fit into those berths), and all 3 airports in Moscow are in the middle of nowhere, so it essentially takes the same 4 hours if you fly. And I'm not taking price into account, it varies a lot. I'm just ranting that there isn't a good option for this kind of distance. Not long enough to fly, but a bit too long for a train. Oh and you're only left with the slow train if you want to spend a day, including the evening, in Moscow, and return at night.
Befterriager 6y ago
> However, if you're already arriving or leaving on a long distance flight, the whole overhead of getting to/from/through the airport disappears and those 1.5 hours start making a difference. There is a workaround for this. For long distance flight, take a company where the international/local connection takes place outside France: KLM through Amsterdam, Lufthansa through german airports, Brussels Airlines through Brussels... This is already what I always do when I have to make a long distance flight because Paris Charles de Gaulle airport is horrendous and Air France is prone to mass cancellations when there is a strike. But this is doable because I live in Toulouse which has bad train infrastructure but is well connected to the rest of Europe by plane.
kmeisthax 6y ago
I would not be surprised if airline companies lobbied for unrealistically short pre- and post-flight times - much like how they often sell really tight connections that result in you having to run halfway across O'Hare for some reason.
Pasorrijer 6y ago
If you're a frequent flier, and on the right route, most of those times go right down. I've walked into an airport 15 minutes before the flight, boarded the plane and gotten out of the airport 10 minutes after landing
m463 6y ago
> advertise more honest flight durations that's an interesting concept. I think that might have an unintended (good) consequence - could airports with lots of inefficiencies work on their passenger flow to be competitive?
- s0rce 6y ago
  Absolutely, I'm almost certain it could be as efficient as a train as most of the security is pointless theater. When I was flying more often I would leave much less time and usually not miss my flight. Sure, something could go wrong and I would miss it but the hours saved not sitting at the airport outweighed a potential occasional missed flight and the extra time that would take to re-book and come back.
belorn 6y ago
When we compare train and air travel here in Sweden, the issues are far away from being about time, UX or advertisements. The rail system has been stagnated in the last 40-50 years and maintenance neglected. The rail is not straight and gives a lot of lateral movement, vibration and noise. The train departments are not sound isolated or have air condition. The speed limit (as a result of the neglect) makes the trip slower than on the highway, with around 30m in favor of the car on a 3hr trip. Motion sickness is an obvious problem. Because of the lack of maintenance, there is almost never alternative rail tracks which mean that when they do maintenance they have to shutdown the whole track and switch to bus, often doubling or tripling the total traveling time. Train tickets is also about 100-200% the cost for distances above 3hrs. I don't know if the French rail is better, through I do know the German one is. Getting into a train department with sound isolation, air condition, plenty of space and almost zero lateral movement was amazing (sample size of one trip I made between two large city centers), and if that was the option I would pick that ever time even if the train was slower or costed more. It is the 50 years old black tin can of motion sickness that makes me pick a plane over a train.
- dopidopHN 6y ago
  Between large cities, the French state has roll out special fast train since the 80s. They are pretty fancy. ( they keep being updated, the 80´s one are gone now ) You might have seen those. Bright color, « futuristic » design. In the vein of the concord Suprasonic plane.
- vladvasiliu 6y ago
  Main French lines are (for the time being at least) in fairly good shape and there's new investment being done. They've opened two new high speed lines relatively recently: Paris - Strasbourg (near Germany in the east of the country) in 2016 and Paris - Bordeaux (near Spain, in the south-west) in 2017. Generally speaking, taking the train in France is a rather good experience. The trains are quiet and confortable, especially the high-speed ones but even regular trains are fine. Newer carriages have power outlets at the seats and are well ventilated. The issues people here fear the most are strikes (which is the national sport, particularly in public transportation) and the creeping-up of prices, especially now that there won't be any more competition from planes.
wink 6y ago
I think your experience may be jaded from the one side as much as mine is from the other side. Your example assumes the same level of quality and guarantee of timely arrival. Maybe it's just me but I've had such bad luck with trains in Germany that if I need to be somewhere I will fly or take a train one hour earlier. Or two. It was a running joke at my former company that every single time I visited our other office my reserved spot in an ICE was cancelled or the whole train was changed to an IC (yay, working with a laptop on your lap). I think of all the times I've taken a plane in my life there was major delay twice - and one was at the other end of world, so a single time starting from here. And no, I'm not one to regularly fly (and I hate to do it) but if you for example take Munich - Berlin or Munich - Hamburg, if I need to be there in the morning I'd need to take a train the day before and pay for a night in the hotel, or I fly in the morning. Proper night trains would solve that but then it might still be a wasted evening in a hotel room whereas I have no problem getting up at 4 am and catch a plane at 7. For clarity: while part of my story doesn't apply for "train rides of 2.5h" the gist is the same. If I don't trust that the 6:30 train will make me arrive on time at 9:00 I'd need to take one at 5:30 or 4:30. Also I fully support this ban. I'm just not buying the time+stress argument.
- schmidp 6y ago
  And that’s why I believe self driving cars will kill public transport as well as short leg flying. I already prefer the Tesla autopilot on longer highway drives to trains. As soon as I can really take my eyes off at the motorway I have not much reason to fly anymore (before Covid I had 30-50 flights in one year), except long distance.
dagw 6y ago
There is no reason to fly short distance if you want to go from city center to city center. I used to travel quite a bit between two cities where the option was a 3 hour high speed train and a ~45 minute flight. And while the train was great in theory (fast, comfortable, free wifi etc.) it wasn't quite reliable enough. Being 1-2 hours late was common enough that you basically had to take it into consideration when making plans. If it was an important meeting I would normally fly in the morning to increase the chance of being on time, and take the train home in the afternoon when I could just chill with a glass of wine and watch a movie and being an hour+ delayed wasn't a big deal.

kevindong 6y ago

If you use Google Flights, you can specify the number carry-on/checked bags you want and Google will include the pricing info in its rankings of flights which is handy. I don't agree that airlines (or really any travel provider) should be required to include travel time to/from city centers though because not everyone is going to go into city centers. However, that'd be an interesting feature to implement: a feature that lets users specify their actual destination to get a fuller picture of travel time.

cycomanic 6y ago
I think including the travel time to town centre is a good idea. At least it gets rid of the shenanigans that Ryan air does, where they say Frankfurt and the airport is in the middle of nowhere (1.5h from Frankfurt). Also many travellers (except for locals) need to go to the town centre anyway if they need to access other modes of transportation. And if not, they likely would have looked up their itinerary anyway.

Sharlin 6y ago

And flights costing 29 EUR are simply a market (and policy) failure. In no reasonable sustainably operating economy would we ever have gotten into a situation of flights being cheaper than train trips.

kevindong 6y ago
Counterexample: in Summer 2019, I took a one way flight from Rome to Lisbon via Ryanair for $57.40 USD / ~€48.77 (current conversion rates, my receipt was denominated in USD). That's a 1,160 miles / 1,870 km / ~2.75 hour flight (distance is as the crow flies). A train cannot compete with that. Not that a reasonable train itinerary between Lisbon and Rome exists. For May 2021 [0], I'm seeing several roundtrip itineraries between Lisbon and Rome for USD$31 / €26 on Ryanair. I think the fact that such a low-priced flight can exist is actually a triumph of capitalism. [0]: https://www.google.com/travel/flights/s/a5Ea https://www.google.com/travel/flights/s/a5Ea
- verall 6y ago
  It would be more of a triumph if those $30 flights were not using leaded fuel, or if there was at least some lead pollution task to encourage people to take different transit options until the airline industry figures it out. I think, it was much less of a problem, when many less planes were flying. -- Correction in the comment, Jet-A has no lead. Cursory research suggests its nasty products are mostly organics rather than heavy metals, which is much less bad. Thanks! https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15093276/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15093276/
  - coryrc 6y ago
    I don't believe Ryanair flies any piston planes and, thus, does not use any leaded fuel.
- anodari 6y ago
  I understood that the ban was only for flights within France.
- 6y ago

Scoundreller 6y ago

I largely agree. One issue with France is that their train system is very Paris-centric. Want to go from the Rennes northwest to the Toulouse in the southwest? Yeah, you’re going to go through Paris in the centre of the country. Same with Bordeaux to Lyon. Takes about the same time driving as high-speed rail takes a horseshoe route.

Denvercoder9 6y ago
This is kind of an intrinsic problem with transport that needs infrastructure along the whole route (i.e. trains and cars). You need a minimum amount of travel along a route for it to be worth it to construct and maintain that infrastructure. The system naturally evolves to a hub-and-spoke model. Planes just need infrastructure at both ends, so it's a lot easier to create a point-to-point model.
- gsnedders 6y ago
  It's far from just the infrastructure, if you're looking at HSR; Bordeaux to Lyon as an aviation route is mostly served by E190's, each seating 100 people, whereas a TGV Réseau seats 377 (which I believe is the lowest capacity of any current TGV). Clearly the train can have the advantage of intermediate stops, but you're starting off with much higher capacity to fill. And sure, you could build a very short train, but a lot of the efficiencies of rail are built on transporting large numbers of people at once.
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    I'm surprised they're running jets instead of turboprops, but maybe fuel efficiency is too high in my mind. Only Chalair runs a small handful of ATRs.
    - gsnedders 6y ago
      Air France Hop and easyJet, the two operators of the route, only fly jets. In the Hop case, post-pandemic they'll be operating ERJs and E-Jets; in the easyJet case, they'll be operating A320 family aircraft. Note that Hop did have various ATR 42/72s until 2019/20, when they got rid of their (fairly recent) ATR 72-600s. It is perhaps surprising that they now are jet-only, but at least pre-pandemic the plan was for them to long-term be operating only CRJ1000 and E-190s, both of which are notably larger than the largest turboprops on the market. I don't know what their average sector length is, but it's certainly not implausible that the fuel efficiency per passenger isn't that much worse (and easyJet's A320s almost certainly beat any turboprop on a per passenger basis given their average loadings).

nraynaud 6y ago

remember that now you're supposed to be in the train 20min in advance, and connecting across stations in Paris with heavy luggage and kids is a shit show (and a non-starter for foreigners, they just call a taxi, and as the most visited country in the world, this detail should matter) But I hope it increases the frequency of bullet trains to and from CDG TGV, this train station never had a useful train time for my airplane. Lyon Airport is very easy to reach by train, too bad it has almost no airplane.

ahartmetz 6y ago
> now you're supposed to be in the train 20min in advance Oh, why is that? Never heard of it or had to do it anywhere. My last train trip starting from France was about 15 years ago, though. And most trains have several stops so you couldn't possibly be so early except at the initial departure, not without slowing down the whole trip unacceptably.
- nraynaud 6y ago
  So a train driver closed the doors 2 minutes early once, letting a lawyer who could prove he was on time stranded in the train station instead of appearing in court, and now our world has changed. This is a true story, and this is really the beginning of the change. They also hired people from the airplane industrie, so they now control some stuff in the station instead of during the travel, robbing everybody of more time. It just baffles me that I can't rush to the train and buy my ticket inside, where I have nothing better to do anyways.
kergonath 6y ago
> remember that now you're supposed to be in the train 20min in advance That is not true. They show the platform on the screens at the station 20 minutes in advance. I think they recommend being 5 minutes in advance, but they let anyone board as long as the doors are open.
- nraynaud 6y ago
  you are right, they just "advise" you to be there 20 to 30 minutes early. https://www.oui.sncf/aide/presentation-a-l-embarquement https://www.oui.sncf/aide/presentation-a-l-embarquement And they outright write that some people will get an airplane experience, and not in a free drink way.

efwfhfasljd 6y ago

UX is also being neglected by train companies, and especially between train companies. I think it would be a great enhancement if we had a European booking system that'd provide single-ticket journeys no matter which operator, and a Google-Flights-like UX. Right now, the German DB got me into a mindset of adding an extra hour between transits, and assume that the train might skip my destination entirely. And if I file a complaint? Well, that's already part of the price!

ajross 6y ago

> There is no reason to fly short distance if you want to go from city center to city center. In France. In nations like the US (outside the DC-to-Boston corridor anyway) without a well-designed and -maintained rail infastructure, 1-2 hour flights are routine and not really replaceable with other options. Infrastructure investment pays off for decades and decades, and Europe has done really well here. > However, if you're already arriving or leaving on a long distance flight, the whole overhead of getting to/from/through the airport disappears That's an infrastructure problem too, though! There's no reason rail service directly to and from airports can't be integrated with the system. It's true in many places already, though I know nothing about France.

xalava 6y ago
The US is pretty exceptional in its lack of rails. There is also a Seattle-San Diego. Enjoyable as a tourist, but probably not suited for business purposes except in the last portions. In France some high speed trains go now directly to airports (CDG,LYO). So it is becoming possible to chain a plane and a train in a few scenarios.
- pochamago 6y ago
  It's not really that the US lacks rails, we have the largest rail network in the world. The problem for passenger rail here is population density. France is three and a half times denser, and Japan is nearly 10x. I think they would also struggle a bit more to justify rail costs if they were as spread out as the US.
  - ajross 6y ago
    > we have the largest rail network in the world For freight[1]. Putative high speed rail might go to the same places but generally can't share the same tracks with 30mph long haul trains. And the big gap is the plumbing of rail and transit into the urban cores, which in most US cities is highly decayed and in many of the newer metropolises was never built at all. [1] Which is unsurprising, because we have the biggest per-capita need for transcontinental land freight transport in the world. The US has been perfectly fine at building out infrastructure it thinks it needs, it's just been making poor choices about what it "needs".

dmurray 6y ago

"Planes take longer to travel city centre to city centre" always gets trotted out in these discussions, but it's the wrong comparison. People don't all live in the city centre. Airports are usually outside the city, but well served by motorways and public transport. I wouldn't be surprised if more people can reach Charles de Gaulle or Orly within 45 minutes at rush hour than can get to Gare de Lyon.

tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
But then you need a car, and you need to either deal with rental/pickup/dropoff, or pay something ridiculous for parking.
jcranmer 6y ago
The US cities with the best transit have poor transit by world measures. Sure, most people don't live in the city centers, they live in the suburbs. But for much of Europe, suburbia means easy access to high frequency regional rail transit systems that gives you easy 45-60 minute access to city center at all times of the day. Even in the US, where I've lived in cities that had what the US thinks is good transit, getting to an intercity rail station has often been as easy, if not easier, than getting to the airport, even though I'm originating in the suburbs.
vladvasiliu 6y ago
> I wouldn't be surprised if more people can reach Charles de Gaulle or Orly within 45 minutes at rush hour than can get to Gare de Lyon. Actually, I would. The highways around Orly (A6 and A86) tend to be extremely congested during rush hour. Add to it that the areas around those airports aren't that densely populated and are sufficiently far out so that public transportation has to go through Paris if you're not close by, and I don't think that more people are able to reach the airports quicker than Gare de Lyon or Gare du Nord. Charles de Gaulle is even further out in the "country" so I think there are even less people able to reach that quickly, especially via the A1 and A3 which are also congested all the time. Then once there, the airport is so huge that just getting around it may take you a good 15-20 minutes. Note that for some destinations south of Paris there are TGVs departing from Massy, which is a couple stops away from Orly. The same applies for CDG and the north. Also, Paris is only one end of the journey. On the other side, the public transit situation isn't always as great. It's either some sort of bus, which takes forever (especially during rush hour), or some taxi which may be somewhat quicker than the bus but will cost an arm and a leg.

ipqk 6y ago

Just put a large tax if the short, domestic flight isn't a connecting flight. Short, domestic flight by itself: 100€ Short, domestic flight part of an international itinerary: +30€ It'll mostly work itself out.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
frosted-flakes 6y ago
What would stop people from doing split tickets?
- lentil_soup 6y ago
  If you split it you'd pay more, no?
  - frosted-flakes 6y ago
    Yeah, I don't know how that never occurred to me.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  The above idea specifically discourages split tickets (buying one ticket for each leg). You'd end up with an extra 70€ fee if you buy the two tickets separately. So unless buying a multi-leg tickets adds more than 70€ to the total price it's not worth the trouble.
ArkanExplorer 6y ago
Just tax CO2 emissions to a sufficient level and let the market sort itself out.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  Yes and in this case this could achieved very easily by simply increasing taxes on kerosene, in a way that does not affect existing and future 'green' aviation fuels.

Mister_Snuggles 6y ago

I used to regularly travel from Edmonton to Calgary for work. When you add up the extra time required for flying, it's about a three hour trip (45 minutes in the air, the rest is getting to the airport, checking in, etc). Coincidentally, it's also about a three hour drive. My reasons for driving vs flying were usually to do with how long I'd be there. If I was going for one day then flying was preferable since falling asleep on the way home isn't a big deal. If I was going for multiple days then driving was preferable so that I'd have a car and be able to go places after finishing at the office. Flying was preferable in winter in case the roads were in bad shape. Driving was preferable on Fridays so that I could visit friends afterwards and come back the next day. Flying was preferable during the Calgary Stampede to avoid having to deal with the excess traffic in Calgary (plus WestJet did a cowboy-themed safety lecture during Stampede which was kind of neat).

publicola1990 6y ago
In general though flying is much safer than highway driving. If one wanted to minimize risk, one would always fly.
- lovasoa 6y ago
  Flying is actually much more dangerous than driving. The risk is to destroy the environment that sustains life on earth. This does not even compare with the risk of a car or plane accident.
  - varajelle 6y ago
    I believe it might be better for the environnement to share a full plane than be alone in your car, for equal distances.
    - jeromegv 6y ago
      Quotation needed. All studies show the impact of flying as being much higher than driving, even when shared.

bertil 6y ago

I like your idea of forcing sites selling airline tickets to be honest about their cost and delays, but… after the fiasco of cookie-warning pop-ups, that’s a particularly promising can of worms. > if you're already arriving or leaving on a long distance flight, the whole overhead of getting to/from/through the airport disappears About connecting flights: most major French airports have a high-speed train (TGV) station for that reason. They typically have fewer trains than central stations, but they have good connections to nearby cities with small regional airports.

marcandre 6y ago

The website fromrome2rio includes transfer times, wait times and costs too.

dopidopHN 6y ago

Thanks for getting into the details. The fine prints change everything.

grishka 6y ago

Moscow and St Petersburg are ~700 km apart. It takes 4 hours by high-speed train, 8 hours (a night basically) by low-speed train you can sleep in, or about an hour by plane. And none of these are optimal. You have to spend those 4 hours awake if you're taking the high-speed train, you might get annoying neighbors if you take the low-speed one (and some people also don't fit into those berths), and all 3 airports in Moscow are in the middle of nowhere, so it essentially takes the same 4 hours if you fly. And I'm not taking price into account, it varies a lot. I'm just ranting that there isn't a good option for this kind of distance. Not long enough to fly, but a bit too long for a train. Oh and you're only left with the slow train if you want to spend a day, including the evening, in Moscow, and return at night.

Befterriager 6y ago

> However, if you're already arriving or leaving on a long distance flight, the whole overhead of getting to/from/through the airport disappears and those 1.5 hours start making a difference. There is a workaround for this. For long distance flight, take a company where the international/local connection takes place outside France: KLM through Amsterdam, Lufthansa through german airports, Brussels Airlines through Brussels... This is already what I always do when I have to make a long distance flight because Paris Charles de Gaulle airport is horrendous and Air France is prone to mass cancellations when there is a strike. But this is doable because I live in Toulouse which has bad train infrastructure but is well connected to the rest of Europe by plane.

kmeisthax 6y ago

I would not be surprised if airline companies lobbied for unrealistically short pre- and post-flight times - much like how they often sell really tight connections that result in you having to run halfway across O'Hare for some reason.

Pasorrijer 6y ago

If you're a frequent flier, and on the right route, most of those times go right down. I've walked into an airport 15 minutes before the flight, boarded the plane and gotten out of the airport 10 minutes after landing

m463 6y ago

> advertise more honest flight durations that's an interesting concept. I think that might have an unintended (good) consequence - could airports with lots of inefficiencies work on their passenger flow to be competitive?

s0rce 6y ago
Absolutely, I'm almost certain it could be as efficient as a train as most of the security is pointless theater. When I was flying more often I would leave much less time and usually not miss my flight. Sure, something could go wrong and I would miss it but the hours saved not sitting at the airport outweighed a potential occasional missed flight and the extra time that would take to re-book and come back.

belorn 6y ago

When we compare train and air travel here in Sweden, the issues are far away from being about time, UX or advertisements. The rail system has been stagnated in the last 40-50 years and maintenance neglected. The rail is not straight and gives a lot of lateral movement, vibration and noise. The train departments are not sound isolated or have air condition. The speed limit (as a result of the neglect) makes the trip slower than on the highway, with around 30m in favor of the car on a 3hr trip. Motion sickness is an obvious problem. Because of the lack of maintenance, there is almost never alternative rail tracks which mean that when they do maintenance they have to shutdown the whole track and switch to bus, often doubling or tripling the total traveling time. Train tickets is also about 100-200% the cost for distances above 3hrs. I don't know if the French rail is better, through I do know the German one is. Getting into a train department with sound isolation, air condition, plenty of space and almost zero lateral movement was amazing (sample size of one trip I made between two large city centers), and if that was the option I would pick that ever time even if the train was slower or costed more. It is the 50 years old black tin can of motion sickness that makes me pick a plane over a train.

dopidopHN 6y ago
Between large cities, the French state has roll out special fast train since the 80s. They are pretty fancy. ( they keep being updated, the 80´s one are gone now ) You might have seen those. Bright color, « futuristic » design. In the vein of the concord Suprasonic plane.
vladvasiliu 6y ago
Main French lines are (for the time being at least) in fairly good shape and there's new investment being done. They've opened two new high speed lines relatively recently: Paris - Strasbourg (near Germany in the east of the country) in 2016 and Paris - Bordeaux (near Spain, in the south-west) in 2017. Generally speaking, taking the train in France is a rather good experience. The trains are quiet and confortable, especially the high-speed ones but even regular trains are fine. Newer carriages have power outlets at the seats and are well ventilated. The issues people here fear the most are strikes (which is the national sport, particularly in public transportation) and the creeping-up of prices, especially now that there won't be any more competition from planes.

wink 6y ago

I think your experience may be jaded from the one side as much as mine is from the other side. Your example assumes the same level of quality and guarantee of timely arrival. Maybe it's just me but I've had such bad luck with trains in Germany that if I need to be somewhere I will fly or take a train one hour earlier. Or two. It was a running joke at my former company that every single time I visited our other office my reserved spot in an ICE was cancelled or the whole train was changed to an IC (yay, working with a laptop on your lap). I think of all the times I've taken a plane in my life there was major delay twice - and one was at the other end of world, so a single time starting from here. And no, I'm not one to regularly fly (and I hate to do it) but if you for example take Munich - Berlin or Munich - Hamburg, if I need to be there in the morning I'd need to take a train the day before and pay for a night in the hotel, or I fly in the morning. Proper night trains would solve that but then it might still be a wasted evening in a hotel room whereas I have no problem getting up at 4 am and catch a plane at 7. For clarity: while part of my story doesn't apply for "train rides of 2.5h" the gist is the same. If I don't trust that the 6:30 train will make me arrive on time at 9:00 I'd need to take one at 5:30 or 4:30. Also I fully support this ban. I'm just not buying the time+stress argument.

schmidp 6y ago
And that’s why I believe self driving cars will kill public transport as well as short leg flying. I already prefer the Tesla autopilot on longer highway drives to trains. As soon as I can really take my eyes off at the motorway I have not much reason to fly anymore (before Covid I had 30-50 flights in one year), except long distance.

dagw 6y ago

There is no reason to fly short distance if you want to go from city center to city center. I used to travel quite a bit between two cities where the option was a 3 hour high speed train and a ~45 minute flight. And while the train was great in theory (fast, comfortable, free wifi etc.) it wasn't quite reliable enough. Being 1-2 hours late was common enough that you basically had to take it into consideration when making plans. If it was an important meeting I would normally fly in the morning to increase the chance of being on time, and take the train home in the afternoon when I could just chill with a glass of wine and watch a movie and being an hour+ delayed wasn't a big deal.