4 ms·

Surprisingly, this makes a lot of sense. It will help protecting the environment tremendously.

• inglor_cz 6y ago
  Impact of this particular ban is very limited. Connecting flights are not affected, neither are some important routes (Paris-Marseille) where the TGV takes too long to travel.
• wutbrodo 6y ago
  Agreed, the knee-jerk reaction to "France regulates [something unexpected]" is usually that it's lunatic bureaucrats gone wild (in the way that "America deregulates [something unexpected]" often is the converse). Ideally, the regulation wouldn't be so centralized and discontinuous: flights that replace 3-hr train trips are still harmful to the environment and still have nonzero fungibility with train trips, and this legislation doesn't address them at all. Relatedly, there could be reasons someone may want to take a short-hop flight that provide more utility than a flight over the allowable threshold would for someone else, and reflecting externalities in the price signal neatly allows this decentralized decision-making system to kick into gear. But the perfect shouldn't be the enemy of the good, and this is likely a much easier-to-pass alternative to, eg, thorough carbon pricing of transportation options. Even though its area of effect is small, status quo bias is one of the most powerful forces in democratic politics, and it'll probably open the door to smarter and more expansive regulation in the future.