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I still find it weird that planes are cheaper than trains even for quite small distances. London -> Berlin? Paris -> Madrid? Hell even Rome -> Milan is cheaper

I still find it weird that planes are cheaper than trains even for quite small distances. London -> Berlin? Paris -> Madrid? Hell even Rome -> Milan is cheaper to fly. I would love to start contributing less to emissions and take trains even though they take more time but they gotta start taxing planes and making trains cheaper to make people start doing it.

abyssin 5y ago
What we need to do is make planes more expensive, instead of making trains cheaper. That would be relatively easy, but people wouldn’t like it because they want change that doesn’t affect their lifestyle. But if we’re to take climate change seriously, all lifestyles have to change radically.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  We should subsidize one and tax the other. Yes, flying needs to suck, but travel doesn't need to suck. Don't be too self-flagellist about this. If we really subsidize trains, we will induce enough demand to make investments look better in nominal terms and shift the culture/politics by normalizing way more rail travel. Easy victory. A problem is the Europeans are prudish about printing money with their bad ordoliberal EU Constitution.
  - HPsquared 5y ago
    Trains over long distances are always going to suck relative to planes, unless they're something like maglev or other ultra high speed design.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      "Suck" for certain dimensions. Travel is slower. Which can equate to cheaper (e.g. long distance buses) or can equate to roomier with more luxury--and more expensive. But there's not a lot of market these days for expensive, luxurious travel that takes a long time.
    - Ericson2314 5y ago
      City center to city center transport with lots of room and good internet I can realistically work during? Sign me up. I don't think people realize how much more travel we all could do with good cheap comfortable HSR everywhere. Stuff like go to Miami from North Carolina every weekend.
- lostgame 5y ago
  But planes are cheaper. The infrastructure alone for trains is insane. We don’t need rails in the sky. Not only that - but we’re talking about staff for half a day instead of a couple hours. What we could use are electric planes, for short distances. Plane usage isn’t going to stop. Only the select few with the luxury of time to kill are going to pick a 12hr train over a 2-3hr flight for the same distance, even at half the price. Business travel alone makes the idea of increasing flights costs a serious no-go.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    > The infrastructure alone for trains is insane. We don’t need rails in the sky. Airports past a single runway and hangar also cost a lot of money. Not to mention all the related infrastructure ( road, public transit connections), ATC, etc. Airplanes are expensive and need maintenance, luggage handling, etc. and fuel. Tons of it, to be stored, transported, refueled, etc.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
bionade24 5y ago
Planes don't have to pay any fuel taxes in Germany and other things. The government-owned train company "Deutsche Bahn" increased the prices shortly after government lowered taxes on train tickets. For fuel and electric, trains still have to pay full taxes. So not suprising that planes a cheaper with better tax conditions.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  Also, the environmental impact of planes is not accounted in the cost. Not to mention the ethical implications around sourcing oil-derived fuel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_war
  - jhgb 5y ago
    And with a six-fold difference in carbon footprint of traveling between flying and taking a train, that's borderline criminal.
    - runj__ 5y ago
      I know you really don't mean it but... Criminal? As lover of flying I might have my feathers ruffled but there's certainly other pros to flying (the view, the feeling of takeoff). Maybe I'm just trying to justify my love of flying, still though.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        Well, maybe the criminality isn't obvious in your own life (or mine). But to a person who lives on, say, Tuvalu, I'd imagine it's a lot more obvious, even if it is "death by a billion small cuts".
      - jhgb 5y ago
        So "lovers of flying" should just push environmental costs onto other people not just by not paying carbon taxes, but even by paying no fuel taxes whatsoever? And why don't I "mean it"? As far as I know, there are already some investigations in progress against major oil companies.
cmdli 5y ago
Trains require a lot more infrastructure, which is why they are at a cost disadvantage. The miles of constructed track, power lines, bridges, etc cost a lot of money to build and maintain, while planes just use the air, which is basically free. I wouldn’t be surprised if, for very short flights, we still used planes once they convert to electric (which is relatively viable for short flights now).
- anpago 5y ago
  Heathrow have plans for a air taxi service by 202 "Vertical and Heathrow Airport partner on air taxi services" https://www.airport-technology.com/news/vertical-heathrow-airport/ https://www.airport-technology.com/news/vertical-heathrow-ai...
hartator 5y ago
Competition.
robotresearcher 5y ago
London-Berlin flying takes 1h50m. The train takes ~14h. (edit: replies say 9h can be done) You tie up the machine and staff for 7X longer, and need safely maintained local infrastructure every meter of the journey. It's tough to make that cheaper. And then the service is less valuable since it's so damn long. I love train rides, but 14 hours costs a whole day, and 2h costs an early-rise morning.
- rytis 5y ago
  I don't think 2h is exactly accurate - you have to get to the airport ahead of departure time to allow for security check/etc. Then there's transfer to/from airport on both sides, whereas train stations are usually in convenient spots to continue the journey (office/home/whatever). Nonetheless, the base argument holds true - flying is cheaper and quicker...
  - rp1 5y ago
    I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done the Berlin-London trip early Monday morning before work. 2h might be an underestimate, but it really is quite fast.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      In the US, Acela--which is as good as it gets in the US--is still a full day trip from Boston to Washington DC while a flight is less than two hours. It's not as just-roll-up-to-the-airport as it was pre-9/11 but it's still something you can do to catch a mid-morning meeting. The train is pretty much a full day. I've done it when schedule allowed but going down the day before, working on the train, and spending the night in a hotel as opposed to doing an out and back in a day doesn't work for a lot of people. Of course, shorter segments of the Northeast Corridor work pretty well by train. I pretty much never fly Boston to NYC unless I'm under unusual constraints.
      - ProZsolt 5y ago
        That distance would be perfect for sleeper train. Hop on in the evening, sleep while you traveling and arrive in the morning well rested. You have the entire day for work, and hop on the train back on the evening.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
R0b0t1 5y ago
Time has value. Trains make a lot of sense for freight. I don't think taxing planes to make people not use them is the solution.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  More taxes seems to be the go-to solution for people of a certain mindset. I understand where they're coming from, to a point. But I certainly don't agree.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    The taxes are not to encourage people not to use them. They're to make sure that the full cost of the flight is paid by the people taking the flight, rather than them just freeloading because the externalities are unaccounted for. If that happens to discourage people from flying, well, that's just a side effect of having a properly functioning marketplace, where there are no externalities and the participants all have full information.
    - jaywalk 5y ago
      >The taxes are not to encourage people not to use them. The grandparent comment of the one I replied to specifically mentioned taxing planes to get people to take trains instead.
  - bettysdiagnose 5y ago
    The mindset is simply that the market fails to price in the negative externalities associated with CO2 emissions. So taxes in some form make up for that. I'm not sure what there is to disagree with there. All such people are advocating is that flights are priced at their true cost, not the "lol let the next generations/people in the third world pay the difference" cost.
Robotbeat 5y ago
We should do electric planes. Perfect for these shorter routes.
- trutannus 5y ago
  Do batteries that can power a plane for routes like this exist yet? I know nothing about aviation, but I always thought the energy needed to spin up a turbine, or prop, is immense.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    We’re building such planes now. https://twitter.com/GovInslee/status/1440442441920774146 https://twitter.com/GovInslee/status/1440442441920774146 The batteries are plenty powerful. We’re limited in energy to about 500-1000 miles unless we use better aerodynamics, etc.
  - HPsquared 5y ago
    There are a lot of aircraft designs in the pipeline at the moment, using current tech as far as I know. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EVTOL https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EVTOL
- tremon 5y ago
  I wonder if we should focus more on gliders with electric auxiliary engines only, and use a launch system that stays on the airport of departure. Kinetic aviation, if you will. It certainly reduces the weight of the plane if it doesn't need to carry its initial propulsion system for the entire flight.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    There’s a kernel of a good idea there, particularly for cargo. I’ve had similar thoughts.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    A linear motor the length of the runway? I wonder what the 0-300mph time could get down to.
TravelPiglet 5y ago
Infrastructure is ridiculously expensive today and train is the most expensive form of static infrastructure. Roads aren’t as expensive as railways and you can always take another route in case of maintenance.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
In UK we privatised rail to get free market to run it more efficiently. Now the rail is back to being government run and it's some of the worst it's ever been. Except it is now foreign governments that bought our rail on the market and are now creaming it. https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/70-of-uk-rail-routes-now-owned-by-foreign-states/#:~:text=As%20Italian%20operator%20takes%20over%20C2C%20RMT%20reveals,wholly%20owned%20by%20foreign%20states%20or%20their%20railways https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/70-of-uk-rail-routes-now-owned-b....
- freeflight 5y ago
  Afaik that went both ways, some private UK companies now run rails in Germany.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  >and it's some of the worst it's ever been. I'm not so sure about that. British Rail was dire before it was all privatised.
lultimouomo 5y ago
Rome -> Milan is 3hrs (+15/30 minutes if the train has intermediate stops) and less than 100€ on standard fare (you can get a discounted fare of around 60€ if you book a month or so in advance), seems quite competitive with plan both time and money wise.
laurencerowe 5y ago
> Hell even Rome -> Milan is cheaper to fly. This one is unlike the others because at 3 hours it's faster and more convenient than the plane city centre to city centre. Building that high speed line helped put Italy's national carrier out of business: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/italy-high-speed-trains-alitalia/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/italy-high-speed-trai...
gremloni 5y ago
Why would I want to spend 12 hours on something I can do in 1 hour for less money. Trains are a regression unless it is freight.
- danny_codes 5y ago
  A high-speed train is about 40% the speed of an airplane. So a 1 hour flight is comparable to a 2.5 hour train ride. However a quick check shows that, on average, it takes over 2 hours (133 minutes) to get on the plane after you've arrived at the airport. Then of course you've got to get off the plane, but we'll be generous and not count that time. In summary, taking the train is about 30 minutes faster than flying. As for cost, well, the emissions from flying make the cost somewhat irrelevant. Any reasonable government would tax flying so it's more expensive than rail travel.
- nicbou 5y ago
  That's a really slow train. The benefit of trains (for what would be a 1 hour flight) is that you don't need to get to a distant airport and go through the usual airport nonsense. You just arrive 5 minutes early and board the train. You get off the same way, at the central terminal of a large city.

abyssin 5y ago

What we need to do is make planes more expensive, instead of making trains cheaper. That would be relatively easy, but people wouldn’t like it because they want change that doesn’t affect their lifestyle. But if we’re to take climate change seriously, all lifestyles have to change radically.

Ericson2314 5y ago
We should subsidize one and tax the other. Yes, flying needs to suck, but travel doesn't need to suck. Don't be too self-flagellist about this. If we really subsidize trains, we will induce enough demand to make investments look better in nominal terms and shift the culture/politics by normalizing way more rail travel. Easy victory. A problem is the Europeans are prudish about printing money with their bad ordoliberal EU Constitution.
- HPsquared 5y ago
  Trains over long distances are always going to suck relative to planes, unless they're something like maglev or other ultra high speed design.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    "Suck" for certain dimensions. Travel is slower. Which can equate to cheaper (e.g. long distance buses) or can equate to roomier with more luxury--and more expensive. But there's not a lot of market these days for expensive, luxurious travel that takes a long time.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    City center to city center transport with lots of room and good internet I can realistically work during? Sign me up. I don't think people realize how much more travel we all could do with good cheap comfortable HSR everywhere. Stuff like go to Miami from North Carolina every weekend.
lostgame 5y ago
But planes are cheaper. The infrastructure alone for trains is insane. We don’t need rails in the sky. Not only that - but we’re talking about staff for half a day instead of a couple hours. What we could use are electric planes, for short distances. Plane usage isn’t going to stop. Only the select few with the luxury of time to kill are going to pick a 12hr train over a 2-3hr flight for the same distance, even at half the price. Business travel alone makes the idea of increasing flights costs a serious no-go.
- sofixa 5y ago
  > The infrastructure alone for trains is insane. We don’t need rails in the sky. Airports past a single runway and hangar also cost a lot of money. Not to mention all the related infrastructure ( road, public transit connections), ATC, etc. Airplanes are expensive and need maintenance, luggage handling, etc. and fuel. Tons of it, to be stored, transported, refueled, etc.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

bionade24 5y ago

Planes don't have to pay any fuel taxes in Germany and other things. The government-owned train company "Deutsche Bahn" increased the prices shortly after government lowered taxes on train tickets. For fuel and electric, trains still have to pay full taxes. So not suprising that planes a cheaper with better tax conditions.

goodpoint 5y ago
Also, the environmental impact of planes is not accounted in the cost. Not to mention the ethical implications around sourcing oil-derived fuel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_war
- jhgb 5y ago
  And with a six-fold difference in carbon footprint of traveling between flying and taking a train, that's borderline criminal.
  - runj__ 5y ago
    I know you really don't mean it but... Criminal? As lover of flying I might have my feathers ruffled but there's certainly other pros to flying (the view, the feeling of takeoff). Maybe I'm just trying to justify my love of flying, still though.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      Well, maybe the criminality isn't obvious in your own life (or mine). But to a person who lives on, say, Tuvalu, I'd imagine it's a lot more obvious, even if it is "death by a billion small cuts".
    - jhgb 5y ago
      So "lovers of flying" should just push environmental costs onto other people not just by not paying carbon taxes, but even by paying no fuel taxes whatsoever? And why don't I "mean it"? As far as I know, there are already some investigations in progress against major oil companies.

cmdli 5y ago

Trains require a lot more infrastructure, which is why they are at a cost disadvantage. The miles of constructed track, power lines, bridges, etc cost a lot of money to build and maintain, while planes just use the air, which is basically free. I wouldn’t be surprised if, for very short flights, we still used planes once they convert to electric (which is relatively viable for short flights now).

anpago 5y ago
Heathrow have plans for a air taxi service by 202 "Vertical and Heathrow Airport partner on air taxi services" https://www.airport-technology.com/news/vertical-heathrow-airport/ https://www.airport-technology.com/news/vertical-heathrow-ai...

hartator 5y ago

Competition.

robotresearcher 5y ago

London-Berlin flying takes 1h50m. The train takes ~14h. (edit: replies say 9h can be done) You tie up the machine and staff for 7X longer, and need safely maintained local infrastructure every meter of the journey. It's tough to make that cheaper. And then the service is less valuable since it's so damn long. I love train rides, but 14 hours costs a whole day, and 2h costs an early-rise morning.

rytis 5y ago
I don't think 2h is exactly accurate - you have to get to the airport ahead of departure time to allow for security check/etc. Then there's transfer to/from airport on both sides, whereas train stations are usually in convenient spots to continue the journey (office/home/whatever). Nonetheless, the base argument holds true - flying is cheaper and quicker...
- rp1 5y ago
  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done the Berlin-London trip early Monday morning before work. 2h might be an underestimate, but it really is quite fast.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    In the US, Acela--which is as good as it gets in the US--is still a full day trip from Boston to Washington DC while a flight is less than two hours. It's not as just-roll-up-to-the-airport as it was pre-9/11 but it's still something you can do to catch a mid-morning meeting. The train is pretty much a full day. I've done it when schedule allowed but going down the day before, working on the train, and spending the night in a hotel as opposed to doing an out and back in a day doesn't work for a lot of people. Of course, shorter segments of the Northeast Corridor work pretty well by train. I pretty much never fly Boston to NYC unless I'm under unusual constraints.
    - ProZsolt 5y ago
      That distance would be perfect for sleeper train. Hop on in the evening, sleep while you traveling and arrive in the morning well rested. You have the entire day for work, and hop on the train back on the evening.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

R0b0t1 5y ago

Time has value. Trains make a lot of sense for freight. I don't think taxing planes to make people not use them is the solution.

jaywalk 5y ago
More taxes seems to be the go-to solution for people of a certain mindset. I understand where they're coming from, to a point. But I certainly don't agree.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  The taxes are not to encourage people not to use them. They're to make sure that the full cost of the flight is paid by the people taking the flight, rather than them just freeloading because the externalities are unaccounted for. If that happens to discourage people from flying, well, that's just a side effect of having a properly functioning marketplace, where there are no externalities and the participants all have full information.
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    >The taxes are not to encourage people not to use them. The grandparent comment of the one I replied to specifically mentioned taxing planes to get people to take trains instead.
- bettysdiagnose 5y ago
  The mindset is simply that the market fails to price in the negative externalities associated with CO2 emissions. So taxes in some form make up for that. I'm not sure what there is to disagree with there. All such people are advocating is that flights are priced at their true cost, not the "lol let the next generations/people in the third world pay the difference" cost.

Robotbeat 5y ago

We should do electric planes. Perfect for these shorter routes.

trutannus 5y ago
Do batteries that can power a plane for routes like this exist yet? I know nothing about aviation, but I always thought the energy needed to spin up a turbine, or prop, is immense.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  We’re building such planes now. https://twitter.com/GovInslee/status/1440442441920774146 https://twitter.com/GovInslee/status/1440442441920774146 The batteries are plenty powerful. We’re limited in energy to about 500-1000 miles unless we use better aerodynamics, etc.
- HPsquared 5y ago
  There are a lot of aircraft designs in the pipeline at the moment, using current tech as far as I know. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EVTOL https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EVTOL
tremon 5y ago
I wonder if we should focus more on gliders with electric auxiliary engines only, and use a launch system that stays on the airport of departure. Kinetic aviation, if you will. It certainly reduces the weight of the plane if it doesn't need to carry its initial propulsion system for the entire flight.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  There’s a kernel of a good idea there, particularly for cargo. I’ve had similar thoughts.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  A linear motor the length of the runway? I wonder what the 0-300mph time could get down to.

TravelPiglet 5y ago

Infrastructure is ridiculously expensive today and train is the most expensive form of static infrastructure. Roads aren’t as expensive as railways and you can always take another route in case of maintenance.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

In UK we privatised rail to get free market to run it more efficiently. Now the rail is back to being government run and it's some of the worst it's ever been. Except it is now foreign governments that bought our rail on the market and are now creaming it. https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/70-of-uk-rail-routes-now-owned-by-foreign-states/#:~:text=As%20Italian%20operator%20takes%20over%20C2C%20RMT%20reveals,wholly%20owned%20by%20foreign%20states%20or%20their%20railways https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/70-of-uk-rail-routes-now-owned-b....

freeflight 5y ago
Afaik that went both ways, some private UK companies now run rails in Germany.
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
>and it's some of the worst it's ever been. I'm not so sure about that. British Rail was dire before it was all privatised.

lultimouomo 5y ago

Rome -> Milan is 3hrs (+15/30 minutes if the train has intermediate stops) and less than 100€ on standard fare (you can get a discounted fare of around 60€ if you book a month or so in advance), seems quite competitive with plan both time and money wise.

laurencerowe 5y ago

> Hell even Rome -> Milan is cheaper to fly. This one is unlike the others because at 3 hours it's faster and more convenient than the plane city centre to city centre. Building that high speed line helped put Italy's national carrier out of business: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/italy-high-speed-trains-alitalia/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/italy-high-speed-trai...

gremloni 5y ago

Why would I want to spend 12 hours on something I can do in 1 hour for less money. Trains are a regression unless it is freight.

danny_codes 5y ago
A high-speed train is about 40% the speed of an airplane. So a 1 hour flight is comparable to a 2.5 hour train ride. However a quick check shows that, on average, it takes over 2 hours (133 minutes) to get on the plane after you've arrived at the airport. Then of course you've got to get off the plane, but we'll be generous and not count that time. In summary, taking the train is about 30 minutes faster than flying. As for cost, well, the emissions from flying make the cost somewhat irrelevant. Any reasonable government would tax flying so it's more expensive than rail travel.
nicbou 5y ago
That's a really slow train. The benefit of trains (for what would be a 1 hour flight) is that you don't need to get to a distant airport and go through the usual airport nonsense. You just arrive 5 minutes early and board the train. You get off the same way, at the central terminal of a large city.