17 ms·

Rail is great for freight but what surprised me was that while I was in Europe flights were faster and cheaper. I don't think the right reaction is to tax plane

by R0b0t1 5y ago

Rail is great for freight but what surprised me was that while I was in Europe flights were faster and cheaper. I don't think the right reaction is to tax planes so that people don't use them, as time has value.

RC_ITR 5y ago
Argument is the externalities of carbon emissions have (negative) value, so a tax would bring those two things in line and encourage that only people who really need to fly do so.
- R0b0t1 5y ago
  All other things equal you need to make a very strong case for externalities as the market is efficient. So far it's just people saying "planes are bad." It's entirely possible the externalities of having people (and goods) unproductive for longer periods of time is worse than simply getting them where they need to be.
  - philips 5y ago
    Without putting a price on the carbon externality the market can't figure it out though. Idle time of workers is a pretty well understood market problem so I don't think that is an externality. Am I misunderstanding your position?
  - RC_ITR 5y ago
    I mean, have you ever heard of tragedy of the commons? 1) All people share one atmosphere 2) Well-reviewed science shows that individual decisions like taking a flight make the atmosphere less hospitable for all. That type of problem is literally the reason the term externality was coined.
  - gautamcgoel 5y ago
    I'm a bit confused by what you mean by "strong case". Flying emits substantially more carbon dioxide (by more than a factor of 100, IIRC). The deleterious effects of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere are well-documented. Isn't that a strong enough case?
  - School-Cotton 5y ago
    Externalities are basically by definition the things that can't be determined by a free market.
    - evanwolf 5y ago
      Perhaps a jet fuel tax? If we bring the the lifetime cost of atmospheric carbon recovery and disaster response to flight, might we make air travel with using ICE engines less routine?
  - LeifCarrotson 5y ago
    > you need to make a very strong case for externalities as the market is efficient Markets are not efficient at considering externalities at all.
    - R0b0t1 5y ago
      By definition yes, but you need to prove the externality is there and actually worse than your proposed tax.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - Ensorceled 5y ago
        I was worried that was your position. If you still need further proof of global warming and it's deleterious effects then providing proof is impossible.
        R0b0t1 5y ago
        Not proof of global warming, proof that this is the most efficacious tax to undertake and will not distort the market to be worse.
        teddyh 5y ago
        It’s not practically possible to prove that something is the most efficient alternative – you’d have to exhaustively show that all possible alternatives are worse. It’s more reasonable for you to provide an even better alternative, since you seem to believe that one exists. Once two specific options are named, the two can be compared in earnest.
  - hhaha88 5y ago
    What makes you believe gaps in productivity can’t be accounted for by caching, converting to making goods closer to the source as much as possible? Maybe we could train more experts to avoid them needing to fly all over; buy and serve local. A lot of efficiency options are left off the table sticking with the status quo.
  - Ensorceled 5y ago
    The fact that negative externalities can warp markets or cause them to fail entirely is Econ 101. Air travel is blamed for up to 3.5% of climate impacts; it's not an insignificant contributor...
  - NoGravitas 5y ago
    The Efficient Market Hypothesis has been effectively disproven; it was proven that it's equivalent to P=NP, and it's very unlikely that P=NP. In other words, if markets were efficient, we could just use simulated markets to solve NP-hard problems in polynomial time. Not surprisingly, that doesn't work.
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      > The Efficient Market Hypothesis has been effectively disproven No, the opposite of "effectively". That's like saying you can't plan an effective route because CSP, or you can't use SAT solvers to design things. Markets aren't perfect, and that's all that proof manages to show. They could still be 99.99% accurate based on that logic. It's a cute thought experiment, not something practical.
- foolfoolz 5y ago
  i love this philosophy. we can just tax and regulate away all the nice things in life
  - CameronNemo 5y ago
    Ah yes, it is so nice to breathe noxious chemicals exhausted from jet engines. And CO2 is good for plant growth, right?
    - kaybe 5y ago
      CO2 being good for plant growth can mean it's bad for forest CO2 sequestration, since the wrong plants take over. https://e360.yale.edu/features/the-strange-case-of-the-liana-vine-and-its-role-in-global-warming https://e360.yale.edu/features/the-strange-case-of-the-liana...
  - RC_ITR 5y ago
    I love your philosophy. Just embrace entropy, what could go wrong?
  - Djrhfbfnsks 5y ago
    I'm as libertarian as they come, but if you're doing $x of damage to the environment, it seems totally fair to charge $x in taxes to cover that damage. That wouldn't stop you from enjoying an activity -- it's just making the price more accurately reflect the true costs.
  - evilos 5y ago
    Flying has a hidden cost that wasn't being charged to the flyer. It was being charged to everyone that will suffer from climate change. Charging to offset the damage that flying does is basically just closing a loop hole. (Assuming that the extra money taken is used to actually offset the carbon impact and not just pocketed by industry/government.)
  - erect_hacker0 5y ago
    Are you one of those “american nationalists” I hear so much about? I heard they frequent the hackers news, so was just wondering.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  Then do electric aircraft. We can do 500-1000 mile electric air travel. Longer term, >3000 mile. Plus multiple hops. Still faster and cheaper than rail.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    > We can do 500-1000 mile electric air travel. We can? Present tense, certified, operational aircraft in service? Or do you mean that people are working on building them now and hope to have them in service at some point in the future?
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      The latter. I think we can have them in service before we could complete a new HSR line starting from scratch, at least in the US. (I think Europe is better at this kind of HSR infrastructure, so maybe it wouldn't be as bad.)
  - RC_ITR 5y ago
    We 100% cannot do those things with current technology. I'm 'commenting too fast' to reply, but show me any of your examples in flight please.
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      We absolutely can. https://twitter.com/GovInslee/status/1440442441920774146 https://twitter.com/GovInslee/status/1440442441920774146 500+ miles range. Building it right now. Plus Wright Electric, Bye Aerospace’s eflyer 800, etc. Why do people so easily and confidently claim something can’t be done?
      - burkaman 5y ago
        That carries 9 passengers, at ~half the speed of a standard airliner. It's exciting and I want to fly in one, but I don't think it will be faster and cheaper than trains in most cases, yet. But we're almost there.
- CameronNemo 5y ago
  then the (really poor quality, high pollution, not just co2 that jets exhaust) airplane fuel should be taxed, not the flights themselves. the price will get adjusted accordingly.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - adamlett 5y ago
    That would be ideal. As I understand it, it has been tried, but without reaching an international consensus, and leads to airlines filling the tanks of their planes in countries that don't tax the fuel, and flying with more fuel than needed (and therefore having to burn more fuel) so they don't need to refuel in countries that do tax the fuel, thus defeating the purpose of the tax.
    - Symbiote 5y ago
      I don't know if it was widely reported, but in the days before the COP meeting in Glasgow, Britain removed the tax they had on internal flights.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  > Argument is the externalities of carbon emissions have (negative) value, so a tax would bring those two things in line and encourage that only people who really need to fly do so. If we charged $100-200 per ton of CO2, which is supposedly more than recapture would cost, that would only be about $1-2 per 50 miles. From the numbers being quoted here, it sounds like that would do very little to bring prices in line.
  - ants_a 5y ago
    EU is already trading CO2 at 60€/t.
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      In a limited way, sure. But with massive quotas that are free. That's the price of the very easiest CO2 to deal with, and the rest pollutes for free. Either charge for all the carbon, or start harshly dropping the quotas.
andrewseanryan 5y ago
While flights are often cheaper than rail in Europe they are not always faster when you include travel time to/from airport/train station (airports tend to be outside of town and train stations are typically center of city) and that you have to be at the airport earlier. I lived in Munich and a number of times it was faster to take the train. Me and my GF both went to Paris; she flew and I took rail from Munich and my train was slightly faster or at least break even. Also, traveling by rail in Europe is a nicer experience in my opinion.
- ozim 5y ago
  That is nice if you travel between big cities having direct connection via rail and big airports. Not to disregard your example but from my perspective it is not representative to most of travelers in the Europe. While taking train for me was more comfortable, most of the times it is not feasible and definitely a lot longer than taking an airplane. Especially if you live in smaller city where you don't have a major train station couple bus stations away.
  - toyg 5y ago
    I'm not sure I follow - if you are in a smaller city, chances are you live far from an airport, but still very close to a train station. Unless, of course, you fly private charters to minuscule landings.
    - saiya-jin 5y ago
      I live in such smallish city (Geneva, 500k folks in central part). Yes its nice to get to Paris in say 3.5h by direct TGV, faster than plane if you count center-center, although more expensive. Well, and that's about it. I don't care for Paris that much, there are about thousand other places I prefer visiting. Its not that exotic to Europeans compared to Americans, and Paris' painful and obvious drawbacks (its a mega tourist trap, rampant crime, french are often rude if you don't speak perfect parisian french etc.) remove a lot of its allure. Currently we travel to nearby islands with small kids (balearic, canarias, sardinia, corsica, greek ones etc.). We travel home which is 1500km away (1:30 flight to +-nearby airport, or 15h+ multi-train galore), we travel exotic (0 options for trains). Heck, being Swiss, we use practically 0 Swiss trains. They are super expensive even for us since we don't commute by them to work every day, and Geneva being border town literally at the edge of confederation surrounded by France has little use of rails for us. France has pretty bad rail situation in comparison - our usual way to Chamonix takes 45mins by car, and 2+h by train. Family of 4 with 2 tiny kids? Never, ever, with all necessary luggage, even for free. You can't have cheap good reliable railway network even in dense Europe, unless its heavily subsidized. Its a pipe dream, nice one but unless they tax flights into oblivion they will remain as easier and cheaper option for most. Options will be different for rural living and different family settings obviously.
foolfoolz 5y ago
this has been the case for years and the convenience gap is only growing bigger for air travel. this is a huge reason why rail is not going to be such a huge development in america. we have air infrastructure that already surpasses what the not even built rail would be
xtracto 5y ago
I was unpleasantly surprised about the train price when I decided to take a train to go from Liverpool to London around 2008. I think at that time the rail ticket was around £200 while the flight would have cost me around £50 (and MegaBus was I think £6) ... That gave me the impression that train in the UK was for rich people.
- cnorthwood 5y ago
  At present, a walk-up (no advance booking) peak-time first class ticket from Liverpool to London is £255. Standard class is £171. A walk-up off-peak standard class ticket is £66.10, and you can get it cheaper if you book a day in advance. At peak times, or for longer distances (think Scotland to London), planes can be cheaper, but not often. Coaches can generally be cheaper though.
- toyg 5y ago
  The UK is a basket case when it comes to rail. The country that effectively invented the bloody thing, completely lost its mind in the 70s and started scrapping its extensive network. Then the Tories got in power, and at that point heavily-unionised public service like rail simply "had" to be eviscerated. Now it's an embarrassment, when compared to most European countries: expensive tickets, poor reliability, obsolete and polluting trains, continuous inability to pay for itself... I could go on. I'm Italian, I thought "our" trains were bad, but in the UK it's much worse. Barely 40% of the network is even electrified, in 2021!
  - Symbiote 5y ago
    Frequency of trains is generally higher in Britain.
  - avianlyric 5y ago
    > Then the Tories got in power What I find particularly funny about this, it that Maggie Thatcher was a strong proponent to keeping the trains in public ownership, believing that privatising them was a bridge two far, even for her. Her successor on the other hand, they weren’t so bothered. However the recovery of passenger number after privatisation is undeniable. While the private model wasn’t great, the previous public ownership was even worse. Hopefully our second stab at public ownership goes better, this time we have very successful models like TfL to work from.
brnt 5y ago
Air travel is severely under taxed compared to other modalities. Its right to start taxing air travel normally, because otherwise trains can't expect to compete on a level playing field.
- jokoon 5y ago
  The main culprit is tax on kerosene. Electricity is also taxed in france. Kerosene must be taxed because it emits a lot of CO2 per flight.
  - thow-01187 5y ago
    Planes are actually surprisingly fuel efficient. The short haul flights in Europe are often served by Airbus A320 or A321 Neo, with fuel consumption per seat at 2.19 L/100 km. A mid-sized petrol-powered car consumes three times as much. And that figure ignores that planes take a straight route - taking that into account, the emissions are close to a single-occupant electric car
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      > the emissions are close to a single-occupant electric car I'd imagine the emissions would be infinitely greater than an electric car. For an ICE car with two people, you'd be closer.
      - pilsetnieks 5y ago
        I think they mean the emissions from generating all that electricity, which isn't always clean. You'll get a lot of hydro and renewables in some countries at some times but then also coal and gas at other times.
      - hollerith 5y ago
        >the emissions would be infinitely greater than an electric car. Not if you include the emissions caused by generating the electricity.
ratsforhorses 5y ago
Also of note, not sure about the cost or availability of wifi/internet on planes but it can/could/should be included into the equation, in fact I'm sure there's a place/market for groups working traveling...and besides it does seem reasonable to tax plane travel more, their ?lead filled fuel is ?tax free ? and in a world which global warming is an (ignored)issue carbon tax shouldis be mandatory...
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Turbine engines burn Jet-A (basically kerosene), which does not contain lead. The leaded fuel concern is for piston engined aircraft burning 100LL avgas. Almost all commercial aviation is done using turbine equipment. Some of the small island-hopper type airplanes are piston-engined.
rbanffy 5y ago
They are not replacements - they are complementary. I think trains should be cheaper than they are now to be more appealing than airplanes (I prefer the view from the airplane, but the cabin pressure and silence of the train is a plus), but it's not an either/or situation. When we count externalities such as the carbon footprint, trains easily beat planes. Finally, TGV and Ryanair are not comparable experiences.
_carbyau_ 5y ago
The best use of trains for me is as overnight sleeper. Combines the cost of an overnight stay with the travel ticket. The few times I have done it - lowest class with an actual bed - it was pretty minimal as a hotel experience but great to be able to wake up, step off the train and go to town!
- dzhiurgis 5y ago
  But that's probably less than .1% of active routes while title says "replace"...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
kergonath 5y ago
A healthy living environment has value too. The point about taxing short-haul flight is that otherwise their pricing does not account for externalities that we collectively have to pay for. The absence of tax is effectively a subsidy. Rail has several advantages, time-wise. Airports are far from city centres and security theatre takes a lot of time. Cheap flights also tend to use smaller, more remote airports because they are cheaper to use than big hubs close to large cities.
jltsiren 5y ago
The main advantage of rail is capacity, not price. Roughly speaking, a railway station can handle 10x more passengers than an airport using 10x less space. In a densely populated area with a high passenger volume, it's not possible to build enough airports to handle intercity passenger traffic. Capacity also means flexibility. When the service is frequent enough, you don't have to plan in advance. You can buy the tickets just before departure for a reasonable price. You don't have to adjust your schedule to make it to the specific train, as you can also take the next one 30 minutes later. Different modes of transport have their own strengths and weaknesses. Switching to another mode never makes things unambiguously better. If you want to switch to another mode, you also have to change your habits to take full advantage of the strengths of the new mode.
silexia 5y ago
Time is not as valuable as the value of the damage from emissions both to public health and to the climate. Also... Business travel should be entirely eliminated in favor of Zoom and video tour calls. Only when someone needs to vacation or do actual physical work should they travel by plane.
mavhc 5y ago
Tax everything the amount it costs to clean up the pollution it causes, then use that money to clean up the pollution, problem solved. No one gets to cheat by making a cheap service that pollutes for free.
atoav 5y ago
Taxing? Stopping to subsidize them is already a good idea. Also: climate goals and airtraffic don't mix well, so a regulators goal should definitly be that the most climate-friendly ways to travel are also the easiest, cheapest and most comfortable and reliable. As a European who has taken more than one 16 hour train ride where I could have taken a 2.5 hour plane trip, I really think night trains done properly could be a game changer.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by R0b0t1 5y ago

RC_ITR 5y ago

Argument is the externalities of carbon emissions have (negative) value, so a tax would bring those two things in line and encourage that only people who really need to fly do so.

R0b0t1 5y ago
All other things equal you need to make a very strong case for externalities as the market is efficient. So far it's just people saying "planes are bad." It's entirely possible the externalities of having people (and goods) unproductive for longer periods of time is worse than simply getting them where they need to be.
- philips 5y ago
  Without putting a price on the carbon externality the market can't figure it out though. Idle time of workers is a pretty well understood market problem so I don't think that is an externality. Am I misunderstanding your position?
- RC_ITR 5y ago
  I mean, have you ever heard of tragedy of the commons? 1) All people share one atmosphere 2) Well-reviewed science shows that individual decisions like taking a flight make the atmosphere less hospitable for all. That type of problem is literally the reason the term externality was coined.
- gautamcgoel 5y ago
  I'm a bit confused by what you mean by "strong case". Flying emits substantially more carbon dioxide (by more than a factor of 100, IIRC). The deleterious effects of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere are well-documented. Isn't that a strong enough case?
- School-Cotton 5y ago
  Externalities are basically by definition the things that can't be determined by a free market.
  - evanwolf 5y ago
    Perhaps a jet fuel tax? If we bring the the lifetime cost of atmospheric carbon recovery and disaster response to flight, might we make air travel with using ICE engines less routine?
- LeifCarrotson 5y ago
  > you need to make a very strong case for externalities as the market is efficient Markets are not efficient at considering externalities at all.
  - R0b0t1 5y ago
    By definition yes, but you need to prove the externality is there and actually worse than your proposed tax.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Ensorceled 5y ago
      I was worried that was your position. If you still need further proof of global warming and it's deleterious effects then providing proof is impossible.
      - R0b0t1 5y ago
        Not proof of global warming, proof that this is the most efficacious tax to undertake and will not distort the market to be worse.
        teddyh 5y ago
        It’s not practically possible to prove that something is the most efficient alternative – you’d have to exhaustively show that all possible alternatives are worse. It’s more reasonable for you to provide an even better alternative, since you seem to believe that one exists. Once two specific options are named, the two can be compared in earnest.
- hhaha88 5y ago
  What makes you believe gaps in productivity can’t be accounted for by caching, converting to making goods closer to the source as much as possible? Maybe we could train more experts to avoid them needing to fly all over; buy and serve local. A lot of efficiency options are left off the table sticking with the status quo.
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  The fact that negative externalities can warp markets or cause them to fail entirely is Econ 101. Air travel is blamed for up to 3.5% of climate impacts; it's not an insignificant contributor...
- NoGravitas 5y ago
  The Efficient Market Hypothesis has been effectively disproven; it was proven that it's equivalent to P=NP, and it's very unlikely that P=NP. In other words, if markets were efficient, we could just use simulated markets to solve NP-hard problems in polynomial time. Not surprisingly, that doesn't work.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    > The Efficient Market Hypothesis has been effectively disproven No, the opposite of "effectively". That's like saying you can't plan an effective route because CSP, or you can't use SAT solvers to design things. Markets aren't perfect, and that's all that proof manages to show. They could still be 99.99% accurate based on that logic. It's a cute thought experiment, not something practical.
foolfoolz 5y ago
i love this philosophy. we can just tax and regulate away all the nice things in life
- CameronNemo 5y ago
  Ah yes, it is so nice to breathe noxious chemicals exhausted from jet engines. And CO2 is good for plant growth, right?
  - kaybe 5y ago
    CO2 being good for plant growth can mean it's bad for forest CO2 sequestration, since the wrong plants take over. https://e360.yale.edu/features/the-strange-case-of-the-liana-vine-and-its-role-in-global-warming https://e360.yale.edu/features/the-strange-case-of-the-liana...
- RC_ITR 5y ago
  I love your philosophy. Just embrace entropy, what could go wrong?
- Djrhfbfnsks 5y ago
  I'm as libertarian as they come, but if you're doing $x of damage to the environment, it seems totally fair to charge $x in taxes to cover that damage. That wouldn't stop you from enjoying an activity -- it's just making the price more accurately reflect the true costs.
- evilos 5y ago
  Flying has a hidden cost that wasn't being charged to the flyer. It was being charged to everyone that will suffer from climate change. Charging to offset the damage that flying does is basically just closing a loop hole. (Assuming that the extra money taken is used to actually offset the carbon impact and not just pocketed by industry/government.)
- erect_hacker0 5y ago
  Are you one of those “american nationalists” I hear so much about? I heard they frequent the hackers news, so was just wondering.
Robotbeat 5y ago
Then do electric aircraft. We can do 500-1000 mile electric air travel. Longer term, >3000 mile. Plus multiple hops. Still faster and cheaper than rail.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  > We can do 500-1000 mile electric air travel. We can? Present tense, certified, operational aircraft in service? Or do you mean that people are working on building them now and hope to have them in service at some point in the future?
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    The latter. I think we can have them in service before we could complete a new HSR line starting from scratch, at least in the US. (I think Europe is better at this kind of HSR infrastructure, so maybe it wouldn't be as bad.)
- RC_ITR 5y ago
  We 100% cannot do those things with current technology. I'm 'commenting too fast' to reply, but show me any of your examples in flight please.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    We absolutely can. https://twitter.com/GovInslee/status/1440442441920774146 https://twitter.com/GovInslee/status/1440442441920774146 500+ miles range. Building it right now. Plus Wright Electric, Bye Aerospace’s eflyer 800, etc. Why do people so easily and confidently claim something can’t be done?
    - burkaman 5y ago
      That carries 9 passengers, at ~half the speed of a standard airliner. It's exciting and I want to fly in one, but I don't think it will be faster and cheaper than trains in most cases, yet. But we're almost there.
CameronNemo 5y ago
then the (really poor quality, high pollution, not just co2 that jets exhaust) airplane fuel should be taxed, not the flights themselves. the price will get adjusted accordingly.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- adamlett 5y ago
  That would be ideal. As I understand it, it has been tried, but without reaching an international consensus, and leads to airlines filling the tanks of their planes in countries that don't tax the fuel, and flying with more fuel than needed (and therefore having to burn more fuel) so they don't need to refuel in countries that do tax the fuel, thus defeating the purpose of the tax.
  - Symbiote 5y ago
    I don't know if it was widely reported, but in the days before the COP meeting in Glasgow, Britain removed the tax they had on internal flights.
Dylan16807 5y ago
> Argument is the externalities of carbon emissions have (negative) value, so a tax would bring those two things in line and encourage that only people who really need to fly do so. If we charged $100-200 per ton of CO2, which is supposedly more than recapture would cost, that would only be about $1-2 per 50 miles. From the numbers being quoted here, it sounds like that would do very little to bring prices in line.
- ants_a 5y ago
  EU is already trading CO2 at 60€/t.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    In a limited way, sure. But with massive quotas that are free. That's the price of the very easiest CO2 to deal with, and the rest pollutes for free. Either charge for all the carbon, or start harshly dropping the quotas.

andrewseanryan 5y ago

While flights are often cheaper than rail in Europe they are not always faster when you include travel time to/from airport/train station (airports tend to be outside of town and train stations are typically center of city) and that you have to be at the airport earlier. I lived in Munich and a number of times it was faster to take the train. Me and my GF both went to Paris; she flew and I took rail from Munich and my train was slightly faster or at least break even. Also, traveling by rail in Europe is a nicer experience in my opinion.

ozim 5y ago
That is nice if you travel between big cities having direct connection via rail and big airports. Not to disregard your example but from my perspective it is not representative to most of travelers in the Europe. While taking train for me was more comfortable, most of the times it is not feasible and definitely a lot longer than taking an airplane. Especially if you live in smaller city where you don't have a major train station couple bus stations away.
- toyg 5y ago
  I'm not sure I follow - if you are in a smaller city, chances are you live far from an airport, but still very close to a train station. Unless, of course, you fly private charters to minuscule landings.
  - saiya-jin 5y ago
    I live in such smallish city (Geneva, 500k folks in central part). Yes its nice to get to Paris in say 3.5h by direct TGV, faster than plane if you count center-center, although more expensive. Well, and that's about it. I don't care for Paris that much, there are about thousand other places I prefer visiting. Its not that exotic to Europeans compared to Americans, and Paris' painful and obvious drawbacks (its a mega tourist trap, rampant crime, french are often rude if you don't speak perfect parisian french etc.) remove a lot of its allure. Currently we travel to nearby islands with small kids (balearic, canarias, sardinia, corsica, greek ones etc.). We travel home which is 1500km away (1:30 flight to +-nearby airport, or 15h+ multi-train galore), we travel exotic (0 options for trains). Heck, being Swiss, we use practically 0 Swiss trains. They are super expensive even for us since we don't commute by them to work every day, and Geneva being border town literally at the edge of confederation surrounded by France has little use of rails for us. France has pretty bad rail situation in comparison - our usual way to Chamonix takes 45mins by car, and 2+h by train. Family of 4 with 2 tiny kids? Never, ever, with all necessary luggage, even for free. You can't have cheap good reliable railway network even in dense Europe, unless its heavily subsidized. Its a pipe dream, nice one but unless they tax flights into oblivion they will remain as easier and cheaper option for most. Options will be different for rural living and different family settings obviously.

foolfoolz 5y ago

this has been the case for years and the convenience gap is only growing bigger for air travel. this is a huge reason why rail is not going to be such a huge development in america. we have air infrastructure that already surpasses what the not even built rail would be

xtracto 5y ago

I was unpleasantly surprised about the train price when I decided to take a train to go from Liverpool to London around 2008. I think at that time the rail ticket was around £200 while the flight would have cost me around £50 (and MegaBus was I think £6) ... That gave me the impression that train in the UK was for rich people.

cnorthwood 5y ago
At present, a walk-up (no advance booking) peak-time first class ticket from Liverpool to London is £255. Standard class is £171. A walk-up off-peak standard class ticket is £66.10, and you can get it cheaper if you book a day in advance. At peak times, or for longer distances (think Scotland to London), planes can be cheaper, but not often. Coaches can generally be cheaper though.
toyg 5y ago
The UK is a basket case when it comes to rail. The country that effectively invented the bloody thing, completely lost its mind in the 70s and started scrapping its extensive network. Then the Tories got in power, and at that point heavily-unionised public service like rail simply "had" to be eviscerated. Now it's an embarrassment, when compared to most European countries: expensive tickets, poor reliability, obsolete and polluting trains, continuous inability to pay for itself... I could go on. I'm Italian, I thought "our" trains were bad, but in the UK it's much worse. Barely 40% of the network is even electrified, in 2021!
- Symbiote 5y ago
  Frequency of trains is generally higher in Britain.
- avianlyric 5y ago
  > Then the Tories got in power What I find particularly funny about this, it that Maggie Thatcher was a strong proponent to keeping the trains in public ownership, believing that privatising them was a bridge two far, even for her. Her successor on the other hand, they weren’t so bothered. However the recovery of passenger number after privatisation is undeniable. While the private model wasn’t great, the previous public ownership was even worse. Hopefully our second stab at public ownership goes better, this time we have very successful models like TfL to work from.

brnt 5y ago

Air travel is severely under taxed compared to other modalities. Its right to start taxing air travel normally, because otherwise trains can't expect to compete on a level playing field.

jokoon 5y ago
The main culprit is tax on kerosene. Electricity is also taxed in france. Kerosene must be taxed because it emits a lot of CO2 per flight.
- thow-01187 5y ago
  Planes are actually surprisingly fuel efficient. The short haul flights in Europe are often served by Airbus A320 or A321 Neo, with fuel consumption per seat at 2.19 L/100 km. A mid-sized petrol-powered car consumes three times as much. And that figure ignores that planes take a straight route - taking that into account, the emissions are close to a single-occupant electric car
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    > the emissions are close to a single-occupant electric car I'd imagine the emissions would be infinitely greater than an electric car. For an ICE car with two people, you'd be closer.
    - pilsetnieks 5y ago
      I think they mean the emissions from generating all that electricity, which isn't always clean. You'll get a lot of hydro and renewables in some countries at some times but then also coal and gas at other times.
    - hollerith 5y ago
      >the emissions would be infinitely greater than an electric car. Not if you include the emissions caused by generating the electricity.

ratsforhorses 5y ago

Also of note, not sure about the cost or availability of wifi/internet on planes but it can/could/should be included into the equation, in fact I'm sure there's a place/market for groups working traveling...and besides it does seem reasonable to tax plane travel more, their ?lead filled fuel is ?tax free ? and in a world which global warming is an (ignored)issue carbon tax shouldis be mandatory...

sokoloff 5y ago
Turbine engines burn Jet-A (basically kerosene), which does not contain lead. The leaded fuel concern is for piston engined aircraft burning 100LL avgas. Almost all commercial aviation is done using turbine equipment. Some of the small island-hopper type airplanes are piston-engined.

rbanffy 5y ago

They are not replacements - they are complementary. I think trains should be cheaper than they are now to be more appealing than airplanes (I prefer the view from the airplane, but the cabin pressure and silence of the train is a plus), but it's not an either/or situation. When we count externalities such as the carbon footprint, trains easily beat planes. Finally, TGV and Ryanair are not comparable experiences.

_carbyau_ 5y ago

The best use of trains for me is as overnight sleeper. Combines the cost of an overnight stay with the travel ticket. The few times I have done it - lowest class with an actual bed - it was pretty minimal as a hotel experience but great to be able to wake up, step off the train and go to town!

dzhiurgis 5y ago
But that's probably less than .1% of active routes while title says "replace"...
- deleted 5y ago
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kergonath 5y ago

A healthy living environment has value too. The point about taxing short-haul flight is that otherwise their pricing does not account for externalities that we collectively have to pay for. The absence of tax is effectively a subsidy. Rail has several advantages, time-wise. Airports are far from city centres and security theatre takes a lot of time. Cheap flights also tend to use smaller, more remote airports because they are cheaper to use than big hubs close to large cities.

jltsiren 5y ago

The main advantage of rail is capacity, not price. Roughly speaking, a railway station can handle 10x more passengers than an airport using 10x less space. In a densely populated area with a high passenger volume, it's not possible to build enough airports to handle intercity passenger traffic. Capacity also means flexibility. When the service is frequent enough, you don't have to plan in advance. You can buy the tickets just before departure for a reasonable price. You don't have to adjust your schedule to make it to the specific train, as you can also take the next one 30 minutes later. Different modes of transport have their own strengths and weaknesses. Switching to another mode never makes things unambiguously better. If you want to switch to another mode, you also have to change your habits to take full advantage of the strengths of the new mode.

silexia 5y ago

Time is not as valuable as the value of the damage from emissions both to public health and to the climate. Also... Business travel should be entirely eliminated in favor of Zoom and video tour calls. Only when someone needs to vacation or do actual physical work should they travel by plane.

mavhc 5y ago

Tax everything the amount it costs to clean up the pollution it causes, then use that money to clean up the pollution, problem solved. No one gets to cheat by making a cheap service that pollutes for free.

atoav 5y ago

Taxing? Stopping to subsidize them is already a good idea. Also: climate goals and airtraffic don't mix well, so a regulators goal should definitly be that the most climate-friendly ways to travel are also the easiest, cheapest and most comfortable and reliable. As a European who has taken more than one 16 hour train ride where I could have taken a 2.5 hour plane trip, I really think night trains done properly could be a game changer.

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