13 ms·

France bans short haul domestic flights in favour of train travel

99 points by Manheim 4y ago

hkc 4y ago
Slightly OT but checkout Tag Across Europe: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB7ZcpBcwdC5B-l2FQNOPJVFpqF0QVxfG https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB7ZcpBcwdC5B-l2FQNOP...
varispeed 4y ago
We are all in this together* *except the rich So this is another measure to widen the gap between the rich and the pleb - when the pleb's travel gets restricted further, the rich can enjoy private jet hopping undisturbed - which gives them advantage over the pleb as they can get to places even quicker. If we are serious about climate, then there should be no exceptions for the rich, in fact they should be leading by example.
- prawn 4y ago
  From the article: ” France is also cracking down on the use of private jets for short journeys in a bid to make transport greener and fairer for the population.” ”Transport minister Clément Beaune said the country could no longer tolerate the super rich using private planes while the public are making cutbacks to deal with the energy crisis and climate change.”
  - hulitu 4y ago
    > transport minister Clément Beaune said the country could no longer tolerate the super rich using private planes I'm sure this is a misunderstanding. With a small donation for the party, everyone will be happy.
  - varispeed 4y ago
    > France is also cracking down This is a soundbite designed to calm people down. If there was a "crackdown", they would have listed steps taken to ensure the transport is "fairer". When government is saying they are "cracking down" - using quite emotionally loaded word - is precisely to cover up the fact they do nothing. If they really wanted to make transport fairer, they would have banned short private jet trips too. There is no excuse to not do that. None.
- jeltz 4y ago
  Pretty dishonest to write that about France, one of the few countries which seems intent on cracking down on private jets.
  - varispeed 4y ago
    > seems intent They do nothing. Words have no bearing if they are not backed by actions. There was no excuse why they shouldn't ban short private jet trips too.
- pooper 4y ago
  I don't think we (assuming you are also US american) have a leg to stand on until we raise our taxes. France iirc has a solidarity tax and from what I hear people don't go bankrupt due to routine medical care. Back to the topic though, a ban on short flights doesn't sound right to me. I'd feel better if the flights were made more expensive with higher taxes or perhaps even a new tax altogether
thedrbrian 4y ago
alternative headline could be France bans short haul domestic flights in favour of having to prop up SNCF
- the_why_of_y 4y ago
  SNCF pays full taxes for the fuel/electricity they use. Airlines do not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerosene_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerosene_tax However, as of 2018, commercial kerosene consumption is currently tax exempt under the legislation of all member states of the European Union.
bsaul 4y ago
Bet : How long until this completely absurd measure shows its first detrimental unexpected side effect ? We french are really kings for disturbing markets because of ideology. used to be socialism, now it’s eco-bullshit () () eco bullshit looks just like environmental activism, except it makes 0 environmental impact, is 100% about politics and can destroy economies in less than 10 years.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  >We french are really kings for disturbing markets because of ideology. Sorry, but you've been massively overtaken by the Germans. Better luck next time.
  - bsaul 4y ago
    Yes ! Absolutely, pardon my chauvinism. Germans have taken the crown on this topic. They’re on another scale.
    - SanjayMehta 4y ago
      Can anyone point a bemused me to any document which explains why Germany decided to shut down their nuclear power plants? I can't understand how wind and solar will provide power 24 hours day.
      - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
        TL;DR: clueless German anti-nuclear ideology following the Chernobyl disaster further pushing the industry to gas due to German corrupt leadership meeting Russian gas bribes which further pushed the anti-nuclear propaganda in Germany. "the gray building in the northeastern German city of Schwerin looks innocuous enough — and so does its tenant, the Foundation for the Protection of the Climate and Environment. Yet this regional foundation, created 23 months ago by the local state government, has done little for the climate. Instead, it served as a conduit for at least 165 million euros from the Kremlin-owned energy company Gazprom to build one of the world’s most contested gas pipelines: Nord Stream 2."[1] [1] https://archive.ph/UrygD#selection-633.0-637.297 https://archive.ph/UrygD#selection-633.0-637.297
543g43g43 4y ago
If you really want to reduce CO2 emissions, you need to ban cars, buses, and SUVs before you address planes. https://truecostblog.com/2010/05/27/fuel-efficiency-modes-of-transportation-ranked-by-mpg/ https://truecostblog.com/2010/05/27/fuel-efficiency-modes-of... Flippancy aside, in most cases the transportation mode has a relatively similar rate of emission. The problem is the number of miles travelled.
- foxhill 4y ago
  nonsense. cars, buses, and SUVs (odd distinction, but ok. also why buses?!) account for ~10-15% of global emissions (depending on how you cut it). see https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    I don’t see where your data refutes GP’s primary point; your data shows road transport as being much higher share of emissions than aviation.
    - foxhill 4y ago
      it doesn’t refute it, and it wasn’t my intention to do so. i was trying to point out that such an “extreme” position might not be sensible for such a fractionally small amount of CO2 emissions.
      - sokoloff 4y ago
        The extreme position being banning a small sliver of air travel (itself a small sliver of the overall pie)?
      - 543g43g43 4y ago
        What is sensible, about banning a particular journey type for a transport sector that produces even smaller CO2 emissions, and has better fuel economy per passenger seat than (for example) buses and SUVs?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bmitc 4y ago
The U.S. has seemingly done the opposite. Nonstop flights have all but vanished completely. What used to be a few hours on a cross-country nonstop flight has now become two to four connecting regional flights that start to approach international flight times in total. Does anyone know what's going on with no nonstop flights anymore?
- piskerpan 4y ago
  No experience with the US market, but I thought that thanks to planes like A350 the opposite was happening: new routes between smaller cities thanks to fuel efficiency. It's possible that in the US you're seeing that as a consequence of few available pilots and their resistance to change (hub and spoke has been around forever in the region)
  - nivenkos 4y ago
    The 1500 hour rule and its consequences...
  - maxerickson 4y ago
    The regional operator of the spoke flight from my local airport to the hub tried to change it to have a stopover at another airport, changing a ~1 hour flight to like 2.5 hours, with an hour sitting on the ground. The airport managed to reject the change. I took that flight several times earlier in the year and it was always pretty close to capacity, so sort of hard to understand. I guess the most likely thing is that they were trying to eliminate the direct flight to the middle airport while maintaining service there, but screwing over the majority of your customers seems like a bad way to go about that. 400 mile drive, no trains.
    - 8ytecoder 4y ago
      It seems like a post-pandemic thing. Until recently the hub and spoke model was pronounced dead thanks to high efficiency of long-haul flights.
- alistairSH 4y ago
mojuba 4y ago
I understand the criticism but to be fair high speed trains are better in many cases: Paris - Lyon by airplane: 1h15 plus travel to and from airport, plus security, boarding etc Paris - Lyon by train: 2h30, city center to city center, no security checks. This might actually be faster! Personally when traveling between London and Paris I choose the high speed train. It's usually more expensive but just the fact it removes traveling to and from airports (especially in London!) adds so much comfort that you realize the extra £50-70 are totally worth it. The overall travel time is also comparable.
- quentindemetz 4y ago
  Paris-Lyon is more like 2h
- throw_m239339 4y ago
  It costs me around 60€ to go from France to Switzerland by plane. It costs me way more than 60€ to go from France to Switzerland by train. This why people are taking the plane, because it's less expensive that high speed rail, nothing more. Make high speed rail less expensive and people will take the train. Government induced free market distortion under pretense of ecology concerns is just what it is, bullshit, and a bad French habit. edit: I know France Switzerland trips aren't affected by these laws, it's just an example.
  - amrocha 4y ago
    "under pretense of ecology concerns" Yes, the evil government is propping up BIG TRAIN because they hate planes!!!
    - throw_m239339 4y ago
      > Yes, the evil government is propping up BIG TRAIN because they hate planes!!! Dude, instead of mocking me and sounding like an ass, learn your history. 20 years ago in that country, it was impossible to go from Region to region by bus, you had to take the train. You couldn't do Le Mans Paris by bus because bus operators were not allowed to sell inter regional trips. It's the EU that forced France to allow these. You're damn right the french government is once again rigging the game in favor of the SNCF.
usr1106 4y ago
This seems like making headlines for little real impact. If they did want to do something for the environment and fairer competition between transport modes they should tax aviation fuel and airline tickets. Regardless of distance and destination.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  Aviation emissions are 1.9% of global emissions. [0] I certainly don't disagree with a jet fuel tax (which is obscenely tax free in most of the world). However, if we want to be impactful then we need to start building massive storage infrastructure and grow renewable sources so that we can curb down emissions from energy production using coal and gas. Everything else is a drop in a bucket comparatively speaking (even ICE to EV transition is relatively small in comparison with Electricity related emissions). More so if EVs are charged up from Coal/Gas Electricity sources. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sector-%E2%80%93-pie-charts.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sect...
  - osigurdson 4y ago
    This is one of the problems with hiring non-technical politicians. They have zero background in science and base everything on current trends and analogies. It is a real problem in many western democracies - people who are only capable of getting a political science degree run for office because that is the only job they can get. Capable people end up doing other jobs because politics doesn't pay until you are in a position to corrupt things and capable people usually aren't interested in corruption. Politics needs to pay far more in order to attract capable/competent people.
  - jacooper 4y ago
    100%, most for the climate rules in the Eu are just for show. they pick the most miniscule and most visible / inconveniencing regulations so that they look like they care about the environment, while actually doing nothing.
- halpmeh 4y ago
  You could basically say that about any climate initiative. Cheap carbon-based fuels form the entire foundation of our society. Changing that is going to be a long, hard fight. You have to start somewhere. As a personal anecdote. My family decided to drive instead of fly over Thanksgiving. We saved about 1200 kg of CO2 even though we had to drive 12 hours. Clearly some savings can be made by forcing alternate means of transportation.
exabrial 4y ago
Read between the lines: this has nothing to do with ecology. I don’t really understand the French government and culture enough to guess what the ulterior motive is; perhaps something with keeping non-French companies from running cheap airlines in the country?
- 36amxn35 4y ago
  Absolutely this. Also, in political threads, I always read the grey-ish/dead comments because they are the ones with a glimpse of common sense. I think that this forum should stick strictly to technology as it simply can't handle political news, and it causes more harm that good. A false consensus, an echo chamber, whatever you want to call it.
- Nifty3929 4y ago
  More likely favoring the train companies and unions.
freddealmeida 4y ago
I find this disconcerting. 1) everyone has different reasons for taking flights over trains. Markets should decide the economics of it. Government shouldnt. 2) There is no clear impact thesis on carbon on the environment of France. It is probably close to zero. If not negligible. 3). Not for you but for them. I dont see elites, powerful politicians taking the train. All the reasons will be given. Teams need to move, security, time constraints, nearness to the airport etc. 4) private jets while being attacked in France will never be banned. In fact because of this ban on flights I would expect an increase in private use/lease/ownership. 5) These kind of measures hurt the poor. When you have no competing options, prices go up.
avmich 4y ago
Don't see any mentioning of electric planes :/ - I'd assume they should be encouraged. Today they probably won't cover all distances for 2.5 hours flight, but they still can be used on shorter distances.

99 points by Manheim 4y ago

hkc 4y ago

Slightly OT but checkout Tag Across Europe: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB7ZcpBcwdC5B-l2FQNOPJVFpqF0QVxfG https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB7ZcpBcwdC5B-l2FQNOP...

varispeed 4y ago

We are all in this together* *except the rich So this is another measure to widen the gap between the rich and the pleb - when the pleb's travel gets restricted further, the rich can enjoy private jet hopping undisturbed - which gives them advantage over the pleb as they can get to places even quicker. If we are serious about climate, then there should be no exceptions for the rich, in fact they should be leading by example.

prawn 4y ago
From the article: ” France is also cracking down on the use of private jets for short journeys in a bid to make transport greener and fairer for the population.” ”Transport minister Clément Beaune said the country could no longer tolerate the super rich using private planes while the public are making cutbacks to deal with the energy crisis and climate change.”
- hulitu 4y ago
  > transport minister Clément Beaune said the country could no longer tolerate the super rich using private planes I'm sure this is a misunderstanding. With a small donation for the party, everyone will be happy.
- varispeed 4y ago
  > France is also cracking down This is a soundbite designed to calm people down. If there was a "crackdown", they would have listed steps taken to ensure the transport is "fairer". When government is saying they are "cracking down" - using quite emotionally loaded word - is precisely to cover up the fact they do nothing. If they really wanted to make transport fairer, they would have banned short private jet trips too. There is no excuse to not do that. None.
jeltz 4y ago
Pretty dishonest to write that about France, one of the few countries which seems intent on cracking down on private jets.
- varispeed 4y ago
  > seems intent They do nothing. Words have no bearing if they are not backed by actions. There was no excuse why they shouldn't ban short private jet trips too.
pooper 4y ago
I don't think we (assuming you are also US american) have a leg to stand on until we raise our taxes. France iirc has a solidarity tax and from what I hear people don't go bankrupt due to routine medical care. Back to the topic though, a ban on short flights doesn't sound right to me. I'd feel better if the flights were made more expensive with higher taxes or perhaps even a new tax altogether

thedrbrian 4y ago

alternative headline could be France bans short haul domestic flights in favour of having to prop up SNCF

the_why_of_y 4y ago
SNCF pays full taxes for the fuel/electricity they use. Airlines do not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerosene_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerosene_tax However, as of 2018, commercial kerosene consumption is currently tax exempt under the legislation of all member states of the European Union.

bsaul 4y ago

Bet : How long until this completely absurd measure shows its first detrimental unexpected side effect ? We french are really kings for disturbing markets because of ideology. used to be socialism, now it’s eco-bullshit () () eco bullshit looks just like environmental activism, except it makes 0 environmental impact, is 100% about politics and can destroy economies in less than 10 years.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>We french are really kings for disturbing markets because of ideology. Sorry, but you've been massively overtaken by the Germans. Better luck next time.
- bsaul 4y ago
  Yes ! Absolutely, pardon my chauvinism. Germans have taken the crown on this topic. They’re on another scale.
  - SanjayMehta 4y ago
    Can anyone point a bemused me to any document which explains why Germany decided to shut down their nuclear power plants? I can't understand how wind and solar will provide power 24 hours day.
    - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
      TL;DR: clueless German anti-nuclear ideology following the Chernobyl disaster further pushing the industry to gas due to German corrupt leadership meeting Russian gas bribes which further pushed the anti-nuclear propaganda in Germany. "the gray building in the northeastern German city of Schwerin looks innocuous enough — and so does its tenant, the Foundation for the Protection of the Climate and Environment. Yet this regional foundation, created 23 months ago by the local state government, has done little for the climate. Instead, it served as a conduit for at least 165 million euros from the Kremlin-owned energy company Gazprom to build one of the world’s most contested gas pipelines: Nord Stream 2."[1] [1] https://archive.ph/UrygD#selection-633.0-637.297 https://archive.ph/UrygD#selection-633.0-637.297

543g43g43 4y ago

If you really want to reduce CO2 emissions, you need to ban cars, buses, and SUVs before you address planes. https://truecostblog.com/2010/05/27/fuel-efficiency-modes-of-transportation-ranked-by-mpg/ https://truecostblog.com/2010/05/27/fuel-efficiency-modes-of... Flippancy aside, in most cases the transportation mode has a relatively similar rate of emission. The problem is the number of miles travelled.

foxhill 4y ago
nonsense. cars, buses, and SUVs (odd distinction, but ok. also why buses?!) account for ~10-15% of global emissions (depending on how you cut it). see https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  I don’t see where your data refutes GP’s primary point; your data shows road transport as being much higher share of emissions than aviation.
  - foxhill 4y ago
    it doesn’t refute it, and it wasn’t my intention to do so. i was trying to point out that such an “extreme” position might not be sensible for such a fractionally small amount of CO2 emissions.
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      The extreme position being banning a small sliver of air travel (itself a small sliver of the overall pie)?
    - 543g43g43 4y ago
      What is sensible, about banning a particular journey type for a transport sector that produces even smaller CO2 emissions, and has better fuel economy per passenger seat than (for example) buses and SUVs?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bmitc 4y ago

The U.S. has seemingly done the opposite. Nonstop flights have all but vanished completely. What used to be a few hours on a cross-country nonstop flight has now become two to four connecting regional flights that start to approach international flight times in total. Does anyone know what's going on with no nonstop flights anymore?

piskerpan 4y ago
No experience with the US market, but I thought that thanks to planes like A350 the opposite was happening: new routes between smaller cities thanks to fuel efficiency. It's possible that in the US you're seeing that as a consequence of few available pilots and their resistance to change (hub and spoke has been around forever in the region)
- nivenkos 4y ago
  The 1500 hour rule and its consequences...
- maxerickson 4y ago
  The regional operator of the spoke flight from my local airport to the hub tried to change it to have a stopover at another airport, changing a ~1 hour flight to like 2.5 hours, with an hour sitting on the ground. The airport managed to reject the change. I took that flight several times earlier in the year and it was always pretty close to capacity, so sort of hard to understand. I guess the most likely thing is that they were trying to eliminate the direct flight to the middle airport while maintaining service there, but screwing over the majority of your customers seems like a bad way to go about that. 400 mile drive, no trains.
  - 8ytecoder 4y ago
    It seems like a post-pandemic thing. Until recently the hub and spoke model was pronounced dead thanks to high efficiency of long-haul flights.
alistairSH 4y ago

mojuba 4y ago

I understand the criticism but to be fair high speed trains are better in many cases: Paris - Lyon by airplane: 1h15 plus travel to and from airport, plus security, boarding etc Paris - Lyon by train: 2h30, city center to city center, no security checks. This might actually be faster! Personally when traveling between London and Paris I choose the high speed train. It's usually more expensive but just the fact it removes traveling to and from airports (especially in London!) adds so much comfort that you realize the extra £50-70 are totally worth it. The overall travel time is also comparable.

quentindemetz 4y ago
Paris-Lyon is more like 2h
throw_m239339 4y ago
It costs me around 60€ to go from France to Switzerland by plane. It costs me way more than 60€ to go from France to Switzerland by train. This why people are taking the plane, because it's less expensive that high speed rail, nothing more. Make high speed rail less expensive and people will take the train. Government induced free market distortion under pretense of ecology concerns is just what it is, bullshit, and a bad French habit. edit: I know France Switzerland trips aren't affected by these laws, it's just an example.
- amrocha 4y ago
  "under pretense of ecology concerns" Yes, the evil government is propping up BIG TRAIN because they hate planes!!!
  - throw_m239339 4y ago
    > Yes, the evil government is propping up BIG TRAIN because they hate planes!!! Dude, instead of mocking me and sounding like an ass, learn your history. 20 years ago in that country, it was impossible to go from Region to region by bus, you had to take the train. You couldn't do Le Mans Paris by bus because bus operators were not allowed to sell inter regional trips. It's the EU that forced France to allow these. You're damn right the french government is once again rigging the game in favor of the SNCF.

usr1106 4y ago

This seems like making headlines for little real impact. If they did want to do something for the environment and fairer competition between transport modes they should tax aviation fuel and airline tickets. Regardless of distance and destination.

DoingIsLearning 4y ago
Aviation emissions are 1.9% of global emissions. [0] I certainly don't disagree with a jet fuel tax (which is obscenely tax free in most of the world). However, if we want to be impactful then we need to start building massive storage infrastructure and grow renewable sources so that we can curb down emissions from energy production using coal and gas. Everything else is a drop in a bucket comparatively speaking (even ICE to EV transition is relatively small in comparison with Electricity related emissions). More so if EVs are charged up from Coal/Gas Electricity sources. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sector-%E2%80%93-pie-charts.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sect...
- osigurdson 4y ago
  This is one of the problems with hiring non-technical politicians. They have zero background in science and base everything on current trends and analogies. It is a real problem in many western democracies - people who are only capable of getting a political science degree run for office because that is the only job they can get. Capable people end up doing other jobs because politics doesn't pay until you are in a position to corrupt things and capable people usually aren't interested in corruption. Politics needs to pay far more in order to attract capable/competent people.
- jacooper 4y ago
  100%, most for the climate rules in the Eu are just for show. they pick the most miniscule and most visible / inconveniencing regulations so that they look like they care about the environment, while actually doing nothing.
halpmeh 4y ago
You could basically say that about any climate initiative. Cheap carbon-based fuels form the entire foundation of our society. Changing that is going to be a long, hard fight. You have to start somewhere. As a personal anecdote. My family decided to drive instead of fly over Thanksgiving. We saved about 1200 kg of CO2 even though we had to drive 12 hours. Clearly some savings can be made by forcing alternate means of transportation.

exabrial 4y ago

Read between the lines: this has nothing to do with ecology. I don’t really understand the French government and culture enough to guess what the ulterior motive is; perhaps something with keeping non-French companies from running cheap airlines in the country?

36amxn35 4y ago
Absolutely this. Also, in political threads, I always read the grey-ish/dead comments because they are the ones with a glimpse of common sense. I think that this forum should stick strictly to technology as it simply can't handle political news, and it causes more harm that good. A false consensus, an echo chamber, whatever you want to call it.
Nifty3929 4y ago
More likely favoring the train companies and unions.

freddealmeida 4y ago

I find this disconcerting. 1) everyone has different reasons for taking flights over trains. Markets should decide the economics of it. Government shouldnt. 2) There is no clear impact thesis on carbon on the environment of France. It is probably close to zero. If not negligible. 3). Not for you but for them. I dont see elites, powerful politicians taking the train. All the reasons will be given. Teams need to move, security, time constraints, nearness to the airport etc. 4) private jets while being attacked in France will never be banned. In fact because of this ban on flights I would expect an increase in private use/lease/ownership. 5) These kind of measures hurt the poor. When you have no competing options, prices go up.

avmich 4y ago

Don't see any mentioning of electric planes :/ - I'd assume they should be encouraged. Today they probably won't cover all distances for 2.5 hours flight, but they still can be used on shorter distances.