Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 361 posts

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#41

Post by kevindong »

Sharlin wrote: post #17
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #4

There is no reason to fly short distance if you want to go from city center to city center. However, if you're already arriving or leaving on a long distance flight, the whole overhead of getting to/from/through the airport disappears and those 1.5 hours start making a difference. I think forcing companies to advertise more honest flight durations and prices could make a huge difference. If the airline tells you that…

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

Counterexample: in Summer 2019, I took a one way flight from Rome to Lisbon via Ryanair for $57.40 USD / ~€48.77 (current conversion rates, my receipt was denominated in USD).

That's a 1,160 miles / 1,870 km / ~2.75 hour flight (distance is as the crow flies). A train cannot compete with that. Not that a reasonable train itinerary between Lisbon and Rome exists.

For May 2021 [0], I'm seeing several roundtrip itineraries between Lisbon and Rome for USD$31 / €26 on Ryanair. I think the fact that such a low-priced flight can exist is actually a triumph of capitalism.

[0]: https://www.google.com/travel/flights/s/a5Ea

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#42

Post by ajross »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #4

There is no reason to fly short distance if you want to go from city center to city center. However, if you're already arriving or leaving on a long distance flight, the whole overhead of getting to/from/through the airport disappears and those 1.5 hours start making a difference. I think forcing companies to advertise more honest flight durations and prices could make a huge difference. If the airline tells you that…

> There is no reason to fly short distance if you want to go from city center to city center.

In France. In nations like the US (outside the DC-to-Boston corridor anyway) without a well-designed and -maintained rail infastructure, 1-2 hour flights are routine and not really replaceable with other options. Infrastructure investment pays off for decades and decades, and Europe has done really well here.

> However, if you're already arriving or leaving on a long distance flight, the whole overhead of getting to/from/through the airport disappears

That's an infrastructure problem too, though! There's no reason rail service directly to and from airports can't be integrated with the system. It's true in many places already, though I know nothing about France.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#43

Post by missedthecue »

guilamu wrote: post #15
bpodgursky wrote: post #2

Maybe they should ask themselves _why_ someone would take a flight instead of a 2.5 hour train ride? There's really no reason a human would try to fly instead of take a train, if the trains were functioning at high efficiency. Flying sucks. And yet...

In France, it mostly comes down to a price issue. On one hand, flights are massively subsidized and can be extremely cheap. On the other hand, train is not subsidized at all and can be pretty pricey. Recently though, things are changing and making a Paris - Nice by train is becoming somewhat financially doable.

French rail receives 13 billion euros annually in subsidies

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_subsidies

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#44

Post by Analemma_ »

underdeserver wrote: post #12

I'm not an economist, but wouldn't it have been better to tax the carbon emissions? If you could offset the carbon emissions for 10 EUR, maybe add 12 EUR to the price of a ticket and use that money to buy carbon offsets? That way those who still want it can still fly, and we're at net negative emissions.

It would, but the last time France tried imposing a carbon tax there were riots in the streets. This might be the best we can hope for.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#45

Post by allendoerfer »

flavius29663 wrote: post #25
medium_burrito wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because light rail/bus to airport is cheap, and $25 fares are cheap. And the trains are expensive. Now, why is flying so cheap vs a train? The whole the US government essentially gives away 737s at a loss to employ people might be one part of it? Nobody is giving away free trains that I know of.

Trains are heavily subsidized in Europe. E.g. Germany paid 17 billions in a single year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_subsidies#Europe How many 737s would that buy, per year? around 40-50? This is Germany alone, the rest of Europe is just the same

Deutsche Bahn has a (quasi) monopoly on German long-distance trains and is state owned. It has to operate some connections at a loss. It also maintains the railways.

German streets a build by the state, not by Volkswagen or Mercedes Benz. Airports are owned by local governments and often a loss-leader, sometimes epic disasters (with the exception of Fraport).

It is extremely hard to compare trains and argue about whether they are competitive or subsidized.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#46

Post by Denvercoder9 »

underdeserver wrote: post #12

I'm not an economist, but wouldn't it have been better to tax the carbon emissions? If you could offset the carbon emissions for 10 EUR, maybe add 12 EUR to the price of a ticket and use that money to buy carbon offsets? That way those who still want it can still fly, and we're at net negative emissions.

Carbon offsets are not a structural solution though. Most offsets right now reduce emissions elsewhere, where it's either cheaper or technologically more feasible. However, eventually we'll run out of those, and offsets will actually need to capture carbon from the atmosphere. Since there's no feasible synthetic carbon sequestration process invented yet, practically that means you have to increase biomass, and ensure it remains biomass in perpetuity. That can only be taken so far, at a certain point you'll run out of space to plant forests.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#47

Post by gsnedders »

Denvercoder9 wrote: post #32
Scoundreller wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is kind of an intrinsic problem with transport that needs infrastructure along the whole route (i.e. trains and cars). You need a minimum amount of travel along a route for it to be worth it to construct and maintain that infrastructure. The system naturally evolves to a hub-and-spoke model. Planes just need infrastructure at both ends, so it's a lot easier to create a point-to-point model.

It's far from just the infrastructure, if you're looking at HSR; Bordeaux to Lyon as an aviation route is mostly served by E190's, each seating 100 people, whereas a TGV Réseau seats 377 (which I believe is the lowest capacity of any current TGV). Clearly the train can have the advantage of intermediate stops, but you're starting off with much higher capacity to fill.

And sure, you could build a very short train, but a lot of the efficiencies of rail are built on transporting large numbers of people at once.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#48

Post by dmurray »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #4

There is no reason to fly short distance if you want to go from city center to city center. However, if you're already arriving or leaving on a long distance flight, the whole overhead of getting to/from/through the airport disappears and those 1.5 hours start making a difference. I think forcing companies to advertise more honest flight durations and prices could make a huge difference. If the airline tells you that…

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

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#49

Post by avian »

bpodgursky wrote: post #2

Maybe they should ask themselves _why_ someone would take a flight instead of a 2.5 hour train ride? There's really no reason a human would try to fly instead of take a train, if the trains were functioning at high efficiency. Flying sucks. And yet...

> There's really no reason a human would try to fly instead of take a train.

My anecdote:

Some time ago I did a lot of business trips around Europe. All business travel was organized by a subcontractor. They sometimes wanted to route me through a crazy amount of short airplane hops to get me to the destination. Sometimes even when a direct flight was available they couldn't put me on it because they didn't have a contract with the operator or something like that.

For some reason they strongly favored air travel and fell back on other means of transport only when there was absolutely no way to get there by air.

One some occassions I was supposed to do 4 or 5 500 km short hops, which would mean a whole wasted day of basically waiting at airports and boarding airplanes. In such cases I just said no, paid out of my own pocket for a train ticket or took my own car. And then spent next 3 months doing paperwork to get travel expenses reimbursed.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#50

Post by keiferski »

bombcar wrote: post #26
bpodgursky wrote: post #2

Maybe they should ask themselves _why_ someone would take a flight instead of a 2.5 hour train ride? There's really no reason a human would try to fly instead of take a train, if the trains were functioning at high efficiency. Flying sucks. And yet...

The most common reason to take a short domestic flight is that you just arrived on a longer international flight - hub and spoke. Fly into LA and the fly to San Diego kinda thing. This may actually INCREASE emissions as now there will me smaller “direct” flights from out of country instead of them all going through major hubs.

Most major airports in France have train connections built-in.
Post reply on HN