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

121–130 of 361 posts

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#121

Post by conradfr »

bjeds wrote: post #35

I wonder what the unintended consequences are with this measure. Here are some: 1) I can imagine weird situations where a multi-leg flight could be broken up by this ban, especially if you are traveling from the middle of nowhere (connected to a smaller airport in France) and you are flying to another middle of nowhere place (connected by _another_ smaller airport in France). Instead of having one flight, you now hav…

Apparently the law has an exception for connecting flights but I'm not sure it will work in practice.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#122

Post by ajross »

gamblor956 wrote: post #109
ajross wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 y…

In nations like the US (outside the DC-to-Boston corridor anyway) without a well-designed and -maintained rail infastructure, The U.S. has the world's best designed and maintained rail infrastructure. It's simply that, unlike every other country with a national rail network, America's rail system is designed for freight traffic, because now and historically passenger traffic in America has always been such a small po…

You can't put a 100mph high speed train on a freight line, and those freight lines don't cross with other transit arteries nor enter the urban cores where people are. What you say is true, but other than the fact that they are both "trains", it's not the same infrastructure we're discussing.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#123

Post by thiht »

jcranmer wrote: post #108
thiht wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rennes-Toulouse is 10 hours by train, because it transits through Paris. It's 2 hours by plane. If you're in Paris, you can go anywhere easily. If you're not in Paris, some cities are hard to reach by train.

Looking at timetables, it's actually 7h30 or 6h30 by train (I'm seeing two different itineraries, and I'm not sure where the hour difference comes from). Even then, the Bordeaux-Toulouse link is not full HSR speed, and adds an extra ~2h of travel time because of it. When LGV Bordeaux-Toulouse is built, that should cut off another 2h to a 4h30 trip. You might theoretically cut off another 1h if there were a more direc…

Maybe it improved since the time I had to do Rennes-Toulouse, which is good (although it should be better). FWIW the SNCF website still says that the average is 10h30, 6h30 being the best.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#124

Post by nobodyandproud »

xfitm3 wrote: post #116
ajross wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 y…

If you have a disability changing modes of transportation mid-trip is an extreme hardship. I suffered an injury and needed a wheelchair for about a year while I still had to travel for work three times. You have no idea how hard basic things can be until you're incapable of doing them on your own.

I had reduced mobility for months, many years ago.

Even though I was already aware of just how difficult it would be to get around, living through it gave a shocking amount of perspective.

Some of the disability accommodations (disability parking) were pure bullshit. Elevators and ramps were godsends.

A large, standing shower without steps and room for a stool were musts.

A taste of what’s to come, when I get older. I don’t really see any real solution either, other than prepping.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#125

Post by makapuf »

makapuf wrote: post #95
dsnr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And flights costing 29 EUR are simply a market failure That’s actually the market working as intended. In the case of flights you have competition which drives the price down, in the case of trains you mostly have a monopoly of the national operator which increases prices each year (DB, Germany). Train prices are prohibitively high, and when I face the choice I always end up driving vs taking the train (the price a…

Sometimes those 29€ are just the emerged part if the iceberg, with local airports subsidies which distorts said market.

If you look at this article[0], the subsidies can be 100€ per passenger [0] https://www.lechotouristique.com/article/il-y-a-trop-d-aerop... (french)

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#126

Post by hyakosm »

Scoundreller wrote: post #117

I'll assume this is just for commercially available tickets, right? If you're important enough to charter, you won't be forced to slum it on the train, right?

It's only for commercial tickets from one city to another. Short flights will still exist in correspondance of a bigger flight.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#128

Post by raverbashing »

thiht wrote: post #101
dopidopHN wrote: post #96

To be noted : we have a extensive fast train system. As a user, I prefer to take the train. It’s faster, more confortable and overall less hassle. ( you get from city center to city center, no security check; you can move around, use your mobile hotspot or the train wifi ) The one use case is going from Paris to Toulouse for instance. It’s take a day of train. But even Paris-Marseille is less than 3h at this point. P…

Rennes-Toulouse is 10 hours by train, because it transits through Paris. It's 2 hours by plane. If you're in Paris, you can go anywhere easily. If you're not in Paris, some cities are hard to reach by train.

As per TFA (which apparently nobody read)

> to abolish domestic flights on routes than can be covered by train in under two-and-a-half hours

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#129

Post by ascorbic »

thiht wrote: post #100
bertil wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there direct flights though?

I did Rennes-Toulouse multiple times (it was actually the example I was going to give in this thread). It's 10 hours by train, 2 hours by plane. So as long as there are no direct trains, if flying was to be banned, there would be no short way to do Rennes-Toulouse anymore.

According to the article, the law is banning routes that have a fast train alternative so I'd imagine that's fine.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#130

Post by mschuster91 »

dsnr wrote: post #37
Sharlin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> And flights costing 29 EUR are simply a market failure That’s actually the market working as intended. In the case of flights you have competition which drives the price down, in the case of trains you mostly have a monopoly of the national operator which increases prices each year (DB, Germany). Train prices are prohibitively high, and when I face the choice I always end up driving vs taking the train (the price a…

> Train prices are prohibitively high

They didn't need to be, the problem is that Deutsche Bahn is expected to be profitable since two decades (as a result of the failed attempts to privatize it) - and that includes the cost of physical infrastructure, which is enormous.

An airport however is cheap to build (okay, jokes like the BER aside) and operate, not to mention subsidies for regional airports whereas the EU has been pushing for de-subsidizing and liberalization of the railways for decades now.

Post reply on HN