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French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

reuters.com

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Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#341

Post by sofixa »

dopidopHN wrote: post #261
martinald wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, this is totally not true in Europe either. Yes high speed rail is great for a few routes (I'm a huge supporter of it!). But outside of these key routes flying will always be better. Europe has absolutely enormous levels of flying. The amount of city pairs in Europe which are a 1-2hr flight and more than 4 hours on trains are very high. Outside of maybe some routes in UK/France/Netherlands/Belgium/(western) Ger…

I had jobs where I had to visit clients in Uk, France, Germany and Italy. It was often plan kinda last minute. I’m French and was living in Paris at the time. Of course, for all abroad stuff beside london ( Eurostar ), the plane was preferred. But for national travel, only one city was too far to reach with a early morning train ride. All other major cities are reachable by a 2 to 4h train ride ( city center to city…

> The city is question is Toulouse. It’s just take too long from Paris. I Had to fly for this one.

Since last year ( or the year before that) via the LGV to Bordeaux, Toulouse is at 4h and ~10minutes from Paris.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#342

Post by jakub_g »

ashtonkem wrote: post #262
wut42 wrote: post #104

While the reason is honorable, I can't help but think this is an attack on poor/middle class people. Traveling by train in France is quite expensive, and very annoying some times (I live in a lost country-side, and if I want to travel to my parents, it's a three to four train ride, taking about 8 to 10 hours). Ok, plane wouldn't help in most cases either, but the train offering got a lot gutted over the years and it'…

Are airplane rides actually cheap, or are they heavily subsidized?

Often they are cheap because airlines open their bases in exotic places and the regional local govs, who invested heavily in an airport as part of muscle flexing, subsidize the carriers to avoid having a ghost airport. Modus operandi or Ryanair for a while. (But also connections between major airports in EU can be cheap if booked in advance).

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#343

Post by kergonath »

nraynaud wrote: post #319
kergonath wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> remember that now you're supposed to be in the train 20min in advance That is not true. They show the platform on the screens at the station 20 minutes in advance. I think they recommend being 5 minutes in advance, but they let anyone board as long as the doors are open.

you are right, they just "advise" you to be there 20 to 30 minutes early. https://www.oui.sncf/aide/presentation-a-l-embarquement And they outright write that some people will get an airplane experience, and not in a free drink way.

$former_job used to pay “pro 1ère” TGV tickets. Those came with free drinks and nibbles, I quite enjoyed it. It was much better than a plane in terms of noise, stability, and legroom. No idea how much they cost though.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#344

Post by conradfr »

ivan1783 wrote: post #306
conradfr wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You have a source?

> Une exception toutefois pour les lignes qui permettent une correspondance vers l'étranger. Même chose pour les liaisons entre les régions.

https://www.lci.fr/planete/interdiction-des-vols-courts-en-f...

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#345

Post by Scoundreller »

jobigoud wrote: post #284
Scoundreller wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYC-MAD-BOD is a bit closer... My advice is to avoid transferring at CDG at all costs, but LHR is slightly worse imo. Maybe one day NYC-YUL-BOD will be a valid option to shave off a few hundred miles in the air, but that is another border.

AMS is currently a very typical option as there are links between Amsterdam and all major French cities. I used to take the LAX-AMS-BOD quite often before the pandemic.

Yeah, it’s an EU route from Toronto that was never cut during the pandemic. I think it hasn’t dropped from daily. I guess there’s enough freight (or bailouts?) to keep it afloat.

But it ground my gears that KLM was still bussing from the gate to some aircraft to keep up their drive-through ops efficiency.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#346

Post by kergonath »

gsnedders wrote: post #322
kergonath wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said, I think this exactly shows one of the benefits of liberialisation of the rail market: it allows other companies to serve routes that the nationalised operator does not want to. It really does not. Private companies won’t invest in the un-profitable routes that are the most important for half the country. Instead, they’ll eat into the margins of the established companies on high profit main lines, which a…

Is cross-subsidy really the best way to fund unprofitable routes, though? It makes sense if you view the state's rail budget as something that needs to be balanced in and of itself, but that's a matter of government accounting, moving where the revenue comes from, rather than a business in its own right. Relying on cross-subsidy you're essentially overcharging those taking the profitable lines, versus raising the sub…

> Is cross-subsidy really the best way to fund unprofitable routes, though? It makes sense if you view the state's rail budget as something that needs to be balanced in and of itself, but that's a matter of government accounting, moving where the revenue comes from, rather than a business in its own right.

I think you’re right. It’s just that we’ve been brainwashed into seeing our state-owned companies as normal companies that need to turn a profit. From that point of view it makes sense for high-margin routes to subsidise unprofitable ones. But a state does not have to balance the books the same way.

Subsidising smaller routes directly from the State budget works as well, and results in lower fares overall, at the expense of a bit more in taxes.

Subsidising private companies operating these routes, however, is a recipe for disaster. These companies expect a profit and would cut any corner to pocket the subsidies instead of doing their job. This is how it (mostly) works in the U.K., and it is terrible and expensive.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#347

Post by hansvm »

js2 wrote: post #234
publicola1990 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general though flying is much safer than highway driving. If one wanted to minimize risk, one would always fly.

The difference in relative risk is high, but the absolute risk of dying in a car is still pretty low if you're sober, wearing a seatbelt, and not speeding. Oh, and apparently if you're not driving in the U.S. Geez, didn't realize we're such crappy drivers here. https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/motor-vehicle-safety/index.ht...

I'd be curious to know what exactly makes the difference so pronounced.

My pet theory is that people don't know how dangerous their actions are _and_ feel entitled to break laws they deem useless. About 4 times out of 5 when somebody nearly hits me blowing through a stop sign and crosswalk they'll stop and apologize profusely, indicating they probably didn't intend to put me in harm's way. That's not a huge dataset though (at most a few times per week), and it doesn't say anything about tailgating or other forms of dangerous driving.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#348

Post by crazygringo »

trainsplanes wrote: post #274
crazygringo wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am American, but having traveled around Europe and Japan, I can say with confidence that if you're traveling between cities you very often need to buy your ticket in advance and it's valid only for that departure. Your seat is reserved because the train can sell out, and they do. Plus, fares often go up significantly the closer the train is to being sold out (so days/weeks early can be a good idea). It's no "funny…

What? No. I live in Japan and you absolutely do not need to book trains in advance, ever, for any reason. It's a good idea if you're planning to travel during peak hours on the first and last days of a major holiday period, but there is a free seating area that you can ride. The only downside is that you may need to wait a bit on the platform until you're squeezed onto the shinkansen. You're sacrificing some comfort…

> But that problem only occurs 3 weeks out of an entire year.

Which is, of course, when you're statistically the most likely to be traveling.

And the fact that a ticket is valid the whole day doesn't help much when your flight is delayed overnight or by a day.

Some people tend to travel precisely when others are not, and might not run into this problem, seems like that might be your case. Other people travel precisely when others are too, and will run into it all the time. As far as China, every hard sleeper I ever took was sold out in advance, zero holidays.

As far as I can tell, you're entirely confirming what I'm saying.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#349

Post by gsnedders »

kergonath wrote: post #346
gsnedders wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is cross-subsidy really the best way to fund unprofitable routes, though? It makes sense if you view the state's rail budget as something that needs to be balanced in and of itself, but that's a matter of government accounting, moving where the revenue comes from, rather than a business in its own right. Relying on cross-subsidy you're essentially overcharging those taking the profitable lines, versus raising the sub…

> Is cross-subsidy really the best way to fund unprofitable routes, though? It makes sense if you view the state's rail budget as something that needs to be balanced in and of itself, but that's a matter of government accounting, moving where the revenue comes from, rather than a business in its own right. I think you’re right. It’s just that we’ve been brainwashed into seeing our state-owned companies as normal comp…

> Subsidising private companies operating these routes, however, is a recipe for disaster. These companies expect a profit and would cut any corner to pocket the subsidies instead of doing their job. This is how it (mostly) works in the U.K., and it is terrible and expensive.

While I might defend the EU's push for rail liberalisation in general, I'm certainly not going to defend the historic GB model (Northern Ireland was never privatised, and the model of franchises carrying the revenue risk is gone from GB[1], killed slightly sooner than it would've been due to the pandemic).

That said, note a significant part of the reason why GB ends up with higher fares is much higher cross-subsidy and much lower reliance on the State budget than elsewhere in Western Europe. We've year-on-year had above inflation fare rises (and note that the rises have always been limited by Government; had there been a desire to set a lower (or no!) fare rise Government could have done so) combined with decreases in subsidy. This is highly unlikely to change even with the demise of franchises as we currently know them, as the Government desire to reduce subsidy is likely to continue.

So the GB model did achieve its stated goal: moving revenue risk to the private sector and decreasing subsidy.

The failings of prior franchises—and whether or not they're terrible—is a long and varied topic. Ultimately, they by and large delivered the service they were contracted to. There's ways in which this is an issue with the specification of the tender, and ways in which it's inherently a downside. Many of the complaints have some of their origins in Government intervention, it must be said: rolling stock acquisition was very tightly controlled from the 2000s onwards, inconsistent and often changing electrification plans, and infrastructure in many places running near capacity.

That's not to say the franchisees did nothing wrong, but often they had their hands tied in many, many ways: and often much tighter tied than British Rail ever did.

I'll argue to the end that the biggest mistake was selling off all of British Rail; elsewhere in the EU having the incumbent survive has almost certainly provided a more beneficial competitive environment.

[1]: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/rail-franchising-reaches-...

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#350

Post by belorn »

cycomanic wrote: post #303
vladvasiliu wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Main French lines are (for the time being at least) in fairly good shape and there's new investment being done. They've opened two new high speed lines relatively recently: Paris - Strasbourg (near Germany in the east of the country) in 2016 and Paris - Bordeaux (near Spain, in the south-west) in 2017. Generally speaking, taking the train in France is a rather good experience. The trains are quiet and confortable, es…

I think for travelling to/from Paris the French train system is absolutely amazing. I mean the TGV from Bordeaux to Paris takes 2h for ~550km, nothing can beat that. That's the advantage of the fact that France is very centralised around Paris. Germany has the ICE which is also fast, but it needs to stop much more often, because the way Germany is structured means trips are much more spread out and not so much of a s…

I have taken the Stockholm and Gothenburg several time, both the black tin cans that are used as night trains and built somewhere around 1970, and the state of the art high speed train x2000 built during the 1990s. It takes me about a whole day to recover from the motion sickness, especially the x2000 which is well known for it lateral motion problem thanks to the non-straight rail and high speed.

The more rapid but shorter lateral movements on a plane does not trigger my motion sickness, and neither do turbulence. That could be a personal aspect. I have the same issue where if I am on a boat that goes up and down then I am usually fine, but not if the waves comes side to side.

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