361–370 of 654 posts
> Last year, SNCF relaunched overnight services between Paris and Nice, with tickets starting as low as 19 euros, about $21, for a midweek low-season ticket. That compares with 31 euros, not including baggage fees or the cost of airport transfers, for a short flight on EasyJet These prices are inconceivable in the US, where competition in air travel has essentially been eliminated.
I used to travel frequently between Vienna and Paris (to visit relatives in Paris) and I quickly stopped flying between the two cities when I discovered the city-to-city train then called the 'Mozart' (it ceased service in 2007): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_(train) . I found that whilst the duration of the flying time was considerably shorter than the train trip the overall flying time was still quite long g…
https://www.sncf.com/en/passenger-offer/travel-by-train/nigh...
Living in Spain, I love trains and take them over airplane when it's an option. However, trains are often around twice as expensive as flying for may routes. I know nothing about trains, but intuitively I would expect the opposite, and I really wish it was more affordable, specially high speed rail.
The fact that the equipment and the crews are absolutely cheaper doesn’t help ticket prices as much as you’d think. Time is money.
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People are already paying for those externalities in extreme weather events caused by CO2, also from carbon taxes in other countries that wouldn't have been necessary otherwise, from people who have to buy more expensive cars and fuel, etc...
> People are already paying for those externalities in extreme weather events caused by CO2, And others are benefitting from positive externalities of warmer weather, reducing need for heating, increases yields due to increased CO2 concentration etc. Thing is, it’s incredibly hard to put a number on net costs on climate change. The most serious recent attempt to do that had its author, William Nordhaus, a Nobel Prize…
William's Nordhaus models for which he has received the Nobel prize predate the millennium, and have been superceded since then by much better models. His models are highly problematic, now that we know that you cannot extrapolate the average temperature on GDP due to increased amplitude, and for many other reasons. That is why the Nobel committee awarded it not for the current relevance of the results, but for the pioneering nature of the research.
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The US airline industry is massively subsidized. Every country heavily subsidizes air travel. The federal government spends $2BN/year on Amtrak and people lose their damn minds. Meanwhile, at the FAA, nearly $12BN/year...and that doesn't account for all the local and state funds used to subsidize airports. Or Department of Transportation spending...
How does that subsidy look per trip, though?
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as I remember, the discussion went that if EU implemented a tariff on on jet fuel companies would simply load their planes elsewhere, e.g. Russia/Dubai where there's abundant fuel with little to no tax not so relevant for the shorter trips intra-EU, but still a factor
If they did do that then the EU could introduce a tariff on the fuel they import when they fly back in. There would be rules around a fuel flight vs a legit passenger/cargo service, assuming they don't want to tax the extra fuel left in a plane at the end of a flight. But that seem like a pretty straightforward problem to solve.
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By definition, low taxes are not a subsidy. It is the trains that are heavily subsidized. The main reason behind the price difference is that there is plenty of competition between airlines for a given flight, eg Paris-Berlin, but no competition for the same train connection.
The argument that lower taxes isn't a subsidy is just stupid. It makes absolutely no meaningful difference if someone pays the same taxes as everyone else but then the government pay them some money, or if someone pays correspondingly lower taxes. In the end the recipient ends up with exactly the same amount of more money, and the government ends up with exactly the same amount of less money.
Minus overhead
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And in addition to that they also removed a lot of rail lines, especially goods traffic. It would've been a boon to have fewer trucks on the motorway and probably better for the environment.
European trains don't really do that much freight though. They tend to be optimized to carry people. America is actually way ahead of Europe in terms of rail freight, something like 10x depending on the measurement.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRLA
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlsruhe%E2%80%93Basel_high-s...
Living in Spain, I love trains and take them over airplane when it's an option. However, trains are often around twice as expensive as flying for may routes. I know nothing about trains, but intuitively I would expect the opposite, and I really wish it was more affordable, specially high speed rail.
A plane doesn't have to build and maintain km of tracks, it just uses airport facilities (subsidised usually) and untaxed kerosene. A high speed train can only go to a few destination, the tracks can hardly be repaid
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This is mentioned near the end of the article but the reason those short domestic flights are so cheap in Europe is that commercial kerosene is currently tax exempt in every single EU member state. Jet fuel is cheaper per gallon in the EU than it is in the USA! (or was, before the current war) In typically tax-happy Europe this always struck me as odd, agree it is sad when you find out an airplane ticket is cheaper t…
There's also intense competition among airlines which cuts costs to the bone. That doesnt happen for rail.