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

France bans short haul domestic flights in favour of train travel

euronews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 149 posts

Re: France bans short haul domestic flights in favour of train travel

#101

Post by mojuba »

osigurdson wrote: post #77
cauch wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laws should not be decided just based on what is good for you in particular, but in considering what is the most efficient in average. Sure, you may have an easy access to the airport outside the city centre, but people in the city centre, which constitute a bigger number, have a worst access. And people who are not in the city centre but on the other side also have a worst access to the airport than the city centre.…

Presumably if trains truly were better, there should be no need for a law. Perhaps they should focus their efforts on making trains an obviously superior service.

Unfortunately public transport and esp. railway transport is not a 100% free market, there are a lot of natural monopolies in this space that need to be regulated. For example what stops Eurostar from pricing their tickets by looking at airline ones (it's what they are apparently doing)? Nothing because Eurostar is a monopolist for some important destination pairs like Paris - London.

Re: France bans short haul domestic flights in favour of train travel

#102

Post by bchanudet »

quadcore wrote: post #47
dorfsmay wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about trips that don't involve Paris, say Nantes - Marseille?

Just insert Paris in between. Nantes - Paris - Marseille shouldnt be too bad really.

Change at Lyon instead, it's way easier as it's all in the same trainstation.

Re: France bans short haul domestic flights in favour of train travel

#103

Post by helloworld11 »

varispeed wrote: post #57
mojuba wrote: post #16

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 rem…

> Paris - Lyon by airplane: 1h15 plus travel to and from airport, plus security, boarding etc Reminds of when someone says "this recipe only takes 20 minutes to make!" and they fail to mention you have to spend whole day shopping for ingredients, do some prep the day before and then spend half a day cleaning the kitchen afterwards... oh and then if you actually cook it for 20 minutes, chances are it will be barely sa…

>Reminds of when someone says "this recipe only takes 20 minutes to make!" and they fail to mention....

Or, keep essential ingredients for good and favorite recipes on hand generally, clean pots and utensils in the middle of cooking (usually very possible during pauses and wait times) and cook properly. Most foods can indeed be cooked perfectly in 20 minutes and with a bit of practice it's easy to create great 20-30 minute meals without any of the hassles you describe,unless you're one of those people who barely bothers to ever cook or keep a thing at home and even scrambled eggs with toast require a trip to the grocery store and bakery first.

Re: France bans short haul domestic flights in favour of train travel

#104

Post by xracy »

osigurdson wrote: post #77
cauch wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laws should not be decided just based on what is good for you in particular, but in considering what is the most efficient in average. Sure, you may have an easy access to the airport outside the city centre, but people in the city centre, which constitute a bigger number, have a worst access. And people who are not in the city centre but on the other side also have a worst access to the airport than the city centre.…

Presumably if trains truly were better, there should be no need for a law. Perhaps they should focus their efforts on making trains an obviously superior service.

This mostly hits people with private jets...

Trains are better in some ways, and they're wayyyyy better than someone traveling by private jet cause they don't want to ride with the bourgeoisie.

Re: France bans short haul domestic flights in favour of train travel

#105

Post by xracy »

joking wrote: post #68
mojuba wrote: post #16

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 rem…

That’s correct if everyone traveled from city center to city center, but in my case, the airport is easier to get than the hsr station, has more long time parking options, and sometimes the destination is a layover, so I would have to go from the center of paris to the airport equally. I Would love to travel a lot more by train, or less by plane, but right now and at least in my case, it’s not a very good option.

I would be surprised if you needed to drive to the HSR station...

The public transportation too the city center is better in european cities than driving. Sample route is charles de gaul to the train station.

Re: France bans short haul domestic flights in favour of train travel

#106

Post by 8ytecoder »

maxerickson wrote: post #32
piskerpan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

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 tha…

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.

Re: France bans short haul domestic flights in favour of train travel

#107

Post by qeternity »

throwaway049 wrote: post #52
qeternity wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Competition, and the subsidies are the other way around: many train companies receive them, and most airlines don't.

I'd argue that not pricing in the negative externalities of flying amounts to a subsidy.

I’d agree with you except that EU airlines have to participate in the cap and trade system (ETS), whereas trains do not.

Re: France bans short haul domestic flights in favour of train travel

#108

Post by aaravchen »

NBJack wrote: post #44
tssva wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not my experience at all. I fly non-stop between major US cities all the time. For smaller cities I may need to make a single connection. I live on the east coast and within 45 minutes of 2 major airports. I just did some quick checking. Following are examples of the number of daily non-stops available from them: San Francisco - 11 Las Angeles - 13 Dallas - 17 Seattle - 9 Portland - 4 Chicago - 33 St Louis -…

Anecdotally, the reverse is not true. West to East non-stop flights have been scarce as of late to many major cities, even from a major hub, compared to a few years ago. Some flights in the same direction have sometimes been faster via Canada than staying the US. I too am curious as to the shift.

Having had to do that quite frequently in the US, flights from West to East in my experience are much more likely to be non-stop hub to hub, or entirely unavailable.

The time difference and regional/hopper flights catering to "commuters" who need to fly early morning and late evening doesn't play well with the time zone changes, so you can either have a bunch of hopper flights with full day layovers at each airport, or you can catch an early morning long haul flight from a major hub airport to another major hub airport.

In fact I think I just saw an article (can't find the source) that talked about post pandemic the US domestic flights were much more focused on large volume hub-to-hub flights as a way of serving pre-pandemic customer levels despite understaffing.

Re: France bans short haul domestic flights in favour of train travel

#109

Post by JeanMarcS »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #33
amrocha wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"under pretense of ecology concerns" Yes, the evil government is propping up BIG TRAIN because they hate planes!!!

> 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. Yo…

And it's the EU laws that are retranscribed here in France so what's your point exactly ?

Re: France bans short haul domestic flights in favour of train travel

#110

Post by bmitc »

tssva wrote: post #40
bmitc wrote: post #12

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?

That is not my experience at all. I fly non-stop between major US cities all the time. For smaller cities I may need to make a single connection. I live on the east coast and within 45 minutes of 2 major airports. I just did some quick checking. Following are examples of the number of daily non-stops available from them: San Francisco - 11 Las Angeles - 13 Dallas - 17 Seattle - 9 Portland - 4 Chicago - 33 St Louis -…

Well your experience contradicts both mine and my family's, the both of us living in two of the most major cities in the U.S. And there has absolutely been a dropoff of nonstop flights. Several used to exist and now literally none between areas I used to fly.
Post reply on HN