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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

#31

Post by ancarda »

Sharlin wrote: post #27
EdwinLarkin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it does not.if it is faster to fly most people will choose to fly.

Not if the speed comes with a price tag that properly accounts for externalities. Cheap flights are a market failure, plain and simple. Besides, on short flights the relative overhead of getting to/from the airport, and spending time on the airport waiting, is especially high, whereas with trains the overhead is minimal.

>Cheap flights are a market failure

Could you explain this? I'm struggling to understand how something becoming very cheap can be considered an (economic) failure? Isn't that something the market optimizes for?

EDIT: Perhaps you mean expensive rail is a market failure?

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#32

Post by Denvercoder9 »

Scoundreller wrote: post #18
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…

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.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#34

Post by benja123 »

Overall I am for this, but I do wonder if most short domestic flights are business trips. I can definitely imagine a situation where if I was taking frequent day trips for work and that extra 30 minutes to an hour is the difference between me seeing me kid before they go to sleep or not choosing to take the flights.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#35

Post by bjeds »

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 have two flights with a train trip in the middle, which can of course be inconvenient in case the first flight is delayed and so on.

2) Say I live in one of the larger French cities, but not Paris. I want to travel to northern Japan, for example. Previously I could go to my local airport and transfer in Paris CDG. However now there are two other options viable for me because I can no longer fly to Paris: I can either take the train to Paris (Charles de Gaulle), hauling my checked luggage on the train and possible taxis (skis, travel gear, lots of duffels)... Or I can just go to my local airport, dump the luggage on that airport, and transfer in Frankfurt.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#36

Post by EdwinLarkin »

Sharlin wrote: post #27
EdwinLarkin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it does not.if it is faster to fly most people will choose to fly.

Not if the speed comes with a price tag that properly accounts for externalities. Cheap flights are a market failure, plain and simple. Besides, on short flights the relative overhead of getting to/from the airport, and spending time on the airport waiting, is especially high, whereas with trains the overhead is minimal.

What does it even mean to account for externalities?

The relative time on the airport is not high.You can literally come to the airport just a few minutes before your departure (and many people in fact do this). Also most airports are in my opinion much better organized than train stations.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#37

Post by dsnr »

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.

> 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 advantage grows larger with the number of people travelling).

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#38

Post by missedthecue »

simias wrote: post #21
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 plane industry is heavily subsidized and manages to get (IMO absurdly) low prices for some rides, and there are some situations where it's more convenient to take a plane than the train (for instance if you arrive from a long distance plane trip and are already at the airport). French trains, especially the high speed ones, are very comfortable and "high efficiency". They can be pretty expensive however.

European rail is also highly subsidized, on the order of tens of billions of euro annually, per country.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#39

Post by EdwinLarkin »

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.

Railway systems usually dont play well with capitalism as there is very little competition (given that infrastructure and the train operator is usually a state owned company).

Aviation is simply much more efficient.

Re: French lawmakers approve a ban on short domestic flights

#40

Post by missedthecue »

Sharlin wrote: post #27
EdwinLarkin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it does not.if it is faster to fly most people will choose to fly.

Not if the speed comes with a price tag that properly accounts for externalities. Cheap flights are a market failure, plain and simple. Besides, on short flights the relative overhead of getting to/from the airport, and spending time on the airport waiting, is especially high, whereas with trains the overhead is minimal.

The amount of carbon emitted on domestic flights in France has about 10€ in carbon cost per seat. I believe you are attributing too much to it
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