France bans short haul domestic flights in favour of train travel • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by nivenkos » Sun, Dec 04, 2022, 12:56 PM UTC

piskerpan wrote: post #22

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?

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 1500 hour rule and its consequences...

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

#32

Post by maxerickson » Sun, Dec 04, 2022, 12:57 PM UTC

piskerpan wrote: post #22

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?

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 that they were trying to eliminate the direct flight to the middle airport while maintaining service there, but screwing over the majority of your customers seems like a bad way to go about that.

400 mile drive, no trains.

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

#33

Post by throw_m239339 » Sun, Dec 04, 2022, 12:58 PM UTC

amrocha wrote: post #23

throw_m239339 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It costs me around 60€ to go from France to Switzerland by plane. It costs me way more than 60€ to go from France to Switzerland by train. This why people are taking the plane, because it's less expensive that high speed rail, nothing more. Make high speed rail less expensive and people will take the train. Government induced free market distortion under pretense of ecology concerns is just what it is, bullshit, and…

"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. You're damn right the french government is once again rigging the game in favor of the SNCF.

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

#34

Post by Tpt » Sun, Dec 04, 2022, 12:59 PM UTC

the_why_of_y wrote: post #30

alistairSH wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is train so much more expensive? Surely jets that cost $100s of millions, supported by massive airports, are more expensive? Seems like the market distortions are subsidies to airlines of some sort.

Jet fuel is tax free in the EU, a huge market-distorting subsidy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerosene_tax However, as of 2018, commercial kerosene consumption is currently tax exempt under the legislation of all member states of the European Union.

Rail lines are massively subsidized and the French government is regularly bailing out SNCF (the national rail company). So imho it not clear that the global market distortion is in the favor of plane.

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

#35

Post by mojuba » Sun, Dec 04, 2022, 1:01 PM UTC

alistairSH wrote: post #24

throw_m239339 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It costs me around 60€ to go from France to Switzerland by plane. It costs me way more than 60€ to go from France to Switzerland by train. This why people are taking the plane, because it's less expensive that high speed rail, nothing more. Make high speed rail less expensive and people will take the train. Government induced free market distortion under pretense of ecology concerns is just what it is, bullshit, and…

Why is train so much more expensive? Surely jets that cost $100s of millions, supported by massive airports, are more expensive? Seems like the market distortions are subsidies to airlines of some sort.

I suspect in case of the Eurostar high speed train they simply follow the airline ticket pricing for the same destinations and add their "convenience tax" on top of it, usually around £50. Saying this because I've noticed that their prices fluctuate together with airline ones, and they fluctuate wildly.

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

#36

Post by ChuckNorris89 » Sun, Dec 04, 2022, 1:01 PM UTC

SanjayMehta wrote: post #18

bsaul wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes ! Absolutely, pardon my chauvinism. Germans have taken the crown on this topic. They’re on another scale.

Can anyone point a bemused me to any document which explains why Germany decided to shut down their nuclear power plants? I can't understand how wind and solar will provide power 24 hours day.

TL;DR: clueless German anti-nuclear ideology following the Chernobyl disaster further pushing the industry to gas due to German corrupt leadership meeting Russian gas bribes which further pushed the anti-nuclear propaganda in Germany.

"the gray building in the northeastern German city of Schwerin looks innocuous enough — and so does its tenant, the Foundation for the Protection of the Climate and Environment. Yet this regional foundation, created 23 months ago by the local state government, has done little for the climate. Instead, it served as a conduit for at least 165 million euros from the Kremlin-owned energy company Gazprom to build one of the world’s most contested gas pipelines: Nord Stream 2."[1]

[1] https://archive.ph/UrygD#selection-633.0-637.297

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

#37

Post by Freak_NL » Sun, Dec 04, 2022, 1:01 PM UTC

throw_m239339 wrote: post #20

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…

It costs me around 60€ to go from France to Switzerland by plane. It costs me way more than 60€ to go from France to Switzerland by train. This why people are taking the plane, because it's less expensive that high speed rail, nothing more. Make high speed rail less expensive and people will take the train. Government induced free market distortion under pretense of ecology concerns is just what it is, bullshit, and…

Just taking a simple example like Lausanne (Switzerland) to Paris (France)¹ shows comparable ticket prices. For an arbitrary date a few months away like April 21st, that gives me a single train ticket for €65 on a direct connection to Gare du Nord, or a train ride to Genève-Aéroport (€8) plus a plane ticket for around €65 to Orly. Cheaper plane tickets exist, but not if you have even a single backpack.

In terms of time, the train is a direct TGV that takes 3¾ hours, while the plane route means taking a train for ¾ hours, waiting at the airport for at least an hour because of security, flying for 1¼ hour, wait for another half hour at least to get out of the airport, and then spend at least half an hour getting to where you actually want to be in Paris. It takes just as long, but probably longer if you want a decent safety margin on the airport.

And that excludes the simple fact that we all have a responsibility in reducing our carbon footprint, and that for most us who have the means to travel taking a route that may be (but isn't in this case) slightly more expensive and take slightly longer is the least we can do if it is the greener alternative by far.

1: Just an example of a journey I took myself, by train.

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

#38

Post by bsaul » Sun, Dec 04, 2022, 1:03 PM UTC

helmholtz wrote: post #11

bsaul wrote: post #5

Bet : How long until this completely absurd measure shows its first detrimental unexpected side effect ? We french are really kings for disturbing markets because of ideology. used to be socialism, now it’s eco-bullshit ( ) ( ) eco bullshit looks just like environmental activism, except it makes 0 environmental impact, is 100% about politics and can destroy economies in less than 10 years.

Your comment is high on inflamatory polemics but lacking in substance. If you'd listed _what_ side effects you do foresee, that would have been a much more interesting comment.

We've had numerous examples now of how pseudo-environmental policies destroyed economies and energy infrastructure in europe (germany becoming super dependant on gaz and coal, and france leaving its nuclear infrastructure to rust), with absolutely 0 effect on climate, (and 0 is a generous number, if anything those policies did worst for climate change than just doing nothin).

I believe it is now time for citizen to ask a little more than just a "it's good for the environment" slogan, whenever state are starting to highly regulate and destroy parts of our economies. Such as serious scientific assessment on the real, numbered impact expected. Hint: it's not going to happen, because this airplane traffic obviously is totally negligible compared to the country CO2 emissions.

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

#39

Post by bsaul » Sun, Dec 04, 2022, 1:06 PM UTC

nraynaud wrote: post #15

bsaul wrote: post #5

Bet : How long until this completely absurd measure shows its first detrimental unexpected side effect ? We french are really kings for disturbing markets because of ideology. used to be socialism, now it’s eco-bullshit ( ) ( ) eco bullshit looks just like environmental activism, except it makes 0 environmental impact, is 100% about politics and can destroy economies in less than 10 years.

You know staying the 6th GDP in the world with a smallish population and no natural resources, we’re doing not too bad. There was no natural markets there anyways, the airports are paid for by local taxpayers, only really big airports make money.

Well, then there's an easier way to shutdown this traffic, and let the market do its job : stop financing those airports with public money if they're not profitable. And let the ones that manage to actually create an effective business model survive.

But that's not how we french like do it, because it sounds too much like "laisser faire". Politicians want to show that they've acted, they like to spend money and regulate, it makes them feel warm and fuzzy inside.

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

#40

Post by tssva » Sun, Dec 04, 2022, 1:09 PM UTC

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 - 9 Denver - 14

I fly to Little Rock, AR a couple of times a year. There are no non-stop flights but a quick search showed over 40 1-stop options from just the airport closest to me. Not all of those are going to be combinations most people want to do or are cost effective but if you throw away 1/2 if them that is still over 20 options. I also fly into Albuquerque, NM a couple of times a year. From my closest airport there are 58 1-stop options. If I drive 75 minutes to a further airport there are 4 non-stop flights to Albuquerque per week.

If you live in or near a smaller city served only by regional flights and are flying to another smaller city served only by regional flights than 2 stops will be necessary but 4 seems excessive.