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France bans short-haul flights to cut carbon emissions

editor

editor

hiraethified
Can we have this for the UK please?

France has banned domestic short-haul flights where train alternatives exist, in a bid to cut carbon emissions.
The law came into force two years after lawmakers had voted to end routes where the same journey could be made by train in under two-and-a-half hours.
The ban all but rules out air travel between Paris and cities including Nantes, Lyon and Bordeaux, while connecting flights are unaffected.
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www.bbc.co.uk

France bans short-haul flights to cut carbon emissions

All domestic air routes are stopped where the same journey could be made by train in under 2.5 hours.
www.bbc.co.uk
 
That’s not unreasonable. They’re only banning flights between cities where train services of 2.5 hours or less exist. The main domestic flights in the UK are between London and Scotland, London and N.Ireland, London and Cornwall; and Cornwall/Bristol and Manchester/Newcastle/Scotland. These would all be unaffected.

The only popular UK route it would cut out is London-Manchester, which is a bit silly anyway.
 
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It's a good idea. I am in France at the moment and it's impressive I could be in Paris in less than 3.5 hours from the other end of the country. If I so wished. I see Marseille won't be affected. Like it or not it's still cheaper to fly with Ryanair a lot of the time in France.. the train is often not cheap nowadays.

But like a typical shit BBC story it doesn't contain any actual journalistic research. When does this come into effect? will there be a grace period? who is responsible for checking that you are proceeding to an onward destination further afield?
 
Riklet said:
It's a good idea. I am in France at the moment and it's impressive I could be in Paris in less than 3.5 hours from the other end of the country. If I so wished. I see Marseille won't be affected. Like it or not it's still cheaper to fly with Ryanair a lot of the time in France.. the train is often not cheap nowadays.

But like a typical shit BBC story it doesn't contain any actual journalistic research. When does this come into effect? will there be a grace period? who is responsible for checking that you are proceeding to an onward destination further afield?
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It should have covered Marseille, it's nuts that it doesn't.

And allowing flights to exist only for connecting passengers means the same number of flights will operate, only with not many passengers on board, so net result is fuck all gained.

A typical fudge that is the hallmark of modern politics.
 
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toothless, but symbolically useful. hopefully pushes others to enact similar legislation. short haul flights within Europe (including international) need to be cut down drastically. I'd increase the limit to cutting all plane journeys where a train takes 8 hours or less.
 
skyscraper101 said:
I would happily take the train to Paris, Brussels and beyond if it were the same price or even a similar price to flying. It's nuts that the Eurostar is often double the cost or more of a flight. They need to drastically lower those costs if they want to get me to switch.
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And of course, people who don't live in London have the double-whammy of getting ripped off for the train to get from their home to St Pancras too!

Eurostar only works for Londoners; and even then, only those within easy strike of KXSP.
 
Spymaster said:
And of course, people who don't live in London have the double-whammy of getting ripped off for the train to get from their home to St Pancras too!

Eurostar only works for Londoners; and even then, only those within easy strike of KXSP.
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Frau Bahn and BB2 will be on Eurostar in July at 7am, they have to stay in a hotel the night before as there's no way to get there in time by train from here...
 
Does this ban the airlines from flying planes along these routes or just ban passengers from doing it? If it is the second and not the first then the most that is likely to happen is a smaller plane being used because there are fewer passengers. I'm not sure it will achieve even that since the airlines are going to want to fill seats and will probably turn a blind eye to people flying domestic rather than a connecting flight.
 
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Riklet said:
It's a good idea. I am in France at the moment and it's impressive I could be in Paris in less than 3.5 hours from the other end of the country. If I so wished. I see Marseille won't be affected. Like it or not it's still cheaper to fly with Ryanair a lot of the time in France.. the train is often not cheap nowadays.

But like a typical shit BBC story it doesn't contain any actual journalistic research. When does this come into effect? will there be a grace period? who is responsible for checking that you are proceeding to an onward destination further afield?
Click to expand...
It's been two years since the ban was passed by the French legislature and six months since the EU said it was okay for them to go ahead with it - tho not for the Marseille flights cos the trains aren't yet good enough. You simply won't be able to book a Nantes to Paris flight unless it is as part of one going somewhere significantly further (which will mean there are fewer flights).
 
Spymaster said:
And of course, people who don't live in London have the double-whammy of getting ripped off for the train to get from their home to St Pancras too!

Eurostar only works for Londoners; and even then, only those within easy strike of KXSP.
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It also works for insurance people whose company is paying for their travel.
 
The Marseille thing is a bad fudge. Looking it up, a direct train from Paris takes between 3 hrs 20 mins and 3 hrs 30 mins. A flight is just over an hour. Once you have factored in getting to and from the airports, checking in, etc, the plane is no quicker.

750 km in three and a half hours, city centre to city centre, is pretty good!

No reason other than cost not to take the train. That is a biggie, though. A return from Paris to Marseille leaving this evening and returning tomorrow costs 250 euros.
 
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littlebabyjesus said:
The Marseille thing is a bad fudge. Looking it up, a direct train from Paris takes between 3 hrs 20 mins and 3 hrs 30 mins. A flight is just over an hour. Once you have factored in getting to and from the airports, checking in, etc, the plane is no quicker.
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This ignores the fact you have to get to the main train stations too. Many people live closer to the airports than the relevant train stations.

Similarly, people in SE London, Kent, Sussex, are likely better off flying to Paris from Southend or Gatwick, than coming into Central London and getting the Eurostar out again. Domestic flights-wise, it's rarely faster to take the train to Scotland from London, almost never cheaper, and from anywhere in the South/South West of England, doing anything other than flying is probably efficiency and financially imprudent.
 
A lot more people will live an easy journey away from Marseille train station than from Marseille airport.

It takes half an hour to get from the airport to the city centre. Be interested to know what percentage of passengers arriving at the airport head straight for Marseille centre, arriving at the same train station that the high-speed train from Paris arrives at. Bet it's a high number.

Cost is the fucker. The fact that flying is often significantly cheaper than taking the train is the thing that needs to change. And this appears also to apply in France.
 
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Spymaster said:
This ignores the fact you have to get to the main train stations too. Many people live closer to the airports than the relevant train stations.

Similarly, people in SE London, Kent, Sussex, are likely better off flying to Paris from Southend or Gatwick, than coming into Central London and getting the Eurostar out again. Domestic flights-wise, it's rarely faster to take the train to Scotland from London, almost never cheaper, and from anywhere in the South/South West of England, doing anything other than flying is probably efficiency and financially imprudent.
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There are very few Gatwick-Paris flights, though. I know this because I have to get to Paris fairly regularly, and to get there and back in a day by flight involves leaving very early and coming back very late. By contrast, there are trains to Paris leaving every hour or two. I can leave the house at about 7:30, make it to a meeting in Paris at 2pm and then get back home for 8:30pm. This used to be even better when the Eurostar stopped in Ebbsfleet International, because I could drive there in less than an hour, and take 30 minutes of that hour off the train journey time. I could go to a meeting in Paris and my working day would be no longer than usual. Unfortunately, however, post-COVID, they still haven't yet reopened the Ebbsfleet stop.
 
Spymaster said:
This ignores the fact you have to get to the main train stations too. Many people live closer to the airports than the relevant train stations.

Similarly, people in SE London, Kent, Sussex, are likely better off flying to Paris from Southend or Gatwick, than coming into Central London and getting the Eurostar out again. Domestic flights-wise, it's rarely faster to take the train to Scotland from London, almost never cheaper, and from anywhere in the South/South West of England, doing anything other than flying is probably efficiency and financially imprudent.
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In Kent? You would just go to Ebbsfleet or Ashford. I’ve got family down that way and I’ve been on the Eurostar thus. Obviously it doesn’t make much sense if I was just going from here, Bristol. and yeah as mentioned before, for me to get to Scotland from here is much easier to fly. And significantly quicker obviously. was cheaper last time as well.
 
Ebbsfleet and Ashford services have not operated since 2020 and show no signs of being reinstated. I shouldn’t have thought Border Force or Eurostar are keen to go back there as there were only a few services which were probably low yield plus the demand will have perhaps dried up as people readjust.

I’m going to Marseille this year but for various reasons from where I live (between Plymouth and Exeter) it made more sense to fly from Heathrow.
 
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