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France Bans Short Haul Domestic Flights in Favour of Train Travel

posted by janrinok on Sunday December 11 2022, @05:41PM   
from the walking-will-be-mandatory-soon dept.

hubie writes:

It's official: France bans short haul domestic flights in favour of train travel:

France has been given the green light to ban short haul domestic flights.

The European Commission has approved the move which will abolish flights between cities that are linked by a train journey of less than 2.5 hours.

[...] France is also cracking down on the use of private jets for short journeys in a bid to make transport greener and fairer for the population.

Transport minister Clément Beaune said the country could no longer tolerate the super rich using private planes while the public are making cutbacks to deal with the energy crisis and climate change.

[...] The ban on short-haul flights will be valid for three years, after which it must be reassessed by the Commission.

"[This] is a major step forward in the policy of reducing greenhouse gas emissions," transport minister Beaune said in a press release.

[...] Sarah Fayolle, Greenpeace France transport campaign manager, told Euronews that there were both "negative and positive aspects" to the European Commission's decision given that only three routes are affected.

"It's going in the right direction, but the initial measure is one that's (not very) ambitious. We must go even further," she said.

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Original Submission

• Re:Lefty tyrants here who belong at the green plac (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 11 2022, @11:45PM

  by khallow (3766) on Sunday December 11 2022, @11:45PM (#1282064) Journal

  If they were approaching this rationally, with the goal of having the best mode of transport, you are completely correct. However the goal here is not to do that. The (official) goal is to reduce CO2 emissions, and that is a political decision, not an economic one. The only real way to do that is to severely restrict the masses energy usage. So the goal is making it more inconvenient, expensive and difficult to travel.
  
  When you think of it that way, the decisions make perfect sense. Flying from Paris to Nice (a common route) will take 1h30 mins by plane. Doing the same trip by public transport will take you 10h15 mins, with 4 changeovers and walking with luggage (and this is assuming no delays or waiting for the trains/buses to arrive, and no strikes). The total cost of the public transport is also more expensive than the flight (and now with flights being banned, and less competition I doubt public transport will get any cheaper).

  I think they were just virtue signaling. Here is this completely virtuous way we're doing those official goals we claim to care about and sticking it to the superrich - who will now have to two hop to some qualifying middle airport (wasting more fuel and time in the process), if they want to do these routes. Maybe they can perfunctorily get kind of close to the middle airport and count that?

  And finally, the mind-boggling stupidity of justifying this move because billionaires would rather fly than take a lousy train.

  The irony of that justification, is that the rich rarely (if ever) fly on public flights. They fly on private airplanes, which are actually exempt from this rule (just like all the other eco-taxes they are exempt from).

  The politicians in this story made noises about sticking it to the superrich in the name of fairness ("France is also cracking down on the use of private jets for short journeys in a bid to make transport greener and fairer for the population.") which sounded to me at the time like it was a real thing. But I wouldn't be surprised if these policies somehow never make it to the superrich.

  Parent