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from the walking-will-be-mandatory-soon dept.
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.
(Score: 3, Informative) by turgid on Sunday December 11 2022, @07:37PM (7 children)
I believe we're currently on course to have a sea level rise of 50cm (about 18 inches) by 2050 due to global warming.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Sunday December 11 2022, @08:07PM (4 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12 2022, @06:02AM (1 child)
Citation needed.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 12 2022, @03:36PM
(Score: 2) by sfm on Monday December 12 2022, @04:46PM (1 child)
With the entire transportation sector (cars/trucks, trains, shipping, and air) making
up only 16% of the CO2 released every year, would it not make more sense to focus
on electricity generation (~40% of CO2) than on short haul air travel ?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 12 2022, @07:26PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12 2022, @06:01AM (1 child)
Citation needed.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 14 2022, @02:44PM
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Opportunist on Sunday December 11 2022, @11:07PM (4 children)
If I need to go less than 1000 kilometers, it's usually a smarter idea to go with an overnight train. 1000 kilometers is something you can do in a good night's travel. And more comfortably, too.
Yes, the flight would only take about 1-2 hours. Plus an hour check in. Plus an hour getting your stuff. And you fall out of the plane in a very non-presentable fashion after being crammed in with the other sardines.
The overnight train lets you arrive refreshed and presentable, after a nice breakfast and after sleeping in a rather comfy bed, you have ample time to wash and dress and be very presentable when you arrive at your destination. If it's a one-day arrangement, you don't even need a lot of luggage and can do without a hotel room because you don't need to change clothes and become business presentable again, that's something you can do on the train.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 12 2022, @12:27AM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday December 12 2022, @07:16AM (2 children)
If you find a flight on a moment's notice... I don't know about your country, here, getting a flight NOW is either impossible or so expensive that you wonder whether you get the plane for free on top of the ticket.
The idea behind overnight train travel is that you have to sleep anyway, and whether you do that at home or in the train is rather unimportant. The difference is that you can travel while you sleep.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 12 2022, @03:39PM (1 child)
Not in my country (US). But should we be surprised that it's difficult to get a flight, when you're in a region where they're starting to ban flights? It's like complaining that you're in a country where it's hard to find jobs, and then we find out that your country is actively trying to prevent employment. Fix the actual problems interfering with that decision making, then it'll be worth talking about the choices.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Tuesday December 13 2022, @05:40PM
You wouldn't find me dead in France, let alone alive. But you can try yourself, find a flight for NOW to a moderately important destination and check out your options.
The only flight I could get NOW for a trip that should take like 1-2 hours flight would take a total of about 11 hours with 3 trips in total, costing about 700 bucks. And that's the fastest option, others have layovers of 10+ hours twice, keeping me in transit for roughly 24 hours.
On the other hand, I could get a night jet ticket for 70 bucks where I can board the train in 2 hours, it gets me to my destination roughly 8 hours later and I'd have a sleeping cabin I share with a second passenger instead of 300 others.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday December 11 2022, @11:09PM
Take a guess at what proportion of global emissions is comprised by private planes from the super rich. Why do something hard to solve the problem when you can do something easy that has the appearance of solving the problem to the people who will vote for you?
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday December 12 2022, @12:54AM (1 child)
Hmm no: what people want is for the super-rich to pay their taxes like the rest of us.
And they can fly in private planes too if they want: what the government should be doing it taxing the activity just bad enough that rich people who really want to use that mode of transportation can, but most well-to-do won't. Like a million dollars per traveled mile or something. I bet there's plenty of kajilionnaires who will pay any amount to avoid flying with the plebs. This would be fairer to the general population, who has to pay taxes through the nose just because their everyday car has a slightly sportier engine, and it would net the state some money - as opposed to banning it outright.
Finland has the right idea of how to deal with rich people: they fine people for speeding based on their income [boredpanda.com]: if you're rich, it hurts you as much as it hurts poor people to break the law, so you don't get to do what poor people can't just because you're rich. Same thing for flying: it should hurt you as much as it hurts poor people to fly in style just because you want to feel spoiled.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NateMich on Monday December 12 2022, @03:17AM
If you're going to ban people from driving around in ICE cars, then you should probably address the aircraft as well.
This seems reasonable to me, in that respect.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 19 2022, @05:14PM
Case 1: I have a plane in city X and want to fly to distant city Z. However some members of my traveling party are in nearby city Y. In the old scheme, I just make the short hop over to pick them up and then fly to Z. In the new policy, I have to come up with something else since I can't just fly to Y. I could fly out to a fourth airport W that is outside the prohibited area and then fly back in to Y. I could transport the people in Y to X (train or car), then board them at X. I could just transport everyone by time inefficient train and waste a lot of time. There are more such scenarios. But notice the simplest and most efficient can't be done anymore.
Case 2: I'm berthing my plane at city X and want to move it to a new berth at nearby city Y. Now I have to fly to a city outside the prohibited area and then fly it back in.
Case 3: My air passenger business flies out of hub city X. Passengers from foreign country U occasionally want to fly in to city Y which is too near city X. A direct flight to Y just doesn't have the volume to justify the flight. Before, I could transfer them to a small plane hopper and just fly to city Y. Now, either that hopper has to do the above dance to get around the regulation, or I dump them on the train, for which most of them have no experience with all that luggage they brought along (since the luggage can't fly there either). Or I could just stop flying people to Y.
These illustrate the silliness of assuming that short hop flight must somehow be spurious and inefficient. In the first case, that short hop greatly reduces the complexity of transporting a group that comes from different starting airports. In the second, it's just a mundane movement of planes from one airport to another that runs afoul of this policy. In the third, it's a display of complete ignorance of how air passenger travel works combined with a cynical attempt to steal air traffic for the rails.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 26 2022, @09:46PM
>Know this.
Your confidence is telling, like the confidence for anything within a 20SD bound, as long as you are satisfied then... You are satisfied.
🌻🌻 [google.com]