Quote: "There are relatively few domestic air services because France, unlike the UK has properly invested in high speed rail."
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Not so, both France and the UK are both, rightly, awash with domestic air services. The problem in the UK is that not nearly enough of them are domestic destinations linked to LHR, the country's hub.
High speed rail is a red-herring. It adds choice and options, enables more journeys, and allows an increase in the volume of journeys overall. It is not an alternative to domestic flights it complements them.
Actually, the only city of note in France where rail does have
almost all the market is Lyon (c. 93%).
Once you go beyond 2 hours, rail is just an option, it is not the provider of everything. Still no LGV yet as far as BOD / TLS or NCE.
Actually,
England must already have a higher rail-to-capital market share than France if you look at LPL, LBA, MME where there are no air routes (although LBA due to regain LHR), and even on MAN & NCL, air is in retreat already, long before any new HSR gets built.
Air is more dominant in Scotland, but be under no illusions that HS2 is going to change this, as it will only go as far as the Manchester - Leeds axis, and for anything above that, the proposed new trains are slightly
slower than the existing ones!
If we want to learn from Germany for how to do HSR, that is fine - they aren't so dependent on new lines but they have them where they provide a clear gain and they don't spend billions on the last few miles like we are doing. They also link into a number of core airports - not just FRA, but also DUS and CGN + the iirc the new BER when it opens - like we are not doing! (BHX is already linked to inter-city services and do you really think they will spend more on a rail link to T5 than the terminal itself cost - just to link it to the regions?).
But this thread was about air, not rail! I'll save the rest of this rant for P
TDRUNe!