France to ban internal short haul?
 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56716708French lawmakers have moved to ban short-haul internal flights where train alternatives exist, in a bid to reduce carbon emissions.

Over the weekend, lawmakers voted in favour of a bill to end routes where the same journey could be made by train in under two-and-a-half hours.

Connecting flights will not be affected, however. The planned measures will face a further vote in the Senate before becoming law. Airlines around the world have been severely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, with website Flightradar24 reporting that the number of flights last year were down almost 42% from 2019. The measures could affect travel between Paris and cities including Nantes, Lyon and Bordeaux.

But the French government had faced calls to introduce for even stricter rules on domestic flights. France's Citizens' Convention on Climate, which was created by President Emmanuel Macron in 2019 and included 150 members of the public, had proposed scrapping plane journeys where train journeys of under four hours existed. Saturday's vote came days after the French government more than doubled its stake in Air France. The government had previously offered €7bn ($8.3bn, £6bn) in loans to help the airline weather the pandemic, although France's economy minister said at the time the funding was dependent on the airline scrapping some of its domestic flights.

This is not the first time similar measures have been introduced. Last year, Austrian Airlines replaced a flight route between the capital Vienna and the city of Salzburg with an increased train service, after receiving a government bailout with provisions to cut its carbon footprint.

Since connecting flights are not affected I don't really see what the fuss is all about. Are there really that many who travel point to point domestically by air to destinations which are 2.5 hours or less by train? I'm guessing but I would estimate it to be a relatively small minority.

Those flights can be useful if travelling from regional France to CDG to self-connect to a flight which doesn't interline with a suitable schedule (or doesn't interline at sensible prices) with Air France.

As an example, trying to combine Air France and Easyjet on the same ticket is not worth trying. However, 2 separate (modestly priced) tickets, and it's sometimes worthwhile. Connecting from somewhere like Montparnasse across Paris to CDG by metro / RER is a pain

Strasbourg City to Paris CDG via train is more complicated than a short feeder flight ... even if the train has an AF flight number ... (personal experience!)

Before the pandemic, Orly-Toulouse had 20+ return flights per day.

ORY-TLS is not concerned by those measures. There is no train service Paris-Toulouse in under 2.5 hours.

How will connecting flights not be affected? Surely on a route like Nantes to CDG there will be p to p travellers sitting next to interlining. Just like Newcastle-LHR. If your business has a branch in Woking or your mum lives in Staines, it's useful. Is the proposal actually that you can't buy a p to p ticket but the flights will continue?

Yes, seems so

can't see how they "not affect connecting flights" would work either - you're not going to run services just for connectors

I suspect its mis translated

2.5hours by TGV - that's about 400km including starting and stopping? So still flights to the deep South and SW

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....6a6478002f.jpg

Madness. There are several lobbies lately which too much power, they need to be stopped.

Here are some train times....... Major Routes from Paris

All train times given here are the shortest time on a direct route. You can continue on to other cities from all these destinations.

TGV Nord from Paris Gare du Nord. Connects to the north of France, to Lille, and Eurostar to London, Lille, and Brussels.

• Paris to Lille - 59 minutes
• Paris to Dunkerque - 1 hour 37 minutes

TGV Est from Paris Gare de l’Est. Connects to the east of France, one of the new regions now called Grand Est, serving destinations like Reims, Metz (visit the great Pompidou Metz Museum), Nancy, Strasbourg, Luxembourg and beyond.

• Paris to Reims - 48 minutes
• Paris to Metz - 1 hour 27 minutes
• Paris to Nancy – 1 hour 31 minutes
• Paris to Strasbourg – 2 hours 18 minutes

TGV Sud-Est from Paris Gare de Lyon. Connects to the south and east of France.

• Paris to Lyon - 1hr 59 minutes
• Paris to Dijon - 1hr 37 minutes

TGV Alpes from Paris Gare de Lyon. Connects to the east of France and in winter is particularly useful for skiers, going on to Alpine resorts like Courchevel.

• Paris to Grenoble - 3 hours 2 minutes
• Paris to Annecy - 3 hours 48 minutes
• Paris to Chambéry - 2 hours 50 minutes

TGV Méditerranée from Paris Gare de Lyon. Connects to Provence and the Cote d'Azur.

• Paris to Marseille - 3 hours 25 minutes
• Paris to Avignon - 3 hours 36 minutes
• Paris to Aix-en-Provence - 3 hours 8 minutes
• Paris to Nice - 5 hours 38 minutes
• Paris to Nimes – 2 hours 59 minutes

TGV Atlantique from Paris Gare Montparnasse. Connects to the south and the west of France.

• Paris to Tours – 1 hour 49 minutes
• Paris to Bordeaux – 2 hours 14 minutes
• Paris to Toulouse – 5 hours 19 minutes
• Paris to Pau – 4 hours 9 minutes
• Paris to Lourdes – 4 hours 36 minutes
• Paris to Le Mans – 55 minutes
• Paris to Rennes – 1 hour 25 minutes
• Paris to Nantes – 1 hours 56 minutes

Surely the guide should be comparative travel times for real journeys.
For example, Paris to Nice. How long does it take, on average (not fastest achievable by racing) to get from Notre-Dame to Place Masséna by public transport (1) by TGV, (2) by air, including travel time to station/airport, check-in, security, sitting around waiting to board, boarding, gate-to-gate time of train or plane, getting out of station/airport, travel time to destination? I don't know, but I'd bet on the TGV winning.

You are of course correct but they can't calculate an infinite number of journey options. I presume the idea was you spend 45 minutes pre flight and 15 post landing absolute minimum when flying. 2.5 hours by TGV is about 400 kms so say an hour in the plane including taxying etc. So that's an absolute minimum of 2 hours by air and likely more like 2.5 hours - so just set the limit at 2.5 hours by train

You'll note the Citizens' Convention on Climate suggested 4 hours - which is what I'd think is closer to reality for any centre to centre trip.

If they do it I could see it spreading across Europe

dlcmdrx

That's it - once you decide to start cutting emissions it starts to hurt I'm afraid. This is just the start - the "low hanging fruit"

anothertyke

By "connecting flights" ("trajets en correspondance") they presumably mean multi-leg ones, as opposed to a flight that starts and ends within France.

Negan

Couldn’t agree more. There are real tangible solutions to climate change and a ton of low hanging fruit to make huge impact we never talk about.
Activists have completely damaged the narrative and polarized the debate so completely that politicians make stupid decisions.

As I understand it the French railway unions, on the odd occasion when they are not on strike, have been behind this, strongarming their associates in government.

So what's the modelled effect on the French air sector carbon budget? It must be three fifths of two ninths of **** ***.

Bindair Dundat

Also agreed. I like to think of myself as someone who takes the climate change thing reasonably seriously, but the topic has been adopted by the green peace contingent as a way of targeting the elite and the establishment, totally missing the point that most domestic travellers aren’t in that category.

Im also surprised that France of all countries is trying to enforce change by blanket ban rather than taxation or similar. It doesn’t seem very Libertarian?

Having said that, if it is indeed the case that only a select few passengers will be affected then this is perhaps just a symbolic change to make it look like the government is “tackling the issue” regardless of the fact it will barely scratch their emissions per capita.