This is mentioned near the end of the article but the reason those short domestic flights are so cheap in Europe is that commercial kerosene is currently tax exempt in every single EU member state. Jet fuel is cheaper per gallon in the EU than it is in the USA! (or was, before the current war)
In typically tax-happy Europe this always struck me as odd, agree it is sad when you find out an airplane ticket is cheaper than a corresponding train.
This is due to an international agreement post world war two (the 1944 Chicago Convention on Aviation) that agreed that fuel and maintenance parts necessary for _international air travel_ would be exempt from tarrifs and all taxes, barring a specific agreement between those to nations.
Domestic use is taxed, and at rather steep rates (look at the US!); however, because most flights in the EU are international, it would require both nations ok'ing a tax on flights between them. No one has gone through with this, and it's doubtful any one ever will, for a variety of reasons.
All that does is neuter domestic airline hubs and give more money to the Gulf (Emirates, Etihad, ...) or America-based airlines, which is neither good for the economy nor for the environment.
But that's exactly what hguant explains. Flights between EU countries are international flights and are therefore tax exempt under the Chicago Convention.
Okay, let's do the math. Consider a 2 hour flight, say Madrid -> Paris. A round trip is something like 140 eur. Boeing 737-800 burns something like 3000 liters of jet fuel/hour, and will typically carry something like 150 passengers. That's 40 liters per person. Jet fuel is really pricey now, something like 80 cents/liter. This means that fuel costs something like 30 eur per flight per passenger, so 60 eur in a round trip.
Now imagine we slap a tax on jet fuel similar to the one on vehicle gasoline. This would mean that the price of jet fuel would go up by 50%. The round trip ticket Madrid - Paris now costs 170 eur instead of 140 eur. Would it make Madrid - Paris train route competitive? No, not at all.
Truth is, you can make anything competitive with anything else if you put heavy enough finger on the scale, but the reason flights are much cheaper than trains, despite being faster, is not because of lack of jet fuel taxes.
According to this [1], taxes on gasoline are much higher than 40 cents/litre (50 cents in Spain, 68 cents in France).
If you buy a train ticket in advance, you definitely are in that price scale. I looked up train rides one month in advance [2] and a ride from Madrid to Spain is now 175€ to 210€, right in the range of the train ride.
But hopefully, Europe-wide CO2 taxes will start to price in externalities and remove the finger from the scale in favor of flights.
That ticket-in-advance thing is a part of the problem. For some unclear reason, some European countries let ticket prices skyrocket if you want to just go down to the train station and grab a train.
How is this a good thing?
And don't tell me it's important for planning loads: The schedules are mostly fixed anyway, and the usage doesn't fluctuate that wildly. In some countries, like the Netherlands, this is not a thing, and the national train (NS) behaves just like a city metro: You wave your pass walking on to the platform, and wave it again on the way out.
This is called market segmentation, and in competitive markets (like, say, flying or hotels) it’s a good thing: it allows the carrier to sell early tickets at very low prices, often well below the actual marginal cost of the last seat, because these losses will be made up by people who have urgent need for travel right now, and so are much less price sensitive. That’s how, for example, RyanAir is able to offer those 20 EUR cross Europe fares, which is well below even just the fuel cost, much less other costs.
I pay more than 100% in petrol taxes when I fill my car at $2.50/liter.
Also, CDG-MAD flight isn't really between Paris and Madrid but between CDG and MAD, which have some additional costs associated with transfers (assuming you are actually going beteween the city centers). So to be competitive a train ride might not need to have the flight price exactly, but can be a bot more expensive.
But a sensible policy would be that when trains are more expensive, taxes should be put on flying until they aren't (taxes directed to trains through subsidies, infrastructure investment and so on).
> Would it make Madrid - Paris train route competitive? No, not at all.
Just to provide some data points:
Madrid-Paris by train takes about 17-20 hours and costs between 261 and 350 Euros. By plane, it takes about two and a half hours and costs (in your example) around 170 Euros.
Also take into account that for many international travellers, the time saved aspect is more relevant than the money saved aspect, as lifetime is a very limited and non-regenerating resource, and planes will win pretty much always. The idea of Europeans going from Madrid to Paris by train happily is a green pipe dream outside train enthusiast circles (for our American friends: How often would you say you take Amtrak from Chicago to New York, roughly the same distance, before you get bored of it?)
Sleeper trains change the calculus a little, because you can sleep as you travel. While they're a foreign concept to many people, they are reasonably popular in Europe — not just among railfans — and in many parts of Asia are a very typical mode of transport. Going to sleep in one city centre and waking up in another is often far more convenient than the air travel alternative, especially for the many cities where there is no fast+convenient public transport to the airport.
Furthermore, to make a fair comparison you need to:
- Include all the costs of the air ticket in the price comparison, in particular transport to and from the airports. Public transport is sometimes not available, or may not be convenient (e.g. with luggage or small children), and due to the large distance to many airports taxis can be very expensive
- Include all of the time involved in the flight — depending on the cities involved, your two and half hour flight could easily be 5+ hours city-centre-to-city-centre once local transport, check-in deadline, time padding for uncertainties etc is considered.
- Compare to a rail ticket for a specific train at a specific time, which is usually cheaper. The more expensive rail tickets often give you the option of multiple trains on a given day, which is a level of flexibility no air ticket gives you.
If we want to really make it a fair comparison you should also probably compare the price to the business class flight ticket, considering that even the lowest class of train ticket gives you a comparable level of comfort to a typical intra-Europe business class airplane seat.
If you need to get there as quickly as possible, the airplane is going to win on most (but not all) routes. But for many people, having fewer steps in the journey and being able to comfortably work during the journey can actually make the longer train option more convenient.
If we want the comparison to be completely fair, you need to take into account that hardly anyone lives in a major train station (or directly adjacent to one) and wants to travel to another major train station (or directly adjacent to one). More often than not, just getting to Paris is only a leg, then you need to get to Aix-en-Belle-Fountaine (fictional place, don't look it up), some 50 km away from Paris. Once you have that realisation, the same disadvantages exists for trains that you propose to take into account for planes.
> - Compare to a rail ticket for a specific train at a specific time, which is usually cheaper. The more expensive rail tickets often give you the option of multiple trains on a given day, which is a level of flexibility no air ticket gives you.
Virtually any airline outside of the no-frills-Ryanair sector happily sells you flexible tickets (often for price).
> If we want to really make it a fair comparison you should also probably compare the price to the business class flight ticket, considering that even the lowest class of train ticket gives you a comparable level of comfort to a typical intra-Europe business class airplane seat.
You must not have had the DB ICE4 experience. I'd rather jump off an office building than to sit in one of their second-class cars ever again. They are extremely space-constrained, and now they build the window walls slightly round (and rounder so than e.g. mid-range aircraft cabins), so you sit in there with an arm folded to the inside, like Ötzi. On my ride back, I shredded the already-paid ticket and bought a new one for First Class, which was only slightly better. No European airline even comes close to that awfulness (and yes, I've had non-Business Ryanair experiences).
Planes may be more uncomfortable, but at least they don't make you sit down for half a day.
> But for many people, having fewer steps in the journey
Are you aware how often you have to switch trains if you are doing point-to-point travel? Even within Germany, I have 4 switchovers between where I live and Berlin (that is, if I am lucky). With the plane? Sit down, stand up, Berlin.
> being able to comfortably work
Unless you travel First Class AND get a seat with a table AND somehow are able to work without internet, I don't see how that argument (which comes up every once in a while) works out for you. YMMV, depending on which country you are in.
Most of your points are entirely fair, and my experience may have been unique (lived in the centre of a succession of European cities and used trains extensively throughout Europe for many years). Not every train is easy to work on, but with a minimum of planning I can usually design a long-distance journey such that the probability of being able to work during most of the trip is very high. My productivity doesn't depend on access to the Internet every minute of the day; for others the frequent loss of mobile connectivity e.g. on some routes in Germany would be a problem.
> Virtually any airline outside of the no-frills-Ryanair sector happily sells you flexible tickets (often for price).
This is not the same thing. I do not need to tell anyone that I have decided to take a later train using my open train ticket.
Yeah and the amount of space is not really anything specific to the train. You can vary the amount of space in planes, buses and cars as well, and the price will follow, just as in trains.
There is no reason why space is "cheaper" in a train really, it's only the scheduling of few trips that make more space available, if you have more trips on the tracks, similar to a road, space becomes constrained, like you see in subway trains.
And you can find round trip tickets Madrid-Paris on RyanAir for 50 eur, and for 100 eur on regular airlines. In my comment I took 140 eur as typical price of airfare. Typical cost of rail is something closer to 250 eur.
This also ignores the speed: if the prices were the other way around, with airfare twice as expensive as rail, I expect most people would still take the plane.
> Madrid-Paris on RyanAir for 50 eur, and for 100 eur on regular airlines
Airlines also typically charge for luggage, RyanAir charge extra for anything they can think of, including choosing a seat, and people booking at shorter notice subsidise those who book in advance. The cost difference for most passengers is probably smaller.
Can you? Seems that connection does not run regularly either when it comes to time (I checked Trainline and on another date there actually was a connection much like that) or for that pricepoint.
10.5 hours is still longer than 2.5 (or maybe - if you include security checkpoint time - 3.5 hours) by plane.
I think you're underestimating the travel to/from the airport. Madrid city centre to airport takes 45 minutes, you should be at the airport at least 2 hours prior to the departure, Paris airport to city centre takes another hour. Even if you're a seasoned traveller who pushes it and come to the airport just one hour prior to departure, you should still count with at least 3h overhead.
Point is: You don't often need to travel to the city center, and choosing that as fictional final destination is giving trains an unfair advantage. Often you need to somewhere NEAR Paris.
Also, and this may be related to the airports I fly out of, but I have hardly ever had planned more than an hour of time from entering an airport terminal to the gate. In TXL (sadly closed now for the much inferior BER), I averaged 25 minutes. At Stuttgart, I once managed to get there in 20. It all comes down to being prepared for security, knowing which security controls are often underused and picking up the right departure times. rel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnNyUGhXTsw
> Also, and this may be related to the airports I fly out of, but I have hardly ever had planned more than an hour of time from entering an airport terminal to the gate. In TXL (sadly closed now for the much inferior BER), I averaged 25 minutes. At Stuttgart, I once managed to get there in 20.
This is the saddest part of flying, that it really can take only 20 minutes, and instead of making it as efficient as possible, there's the opposite development, where the recommended time has gone from 1 hour to now at least two hours.
Very much depends on whether you need to check in luggage. My guess is that bag drop is closed 20 minutes prior to departure, but I might be wrong. Picking up luggage can easily add 15-30 minutes as well. Even on relatively small airports like Copenhagen, some gates are at least 10 min of brisk walking from the security, so 20 minutes is really pushing it without prior familiarity with the airport. But yes, it can be done.
Yes, but note usually around 30% of the ticket price of a european short-haul flight is already other taxes. This is compared to train tickets that include a 30%+ subsidy
The US airline industry is massively subsidized. Every country heavily subsidizes air travel.
The federal government spends $2BN/year on Amtrak and people lose their damn minds.
Meanwhile, at the FAA, nearly $12BN/year...and that doesn't account for all the local and state funds used to subsidize airports. Or Department of Transportation spending...
Airlines seem to be a bad business in the long run.
I recall a figure from MIT's microeconomics textbook (Pindyck et al.) where they showed the aggregate profits of all industry since its inception were negative.
In EU, subsidies to airlines are an indirect subsidy to the tourism industry.
Amtrack moves just shy of 17 million passengers in a year. Airlines in the US do that in 8 days. That's works out to roughly 45x as many passengers, with only what, 6x the subsidies?
American rail is apparently heavily biased towards moving freight. This may even be a good thing, but it'll throw out the numbers if you compare train to car or plane and don't include it.
I believe this is a remnant of some complications with regards to taxation in an international context, similar to duty-free shopping.
Another consideration may be the consequences of possibly diverging tax rates for kerosene: if it's much cheaper to fill up in, say, Spain, than it is in France, it might become cheaper to carry the fuel for the return leg, even if the increased weight increases fuel consumption.
I'm not saying that any of this justifies the state of affairs. But it's possible to arrive at it even with mostly good intentions.
A Boeing 737 consumes 2.28 L/100 km per seat. Fuel prices would have to go parabolic before airline tickets approached rail ticket prices (nevermind the time rail takes, even on the fastest routes)
I checked it out and the number seems about right(like up to 2x but not too much). So, to beat an airplane on fuel efficiency you need to be at least 2 persons on an extremely fuel efficient small car.
Surely, the actual costs calculations will need to include the infra and operational costs however if you check the energy consumption per passenger per distance[0], rail transport is always on the more efficient side of things.
Unless the infrastructure and operational costs of trains are higher than airplanes, I don't see how airplanes can be more competitive. Is the rail infrastructure that much expensive?
Maybe the argument can be made about convenience but on efficiency, trains look more efficient.
Trains are more efficient, but flights only do the most traveled routes generally, which is why they're usually booked out afaik. The same can't be said about trains usually, as they're also doing the outlying routes
It makes flying seem more competitive then it actually is, as trains usually aren't booked relative how much your transportation cost and instead the overall cost to also enable these almost empty routine runs
Because trains are considered an essential public service.
The people with only outlying routes nearby would be stuck without public transport, which is unacceptable. Commercial train companies only get contracts for the busy intercity routes if they also provide service on the outlying routes.
Is it? It's not that obvious to me at least. I suspect that it's more like function of distance, speed, landscape.
Airports also tend to be at the middle of nowhere, IMHO you need to incorporate the cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure needed to get somewhere from that nowhere.
Well, there are lots of other factors, but the general reasoning holds.
If you have ten airports, you have 10 * (10 + 1) / 2 = 55 airlines. If you have 10 train stations, you have only as many rail lines as you're willing to build, which means countries end up spending most of the effort and money on lines connecting major city centers.
Also, if you have an international airport, you're connected to every capital city of the world.
The logistic advantages of air travel are huge. Kerosene will need to get a lot more expensive before these advantages lose out.
Sure, there are advantages but advantages are not one sided. It's not like choosing between Netflix plans where you pay 9.99$ for 2 screen and HD streaming and you can upgrade to 14.99$ package with 4 screens and UHD streaming. It's more like choosing between Netflix and Amazon Prime. You might get fewer options to watch but you also get one day delivery and some really nice content too. Often, you end up having both.
Also, trains can switch lines, disconnect, run on the same line back to back etc.
I suspect, with some standardisation and automation, you can end up having very good point-to-point travel options by train. Even better than airlines maybe. The current inefficiencies could be due to poor management and weak integrations. Can you imagine how great could be to have Europe and Asia wide rail network where automated carriages and rail switching systems coordinate to achieve travel from any train station to any train station?
a plane also can make 4 round trips in the time the train takes to make 1, but on the other side, a train can move 500-600 people while the plane moves 160.
I bet there is a good bit of mandatory service. You cant just periodically cut off a few thousand from their job here and there just because it satisfies investors.
The usual tracks either connect big cities or they run between urban centers and less populated areas. IOW run between every seat taken and almost empty.
I'm fairly sure a mode of transportation that can carry thousands and doesn't fall out of the sky when something fails has other benefits, even if the fuel/passenger ration should be worse (which I doubt).
You're saying this like it's a bad thing, why? Why should we tax common goods and services to the point they become luxuries only some people can afford?
3.5% is a very small price for what is one of the greatest human achievements: freedom to travel anywhere, on a layman's salary. Up until the modern age, world travel was reserved for the elites. Travel means freedom, and I strongly believe our freedom should come first when talking about GHG emissions.
Let's cut out the 96.5% first, then reduce travel.
The same with cars. Automobiles amount for a small portion of total gas emissions. All in all, passenger cars+ passenger aviation is about 10% of total emissions. Yet we heard complaints about these more than anything else. And not only complaints, but policies that want to fix this problem.
Why not focus on the 90%? Industry lobbyists love this state of affairs, we auto-flagellate for 10% and nobody says a peep about the elephant in the room.
I am pretty sure land use for all those tracks, elevated rail beds, tunnels and bridges, stations is FAR higher than what the planes use.
Single plastic usage is such a red herring...every time you load up your car with gas, you put in 15 gallons, that is ~50 kilograms. A plastic straw is 0.4 grams, 125,000 plastic straws to amount to the same hydrocarbon footprint. This is a very rough math, but you get the idea. You can compensate for all your life consumption of straws and forks by not filling up once. Plates are heavier, but still marginal compared to everything else.
Another one: plastic grocery bags are 5 grams, that means one tank of gas is like 12000 grocery bags.
You could say: but at least use less single use plastic! Have you considered the alternatives? Would stainless plates weigh much more on a plane, and induce a higher CO2? Would food non-wrapped in plastic spoil more? (We throw away about 50% of all fruits and vegetables anyway).
GHG is a tough problem. Focusing on some token issues like plastic straws and plane travel for ordinary people does not solve it, it only makes it harder for people to accept it.
It might be a token problem but I think it's important to put this on the map for people to even realize it's a problem.
Also, trains (in large parts of Europe anyway) run on electricity only of which a significant chunk is from nuclear power, which doesn't emit anywhere near as much CO2 to move as many people as a plane would.
And the noise. trains are so quiet compared to planes.
The problem is that people have a limited amount of things they can care for. You bombard them with plastic straws bans, grocery bag bans, 100% gas taxes, diesel poisons, shaming flying and you amount to maybe 1% reduction in GHG.
Then when it come to bigger hitters, like industry, building insulation, agriculture etc. you will get exhausted and poorer people that just can't take it anymore. And then you end up with people thinking this is all so futile and so scared of the future that they don't want to even have kids anymore.
Around 2.4% of all global green house gas emissions, but responsible for 5% of global warming [1]. I wouldn't call it minuscule.
I think one of the reasons that aviation is so often in the spotlight in discussions about climate change is the existence of greener alternatives. Of course, those can't replace all flights, but they don't have to.
Add to that the fact that air travel has exploded in recent years before Corona, and you certainly have to ask yourself whether taking five weekend trips a year from Zurich to Hamburg really improves our standard of living so much that we should put up with the downsides of it.
Personally, of course, I also like to travel and I think flying is a great invention that brings countries and people closer. Nevertheless, you have to be a bit critical about whether every flight is really necessary.
as I remember, the discussion went that if EU implemented a tariff on on jet fuel companies would simply load their planes elsewhere, e.g. Russia/Dubai where there's abundant fuel with little to no tax
not so relevant for the shorter trips intra-EU, but still a factor
If they did do that then the EU could introduce a tariff on the fuel they import when they fly back in.
There would be rules around a fuel flight vs a legit passenger/cargo service, assuming they don't want to tax the extra fuel left in a plane at the end of a flight.
But that seem like a pretty straightforward problem to solve.
Making it even easier to implement: Commercial airline weights are carefully tracked for safety and efficiency purposes already, as are fuel levels. All the information needed to levy such a tax is already available.
It'll be more expensive to constantly fly back and forth to Dubai to load up than to simply pay the tax. Dubai is not that close to Paris. It takes about 7-8 hours. I don't know if you've been checking the news lately but Russia is out of the question for airplanes. They won't even return leased airplanes back anymore.
Switzerland and Norway at least would very likely accept such rules and implement them as well.
I'm Swiss and at least in Switzerland such a rule would automatically apply unless the population would do a referendum. And that would lead to a public vote that would almost certainty lose.
I bet this keeps a lot of national airlines afloat and they're already barely afloat, if they start taxing kerosene they'll require even more subsidies from their governments.
That wasn't really the point. He was surprised that this tax-free situation is not addressed and I just gave a (of many) reason why they might not want to change that.
I think your new point is optimistic at best. You would have to switch trains quite often and the time it takes would probably weigh heavier than the price. Especially between EU countries, within country flying is not really that big in EU.
With rail, the physical rail becomes an economic chokepoint. Who controls the rail came name his price. Now you might think that the same goes for airports, but often there are multiple viable choices. E.g. in the bay area you could use SF, Oakland or San Jose.
I think this is probably the most accurate answer in this particular thread. There's essentially unlimited capacity in airspace, and while some airports are massively oversubscribed (LHR!) most are not. You can just keep putting planes up in the air in 3 dimensions where increasing the number of trains needs laying more excessively expensive physical infrastructure in 2 dimensions
I think it is actually the other way around and also not what GP said. Trains need more scale than planes.
Example: From Amsterdam Airport to Palermo, there are 2 flights per week (Friday and Monday). That is 300 passengers per week. It is a profitable to fly planes between these two cities, but a direct rail route including maintenance of the railway system would be far to expensive. This is partly resolved by stops along the way, but definitely not completely. The busiest direct railway routes (AMS-PARIS, AMS-LONDON, PARIS LONDON) in Europe are far from full, with one train an hour.
So the problem is not insufficient capacity, but rather that the scale is to small. I see electric buses playing a big role in the future to allow for better point-to-point connections.
just 2 directions, beyond that you can (like with airlines) go bigger and more frequent. After that the proverbial landing strips become the bottle neck.
Except "who controls the rail" is often a (private or national) entity (DB Netz / SNCF réseaux) who will have to offer access to the infrastructure to pretty heavily regulated and uniform conditions.
Much like the idea of separating ISPs from the last mile infrastructure by the way.
Even with the network controlled by a "neutral" entity limited capacity means you can pretty quickly reach a situation where additional competition can't happen without actively worsening the schedules of the existing operators.
Timetabled connections are likewise impossible to set up with too much uncoordinated competition, because without making the connection times unattractively long they cannot really be set up between more than one train per relation (maybe sometimes two at a stretch).
Plus connections that aren't ridiculously padded (and therefore result in absolutely uncompetitive journey times) really only work with some sort of through-ticketing so passengers aren't left stranded if they do miss a connection after all.
Ouigo is a play by SNCF to avoid being undercut by a more aggressive low cost operator on the few profitable French lines. If you carefully look at their cost structure you will see that without the significant boost given to them
by their parent company they would probably not be profitable.
In typically tax-happy Europe this always struck me as odd, agree it is sad when you find out an airplane ticket is cheaper than a corresponding train.