Why are flights cheaper than trains in Europe?
Why are flights cheaper than trains in Europe?
Train travel is often more expensive than flying. Could taxing aviation to invest in the rail industry help change that?
Tax subsidies on avation gas? Where as none on trains (subsidies)
no taxes on aviation fuel and no VAT on flights. Both apply for trains.
So it's the fault of the governments? What a surprise. /S
Why guessing, when the answer is in the article?
Suggesting that someone read the article in a comment section under said article…blasphemy!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
France will increase taxes on flights to invest more in its railways, the country’s Transport Minister Clément Beaune announced this week.
Last month Greenpeace released an analysis showing that taking a train is on average double the cost of flying.
The report compared the costs of flight and train tickets on 112 routes in Europe, including 94 cross-border connections.
Dardenne counters that the climate crisis is a much bigger threat to tourism and points to the example of wildfires and heatwaves in Europe this summer that have been disrupting holidays on the continent.
The European Commission has been working on an upcoming ‘Regulation on Multimodal Digital Mobility Services’ to improve the process of booking tickets across rail, bus and air.
It says this could be funded by windfall profit taxes, the phase-out of airline subsidies, and a fair taxation system based on CO2 emissions.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
maybe don't use a Picture of the SBB, probably the best Train Operator on the entire Continent, for this Article?
anyways, i just compared SBB Zürich -> Généve: 48.- / 44.20 CHF. not even comparing the zone subscriptions you can use to save money if you frequent a route.
Airplane Zürich -> Généve: min. 94.- CHFfor any other country it probably holds up though
You can't use zone subscriptions on most IC connections and 48.- is also only with a half-fare subscription. So basically equal price.
Because trains require far more infrastructure
Air traffic uses far more infrastructure: airports are gigantic compared to the throughput they have. LAX has 30 M passengers per year. Berlin main station has 50 M long distance and 85 M public transport passengers per year.
„But you need rails and shit for trains!“. Yeah, and you know what, trains use way less fuel because of that… Now guess what is exempted from tax? Kerosene.
And airports still need train infrastructure or roads to be able to access them, while a train drops you right in the city.
Edit: had a look at „driftking‘s“ posting history, of course it’s just a right wing troll who’s looking forward to „getting to that sweet oil under Antarctica once the ice is gone“, lol.
You cant just go and compare europe and america to the whole world. Have you ever seen South East Asian train networks? I know the article is related to the former but I think having a global perspective on this is way more important. Many places need to be accessible by plane. Global travel is not practical by train
They would be cheaper, if flights had to pay VAT and taxes on fuel. The price difference is not that crazy.
Literally read the article
Ignore the troll.
No
It's faster and cheaper than trains
It’s faster
Apart from long distances, that's true only if you count flight time. To take a plane, you need to drive to the airport (which is far from the city), show up at least 2 hours before your flight, go through check-in, wait in line and do the reverse on arrival; and if there's a sudden storm or something you gotta wait on the runway for another 3 hours. Trains take you from one city center to another city centre, you need to show up 20 minutes before departure and there's no check-in (unless you live in Canada).
and cheaper
Artificially cheaper, planes are subsidized, trains are not. When you buy a plane ticket, you're actually paying for only a fraction of the real price.
Most commonly you want to go from city center to city center. Airports are outside, so you have to get there. that takes time. Then you have security checks, boarding and so forth, which takes hours. If trains are reasonably fast trains are faster at something like 500km, for really well built high speed rail you end up at 1000km.
As for cost, as the article explains, trains have to pay fuel taxes and VAT, which flights do not. The price difference is low enough, that that would make trains cheaper or at least as expensive as planes on many journeys.
Oh, so the reason why flights are cheaper is because they’re cheaper? Yeah that makes sense.
🤡
The actual flight might be cheaper, but the airport bureucracy isn't. The security theater wastes a ton of time.
The last times I flew it didn't. It gets really easy and quick with an EU passport
Without proper info and data we are swimming in opinions and anecdotes and not able to vote for something rational.
Tax exemptions for aviation is a problem. A bigger problem yet is that the environmental costs are not charged to the user (in both aviation or trains).
But even considering that, I suspect the train tickets would still be to expensive, relative to aviation. And that is, in my opinion, due to the inherent lack of competition in trains and relatively easy to implement competition in aviation. Train and train infrastructure companies need more accountability --- big vehicles in dedicated tracks should result in very inexpensive tickets, why aren't they?
