> There's really no reason a human would try to fly instead of take a train.
My anecdote:
Some time ago I did a lot of business trips around Europe. All business travel was organized by a subcontractor. They sometimes wanted to route me through a crazy amount of short airplane hops to get me to the destination. Sometimes even when a direct flight was available they couldn't put me on it because they didn't have a contract with the operator or something like that.
For some reason they strongly favored air travel and fell back on other means of transport only when there was absolutely no way to get there by air.
One some occassions I was supposed to do 4 or 5 500 km short hops, which would mean a whole wasted day of basically waiting at airports and boarding airplanes. In such cases I just said no, paid out of my own pocket for a train ticket or took my own car. And then spent next 3 months doing paperwork to get travel expenses reimbursed.
Because light rail/bus to airport is cheap, and $25 fares are cheap. And the trains are expensive.
Now, why is flying so cheap vs a train? The whole the US government essentially gives away 737s at a loss to employ people might be one part of it? Nobody is giving away free trains that I know of.
In France, the answer is simple: the train company is basically a monopoly (owned via a very thin veil by the state).
They are therefore, like all entities not subjected to competition:
- expensive
- unreliable
- low quality of service overall (atrocious food, disgustingly dirty bathrooms, in-seat power supply almost never works, internet non-nexistant).
After living in various Asian metros it really does seem that private markets have done wonders for quality of service - I live in Japan now, but while it isn't cheaper per se, it's definitely a phenomenal quality of service, and far from the only great system I've seen in the region.
Deutsche Bahn has a (quasi) monopoly on German long-distance trains and is state owned. It has to operate some connections at a loss. It also maintains the railways.
German streets a build by the state, not by Volkswagen or Mercedes Benz. Airports are owned by local governments and often a loss-leader, sometimes epic disasters (with the exception of Fraport).
It is extremely hard to compare trains and argue about whether they are competitive or subsidized.
I find it silly that people think that train fares should cover a train's value. Few people are riding trains just because they really love to sit on a train. The value is in that you got from point A to point B. Unsurprising that East Japan Rail is super profitable, given that they're only partially a train company - rather they're a real-estate play that builds human conveyor belts into shopping/apartment/office complexes they control.
Ordinarily I am skeptical of private enterprise to serve the common good, but in the case of the public transit system here in Japan and other Asian metros it really does seem to have produced great outcomes.
It's hard to believe we are successfully giving Boeings to France when the only major competitor to Boeing is a French company (Airbus). If we actually are I am curious about the story behind it
Boeing "is the largest U.S. goods exporter" and represents, pre 737-MAX fallout, about 5% of the US GDP. This might come as a surprise to east-coasters as for most of their existence they were based out of Seattle, and only recently moved their HQ to Chicago. Boeing sells a lot of civilian airplanes, but depending on the year/conflict 35-49% of Boeing's income comes from arms sales, either jets, cruise missiles, spy satellites or what have you. Boeing's manufacturing capacity plays a significant role in US wartime capability. Between Boeing and Weyerhaeuser, those two companies (and their cottage industries) prop up the lion's share of Washington State's economy, or at least it did pre-Microsoft/Intel/Amazon
The most common reason to take a short domestic flight is that you just arrived on a longer international flight - hub and spoke. Fly into LA and the fly to San Diego kinda thing.
This may actually INCREASE emissions as now there will me smaller “direct” flights from out of country instead of them all going through major hubs.
LOL, you clearly haven't had to travel CDG <=> center of Paris by train very often.
What you say is true (there is a train), but the quality of service is so bad (strikes, trains late or overcrowded, broken ticket machines, broken escalators, PITA to go from gate to train terminal) that most people who can afford it would rather be stuck in freeway jams in a taxi than consider taking the train.
I was replying to the above comment's reference to connections. It is fairly easy to fly into Paris and take a train to Lyon, for example, without having to go into Paris proper first.
The plane industry is heavily subsidized and manages to get (IMO absurdly) low prices for some rides, and there are some situations where it's more convenient to take a plane than the train (for instance if you arrive from a long distance plane trip and are already at the airport).
French trains, especially the high speed ones, are very comfortable and "high efficiency". They can be pretty expensive however.
In France, it mostly comes down to a price issue. On one hand, flights are massively subsidized and can be extremely cheap. On the other hand, train is not subsidized at all and can be pretty pricey.
Recently though, things are changing and making a Paris - Nice by train is becoming somewhat financially doable.
It's not always a rational choice. Among other things, there's some social status associated to flying compared to taking a train. So the professionals tend to take the plane even when it's neither cheaper, nor faster, nor more reliable.
The only answer is price in France, that's it. Time-wise that's about the same, trains are very fast and planes have a longer travel from the city center so that's even it out.
Any source on this or it's just your assumption that trains are faster and more reliable? I doubt that would be the case in France especially when it comes to trains.
Not if the speed comes with a price tag that properly accounts for externalities. Cheap flights are a market failure, plain and simple. Besides, on short flights the relative overhead of getting to/from the airport, and spending time on the airport waiting, is especially high, whereas with trains the overhead is minimal.
Could you explain this? I'm struggling to understand how something becoming very cheap can be considered an (economic) failure? Isn't that something the market optimizes for?
EDIT: Perhaps you mean expensive rail is a market failure?
The same way as cheap gas is a market failure. Externalities are not properly paid for (or they're paid by the public rather than the parties of the transaction). To be fair, things like jet fuel being VAT free is a policy failure rather than market failure.
What does it even mean to account for externalities?
The relative time on the airport is not high.You can literally come to the airport just a few minutes before your departure (and many people in fact do this).
Also most airports are in my opinion much better organized than train stations.
Well, the most topical externality right now is CO2 emissions, of course. Airlines don't have to pay for their emission rights – indeed, jet fuel is artificially cheap because it's VAT free because of reasons.
There's really no reason a human would try to fly instead of take a train, if the trains were functioning at high efficiency. Flying sucks. And yet...