In Germany, jet fuel is untaxed, whereas train companies have to pay tax on electricity, in particular renewable energy. Also, VAT is handled differently: if you buy a flight from Germany to another country, only a portion of what you paid for your plane ticket is taxed at German VAT rate, but for train tickets, 100% of the ticket price is taxed with the German VAT rate. These are several factors that make it quite a bit harder for the railway to compete with short-distance flights.

>These are several factors that make it quite a bit harder for the railway to compete with short-distance flights.

Main factor for journeys within Germany though is the lack of competition for DB. Compare Lufthansa prices on MUC-TXL vs. STR-FMO.

The joke is that airfare is way too cheap compared to the damage it causes - be it noise, exhaust gases or land usage for airport infrastructure.

In addition jet fuel in Europe is tax-free which enables these ultra low prices.

>In addition jet fuel in Europe is tax-free which enables these ultra low prices.

This kind of Orwellian double speak is amazing. Lack of tax leaves too low prices for the consumer!

If you really feel that this tax is important, you can always tax yourself! Anyone you can persuade can join you, voluntarily. Just estimate the tax you owe (through this as of now not yet enacted tax) and send a cheque to the national treasury, with "Gift" as memo. They will take it!

I hope this voluntary taxation idea catches on.

> This kind of Orwellian double speak is amazing. Lack of tax leaves too low prices for the consumer!

The point of the tax is to tie the costs of externalities (pollution, climate change, etc.) directly to the usage.

Not taxing fuel means the population as a whole winds up subsidizing the air travelers and their impact on the country.

Air travel is comparable in fuel usage to trains [1]. Which surprised me a bit, as I expected much better mileage for the air travel, thanks to the exceptionally low drag of the rarified air up there as compared to wheels on rails.

However the railway ought to be more expensive overall due to the other costs: requires build-out and maintenance of extensive ground based network, including some prime real estate; requires much longer occupancy of vehicles; requires much more man-hours for each vehicle crew. Sadly in most settings (like continental Europe) the fixed costs of rail are barely visible to our considerations due to the governmental funding. Meanwhile airplanes only require build-out of the end-points, and the crew required is minimal.

The only meaningful way of fixing the problems with rail is 1) high speed (Mach 0.5 ... 1); 2) de-coupling from wheels-on-rails as the source of noise, drag and speed limitation; 3) de-coupling from expensive on-the-ground infrastructure as cause of high costs and NIMBYism; 4) high automation, little to no amenities; 5) smaller vehicles, more frequent departures. All in all, going in the airplane-like direction. Hyperloop may just be the thing, if it ever becomes large scale commercial.

[1] per passenger * km. Example: https://www.theprch.com/this-vs-that/fuel-efficiency-planes-...

That's a misleading statement. From your linked article:

"Trains in countries like Japan are predominantly electric and transport a much larger number of people per cabin than trains in the US. While it’s difficult to broadly compare trains between regions it’s safe to say that trains in European and Asian countries are far more fuel efficient than those in the US, making them a leading option for travel.

In most cases outside of the US, trains are probably at least as efficient as buses and are much more efficient than cars and planes."

Yours, Physics.

Physics gets removed from the conversation when we start to view trains as endlessly more efficient than airplanes. They aren’t, and in the US part of that equation is the requirement to make passenger trains able to survive a full collision with a freight train, adding a great deal of weight and removing much of the physical advantage of low rolling resistance. Other examples are the overly prescriptive regulations for trains, which is a situation that the aeronautical industry has recently been able to make major gains on. Trains are great, but they’re not necessarily better for the environment or the users than airplanes because of their physics.

Trains are amazing when they are built for people to take. Unfortunately, trains in the US were built for industrial transport.

Trains for people have a few cars and go really fast. Trains for cargo have hundreds of cars and go really slow.

Physics is on the airplane's side [0]. The drag of rolling over rails, and of going through the dense air at ground level pressure is naturally much worse than that of flying up high for any non-trivial speeds.

Right now the trains may be ahead in some regions thanks to their slow speeds, and thanks to the electrification - with the assumption electricity is generated from sources other than fossil fuel.

But if you tried to set up railway at travel time comparable to airways, you'd quickly find yourself doing away with rolling in favor of maglev or maybe air cushion, and also trying to lower the air drag as much as possible. Both are non-trivial engineering challenges - cue the Hyperloop languishing in protracted development. Both have been solved by air travel decades ago.

Meanwhile electrification of the air travel is already underway. Quiet SSTs[1] are up next. And yes, SSTs are rather fuel efficient, thanks to the even higher operating altitude, and also the natural efficiency of the jets at high speeds.

I will miss the railways. It used to be a great adventure back when I was a kid.

[0] well if you disregard travel time, then the sailing ships would be the kings

[1] relevant: the X-59, and the Boom

A 3 passenger car at 25 MPG significantly beat airlines in fuel efficiency per passenger mile assuming reasonably direct routes.

Busses and trains both crush aircraft from a physics standpoint assuming similar occupancy. Though of course with very low occupancy per cabin things can shift.

> where as a flight would have been about €50.

To be fair to travel betwee Berlin and Vienna City centres you'd need to add at least a €10 in each end for ground transport.

Berlin AB ticket (for Tegel airport), EUR 2.80.

Berlin ABC ticket (for Schönefeld airport), EUR 3.40.

>To be fair to travel betwee Berlin and Vienna City centres you'd need to add at least a €10 in each end for ground transport.

Vienna should be less than 5€ for the airport + VOR ticket.

A bit over €3 for a Berlin ABC ticket I believe.