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A comment on France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall. Parent comment

Re:France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall by simias on Tuesday July 09, 2019 @12:01PM (#20393151)
I took a plane from Lisbon to Paris for 35 euros last week. That feels incredibly cheap to me, especially compared to high-speed train. I routinely pay twice as much to get not even half as far by TGV. Making train more competitive by taxing planes more might not be a terrible idea. I say might because I can't pretend to even begin to understand all the implications of this tax but hopefully whoever came up with it did...
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Re:France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall by pmontra on Tuesday July 09, 2019 @12:10PM (#20393284)
On distances like Lisbom to Paris trains can't compete on time, not only on price. There is no way a train can be made faster with the current technology (hyperloop: let's wait and see.) I think nobody goes from Lisbon to Paris and back by train to spend a weekend there.

Of course if flying costs more people will fly less.

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Re:France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall by gdhbcc on Tuesday July 09, 2019 @12:41PM (#20393691)
Portugal is generally not connected by train anywhere else.

Last I checked we didn't even have more than one or 2 routes to Spain by train, due to different gauges, and spain has different gauges from france.

If you want to go from Paris to Lisbon by train expect a whole day of travel if not more, with multiple changes

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Re:France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall by simias on Tuesday July 09, 2019 @03:09PM (#20395463)
Hopefully if planes become more expensive we'll see some investments in the train infrastructure. Going from Lisbon to Paris even without changes will probably still take a long time even with a bullet train but if I can schedule a trip by night and sleep reasonably comfortably I think I'd consider it over the plane.

Catching a train in the late afternoon in the center of Lisbon, working for a few hours, sleeping and waking up in the center of Paris sounds fairly pleasant to me. Of course at the moment that's effectively science fiction.

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