You are comparing the price of a budget airline flight, booked at least several days, if not weeks, in advance, with a first class train ticket bought on the day of departure.
Departing tomorrow afternoon, an EasyJet flight is £115. I don't know if the morning flights are sold out, or are currently not running, but they presumably exist. The train is £77 off peak (which matches the flight arrival time), or £166 peak (assuming there are sold-out morning flights). Even this late the day before, it's still possible to book onto a particular train, which is about £60-70.
Train times and ticket costs for tomorrow: https://traintimes.org.uk/edinburgh/london/06:30/tomorrow
As an aside, the train schedule and prices seem substantially cheaper than this time last year. I don't ever recall there being availability on the super off peak trains if travelling within a week or so.
There's no such thing as 'availability' on trains, you can buy a ticket from the ticket machine without booking in advance. You may not get a seat for the whole journey, but it's better IMO than not being able to board at all (like when flights sell out).
The problem with flying is if you want to do it very last minute it can cost an absolute fortune, whereas the train is capped by the walk on ticket prices. Plus with the train you don't need to book it if you don't want, and can literally buy a ticket minutes from departure with a known maximum price, so you don't need to worry about getting a refund or changing the booking if your plans change.
I was caught out with this when I visited Toledo from Madrid. I bought a ticket for the next train to Toledo from a machine, which was fine. When I tried to return, there were no available tickets for several hours. I took a bus instead.
A seat reservation is also compulsory on the TGV in France, but not the ICE in Germany.
In the before times, it was pretty much the same price to get a last minute VIA train ticket or a Porter flight between Ottawa and Toronto. If you’re lucky, early, or a student, you can get a train ticket quite a bit cheaper.
Even some quite long -- for Europe -- flights, like 4½ hours for Dublin to Athens, are just €20. Some shorter ones are €10.
(This only includes a fairly small cabin bag, put under the seat in front. The service level is roughly equivalent to a cheap intercity bus.)
Well, they are for some tickets. Ryanair (like any airline, and indeed train line) is heavily dependent on people booking late and paying much, much more.
Canada, as a whole, is an absolute rip-off. There is virtually nothing you can point to in the country and remark that it's a good deal when compared to the prices offered in America or most areas of Europe.
High food costs, high booze costs, high communications costs, high transport costs, high taxes etc., combined with low salaries, is incredibly bleak.
* https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/overall-rankings
And consistently in the Top 10 for happiest:
America, I understand. But aren't prices in Canada generally lower than Europe when you include taxes? Sales taxes are 5-15% in Canada. They are generally 20% or higher in EU. Car insurance is perhaps more expensive in Canada, but vehicle registration/taxes are lower than Europe, so the total cost of ownership is lower.
I fell like a lot of the perception of things being more expensive in Canada is that CAD is values lower than EUR/USD/CHF/GBP. So looking at raw numbers, things feel more expensive. If you do the currency conversion, they become more comparable. Do you have any data showing things are generally more expensive in Canada compared to Europe, when accounting for currency conversion?
I recall a pitch to Amazon for their headquarters that they could get away outsourcing for cheaper over there.
I think the value of CAD depends on BoC decisions, not politicians. They can increase its value, for example by increasing interest rates, but that would cause an increase in unemployment. I don't think there is a mechanism to increase value of CAD without also messing up some other part of the economy, e.g. employment or inflation.
Besides, much more energy is wasted heating old, leaky homes that are an eauivalent of a wet dump. Landlords have no incentive to fix them because the tenants are the ones that pay for heating. If we fixed crappy housing im UK, allegendly worst in europe if yoy consider price, we would save a lot more CO2 and a lot more people would be happy.
Back to work, peasants!
Once you tax it markets will immediately respond by finding efficient, low carbon footprint alternatives to everything. That is, if people can get into their heads that capitalism is a system (to be tweaked for the benefit of everyone), not a religion.
By the way rich people will be the least affected global warming.
The other option is the train, it's 4.5 hours, comfortable, but costs £250. It's a much nicer journey, but regularly much more expensive.