France bans flights that trains would take under 2.5 hours to do

EAS does provide a useful service in some cases. For example, the only time I used an EAS flight, Boston to Presque Isle Maine (KPQI). The only other alternative to the 11 hour drive is bus which would require an overnight stay in Bangor as the Bangor to PI bus leaves early in the morning and takes all day to get there. Not an efficient use of a weekend.

But back to the original topic, I suspect this is more symbolic than anything given how competitive the trains in France are already. Gives their politicians a chance to do something that looks good on the climate change issue without having anybody really sacrifice. I suspect you could improve the environment a lot more by stopping the various time wasting conferences that the various climate change activists fly to in their private jets. But I digress.

Jon

electricron wrote: ↑Wed Apr 14, 2021 12:58 am The bread and butter finances and ridership for this train is the Seattle to Portland service.
Maybe wiser managers should drop the service extensions to Eugene and Vancouver BC?

I've been suggesting that for years; especially now with the Canadian border completely shut down. Seattle to Bellingham is at the high end of commuter rail distance so it would be fairly easy to extend Sound Transit a couple of stops to serve Bellingham, or use commuter buses.

Portland-Eugene just doesn't have the intercity travel demand for rail and there's little/no interest in commuter rail.

With that, you could free up the equipment to focus on Portland-Seattle where there is sufficient demand to increase frequency to every two hours. With some tightening of the turn times at each station (Amtrak literallly leaves revenue equipment idle for hours and hours when it could easily provide more service) there'd be much more new service but with little additional cost.

jonnhrr wrote: ↑Wed Apr 14, 2021 11:02 am EAS does provide a useful service in some cases.

Interestingly, in the Pacific Northwest (Washington and Oregon) there is exactly ONE EAS flight, Portland to Pendleton, Oregon. There are no EAS airports in Washington; yet Horizon Air flies a good number of Q400 turboprops throughout the state successfully and without subsidy.

MattW wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 2:05 pm The problem with rail over here is going to be frequencies. France can do this because many of these cities probably have 2 or more trains per hour (through some combination of services I'm sure) between them.

The original motion would have banned domestic flights if there were competing TGV travel times of under 4 hours, and was aimed at the touristic shorthaul travel between Paris and the Mediterranean Coast. Air France La Navette runs 80 flights per day on this route set, with frequencies to some destinations of up to 4 flights per hour in peaktime. . This original motion was successfully defeated by representatives from affected regions throughout South France.

The 2.5 hour compromise solution only affects Bordeaux and Lyon as destinations, with only 3 flights per day from Paris to each of these. Nantes (also 3 flights) would have also been affected, but Air France was going to cancel that route anyways.

The train frequency isn't as high as you suspect though. Lyon and Bordeaux are served about hourly from Paris by TGV (there's some TER options with multiple train changes in addition of course, but then you're looking at travel times of 5-6 hours).

Recall the Metroliner's original target was 2.5 hours WAS-NYP to compete with the Eastern Shuttle.
There have been attempts at "super express" and "non stop" Metroliners and Acelas over the years,
but generally did not last long.

R36 Combine Coach wrote: ↑Sun May 02, 2021 8:35 pm Recall the Metroliner's original target was 2.5 hours WAS-NYP to compete with the Eastern Shuttle.
There have been attempts at "super express" and "non stop" Metroliners and Acelas over the years,
but generally did not last long.

Were the previous attempts killed due to demand? I know there was a latest effort, and that got killed by the pandemic. It may come back once demand for travel comes back.

3 hours at an overall vector of advance of 70MPH is 210 miles...

3 hours at an overall vector of advance of 50 MPH is 150 miles.

America has a railroad velocity problem.

I never understood why the non-stops weren't successful. There has to be a market for this I would think.

"why the non-stops weren't successful": my opinion is that they aren't attractive unless they leave when you want to, and super-expresses running only once or twice a day would have a hard time doing that. If you have to leave half an hour earlier or later to spend 15 minutes less on the train, you're not saving time. I don't think that a little less time on the train is a big marketing plus. What might attract travelers is a faster trip that gets you where you want to go when you want to be there. (I think I expressed this thought some time ago in a different forum, so I apologize for the repetition.)

That makes sense, the frequency issue. On a commuter line the peak hours are narrow and you can schedule, say, two or three for each rush. If WAS-NYP doesn't have that density, you end up with one and it's not convenient.

Also, track scheduling of run-throughs might be an issue? MNRR has four-track.

But another benefit to expresses, other than time saved, is that stopping is annoying.

kitchin wrote: ↑Mon May 03, 2021 12:43 pm
Also, track scheduling of run-throughs might be an issue? MNRR has four-track.

Just remember MNRR has many work windows that limit it to 3 tracks. Also walk bridge is just 3 track for more than a year and when the first draw bridge is near ready it will just 2 tracks until all the interfering bridgework on the swing bridge is removed and the 2 north tracks are aligned and raised for the new draw span. Then all that will need repeating for the new south draw span. Then that will be repeated for all the other draw span replacements.

An update just hit:

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/2023 ... -emissions

France on Tuesday formally banned domestic flights on short routes that can be covered by train in less than two-and-a-half hours -- a move aimed at reducing airline emissions that has also irked the industry.

Although the measure was included in a 2021 climate law and already applied in practice, some airlines had asked the European Commission to investigate whether it was legal.

The change will mostly rule out air trips between Paris and regional hubs such as Nantes, Lyon and Bordeaux, with connecting flights unaffected.

Critics have noted that the cutoff point for comparable train journeys is shy of the roughly three hours it takes to travel from Paris to Mediterranean port city Marseille by high-speed rail.

The law does specify that train services on the same route must be frequent, timely and well-connected enough to meet the needs of passengers who would otherwise travel by air -- and able to absorb the increase in passenger numbers.

People making such trips should be able to make outbound and return train journeys on the same day, having spent eight hours at their destination.

Take this 'progress' with a chunk of ballast. It's a great sound bite headline, but the actual substance is pretty minimal..

Paris has two airports, similar to O'Hare and Midway in Chicago. This rule is going to restrict flights to Orly Airport. It's not going to prevent flights from these close in cities to CDG Airport, nor does it appear to prevent ticketing people from flying only from Bordeaux or Lyon to CDG.


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Mr. Olesen, I think LFPO/ORY is kind of Chicago's MDW.

That this dictum does not apply to LFPG/CDG is much for the same as reason that 016/UA/UAL supports "puddle jumper" flights between KMKG/MKG and KORD/ORD. After all, say, a KMKG-KORD-RJAA booking is mighty lucrative - especially if "forward of the curtain".

Need I translate, anyone?