Originally published at: To cut carbon emissions, France bans short flights when a perfectly good train can get you there | Boing Boing
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Perfectly good trains are not something America does well. I know the geographic scale is different but we could have nice things if the will was there.
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If we never did anything because every time someone said “but it doesn’t solve the whole problem, only a small bit of it,” nothing would ever change. And this is MUCH more positive than telling consumers “it’s all on you to reduce, reuse, and recycle,” while industries keep on polluting.
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man, I have some guilt about my upcoming 45 mintue flight from NYC to Maine, but the alternative is an 8-10 hour train or bus ride with sketchy scheduling, ticketing and seating. Get it to-fucking-gether US. If I could take even a 4 hour train ride I totally would.
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Osaka to Tokyo is just barely within 2.5 hours by train, but it’s actually quite a bit cheaper* to fly…
How are train ticket prices in France?
*Assuming you book well in advance. There’s no early discount for trains.
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Though that branding in the picture that the train has of inOui doesn’t help since it sounds a lot like ennui
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The sad part is the US use to be the world leader in streetcar public transit. Now, we got folks complaining about the addition of bike lanes to streets, so I doubt we’ll see any movement on non-car transit options for most of the US for a long time.
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Really? Color me surprised.
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Calling the “interim head of group Airlines for Europe” a critic feels really generous, as if he had some honest concerns about the policy and wasn’t just paid to say whatever he could. I wish we didn’t bother listening to people like that.
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In the UK this should have come as a specific condition for continued HS2 funding.
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Advance fares can be pretty reasonable and SNCF offer ‘Advantage’ discount cards which can knock about 1/3 off the price.
Right now it looks like a TGV from Paris to Lyon taking a little under 2 hours will cost €39 tomorrow.
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I’m too lazy to post the “that’s the joke” gif here, so, uh, imagine I posted it here. Fnord.
On a more serious note, this and Germany’s €49 monthly ticket for usage of all public transportation nationwide (excluding express trains), I get good vibes from living in Europe at the moment. You guys keep it up!
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While the word ennui does exist in French, inouï means something like “amazing” or “incredible.”
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Indeed. Just like every debate about transport in Ireland is incomplete without the “expert” opinion of the PR from AA.
Or the editorial in the Irish times today “raising concerns” about the carbon impact of offshore wind farms.
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I couldn’t help noticing that the logo is an ambigram (if you flipped it over it would still say the same thing) (note that it doesn’t use the umlaut), and I thought maybe that was a nod to the fact that the trains go both backwards and forwards on the tracks.
But this post seems to suggest (in a brief mention at the very end of the post) that it could have been a play on the idea of a round trip, but that the train company didn’t seem to be playing that up:
(I don’t read French; Google translated it for me. There are likely other articles/posts about the logo that are equally or more worthwhile, but that was the first one I clicked on.)
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I much prefer to take the train down to London rather than fly. It takes roughly the same amount of time once you factor in airport time and then transport from the airport into London proper. The biggest drawback is the cost. It is so damn cheap to fly and the train costs a bloody arm and a leg.
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Me too. And I usually travel from the continent
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… well that makes perfect sense
since connecting flights do not emit CO2
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The Eurostar is a wonderful thing.
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