From my experience with European rail is that for short trips it’s more efficient than taking a short flight. You can catch the trains from central cities rather having to go to an airport on the outskirts of a city. Taking the time to get to an airport makes it faster even if the plane travels faster. Also a train can carry many more passengers than a short haul plane. Also to add while there have been rail strikes in France recent protests especially by farmers have blocked arterial roads too.
it will be interesting to see what happens. a colleague of mine wrote a book once about changing peoples' attitudes and behaviors. He uses the example of a campus ban on bottled water that was intended to reduce plastic bottles in the waste stream. The predicted/anticipated behavioral change? planners assumed folks would start drinking more water out of campus water fountains, filling water bottles from the fountains, etc. The actual behavioral change? People switched over to drinking bottled soda, fruit juices, and energy drinks. And because some of those products are mildly addictive, plastic bottle consumption actually rose campus-wide since people bought more sodas and energy drinks than the bottled water they had previously purchased. So predictions are hard. Especially about the future.
They are all just going to board the mothership and warp away to Planet X to live with the bronteroks anyway.
Of course they are and maybe this French policy will work out exactly like the writer says. That said given the French have a good multimodal travel system it might not. If this ban was internet the US that very well might be the situation. France though isn’t the US.
Human behavior is complex, and rules gov't to change human behavior indirectly can have these kinds of effects. That's why you have to have rules that directly affect outcomes vs indirectly - or take a holistic approach to problem solving. In this case, it was a stupid idea. This doesn't mean all rule changes are bad or stupid - or that they are unpredictable. There's lots of bad ideas, but if you've done your homework and truly understand the issues and levers at play, you are far more likely to have a better outcome. In this case, this won't have much impact at all. This is a case more of policy makers (politicians) wanting to look good vs doing something that has impact. They are banning 5,000 flights a year - that's it. It's specific to 3 routes that have major highspeed rail connections. If you can go from Lyon to Paris for $25 in less than two hours on train, why would you pay a lot more to take longer to fly? my *guess* is that this isn't really hitting French people very much at all - or even targeting them, but instead hits tourists who don't know better than to use the rail system and instead bounce around on short haul flights.
Yes this might not make much of an effect but I don’t think it’s necessarily a dumb policy or is certain to backfire as the opinion of expressed.
Small things can start bigger changes - that's true. But as someone who as worked in marketing for the vast majority of my career, changing human behavior is hard. Very hard. And I always advise that before you try to change human behavior, you have to understand the self interest of each individual involved and why they do what they do. It's too easy to apply rules or taxes - too lazy I should say. If you want to have impact, people need to go deeper - and instead seek to solve real problems. In this case, this isn't happening - and unlikely to change anything. Is it a dumb policy? Well it may help politicians get re-elected so perhaps thats a smart policy. Will it backfire? Unlikely. It will probably reduce CO2 emissions a bit so maybe that might get the ball rolling on something - but what? A better approach would be to try to understand why people fly instead of taking the rail. What misconception do they have? What are they missing? Or is there an actual issue that would make rail travel more preferable to whatever group you are trying to hit. Address that and you don't need a policy, the change will happen on its own and with stronger effect. Policy change should be used to enable and allow consumers to overcome a barrier.
That could be said about any new policy. We’ve seen policies make profound changes That we’re criticized or called dumb when implemented. As noted earlier there was resistance to measures to reduce sulfur admissions and CFC’s for refrigeration yet those have proven very effective in addressing acid rain and depletion to the ozone layer. In this case this isn’t a policy made in a vacuum. This isn’t California banning. Flights from LAX to SFO when there are few alternatives modes to travel bewteen those. Eurail has well function system that in many cases works more efficiently than air travel for short haul trips.
This is just a classic tweet that makes a claim with little context. Yes there has been an expansion for eastern Antarctic ice during those years but there has also been a significant shrinkage of other ice shelves. Also that eastern expansion might’ve stopped as since 2020 more iceberg calving appears to be happening in eastern Antarctica. https://www.euronews.com/green/2022...-surprising-growth-of-one-antarctic-ice-sheet
It may not be that, but that doesn't mean it's misguided. I don't favor enacting policy and regulations for the sake of just stating "the ball rolling" and getting something done even if it may not have any significant impact. To me that's a waste of money in process. Political victories to throw meat to the base may have value to some, but not to me.
Again they could be said about many policies. Obviously we can’t seem in the future but I don’t think this policy is quite as misguided given the context and infrastructure of France.
We can disagree. I just feel that they should try to put energy into solving things that actually have impact.
Reducing short haul flights would have an impact given that planes emit a lot of greenhouse gases and are inefficient compared to trains for the same travel distance in Europe. i ageee though we don’t know how much an effect it will be and it’s very possible this doesn’t make much of a difference. Given thought that there are multi modal travel options I don’t think this law will be the failure that critics are making it out to be.
They aren't eliminating all short haul flights - they are eliminating a very small fraction of their short haul flights - 5,000 of the out of 200,000. That's the issue. If you want to argue that this is just a first step on the way, I don't actually think it is. Instead of doing this, I think it would be more effective (more impactful), to instead communicate the speed and luxury of train travel over flying to both the French people and educate tourists as they arrive in France. Appealing to self interest and comfort will do more to shift the needle over regulations. I'm not against enacting regulation on business and industry at all, but I do think when there are alternatives, especially alternatives that are likely more impactful, they should be chosen as the first option instead.
Train rides can get pricey in Europe. For major destinations, it can be faster and cheaper if you use deal sites or cheap it up with low budget carriers like Ryanair.
