And very gross too:
France is banning short-haul domestic flights when there is a rail alternative that takes less than two and a half hours.
The ban, which has been greenlit by Brussels, will put an end to flights between Paris Orly Airport and the cities of Nantes, Bordeaux, and Lyon.
Ghastly in fact.
For of course what is the one form of flying these distances which is not banned? Private planes – so, the rich get to continue, it’s the middling to poor who cannot.
Very social justice, that.
Next year’s headline:
“Air France demands government subsidies after losing hundreds of thousands of long-haul passengers from Bordeaux, Nantes, and Lyon”
And the following year’s:
“Macron demands EU-wide ban on domestic feeder flights because snot fair to Air France otherwise”.
@BiFR
I think there is an exemption if there is more than 1 flight involved.
Given all the dicking around at airports, wouldn’t it be quicker to use a train anyway?
Though just let the market decide.
I don’t imagine it’s changed, given how concerned politicians are about Globbal Waaaarming (i.e. not at all) but every UK flight of Foreign Office dignitaries used to consist of two planes. One for the staff of the FO and one for the servants, booze and food.
Somehow, I don’t see Manny being more frugal…
What part of “You will own nothing and be happy :smirk:” did you think was a joke?
Apart from the happiness bit, obvs.
They want to make you the new Helots, and there’s a dogskin cap in it for you if you’re a good boy. Why do you think the Canadians weaponised their banks against peaceful (but the wrong kind) of protestors?
Why do you think the Dutch are closing down 3,000 farms (for starters)?
Why do you think Rishi announced massive tax rises nobody voted for with a big, shit-eating grin?
They’re coming to get you, Barbara. What you think of as your “property” and your “rights” are fair game for them.
Forget what the Frogs are up to, have you seen what Oxford City Council plan to do in the name of Gaia?
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/12/05/oxford-county-councillors-to-introduce-trial-climate-lockdown-in-2024/
“Why do you think the Dutch are closing down 3,000 farms (for starters)?”
Trying to, Steve… We’re still in the “tensions are rising” stage over here.
But they’re trying… oh boy are they.. Like suddenly a lot of farmers who have been exempted for some national administration for yonks for Being Too Small suddenly getting huge fines for not having said administration for the past years (sometimes a decade) by the provincial governments.. So that the Hague can shrug innocently saying that’s not their doing.
We’re still working up to Interesting Times over here, and it’ll take until next summer, to see exactly how Interesting.
March 15th will be Interesting, as then we’ll have Provincial Elections ( which indirectly choose our “House of Lords” ).
They are usually a tame and boring affair. This time around? Weeelll…..
I think there is an exemption if there is more than 1 flight involved.
Doesn’t mean a thing if the local airport closes due to the economics of not having local flights.
@Jim – re: “Oxford”…
Am I the only one who suspects that sales of angle-grinders might jump in said city? OTOH, as the council seems to be made up of the authoritarian left – voted in by their compliant sheeple, perhaps they’ll just “follow orders”.
It certainly won’t do house prices in the city many favours.
@Jim – that Oxford Council plan is deranged. The “15 minute city” model means you design a city so that citizens can get almost everything they need within 15 minutes; ideally 15 minutes walk. So you have districts with a mix of uses and amenities where people don’t travel across the city as much because they don’t need to. No enforcement is necessary.
What you don’t do is divide the city up into 15 minute zones and prevent people from getting out of them. That is just fucking bonkers. I doubt these districts will have the right mix of uses and amenities to remove the need for frequent travel outside them. The council is just using Chicom-style oppression to prevent free movement.
“…perhaps they’ll just “follow orders”…”
I don’t think obeying orders is big in Blackbird Leys
Gunker, that’s even more unhinged. So you can fly from Nantes to Bordeaux via Paris.
And the flights will go with dozens of empty seats if it really is transfer passengers only. The airlines don’t want short haul pax clogging up their feeders, but they’re happy to sell the seats for something more than nothing!
Given there are also various ways around taking connecting legs, which the airlines are generally prepared to turn an occasional blind eye to if you ask nicely and don’t do it every week, plus, I think, pending EU legislation that will stop airlines cancelling all your onwards if you miss an outbound leg, who is seriously going to police this?
And yes, I once had to take a domestic flight to Berlin via Zurich, as LH were having one of the regular strikes.
Chernyy,
“Given all the dicking around at airports, wouldn’t it be quicker to use a train anyway?”
The thing with a lot of these flights is more about connections from an airport. For example, someone from the USA wants to go to Bordeaux, they fly into CDG and then catch a flight to Bordeaux Merignac. And if you’re in business class, dicking around times are shorter.
It’s going to take you time just to get out to the station at the airport, then onto a train to Paris for an hour, and how long to wait for a TGV? Especially as they stop after 10pm. Maybe there’s a good, connecting flight so you get on it at 9:30 and then you get into a hotel near Bordeaux airport by midnight? Which means you get some sleep and then go to the meeting next morning for 9am. Because the alternative is sitting at a station in Paris for a TGV at 5:30 that gets you in at 8am, knackered. Even if it costs another £50-100, it’s going to be worth doing that flight.
I don’t know. Maybe ask people, but really, just accept it’s happening. Someone wants it. Even in the face of the fast TGV that goes city to city, some people find the plane more useful. Does it cause problems with pollution? Yes. So, just tax the pollution.
MC,
“that Oxford Council plan is deranged. The “15 minute city” model means you design a city so that citizens can get almost everything they need within 15 minutes; ideally 15 minutes walk. So you have districts with a mix of uses and amenities where people don’t travel across the city as much because they don’t need to. No enforcement is necessary.”
The “15 minute city” is just the new hip thing from the cool kids. It will never, ever work in Oxford because 15 minute cities need a lot of density and height. A health centre, shop, whatever on the ground floor, and flats or offices above it. Oxford has too much old redundant listed tourist shit that can’t be demolished in the centre, lots of tourist tat shops and supportive businesses (tons of cafes). No-one is going to build 6 storey buildings outside of that, either, because they’re the biggest NIMBYs in Christendom and will all object to it.
The centre of Reading is more like a 15 minute city. Lots of tall buildings, so flats or offices, with the ground floor having shops, cafes etc.
BonM4: I wrote this before I saw your comment, but it does rather chime with it…
Air Inter, the former domestic air monopoly, used to be owned by the SNCF. Which was a bit of a problem, because it found itself competing against its own trains. This was doubly maddening because the railway was spending a fortune on those shiny new TGV things, and the bloody public would insist on taking the plane instead. (Inter’s reputation for lavish in-flight meals might have had something to do with that, of course.)
Air Inter was fobbed off onto Air France just prior to denationalization, the name retired and the monopoly ended, but the trains are still owned by the government. So how convenient that their chief competitors can be banned in the name of Saving The Planet™. Gotta justify those high-speed lines somehow…
The centre of Reading is more like a 15 minute city.
Yes, poor old Reading, a county town that smelled of beer or biscuits depending on how the wind blew.
I don’t think obeying orders is big in Blackbird Leys
Can’t fault that! When I attended St. Redundantlistedtouristshit’s it was less diverse and way out there in the no man’s land beyond the Poly.
TMB,
“Yes, poor old Reading, a county town that smelled of beer or biscuits depending on how the wind blew.”
Both of those industries are gone. Reading smells like… victory. Thriving town centre, high employment, low crime, not much old medieval shit cluttering the place up and getting in the way of progress.
Nothing to do with climate change but all about rail passenger numbers which have been in decline for years particularly on that wonderful TGV.
The mainline – SNCF – is State owned and heavily subsidised. Ergo, since the French State which has always been skint is now skint to an overwhelming degree, anything that can reduce cost of SNCF will be welcome.
And by spooky coincidence, Nantes, Bordeaux and Lyon are the three main TGV routes out of Paris.
Ah… the TGV ( and the ICE going East.)… The thing that is worse at pricing than even airplanes, because planes at least do actual Last Minute seats?
TGV is “cheap” if you know a year beforehand that you need to be at one of their stops. Two months before.. Not So Much, and if you got the time it’s already way cheaper to use standard lines ( and possibly play Tourist somewhere at leisure.), or fly.
One or two weeks ahead? You’re kidding, right?
15-minute city would have destroyed my childhood, which revolved around getting a 30-minute bus into town, and then another 20-minute bus, to browse the electronics supply shop, grasping my shopping list of components in one hand, and my pocket money in the other, browsing through all the army surplus stuff, finding choice bits and pieces. There was no way that Sheffield was going to have 30 Bardwells scattered all over the city, all with the same service available.
Dunno if it would have destroyed your childhood, jgh..
After all, teen, rebellious… And how better to Stick It To The Man than to do your shopping deliberately outside your designated 15-mins neighbourhood.. 😉
jgh,
It’s just a high status opinion. None of the people talking about it have put even a moment’s thought into it. Those people who draw those utopian cartoons of various diverse people riding around on bicycles with gumdrop smiles and rainbow skies.
I’m glad the people in Oxford are having to test some of this out. Parasitic, state-funded hippies that they are. They vote for these sort of people and can get it good and hard.
But, but, but .. travelling by train sur le Contignon is pure bliss.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/11/trains-mostly-planes-and-automobiles/
“And how better to Stick It To The Man than to do your shopping deliberately outside your designated 15-mins neighbourhood”
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Reading smells like… victory.
Ah, the heady atmosphere of the flyovers and the fragrance of the underpasses. How does its perfume compare with,say, Swindon?