Comment by bluebarbet
17 hours ago
Yet the very fact that airlines routinely do put people up in hotels when flights get cancelled is an example of the exorbitant privilege of air travel (another being tax-free kerosene).
Nobody expects this to happen with train travel. Perhaps they should.
I travel mostly by high speed train over very long distances and I fail to see it making more economical sense than air travel, even with taxed kerosene.
The costs of a high speed line are on the scale of 30 millions euros per km, with maintenance of 300,000 €/km/year. A TGV with 740 seats costs around 25 millions euros and has maintenance too. Most of the operating costs are per trip, a TGV typically does 2 to 3 500km trips per day.
A mid-range plane like the A320neo costs around 100 millions euros for 190 passengers and typical operating costs of 5 millions for a 2 flights per day average. A lot of these costs are hourly costs (fuel and maintenance) and airport costs. Fuel is 10%.
In France, trains and especially high-speed trains are heavily subsidised with a lot of tickets paid under various incentivized and subsidized schemes. SNCF (trains and railways) receives between 10 and 20 billions euros per year from various government entities (depending on what you include), i.e. 20% to 35% of revenue. There are also indirect subsidies through corporate tax schemes like commuting exemptions. Finally, long haul buses have long been forbidden and considered a threat to the train monopoly, and after a short golden age of EU-led monopoly breaking, they have been again heavily regulated so they can hardly compete. Similarly, short-haul flights have been almost banned.
The train is more practical but when I hear it is on par with air travel economically and more environment friendly I fail to make sense of the numbers.
My allusion was to environmental sustainability, not to the human construct of economic efficiency.
However counter-intuitive it may be, air travel is indeed far more energy-intensive, and therefore destructive, than train travel. Mainly due to the exponential increase of wind resistance with speed. On a planet of 9 billion people, airplanes will simply not be a sustainably form of transport by any metric.
Deutsche Bahn paid for my hotel and meal the last time my train was delayed, though I did have to make the booking myself and claim reimbursement.
They are required to by law I believe.
The EU law applies, but companies get out of it by:
- encouraging you to take multiple tickets (so you can't claim compensation on the whole trip and becaise of missed transfers).
- saying it's not their doing (DB specialty).
- in some cases accepting an "alternate schedule" (typically by changing your ticket at the company's suggestion) will void any claims.
In some cases you have better chances hiring a taxi for 2000km and forcing the company to pay.
On the opposite, on (very expensive) French TGVs you get compensation starting at 30 minutes delay (connections counted) whatever the reason and SNCF will do their utmost to bring you to destination or ensure you get accomodation.