That’s really unfortunate.
No tax on airline fuel.
Those price discrepancies are genuinely shocking
Hell, it’s cheaper and faster to fly from Zurich or Munich to Hamburg via Barcelona, London or Dublin.
But why though?
Air travel is heavily subsidised, especially through very very very favourable tax rates on aviation fuel
I’m not sure it’s like this everywhere, but many airlines are more focused on financial products (like credit cards) for profit than flights. Here’s something about it, no guarantee of quality, but it’s enough to get the general idea: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/airlines-banks-mileage-programs/675374/
Cheaper maybe, but I don’t bet on faster for the passenger. Train station normally are in the city center (or really near), airport are relatively far from the city.
It’a apples to oranges. Pricing policies are different. Only few get the cheapest airline tickets.
There is also a hidden cost from the tracks.
A rail track of 3m for 100km used for solar cells would generate enough electricity to transport 37500 passengers per plane.
Solar cells generate 2kWp per 10 square meters, which are 2MWh per year which is 5kWh per day.
300ksqm generate 150MWh per day.
4l kerosine per pessenger per 100km are about 40kWh.
150MWh are enough for 37500 passengers.
It’s not renewable but influences the economics.
I’m not really sure what point you’re trying to make here -
It’s not like rails are in any significant way displacing solar panels.
If one were motivated, you could use the same land for tracks and for solar panels by raising the solar panels above the tracks and catenaries, making double use of the land at the expense of having to build platforms for the panels.
Finally, solar energy can’t be used to transport passengers by plane since electric plane travel is not at a mass-market scale (nor is it even certain that they will ever be able to).
The costs of the platforms would significantly reduce the efficiency of the solar cells.
My point is that planes have the advantage of not needing tracks which come with costs. There are the maintenance costs and the costs of not using them otherwise. We shouldn’t be surprised if trains can’t compete on many connections.
The amortized savings of having the tracks outweigh any opportunity costs introduced by the tracks taking up space.
Do you have any numbers?
In France, airfrance stopped to fly some routes since they cannot make them cheaper than a TGV
Of course there are connections where trains are more efficient. It’s just not all of them. An analysis should try to identify which connections should be cheaper but are not. Listing them all destroys any meaningful critique.
Well, airports are not free
Neither are railway stations.
2 kWp means 2 kilo watt peak. It’s the maximum they can produce and in no way the average.
You are right, I considered that.
The average per year is calculated from that number by roughly multiplying with 10 in Europe. I have looked that up and not multiplied by hours in a year.
