There’s a reason flights are so cheap compared to to rail, and it’s not good news for anybody except the CEOs of those companies. TLDR: they’re subsidised and the fuel is subsidised to artificially price them below public transport. We could have cheap or even free public transport if we wanted using the same method.
Oh man. I wish that’d work where I live (Canada). Europeans don’t realize how lucky they have it! I can’t fly to any worthwhile countries and back in a day (at least not long enough to enjoy the stay)
An old colleague of mine worked at a different office - he got fed up of the rat run and took a job within a stone’s throw of Stansted Airport - close enough that a hotel or carpark shuttle bus covered his route.
He couldn’t be arsed with London and Essex house prices so he bought his house near Shannon (yes, in the Republic of Ireland) and commuted by plane every day. The major problem with that was if he didn’t book a flight when they were released (where it was about fifteen or twenty quid return!), or if there was a short notice job came in that changed his hours, he was royally fucked and it cost him a fortune.
I should imagine his carbon footprint was somewhere between “Chinese concrete factory” and “literally burning petrol in the back garden for a laugh”.
A friend of a friend did something similar in east London - couldn’t be holed with the London house prices so got a place in some Paris suburb and commuted by train most mornings, only staying over if there was a staff night out or a late working task planned.
…and I sometimes complain about my ten mile commute.
I work remotely, but when I have to go into the office, it takes half an hour. I walk.
My son’s commute to his workplace is four minutes. He also walks.
£7.50 for a flight? That’s insane! I’d be going on vacation once a month if I could score a single flight for even 10x that.
Oftentimes, it was even more wild than that. One flight may have been ten or twelve quid; and the other flight might have been three or four quid. Granted this was ten or fifteen years ago; but some of the low-cost carrier flights were insanely low.
There’s still some crazy low prices to be had if you live near a hub for a low cost carrier, like Stansted or Glasgow Prestwick.
Be tempted to look south my man
I’d like to visit Mexico sometime, but it wouldn’t really work for a day trip
Can hardly even fly to another Canadian city without it costing an arm and a leg.
public transit is a service, not a business. it does not need to make a profit.
Ideally it should be supported without deficit or profit by its users. A lot of these old services also accumulate inefficiencies over time that should be pruned from time to time
Fucking airline companies leeching on government opportunities, fucking train companies that treat train travel as a luxury (ex: fucking Thameslink which is expensive and yet only has seat treys in its first class) and governments not giving train lines the same benefits they give to airline companies are all complicit in environmental crimes.
I…don’t blame them? If people prefer flying, which usually consist of at least an hour of waiting before taking off and the flight time, which sometime could be longer than, vs train, then there’s something seriously bad happen to the train. The article mentioned £150 on train without a seat, if that’s true then that’s a serious issue, for both the price and seat.
