In recent weeks, the two largest EU countries – Germany and France – have launched one after the other initiatives aimed at greener inland travel by land.
These initiatives are mainly aimed at promoting travel by train instead of flying, but it should be noted that countries have chosen different strategies.
A ban on air travel?
On April 10, the French parliament passed a bill banning flights on short routes, where there is an alternative to railway service lasting two and a half hours. This bill will exclude flights between Paris and, for example, Bordeaux, Lyon or Nantes.
It should be noted that we are talking only about the draft law so far. Moreover, the current version of the law does not go as far as the initiators intended. For example, there is an exception for international feeder flights. In other words, flights from Paris to Lyon will still be possible as part of an international route such as Singapore-Paris-Lyon.
This partial ban on domestic flights is bad news for the French national carrier Air France. This came shortly after the French government helped the carrier with a billion dollar loan, which was due to the abandonment of slots in Paris-Orly to which concessions in domestic traffic were already pegged.
Germany seeks cooperation
Germany has chosen a different strategy to create a more sustainable system for domestic travel. The largest railway company Deutsche Bahn (DB), together with the Federal Association of the German Aviation Industry (BDL), presented a joint action plan.
This plan includes tighter integration of modes of transport with the aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the passenger transport sector. In a statement, the parties said they will take a number of measures to improve interoperability between modes of transport so that more travelers prefer to travel by train, especially when moving to hubs.
The action plan focuses on three main areas related to expanding rail transport and facilitating train-to-flight transitions. Key points are the growing assortment of auxiliary trains for international flights, easier flight-to-train transitions, and faster rail connections between metropolitan areas.
Railway transport potential
BDL and DB see the potential that around 20% of those traveling in Germany by plane will choose to travel by train. The partners want to unleash this potential in the coming years. Thanks to attractive offers and the constant expansion of the railway transport infrastructure, it is planned to attract an additional 4.3 million passengers to ground travel.
In 2019, the German aviation industry registered approximately 23 million domestic travelers, of which 8 million were feeder and 15 million purely domestic. As a result of the above initiative, the share of domestic air traffic in CO2 emissions in Germany could be reduced by one sixth.
What’s interesting about this initiative is that airport and airline officials are trying to convince more people to switch to rail and thus help to protect the climate while traveling inland.
In doing so, they demonstrate a sense of responsibility without generating fundamental discussions about the negative consequences of air travel. The focus is on customer-friendly connectivity between airports and the rail network, which should result in more people traveling by train, rather than cars or even airplanes for short, medium and long haul trips to the airport.