Can Europe’s trains compete with low-cost airlines?
It was less than a week into the job running one of Europe’s biggest airports that Ruud Sondag realised that inviting climate protesters to visit might have been a mistake. “I saw a big advertisement in the paper from Extinction Rebellion and Greenpeace saying they were coming to visit the airport,” says Sondag, the CE of Amsterdam’s Schiphol at the time. “We basically said: ‘Come on over. Don’t make a mess, but you’re welcome. Express your thoughts’,” Sondag recalls. “And that worked pretty well until the moment that they chained themselves to the private jets. The disruption was part of long-running protests against the aviation industry and its impact on the environment. That pressure is moving into the political mainstream, with policymakers in Europe asking themselves whether airlines and airports should be forced to reduce flight numbers in order to slow emissions growth. “It is a conversation that was absent from public debates and policymakers’ agendas until recently,” says Jo Dardenne, aviation director at Brussels-based environmental NGO Transport & Environment. “But the aviation industry has to face the fact that growth is contrary to their climate objectives.” Last week Spain followed France in unveiling a limited ban on short-haul flights. The Netherlands, Denmark and France have pushed ahead with plans for higher taxes on flying, while the Dutch government previously tried to impose a hard cap to lower the number of flights at Schiphol. But policymakers also need to acknowledge the public popularity of cheap flying and confront the lack of viable alternatives. The European Court of Auditors, which assesses EU policy, said in a 2018 report that there was “no realistic long-term EU plan for high speed rail.” In a later report it added that of E54b required for eight cross-border transport “mega-projects”, the EU had only spent E3.4b. “The core network is unlikely to be operational by 2030,” it concluded, although efforts to improve the rollout have been made since then.<br/>
https://portal.staralliance.com/cms/news/hot-topics/2024-03-08/general/can-europe2019s-trains-compete-with-low-cost-airlines
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Can Europe’s trains compete with low-cost airlines?
It was less than a week into the job running one of Europe’s biggest airports that Ruud Sondag realised that inviting climate protesters to visit might have been a mistake. “I saw a big advertisement in the paper from Extinction Rebellion and Greenpeace saying they were coming to visit the airport,” says Sondag, the CE of Amsterdam’s Schiphol at the time. “We basically said: ‘Come on over. Don’t make a mess, but you’re welcome. Express your thoughts’,” Sondag recalls. “And that worked pretty well until the moment that they chained themselves to the private jets. The disruption was part of long-running protests against the aviation industry and its impact on the environment. That pressure is moving into the political mainstream, with policymakers in Europe asking themselves whether airlines and airports should be forced to reduce flight numbers in order to slow emissions growth. “It is a conversation that was absent from public debates and policymakers’ agendas until recently,” says Jo Dardenne, aviation director at Brussels-based environmental NGO Transport & Environment. “But the aviation industry has to face the fact that growth is contrary to their climate objectives.” Last week Spain followed France in unveiling a limited ban on short-haul flights. The Netherlands, Denmark and France have pushed ahead with plans for higher taxes on flying, while the Dutch government previously tried to impose a hard cap to lower the number of flights at Schiphol. But policymakers also need to acknowledge the public popularity of cheap flying and confront the lack of viable alternatives. The European Court of Auditors, which assesses EU policy, said in a 2018 report that there was “no realistic long-term EU plan for high speed rail.” In a later report it added that of E54b required for eight cross-border transport “mega-projects”, the EU had only spent E3.4b. “The core network is unlikely to be operational by 2030,” it concluded, although efforts to improve the rollout have been made since then.<br/>
