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Because it is not the main reason. Even if airlines paid tax on fuel (and they should) it would still end up with fares being a lot cheaper than by rail. It’s the very nature of the infrastructure which is key.
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That is a big presumption. And with respect I think you are overstating the imbalance.
1. If aviation fuel was taxed similarly to car fuel it would add more than 50% to airline fuel overheads.
2. If environmentalists get their way we should over-tax flying. It does make sense as it’s highly polluting. If aviation fuel tax was at 60-70% we’d reverse the current imbalance towards trains surely.
3. Rail infrastructure is largely in place. Yes there are maintenance costs but there are with plane checks too. I think people overstate this cost. It is not like all rail has to be built from scratch now.
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A plane has the advantage of being able to fly mostly everywhere. You could have the need of a plane somewhere to get stranded passengers for example, if you have the crew, you can do it even if the plane is 1000-2000km away. Go do that with a train.
Except in some specific case, you do not need specific pilot training. A stopped train is dead asset + you need the driver knowledge and the appropriate tracks to run it.
Absolutely. The confines of rail systems are prohibitive. Yet there is an amazing infrastructure in place today. With investment and will it can be improved still.
Except in slim cases, airlines don't pay a dime in operational taxes (taxes, not anything that has to do with airports and overflying), we do. And a sizeable part of any plane ticket is comprised of those taxes.
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The lobby of the airlines is probably a lot stronger that any in the transportation world, fuel tax will either never happen or be so small that it will not do anything to airlines. Especially when the main way out of the UK and Ireland is flying.
I know this. I’ve done more to promote sleeper trains directly to aviation enthusiasts than perhaps anyone else! But it remains a niche activity - you cannot just demand people think a different way. And no, the long distances you talk about to places like Malaga aren’t a free day without hotel costs. You’ve already paid the hotel cost in the sleeper fare and had to leave a day earlier to get somewhere by noon. That’s not realistic or pragmatic for most people taking budget flights to Europe. It just isn’t.
That is a platitude which does not address the unworkability of a personal flight allowance. Nobody has ever proposed a policy which actually would work, nor would locking people in an island country lead to a healthy, prosperous and successful society. There is one tunnel linking us to the continent; you cannot put many people through it and sleeper trains aren’t a good use of the very limited capacity that asset offers. (Next it’ll be a pivot to “let’s build two or three more” which is unfortunately further crayonista territory in my opinion)
Talking about flights here. Vastly more flexible than railways, operationally, and extremely market-responsive.
I’m afraid there are people here who know quite a bit about how sleepers work and if you took more of them in Europe you would probably have a more realistic way of looking at them.
I think in general I’m looking forward. How can things be designed and made to work in the future, not how they work today.
As outlined the preface to all these points is some form of aviation tax or control. Or at least parity with rail where fuel is taxed.
If the costs of flying are increased and the ease of train travel increased, we would certainly see more people on rails and not polluting via flight. That people do not even have the option of a sleeper service to southern France for example, now, is restrictive. In national terms the cost wouldn’t be high just to prove the concept and to build upon it.
It does beg the question, why not invest into trains which are viable now. And as you allude, the relative costs of improving transnational rail are relatively small in comparison to developing new forms of propulsion.
A European length sleeper train isn't going to fit more than around 200 passengers.
Assume the channel tunnel is stacked with fifteen trains per hour. You can at maximum force 3000 people through the tunnel per hour in each direction.
About 24,000 per night (~8 hours), even with no maintenance stoppages.
Currently, approximately ~100m passengers leave the UK per year by flights (~100m more enter).
That's about 270,000 people per day.
So even if we somehow stacked the channel tunnel with sleeper trains, end to end, all night, we'd still only get less than ten percent of international air traffic.
Sleepers can never be a substantial source of international traffic without ludicrous spending on infrastructure.
EDIT:
The 100m in, 100m out was 2022. In 2023 we reached 140m in, 140m out and 2024 will be higher still.
We're heading for 150m in, 150m out.
Maintenance doesn’t occur on all rails every night does it? With maintenance required in say Kent and a sleeper train travelling from London to southern Europe, the train has left the area by 1am. More or less the time most domestic services cease.
So you cannot get on track until at least 1.30-2am, then have to get back off by 6 at the latest for the morning peak. You don't get much done in 4 hours...
A European length sleeper train isn't going to fit more than around 200 passengers.
Assume the channel tunnel is stacked with fifteen trains per hour. You can at maximum force 3000 people through the tunnel per hour in each direction.
About 24,000 per night (~8 hours), even with no maintenance stoppages.
Currently, approximately ~100m passengers leave the UK per year by flights (~100m more enter).
That's about 270,000 people per day.
So even if we somehow stacked the channel tunnel with sleeper trains, end to end, all night, we'd still only get less than ten percent of international air traffic.
Sleepers can never be a substantial source of international traffic without ludicrous spending on infrastructure.
EDIT:
The 100m in, 100m out was 2022. In 2023 we reached 140m in, 140m out and 2024 will be higher still.
We're heading for 150m in, 150m out.
Plenty of capacity. And no one ever suggested sleepers were to replace all air travel which is often across oceans.
If we can have 20,000 people a night using sleeper services, why wouldn't we? There probably isn't demand. So lets start with a couple of trains and develop it step by step. To make a comparison with total flights is churlish, and pointless.
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Not really. We just need to push the dial a little more towards trains rather than planes. There isn't capacity for huge transportation volumes via train, and they can only cover European trips anyway.
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So you cannot get on track until at least 1.30-2am, then have to get back off by 6 at the latest for the morning peak. You don't get much done in 4 hours...
signal.eu.org/osm says Paris to Málaga avoiding high-speed lines is 20 hours (2100 km / 1300 miles via Poitiers, Bordeaux and Valladolid, or 2370 km / 1470 miles via Lyon and Barcelona). Using high-speed sleeper trains – which I think is only Hong Kong to Beijing right now, and which would have the issue of constructing suitable trains – it would be 2190 km / 1370 miles; I'd guess eleven to thirteen hours.
Humans have the tech now. It is all the other nonsense that is in the way. One day I hope we'll be able to get a sleeper all the way to Spain or Southern France.
Plenty of capacity. And no one ever suggested sleepers were to replace air travel which is often across oceans.
If we can have 20,000 people a night using sleeper services, why wouldn't we? There probably isn't demand. So lets start with a couple of trains and develop it step by step. To make a comparison with total flights is churlish, and pointless.
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Not really. We just need to push the dial a little more towards trains rather than planes. There isn't capacity for huge transportation volumes via train, and they can only cover European trips anyway.
So lets not start any, as we have a pretty good idea what the economics are likely to be - black hole. We've got three internally in the UK already and have plenty of experience of their miserable economics. Of course, private business is at liberty to do so, if they have the capital to throw at such a thing. Funnily enough, no credible entrepreneur has done that yet. We don't need to push that dial with sleeper trains, because we know it will be a waste of money and just be a highly subsidised plaything, like the Cornish and Scottish ones, with very little effect on pollution/global warming etc. Increasing airline taxes (and thereby fares) by a certain percentage likely would have a better effect on reducing air passenger numbers (and therefore flights) than a couple of highly subsidised sleeper trains could ever achieve. Fiscally a no-brainer too.
So lets not start any, as we have a pretty good idea what the economics are likely to be - black hole. We've got three internally in the UK already and have plenty of experience of their miserable economics. Of course, private business is at liberty to do so, if they have the capital to throw at such a thing. Funnily enough, no credible entrepreneur has done that yet. We don't need to push that dial with sleeper trains, because we know it will be a waste of money and just be a highly subsidised plaything, like the Cornish and Scottish ones, with very little effect on pollution/global warming etc. Increasing airline taxes (and thereby fares) by a certain percentage likely would have a better effect on reducing air passenger numbers (and therefore flights) than a couple of highly subsidised sleeper trains could ever achieve. Fiscally a no-brainer too.
Never mind 'miserable economics' it is a miserable outlook. Sleeper trains exist and work in numerous locations. Developing and nudging human behaviour takes time, and changing the zero tax on aviation fuel can't come soon enough. A credits system for flights seem totally fair as well, and a matter of time in one shape or another. It won't be in the next 5 years but sometime after that I would imagine.
If you agree that air travel needs greater taxation, what kinds of alternative ways to travel are you proposing? Easy to criticise, harder to create.
If they can't replace a significant fraction of air travel, there is little point bothering!
Either airline decarbonisation will occur, or it won't. If it occurs then the sleepers have little environmental basis, if it doesn't then international travel will have to be almost totally curtailed anyway.
If they can't replace a significant fraction of air travel, there is little point bothering!
Either airline decarbonisation will occur, or it won't. If it occurs then the sleepers have little environmental basis, if it doesn't then international travel will have to be almost totally curtailed anyway.
Forgive my confusion. You seemed to be arguing that sleeper travel can not touch the sides of flight demand. Now you’re suggesting it should?
Doesn’t the truth lie somewhere in between? That long distance train services can make a dent on short distance flights. And this would be a good start to cutting aviation pollution.
A credits system for flights seem totally fair as well, and a matter of time in one shape or another. It won't be in the next 5 years but sometime after that I would imagine.
Never mind 'miserable economics' it is a miserable outlook. Sleeper trains exist and work in numerous locations. Developing and nudging human behaviour takes time, and changing the zero tax on aviation fuel can't come soon enough. A credits system for flights seem totally fair as well, and a matter of time in one shape or another. It won't be in the next 5 years but sometime after that I would imagine.
We do not have infinite industrial resources.
Any resources we expend on sleeper trains are not available for doing something else.
The resources required to move significant numbers of people abroad using sleeper trains are enormous, they could be employed in many places in the decarbonisation effort - even in the rail industry's contribution to the decarbonisation effort.
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Forgive my confusion. You seemed to be arguing that sleeper travel can not touch the sides of flight demand. Now you’re suggesting it should?
Doesn’t the truth lie somewhere in between? That long distance train services can make a dent on short distance flights. And this would be a good start to cutting aviation pollution.
No, I'm suggesting sleeper trains are not worth doing unless they can make a significant contribution.
I do not see how they can make a significant contribution, therefore they are not worth the effort.
There are many ways to cut aviation pollution before we even get to curtailing flights.
We could, for example, ban business class (increasing the number of people each kg of plane carries) or remove the windows from planes (they are very heavy, which is why most airliner derived airfreighters don't fit them).
It would require a technological solution for a start; it is not just a check of the passport but also the logging of entries and verification of right to enter once ETIAS comes in. It’s unlikely this could be done on the move without a physical terminal as you would get at a normal border, but in any case there’s a good reason why even now, Eurostar services have checks prior to boarding. It’s simply much quicker and doesn’t involve a risk to delaying the train or removing passengers who are ineligible to enter. Where would you do this? This isn’t a normal land border; there’s a tunnel involved, so which station are you designating as the kick off point?
The resources required to move significant numbers of people abroad using sleeper trains are enormous, they could be employed in many places in the decarbonisation effort - even in the rail industry's contribution to the decarbonisation effort.
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No, I'm suggesting sleeper trains are not worth doing unless they can make a significant contribution.
I do not see how they can make a significant contribution, therefore they are not worth the effort.
Why bother with anything? You have to start somewhere. Do you feel the same about EV cars? They only save about a third of the carbon that old cars do, so why bother?
What you miss, is that you start somewhere. On a new branch-line. And then humans innovate, develop and improve. But doing nothing - what we’ve always done isn’t the answer.
There are many ways to cut aviation pollution before we even get to curtailing flights.
We could, for example, ban business class (increasing the number of people each kg of plane carries) or remove the windows from planes (they are very heavy, which is why most airliner derived airfreighters don't fit them).
Never mind the irony of dismissing taking people off airlines into trains as ‘insignificant’, while removing weight from windows and a tiny % of flyers from planes isn’t. These ideas aren’t realistic either. People do need to travel for business. Airlines won’t want the expense of filling in glass and consumers wouldn’t like the sense of claustrophobia. But it’s an interesting idea. Presumably one you wouldn’t apply to trains too?
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Most people who talk about quotas or escalating taxes haven’t thought it through. Firstly, we don’t apply this sort of rationale to any other sort of (harmful) service or good, and it’s not clear why it is necessary for flying.
Flying should be taxed more. But people who dream of this also think you should get a cheap hit at this harmful activity as long as it’s, say, once a year, going to Spain on your holidays. If you double APD you would still have frequent travellers hit hard - and in any case, there’s no good reason why someone who purchases one flight ticket to joyride down to Spain be taxed less than someone else who already took their holiday but had a relative die in, say, India. Plus, imagine how much more expensive flying would be if everyone who took 5 or more flights a year was taxed off the aircraft?
This is before you even get into the weeds of how you’d collect and enforce the tax, as it would not work like APD which is the same for everyone, and rely instead on some database of flights taken. I’ve got two passports in two names, and I doubt anyone has thought about how exactly you’d enforce this.
Raising APD is a simpler and fairer way of achieving the same goal.
You're almost saying people are wrong, but you don’t know how to nudge them towards your way of thinking. I suggested an advertising campaign because it is a chance to gently offer an alternative to people's habits. We can test the idea with <£100k, not >£100m.
Yes, obviously we can.
But we will be worse off for throwing vast resources at trying to bring back the halcyon era of sleeper trains.
The jet era is here, there is no going back.
High speed rail might be able to beat the jets for Europe, but overnight sleeper trains have no chance - they just can't move enough people to be economic, and in any case can't really use high speed lines in Europe.
Fischer Tropsch fuel synthesis has been in industrial-scale operation since about 1940. As I said before, it predates the arrival of practical jet aircraft.
Leaving aside that wind and solar panels do not self-multiply and have to be built, if we have near unlimited energy then we can just eat the inefficiencies of going electricity-hydrogen-fischer tropsch kerosene-aircraft.
Why bother with anything? You have to start somewhere. Do you feel the same about EV cars? They only save about a third of the carbon that old cars do, so why bother?
Even with today's electricity it is about an 80% saving and this will increase further with time.
The calculations from my PhD put the electricity gCO2/kWh for zero saving at over 700g/kWh.
UK electricity is now about 160g/kWh and falling rapidly.
What you miss, is that you start somewhere. On a new branch-line. And then humans innovate, develop and improve. But doing nothing - what we’ve always done isn’t the answer.
Never mind the irony of dismissing taking people off airlines into trains as ‘insignificant’, while removing weight from windows and a tiny % of flyers from planes isn’t. These ideas aren’t realistic either. People do need to travel for business. Airlines won’t want the expense of filling in glass and consumers wouldn’t like the sense of claustrophobia. But it’s an interesting idea. Presumably one you wouldn’t apply to trains too?
Well.... business people would just travel in the normal seats with everyone else?
The average age of airliners is pretty young compared to trains (~11.6 years globally), so you wouldn't have to retrofit airliners to remove the windows.
It's hard to get good figures but most outline studies suggest fuel savings of ~30% or so from eliminating the windows.
They are very heavy.
Trains by contrast don't care so much about the weight of the train.
It did, but that was in the days when on driving into the ferry terminal "yes, you have the right number of passports for the people in the car, no we don't need to look at them" was the norm.
Most people who talk about quotas or escalating taxes haven’t thought it through. Firstly, we don’t apply this sort of rationale to any other sort of (harmful) service or good, and it’s not clear why it is necessary for flying.
Flying should be taxed more. But people who dream of this also think you should get a cheap hit at this harmful activity as long as it’s, say, once a year, going to Spain on your holidays. If you double APD you would still have frequent travellers hit hard - and in any case, there’s no good reason why someone who purchases one flight ticket to joyride down to Spain be taxed less than someone else who already took their holiday but had a relative die in, say, India. Plus, imagine how much more expensive flying would be if everyone who took 5 or more flights a year was taxed off the aircraft?
This is before you even get into the weeds of how you’d collect and enforce the tax, as it would not work like APD which is the same for everyone, and rely instead on some database of flights taken. I’ve got two passports in two names, and I doubt anyone has thought about how exactly you’d enforce this.
Raising APD is a simpler and fairer way of achieving the same goal.
You're almost saying people are wrong, but you don’t know how to nudge them towards your way of thinking. I suggested an advertising campaign because it is a chance to gently offer an alternative to people's habits. We can test the idea with <£100k, not >£100m.
Economics is the simplest of drivers of human behaviour. And it’s easy to measure. Flights tend to be cheaper than long distance train tickets. Though that which? Research was interesting suggesting it was closer than many presume.
Taxing aviation fuel is the simplest and most obvious nudge.
The notion that people are ‘wrong’ is misguided. People in the UK can not take a sleeper train to Europe. What is wrong is they don’t have this choice. If such a service was launched, you wouldn’t need an advertising campaign as the free publicity would be huge. And I’m sure an initial service would be booked up in no time.
Taxation of aviation fuel is prohibited under article 24 of the Chicago Convention of 1944, which governs international civil aviation.
Article 24: Aircraft flying to, from or across, the territory of a State shall be admitted temporarily free of duty. Fuel, oil, spare parts, regular equipment and aircraft stores retained on board are also exempted from customs duty, inspection fees or similar charges.
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