Jon WorthAug 15, 2023

Missing the point

Yes taxation rates matter. But France-Spain and France-Belgium trains are expensive to take *because the capacity is too low*

If you reduce ticket prices on those routes you WON’T TRANSPORT MORE PEOPLE. Just different people. As the trains are full anyway

So, Clement Beaune, how are you going to get more TGVs to Barcelona?

https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/08/10/france-is-raising-taxes-on-flights-to-pay-for-trains-should-other-european-countries-do-th

Why are flights cheaper than trains in Europe?

Train travel is often more expensive than flying. Could taxing aviation to invest in the rail industry help change that?

euronews
Show threadJon WorthAug 15, 2023
And if your response is “ah but rail firms will add more capacity”, I’d point you to Thalys that hasn’t upped capacity in 2 decades despite rising demand and sky high prices. And SNCF that runs just 2 TGVs to Barcelona a day. Both easy to solve, both not done.
Show threadAGTMADCAT 🇬🇧🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼🇵🇸Aug 16, 2023
@jon In theory this is what open access regulations are supposed to help solve - these underserved routes are clearly popular and profitable, so a private company should be able to lease some trainsets and station slots and get a service going.
Show threadJon Worth
@AGTMADCAT In theory. But if there are no suitable trains to lease (and generally there are not), then what?
Aug 16, 2023 at 8:21amWeb
Show threadAGTMADCAT 🇬🇧🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼🇵🇸Aug 16, 2023
@jon then I guess you go to Alstom or Hitachi or Siemens or Talgo or whomever and work something out with their financing department, and you get in line for new stock. Queues are a couple of years but not too bad.
Show threadJon WorthAug 16, 2023

@AGTMADCAT you know that cracking this problem is part of my work, right?

The issue is scale. There’s no leasing market for passenger stock. The operators who’d lease passenger stock are small. So a leasing company has never dared go to Alstom or Siemens (or more likely FPS in Poland or Astra in Romania) and ordered 300 carriages.

Show threadAGTMADCAT 🇬🇧🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼🇵🇸Aug 16, 2023

@jon I did not! That's super cool.

I was making assumptions that the broader European rolling stock market had some parallels with the UK market, which for all the faults of franchising (and there are many), seems to have created a norm of leasing, with leasing companies seeming to always have something knocking around.

I'm thinking in particular of Grand Central in the UK, which started off very small and still only has 50 carriages. Obviously old high speed stock is going to be thinner on the ground, but I'd think that a cheap 200kph service would probably still draw customers.