PARIS – France has banned domestic short-haul flights where rail alternatives exist to cut carbon emissions, BBC News reported. The law comes into effect two years after French lawmakers had voted to end airline routes where the same journey could be made by train in under two-and-a-half hours. France’s Citizens’ Convention on Climate, which was created by President Emmanuel Macron in 2019 and included 150 members of the public, had proposed scrapping plane journeys where train journeys of under four hours existed. It was reduced to two-and-a-half hours after objections from some regions, as well as the airline Air France-KLM.
The ban all but rules out air travel between Paris and cities including Nantes, Lyon and Bordeaux, while connecting flights are unaffected.
The government had faced calls to introduce even stricter rules. French consumer group UFC-Que Choisir had earlier called on lawmakers to retain the four-hour limit. “On average, the plane emits 77 times more CO2 per passenger than the train on these routes, even though the train is cheaper and the time lost is limited to 40 minutes,” the group said. It also called for “safeguards that French national railway SNCF will not seize the opportunity to artificially inflate its prices or degrade the quality of rail service,” BBC reported.
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