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Comment by simias | Hacker News Reader

I took a plane from Lisbon to Paris for 35 euros last week. That feels incredibly cheap to me, especially compared to high-speed train. I routinely pay twice as much to get not even half as far by TGV. Making train more competitive by taxing planes more might not be a terrible idea. I say might because I can't pretend to even begin to understand all the implications of this tax but hopefully whoever came up with it did...

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On distances like Lisbom to Paris trains can't compete on time, not only on price. There is no way a train can be made faster with the current technology (hyperloop: let's wait and see.) I think nobody goes from Lisbon to Paris and back by train to spend a weekend there.

Of course if flying costs more people will fly less.

Portugal is generally not connected by train anywhere else.

Last I checked we didn't even have more than one or 2 routes to Spain by train, due to different gauges, and spain has different gauges from france.

If you want to go from Paris to Lisbon by train expect a whole day of travel if not more, with multiple changes

Hopefully if planes become more expensive we'll see some investments in the train infrastructure. Going from Lisbon to Paris even without changes will probably still take a long time even with a bullet train but if I can schedule a trip by night and sleep reasonably comfortably I think I'd consider it over the plane.

Catching a train in the late afternoon in the center of Lisbon, working for a few hours, sleeping and waking up in the center of Paris sounds fairly pleasant to me. Of course at the moment that's effectively science fiction.

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