Planes, Trains and stupid politicians

Airlines are taking a bit of a battering lately in the fight on global warming and yet another politician has thrown in his two-penneth.



Tory MP Tim Yeo is calling for a complete ban on domestic flights. He believes, that by taxing all flights between UK airports and forcing us onto the train, we'll be saving the environment and the hole in the O-Zone layer will be healed.

The only problem however, is he's talking garbage.

Not about the aircraft CO2 thing, on that he's probably right, but he's wrong on the 'take the train' rubbish.

There's a reason why, in Britain, we don't use trains. It's because they're crowded, late, expensive, unreliable, you need to be a MENSA member to understand the fare structure and they don't work in the autumn when leaves fall on the track.

Planes on the other hand are much more comfortable and in fact, they're cheaper. Don't believe me?

Just as a basic experiment, I've got train and plane fares for a one-way trip from London to Manchester, the sort of trip hundreds if not thousands of business people make on a regular basis. As part of this, I'll need to be in Manchester before 9:00am on March 20th (a date picked completely at random). They say you have to book in advance for the decent train fares, so I'm giving them more than a fare (geddit) chance.

Here's how they each got on:
First let see how the eco-friendly public service train did. National Rail offered me a single ticket from London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly, leaving the capital at 6:20 and arriving in Manchester 2 and a half hours later at 8:50 via Virgin trains for the princely sum of £42.00.
Now for the airlines. There's actually a choice of three airlines, all vying for my business, so that should keep the prices competitive.
Firstly, British Airways, our national carrier. They'll offer to take me from London Gatwick and get me to Manchester by 8:10 for the fee of £39.10. That's already better than the train but I think we can do better.
Bmi are next up. This time you leave Heathrow, and land in Lancashire at 8:15 but for more than £10 less than BA - £29 to be exact.
But we're not done. This route has a new kid on the block, low-cost carrier Jet2. There London Gatwick to Manchester service comes in at an amazing £3.99, but before you get excited, that excludes taxes. That makes the £3.99 fare a £24.99 fare, still the cheapest of the three and more than £17 cheaper than the 'good for the environment, public service, publicly subsidised' train service.

And that's the crux of the problem. We're deciding to fly because, at the end of the day, we save money. The logical solution therefore in such case would be to lower your prices, improve your service and become more competitive would it not?

Not if your a minister. Improving services would cost money whilst lowering fares would hit the shareholders of the various private enterprises that have their fingers in the National Rail pie.
So instead of lowering the cost of rail travel to encourage the fliers and even motorists onto the trains, what you do is create a new form of taxation to deter people from taking to the sky's or the motorway network.
Except that doesn't work either so then you have to resort to making stupid statements like this one and quite quickly, you're back to square one.

The only saving grace is that we haven't elected this idiot, not yet anyway.