Petrol is set to become more expensive from January 1, after MPs backed a proposal to raise excise duties by a narrow majority. The tax on a litre of petrol will increase by 5.6 cents, with diesel up 3.6 cents and LPG by 1.3 cents, if the changes go ahead. MPs supported a ChristenUnie plan to redirect part of the money originally intended to keep pump prices down towards public transport. Earlier this year, the cabinet agreed to extend temporary...
We actually already have that since a while. It’s worked pretty well. There are gonna be a few changes, relatively minor but they do have some impact.
Flights up to 2,000 km away + Caribbean areas of the Kingdom = keep same flight levy of about €30.
Flights of 2,000-5,500 km become about €50.
Further away becomes around €70.
44% are in support of it, 33% has no opinion on it, and only 26% is opposed. Most flights are within Europe.
The expected impact is that most people will then decide to fly closer. There have been talks of making the public transit pass cheaper, which could then attract more people and quicken the recovery from covid.
There’s an argument to be made that flights less than, say, 4 hrs should be taxed more, as a train can easily and more efficiently handle that trip. What with the pre-checkin time, it gives a good 2-3 hrs buffer for transfers. Flying from London to Amsterdam is just silly.
Also, a flight emits more emissions when ascending and descending than at cruising altitude, meaning that short-haul flights emit more per mile than longer ones. And a financial penalty on flying will act best as a deterrent where there are alternatives: one could conceivably replace a flight from Amsterdam to Berlin or Barcelona with a day-long and/or overnight train journey (especially if rail travel was cheaper), though there are few alternatives to flying to New York or Singapore other than not going. (If flights weren’t an option, a trans-Atlantic crossing would take most of a week and a sea journey to East Asia about a month. A train via the Trans-Siberian Railway, were it geopolitically viable, takes a week to go between Moscow and Vladivostok or Beijing.)
Eurostar has annoying pre-checkin times too though at least for London - they recommend over an hour.
I think that does make it faster to fly even with 2*airport to centre transit times - though extra time for checked bag in an airplane might just swing it back the other way.
If you could turn up for eurostar 5 minutes before, like a normal train it’d probably be better.
We actually already have that since a while. It’s worked pretty well. There are gonna be a few changes, relatively minor but they do have some impact.
44% are in support of it, 33% has no opinion on it, and only 26% is opposed. Most flights are within Europe.
The expected impact is that most people will then decide to fly closer. There have been talks of making the public transit pass cheaper, which could then attract more people and quicken the recovery from covid.
There’s an argument to be made that flights less than, say, 4 hrs should be taxed more, as a train can easily and more efficiently handle that trip. What with the pre-checkin time, it gives a good 2-3 hrs buffer for transfers. Flying from London to Amsterdam is just silly.
Also, a flight emits more emissions when ascending and descending than at cruising altitude, meaning that short-haul flights emit more per mile than longer ones. And a financial penalty on flying will act best as a deterrent where there are alternatives: one could conceivably replace a flight from Amsterdam to Berlin or Barcelona with a day-long and/or overnight train journey (especially if rail travel was cheaper), though there are few alternatives to flying to New York or Singapore other than not going. (If flights weren’t an option, a trans-Atlantic crossing would take most of a week and a sea journey to East Asia about a month. A train via the Trans-Siberian Railway, were it geopolitically viable, takes a week to go between Moscow and Vladivostok or Beijing.)
Eurostar has annoying pre-checkin times too though at least for London - they recommend over an hour.
I think that does make it faster to fly even with 2*airport to centre transit times - though extra time for checked bag in an airplane might just swing it back the other way.
If you could turn up for eurostar 5 minutes before, like a normal train it’d probably be better.
Those pre-checkin times are needed because the queues are insane. There should be much higher capacity at rush hour