More Taxes on Flights for a Train-Friendly Future

France is looking to close the gap between train tickets and airplane tickets by further taxing the aviation industry to invest in the national railway network, curbing the heavily polluting sector in favor of an environmentally-friendlier industry.

“In a climate crisis, giving tax exemptions to a super polluting sector is incompatible with the challenges of today,” says Jo Dardenne, the aviation director at the clean transport campaign group Transport and Environment.

According to a Greenpeace report, taking the train costs, on average, twice as much as flying. This disparity is explained by the lower taxes the aviation industry benefits from. To help customers choose trains over planes, there also needs to be a centralized booking website and better cooperation between national train companies to simplify cross-border journeys and to find the best deals. To that effect, the European Commission is working on a Regulation on Multimodal Digital Mobility Services to improve booking tickets for trains, buses, and airplanes. Another way to close the gap between train and plane fares is for the European Union to revamp its energy taxes, with the idea to introduce a tax on kerosene and lower the price of greener fuels.