More details on Air France/KLM high-speed rail venture

Earlier this summer we posted about how Air France-KLM (or whatever they’re called in these days of airline mergers) was considering getting into the high-speed rail business when the EU liberalizes international rail travel in 2010. That plan took a more solid form today when the airline publicly announced its intention to begin offering high-speed train service in partnership with environmental services company Veolia. The company has apparently been in talks with Alstom, developers of the TGV stock, about purchasing a more advanced version known as the AGV.

What’s interesting is that the sources I’ve read don’t seem to be talking about this as just a useful way to connect flights. Air France seems to want this to be a money maker. According to Deutsche Welle:

The diversification amounted to a “change in flight direction for Air France” which was responding to “the difficult position of airlines for journeys of less than three hours.”

This is great, but I can just imagine that misguided politicians here are going to start pointing to Europe saying “Look, rail can make money over there, why does it need public funding here?” What they fail to understand is that new operators such as Air France will be using tracks that were built with public money, tracks that are rented from a public company. Amtrak’s situation is very different from those of the European rail carriers, but many tend not to realize this when they cry “Privatize!” from the rooftops every year.

Filed under: International High Speed Rail, air france, airlines, high speed rail, hsr, klm

Air France considering entering HSR business

File this one under ‘Woah.’ Air France, France’s national air carrier and one of the world’s largest airlines, is considering replacing some of its connecting flights with high-speed rail service in conjunction with Veolia Transport, also of France. According to the International Herald Tribune:

“More than half of all flights are connections, and in effect long-haul is where the value is. Short haul is just way for Air France to get passengers to Charles de Gaulle” airport in Paris, Van den Brul said.

Shifting passengers onto trains from planes would result in “significant” cost savings, a particular concern for airlines struggling to cope with record high oil prices.

Energy accounts for about 40 percent of an airline’s total costs, against only around 10-15 percent for rail.

This is pretty nutty stuff. In the US at least, airlines have been suppressing passenger rail for decades. Hence, it’s more than a little ironic that at least one of them is turning to the efficiencies of HSR to save their collapsing business model.

And this is exactly the market high-speed rail can appeal to. Planes are always going to dominate the long-haul routes. New York-Los Angeles, Miami-Seattle, any overseas travel for obvious reasons… some routes are too far for even fast trains to really compete with air travel. But Minneapolis-Chicago, Boston-Washington, Los Angeles-San Francisco, these are the lengths where high-speed trains are eminently more practical than planes. With fuel costs for airlines rising, particularly on these short trips, we can only hope that more airlines like Air France will see that HSR can benefit them as well as us.

This is what we want: More transportation options.

Filed under: International High Speed Rail, air france, air france-klm, airlines, high speed rail, hsr