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TL;DR: yes!
I'm left with a lot of questions though, as the scope of the article is quite limited.
Short-haul flight are banned, so the gains seem obvious. But the article doesn't seem to detail if they're actually substituted by rail. Travellers could also be going by car, search for destinations further away, maybe not go at all.
I guess it's quite hard to find an actual effect from a broader perspective, but if their expectations are true, travellers using rail should have a noticable increase. It's a shame this is missing in the article.
Basically the article is saying that if you scrap a bunch of flights, emissions by aviations go down. Maybe I'm missing the point, but that seems pretty obvious. I'd like to know what the actual broader effect is of these measures taken.
Cars are still roughly an order of magnitude less emitting for the same trip compared to planes so in the worst case it's still a win, as long as it doesn't increase public subsidization of car-centric infrastructure. I think I would personally take rail if I were presented with car or train. I can at least do something while riding the train or even work remotely or something.
Planes are terrible for emissions
I would like to add the stipulation that intelligently planned uses of electric aircraft that provide unique low impact and cost shorthaul capabilities by charging opportunistically from the grid are a different path and shouldn't be mixed up with fossil fuel aircraft unnecessarily used when trains make more sense.
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2026
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