[alancalverd (OP)]

This is why public transport needs to be as near free as makes no difference, to compensate for it's other failings. Unfortunately it's actually going the other way:

Ah, the joys of privatisation. You take a natural monopoly, sell it in unprofitable but noncompeting chunks, then subsidise the losses  "performance" bonuses of the new owners. You might look at water, gas and electricity prices too.

The reason motoring has not  kept pace with the overall cost of living is that (a) you have a real choice between competing providers of cars, (b) since most of what you pay is tax, the government effectively controls the price of road fuel and (c) there is still a degree of competition between fuel suppliers because you can always drive to the next garage.

[Petrochemicals]

amazingly in London people don't need this, by some sort of magic it is possible to live without a car yet still travel.

Back in the 1980s the Dept of Health ran a national survey of disability and discovered that there were very few disabled people in London, but over 25% of the population of rural Northern Ireland was seriously mobility-impaired. I was on a committee charged with looking at technological solutions to disability but before calling for solutions I thought it worthwhile to question the question. It turned out that a key question was "Can you walk to a bus stop?" and many other questions concerned shopping, visiting a doctor or dentist, and so forth. Something to do, I think, with population density.

I'm afraid the correct answer there Alan was 'The Underground'. Low energy usage per passenger transported, quicker than a car across the city. Unfortunately limited to the capital city in this country, unlike other more progressive European standard bearers.

Could go in to Birmingham Bristol Manchester Leeds Sheffield Liverpool and expand the pitiful efforts in Tyneside and Glazgee' reduce energy use journey times congestion and air pollution for 20 million people, but would probably cost about 100 billion.

[alancalverd (OP)]

Most of  the London Underground is north of the Thames. Half the population live on the other side and rely to a greater extent on buses.

A lot of the Tube isn't a tube at all - it was built by "cut and cover", long before such disruption to road traffic became unacceptable. Tunnelling is vastly more expensive but you could indeed do a lot of good for 100,000,000,000 - the Elizabeth Line cost about 25bn.

Geology aside (South London being very marshy and unsuitable for tunnels) you need a significant population and commercial density over a significant area to support an underground rail network. Birmingham would be a serious candidate and is anomalous in not having one, whilst Glasgow and Newcastle do.

[Bored chemist]

"A mile of road will take you nowhere. A mile of runway will take you anywhere."

don't run door-to-door, so you still need a city full of motor vehicles to get to and from

Pick one.

[alancalverd (OP)]

Unless you live next door to the train station, you will probably need some form of motor transport to get there.  If I want to travel to Glasgow it takes me about ten minutes longer to drive to Stansted airport than to the train station (where the car park is full by 0900), then around 7 hours by train, or 75 minutes by air for half the cost. And whilst  the train companies are receiving all sorts of subsidies, the airline makes a profit.

[Bored chemist]

If I had a diesel engine car, could I run it on jet fuel (with a bit of oil)?
How much does a litre cost?

[Petrochemicals]

Unless you live next door to the train station, you will probably need some form of motor transport to get there.  If I want to travel to Glasgow it takes me about ten minutes longer to drive to Stansted airport than to the train station (where the car park is full by 0900), then around 7 hours by train, or 75 minutes by air for half the cost. And whilst  the train companies are receiving all sorts of subsidies, the airline makes a profit.

but what about the 2 hour pre flight check-in time, the unloading time the other end, taxi etc etc. You make it sound like we could pop down the south of France for a meal after work. How long in the Cessna, door to door ?

[vhfpmr]

the train companies are receiving all sorts of subsidies, the airline makes a profit.

Air travel is better than trains overall, but it's not subsidy-free. Aviation taxes and charges only cover 42% of costs, the rest is externalised, and in terms of climate change, trains beat aviation hands down. How  much profit would aviation make if travellers were made to pay the true costs? How many would drive if motorists were made to pay the true costs? Bus & rail is heavily subsidised because it's deemed less harmful to society, but what's the excuse for the rest of it?

https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/696d402f-a45a-11e9-9d01-01aa75ed71a1

[alancalverd (OP)]

If I had a diesel engine car, could I run it on jet fuel (with a bit of oil)?
How much does a litre cost?

An old tractor, possibly, but maybe not a modern high performance diesel. The basic fuel cost is, I think,  around 80 p per litre, half the cost of AVGAS.

[alancalverd (OP)]

Aviation taxes and charges only cover 42% of costs,

Hypothetical costs. The charges are levied as a luxury tax, notionally in response to the perceived, claimed or imagined impact of aviation, and are paid into the central exchequer where they offset various governmental extravagances such as the subsidies to rail companies.

How  much profit would aviation make if travellers were made to pay the true costs?

I pay the entire true cost of owning and operating a small plane, with a bit of subsidy actually coming from the airlines who pay route charges that provide traffic control for everyone. But most UK airspace below 10,000 ft is still uncontrolled so I don't really need that service  unless I want to fly above cloud or directly over a major airport. And it turns out that, as I mentioned earlier, with 2 or 3 passengers it's cheaper than going by rail. Flying solo, and including landing fees, it costs about the same as first-class rail.   

[alancalverd (OP)]

You make it sound like we could pop down the south of France for a meal after work. How long in the Cessna, door to door ?

15 minutes to the airfield, 20 minutes to get airborne, then 130 mph in a straight-ish line to wherever. Most airfields will arrange to have a taxi waiting and refuel the plane while I'm at work. Customs and immigration is no sweat. South of France is a bit of a haul for lunch, but  Le Touquet is less than 90 minutes away and has free bicycles - 15 minutes into town.

[Petrochemicals]

You make it sound like we could pop down the south of France for a meal after work. How long in the Cessna, door to door ?

15 minutes to the airfield, 20 minutes to get airborne, then 130 mph in a straight-ish line to wherever. Most airfields will arrange to have a taxi waiting and refuel the plane while I'm at work. Customs and immigration is no sweat. South of France is a bit of a haul for lunch, but  Le Touquet is less than 90 minutes away and has free bicycles - 15 minutes into town.

Paris is only 2 hours by train.

[alancalverd (OP)]

Plus 90 minutes to get to London and as long as it takes to check in. My estimated flight time  to Le Bourget is under 2 hours, at a cost of about ?220 for myself and up to 3 passengers - and even if I fly solo, it works out cheaper than the train.

[vhfpmr]

Hypothetical costs.

Only for climate change deniers. The whole problem with cost coverage is that all the costs that are easy to ignore, or deny, or inflict on others become externalised, and aren't paid by the customers of the business. The issue isn't just climate change, waterways are another example of a public dustbin that's been in use since the year dot because out of sight is out of accountant's minds.

In the case of cars the cost coverage ratio is around 50%, which is barely enough to cover just the road accidents alone. (Denmark is the only country with a road passenger cost coverage ratio of 100%.)

How  much profit would aviation make if travellers were made to pay the true costs?

I pay the entire true cost of owning and operating a small plane, with a bit of subsidy actually coming from the airlines who pay route charges that provide traffic control for everyone. But most UK airspace below 10,000 ft is still uncontrolled so I don't really need that service  unless I want to fly above cloud or directly over a major airport. And it turns out that, as I mentioned earlier, with 2 or 3 passengers it's cheaper than going by rail. Flying solo, and including landing fees, it costs about the same as first-class rail.   

That interweb thingy is telling me that the typical profit margin in the aviation industry is less than 3%, how much of that do you think would be left if the cost coverage ratio were increased from 42% to 100%? How much of their business would be left if the fares more than doubled?

[Bored chemist]

If I had a diesel engine car, could I run it on jet fuel (with a bit of oil)?
How much does a litre cost?

An old tractor, possibly, but maybe not a modern high performance diesel. The basic fuel cost is, I think,  around 80 p per litre, half the cost of AVGAS.

Or about the same cost as jet fuel- which is what I asked about.
Not sure what would happen if you used avgas in a tractor.

[Petrochemicals]

Plus 90 minutes to get to London and as long as it takes to check in. My estimated flight time  to Le Bourget is under 2 hours, at a cost of about ?220 for myself and up to 3 passengers - and even if I fly solo, it works out cheaper than the train.

landing fees administration, taxi fare, or do they have bicycles too?

[alancalverd (OP)]

Landing fees vary from ?10 (in an honesty box on a farm) to around ?100 at the busiest airports with full traffic control and instrument approach. Le Bourget has a cheap (compared with UK prices)  rail link to central Paris.

[Petrochemicals]

Landing fees vary from ?10 (in an honesty box on a farm) to around ?100 at the busiest airports with full traffic control and instrument approach. Le Bourget has a cheap (compared with UK prices)  rail link to central Paris.

boom boom tish.

[evan_au]

Australia inherited some of Britain's railway developments from 150 years ago...
As a group of British colonies, they looked to the mother country for engineering design of their railway system.
- As I understand it, one looked to England, another to Scotland, and one looked to Ireland.
- Later, these different colonies integrated to become states of Australia, with different railway gauges, and incompatible rolling stock.

I recently visited the town of Peterborough; there were railway lines entering Peterborough from 4 directions, using 3 different gauges.
- But the same workshops needed to service trains on all lines.
- Here is a short section of the train line over the pits inside the workshop

https://southaustralia.com/products/flinders-ranges-and-outback/attraction/steamtown-heritage-rail-centre

Australian Railway Gauges.jpg (167.54 kB . 775x578 - viewed 98 times)

[paul cotter]

BC, a petrol(gasoline) spark ignition engine requires a certain minimum octane rating to minimise knocking which reduces efficiency and can damage the engine. With all the fuel compressed in the cylinder prior to the spark a slow burn is desirable and one gets this with branched chain alkanes. The octane rating is a percentage of the performance obtainable with iso-octane. With the diesel the fuel is sprayed in during the expansion stroke and the fastest possible burn rate is required or otherwise a build up of unburnt fuel and subsequent ignition can cause diesel knock. The diesel standard is the cetane rating and in simplistic terms a fuel with a high octane rating will have a low cetane rating and a fuel with a high cetane rating will have a low octane rating. So petrol(gasoline ) in a diesel engine would probably wreck it.