If you'd like Dijon to re open its airport, please sign the petition
 

I'm not sure I should post this here or in the lounge but it is travel related and it would make a big progress for everyone travelling in to and from Burgundy.

The general manager of Dijon Chambre de Commerce sent me a petition to support Dijon airport. I was n°882 yesterday and now there are more than 1700 signatures. A few of them are British living in Burgundy or in the UK and like most of the Burgundians, they want to travel more easily. You may view what it is like before signing
http://app1.dijon.cci.fr/petition/cci_lstsig.jsp
to sign it (you can add a comment too)
http://app1.dijon.cci.fr/petition/cci_petition2.jsp
It seems crazy not to have an airport in Burgundy!
Thank you!!!!

I came in at 1770. For non-French speakers , where it asks for your addre4ss it wants an email address.

Merci avalon, you're right, they send you a confirmation with thanks.
You are the 1st American I think, great!
Where are the British Fodorites?

If you read the comments you'll see a lot of people who also want an air link with Bordeaux and Toulouse. Imagine tasting Burgundy wines one day and then Bordeaux wines the next day (in the right vineyards of course!)

I'm certainly NOT signing. It's not a petition to open an airport. It's but a request to squander taxpayers' money on yet another non-viable French business. I wonder how much of tht money is supposed to be coming from EU Restructuring funds - ie MY taxes?

I'm not French. If the people of Burgundy want an airport but can't make Dijon economically viable, it's up to them - not a foreigner - to find a business plan that works.

Far worse-located airports - like Coventry or Liverpool - are now successful businesses because people with a bit of gumption got off their bums and made them work. They DIDN'T waste time asking some bloody bureaucrat to do that for them.

Could it actually be true, as George Bush has been mocked for saying, that 'entrepreneur' is used in French only to describe people who organise funerals?

Dijon is less than 2 hours by rail from several major airports. I see no reason to continue to deteriorate the environment and squander oil on airplanes when it is not necessary.

Flanner don't worry about your money, it is a local business no funds from the EU and you won't have to give a penny.
Unfortunately the bureaucrats are the only ones who decide to make it possible or not. We just want to show them that many people, not only Burgundian people are in need of this airport.

Kerouac, there is no direct acces to the Atlantic coast like Bordeaux, you surely know that already.
If I don't want to pollute at all, I'll take the train, 6.5h changing in Paris or 10h changing in Lyon. A bit short for a week end for someone willing to see as much as possible of one's short trip to France(from a tourist view of course, a company would say time is money)
I do wish they could fly with electricity or beetle juice only...

I found a map that shows the airports in France
http://www.azureva.com/commun/carte-...aeroports.php3

A number of the airports appear to be missing -- Geneva(French side), Mulhouse, Metz-Nancy....

Non - no more airports supporting a terribly unfriendly environmental form of travel.

Dijon - CDG trains should be more frequent perhaps - then it's two hours to Dijon from a major air hub

Geneva and Mulhouse are close enough

coco cherie go green

I certainly signed. I hope to be living in London for a while in a couple of years and my time to travel in France and other countries on the continent will be limited. I'd love to be able to fly directly into Dijon.

For those of you who disagree (and want to 'go green'), don't you travel by plane at all? If you were sincere about going green, you'd stop flying completely.

I had the same discussion with a friend who wanted to know why I was flying Porter Air out of Toronto Islands. Well, Porter is a downtown airport which doesn't fly jets, uses minimal space and can be reached by public transportation. She would fly out of Pearson Airport, a jet jungle which ate up thousands of acres of good farmland, and can only be accessed (for the most part) by car on a 12-lane highway.

Sometimes going green isn't where you expect it to be.

For those of you who disagree (and want to 'go green'), don't you travel by plane at all? If you were sincere about going green, you'd stop flying completely>

i only travel by plane where trains or buses don't go - like across the ocean

to encourage air traffic IMO is irresponsible, esp for a place like Dijon which is in easy reach of other airports

Europe already gives preferential treatment to airlines or trains in a fuel tax or something - we need more trains - perhaps a bullet train to Geneva airport rather than an airport IMO

and i don't know the local reasons and impacts really but in general enough airports and encouraging more heavily polluting air travel

goddesstogo wrote: "If you were sincere about going green, you'd stop flying completely."

That's nonsense. There are at least forty shades of green.

I can fly directly from Ireland to about 10 different places in France. Would I be much better off if that number were 11? Would the world be better off?

[More than half of my trips to France are made by boat, partly motivated by green sentiment.]

'I can fly directly from Ireland to about 10 different places in France. Would I be much better off if that number were 11? Would the world be better off?'

Well, unless you're magically flying two places simultaneously, it wouldn't matter if the number were 11. And nothing's to stop you from traveling to France by other means. Some travelers may have time constraints that you may not have. Or we could close the airport you use in Ireland so we can have one in Dijon. :) Then we'd stay the same amount of green that we are now.

How many cities similar to Dijon would want airports - including some much more remote from airports than Mustard town is?

In many cities folks mobilize to prevent airports being built actually

Frankly, I don't think that a country the size of France, considering its excellent rail infrastructure, needs more than a grand maximum of 10 airports, yet it already has far more than that.

Does the Dijon Chamber of Commerce think that the price of oil will go back down to $20 a barrel?

Dear Coco,
etant fou d'avions, je ne peux que ressentir joie et plaisir a l'annonce de cette petition. Vive les aeroports!
Ceci dit, ce beau pays qu'est la France possede un tel reseau de transport ferroviaire, rapide, efficace et ponctuel qu'il est certainement difficile de justifier la construction onereuse d'un aerodrome et ses longues pistes de ciment. De plus, Dijon etant maintenant relie DIRECTEMENT a l'aeroport CDG/Paris par TGV, ce traffic, actuellement limite a quelque trains par jour, pourrait etre etendu a plusieur rames par heure, rendant l'emergence d'une connection aerienne inutile. En ces jours sombres de rechauffement globale et augmentation du cout du petrole, il est ainsi NECESSAIRE de garder a l'esprit ce qu'implique le voyage aerien, que ce soit consommation excessive d'energie, nuisances sonores ou autres. Le train, au contraire, est veritablement l'antithese de l'avion moderne: pour une vitesse legerement reduite, l'economie d'utilisation qui en resulte est tout simplement enorme, par exemple au niveau de la quantite d'equivalent petrole requise par tete. De plus, le train a peu de difficulte a s'infiltrer jusqu'aux centre villes, alors que ces beaux avions et leurs moteurs, que mon fils d'ailleur etudie a l'universite et espere, un jour, concevoir, reste des monstres pour l'environnement.
Passes un super week-end, levant les yeux de temps en temps pour apercevoir les trainees blanches de condensation laisses par nos jets modernes volant si hauts, dechargant brutalement leurs oxides dangereuses si proches de cette couche d'ozone qui nous protege.

PalenQ

PQ,
Would you mind translating please so the rest of us can be in on this post.

Mustard town ???

goldwynn asked: "Mustard town ???"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijon

goddesstogo wrote: "Would you mind translating please so the rest of us can be in on this post."

In brief: trains are better than planes, especially on environmental grounds.

"trains are better than planes"

Well, you'd have a problem convincing me of that right now. We just took a dreadful 12-hour train ride from NY to Toronto because we thought the train would be a nice experience. It was not. We could have been home in an hour if we'd flown.