Lawmakers in France have voted to ban short-haul internal flights where train alternatives exist, in a bid to reduce carbon emissions.

They voted in favour of a bill to end routes where the same journey could be made by train in under two-and-a-half hours.

The law says that connecting flights however, will not be affected.

The planned measures will face a further vote in the Senate before becoming law.

The measures could affect travel between Paris and cities including Nantes, Lyon and Bordeaux.

The French government had also faced calls to introduce for even stricter rules on domestic flights.

France’s Citizens’ Convention on Climate, which was created by President Emmanuel Macron in 2019 and included 150 members of the public, had proposed scrapping plane journeys where train journeys of under four hours existed.

This is not the first time similar measures have been introduced.

In 2020 Austrian Airlines replaced a flight route between the capital Vienna and the city of Salzburg with an increased train service, after receiving a government bailout with provisions to cut its carbon footprint.