Planes, Trains, and the Cost of Travelling
When trying to book a journey from England into mainland Europe, it’s common to book a flight with one of the leading no-frills airlines. In fact, with the current flood of cheap deals, one can travel to France, or Spain for a meagre £10 one way (inc. fees and taxes). It’s no wonder then, that air travel over short distances has become so popular with the average consumer.
It doesn’t apply to travelling abroad either. One can travel within the UK by plane for less than the cost of a meal at an averagely priced restaurant.
It is wonderful and exciting to think that international travel can now be undertaken by the majority of society, but at what cost?
It’s become widely accepted that, per passenger, air travel is the most polluting form of transport (based on the idea that more than one person is travelling in a car).
The following graph displays the various transport methods, and their carbon emissions (per person, per mile):
The source of these figures can be obtained here.
Of course, this information on it’s own is really not useful. It’s important to know how popular air travel has become to fully understand the environmental impact.
A 2006 survey conducted by Global TGI stated that Britain had the highest population percentage that travelled by plane (53%), followed closely by Ireland and New Zealand (49% and 41% respectively). The fact that these countries are all islands is a significant contributing factor to these figures, but for Britain at least, one cannot ignore the availability of alternate forms of transport.
The problem lies when the cost of these transports outweigh the perceived environmental benefits associated with them. For example, at the time of writing this article, a return train from London to Amsterdam, booked off-peak with Eurostar would cost £336 (inc. tax). A no-frills flight from Ryan Air however, would cost £60 (inc. fees and taxes).
There are approximately 220 miles between London and Amsterdam (as the crow flies), and even though air or train travel would be more, we can use this figure as a base distance for comparison.
The overall carbon emissions for a £60 return flight would be: 426.8 CO2 pounds per passenger.
And for the £336 train, it would be: 198 CO2 pounds per passenger.
The train is causes less than half the amount of emissions per passenger, and yet costs over 5 times as much. Who can afford to be environmentally friendly when it costs so much?
The fact that the train is less hassle, more comfortable and safer to travel on for the short haul would encourage a lot of people to use it compared with air travel, where you have consider travelling to airports located out of the city, check in times, waiting times, etc. However the cost quickly puts people off, and it’s a wonder why governments in Europe do not do more to
a) discourage air travel; but at the same time,
b) make rail travel cheaper.
It’s even more interesting to note that the British government currently quote the following…
“In 2006, air travel accounted for 6.4 per cent of the UK’s emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas causing climate change. Forecasts suggest that this could grow. If no action is taken, carbon dioxide emissions from aviation could make up around 10 per cent of the UK’s total carbon dioxide emissions by 2020. Air travel is also responsible for some non-carbon dioxide climate change effects, although there is still considerable scientific uncertainty about the scale of these impacts.”
…and yet do nothing to encourage the consumer to go green.
On top of this, many airlines now offer the choice to off-set your carbon (which is similar to somebody calling the ambulance before choosing to break your legs), and that makes people feel that their not doing any damage to the environment, therefore justifying it as a clean form of transport.
If the governments in Europe are serious about reducing carbon emissions (as they claim they are), then they cannot simply tax airlines heavily - they must provide a cheaper alternative for the consumer.