Taking a train from Sydney to Melbourne could cut up to 20% of emissions. Courtesy Rail Projects Victoria.
Air travel has been flagged as a significant contributor to global warming. Some governments are even legislating to cut air miles where they can. France is leading the charge to legislate for the replacement of short-haul flights with train journeys. By James Teo.
Paris, October 2021. Following a Europe-wide upsurge in flygskam, many people are opting to take the train rather than the plane. Which is fine if you are jetting off for a holiday by the sea, but less convenient if you are travelling on a route which demands several small hops to get to your destination.
“Air transport has the highest climate impact” - Stefan Baumeister. Courtesy University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
However, several European governments are looking at legislating that airlines should not offer shorthaul flights – where an alternative train journey will do the job just as well but with significantly less emissions.
“Even though air travel often provides the fastest transport option, it also has the highest climate impact,” says Stefan Baumeister, a senior lecturer at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. And, as he explains, although aircraft usually represent the only feasible option for long-haul trips, they are also frequently on short-haul routes.
“It is the short-haul flights that produce the highest emissions per passenger,” he explains. “These are also the ones that could be replaced the most easily by land-based transportation modes.” Such as trains.
As a result, Macron’s government in France has legislated to ban routes where ‘the same journey can be made by train in less than 2.5 hours.’ While it still needs to be voted on in the French Senate, this would be a real milestone in making sure that transport companies go further than greenwashing, and offer real options to people who want to keep their travel emissions down. National airline Air France has already moved voluntarily in this direction, offering single point booking for travellers who want to use both air and train to get to their destination.
Elsewhere in Europe, the Austrian government has taken a slightly different tack, recently introducing a Euro30 tax on all locally-booked airline tickets for flights of less than 350km, along with a three hour limit on connecting flights where a train service could be viably substituted.
“France has made the right first step,” said Dr Erich Foster of the ALLRAIL European lobby group. “Now it’s time for European stakeholders to grasp the opportunity and become more ambitious. We are now in a ‘decisive decade’ for tackling climate change.” ALLRAIL is recommending that most European night-flight services be replaced by night trains – something that is already happening in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Ukraine and Poland as well as in France.
"The environmental choice must take precedence,” said French member of parliament Francois Pupponi, as long as ‘social and economic choices around industry and airports’ are also considered - such as the use of aircraft for longer haul flights.
As Baumeister notes, any legislation should aim for a potential reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, while also taking into account consumer costs and real door to door travel times. “Our results showed that replacing short-haul flights (with trains) could significantly reduce a country’s climate impact. Furthermore, we found that existing land-based transportation modes can keep up with the travel times of aircrafts on routes up to 400 km.”
Train is becoming the shorthaul transport of choice in many European countries. Courtesy NightJet.
The French legislation came on the heels of a government bail-out of Air France, which saw its business model decimated over the last two years’pandemic travel restrictions. The airline was handed €7bn in loans to keep operating, but even that came with the condition that it looked at reducing the number of domestic flights it had on its timetable.
This spreading movement to cut down train-replaceable shorthaul flights is spreading worldwide. One Australian study showed that scrapping air journeys in favour of high-speed rail travel between Sydney and Melbourne would reduce CO₂ emissions by 18% over time – even including emissions from building and maintaining the required infrastructure (something that is often left out of emissions calculations for air travel). Airline operator Qatar Airways has also recently signed a codeshare agreement with German rail firm Deutsche Bahn.
Taking into account the journey time, seating and sleeping space, food offerings, views, accessible wifi and phone, and obviously those emissions issues, the train would look like a no-brain choice for shorthaul eco-friendly travel.
As Swiss Railways CEO Vincent Ducrot says, “The development of … rail connections day and night is an important element for Switzerland. This is an important contribution to promoting climate-friendly mobility … and is a sustainable trend. The demand for environmentally friendly and resource-efficient mobility will continue to increase.”