Almost a third of journeys often flown within Great Britain could be quicker if people travelled by train instead, according to a recent report from the Intergenerational Foundation think tank. The bulk of the rest would be around 30 minutes slower by train than by plane.
The findings come from a report that suggests a ban on domestic passenger flights for journeys with viable railway journeys of under four-and-a-half hours could cut Great Britain’s CO2 emissions from domestic aviation in half.
Domestic aviation was responsible for emitting 2.7 megatonnes of CO2 and CO2 equivalents in 2019. However, almost two-thirds (62%) of CO2 emissions from UK domestic flights in 2019 were between cities linked by the rail network, and are potentially replaceable by rail travel.
The report (pdf) found that the Newcastle-London and Manchester-London routes have faster city-centre to city-centre travel by train than by plane. The report calls for the government to ban domestic flights on routes that could be travelled by rail in 4.5 hours or less.
An alternative to an outright ban could however be to apply comparable taxes on aviation fuel that apply to road fuels. At the moment, although the government taxes fuel used by road and rail, it doesn’t tax aviation fuel. An international agreement (pdf) prevents taxes on aviation fuel for international travel, but would not forbid that for domestic airlines.
At the moment, domestic flights are usually cheaper than rail fares, unless booked in advance, but that difference shrinks considerably, and may even reverse if domestic aviation fuel were to be taxed.
This brings the aviation industry in line with the principle of polluter pays in taxation.
There does however have to be an investment in rail as well.
High Speed 2 (HS2), when it opens will substantially increase capacity on the railways to cope with increasing numbers of passengers, but there also needs to be shorter term regional upgrades.
There is evidence that when rail travel is reliable, then people will switch to using it, and that requires investment in reliability.
A large part of the reason for the above mentioned Manchester-London rail route being faster than by plane is because of the substantial investment in both tracks and trains that not only increased the speed of the trains, but also reduce the delays caused by problems.
It famously took time to sort out the upgrade, but with journeys between the two cities now a shade under 2 hours — and that was from city centre to city centre, air travel between the cities has collapsed.
Just randomly checking on a flights website, I could find just one flight from London to Manchester arriving before 9am on a Friday, but a similar trip by train would offer me three trips arriving between 8am and 9am. And the prices were comparable.
A ban on domestic flights as proposed by the think tank is possible, but rather than using the stick to drive people onto trains, why not make the trains so desirable that people wouldn’t even think of flying?
At the time of writing: If I want to go to Manchester tomorrow morning it will cost £57 from Heathrow with British Airways. A train from Euston will cost me £185. (Assuming Avanti actually run it). Ok, last minute fare but a train should always be cheaper than a plane, surely?
Totally agree with the direction. But it’s not just enough to tax aviation fuel. The cost of train travel has got come down too. £185 for a journey that would’ve cost about £45 had I booked a few weeks ago. Madness. Not to mention the number of actual ticket options.
Yes ok ok, demand pricing and all that… but customers should not be expected to understand the intricacies. You can’t help wonder how many people would go for the train by default if you told them “Euston to Piccadilly, £45 each way, all day, every day”. (A man can dream).
Behaviours will not change until the DfT get serious about sorting the mess of rail fares. Until then, people will go for the cheapest route, which frustratingly is the plane quite a lot of the time.
My return train trip search for tomorrow just came in at £160, and a British Airways flight is £150 for London to Manchester and back again.
BA app gives me LHR-MAN tomorrow return in economy hand baggage only for £ 448.897
There is no flight displayed for £57
Chespest one way is £138 = and thats for the 21.30 flight
The French dealt with this issue faitly recently.
On certain routes to/from Paris well served by fast trains they ended the sale of flights where there wasn’t an onward connection. They didn’t ban flights entirely but this reduced the number of flights operating.
Unfortunate that this site doesn’t allow screenshot submissions as I would’ve shown you that via Google Flights at 7:10pm today there was a single fare to MAN for £57.
Take the route Rome-Milan in Italy. 20 or so years ago it was by far the busiest domestic connection by plane. Today flights between the two cities have virtually disappeared.
Not because of bans or fuel taxes, but thanks to the free market. People were given the option of travelling city centre to centre in less than 3.5 hours by train, using the newly completed high speed line, at affordable costs (taking a last minute train, today, would cost £80 – one week in advance, £58). And people chose it en-mass. Virtually no one today flies from Rome to Milan.
I am visting family and I really want to travel by train however the cost of the ticket is £61. The petrol in my car for the journey is £26. This is why people don’t travel by train.
Personally I hate driving, I find it stressful and dangerous apart from the pollution I am breathing in. I always take the train, far more relaxing , I can read a book, look out the window play with my laptop if I had one. That is why people take the train.
And it’s door to door at the time you want to go.
The biggest issue even more so than cost is that you simply can’t rely on trains anymore! And hence, there needs to be an alternative… Improve the train punctuality and reliability, and then by all means ban certain routes like the French did.
I vote for a semi-free market option top level te playing field
*Tax aviation fuel fairly
* Encourage competition by requiring that rail websites also list a flying option for domestic and certain short haul international routes where there is a rail/ferry/tunnel option (inject the data into the industry data sources for all companies to use, with a link to airline booking websites)
* Also encourage competition by requiring multi-airline travel booking sites (e.g. Google, Kayak, Expedia, etc.) to show rail options–inject the data directly or via major GDS systems (Galileo, Sabre etc.)
* all travel websites to sho Co2 calculation for all modes (train and plane)
I’m not sure whether express buses should be included in this levelling the field. Although American Airlines now operates an express bus that is booked as a flight (Philadelphia to Atlantic City–c.f. London to Bournemouth?) and US train operator Amtrak also runs an extensive express bus network (permanent rail replacement buses, in practice)
Its alright to say by train is cheaper say between London and Manchester but people seem to be ignoring the fact that for some you spend money getting to London we dont all live next to Euston
The Rome to Milan train fares are incredibly cheap, if HS2 was operational now I am certain the fares would be much higher even for the shorter journey London to Birmingham.
Current position is that the train is unreliable – no idea from week to week whether it will actually be running. There is zero chance this will happen.
What is required is to force carriers to offer through-ticketing between air and rail, with protected connections. That would kill off most domestic flying overnight.
People aren’t stupid if trains were quicker and better people would use them and the flights would naturally dry up.
Typical lefty thinking – let’s kill the excellent and the mediocre will magically improve to fill the void and if it doesn’t we’ll pour billions of taxpayer’s money at the problem we created.
Probably a think tank of people who never take trains