Friday Reads – 3 May 2019

1. On the flight shaming movement, I recently took the train from Rome to the UK, and loved it. But it was only because my son (who loved it too) couldn’t fly after a holiday ear infection. So the insurance paid for it, otherwise we couldn’t have afforded it. I also fly to Germany all to often, and always check Eurostar, and although that is a rail service that DB is actually trying to promote it is nearly always much much much more expensive than flying.

   I mean, London-Hamburg is exactly the same distance as London-Inverness, which I can get for £50-60 (on a sleeper too, and sometimes as low as £37).

2. Is it that flying is too cheap, rather than rail being too expensive?

3. Obviously climate change is a really big problem for aviation, but from an economic point of view, a plane doesn’t need 1000 miles of infrastructure between the two points, so fixed costs are much, much lower

4. Herned: Possibly you are right that fixed costs are sometimes lower for planes than trains, but to prove this you would need to know rather more than the simple fact that planes don’t run on rails. A plane costs much more per seat than a train for a start.

   Or if by “fixed cost” you just mean “cost of the parts of the infrastructure that do not move about”, well, OK, but that would be quite different from the usual economic meaning of the term.

5. Key to air operators is surely cost per seat (standing not being allowed), or per seat mile, and what the revenue per seat / seat mile can yield? To users, it is the fare. Someone can argue that all these costs should include the cost of environmental impact, and I wouldn’t argue – but wasn’t that what the Air Passenger Duty was originally alleged to be about? Unfortunately rail (at least in UK) can grossly overprice its fares, if you want to try a head-on comparison and stimulate a modal shift.

   A quick example. Based in the UK or in other EU countries, a plane can do multiple return legs during a day of normal ‘European’ distance. Up to 8 different legs if averaging 1-2½ hours each, and the plane can switch without problem between internal and international mode. Indeed that is often the most efficient use of plane and crew shifts.

   So say 10 staff for a day’s flights (2 shifts – 2 pilots 3 cabin staff), and say 180 seats to be sold on each of 8 legs. That’s 1440 seats, and say £50-150k fares possible in the one day. Fare per seat per journey leg? Average about £100, easy to flex up or down by £50 or more in each direction, depending on demand.

   Just checked now (23:12 on 3/5) and easyJet can offer me for Wednesday 8th May – so an Advance type ticket – a Bristol (BRS)-Glasgow (GLA) fare of £38.28 on the 07:10, getting me to Glasgow Airport at 08:25, whereas – which is what I don’t understand – the CrossCountry fare for the first train out of Bristol Temple Meads (BRI at 06.27 according to journey planner) is £156.50 to change twice and reach Glasgow Central (GLC) at 12:42, or £92.50 to stay on the same train and reach Glasgow at 14:12. How much?! For how little utility?!

   If this is the CrossCountry approach to revenue maximisation, forget it. The answer is obvious – fly – even if you need a local journey at each end. You might need a local journey with the train option as well.

   In 20+ years of frequent travelling between the West Country and Scotland, I have never once used the train, although I’d like to (I’m very happy to work on a train providing there is a table). Sadly it just isn’t economical in money or time, or any combination of the two. The CrossCountry rail fare is too steep, and so one looks for when it is affordable to travel by plane, if one isn’t starting from London. As shown above, it is easy to find an affordable time to fly, if you don’t have to go immediately. And if you did have to go immediately, the plane is much quicker.

6. The big subsidy for airlines: No tax on fuel.

   If you hike the cost of fuel by 20% overnight, you’d see a difference…

7. @Milton Clevedon. Pedant mode. A plane with 180 seats would need 2 pilots and 4 cabin crew : 1 to 50 minimum of cabin crew on ‘normal’ air services.
   But I agree with your general point, and you missed the detail that Cross Country trains is such a miserable experience that if my train journey would require use of their service I’ll change my plan.

8. “Cross Country trains is such a miserable experience ”

   partly due to Branson’s conceit that rail travel should be more like air travel. Pity was, he has little experience of travelling economy class. And what is tolerable on a one hour flight is considerably less so on a six hour train journey.

   Speed not only sells, it also allows the operator to do more with less. A plane can make maybe six round trips to Aberdeen in the time a train can do one. The post-Hatfield gauge-corner-cracking crisis emphasised this – there was as much rolling stock running around as normal, but only half the services could be run because of the blanket 50mph speed limit.

9. Ironic that Scandinavian Airlines did their bit to reduce flight emissions, as their pilots have been on strike this week!

   To be fair to Cross Country and the other rail operators, to an extent they are victims of their own success. Passenger numbers in the UK have soared in recent years. Less than 1bn in 2002/03 to 1.7bn now is a massive rise which has naturally caused the network to creak, but realistically there will still be some journeys for which flying still is more convenient

   Flights do attract APD as well, which has contributed to many domestic routes being stopped and regional airports closing.

10. Your missing the point here (though Milton Clevedon comes close), there are many routes where rail competes well with air on price, but there are many other very similar routes where it doesn’t, and that is purely caused by the way the rail industry is organised and sets prices, and not because of any inherent cost issues.

    And the governments of all the big European countries don’t do anything about it because they are more interested in dogma (UK) or supplier (DE,FR) than consumers.

    So perhaps the flight shame movement, or our own Extinction Rebellion, instead of blocking London public transport or shaming individuals, should think and organise some interesting direct action that aims to do something about the underlying problem. Though I admit I couldn’t think of anything.

11. The problem for regional airports is their operating overhead for low traffic.
    Large airports externalise their congestion and pollution but exploit much lower unit charges.
    Air Passenger Duty was introduced as a Carbon Tax but could instead be treated as a Congestion Charge on Infrastructure, that would equalise the market for domestic community services in lieu of market manipulation with Public Service Obligation subsidies.

    The Birmingham Moor Street story is praiseworthy.

12. Aircraft get their fuel tax-free. Trains don’t. When they get a level playing field on that (by the removal of what is effectively a subsidy for airlines) we might see an increased modal shift to the more fuel-efficient option. But that fuel discount is moreorless world-wide so will take serious negotiating which no government appears willing to take on as yet.

13. It is a UN agreement (via ICAO) that aircraft fuel is tax-free. This dates back to the 1940s/50s when (a) air travel was very much a minority sport and (b) there was a general acceptance that it needed encouraging. Since air travel became much more widely used and available, no-one has had the political courage to try and get this agreement changed. Maybe Extinction Rebellion might give a way.

14. Isn’t it more nuanced than that. The treaties require the supply of avgas for international flights to be duty free. But I don’t think there is anything preventing a fuel tax on domestic (or even intra EU) flights if only there was a political will for this.

15. The “red diesel” used by trains has a low effective duty rate. The additional power generation for electric trains presumably doesn’t have any duty at all. VAT is also zero-rated for rail travel.

    As far as trains vs planes goes, I can’t see that tax has much to do with it.

16. There HAS been a modal shift from flying to the train.

    BA used to fly regularly from Heathrow to Manchester for example. London to Paris used to be one of the busiest air routes in the world. Indeed the number of people flying on domestic flights within England is tiny

    The key is speed. From memory, 4 hours seems to be the cutoff time, below that people will choose the train, above that people will fly. HS2 will have a significant impact on London to Glasgow/Edinburgh.

    Yes there will still be slow routes (from the regions to the regions) where people will fly instead, but the number are tiny when compared to the overall number of people using rail.

17. I get pleasure & a large proportion of my income from the rail industry but I also enjoy trying to be rational.
    So I find myself arguing that air can be as green as the train.

    Rail traction electricity may be 20 % nuclear.
    However nuclear is not that green when you account for uranium mining, the enormous steel & concrete inputs into making nuclear stations & the huge energy cost in dismantling & digging shock proof vaults for spent fuel & radiatiated waste.

    Above about 50 mph most rail & all aircraft traction energy is used to push through dense air.

    Aircraft plough through air 6 miles up that is four times less dense & 16 times less resistive than at rail level.
    Aircraft can weigh 30% less per seat than lard butt rail units.
    That is because airframes do not have to be designed like battering rams & for years rail engineers did not consider weight an issue. Indeed they like weight for rail grip.

    If aircraft were allowed to land following their glide path they would coast allmost energy free for the final ground distance of 60 miles to the airport.
    They have the potential to be very fuel efficient, but I accept they always have to burn carbon containing molecules .
    I like trains very much but I also like getting it right. Have I?

18. J. ELSON: I think you probably need to consider that short-haul flights are unable to climb so high, so benefit less from lesser wind resistance.

    Also, aircraft need to carry enough fuel to deal with non-landing situations, which must reduce the overall efficiency.

    There is also the matter of airports rarely being the final destination for the passenger: the door-to-door calculations for train-only verses planes and their connecting cars/taxis must be taken into consideration.

19. Surely, if we are concerned about the effect of travel on the environment, it’s not just about replacing air journeys with rail but reducing the overall number of journeys by any form of transport.

20. @J. Elson

    Not quite. For one, in terms of greenhouse gases, nuclear is really really good even including lifecycle emissions like concrete to build the plants. IPCC 2014 report stated mean emissions to be around 12 gCO2eq/kWh – for comparison, they have the best combined-cycle gas plants at 410 gCO2eq/kWh and the median CC gas plant at 490. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_emissions_of_energy_sources#2014_IPCC.2C_Global_warming_potential_of_selected_electricity_sources for the numbers.

    There is the problem of waste material, but for better or worse, that’s a problem on scale of centuries or millennia, whereas greenhouse gases is a problem we must solve within years or at most decades.

    If anything the problem with nuclear is that it’s a giant piece of infrastructure and the current UK political culture struggles with implementation of megaprojects. But the existing plants are the best source of energy you currently have (along with wind, but there the variability can be a problem).

    There are a number of journey emission calculators and they will generally tell you that particularly short-range flights compare poorly with trains. Of course this varies with load factors and train energy source and so on, but in general, overcoming gravity doesn’t come free. Flight emissions generally come in similar on a per-passenger-km level as passenger cars.

    Generally on flights the take-off is the determining factor for energy usage (compared with trains, where gravity is your friend). Then there is an inflection point somewhere around 6 or 8 hours of flight time where longer flights are more energy-intensive than two shorter connecting flights (even accounting for the second take-off) because of the weight of the fuel you have to carry at take-off. On short flights, it really is all about take-off and climb-out.

21. J Elson

    Aircraft do not need to burn molecules containing carbon. Batteries may not have the necessary energy density yet (and have the distinct disadvantage of weighing the same when spent as when fully charged) but hydrogen has a better energy per unit mass than any hydrocarbon.

    The Hindenburg may make hydrogen-fuelled aircraft a hard sell, but the amount of hydrogen needed to keep it airborne was several million times the amount that would be needed to fuel a Transatlantic flight (The Hindenburg was propelled by diesel engines)

    Recalling the scenes at Moscow yesterday, another advantage of hydrogen is that if it leaks, or is deliberately jettisoned, it floats up out of harm’s way, instead of soaking into everything in the vicinity.

    @Mikey C
    Inter-regional flights are usually difficult to arrange because there are few city pairs generating enough traffic to justify regular flights, so it is usually necessary to fly two legs via a major hub – which costs more in fuel, airport charges, time, inconvenience of possible missed connections etc. One of the advantages of rail is that it is much easier to stop en route, so one train making ten stops A, B, C ….J can provide direct journeys it would take 45 separate flights to cover (AB, BC, CD ,…… IJ; AC, BD, ……. HJ; ………..AI, BJ; AJ)

22. @Timbeau. Surely the ‘lesser city’ city pair is the business model that FlyBe go after. Think of the slogan painted on the side of their planes – “faster than road or rail”. They have an extensive network connecting cities like Glasgow Southampton Inverness etc.
    FlyBe are not making much money at it, but there an argument that has a lot to do with buying the wrong planes (new jets) for the job rather than that the business opportunity isn’t there.

23. @ Brian B

    You have to get to very short haul before that is an issue. Last week I flew Bilbao-Bristol, 500 miles ish at a cruising height of 36000 ft, according to the announcement. For routes such as that, you would need to take into account that any land-based route is quite a lot further before working out the differentials (I did go there by ship, which one hopes is a bit better)

24. Bilbao-Bristol is 558 mi at shortest great-circle distance. Meanwhile the other example given of Bristol to Glasgow (GLA) is 318 mi great-circle distance. Even if we take a reasonable land distance (by proxy of driving via M5, M6, and M74) of 371 mi, that’s still over 30% shorter.

    Ultimately the flight shaming isn’t really about a journey from Bristol to Glasgow, it’s about journeys like Stockholm to Malmö (390 mi between two of Sweden’s biggest cities) or the flights from London to Manchester, Birmingham, or Amsterdam. And maybe about cutting back discretionary air travel.

25. @HERNED

    I was actually thinking of the likes of Gatwick to Plymouth that I used to do a lot (340km) or Gatwick to Amsterdam (360km).

    I didn’t mind the cost of these as I was usually doing them for work, and there was a considerable amount of time saved as the rail routes were very indirect.

26. @ J.ELSON

    UK electric rail traction has been 100% low carbon – nuclear, renewable or offsets – since 2013 contract with EDF https://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/news/ten-year-deal-powers-britains-biggest-rail-electrification-programme-in-a-generation

    Slightly surprised that more isn’t made of this

    I did find this detailed breakdown of all Network Rail energy costs from 2017 (apologies, but it’s a Word document) https://safety.networkrail.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/How-Network-Rail-buys-energy-v2-2017-03.docx

    Interestingly it records that (even though as ‘transport’ rail traction is exempt from both Climate Change Levy and Carbon Reduction Commitment for Large Users) more that 25% of the cost of traction electricity is to support for Renewables.

27. Re PeterW,

    The previous long term contract pre 2013 was nuclear so the only real change was adding renewables to the mix but at the price NR are paying it will be nuclear by default.

28. @jarek “flights from London to Manchester, Birmingham, or Amsterdam”

    London to Birmingham flights were trialed in 1951 by BEA from Northolt and only lasted 9 months. Another attempt was made in 1955 using a larger craft from a more central location at the Waterloo Air Terminal, although carrying 3,822 passengers it also closed after 10 months.

    London to Manchester has not been able to compete with West Coast electrification and the M6, Euston was rebuilt to provide the airport experience. Only Heathrow still has that link and it is more about transit traffic.

    London to Amsterdam is only a recent direct rail pair (one way), again it carries a large proportion of Schipol transit traffic.

29. There used to be a pleasing circularity about the freight flows on the electrified Woodhead Line in its last years, when it was mainly kept open by he need to transport Yorkshire coal to Fiddlers Ferry power station in Cheshire. So the power station was powering its own supply chain. (Moreover, the supplier of the fuel, the customer, and the delivery network, were all in public ownership, so financially efficient as no shareholders demanding dividends).

    I don’t think any of the remaining coal flows in the UK use electric traction.

30. @peterw What matters is how the additional demand is satisfied – it’s always fossil fuel. It makes people feel good about themselves, but it doesn’t otherwise matter that there is a contract saying your electrons are low carbon.

    Off-setting is interesting. I can’t imagine there’s a more market-friendly way of dealing with the bulk of it than making carbon disappear in paperwork. Many of the physical schemes that do exist seem a bit noddy – planting trees at an altitude where they tend to increase climate change, for example.

    @J. Elson The answer you should be getting should match the empirical total emissions for the transport mode (including construction and maintenance). Work back from that to explore the mechanism, and how it may be altered.

31. Looking at the carbon cost of taking one passenger from, say, London to, say, Bilbao may not give the right answer. The demand for any such journey is not fixed, but will depend enormously on the cost, time taken, convenience etc. So a big increase in the air fare would not result in all the passengers going by train – a few of them would, but the majority would find other ways to achieve their goals (leisure: go somewhere closer; business: use conference calls, or travel less frequently, say).

    The biggest damage done to the environment by cheap flights, I reckon, is the extra travel that they cause.

32. @TomHawtin – ” physical schemes that do exist seem a bit noddy – planting trees at an altitude where they tend to increase climate change”

    How about funding a solar panel for an emerging economy ?

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