Flybe problems - did they take rail improvements into account?

[underbank]

Firstly any kind of travel rationing will almost always hit the poorer in society, which in turn will lead to more of a social division, which in turn will lead to malcontent, which will eventually lead to violence, possibly even war.

Only if the "rationing" is based on cost/money. That's the trouble with carbon trading - those with money can just "buy" more. Same with high taxes/duty on fuel, tobacco, alcohol, etc - those with money don't care and carry on regardless. Those without either suffer or turn to crime to pay for it.

How about some "absolute" rationing on miles travelled, based and operated via passports. No opportunity for buying/selling personal "miles". Everyone gets a annual allowance. If you don't use it, you just carry it forward to future years. Set it at a reasonable level for each person to have a foreign trip per year, say UK to America. People then have a choice to fly to America once, or to Europe twice, or if they want to go to Australia or Far East, they have to build it up by not having a foreign holiday for a year or two.

Have some kind of dispensation for those with genuine reasons for needing more allowance, such as leading politicians (ministers etc), embassy staff, aid workers, etc. Topped up with the ability for a company to "buy" extra allowances for their staff, but at a ridiculously high cost, to concentrate their minds on whether they really "need" to travel or not - certainly not just a few percent tax on flights which a company would barely notice.

 

[underbank]

And it's only reasonable that people whose lifestyles involve a lot of driving should pay more for the damage they cause to the rest of society.

It may be "reasonable" in areas where there is a good public transport system. But it's certainly not "reasonable" for people living/working in the smaller cities, towns, villages and rural areas where a car is a virtual necessity. Successive governments over several decades have wrecked the public transport system outside a small number of big cities and encouraged car use. That situation has to be reversed and put right before blanket charges to "punish" car use across the board are imposed.

I live between 2 large villages (each has a population of over 5 thousand so not a random farmhouse on a mountainside which is what some people think "rural" means!). Each used to have a main line train station with direct trains to both Leeds and Manchester. The stations were closed a few decades ago. There are no buses in the evening nor Sundays. Only an hourly service to one town Mon-Sat and nothing at all on any day after 9pm. No service at all to the city just 5 miles away so even by bus, it's a long convoluted journey necessitating a change of bus. School pupils or workers who need to get into the city before 9am have to get the 7.30 bus - remember it's only 5 miles away - there are no cycle lanes and the road doesn't even have a pavement. Both villages used to have a wide variety of shops, both had GP surgeries, both had libraries. All that's gone so people living in the village have no option but to travel to nearby towns/cities for even the most basic amenities.

The 10 thousand people living in these two villages have no real alternative but to "damage" (your word) and it's completely unacceptable to even think of charging them for that, when "society" has taken away the public transport alternatives and local amenities.

Or do you think we should do a Pripyat and just abandon those villages to be taken over by wild animals and weeds and move those 10 thousand people into the already overcrowded city centre?

 

[A0wen]

Reducing or zeroing domestic apd would be the worst possible fix - anti-environmental and effectively free money to all the other airlines.

If specific routes need subsidy for social, economic or other reasons then there are existing ways of achieving this

Your comments about APD being "free money" for the airline are wrong. APD is levied against each passenger so if it were abolished it shouldn't be part of the ticket price and the ticket price should drop. That *might* lead to more people flying but there's no guarantee of it.

It's a bit like VAT - retailers collect it but it doesn't benefit the retailer if an item's category is changed from full VAT to zero unless they don't reduce their prices when it changes. I think with APD and the pricing shown online by most of the airlines and the fact the market is competitive, you'd see the saving passed straight onto the consumer.

 

[Bantamzen]

Only if the "rationing" is based on cost/money. That's the trouble with carbon trading - those with money can just "buy" more. Same with high taxes/duty on fuel, tobacco, alcohol, etc - those with money don't care and carry on regardless. Those without either suffer or turn to crime to pay for it.

How about some "absolute" rationing on miles travelled, based and operated via passports. No opportunity for buying/selling personal "miles". Everyone gets a annual allowance. If you don't use it, you just carry it forward to future years. Set it at a reasonable level for each person to have a foreign trip per year, say UK to America. People then have a choice to fly to America once, or to Europe twice, or if they want to go to Australia or Far East, they have to build it up by not having a foreign holiday for a year or two.

Have some kind of dispensation for those with genuine reasons for needing more allowance, such as leading politicians (ministers etc), embassy staff, aid workers, etc. Topped up with the ability for a company to "buy" extra allowances for their staff, but at a ridiculously high cost, to concentrate their minds on whether they really "need" to travel or not - certainly not just a few percent tax on flights which a company would barely notice.

That sounds like something out of the USSR....

I refer you back to my earlier comments about social division, distrust, violence & war....

 

[underbank]

It's a bit like VAT - retailers collect it but it doesn't benefit the retailer if an item's category is changed from full VAT to zero unless they don't reduce their prices when it changes. I think with APD and the pricing shown online by most of the airlines and the fact the market is competitive, you'd see the saving passed straight onto the consumer.

But in both cases, ultimate price is based on supply & demand. Air fares reduce when demand is less and increase with higher demand. Without APD, I'd suggest fares would stay the same, because they're not currently priced according to cost nor profit expectation - they're priced according to filling the plane. Every chance any removal of APD would just mean higher profits.

Same with a shop selling a Mars Bar. If you have two, say, village shops, one VAT registered the other not, you'll find both charge the same (usually RRP) for the Mars Bar. The non VAT registered shop will therefore make more margin on them. We see the same with price-marked chocolate bars, fizzy drink cans etc in convenience stores. The smaller ones who aren't VAT registered don't charge less - they all charge the same.

 

[underbank]

That sounds like something out of the USSR....

I refer you back to my earlier comments about social division, distrust, violence & war....

Exactly - that was my point. But anything else and you're back to the rich doing what they want, i.e. paying higher taxes, buying carbon credits, etc. and there being no improvement.

Back in the real world, the genie is out of the bottle and we have to accept that air travel is here to stay. Any "artificial" methods of control are flawed in one way or another. So we need to concentrate on alternatives, i.e. road/rail/ship, and improving the energy efficiency/reduce pollution of ALL transport modes. Along with, of course, reducing travel too, such as encouraging virtual business meetings, shopping/working closer to home, manufacturing close to markets rather than the other side of the World.

We need carrot rather than stick, and like everything to do with transport, it needs to be all about making environmentally friendly alternatives available at affordable prices. Trying to "punish" through taxes, higher prices, reducing supply etc won't be anywhere near as popular nor effective.

 

[Bantamzen]

Exactly - that was my point. But anything else and you're back to the rich doing what they want, i.e. paying higher taxes, buying carbon credits, etc. and there being no improvement.

Back in the real world, the genie is out of the bottle and we have to accept that air travel is here to stay. Any "artificial" methods of control are flawed in one way or another. So we need to concentrate on alternatives, i.e. road/rail/ship, and improving the energy efficiency/reduce pollution of ALL transport modes. Along with, of course, reducing travel too, such as encouraging virtual business meetings, shopping/working closer to home, manufacturing close to markets rather than the other side of the World.

We need carrot rather than stick, and like everything to do with transport, it needs to be all about making environmentally friendly alternatives available at affordable prices. Trying to "punish" through taxes, higher prices, reducing supply etc won't be anywhere near as popular nor effective.

In terms of getting people to use the most effective means of transport, I totally agree. However to make even small inroads into the 80%+ of journeys not made by public transport, it isn't just a matter of getting the pricing right, although that will help. Capacity is key here, and is why this country should right now be on with projects like HS2/3/NPR, dealing with choke points like the Castlefield corridor, and investing much more heavily in longer trains throughout the network. But for the most part we are not, especially with the infrastructure which we are woefully behind with.

As for air travel, you are right, people are not likely to suddenly give up what campaigners are hoping for. However some airlines are starting to look at how their passengers can help offset at least some of their shared emissions when booking their flights. I would go one step further and make it a requirement for all airlines to offer passengers this option, along with a projected amount of CO2 & a suggested amount to pay for an offset. Of course unlike so many of the websites that seem to have sprung up to do this, the calculations would have to be accurate for the distance & type of aircraft being booked, as well as offering the passenger a choice recipients who will plant those trees. But it would help passengers start to make informed choices, as well as having the confidence that anything they pay for will actually go where they expect it.

 

[edwin_m]

It's too much of a blunt instrument and doesn't take account of local factors. Why should a bloke in London who ignores their fantastic/expensive public transport system and drives a couple of miles to the gym be charged the same as a woman in Cumbria who drives 2 miles to her GP surgery because there's no bus?

If you want mileage tax, then it has to be based on GPS with a satnav or insurance black box fitted to all cars. "Per mile" taxes could then be higher in areas with good public transport and lower/zero in areas without. It could also trigger congestion charges, tolls, etc. Could also be fine tuned to have a lower "per mile" tax on quiet runs and higher on busy motorways. The possibilities are endless. Far simpler and more efficient than having cameras/ANPR everywhere (which are easy to avoid by false plates or not washing your car and letting the road much build up to obscure the number plate).

As already pointed out several times, a mileage charge could be supplemented by London-style congestion or emissions charges in more sensitive areas. The base charge might be similar to typical fuel duty per mile so an EV user would be no worse off - but a fossil fuel driver would still be paying some level of fuel tax on top.

It may be "reasonable" in areas where there is a good public transport system. But it's certainly not "reasonable" for people living/working in the smaller cities, towns, villages and rural areas where a car is a virtual necessity. Successive governments over several decades have wrecked the public transport system outside a small number of big cities and encouraged car use. That situation has to be reversed and put right before blanket charges to "punish" car use across the board are imposed.

We have to recognize that typically someone living rurally who does a lot of driving into cities has a bigger impact on society than either a rural dweller who travels less, or an urban dweller who can and does walk, cycle or use public transport for most journeys. Addressing this needs a mixture of carrots and sticks.

Theoretically if hardly anyone in rural areas had a car, then there would be enough ridership to justify reasonably frequent and quick bus services like they were in the 1950s before the vicious cycle of congestion and loss of ridership set in. There might even be a few more railway lines, I'll focus on buses as they constitute about 95% of this particular issue. This would give a better level of mobility than those residents without a car have now, but not as good as those with a car currently have. There just isn't going to be a service every few minutes as there is in London and the better-connected other cities. And in practice it isn't going to be possible to deny cars to rural dwellers anyway, for a mixture of good and less good reasons, so the downward spiral of bus provision isn't going to be easily reversed.

But increasing costs, with plenty of warning so people can plan ahead like the London charges, provides an incentive for people to change their lifestyles. This could include buying a less polluting vehicle, working from home part of the time, and making use of whatever public transport improvements arise. Extra costs on motoring also provide a funding stream for improving public transport, as happened with London buses for the introduction of the congestion charge.

 

[Meerkat]

More logical is a simple roads pricing system

There is no such thing as a simple roads pricing scheme!
Setting the prices for every stretch of road would be a nightmare of politics, lobbying, unintended rat runs, and distraction to drivers.
Fitting a box to every car would be a huge task, open to massive fraud and failure rates. Not at all convinced GPS is accurate or reliable enough.
Then it is going to generate vast quantities of data for a huge government IT project - how well do they normally go? The German lorry scheme was a fiasco wasn’t it?
At the end there will be billing, for every single motorist, every month. Plus chasing unpaids and dealing with all the queries and “I never drove there” disputes.
Even dealing with registering all the new cars sold and re-registering second hand sales correctly would be a mammoth task.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Given they manage to fill a 10-car Voyager or the Pendolino equivalent on that route every hour

Do they? My experience is that north of Carlisle the trains are empty, hence why you can nearly always pick up advances for less than a fiver.

And it's only reasonable that people whose lifestyles involve a lot of driving should pay more for the damage they cause to the rest of society.

But increasing costs, with plenty of warning so people can plan ahead like the London charges, provides an incentive for people to change their lifestyles.

It's amazing how- no matter the question- the solution is always more tax!

Now nobody smokes the target is fatty/sugary food, and now that cars are as green as they've ever been the target is the plane.

It's amazing how the government always find a new "evil" lifestyle to tax to the hilt.

Anyone would think these sorts of taxes are more about the government rinsing people.

 

[Tetchytyke]

is why this country should right now be on with projects like HS2/3/NPR,

Yet most green campaign groups, including Greenpeace, are anti-HS2 because of its catastrophic environmental impact.

Rail travel is damaging to the environment. The only way of being carbon-neutral is to stay at home. Greta Thunberg's self-indulgent Interrailing has left a massive carbon footprint, so she can sod off with her lectures too.

 

[AlterEgo]

Only if the "rationing" is based on cost/money. That's the trouble with carbon trading - those with money can just "buy" more. Same with high taxes/duty on fuel, tobacco, alcohol, etc - those with money don't care and carry on regardless. Those without either suffer or turn to crime to pay for it.

How about some "absolute" rationing on miles travelled, based and operated via passports. No opportunity for buying/selling personal "miles". Everyone gets a annual allowance. If you don't use it, you just carry it forward to future years. Set it at a reasonable level for each person to have a foreign trip per year, say UK to America. People then have a choice to fly to America once, or to Europe twice, or if they want to go to Australia or Far East, they have to build it up by not having a foreign holiday for a year or two.

Have some kind of dispensation for those with genuine reasons for needing more allowance, such as leading politicians (ministers etc), embassy staff, aid workers, etc. Topped up with the ability for a company to "buy" extra allowances for their staff, but at a ridiculously high cost, to concentrate their minds on whether they really "need" to travel or not - certainly not just a few percent tax on flights which a company would barely notice.

Sounds like a great plan if you want to live in the Stone Age. Won’t happen and can’t be enforced. I’ll simply go to Amsterdam on the train and fly from there instead (incidentally increasing the number of sectors flown!). Also as a dual national I’ll get a double allowance! Drinks all round.

 

[Bantamzen]

Yet most green campaign groups, including Greenpeace, are anti-HS2 because of its catastrophic environmental impact.

Rail travel is damaging to the environment. The only way of being carbon-neutral is to stay at home. Greta Thunberg's self-indulgent Interrailing has left a massive carbon footprint, so she can sod off with her lectures too.

This is part of the problem with campaign groups, too busy chasing the latest headline busting bandwagon to actually think things through. Clearly if we are to make any kind of dent in things like road use & flying (at least domestically), we are going to need to build more infrastructure. Otherwise you won't get people out of those modes at all.

 

[edwin_m]

Yet most green campaign groups, including Greenpeace, are anti-HS2 because of its catastrophic environmental impact.

Rail travel is damaging to the environment. The only way of being carbon-neutral is to stay at home. Greta Thunberg's self-indulgent Interrailing has left a massive carbon footprint, so she can sod off with her lectures too.

The construction impact is maybe a third of that of a motorway of the same length. When first proposed the CO2 impact of travelling high speed rail was similar to driving and a lot less than flying. But that was based on the power supply mix at the time, which has decarbonized considerably since and will continue to do so.

The carbon footprint of Greta or anyone else making a journey by train is far less than flying and usually less than driving. I can't quite evidence right now due to being on a miserable XC wifi, but a search should find you something in a few seconds.

 

[Tetchytyke]

The construction impact is maybe a third of that of a motorway of the same length.

Perhaps so, but HS2 isn't being built instead of a motorway, it's being built alongside an existing motorway. So it's irrelevant.

This is part of the problem with campaign groups, too busy chasing the latest headline busting bandwagon to actually think things through.

Greenpeace do think things through, and understand that HS2 is extremely environmentally damaging. There's also no evidence to suggest that HS2 will encourage any sort of modal shift (and it certainly won't with £110bn construction costs to recoup through fare revenue).

 

[TrafficEng]

Theoretically if hardly anyone in rural areas had a car, then there would be enough ridership to justify reasonably frequent and quick bus services like they were in the 1950s before the vicious cycle of congestion and loss of ridership set in.

Were there ever reasonably frequent bus services in rural areas in the 1950's?

The rural area I'm most familiar with (circa 10 miles from the nearest large town) had roughly 4 bus services per day each way in the 1970's and 80's. That was typically a 50% or greater increase on the service provided in the 1950's (some villages having had a service only a few times per week).

In the 1990's the route operator experimented by changing and combining routes so several of the more populated villages got an hourly service. The experiment only lasted about 5 years because total ridership didn't increase and the operator sold out.

What has changed is people's patterns of life. In the 1950's most of the rural population I'm thinking of worked in the village they lived in, or a neighbouring one. Almost all of that employment has now gone, but the total population has markedly increased. Children almost exclusively went to a primary school in the village they lived in and were walked there by mums who didn't work so had the time. Now the children have to travel to the school they can get into, and are taken there by a parent on the way to work.

Increasing bus frequencies will not change the fundamental changes society has gone through over the last 60 years.

Only further - and radical - changes to society will allow us to go back to a situation in which public transport forms a viable alternative to the car in many rural areas.

 

[Bantamzen]

Greenpeace do think things through, and understand that HS2 is extremely environmentally damaging. There's also no evidence to suggest that HS2 will encourage any sort of modal shift (and it certainly won't with £110bn construction costs to recoup through fare revenue).

I used to be a member of Greenpeace. I say used to because as time went on they seemed to start to tie themselves in knots, and frankly were becoming less and less effective as a result. HS2 is one example, the discussions on it's merits versus damages have largely centred around getting to London a bit quicker, something that we all ought not know is not the only reason for it. Capacity is what HS2 offers, capacity to start to encourage more modal shifting by separating out the long distance capital traffic, and more localised traffic. So HS2 ought in the long term to help in driving down car journeys, something Greenpeace want to see. However whilst they want more people to use public transport, they don't want any more infrastructure built. Cake & eat it is what they want, but that simply won't work.

Some members I still know seem to dream of some rural village utopia, where people don't go anywhere, where the shops are all local, and everyone eats locally grown organic vegan food. Its a lovely idea I'm sure, but none of them that I know seem to have any practical ideas on how to implement it. And therein lies the problem with Greenpeace's policy on transport, they have a vision but no idea on how to deliver it.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Only further - and radical - changes to society will allow us to go back to a situation in which public transport forms a viable alternative to the car in many rural areas.

Replied here:
https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/viable-rural-transport.198960/

 

[Tetchytyke]

Capacity is what HS2 offers, capacity to start to encourage more modal shifting by separating out the long distance capital traffic, and more localised traffic.

Except, of course, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that HS2 will encourage any modal shift, particularly away from road.

People travel by road because they are priced off the train, or because it's inconvenient for door-to-door travel. Spurting £110bn up the wall on a new train set isn't going to make rail more affordable, especially as fares will have to be hiked up massively to recoup the cost.

Anyway, getting back on topic, Flybe aren't struggling because we have an amazing regional rail network. Because we don't. If you don't want to go to London, rail services are terrible. They are struggling because they signed expensive leases on Embraer jet aircraft that are expensive to run and completely unnecessary for domestic air travel.

 

[jayah]

Given they manage to fill a 10-car Voyager or the Pendolino equivalent on that route every hour (yes that includes other flows, but the plane might too) I'd say the air share was fairly small in comparison. Nevertheless that route doesn't deserve any subsidy by air and it ought to be paying for the environmental consequences.

My point was more about the longer flows where rail is less competitive but the numbers flying are even smaller.

They arent filling Pendolinos on the West Coast unless you include London traffic.

Most XC passengers are not travelling over 2hrs.

Rail seems to have a poor market share even when it is direct, city to city, even at 4hrs. It is often far more expensive than air and that just shouldn't happen.

 

[jayah]

It's not either or, it's both.

Genuinely don't understand if you are trying to make a serious point or not?

Columnists in Modern Railways get exercised about the weight of diesel engines and demand everything be electrified at unlimited cost. But in the great scheme of things, it isnt a huge deal.

 

[jayah]

It may be "reasonable" in areas where there is a good public transport system. But it's certainly not "reasonable" for people living/working in the smaller cities, towns, villages and rural areas where a car is a virtual necessity. Successive governments over several decades have wrecked the public transport system outside a small number of big cities and encouraged car use. That situation has to be reversed and put right before blanket charges to "punish" car use across the board are imposed.

I live between 2 large villages (each has a population of over 5 thousand so not a random farmhouse on a mountainside which is what some people think "rural" means!). Each used to have a main line train station with direct trains to both Leeds and Manchester. The stations were closed a few decades ago. There are no buses in the evening nor Sundays. Only an hourly service to one town Mon-Sat and nothing at all on any day after 9pm. No service at all to the city just 5 miles away so even by bus, it's a long convoluted journey necessitating a change of bus. School pupils or workers who need to get into the city before 9am have to get the 7.30 bus - remember it's only 5 miles away - there are no cycle lanes and the road doesn't even have a pavement. Both villages used to have a wide variety of shops, both had GP surgeries, both had libraries. All that's gone so people living in the village have no option but to travel to nearby towns/cities for even the most basic amenities.

The 10 thousand people living in these two villages have no real alternative but to "damage" (your word) and it's completely unacceptable to even think of charging them for that, when "society" has taken away the public transport alternatives and local amenities.

Or do you think we should do a Pripyat and just abandon those villages to be taken over by wild animals and weeds and move those 10 thousand people into the already overcrowded city centre?

They do have a choice of course they chose to live there. The stations closed decades ago.

Our broken planning system no doubt has created dozens of extra suburban homes in these places each with a driveway, garage and two cars. At least.

 

[underbank]

Were there ever reasonably frequent bus services in rural areas in the 1950's?

Apparently so, both my Mother and Father travelled to work by bus from our village when they moved there in the early 50s - they didn't get a car until the 70's. Father was a butcher's shop manager in City, 5 miles away and Mother was a teacher in town, 5 miles the other way. Father started work at 7am so there must have been a bus before then. Mother needed to be at school before 9am, so again, must have been a bus. When we and my brother went to secondary school in the 70s, we went by service bus from the village, he went to the town sec school, I went to the city one in the other direction. We all came home in various buses too. So there must have been a pretty frequent service. I have vague recollections of having to be quick out of school to catch the usual bus home, but if I missed it, I can't remember it being too long for the next one - maybe 15/20 minutes or so.

There are old/disused bus stops through our village centre. The last time they were used was 2009 if I remember rightly. But before then, the village bus service had been run down and it was no surprise few people used it from the village centre as it was just 2 buses per day at around 10.30 and 11.30 to the city, so completely useless for workers and school kids - I only ever saw the odd OAP using it. Now our village is "served" by a bus route which passes the village on the main road by-pass, so quite a walk from the extremes of the village - for some it's a walk on a side road without a pavement nor street lighting, so far from ideal.

Until the bus service is improved for our village, you're simply not going to get people to stop using their cars - they have no alternative.

And as I said upthread, our village isn't small - it has over 5,000 residents, and the next village only a mile away is the same, slightly smaller but still just under 5,000 residents, so that's a total of 10,000 people without anything resembling a suitable bus service.

 

[furnessvale]

Genuinely don't understand if you are trying to make a serious point or not?

Columnists in Modern Railways get exercised about the weight of diesel engines and demand everything be electrified at unlimited cost. But in the great scheme of things, it isnt a huge deal.

I'll try again. The extra weight of the diesel engines is not instead of the weight of the passengers it is in addition to the weight of the passengers.

Thus a fully loaded diesel unit is heavier than a fully loaded electric unit. Give the diesel the same horsepower at the wheelrim and it is considerably heavier. Try to match the 5 minute rating of electric motors and the diesel is heavier again.

 

[The Ham]

Apparently so, both my Mother and Father travelled to work by bus from our village when they moved there in the early 50s - they didn't get a car until the 70's. Father was a butcher's shop manager in City, 5 miles away and Mother was a teacher in town, 5 miles the other way. Father started work at 7am so there must have been a bus before then. Mother needed to be at school before 9am, so again, must have been a bus. When we and my brother went to secondary school in the 70s, we went by service bus from the village, he went to the town sec school, I went to the city one in the other direction. We all came home in various buses too. So there must have been a pretty frequent service. I have vague recollections of having to be quick out of school to catch the usual bus home, but if I missed it, I can't remember it being too long for the next one - maybe 15/20 minutes or so.

There are old/disused bus stops through our village centre. The last time they were used was 2009 if I remember rightly. But before then, the village bus service had been run down and it was no surprise few people used it from the village centre as it was just 2 buses per day at around 10.30 and 11.30 to the city, so completely useless for workers and school kids - I only ever saw the odd OAP using it. Now our village is "served" by a bus route which passes the village on the main road by-pass, so quite a walk from the extremes of the village - for some it's a walk on a side road without a pavement nor street lighting, so far from ideal.

Until the bus service is improved for our village, you're simply not going to get people to stop using their cars - they have no alternative.

And as I said upthread, our village isn't small - it has over 5,000 residents, and the next village only a mile away is the same, slightly smaller but still just under 5,000 residents, so that's a total of 10,000 people without anything resembling a suitable bus service.

FYI government specification of rural is a settlement with less than 10,000 people.

As such your local two villages have quite a way to go before they even get closer to being counted as urban.

 

[underbank]

FYI government specification of rural is a settlement with less than 10,000 people.

As such your local two villages have quite a way to go before they even get closer to being counted as urban.

But some people still think rural means a sleepy hamlet or a few farmhouses on the side of a mountain. There are some pretty big places which are defined as "rural", i.e. thousands of residents, yet still have poor public transport and other amenities.

For those who think people should just move, how do they propose that towns & cities would cope with the influx of tens of thousands of people needing to move into them from the surrounding towns and villages? Then what do we do with the thousands of derelict homes?

Surely, a hell of a lot easier and cheaper just to improve public transport or accept that people in rural areas need cars and therefore shouldn't be taxed as highly as those in urban areas who have genuine alternatives.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Surely, a hell of a lot easier and cheaper just to improve public transport or accept that people in rural areas need cars and therefore shouldn't be taxed as highly as those in urban areas who have genuine alternatives.

Or that if you're going to road price, you price the rural miles cheaper than the urban ones and ensure there are suitable P&R facilities.

Which there are at airports, albeit at a fee (are we back on topic now? )

 

[devonexpress]

Even with an aircraft which is comparable to cars that's still higher than rail travel.

What are your sources for how any aircraft is comparable to a car in terms of CO2e emissions?

Then how does that compare to rail?

Then how does air travel continue to improve, bearing in mind that significant numbers of rail passengers are carried by EMU's which are powered by a rapidly greening power generation system?

Even then rail is significantly higher than walking/cycling.

The problem is that with a growing population (either at a local level within the UK or worldwide) that to stand still on emissions we've got to:
a) travel less
b) travel using much greener modes of travel
c) reduce the emissions of the travel which we are doing
d) carbon offsetting
e) mix of the above

Rail does well on b and c and can even be part of the answer with a. In comparison air travel does badly on all options, with the possible exception of d.

However carbon offsetting generally only works where there's easy wins in terms of helping others cut their emissions, as time goes on that's going to get harder (read more expensive) to do. As such it's likely to be a short term option.

Since 1990 what had the emissions of the UK done and how has aviation contributed to this?

From what's generally available it would appear that UK emissions have fallen, however aviation's emissions have doubled (i.e. the fall would have been much bigger if we weren't flying as much). Unless there's information which can be cited and ideally sources provided which provides evidence which is different to this.

The evidence for aviation's emissions doubling is from here (p9 of the PDF, P8 as labeled on the pages):
https://assets.publishing.service.g...ta/file/787488/tsgb-2018-report-summaries.pdf

Visit Bombardier website. I've worked on the Q400 so I know how good they are. It's all very well saying trains are less polluting, what about the HST's, as much as I love them they used to chuck out emissions like anything, and as for electrification, where do you think all the electricity is coming from, its not 100% renewable.

 

[The Ham]

Visit Bombardier website. I've worked on the Q400 so I know how good they are. It's all very well saying trains are less polluting, what about the HST's, as much as I love them they used to chuck out emissions like anything, and as for electrification, where do you think all the electricity is coming from, its not 100% renewable.

I think that 5% of our electricity comes from coal, that in 2018 we had more power generated by renewables than were predicted to be the case in 2010 for 2020.

The generation grid is a lot greener in 2018 than it was in 2014 and we used less energy than we have at any time since 1994 and less energy on a per person basis than 1984.

 

[jayah]

I'll try again. The extra weight of the diesel engines is not instead of the weight of the passengers it is in addition to the weight of the passengers.

Thus a fully loaded diesel unit is heavier than a fully loaded electric unit. Give the diesel the same horsepower at the wheelrim and it is considerably heavier. Try to match the 5 minute rating of electric motors and the diesel is heavier again.

In the great scheme of things this weight is not material and certainly not a justification for diverting £bn that should be spent making trains faster by improving track, signals and level crossings and making trains longer.

On performance up to 125mph a modern diesel will match the electric equivalent.