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British Mensa Travel Special Interest Group |
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How
to travel green Few doubt that climate change has become in recent years a serious issue (though maybe someone should tell the President of the United States). David Attenborough, no less, has issued his warnings. He has done us a service but environmental awareness has long been growing and I for one find myself worried about the state of the planet in years to come. The mere fact that our summers seem to be getting unpleasantly hot is cause for concern. I like a sunny day as much as anyone, but temperatures of 90 degrees plus for days on end are too much as far as I’m concerned. Our politicians might otherwise be Yellow, Blue or Red, but nearly all of them these days also claim to be Green. All of us should try to do our bit to safeguard the environment e.g. by recycling as much as we can. I have to say, though, that sometimes I can find environmentalists almost unbearably sanctimonious. There are not always easy black-and-white solutions. Cycling is certainly an environment-friendly way of travel and most cyclists are considerate to other road users - but unfortunately there are a fair few, the "lycra louts", who aren't. Wind power might at first sight seem preferable to nasty old nuclear - but modern windmills are ugly and I for one don't want to see them all over our hills. And does anyone else get irritated by the preachy little notices in hotel rooms urging one to save the environment by not having one’s towels changed every day? Actually the hotels are right and it doesn’t hurt to use the same towel two days running. I just can’t help thinking, though, that they are probably more interested in the favourable impact on the bottom line of reduced laundry costs. A good example of sanctimoniousness is the current vogue for assessing the environmental damage caused by someone travelling by plane. I happen to think that, on the whole, it is a good thing that, about a century ago, aeroplanes were invented. In any case they cannot be uninvented. Like other inventions, such as the internet more recently, there are downsides: barely had air travel become possible than flying machines were being used, in World War 1, to drop bombs. But air travel makes possible travel and that has to be a good thing, in my view. Very few of us have time for the leisurely sea voyages of old if we want to visit distant places. Yet when I was telling a colleague about a holiday in Costa Rica, about as environmentally friendly a destination as one can get, she chided me for all the gallons of aviation fuel expended in the process. She’s a good mate and this was a wind-up - but others would have been serious. Returning
to the theme of air travel, I am by no means an uncritical supporter.
One point that might be made is that, unless one is lucky enough to be
able to turn left on entering a plane, such travel is often a far from
pleasant experience. Airline economics dictate cramming as many seats
as possible into Economy and 9/11 has been a reason (excuse?) for airlines
to cut back services, with catering in particular a target. But it is
also the case that these days there is too much air travel and the consequent
pollution of the environment is in danger of becoming unsustainable. I
have argued that air travel is essential if one is travelling long-haul.
I am less convinced that there is a need for short-haul flights. Ideally
we should be looking to our politicians for a lead, especially now they
are so keen to clothe themselves in green garments. Yet it seems to be
accepted almost without question that air travel must inexorably grow.
There are even flights from London to Newquay - why, for heaven’s
sake? A fifth terminal for Heathrow is deemed essential and Stansted expands
yet again, destroying still more of the countryside in this lovely part
of Essex. I am coming to the view that a radical solution is needed, which would discourage, and maybe ultimately prohibit, airline travel within mainland Great Britain. We still have a fairly extensive rail network and, yes, there is a line to Newquay. I might also argue that the same should apply to the near Continent - Helsinki, say, or Warsaw are, I would concede, a different matter - given the availability of fast rail travel using Eurostar. Of course this could not be done overnight. Indeed I can well understand why, within the UK, air travel might currently be the more attractive option. This reflects years of neglect and under-investment in the railways, starting with the disastrous Beeching era. Then there was the privatization of the railways. I don’t much care in fact whether the railways are state-owned or privately owned. What matters is that they are efficiently run and this means operating them as a single integrated network, not separating it out into numerous different companies. (The decision to balkanize the railways was taken by the Tories but New Labour have done exactly the same to the London Underground, again with lamentable results.) The trouble is that a narrow cost accounting view is taken by the Treasury. No-one ever asks whether a road makes a loss or profit, but the railways are judged primarily by financial criteria. It is true that, post-Beeching, the network has stayed reasonably intact, but now even that is under threat. As Transport Minister, Labour’s Alistair Darling questioned the need to keep open rural services which, he claims, carry around “air” - maybe that is all there is between his two ears! It is not just the railways, but public transport more generally, which is affected by this attitude. About the most encouraging development in this sphere in the 1990s was the return of the urban tram. In Croydon, fairly close to my home town Epsom, the trams have done wonders, removing a substantial volume of road traffic as people make the switch to public transport. Yet the Treasury has stamped hard on new schemes, which might have benefited cities such as Leeds and Southampton, on the grounds that the existing tram systems do not make enough profit. It really is about time that there was a mandatory environmental audit of transportation systems. If car or air travel is being reduced, and pollution thus cut back, there is a cost benefit to the country which will not, however, find its way into conventional profit-and-loss accounts. I would also bring back pollution-free trolleybuses, which last ran in Britain in 1972. Rail travel has increased significantly in recent years, yet all too many people prefer other means of transport. This is bound to remain the case when rail travel is so expensive. If it is a lot cheaper for an individual to fly to Liverpool from London than travel via Virgin Rail, who can blame him for choosing the former mode of transport? Flying to Morocco can be cheaper than going by rail to Edinburgh. And getting to Newquay by train is a real faff, so it’s not surprising that airlines have seized that particular opportunity. The railways also suffer through the inordinate complexity of the fares structure, a direct result of balkanization. There are bargains to be had, but this can make purchasing a ticket something of an initiative test. One might need to know, for example, if the planned day of travel coincides with a full moon in a month ending in ‘r’. OK - I made that last bit up, but it’s almost believable. Eurostar, by contrast, is generally a pleasant way of travelling and, in some cases, it can be fairly easy to transfer to other destinations, such as Antwerp or Bruges. But not always. I have used Eurostar, and then the French TGV system, to get to Geneva and to Bordeaux; in both cases a long trek by metro or RER across Paris was necessary, no great fun when one is laden with luggage. One hopes that, sooner or later, there will be new cross-platform links that facilitate rail travel direct from London to destinations much further afield, in Spain, say, or Italy or Germany. Radical solutions are needed, but I am not holding my breath that they will come any time soon. These would, firstly, involve substantial investment in the railways with significant reductions in fares and the imposition of a simple and unified fare structure. (Though a strong advocate of Eurostar, I question whether the vast sums needed for the lengthy tunnel that will take the trains into the new St Pancras terminal, shaving a fairly insignificant amount of travel time off the trip to Paris or Brussels, have been the right spending priority when there is so much else that should be done to develop public transport in our country.) Secondly, subject to good progress on the railways, we could start to phase out airline travel within mainland Great Britain and possibly to the near Continent. First published in VISA issue 69 (October 2006) |