Grounded: Is the UK ready for a domestic air travel ban?

In April 2021, French lawmakers voted in favour of a bill to end domestic flight routes where the same journey could be made by train in under two-and-a-half hours. For environmentalists, this was an encouraging first step towards reducing air travel emissions – currently around 2.4% of global emissions according to the International Council on Clean Transportation.

Environmental groups in the UK have called on the UK Government to take similarly decisive action to tackle the impact of domestic aviation emissions. Although the government has committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050, there seem to be substantial headwinds against a French-style ban in the UK – but could one ever get off the ground?

Jet-zero – a hero?

Domestic air travel carries a heavy environmental cost. To take a prominent example, Boris Johnson’s choices to travel by plane and car from London to Cornwall to attend the 2021 G7 meeting resulted in 97 kg of additional CO₂ emissions compared to taking the train. That’s equivalent to making approximately 1,400 cups of tea. That’s because, per kilometre (km) travelled, UK domestic rail emits approximately 41g of CO₂ per passenger, whilst a UK domestic flight emits 133g of CO₂ per passenger per km (or 254g if the non-CO₂ emissions resulting from high-altitude are included).

In contrast to France’s regulatory approach, the UK Government seems to be relying on technological innovation from the airline industry to clean up the sector, pointing to its ‘jet-zero’ commitment based on the transition to sustainable transport fuels. But industry experts argue that sustainable biofuels can only be reliably produced in small quantities, while batteries lack the energy density to work for large commercial aircraft. Zero-emission aircraft carrying more than 100 passengers are not expected until the 2030s, according to zero-emission aircraft company Zero Avia, who might be considered likely to be at the optimistic end of the spectrum.

If technology is not likely to ride to the rescue, it appears likely that domestic aviation will be carbon-based for at least a decade, and perhaps much longer. That means the only surefire way to reduce its negative environmental impact in a way that is compatible with the UK’s Net Zero commitments is to fly less, and transition these journeys to more sustainable modes of long-distance travel.

Among the factors that make domestic air travel more attractive than rail in the UK, the affordability and perceived convenience of air travel in terms of journey times are perhaps foremost for UK passengers. Can these be tipped in favour of the train?

Build back quicker

Air travel may be seen as far quicker than train travel, but that’s by no means always the case. Travelling from London to Edinburgh actually has a comparable journey time to the same journey by plane (around 4.5 hours) if you factor in travelling to the airport, going through check-in and travelling from the airport to a city-centre destination.

However, London benefits from some of the best and fastest rail connections around the country. Reaching Edinburgh Waverly from Bristol Temple Meads takes between 5.75 and 6.75 hours, making flying the quicker option; in other parts of the country, your proximity to a mainline railway or airport will dictate which option is quickest.

One way to reduce journey times is to increase the speed of trains. The UK lags behind our European neighbours on high-speed rail. Where Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany and France each has at least one high-speed line (over a speed of 140mph) connecting their major cities, the UK only boasts its Eurostar connection. Work continues on the controversial HS2 project connecting London to the Midlands and the North – though the Leeds leg is now set to be dropped. However, a more extensive network of high-speed rail will be needed to provide a comfortable, affordable and speedy alternative to short-haul air travel.

Convenience should not just be measured in journey times, though. Arrival times are also important. Journey times may be comparable between plane and train for some journeys, but arrival times may favour the plane. For example, travelling from Bristol to Edinburgh, there are three flights a week that will arrive at 8.15am, while you won’t find a train arriving before midday on any day of the week. To attract business travellers who want to arrive for an early meeting, perhaps we need to resurrect the extensive network of sleeper trains the UK had in the 1970s.

Travel money

If air travel currently has the edge on convenience, at least in some cases, perhaps more could be done to align prices with environmental outcomes. One step in that direction would be to internalise the environmental costs of air travel into ticket prices. Eunomia’s analysts performed some quick calculations on journeys from London to Glasgow, the host city for COP26, and found that a flight would cost £111 instead of the current £48 whereas a train ticket would stand at £100 instead of the current £89.90.

While internalising environmental costs pushes up the price of flying, the end result is that there’s little difference between the two options. Given the perceived convenience of air travel, equalising prices may not be enough to persuade passengers to switch to train travel.

With train ticket prices rising by 4.8% from the start of 2022, the train travel is not likely to become more affordable in the near future without government subsidy. Instead, incentives have been flowing in the opposite direction. While aviation fuel is not taxed, the electricity used to run trains subject to increasing levies, with some train operating companies opting to revert to diesel power to avoid escalating electricity prices. Meanwhile, the Government halved Air Passenger Duty (APD) – the closest the UK has to an environmental tax on air travel – for domestic flights in its October 2021 budget. There are glimmers of change: a new train company, Lumo, is offering tickets for as little as £20 between London and Edinburgh – but discount services of this kind are only ever likely to appear on popular routes on lines with spare capacity, something of a rarity on the UK’s crowded railways.

There appears to be little prospect of financial incentives shifting the dial sufficiently to spark a mass exodus from the plane to the train. In that case, since we are operating in a climate emergency, perhaps a ban on certain routes merits deeper consideration, at least until clean aviation technology is available.

Leader of the ban

The threat of a ban on certain popular short-haul domestic flight routes – such as London to Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester – where fast trains are already available could help to deter more investment in airport capacity whose carbon footprint we can ill afford. Any ban would need to be accompanied by significant investment in improving rail to ensure that passengers can travel conveniently. Indeed, the recognition that domestic flights are a problem that needs tackling could help motivate the Government to improve the speed and economy of the rail connections to maintain connectivity. A ban would need to be limited to connections that could feasibly be replaced by rail – air travel between Belfast and the rest of the United Kingdom, or from Orkney and the Shetland islands to the mainland, for example, would need to continue so as not to isolate communities. Such accommodations could readily coexist within a regulatory framework that bans unnecessary domestic flights, much as the French ban works.

There is much work to be done to bring the UK’s rail system up to speed, and the government has made much about its “world-leading” climate ambition. If it wants to show it is serious about achieving net zero, it’s time to take decisive action on aviation – banning unnecessary domestic flights seems like a good place to start.

Featured image: xlibber via Wikimedia Commons