The End of Cheap Flights?

The only sustainable solution to the end of cheap flights is to bring about a new era of cheap high speed rail travel, and the only way to do that is to switch the focus of public policy – from the air to the ground.

In a poll commissioned by The Times in April of this year a laudable 46% of customers pledged to cut their personal air travel; 23% indicating that they would prefer to fly with airlines explicitly committed to a green strategy. In contrast, a You Gov poll this week threw up the rather less optimistic conclusion that only 1 in 100 of us rank our carbon footprint as the top priority when booking a holiday. So, do these figures tell us anything beyond what we already knew - that polls are an arbitrary and artificial method of measuring public opinion? The past few years have undoubtedly seen a massive increase in public awareness of the environmental cost of flying. But in these uncertain economic climes, it’s perhaps hardly surprising that for the vast majority of people, the price of a trip still outweighs its environmental cost.

Over recent decades the availability of cheap short-haul flights has had the effect of democratising the skies. In a single generation, our culture of travel and pattern of holiday-making has been completely transformed. In 1954, only 4 million passengers travelled by air in the UK; by 1980 the figure was around 50 million and by 2005 over 228 million. Almost as many people now fly to Spain each year as the total number who took flights from the UK to all destinations in the late1970s. On the Department for Transport’s current projections, the number of air passengers in the UK is expected to rise to 500 million by 2030. Having come to expect that we can fly to Prague, Barcelona or Istanbul for the weekend for less than the cost of a train ticket from London to Edinburgh, curiously it’s now rail fares which are widely perceived as distorted and overpriced.

With the climate change time-bomb ticking and fuel prices heading only one way, the rise in air fares might prove not just inevitable, but terminal. The question remains though, as to whether the growth in flights hinges simply on the cheaper air fares, or whether it also reflects our perception that the world is smaller and closer, a more profound underlying cultural shift in the way we approach travel. There’s a whole generation of people who have grown up flying to Europe for their holidays, rather than taking a caravan to Skegness or Cornwall as their parents did.

The good news is that international high speed rail looks like an increasingly compelling alternative to short haul flights. Travelling by train from London to Paris or Barcelona or even Istanbul might take 10 times as long as flying, but it is 10 times less polluting. Rail holidays also offer a potentially more rewarding travel experience, affording the passenger an appreciation of distance and landscapes that flying often fails to. Perhaps crucially, it makes the ‘journey’ an integral part of the holiday package, as opposed to just a few hours of queues and cabin fever endured en route to a destination.

However, tackling the price issue must precede any shift in cultural perspectives about the way we travel. Part of the problem is that high speed rail operators are still largely contained within national boundaries making it difficult to discount cross border fares. The formation of Rail Team last year – Europe’s first alliance of high speed rail operators – should make planning rail holidays simpler and more convenient at least between participating countries. A centralised booking service will go live in 2009 but whether this will have a downward effect on prices remains to be seen.

A bigger obstacle to cheap trains is that unlike the open skies, rail tracks don’t lend themselves to market (and therefore price) competition. European countries are investing a great deal in extending high speed rail routes which are expected to triple in scope over the next 10-15 years, meeting a growing demand for long distance rail travel within Western Europe. But making the tracks longer doesn’t make them more competitive. Eurostar for instance, enjoys a complete monopoly on rail travel between London and Paris, one of the most popular international rail links in the world. It’s not hard to imagine what would happen to the price of a flight from London to New York if British Airways was the only airline to fly it. The European Union must wise up to this reality and regulate rail operators accordingly. Only then can we begin to imagine a world in which cheap high speed rail travel replaces cheap air fares, and holidays without flying become not just a green alternative, but also accessible – at least as much as it is/was in the era of cheap flights.

Fuelling the Fire

Rising oil prices offer the best hope of curbing carbon emissions in the short term, but they also reflect our unquenchable thirst for the black gold. Just don’t mention the ‘R’ word…

Every cloud has its silver lining. Environmentalists have good reason to breathe a sigh of relief as the price of oil continues to soar, boosting the renewable energy industry, cutting consumption at the pumps and finally putting the breaks on 6 decades of downward spiralling air fares. As unappealing as this hard truth maybe – economic ‘problems’ can do more for the environment than all the dire scientific predictions, green lobbying and climate action protests put together. But to believe the market will eventually bail out the planet is to walk blindfolded into the fire praying for rain to put out the flames.

There was a time – although we didn’t know it then – when the price of flying reflected the environmental cost. Back in the 1950’s a transatlantic flight cost the equivalent of £3000, more than 10 times today’s average. Since then, the air fare avalanche has created a culture of expectancy and dependency in the Developed World that is not easy to break out of. ‘Flying’ has become almost synonymous with ‘Travelling’ and travelling – for business or pleasure – an endemic feature of our lifestyle. To give it up, or to accept a journey of 10 days rather than 10 hours, feels like a giant leap backwards, akin to swapping laptops for typewriters, or ipods for gramophones.

It is this expectancy/dependency that puts the idea of rationing the amount we fly firmly off the table. Rationing was accepted in Britain and America during the Second World War as an effective means of curbing demand for goods that were in short supply. We are now faced with the prospect that our demand for fossil fuels is directly impacting the world’s climate with devastating consequences yet few, if any, dare to utter the ‘R’ word. Politicians – even environmentalists – are intent on persuading us to change our lifestlyles voluntarily, rather than introduce enforcement (a sure fire vote loser in any context). The problem with this approach is twofold:

1. It can take more than a generation to fundamentally change people’s habits through persuasion. Recycling is only now beginning to catch on in the UK and greens have been waging that campaign for decades. In the context of climate change, time is definitely a luxury we no longer have.
2. Even if society does voluntarily change its habits in a meaningful way, there will always be some who change more than others, making it less fair, and less effective than imposed restrictions.

Until very recently, the answer to climate change lay in offsets and biofuels. They promised a win-win scenario in which we could neutralise the harmful effects of our consumption, without checking our hunger for more. But now that the stampede to replace crop fields with biofuel plantations has sparked the worst global food crisis in decades, and the folly of offsets has been exposed by reports that many of them are never actually implemented, it’s clear that cutbacks rather than shortcuts pose the only viable solution.

Still, the mere sound of the word ‘rationing’ conjures up an aura of gloom. It’s something our grandparents had to put up with. It sounds like a fight for survival that’s simply not in keeping with the progress of the post war decades. ‘Rationing’ spells ‘Failure’.

	"the spectre of catastrophic climate change is not a whole lot more pleasant than world domination by the Nazis"

There are 2 things to say here. The first is that the spectre of catastrophic climate change is not a whole lot more pleasant than world domination by the Nazis. But unlike during the Second World War, it doesn’t feel like we’re faced with such a harrowing prospect – particularly when jetting off to a far away island in the sun. Check out any mainstream holiday ad and what they’re selling is essentially blissful escapism: leave your troubles behind and fly away without a care in the world. Fortunately you’ll be flying high enough not to notice the real troubles below, such as food riots or towns wiped out by cyclones.

The second and more crucial point is that rationing need not spell the end of civilisation as we know it. Even in the Developed World, the majority of people don’t take more than one leisure return flight per year. Yet a blanket ban on anything more could mark a dramatic turnaround in the war against climate change – far more profound than charging 15p for a shopping bag.

What would happen to the economy if such rationing was enforced? It’s an unavoidable reality that cutting consumption will result in the cutting of jobs. Such is the rationale that underpins support for a new 3rd runway at London’s Heathrow airport. According to the UK government, it’s the only way Heathrow can maintain its competitive advantage and jobs can be saved.

The immediate hole in this argument is that fossil fuels are a finite resource and so by definition, an industry that continues to depend on them must accept inevitable decline. Any measures aimed at preserving a ‘competitive edge’ are necessarily temporary. When the end of oil will actually come is anybody’s guess – even our knowledge of current reserves is fairly vague due to the closed doors of OPEC. But even the most optimistic experts predict that we are fast approaching Peak Oil – the point at which the rate of production enters terminal decline.

New technologies such as hydrogen powered aircraft are hardly any closer to fruition than the end of oil itself and the carbon savings from biofuels are negligible. According to the World Development Movement even if all flights used biofuels, the reduction in aviation's contribution to climate change would be cancelled out by one year's expected growth in the number of flights. Not to mention the widespread food poverty and deforestation they have already caused.

For some this all leads to a resigned acceptance of the status quo – if we carry on as we are, peak oil will eventually invoke a perpetual spiral in the oil price, and market forces will finally force us to give it up. But if we remain dependent on oil until it starts to run out, we risk not just higher prices but widespread economic depression, instability and unrest. Even that’s a moot point if climate chaos wreaks global havoc first. Saving jobs is important, but not at the cost of lives.

All roads lead to the necessity of mitigating demand and flight rationing is a natural starting point. Aviation is by far the fastest growing source of climate changing emissions and jet fuel already accounts for 7-10% of global oil usage. Given projected growth in demand for flights and the post-peak oil decline, this proportion looks set to increase exponentially.

On a country by country basis, flight rationing simply wouldn’t work. For one thing, the net demand/supply effect of one or a few country’s rations could bring air fares down globally enabling others to fly more, making it a lose-lose scenario. An international agreement is required and the Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change – the scientific body that has predicted irreversible climate chaos if average temperatures warm by more than 2 degrees – should set mandatory limits on flying for all countries on a per capita basis, enforced by the United Nations.

If this sounds hopelessly implausible consider this: Flying is a relatively easy thing to ration – it is already heavily regulated for security and immigration reasons and due to the high barriers to entry there is virtually no black market. If it still sounds fanciful that’s just because we are so used to Economics winning the battle it’s hard to imagine another way. In the words of the Situationists, now more than ever is the time to be realistic and demand the impossible.

There’s another upside to Rationing. Put simply, it’s fair. Rather than allowing market forces to ensure that the wealthiest continue to consume and fly with reckless abandon, rationing would ensure that we all share the burden of caring for the planet. Best of all, high profile celebrities will no longer be able to preach on the imperatives of green living before hopping aboard their private jets.

Finally, whilst flight rationing will certainly hurt the airlines, it will provide a much needed boost to the rail industry. The development of high speed rail links around the world will do much to sweeten the pill of less flying for avid travellers. Ironically, long distance rail goers are the true travelling pioneers of today, chartering a new frontier in enriched holiday experiences that don’t wreck the planet. In the war against climate change, the only way forward is to take a step back.

Reclaim the tracks!

In the face of price increases of 3 times the rate of inflation for average rail journeys in the UK, arguments in support of greater public investment and even re-nationalisation are gaining strength. But as with so much of environmental and transport policy, the opposite is happening in practice...

Ever since privatisation under Margaret Thatcher, the UK rail industry has been plagued by fatal accidents, incessant delays and widespread customer confusion as to which operators run on which routes. Today, much of these problems persist but they are compounded by bewildering annual price increases and a simultaneous cutback in public investment. In a climate altering age when electrified rail is the best hope for curbing transport CO2 emissions, an old lament seems more pertinent than ever: what’s wrong with British rail?

	"...last year the government proudly announced a £1.5 billion reduction in annual rail subsidies,..."

Clothed behind the greenwash espoused by government and corporate PR machines, there is a glaring contradiction between carbon targets and reality. That aviation growth poses the greatest threat to these targets is almost as beyond doubt as the reality of climate change itself. Yet the UK government continues to sponsor widespread airport expansion both rhetorically and financially: unlike all other forms of transport, airlines remain exempt from fuel tax and there is no VAT on the purchase of aircraft or airline taxes. This amounts to an annual subsidy of £4 billion. By contrast, last year the government proudly announced a £1.5 billion reduction in annual rail subsidies, resulting in dramatic price hikes for consumers.

Its justification for this lies in the growth in passenger demand for rail travel. But between 1980 and 2006, rail travel in the UK increased at a lower rate than that of both car and domestic air travel. Indeed much of the increase in demand for rail travel is derived not from consumer choice. Changes in urban trends and the rapid growth in house prices have forced many people to relocate further away from town centres, increasing their dependency on rail commutes. Seen from this light, cutbacks in rail subsidies amount to an income squeeze on those who can least afford it, let alone the environmental consequences.

On the cost side the picture is equally upside down. The last 6 years have seen a fall in the cost of air travel in absolute terms, and contrary to public perception, motoring costs have fallen in real terms. At the same time, the cost of UK rail travel has consistently risen above the rate of inflation. What none of these trends reflect are the stated intensions of the Department for Transport’s green agenda – to promote public transport of all types and encourage people out of their cars.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s not the train operators who are losing out. Since June 2007, the two biggest Rail groups in the UK – Stagecoach and First Group – have announced profit jumps of 38% and 36% respectively. Network rail, the not-for-profit company that owns the rail tracks, has been reporting large profits since 2006, marked for reinvestment in maintenance and development. But 60% of the UK’s rail tracks are still diesel-operated rather than electrified making British rail the most polluting in Western Europe. Add to this the persistent problems with signalling systems and capacity and its no wonder consumers are left wondering where their money is actually being spent.

	"...the consumer and the planet are joint losers in the complex interplay between industry lobbyists and policy directors."

It’s safe to say that the consumer and the planet are joint losers in the complex interplay between industry lobbyists and policy directors. The resultant price hikes are an economic slap in the face to people who depend on rail travel for their jobs. It’s a fact often unnoticed by those who perish the thought of airline taxes rendering flights prohibitive to lower income groups. Even if air taxes remain as they are, much could be done by the government and travel industry alike to encourage people to switch away from the most polluting mode of transport. In 2007, the Institute of Public Policy Research recommended that the travel industry publish ‘green health’ warnings on all air travel related advertising. But without legal sanction, it seems unlikely that such a policy could be effective when air travel accounts for the vast majority of tourism industry revenues.

Sources:

• www.ft.com
• www.dft.gov.uk
• www.naturalchoices.co.uk
• www.esrcsocietytoday.co.uk
• www.thisismoney.co.uk
• www.savethetrain.org.uk
• www.networkrail.co.uk

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