this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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Solarpunk Travel
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Community for those focused on sustainable travel. Our society's current levels of energy intensive and frequent travel are not compatible with life on a finite planet. We advocate for long-term slow travel to see the world, and low energy local travel to deeply experience your community. Green washing free zone.
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Air traffic uses far more infrastructure: airports are gigantic compared to the throughput they have. LAX has 30 M passengers per year. Berlin main station has 50 M long distance and 85 M public transport passengers per year.
„But you need rails and shit for trains!“. Yeah, and you know what, trains use way less fuel because of that… Now guess what is exempted from tax? Kerosene.
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/16D76/production/_108485539_optimised-travel_carbon-nc.png
And airports still need train infrastructure or roads to be able to access them, while a train drops you right in the city.
Edit: had a look at „driftking‘s“ posting history, of course it’s just a right wing troll who’s looking forward to „getting to that sweet oil under Antarctica once the ice is gone“, lol.
so many unwrinkled brains around. i gave up on advocating for this: most of the time i am just met with deaf ears. 13€ from Netherlands to Italy: thats how facking subsidized that shit is
That sounds like a low end of reasonable price for a train ticket. I assume it’s a plane ticket though, at which point what in the actual hell that’s a subsidization level on par with driving in America
it is a plane ticket.but at least u earn a seat in a flying tube, and save alot on time travel. yea, a lot of taxpayer money is wasted in useless and polluting projects: nato funding, SLS launcher and other aerospace failing projects, bailing bankers and monopolies, so on and so forth..
I’m shocked busses lose out to cars. Also is there a difference between a bus and a coach? We don’t have coaches in America and I just thought it was British for bus
I think coaches refers to longer distance bus-travel... like greyhounds in the US.
The reason regular bus travel is so bad in that graphic is that it is counted per passenger and these inner-city buses drive a lot of the time with few passengers. But if you want to keep servicing out-laying districts and non-rush hours there is little to do about that (although often these buses are over-sized).
I admit not having read the full study that lead to that graph, but I think I do understand the graph itself:
Buses are local public transport (intracity), commonly run by the government/municipality/etc. They run no matter what. Maybe at some point they will abandon the line, but it is a public service, so they won’t be doing that easily.
Coaches are long distance (intercity) travel, usually run by a private company, and if it’s not profitable they’ll just cull it. You have that in the US, it’s the Greyhound, which is now run by Flixbus.
If you look at the graph, buses do not generally lose out to cars, only to cars with 4 people on it.
Now a bus that runs 24/7 has a lower average utilization, because e.g. at night you might be the only passenger. If you compare that to a fully loaded car, sure, the car is better.
And the long distance bus (coach) doesn’t have to stop every 500m, so you’ll have way less fuel spent on braking and accelerating compared to a bus.
It’s actually impressive that despite the many times a public transport bus runs at low utilization it still is better than a car with just one person on it.
A coach, on the other hand, will have a better average utilization, since they will just immediately shut it down if there’s only one person using it.
You cant just go and compare europe and america to the whole world. Have you ever seen South East Asian train networks? I know the article is related to the former but I think having a global perspective on this is way more important. Many places need to be accessible by plane. Global travel is not practical by train
I think no one is arguing for completely banning air travel (or maybe only very few people are). But in the long run we need to make train travel more affordable and airtravel less so. The problem right now is that the environmental impact is treated as an externality that the person buying the ticket doesn't have to pay for, but we all have to.
That is exactly my point though, it is impractical. Air travel contributes very little to overall emissions compared to cars or construction. I am all for expanding and subsidising trains but making air travel more expensive will only affect the common person. I travel alot between asia, europe, and america, airfare is already insanely expensive.
Some places need airplane accessibility, once again from a global perspective.
Common person is not traveling a lot via plane (especially between different continents)! That is rich people privilege and when it is subsidized then everybody else, including the common people you mention, pays for that.
I assume you travel for work? Then it is only fair that the company pay the full price.
If you travel for fun, then you should also pay the full price, there's no need to subsidize your hobby. If you travel for family (which I don't assume because you mention three continents) then that's tough, I agree. But just because we have gotten used to reaching remote places fast doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. We have spoild ourselves on the cost of the common good and now we're facing the consequences.
And I also agree that changes have to be made for cars and construction, too. It's not an "all or nothing" situation, we can take measures in all three of these fields.
Thank you for your considered response. I indeed travel for family, which forces me to spend an insane amount of money on travelling costs for the privilege of seeing my children once in a while.
Again, I agree that we should make trains more affordable but not at the expensive of long distance air travel.
Airplanes contribute 2.5 - 3.5% of total emissions
I see. That's rough and I wish you much strength for your situation as well as the fortune to afford these travels. It sucks that money is the only way to realistically filter who "deserves" to make these journeys but sadly that's the system we're living in.
Your point was that air travel uses less infrastructure.
And of course I can point to a high throughput airport and to a high throughput train station and conclude that the airport is using way more infrastructure in comparison.
Also nobody asked for „global travel“ by train.
And what about the SE Asian train network? Do you mean China, lol? Why must „many places“ be accessible by ~~train~~ edit: plane? This is not an argument.
And your point still does not support that trains are more expensive on long disances without being subsidised by tax money. Short distance train travel is not the problem. We need long distance air travel. Who do you think occupies the economy seats. Its not the fat cats
China, japan etc
The question was: „Why are planes cheaper than trains in Europe?“
Your answer was: „because infra“.
I showed you this is wrong because you underestimate the infra needs of air traffic and also neglect the long term savings.
Because that’s why you install infra: it saves money in the long run.
Nobody – except you – is talking about „global air traffic“. Nobody.
So, if you want to burn straw men apply for a job as a fire fighter, and if you want to be a professional goal post mover, IDK, call FIFA maybe?
But stop pulling out „arguments“ out of your ass. Thank you.
Don't get so worked up
fuck off, troll.
He sea lioned you.
true point: planes should be used only for intercontinental travel: for exemple dedicate 2-3 airport hubs in all europe, and the rest of it should only be accessed by train. look up european sky on flightradar: it is always rush hour up there, and probably not so many intercontinental flights. Air travel should also be limited cross country only in Asia's case: and the number of flight hubs should be reduced to a minimum and leave the rest of the country to be accessed through train