Flybe problems - did they take rail improvements into account?

[jagardner1984]

And additionally perception is so important. Even people that have never travelled those routes, the numbers that stick in people’s heads are the £700 fare first class anytime including a gold throne from Inverness to Plymouth they read about in the Daily Mail. Or the £29 Flybe flight they see every time they open a web browser. Of course, both are wildly unrepresentative of what most people pay, but whether it’s through a rail card, or a “rail miles” loyalty scheme, or a carbon tax, or whatever, there is a real job of work to be done on changing that perception.

 

[edwin_m]

As we know, rail fares, especially on cross country, have a lot to do with suppressing demand as much as anything else (services often close to capacity on the XC core in particular) and until capacity is dramatically increased, it will always be cheaper, easier, faster and arguably better to just shove in another Q400 or A319 flight from X regional airport to Y.

It is easy to do, yet doesn't happen. This shows how small the market is for these long distance regional flights, generally between SW England and Scotland, where rail journeys are too long to be competitive and airport capacity isn't an issue. In the interests of regional connectivity we should prioritise other means of reducing CO2, at least unless/until HS2 phase 2 makes rail competitive against the shorter ones. Things probably start changing when the rail alternative is below about 4 hours, which are mostly flights to/from the South East.

 

[jayah]

It is easy to do, yet doesn't happen. This shows how small the market is for these long distance regional flights, generally between SW England and Scotland, where rail journeys are too long to be competitive and airport capacity isn't an issue. In the interests of regional connectivity we should prioritise other means of reducing CO2, at least unless/until HS2 phase 2 makes rail competitive against the shorter ones. Things probably start changing when the rail alternative is below about 4 hours, which are mostly flights to/from the South East.

The domestic routes vary enormously with some punchy numbers you might not expect.

Aberdeen to Cardiff/Bristol is 20,000 per year combined but Birmingham is over 200,000 and Manchester 110,000.

Birmingham to Edinburgh and Glasgow are both over 200,000.

 

[edwin_m]

The domestic routes vary enormously with some punchy numbers you might not expect.

Aberdeen to Cardiff/Bristol is 20,000 per year combined but Birmingham is over 200,000 and Manchester 110,000.

Birmingham to Edinburgh and Glasgow are both over 200,000.

20,000 per year for Aberdeen to Cardiff/Bristol sounds impressive but it's under 70 per day so could be carried by one flight with a medium-sized aircraft. 200,000 per year is two or three 737s per day or equivalent (assuming the above figures are per direction). So the non-London flows where rail is totally uncompetitive on speed (say over 4hr train journey) are a small part of domestic aviation, let alone of the total long-distance travel market.

 

[paul1609]

Surely the problem is that if you are serious about for a net carbon target of zero its not good enough just to promote a mode change to a lower polluting method such as rail, you have to be reducing or eliminating leisure and non essential altogether. you certainly shouldn't be building high speed rail lines.
The days of mode change have passed.It should now be travel rationing.

 

[edwin_m]

Surely the problem is that if you are serious about for a net carbon target of zero its not good enough just to promote a mode change to a lower polluting method such as rail, you have to be reducing or eliminating leisure and non essential altogether. you certainly shouldn't be building high speed rail lines.
The days of mode change have passed.It should now be travel rationing.

That depends on how green you are, and more importantly how green everyone else is.

It's going to be difficult to achieve even minor lifestyle changes in a democracy, so the more major ones you suggest are likely to be totally unacceptable to most of the population. There's also the issue that if travel is reduced, low-carbon options such as the train become less viable due to reducing passenger numbers, so the carbon impact of the remaining journeys may be greater.

If we succeed in decarbonizing the electricity supply network, travel by electric train will have close to zero CO2 emissions even on high speed routes (the embodied emissions of building the lines and the trains will remain, but are much smaller than those that would result from operation using fossil fuels). Electric planes, if they become viable, will also have relatively low climate impact. The more likely route to zero carbon is by technology changes such as these, probably also including some carbon abstraction to counteract those emissions that are unavoidable.

 

[furnessvale]

Surely the problem is that if you are serious about for a net carbon target of zero its not good enough just to promote a mode change to a lower polluting method such as rail, you have to be reducing or eliminating leisure and non essential altogether. you certainly shouldn't be building high speed rail lines.
The days of mode change have passed.It should now be travel rationing.

So the best start is reducing the M1/M6 to 2 lanes each way.

 

[BigCj34]

So the best start is reducing the M1/M6 to 2 lanes each way.

They could start by putting hard shoulders back into the M25 (Also better orbital rail links come to think of it).

 

[thenorthern]

It's unlikely that improved rail travel caused FlyBe to have financial issues. The problem is regional air travel between small/medium sized airports isn't profitable and never will be. If you think about it the busy domestic routes that are profitable are operated by EasyJet, Ryanair or British Airways while FlyBe operates the unprofitable ones.

Since 2000 think about it FlyBMI, Air SouthWest, ScotAirways, Highland Airways, CityWing, EuroManx, Air Wales, British North West Airlines and many others have tried and failed to operate domestic services in the UK. It's just not profitable.

 

[paul1609]

That depends on how green you are, and more importantly how green everyone else is.

It's going to be difficult to achieve even minor lifestyle changes in a democracy, so the more major ones you suggest are likely to be totally unacceptable to most of the population. There's also the issue that if travel is reduced, low-carbon options such as the train become less viable due to reducing passenger numbers, so the carbon impact of the remaining journeys may be greater.

If we succeed in decarbonizing the electricity supply network, travel by electric train will have close to zero CO2 emissions even on high speed routes (the embodied emissions of building the lines and the trains will remain, but are much smaller than those that would result from operation using fossil fuels). Electric planes, if they become viable, will also have relatively low climate impact. The more likely route to zero carbon is by technology changes such as these, probably also including some carbon abstraction to counteract those emissions that are unavoidable.

0% net carbon is a legal requirement by 2050. It won't be achieved by the measures you suggest. The technology doesn't exist today and it won't in 29 years and 11 months time.
We have two options: drastic lifestyle changes with measures such as population control and travel rationing or recognise that the target was never achievable.

 

[paul1609]

So the best start is reducing the M1/M6 to 2 lanes each way.

Make the outside lane EV only?

 

[route101]

Could be an opportunity for another Scotland-Brum service then, if it is extended to Bristol (or even Cardiff!). So Glasgow and Edinburgh each have 1tph to Brum, and 1tp2h to Bristol. I know this is fantasy at this stage, but if it is the most popular non-London flying route in GB it could be worth a look. While a possible 5h30 journey time is still notably more than flying, the extra 2 hours isn't a huge inconvenience to deter leisure travellers who would sacrifice the time for a smoother ride. It's certainly how the Eurostar service to the south of France works.

If the line from Brum to Bristol was electrified , then west coast services could be extended , fantasy i know. Edinburgh has hourly XC to Bristol does it not?

 

[edwin_m]

0% net carbon is a legal requirement by 2050. It won't be achieved by the measures you suggest. The technology doesn't exist today and it won't in 29 years and 11 months time.
We have two options: drastic lifestyle changes with measures such as population control and travel rationing or recognise that the target was never achievable.

I think the lifestyle change approach has less chance of success than the technology approach, so assuming your summary is correct (you haven't cited any evidence) then it isn't achievable.

 

[furnessvale]

Make the outside lane EV only?

Convert it into HS2.

 

[jagardner1984]

0% net carbon is a legal requirement by 2050. It won't be achieved by the measures you suggest. The technology doesn't exist today and it won't in 29 years and 11 months time.
We have two options: drastic lifestyle changes with measures such as population control and travel rationing or recognise that the target was never achievable.

Surely a Carbon based tax is the only way of achieving this. You want to travel, thats fine, but you pay for it. You want to drive 400 miles in an petrol car, that's fine, you pay a levy. You want to travel 400 miles on an electric train, thats fine, here is a small levy to cover the carbon dioxide emitted during construction, and via the consumption of energy. You want to travel 400 miles on a 737, thats also fine, but you pay a much more significant tax increased dramatically exponentially on the construction and energy consumed.

That gives rail an incentive to decarbonise, air an incentive to invest in Electric planes / efficiency, and the general public an incentive not to travel at all.

Either way, using public subsidy to support people flying routes which are possible by other means (if perhaps not desirable), seems to increasingly jar with the legal obligation for Net zero.

It would be interesting to see whether if travel was slowed, made more expensive and more difficult, and the alleged commitment to universal full fibre broadband, whether home working, video conferencing etc might be what takes a real step forward in the coming decades, reducing the pressure on travel infrastructure significantly. The technical hurdles seeming to be the big barrier right now.

Are there any publicly available statistics on the proportion of business / leisure travellers on Flybe ?

 

[Meerkat]

Do you remember the fuel tax escalator? That went well....

 

[jagardner1984]

Do you remember the fuel tax escalator? That went well....

Thats basically exactly what I'm suggesting. I wonder if there is now more public acknowledgment that things can't go on as they are, and some political will to "go further" on climate action (bearing in mind what the boldest political parties are suggesting is way behind what many climate activists say is necessary.)

As Greta and co have repeatedly argued, there is a fundamental contradiction between perpetual economic growth, improved connectivity, faster, easier more frequent travel, and achieving net zero. Flybe is at the heart of that contradiction. Or we can sit on our hands and let our kids deal with it. That's gone well ....

 

[jfollows]

In my opinion, things went wrong when the taxation changed from tax on petrol/diesel to "potential" tax on specific cars. So I lost out, I drove a car with a 5L engine but drove very few miles, so I got whacked with a huge tax bill every year. I knew this when I bought the car, so fair enough. But Mrs. Miggins in her 1L diesel who drove every day contributed far more in nasty emissions than I did over the course of a period; in the past this was catered for by taxation on fuel - the more you use, the more you pay. And, OK, this still applies but given that the tax on fuel hardly ever goes up, whereas the "hypothetical" emissions tax keeps on going up, means that the taxation is more and more decoupled from the actual emissions, be they of CO2, or other things.

I would like to unwind all this, but it won't happen. So governments will go on about how good they are because of the way they slap taxes on larger cars, to some extent this is not unfair because people who can afford larger cars can afford to pay more in tax, but it's increasingly decoupled from actual emissions.

 

[Djgr]

It's going to be difficult to achieve even minor lifestyle changes in a democracy, so the more major ones you suggest are likely to be totally unacceptable to most of the population.

I don't think anyone doubts that lifestyle changes will have to be imposed on the "man on the Clapham omnibus".

 

[jagardner1984]

Seems to me the obvious thing is to scrap APD, scrap Vehicle Excise Duty, and tax fuel on Aviation, Rail and Road more.

That helps to push people towards more efficient cars, trains and planes, and properly tax people on usage rather than on ownership.

 

[jfollows]

Seems to me the obvious thing is to scrap APD, scrap Vehicle Excise Duty, and tax fuel on Aviation, Rail and Road more.

That helps to push people towards more efficient cars, trains and planes, and properly tax people on usage rather than on ownership.

Yes, I think that was what I was trying to say, but you said it better!

 

[JamesT]

In my opinion, things went wrong when the taxation changed from tax on petrol/diesel to "potential" tax on specific cars. So I lost out, I drove a car with a 5L engine but drove very few miles, so I got whacked with a huge tax bill every year. I knew this when I bought the car, so fair enough. But Mrs. Miggins in her 1L diesel who drove every day contributed far more in nasty emissions than I did over the course of a period; in the past this was catered for by taxation on fuel - the more you use, the more you pay. And, OK, this still applies but given that the tax on fuel hardly ever goes up, whereas the "hypothetical" emissions tax keeps on going up, means that the taxation is more and more decoupled from the actual emissions, be they of CO2, or other things.

I would like to unwind all this, but it won't happen. So governments will go on about how good they are because of the way they slap taxes on larger cars, to some extent this is not unfair because people who can afford larger cars can afford to pay more in tax, but it's increasingly decoupled from actual emissions.

There's more to emissions than what comes out of the exhaust pipe. Particulates from tyre and brake wear are also significant. These will be proportionate to the size of vehicle, so a tax on larger vehicles is needed to discourage them. A variable road pricing scheme that charges bigger vehicles more would be the ideal from that POV, but has deeply scary privacy implications. An annual tax related to how 'green' the vehicle is seems the closest we can get for the moment.

 

[jagardner1984]

Cross Party commission on Climate Change to legally bind all politicians into its findings ?

The advantage of an exclusively fuel tax would be it would contribute to driving behaviour as well as technical efficiency. So it removes the anomaly of zero tax on Electric Cars and yet considerable tax on Hybrid Cars. I can drive my 1 litre Petrol Car very efficiently or very inefficiently. Driving behaviour is much more complex than £20/year good car, £150/year bad car, and so should the taxation be.

I'm not sure planetary extinction because Joe from Aberdeen didn't fancy paying a few quid more for his Flybe flight, so voted for the other lot, is a great argument. Fundamental change is needed, and narrow political populism needs to be overcome somehow.

 

[Bletchleyite]

0% net carbon is a legal requirement by 2050. It won't be achieved by the measures you suggest. The technology doesn't exist today and it won't in 29 years and 11 months time.
We have two options: drastic lifestyle changes with measures such as population control and travel rationing or recognise that the target was never achievable.

Or the law gets changed. People on here seem to think laws are immutable; they aren't.

 

[jfollows]

I would like to unwind all this, but it won't happen. So governments will go on about how good they are because of the way they slap taxes on larger cars, to some extent this is not unfair because people who can afford larger cars can afford to pay more in tax, but it's increasingly decoupled from actual emissions.

However, I now see that this has changed, and I hadn't noticed because my last car was registered before 1 April 2017, for cars registered since then there's a whopping up-front tax based on the emissions (£2,135 for "my" car), then it's £135/year for following years for all cars, plus an extra £320/year for 5 years for cars with a list price > £40,000 (so, basically, because you're rich enough to be able to afford it), so my annual payment would reduce from over £500 (EDIT: £570 it would appear) to £455 if my car were new now.

So it's a bit better now than it used to be, in my opinion.

I sold my car a year ago and manage quite well without nowadays.

 

[PartyOperator]

There's more to emissions than what comes out of the exhaust pipe. Particulates from tyre and brake wear are also significant. These will be proportionate to the size of vehicle, so a tax on larger vehicles is needed to discourage them. A variable road pricing scheme that charges bigger vehicles more would be the ideal from that POV, but has deeply scary privacy implications. An annual tax related to how 'green' the vehicle is seems the closest we can get for the moment.

What would be scary about a mileage-based vehicle tax? The DVLA already keeps a record of vehicle mileage as part of the annual MOT. Extending some form of MOT-type check to all cars and linking it to annual vehicle tax wouldn’t be that radical. Just take the car to an approved garage once a year to have them log the mileage with the DVLA and pay the tax bill - most people are doing these already, the only difference would be the bill being linked to mileage. The more complex location/time-based congestion charges already exist. Compared to the countless ANPR cameras we pass on the roads, mileage-based tax doesn’t seem much of an intrusion.

 

[edwin_m]

Seems to me the obvious thing is to scrap APD, scrap Vehicle Excise Duty, and tax fuel on Aviation, Rail and Road more.

That helps to push people towards more efficient cars, trains and planes, and properly tax people on usage rather than on ownership.

Problem there is that electric cars won't be paying fuel tax, other than the 5% VAT on electricity. If most people switch to electric without a reduction in mileage, congestion will be just as bad, pollution is less but not zero, and road maintenance will probably increase as EVs tend to be heavier. So how is this paid for?

What would be scary about a mileage-based vehicle tax? The DVLA already keeps a record of vehicle mileage as part of the annual MOT. Extending some form of MOT-type check to all cars and linking it to annual vehicle tax wouldn’t be that radical. Just take the car to an approved garage once a year to have them log the mileage with the DVLA and pay the tax bill - most people are doing these already, the only difference would be the bill being linked to mileage. The more complex location/time-based congestion charges already exist. Compared to the countless ANPR cameras we pass on the roads, mileage-based tax doesn’t seem much of an intrusion.

That's a very good idea. Could maybe even just self-declare it with some sort of random check.

 

[telstarbox]

A flat tax wouldn't be very effective though. If you drive a mile in a city in rush hour it's more damaging than driving a mile in the countryside on a Sunday night.

 

[BigCj34]

If the line from Brum to Bristol was electrified , then west coast services could be extended , fantasy i know. Edinburgh has hourly XC to Bristol does it not?

It does, though WCML route is faster though the difference is less pronounced than going from Glasgow to Bristol as the direct XC service takes even longer by going via Edinburgh anyway.

Brum to Bristol could be a good electrification candidate though most routes between the two go somewhere much further away on an unelectrified route. But a direct WCML route to Scotland would work with bimodes.

 

[Bantamzen]

Surely the problem is that if you are serious about for a net carbon target of zero its not good enough just to promote a mode change to a lower polluting method such as rail, you have to be reducing or eliminating leisure and non essential altogether. you certainly shouldn't be building high speed rail lines.
The days of mode change have passed.It should now be travel rationing.

Two problems spring to mind here. 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. Secondly, limiting travel will make countries, cities, towns, rural areas more isolated. This in turn will lead back to people being more & more suspicious of people from outside their communities, 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. See a pattern forming yet?

Believe it or not, but travel brings human beings together, helps people better understand each other & our individual ways of life, customs, even religions. Without that we are far more likely to wage war, and with the weapons available to quite a few nations now, that could bring then end of the world, not in decades but in minutes. And if this sounds overly dramatic, its meant to be because history is full of the devastation caused by human beings fighting because they didn't trust or like another nation. So travel, the ability to reach beyond our own pre-set boundaries is good, maybe even essential for the human race to survive.

If you really want to tackle man-made climate change, & man-made pollution (something that seems to have taken a back seat these days) then take for example a real bug-bear of mine, food waste. In the west in general we throw away a third of all the food we produce (closer to 40% in the US), often without it even coming out of it's packaging. So we could, for no real cost to personal budgets, reduce our wasted food to as close to zero as possible, feed the homeless with what was left unsold, and still reduce of food carbon footprint by 30%. Plus as a bonus we would also reduce of need for packaging by a third, reducing the amount of plastics made & therefore associated pollutants, and reduce by the same the amount of plastic that we either throw away into the oceans or have to recycle.

Now that would make a real difference. And all it needs is for people to understand how to buy just enough, and when & how to use the food available effectively. It is the ultimate first world no-brainer.