That only takes in to account vehicle emissions. If you include all those network rail vans blocking the outside lane of dual carriageways at 68 and stuff like the electricity consumption of 500 miles of track circuits I reckon Easyjet is probably the enviromentally friendly option.
So you should also include the energy used to run the airport, all the ground handling vehicles, electricity used for radar, air traffic control, navigation beacons (which will be many, many multiples of that used for track circuiting and signalling) etc etc.
One lap of a holding pattern would quickly exceed the environmental impact of the nightly consumption of track circuits. And, of course, you would have to apportion that cost across all the trains that use a track, just as you would have to apportion the energy consumption of a Aircraft safety check across the different flights it will go on to operate before the next interval check.
I wouldnt mind betting that per passenger on lightly used lines over 500 miles the auxiliary energy will be considerably less in air than rail.
Bear in mind that north of Perth or Dundee the amount of track circuits drops off considerably and there are far fewer signals to keep lit. The environmental impact of, say, the fife circle can be amortised across the daytime trains as well, because you wouldn't be turning the railway off overnight.
Would you be able to link for data for this?
That's a bet you would lose, things like lights and track circuits really don't use much electricity. And electricity in the highlands is very green anyway
| National rail | passenger.km | 0.03549 |
| International rail | passenger.km | 0.00446 |
| Light rail and tram | passenger.km | 0.02861 |
| London Underground | passenger.km | 0.02781 |
| Average passenger (UK Domestic) | passenger.km | 0.24587 |
| Average passenger (Short-haul to/from UK) | passenger.km | 0.15353 |
| Economy class (Short-haul to/from UK) | passenger.km | 0.15102 |
| Business class (Short-haul to/from UK) | passenger.km | 0.22652 |
And of course the sleeper will relatively soon be all-electric whereas flights are quite some way off being electrified.
Is that their year-round load factor? I only ask because I've been on a few London-Edinburgh flights that were well under that (probably closer to 50%) but I've never flown Aberdeen-London.
Thank you. I didn't realise there were that few passengers on the aberdeen highlander!
I suspect it is easyjet's average load factor, as I would be surprised if they publish it on a route by route basis
Is the normal split something like
Fair point there!
That's the energy figures based on the vehicle itself it doesn't include the energy costs of maintaining 500 miles of railways in between the terminals. In the railways case this would be stuff like tamping of the line, inspection of the line repairs to things due to weather and repairing it after things like the Stonehaven derailment. Those energy costs over a 500 mile route are probably more than the vehicle itself, by comparison the maintenance costs of the air infrastructure between the terminals is probably just some radar and nav aids.
This is a silly argument because that 500 miles of infrastructure isn't just there to serve aberdeen to london sleeper trains, it serves a whole bunch of other stuff including all the shorter intermediate and connecting journeys along the route, which would be completely impossible to provide by air unless you want to build an airport in every small town. Furthermore, air transport would be entirely useless without ground based infrastructure that lets people make journeys to and from the airports at each end, delivers the fuel to the aircraft and all the rest of it.
The government source I cited is intended to be as close as possible to a whole lifecycle (so including infrastructure, building the vehicle, maintenance etc.) figure. of course none of these numbers are perfect, but they will be pretty close estimates.
Could I ask how you booked any GB train service through Translink?
Their staff office booked it for me. I think they just use a standard booking agency in the UK. Tickets were posted to me. My partner works for Translink NIR
www.bbc.co.uk
I thought the whole point was that they'd become one company to save on back end staff? I can get them being largely separate divisions but wholly separate companies means zero change from today's situation, which apparently wasn't working.
I hear rumours that Serco intend to keep the top few layers on management and redeploy them rather than transferring them through TUPE, rather than just the director level, so it might end up being a defacto joint operation.
