I came across this article in The Economist...
Posted by: Economist.com | LONDON
Categories: Green issues
Carbon Statement estimates that the carbon dioxide generated by the average expense-claiming employee from business travel (not including commuting) during a year is the equivalent of them boiling a kettle 105,413 times. To offset this additional carbon dioxide, it would require six trees to be planted and grown to maturity (taking about 99 years) per expense-claiming employee per year: 22.5 million additional trees per year for the UK. Assuming, bravely, that the world of business has no plans to plant 22m trees this year, what should environmentally minded business travellers do? The obvious answer is fly less, as flights are particularly damaging. Each year the British workforce claims expenses for 7.7m train journeys, compared with 1.6m flights, but those flights create around six times as much carbon dioxide. Given that over 40% of the flights in the survey were domestic, the green dream is to put more of these flying businessmen into trains. But the difficulty in selling the virtues of time-consuming train travel is exacerbated by the fact that train fares have become dearer in recent years, and air fares cheaper. During this period [2005-2007] the average UK train fare has increased by £6.85 – a hefty 20.3 per cent, well above the rate of inflation. This is in stark contrast to the fall in the amount paid for the average airline ticket of 25 per cent over the same periodWHAT impact does business travel have on the environment? GlobalExpense, a company that manages employee expenses for its clients, has come up with an answer relating to British businesses. GlobalExpense analysed almost 5m claims filed by some 100,000 British employees between 2005 and 2007 and then turned the figures over to Carbon Statement, a company that tracks carbon footprints.
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It seems that until the financial cost of travel reflects its environmental cost, the number of fliers is unlikely to drop.
So, while we are hooked to frequent flier miles and discount airlines, maybe its all not such a good idea in the long run.....
Sigh!
Anyway, not wanting to give the Americans only bad news The Economist also published some encouraging sounds of how Amtrak has improve, and definitely worth a try.
My son and I bought a tourist pass on Amtrak a couple of summers ago, and went from New York to Atlanta, back to Washington and then on to Cleveland, before returning to NY.
My impression then was that our good old Indian Railways was much better. Here is why:
- Indian Railways gives me a berth to sleep on overnight journeys, whether I go by second class or first class, while Amtrak decides that the poorer lot shall only get a sitting seat, (and reserves the berths/cabins for their really high-end travellers)
- At every station in India, all my well-meaning relations can come and bid me a fond farewell or an even fonder (I hope!) welcome on the platform. No such luck with Amtrak, where only travellers get to the platform, there's no one to help with the luggage, and some surly railway attendant will assign you to seats only when you are about to board.
- Nice hot railway food missing in Amtrak, where we got some plasticky junk.
- And the loos.... I think in a train our Indian toilets make most sense. In the Amtrak journeys, halfway into the journey and the toilets would be clogged with toilet paper....
Dont get me wrong, we loved the train rides (small matter that I had a tired back at the end of it all), and the pleasures of nice, large viewing windows to look out at the Hudson River all the way back. The Acela Expresses we used were even better. If I had to do it again, I would still take the train, but not many middle class Americans do it seems. None of my NRI relations had, either!
19:00 GMT +00:00 What about Amtrak? Posted by: Economist.com | WASHINGTON DC Categories: Trains
AMTRAK, America's oft-maligned national passenger rail service, has had a rough life. Deferred maintenance, low levels of federal funding, immense debt and competition with airlines have all taken their toll since the quasi-governmental entity was organised in 1971. But by the numbers, at least, Amtrak seems to be doing better. Ridership was nearly 26m in fiscal 2007, a new record. Ridership for 2008 is up 12% so far, according to AFP. Even Amtrak's "built-too-wide" Acela Express service is doing well. The increased security in airports following the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 have made flying a lot more of a hassle, especially for short trips like the ones between New York and Washington, DC or between Boston and New York. For many business travellers, it's simply easier to go from Penn Station in midtown New York to Union Station in downtown Washington, DC than it is to make the long trips to and from the airports that surround those two cities. A trip from New York to Washington on the Acela takes a little less than three hours, doesn't involve passing through security, and usually costs a little over $100 if purchased in advance. (Tickets can set you back more than twice as much if purchased at the last minute.) All-in-all, the Acela is a comfortable, fast option for travel between the major cities of the north-eastern United States. Bloomberg's James S. Russell elaborates: Flying can't be counted on to have a time advantage when you add waits at security checkpoints and travel to and from the airport....Right now, no other rail corridors in the U.S. match Acela for speed, comfort or frequency. Overburdened airports, along with jammed highways, high gasoline prices and global-warming concerns, may at last push longstanding plans to build fast train service between heavily trafficked urban markets like Los Angeles-San Francisco-Sacramento, Houston-Dallas, St. Louis- Chicago-Detroit and Florida's east coast. Yes, Acela is better, though by international standards it remains a joke. It looks good today mainly because driving and flying are looking so bad. Mr Russell is right: the Acela only seems great because the other options are so miserable. But that's been enough for Amtrak to capture, by some estimates, over half of the market for business travel between New York and Washington, DC. One easy improvement could make Acela even more appealing: Wi-Fi. Right now you need to bring a broadband wireless card along if you want to stay connected while you're on the train. But if the various $20 bus services between New York and DC can provide free Wi-Fi on the road, how hard can it be for Amtrak to provide it on the rails? In a smart post on Information Week's website, Cora Nucci argues that Amtrak faces a moment of truth: Business travelers are Amtrak's bread and butter. It should be hustling to make Wi-Fi a priority -- to make it free, make it fast, and make it available in every car on the line. This is the time to do it. High oil prices are placing a golden opportunity in Amtrak's lap. Amtrak already offers a service that is greener, cheaper, about as fast, and less of a hassle than its competitors. It doesn't even require a trip to the airport; it takes commuters from city centre to city centre. If Acela also offered free Wi-Fi, it would be a deal business travellers would find very hard to pass up.
Ambika, this is a good thing you've highlighted. Unfortunately, we in India still think the conservation issue is only for wealthy countries. And what about cars? Why cant we have good public transport for all instead?
ReplyDeleteAaaaargh!
I LOVED travelling on Indian Railways - which is why, bad carbon footprint or not, I dislike train travel here in America. It totally lacks the charm of good old IR, and is too sterile and unfriendly, and the food is just too ghastly, for me to ever be tempted.
ReplyDeleteThat said, the wastage here is just awful: almost every car one sees here has just one person in it, and other than in some big cities, public transportation is non existent. Attempts at encouraging car pooling have been failures.
Kamini.
I completely agree with you that Americans should use trains more often. I've tried taking the Amtrak here quite a few times, but it's so unreliable, not to mention that it's not at all as well-connected as Indian trains. I once had to return to Chicago from a conference in Springfield, IL (the state capital to and from which there's a lot of commuting) and my train was 7 hours late. Given that it was a 3-hour ride and that I needed to be back in my office by the afternoon, I couldn't wait around for it and had to bum a ride with a colleague.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with Kamini's comments too, BTW. In our attempt to do our part for the environment, we've bought a hybrid car, got rid of our second car and instead of buying another car, we've joined a car-sharing program (I-Go.org). So far so good, I have to say! One I-Go car replaces 17 cars on the road. I'd recommend it to anyone who has access to I-Go, Flex Car, Zip Car, etc. This type of program may work in India too. Ultimately, though, our tax money needs to go into improving public transportation, and that I think is what desperately needs to happen in India too.