The High Price of Low-Cost Travel

Language Level: ADVANCED

Source: SPEAK UP

Standard: British Accent

Since the release in 2006 of Al Gore’s Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, the issue of climate change has been very much on the political agenda.

Some critics have questioned Al Gore’s data, but Miles Tight, a senior lecturer in transport planning at the University of Leeds, says that 99,9 per cent of scientists agree that climate change is already happening. He presented his opinions at a recent conference on traffic, which was organized by the British Council in Milan. He argued that whereas Industrial pollution in the UK had been reduced  in recent years transport-generated carbon emission were increasing. And, when he met with Speak Up, he said that it wasn’t only the automobile which was causing problems:

Miles Tight

Standard: British Accent

Aeroplanes are interesting one. I’ve seen a sort of mix of data on this as to how important their effects actually are. I you look at the emissions per travel kilometre, or per passenger kilometre, then I’ve seen some data which suggests that they, if you have a full aeroplane, compared to a car, then, per person per kilometre, it’s about the same level of emission, but that doesn’t take into account the fact that aircraft emit their fact that aircraft emit their gases high up in the atmosphere, where actually it’s having a much bigger effect on global warming. I’ve seen figures that suggest two to three times the level, so, per passenger kilometre, they are actually more polluting and, when you think about the energy that is required to get this huge multi-ton vehicle up into the air and keep it there, it’s obviously going to be huge.

SKY HIGH

And what we’re seeing with aircraft at the moment worldwide is a massive increase. I mean, in the UK and many other countries, we’ve had the takeoff –if that’s not a pun! –but the rapid rise in the low-cost airline market. I came here today for 15 Euros from Leeds, a ludicrous price and, if I was to come by train, which would obviously be much cleaner, it would cost me somewhere like 300, 400, for the same one-way trip. And somewhere, I think we have to address those kind of relative pricing of the modes.

IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE

You know, I mean, it’s a reasonably good train, because we now have the express trains from Eurotunnel, you know, I could come all the way here in about 10 hours, I guess, compared to the sort of two-and-half hours, plus access and egress and security check-in time and everything else that goes with air travel, so it’s not hugely different. It’s the price which is massively wrong. And everything points towards a huge increase in air travel over the coming years and that, I think, will be sufficient to wipe out any benefits that we might get through more localized measures that we’re seeking to implement to effect ground-based travel, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Well, on the one hand, we’re reducing it, but on the other hand, we’re simply going to add to the problem in another way, and that doesn’t make sense.