The environmental impact of a shift to rail from short-haul flights

The environmental impact of a shift to rail from short-haul flights

van Goeverden, C.D. (TU Delft Transport and Planning)

Tampère, Chris (editor)
Cools, Mario (editor)
Proost, Stef (editor)

2023

In the context of mitigating climate change, a shift from air to rail is proposed for short-haul journeys. The impact of this policy on the GHG emissions of aviation is small and will be even marginal if only journeys < 500 km are involved. These journeys account for 2.2% of the mileage of air travel, and the impact on emissions will be even smaller than this figure, mainly because not all air travellers (likely) will shift, and part of the emission reduction will be undone by increasing emissions of rail transport. When the upper limit of involved distances increases, the impact increases significantly as well; but even at a limit of 1200 km, which is about the upper limit of the market range of the train, the impact will likely be smaller than the opposite impact of the annual growth of air travel. Policy intentions seem to be prompted by just to do something that doesn’t hurt people so much rather than by a systematic analysis of possible measures and their effectiveness.

modal shift
short-haul travel
airplane
train
climate change

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:e452cff3-3632-4bd8-8083-b3d47e8560c2

KU Leuven, Institute for Mobility, Leuven

978-90-82383-31-7

Proceedings of the BIVEC-GIBET Transport Research Days 2023

Institutional Repository

conference paper

© 2023 C.D. van Goeverden