But ‘planes just are cheaper than trains
As ever, the hippies wishing to be so what is not so:
If I want to get from Barcelona to London, I face what should be a simple choice: either I take the plane, and pump out about 280kg of pollution that heats the planet, or the train, and spew just 8kg.
That is not the calculation travellers are presented with, nor is it the one they care about most. Because while the plane ticket would cost €15, an analysis from Greenpeace found this summer, the train ticket would cost a galling €389.
We’d suggest there’s a certain selectivity there in those prices. A certain amount of searching for the lowest possible and the highest respectively. But it’s their evidence so let’s run with it.
This week, we’ll be looking at how Europe runs a system that favours planes over trains in spite of its green ambitions.
But what if the price difference is inherent in the relative efficiencies of the two methods of transport?
Why is it so much cheaper to fly than take the train? A big reason is tax. Unlike drivers and train travellers, fliers do not have to pay tax on jet fuel, and plane tickets are mostly exempt from VAT.
For flights concerning the UK we have Air Passenger Duty so the VAT/carbon tax thing is already taken care of. That’s not it then.
Last year, a study pegged the “social cost of carbon” at about €244 per ton. If trains and planes factored in the social cost of carbon, a train from Barcelona to London would cost just couple more euros, but it would make the flight nearly five times more expensive.
Of course, if you totally just make up numbers you can prove whatever you want. But note that the ‘plane ticket only goes up to €83. Even with that outrageous attempt at a carbon price the ‘plane is still markedly cheaper than the train. And if we use a realistic estimate - say, Stern’s $80 a tonne CO2-e - then the ‘plane ticket is in the €35 to €40 range. Or, as it happens, about 10% of that train ticket.
No, this is more important than just blowing a raspberry at Greenpeace - essential though that activity is. We’ll agree that market prices are not a perfect, inviolable, statement of resource use - but they’re a damn good guide. Something that costs 10x this other method of gaining the same end uses more resources than the cheaper one. Thus this analysis of ‘plane and train prices tells us that to minimise our footprint upon the planet, in order to tread more lightly, we should be taking that ‘plane not that train.
Sorry, ‘planes are just cheaper than trains.
Tim Worstall