Extortionate UK Travel Costs Increases Brits Carbon Footprint
Tags: Electric Vehicles, Climate Change, Aviation, Transportation, UK

The ability to travel to the UK from nearby countries is increasingly becoming a much more cost effective affair, allowing people to undertake commutes to and from the UK for a fraction of the price seen in the past.

This recently gained attention in an article by the Telegraph, which saw a student avoid a hefty train ticket fare from Newcastle to London by flying to his destination via Spain instead. The student found that a train fare would have cost him £78.50 had he gotten a direct train, so opted for a flight via the island of Menorca which only cost him £26.99 — a whopping saving of £51.51!

This all sounds good and jolly, however reports of lower aviation costs are currently being overshadowed by the ongoing problem of rising transportation costs in the UK — notably seen with rising train fares.

In a study conducted by the Manchester based energy management and trading company, Energi Mine, it was revealed that a person could commute to London from Toulouse, cheaper than they could from Manchester.

From looking into train and flight options suitable for a 9am to 5pm job, Energi Mine found that the cheapest train fare from Manchester would cost a person £164.49, whereas a flight from Toulouse would only cost £146; saving them £18.49. Combined with the fact that the UK wages haven’t seen an average increase of 3% since 2015, the rising cost of UK rail travel is becoming a real financial burden on those who rely upon commuting in their daily lives. Furthermore, train services are becoming increasingly unreliable, with around 8,000 services on GTR and 5,000 on Northern having been cancelled or severely delayed this year.

Financial strains aren’t the only problem.

Because more people are considering flying options due to lower costs, carbon emissions will continue to rise as more people undertake commutes by plane.

Cheaper flights have been upheld as key factor in the increase in carbon emissions seen within UK aviation, having increased by nearly 70% since 1990, and rising by 11% in 2004 alone. So while carbon emissions only accounted for 6% of national carbon emissions in 2014, since 1990, aviation emissions have doubled whilst economy-wide emissions have reduced by more than a third.

This is evidently problematic given the latest findings from the IPCC, which stated that the world has just 12 years in which to avoid the catastrophic and irreversible effects of climate change.

What is to be done?

The latest IPCC report has stated that combined action is required to stand a fighting chance against climate change, so the UK government can begin by addressing the unjustified price discrepancy between internal transport costs and travel costs from abroad. This will require more investment into more environmentally sustainable infrastructure, which in turn will allow for more economically efficient transportation.

On top of this, the way people view and use energy will have to change, so innovative new schemes will be required to incentivise more people into using greener modes of transport. An example can already be seen with the EnergiToken (ETK) rewards platform which rewards people for energy efficient behaviour.

Whilst cheaper flights are nice, avoiding environmental catastrophe should clearly be viewed as the main priority, so it is now up to the UK government to facilitate the ideal settings for cheaper and more energy efficient transport options to emerge.

For more information about EnergiToken and its energy-saving reward scheme, please visit www.energitoken.com, follow on Twitter at @EnergiMine or join the EnergiToken Telegram group.