I’m getting on a plane today for the first time since June 2013. I’m heading up to Aberdeen to give a talk about Passenger Pigeons (and a little bit about Hen Harriers) to the Aberdeen RSPB Group on their 40th anniversary.
I’m looking forward to seeing Aberdeen again. It must be almost exactly 34 years since I got off the sleeper in Aberdeen and walked to the Zoology Department to start my PhD on ‘The winter activity of pipistrelle bats’. I remember the granite city looking very grey and not particularly welcoming. The cold wind swirled around Union Street as I walked through the city to the Zoology Department. But first impressions can be misleading (more often so, of places than people, I feel) and I found the welcome at Aberdeen was very warm.
I would rather have travelled by train on this trip too but the economics mitigate strongly against it. I really don’t quite understand how it is so much cheaper to fly from Birmingham to Aberdeen than to get the train. I put a reasonable amount of effort into trying to persuade myself that the price of train travel (and the associated parking and travel to the station) was just as cheap as the flight package but it isn’t. Even parking at Peterborough station for the requisite amount of time is more expensive than its equivalent at Birmingham airport.
Given that planes look quite expensive to build (but I have no idea how much it costs to build a train), and pilots look more expensive than train drivers, and airports occupy a lot of ground, I am surprised by the relative costs. And, of course, the main reason I’d rather travel by train is that the carbon footprint is rather lower, and since carbon footprint is related to energy use then, again, I am surprised that flights work out so much cheaper. But they do.
Can anyone explain this to me?
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Beyond belief isn’t it? So much for the free market making everything work properly. But then there’s no tax on aircraft fuel for one thing.
Perhaps its due to greater competition amongst airlines and airports that help to keep costs down?
Its weird that trains cant be cheaper…. but they will always be slower. In my calculator I do include a notional cost for “time taken”.
One other factor worth considering…. while an airport is large, once the plane is off the ground, the route (other than air traffic control) is free. With trains you have to pay to maintain every inch of the track to your destination.
As M Parry correctly states, airlines are exempt from VAT paying on fuel. I read a couple of years ago that this costs the UK taxpayer something to the tune of £5-6 billion a year in lost revenue!
More evidence I guess that economic neo-liberalism is dead in practice if not in mantra.
I’m sure the infrastructure is the main cost. All those rails, fences, bridges, signals etc. And the whole area will be larger than an airport.
Could it be connected to, as pointed out, fuel for aircraft is tax free Also most train companies are nationalised- owned by German and French State owned companies- and highly profitable. The same goes for that other great nationalised industries- power generation,.
I don’t know the answer but it is ridiculous that trains are so much more expensive. A few years ago I had a 6 month contract working in Edinburgh (for RSPB as it happens-I think you’d have been my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss at the time!) while my now husband was working in Norwich. Plane fares between Norwich and Edinburgh were so cheap that we could buy 6 months worth of weekend visits by plane for the same price as about 4 or 5 return train journeys. Combined with the fact that the plane journey was so much quicker so we could travel after work on a Friday night and get back before work on the first flight on a Monday (whereas the 6-7 hour train journey meant travelling Saturday morning and Sunday evening) it was a no brainer. I still feel guilty about the carbon footprint though!
Loss making British Rail was converted into about 30 separate companies (train operators, track maintainers, stock leasers, revenue apportioners) that one way or another have to return a profit, to provide a return for their shareholders as well as paying the cost of the many internal transactions between each other. Is it a surprise that the passenger, no sorry, customer has had to pay?
“explain this”
The Fat Controller needs his cut
Do train ( and bus ) companies pay tax on fuel? I seem to think that the train companies didn’t ( they certainly didn’t in steam days as there wasn’t tax on coal!)
As mentioned earlier the provision, maintenance and upgrading of all those tunnels, viaducts, signals and track will be a major cost. Trains also run empty for a lot of the time, particularly coming from and going to the depot at the beginning and end of the day and sometimes in the middle of the day. Planes seem to be serviced overnight then start with a good complement of passengers at an early hour and are busy throughout. Because railways offer a walk on service they do have to provide unremunerative trains at unsocial hours.
The answer is to trim your menu en route. The savings will easily make up the difference between air and rail fares, the fry up famine along with the train will give a double hit to carbon, and as a bonus the NHS will be saved. It’s a responsible lifestyle choice.
Saving the planet will cost us. I ‘sume.
The volume of passengers will be important too. Cost divided between hundreds of thousands vs cost divided between just thousands. (Not per plane or train obviously, but overall.)
From Wiki
Buses
Main article: Bus Service Operators Grant
The Bus Service Operators Grant provides a fuel duty rebate to local bus service operators (but not for express coach which receives no rebate). As of April 2010 the rebate was £0.43 for diesel, £0.2360 for road fuel gas other than natural gas and 100% for biodiesel and bioethanol. Additional rebates are available for increasing fuel efficiency, low carbon emission vehicles and equipping vehicles with Smartcards and GPS tracking equipment.
Trains
UK train operators are required pay full duty rates with the exception of biofuels, for which the duty was reduced from 53p to 8p in 2006[16] and for electrified services.
The difficult solution is not to go to Aberdeen just to give a talk. It could be recorded and placed online. On here for example. And you’d get a wider audience.
John Stone: “loss making British Rail” cost the UK taxpayer less than is currently paid in subsidy to the franchisees. We have the highest rail fares per mile in Europe precisely because these scroungers are making money for old rope from the UK taxpayer. With the massive increase in the number of people using the train, fares should have tumbled. Like all privatisations, this was a corrupt piece of political demagoguery which has only benefitted the already rich.