In Europe,
the Movement to Give Up Air Travel Is Taking Off. Could the U.S. Be Next?
A local
train moves by while tourists wait for the Alfa Pendular high speed train,
connecting Porto with Lisbon, at Campanha train station on July 06, 2018 in
Porto, Portugal. Large numbers of visitors and locals travel by means of
railroads between Porto, second largest city in the country, and Lisbon, its
capital city.
BY LISA
ABEND
UPDATED: AUGUST 6, 2019 8:48 AM ET |
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: AUGUST 1, 2019
As a fairly
reserved group, Scandinavians tend to be generally disinclined to chat to
people they don’t know. But as the train for Berlin pulls out of Malmo station
in southern Sweden late on a July afternoon during one of this summer’s many
heatwaves, the atmosphere among the strangers seated in car 104 is almost
festive. Mattias Berglund and Cathrine Hellberg, both in their 20s, chat
easily—even giddily—with the four others in their seemingly 1970’s-era
compartment, replete with faded velour seats and decidedly unairconditioned
temperatures. Perhaps their conviviality was sparked by the close quarters, or
by the 13-hour adventure ahead. Or perhaps it springs from a shared sense of
mission. “We’re very concerned about the environment, and I felt guilty when we
flew to Barcelona for our last holiday,” says Hellberg, a student, to nods all
around. “I feel a little proud now to be taking the train.”
This is the
season of flygskam, or “flight shame.” You don’t have to be Greta Thunberg, the
teenage climate activist who recently announced plans to sail to New York in
August, to recognize that a growing number of Europeans eager to reduce their
carbon footprint are opting to limit air travel in favor of more
environmentally-friendly means of transportation. Significant enough that even
airlines are taking note, flygskam–and its counterpart tagskryt, or
train-bragging—is encouraging both European governments and private rail
companies to consider investing in the return of long-distance night trains.
But the revival of a form of transport that has long seemed consigned to the
pages of Agatha Christie novels poses significant obstacles of its own.
Leave it to
northern Europeans to come up with a neologism to describe a complicated
emotional state. As a concept, flygskam originated in Sweden, and refers both
to the guilt that individuals may feel when using a means of transportation
estimated to contribute between 2 and 3% of total atmospheric carbon and to the
shaming they may face should they persist in flying. It was articulated by
opera singer Malena Ernmann, who gave up flying in 2016 (and who just happens
to be Thunberg’s mother), drawing the attention of other celebrities and the
broader public to the cause. The summer of 2018, which brought record high
temperatures to Sweden, and with them, devastating wildfires, drove the point
home. “It had not been like this ever before,” says Marco Andersson, head of
sales for Snålltåget, the Swedish rail company that runs the Malmo-Berlin line.
“I think a lot of people started thinking, ‘Oh, I need to change my behavior,
maybe I shouldn’t go on vacation to Thailand anymore.’”
Two
grassroots initiatives, both launched that year, helped spread the word:
Flygfritt, which convinced 14,500 Swedes to renounce air travel in 2019 (it’s
shooting for 100,000 in 2020) and Tagsemester, a Facebook group with nearly 100,000
members, that offers information on how to travel by train. Throw in some
selfies posted from the sleeping berth of the train Thunberg took to speak at
the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, as well as European and national
elections in which climate concerns played a decisive factor, and Sweden’s
anti-plane, pro-rail movement has taken off.
For
Snålltåget, which acquired the Malmo-Berlin line in 2011, the impact has been
striking. “From 2012 to 2017 we didn’t make a profit,” says Andersson. “Every
year, we were asking, why are we still in this business? But all that changed
last summer.” During the first six months of 2019, the company, which also runs
night trains between Malmo and Stockholm, and, in winter, to the ski town Åre,
has seen a 20% increase in ticket sales. Meanwhile, flights between Malmo and
Stockholm have declined 10% in the past year, and across Sweden, domestic
flights on the whole have fallen 4.5% in the first quarter of 2019 compared to
the previous year, according to SJ, the national rail company.
Yet Sweden
isn’t the only place feeling the effects of flygskam (in fact, the Dutch,
Germans, and Finns have their own words for it). Flygfritt now has chapters in
the UK, France, and Germany and according to Eurail and Interrail General
Manager Carlo Boselli, flygskam is influencing the decision to purchase the
rail passes (which allow for cross-border travel anywhere on the continent) as
well. “According to an internal survey we did,” Boselli says, “the low carbon
footprint of rail travel was relevant in the decision about holiday
transportation for 71% of Interrailers in 2019–nearly 20% more than in 2017.”
The popularity of sites like the U.K.-based Seat61, which offers information on
train travel in Europe, or the recent expansion of Omio, a Berlin-based booking
platform that links train, bus, and air tickets, only underline this growing
interest.
Europe’s
largest international passenger rail company, the Austrian ÖBB, has seen a 10%
growth this spring and summer over 2018 on some of its lines, including the ones
that run from Vienna to Zurich, and Rome to Munich. Spokesman Bernhard Rieder
cautions that, in high season, they could do much more. “During summer, there’s
no room for us to increase ridership,” he says, “ because we’re already nearly
fully booked. On a Saturday in July in Italy, we could be running three trains
a night instead of one.”
It’s enough
to make an airline executive nervous. Speaking before 150 of them at the annual
meeting of the International Aviation Transport Association held in Seoul in
May, director general Alexandre de Juniac warned of flygskam: “Unchallenged,
this sentiment will grow and spread.”
Could you
give up flying? Meet the no-plane pioneers
Growing
numbers of travellers are abandoning air travel to help save the planet – even
if it means spending 14 days on a train
Emine Saner
@eminesaner
Wed 22 May
2019 05.51 BSTLast modified on Wed 22 May 2019 10.47 BST
Wendy and
her daughter take the train
‘We couldn’t really justify flying any more’
... Wendy and her daughter take the train.
It has
taken Roger Tyers four days to reach Moscow by train from Kiev. His destination
is Beijing: a trip that will take 14 days, with a couple of overnight stops
along the way. Tyers, an environmental sociologist at the University of
Southampton, is on his way to China to research attitudes to the environment,
the climate emergency and personal responsibility. “Given that, I thought it
would be somewhat hypocritical of me to fly,” he says over Skype from his
hostel room.
It has been
months in the planning – he had to convince his bosses to give him a month off
to travel to and from China. Has it been a pain? “It definitely has. It’s a
matter of getting your train schedule in line with your visa requirements. I
didn’t realise I needed a visa to travel through Mongolia, even though I’m not
stopping there. There have been moments when I’ve been close to giving up and
either cancelling the whole trip or just booking a flight.” But he is glad he
has stuck with it, he says. “I have to prove it is possible.”
The no-fly
movement is a small but growing community of people who are drastically
reducing the number of flights they take, or giving up air travel altogether.
Many campaigners say they feel flying is about to receive the same attention as
shunning plastic or eating less meat because of its 2% contribution to global
carbon emissions, predicted to grow to as much as 16% by 2050. In Sweden, where
the movement has taken off, a new term has emerged: flygskam, meaning “flight
shame”. Siân Berry, the co-leader of the Green party, has called on people to
take no more than one flight a year and suggested a tax should be imposed on
further journeys. Berry hasn’t flown since 2005.
The climate
activist Greta Thunberg hasn’t flown since 2015; she did her European tour last
month by train. In January, she attended the World Economic Forum at Davos in
Switzerland, travelling 32 hours each way by rail, while a record number of
private jets – about 1,500 – brought the rich and powerful attendees.
Anna
Hughes, who run a no-flying campaign in the UK
‘There is nowhere I want to go that I can’t
get to by bike, train or boat’ ... Anna Hughes, who run a no-flying campaign in
the UK. Photograph: Mat Smith
It is
becoming harder to defend alleged hypocrisy, however well-meaning. The actor
Emma Thompson was criticised for flying from Los Angeles to support the
Extinction Rebellion protest in London, not only by the usual naysayers eager
to point out double standards, but also by environmental campaigners. “She
could just as easily have paid for a billboard poster in Piccadilly and got her
message across there,” said Kevin Anderson, a climate scientist who hasn’t
flown since 2004, on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. The issue has been
significant among environmental scientists for years; the Flying Less campaign,
aimed at academia, has been running since 2015.
Paul
Chatterton, a professor of urban futures at the University of Leeds, also
hasn’t flown since 2004. “I think every academic has to justify why they are
flying to that particular ‘must-go’ conference. If we have something really
important to say, say it in a different way.” He travels to European
conferences by train. “One of the privileges of being a middle-income
professional – and this is a direct plea to other middle-income professionals –
is that you can negotiate with your boss and you have a bit more money to get
the train. I’m not talking about people who can’t afford to do that, because I
know trains are more expensive.”
As for
Chatterton’s no-fly family holidays, the best ones have been taking the ferry
from Hull to Rotterdam and cycling around the Netherlands. “You travel light,
you make it an adventure with your kids,” he says. “Who wants to sit in a
departure lounge? You get the excitement of travelling through places, figuring
out what the next journey is. I think we have to get back into the idea that
travelling is special; it’s a privilege.”
Most flying
is carried out by a small proportion of the population. Aled Jones, the
director of the Global Sustainability Institute at Anglia Ruskin University,
says we have become used to the low-cost weekend flight abroad in a short space
of time. “When I was growing up, and certainly for the generation before,
flying on holiday was not something you expected to do,” he says. “By radically
cutting down, we’re not going back to the dark ages; we’re going back to when
people holidayed in the UK. It will be less of a sacrifice for a lot of people
than we expect.” He admits that addressing “love miles” – flying to see family
who live abroad – is “a very different challenge”.
Maja Rosén,
who lives in Sweden and gave up flying in 2008, had always kept quiet when
friends talked about flying abroad on holidays – until last year. “I thought:
‘How is it possible I’m more scared of destroying the mood than climate
collapse?’ I decided that my new year resolution last year would be to start
asking some inconvenient questions. I realised that most people weren’t aware
of the impact from flying and how huge it is.”
Cath
Heinemeyer, who hasn't flown for 19 years
‘Your
journey becomes part of your holiday’ ... Cath Heinemeyer hasn’t flown for 19
years.
She and a
friend started a campaign, Flight-free 2019 (now Flight-free 2020), to
encourage people to pledge not to fly. By the end of 2018, 15,000 Swedes had
signed; by the end of this year, she thinks it will be 100,000. It has changed
the conversation around flying in the country: passenger numbers dropped at
Swedish airports in 2018, while a record number of people in the country took
the train.
“People don’t realise that what they do as an
individual is so important because it affects those around them,” says Rosén.
“If you keep flying, all your friends will as well. You contribute to the norm.
But if you decide to give up flying or take a flight-free year, that makes
others reflect. Change can happen fast as soon as enough people start acting.
Before, people saw flying as an experience or something you do, it wasn’t in
the category of consumption, but I think now people are starting to realise
that by taking a flight they are a heavy consumer of fossil fuel.”
There is
now a British arm of the campaign, run by the writer Anna Hughes, who last took
a flight eight years ago. More than 1,000 people have pledged to have a
flight-free year. Hughes likens it to the Veganuary campaign, by which people
give up animal products for January to raise awareness of veganism and change
behaviour. She has travelled to Ireland, Denmark and other European countries –
and seen a lot of the UK. “There is nowhere I can think of that I want to go
that I can’t get to by bike, train or boat. If I was going to go further, I
would just take a long time to do it.”
The author
Nicola Davies is taking long-haul flights for a couple of upcoming commitments,
but after that she will radically rethink her flight consumption, she says.
There will almost certainly be no more European flights; she has already
travelled to the Balearic Islands in Spain by car. “We did the journey down to
Barcelona in two days, then the ferry crossing is eight hours,” she says,
adding that it requires a bit more planning than travelling by plane. “It’s
much more exciting, much closer to the real skin of the planet than the feeling
you get from going to an airport, popping into a metal tube and then popping
out at some other point on the planet with no real grasp of the distance,
habitat, people and cultures you’ve passed over on the way.
If you keep flying, all your friends will. But
if you decide to take a flight-free year, that makes others reflect
Maja Rosén
“I think
this shift to no, or fewer, flights is an opportunity to redraft what travel
truly means, rather than a sort of consumerist ticking of boxes. If we give up
the idea of the weekend break in Budapest or the three days in Miami for a stag
do, I think that’s probably helpful – for us as human beings, as well as for
the planet.”
There are
people who are reminding us that it is possible to travel overland with young
children. “We’ve gone to Italy by train, Spain, different parts of France,”
says Linda Thomas, a fashion designer. For the first couple of years, giving up
flying felt like a loss, she says, but the train-travel website seat61.com has
enabled them to plan more adventurous journeys. “We’ve had some really
incredible wildlife experiences. There would be a feeling of guilt otherwise –
that you’re seeing something, but also contributing to its demise at the same
time, when you’ve taken a long-haul flight to get somewhere. It doesn’t feel
like a loss; it feels like we’ve gained new experiences.”
Wendy and
her husband have cut down on flying in recent years and decided to stop
altogether at the beginning of 2019. “We couldn’t really justify it any more.
Something that was purely for fun didn’t feel enjoyable any more; it didn’t
feel right.” They have had fantastic family holidays by train, starting with a
trip to Chamonix in the French Alps with their six-month-old daughter, but
Wendy says it has been hard not seeing her husband’s family, who live in
Malaysia.
Cath
Heinemeyer, a researcher and community artist who hasn’t flown for 19 years,
says visiting family has been a challenge. “My family live in Northern Ireland,
my husband’s family live in Germany and we live in York. We do see them, but we
see them less frequently, for a longer time.” She admits they haven’t faced
family commitments that would be simplified by flying. “Our parents are in
reasonable health. Maybe it will get challenging if we’re suddenly called to
support them in their later years. We would have to decide that on a
case-by-case basis.”
It can be
more expensive – “You need to get a bit savvy about booking” – and it requires
research, she says. “We have had mishaps, where we’ve had tiny children and
missed a train connection and had to find last-minute accommodation in some
city.” Heinemeyer felt a twinge of regret at missing her high school reunion in
Canada, but otherwise not flying hasn’t felt like a sacrifice, she says. “I
like the children to realise how far they’ve travelled and see how the
landscape changes. It’s just a thing we’ve always worked around. Your journey
becomes part of your holiday.”
Lewis
McNeil, a project manager for the charity the Orchard Project, proved the
viability of long-haul overland travel after he gave up flying in 2006. There
was “a ‘letting go’ period akin to the end of a relationship, but things got
exciting when I realised that one can still travel, and travel far, while
creating a fraction of the emissions that air travel is responsible for”, he
says.
He has gone
by coach to many European destinations, finding the train too expensive if
booked last-minute, but his most intrepid no-fly holiday was a nine-day
cargo-ship journey from France to Trinidad in the Caribbean, booked through a
specialist company, then on to Venezuela by boat. “The idea behind this is that
you’re piggybacking on emissions that are already going to be emitted – that
cargo ship, as unsustainable as it is with our crazy trade system, is going
anyway. With flying, flights depend on demand.” The journey was magical.
“Watching dolphins and whales, seeing incredible starlit skies in the middle of
the Atlantic, swimming in the little plunge pool, swotting up on Spanish,
making friends with the Filipino crew and sharing music. It was pretty
expensive, at €90 (£79) per person a day, but that included food and a lovely
en suite room complete with a porthole and a writing desk.” He returned from
Colombia to the Netherlands.
The key to
flight-free travel, he says, is “seeing the journey as part of the adventure” –
although travel pillows, eye masks, earplugs, snacks, books and a tablet with
films downloaded all help.
After
Moscow, Tyers will get the Trans-Siberian railway to Irkutsk, then on to
Beijing. “Not everybody can do it, I understand that,” he says. “Not everybody
has the time, or bosses who are willing to let people take longer to get
places. But for those who can – and I think a lot more people can than realise
– flying less is good; it’s enriching.” He is pessimistic that people will
change voluntarily to the degree needed. “But we’ll see. Often the cultural
change comes first, then political change – and I do think there’s something in
the air.”
This article is more than 2 months old
Eurostar
enjoys busiest August as passengers seek alternative to flying
Eurostar
expects to start running direct Amsterdam-London trains in the coming months.
Demand for
sustainable travel is ‘an exciting time’ for the high-speed train service, says
CEO
Gwyn Topham
Transport correspondent
@GwynTopham
Thu 17 Oct
2019 18.56 BSTLast modified on Thu 17 Oct 2019 19.20 BST
A Eurostar
train at St Pancras station in London
Eurostar expects to start running direct
Amsterdam-London trains in the coming months. Photograph: Simon Dawson/Reuters
Eurostar
has reported its busiest August ever, with more than a million passengers
travelling on the cross-Channel train service in that month.
The service
appears to have benefited from increasing demand for an alternative to flying -
a trend highlighted in Eurostar’s advertising campaign.
Eurostar’s
chief executive, Mike Cooper, said the growing demand for sustainable travel
was “an exciting time” for the high-speed train service.
“We have
seen positive momentum over the summer, with strong growth in the number of
North American passengers choosing to travel by high-speed rail,” he said.
Airlines
have contributed: the Dutch carrier KLM has called on its passengers to fly
less. It will reduce the number of daily flights it operates between Amsterdam
and Brussels from next March and offer customers a high-speed train seat
instead.
Eurostar
expects to start running direct Amsterdam-London trains in the coming months.
While direct services run from London, UK-bound passengers from the Dutch city
are currently obliged to change at Brussels because of border restrictions.
Ahead of
Brexit, Cooper said that the train service was “in the best possible position
we can be” to combat potential border issues but admitted there was “clearly an
air of uncertainty”.
Sales
revenues at Eurostar grew 3% to £254m over the three months to the end of September,
while passenger numbers were up 4% year on year to 3.1 million for the period.
Next month
marks the 25th anniversary of Eurostar. The journey time from London to Paris
has been reduced from three hours to 2hr 15min since the first journey on 14
November 1994, while passenger numbers have grown from fewer than three million
in the first full year of service to 11 million last year.
Its French
owner, SNCF, is considering merging Eurostar with the Franco-Belgian operator
Thalys to create a European high-speed rail company, a project under the
working name Green Speed, that would extend the network from London into
Germany.
