Sustainability: rail’s secret weapon

Transport is the single largest contributor to UK domestic greenhouse gas emissions. But the average train journey emits 70 per cent less CO2 than going by car, and a single freight train now removes up to 129 lorries from the road. The mission now is to make the public and businesses aware of how just how ‘green’ rail travel is

After a tough past year, the UK rail industry has work to do to re-build its reputation and attract more potential travellers. There are welcome signs, with the improving industrial relations landscape, and the recent talk from Government about trialling new ticketing ideas, both mitigating issues that will have put some people off rail travel.
    
But we also need to address the other side of the coin: what can be done that will encourage travellers to positively want to use rail, and choose it above other modes of transport?
    
For us, the answer lies in sustainability. This can be rail’s secret weapon to attract travellers – indeed, the key to success will be making rail’s sustainability benefits much less of a secret!
    
This mission is important, for anyone travelling across the UK – whatever their favoured mode of transport. Transport is the single largest contributor to UK domestic greenhouse gas emissions, making up 24 per cent of the total. The average train journey emits 70 per cent less CO2 than going by car, and a domestic rail journey is seven times less polluting than flying the same route. Encouraging greater rail use also reduces congestion, which applies equally to freight as well as passenger journeys – a single freight train now removes up to 129 lorries from the road.
    
But these benefits aren’t yet fully appreciated by travellers. Last autumn, Trainline commissioned research which found the British public genuinely wanted to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle. Sixty-one per cent of people survey said they believe it is their “responsibility” to live sustainably, and 58 per cent described being environmentally conscious as a “badge of honour”.
    
Improving people’s knowledge
So, the desire for sustainable lifestyles exists, but crucially people seem to lack understanding about how best to achieve these goals. The most popular green actions highlighted in the survey were recycling and taking reusable bags shopping – both welcome and responsible acts that have captured the public imagination and created a change in society’s behaviour in recent years, but far from the most effective way for an individual to reduce their personal carbon footprint.
    
Instead the biggest potential impact comes from changing transport behaviours, such as living without a car or switching one journey from air travel to rail. Yet our research shows the British public remains alarmingly unaware of this: only 17 per cent in our survey recognised that switching one long distance car or plane journey to rail travel would significantly benefit the environment.
    
Business travellers are showing a similar enthusiasm for sustainable ways to travel too. In January we surveyed British business travellers and found 72 per cent wanted to take a higher proportion of trips by lower carbon modes of transport, such as rail. Two-thirds of respondents said they were concerned about their personal carbon footprint from business travel in 2022. And most worryingly, 95 per cent of respondents took a business trip by car last year that could have been made by an alternative, greener mode of transport.
    
This demonstrates changes in wider society also affect demand for business travel, with the increasing importance of living sustainably crossing over into people’s working lives. As business travellers increasingly think about their carbon footprint, so businesses too need to examine how travel is contributing to their corporate carbon disclosures – and ensure they are responding to the changing requirements of their workforce.
    
Rail provides a natural answer, creating an opportunity that the sector needs to capitalise on.

Famous for being green
It’s against this backdrop that we launched the I Came by Train movement in late 2022. The intention behind this campaign is to help make rail famous for being green, and to establish a positivity that encourages people to choose to take the train – in effect, to move away from the notion of “flight-shaming” to try and enforce behavioural change, and instead create the concept of “train-bragging” that builds pride in rail travel.
    
So how can this be achieved? We don’t have all the answers, but to offer some suggestions in February we published a White Paper, developed through contributions from 16 different experts across the travel, transport, tech and sustainability sectors.
    
A coalition approach is the only effective way to promote the opportunities that sustainability presents. Trainline are members of the Urban Mobility Partnership precisely because it brings together businesses and experts from across the transport sector. No-one has a monopoly on good ideas, but we can all share them, act on them, and increase their impact.
    
Inspirational cross-industry messaging that helps promote the notion of
rail travel, and emphasises its contribution to a reduced carbon footprint, is essential. We need to improve public understanding of how easy it is to reduce their impact on the environment by using rail, and to collaborate on simple messaging that supports modal shift.
    
This messaging can focus on those journeys and opportunities where rail offers the most benefit, where it is either cheaper or quicker than car – or both!
    
To support this, as part of our White Paper research Trainline developed a Reasonable by Rail database, analysing 250,000 different popular UK journeys. This research found that 75 per cent of journeys are cheaper or faster if travellers book in advance and secure the cheapest available price for the journey. Even when considering the average price paid, 64 per cent of journeys – nearly two-thirds – would be cheaper or faster when a Railcard discount is applied.
    
Such options aren’t always available or appropriate for business travellers – but if the rail industry is willing to sell tickets at these prices, and is serious about burnishing its green credentials, then it needs to carefully consider the trade-offs that passengers are making and start leaning in to such decisions.
    
Because if the industry gets these calculations right and popularises sustainable travel, this offers the opportunity to transform the finances of UK rail – and can encourage a resurgence in business travel that still lags below pre-Covid levels.

The prize would be a reduced national carbon footprint from business travel, reduced congestion from fewer cars and lorries on the road, and a growing, more financially-sound UK rail sector.
    
These outcomes are in our collective interest – so we need collective action to achieve them.