Tag Archives: shorthaul flights

How About High Speed 2 Wheels?

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For a long time, when asked about the need to reduce the environmental impact of aviation, my stock answer would be that transferring shorthaul flights on to high-speed rail services should be an obvious aim for governments. Yet, the more I have learnt about this governments high-speed two proposals, the more I have felt that it would be a very poor investment indeed, whether measured on economic or environmental grounds. Yes, having high-speed trains would shift some people from shorthaul flights onto less polluting rail services, but it has to be remembered that this big switch has already been largely made, especially on flights from London to Leeds, Liverpool and Durham Tees Valley, which no longer operate.

So if high-speed 2 is a bad investment, what would be a better investment? Obviously, any comparison between rail and air travel is about longer distance intercity journeys, whereas the vast majority of journeys take place within built-up environments, or are commutes between outlying towns and city centres. What if all the money collected from air passenger duty was actually put towards genuinely environmentally beneficial projects? Few things are better for the environment than high-quality off-road walking and cycling tracks, using existing historic transport corridors, especially disused railway lines. Yet, this can be done for a fraction of the cost of building new ones — the figure quoted by cycling charity Sustrans is that new cycle paths can be built for around £200,000 per mile, compared to the £155,000,000 per mile cost of high-speed 2.

Now, can these really be comparable, when high-speed 2 must surely carry far more people at much higher speeds? Yes, it might well do, but its entire business model is based on very ambitious estimates of user figures. Why put so many billions of pounds into such an inherently risky project? Whether high-speed 2 is viable or not (and we are certainly in the no camp), investing in better facilities for pedestrians and cyclists would still provide a much quicker win, both in terms of transport and human health.

Weigh me up before you go go

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One of the most frequent complaints at the moment about low-cost airlines — and even some very high cost airlines nowadays as well, especially for flying across the pond — is the amount being charged for checked baggage, sometimes up to £16 for shorthaul flights within Europe.

Personally, I’ve always felt that it is much fairer to charge for baggage, rather than giving people who want to carry a lot more with them a free ride, but the flipside of this is that the legacy airlines which don’t charge for checked baggage can suddenly become much better value when compared with their rivals which do.

When baggage charges started at just a few pounds each way, the little bit extra didn’t make that much difference, but £16 doubled could make a seemingly expensive £100 flight with an airline like British Airways, which would also include free food and drink, become much better value than a £70 return flight with Easyjet, and this is before you add in the cost of getting to and from a more remote airport like Stansted or Luton.

However, these extra luggage charges really do just reinforce the argument in favour of travelling light, not to mention making sure that you do know how much you are carrying before you leave. For this, we would have to recommend buying some form of travel scale — I have a simple lightweight analogue scale, made by Gotravel products, and available in the travel department of many major stores.

Here are a few personal tips for travelling light:

  • Clothes — how many do you really need? Hotel laundry might still be ridiculously expensive, but you would probably be better off by washing your clothes halfway through a holiday at a local launderette, rather than paying for extra baggage charges. It’s always worth taking some clothing to cater for sudden changes in the weather, but if you are packing tight, isn’t it better to wear that raincoat through the airport, rather than having to take an extra checked bag?
  • Camera — I used to travel with a large SLR where I went, sometimes complete with long zoom lenses, but now I just take a compact digital camera. Where are your pictures likely to end up? If they are only going to be shared with friends on the Internet, resolution is never really going to be that important, so a decent compact digital camera should give you the versatility you need, especially if you can find a model with a high enough ISO for flexibility when taking photos at night. even if you do plan to print your images, aspect ratio (print shops still default at 3:2) might be a more important consideration than megapixels, as a standard 6×4″ print at 300 dpi will need just 2 megapixels (1800x1200px).
  • Laptop — are you travelling for business or pleasure? If the former, then lightweight models can certainly save considerable extra hassle, and if the latter, then I hope you can just ditch the laptop and enjoy yourself! Same goes for PDAs etc, but if you must get yourself connected, you can always use a hotel business centre or Internet cafe.
  • Adapters and chargers — I used to take a whole load of different power adapters, especially to go with my laptop on camera, but as their technology has improved, most portable devices will go for several days now without being charged. Many hotels will have chargers for standard mobile phones behind the reception desk. Can you get by with just taking a spare battery?
  • Buying stuff on the way — buying souvenirs and other products might be part of a travel experience, but they could end up by lumping you with a whole load of extra charges to get home. Always bear in mind that if your goal is hand luggage only, you won’t be able to take any liquids over 125 mL through security, so it is best not to even look at those cheap wines and spirits. With the buying power of modern supermarkets, not to mention online, can you actually get the product you are looking at back home anyway? Work out the difference in price, and the cost of getting it home, and make your own decision. If you’re getting someone a gift, it might well be cheaper to post it direct from wherever you are — this will save you lugging it around all day anyway. Using the postal system might also be a way of avoiding checked baggage charges for your own stuff – so if you want a little bit more space in your bag for non-liquid gifts, why not leave the task of taking your dirty laundry home to the Postal Service?

If you do find yourself scrunching everything down just to fit in one bag to get through the airport, you might want to take a foldable backpack so that you can put your coat in it once you have reached your sunny destination.