In Western Europe, airlines are losing the battle to preserve their lucrative short-haul routes. Soon, they may not legally be able to fly them. Their loss, unimaginable among U.S. and Canadian airlines, marks a rare victory for the planet.
Take the route from Rome, where I live, to Milan. It never occurs to me to fly between the two cities, even though the distance between them is about 600 kilometres – the same distance as Toronto to Montreal. The Trenitalia site offers 42 high-speed departures from Rome on any weekday. Rival Italo – there is healthy rail competition in Italy – offers 33.
Knowing a train leaves every few minutes for Milan, I never book ahead. I take the metro to Rome’s central train station, pop my credit card into a ticket machine and am rolling a few minutes later. The trains hit 300 kilometres an hour or more – almost turboprop speeds – which means I can be in central Milan in three hours. And, since the trains are electric, my travel is emission-free, as if I were riding in an enormous Tesla.
I know that renewable energy supplies only somewhat more than a third of the country’s power. Still, the output of emissions per passenger per kilometre on an Italian train is far less than that of a car or jet (and about 10 times less stressful). Italy’s move into renewables is picking up momentum, so train travel will become ever cleaner.
As the high-speed rail network expands across Europe, airlines are scaling back their domestic routes, especially those under 500 to 600 kilometres. The loss of great chunks of the domestic market triggered the demise of Alitalia, Italy’s flag carrier, a couple of years ago. Ita Airways, the successor airline, offers relatively few Rome-to-Milan flights.
In 2021, French lawmakers voted to prohibit short-haul domestic flights when a train can provide the same connection in 2½ hours or less. The prohibition was approved by the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, a week ago. But even before the EC swung into action, European airlines realized their short-haul business would become a relic of the past.
In June, the Dutch government revealed plans to cut flights from Schiphol airport by more than 10 per cent, a move expected to trigger a big reduction in short-haul flights. In an interview this week with the Financial Times, Marjan Rintel, the CEO of KLM, the Dutch carrier that is part of the Air France-KLM group, said she is actually encouraging passengers to opt for trains instead of planes on short routes and that KLM is exploring integrated plane-train baggage handling. She said airlines should not view rail as a competitor but as a partner working toward the common goal of cutting emissions.
The short-haul flight prohibitions in Europe will probably be expanded. The question is whether the end of these flights will bring emissions down enough to make a difference.
A recent study by the Université Libre of Brussels said the benefits would be minor since short-haul flights don’t burn much fuel. The culprits are long flights – those longer than 4,000 kilometres – which burn about half of all commercial aviation fuel. Those flights cannot be banned, nor does a clean technology exist to power them.
An October study by the Intergenerational Foundation, a British research and education charity, came to a somewhat more optimistic conclusion. It said that banning flights on British routes (excluding those in Northern Ireland) where a rail alternative of under 4½ hours exists would reduce domestic aviation emissions by more than half. What is beyond debate is that fewer passengers on planes, and more on electric trains, is a win for the planet.
Which brings us to North America, where rail is primitive, especially in Canada, compared with Western Europe. The trains are generally slow, infrequent, expensive and mostly powered by diesel, one of the dirtiest transportation fuels. In Canada, Via Rail offers only about 10 departures a day from Toronto to Montreal, and they are painfully sluggish compared to, say, Italian trains. The fastest train on that route takes about five hours; almost half of them take seven to nine hours. No wonder airlines such as Porter do a booming business on the Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa routes.
The speed issue is exacerbated by the ownership structure. Canada is one of the few countries where rail infrastructure – the tracks and so on – is not publicly owned. The railbed was sold when Canadian National Railway was privatized in 1995. As a result, Via Rail has to wedge its passenger trains between snail-slow freight trains.
There are all sorts of excuses for why high-speed rail does not exist in Canada. The biggie is Canada lacks the population density of Europe. True, but fully half of Canada’s population of 38 million lives in the Quebec City-Windsor corridor. The population density on that route does justify electric high-speed rail, all the more so since both Ontario and Quebec are brimming with renewable power.
The other argument is expense, possibly $20-billion or more to connect Toronto and Montreal alone. But what is the cost of building and maintaining highways forever? And the cost to the planet of allowing that route to be dominated by planes, diesel trains and automobiles? If Canada is serious about reducing its carbon footprint, out with the airlines and in with high-speed electric rail.
Eric Reguly