{"id":7512,"date":"2019-07-15T07:04:43","date_gmt":"2019-07-15T07:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7512"},"modified":"2019-07-15T07:04:43","modified_gmt":"2019-07-15T07:04:43","slug":"train-or-car-a-carbon-comparison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2019\/07\/15\/train-or-car-a-carbon-comparison\/","title":{"rendered":"Train or car: a carbon comparison"},"content":{"rendered":"

I went to London recently by train (and returned). \u00a0On my ticket receipt, Last Great Western noted that they had contributed\u00a029.54 kg to the atmosphere on my behalf to get me there. \u00a0Had I gone by car, I'd have contributed 70.64 kg. \u00a0So well done me.<\/p>\n

But I was struck by how relatively small the difference was: 30 v. 70.<\/p>\n

So I checked their carbon calculator page<\/a><\/strong><\/em>. \u00a0This says: \u00a0\"We have estimated the carbon footprint of your train journey, and an alternative car journey, by multiplying together three pieces of information:<\/em><\/p>\n

1. The number of passengers (the default is one)<\/em><\/p>\n

2. The distance of your journey, per passenger. \u00a0This data comes from WebTIS, the system we use for online ticket purchasing, which in turn takes distance information from the rail industry\u2019s \u2018National Routeing Guide\u2019 data feed. \u00a0The data describes the total distance of your journey, from station to station. \u00a0If there are multiple route options for your journey, the distance is specific to the route you have selected. \u00a0If you select a return journey, the travelling distance is set accordingly. \u00a0For car travel, we don\u2019t know the specific route you would travel, so to give an indicative comparison we have assumed you would travel the same distance by car as you would by train.<\/em><\/p>\n

3. The average emissions intensity of rail and car travel for every km travelled, per passenger. \u00a0We have used overall averages for UK rail and car travel, as published in the UK Government GHG Conversion Factors for Company Reporting, 2016. \u00a0Car data is published per vehicle; to convert to \u2018per passenger\u2019 figures we used the national average car occupancy of 1.6 people, based on the Government\u2019s National Travel Survey: England 2015.\"<\/em><\/p>\n

This means (I think), that if I were to travel to London and back on my own in a car, my footprint would be 1.6 x 70kg. \u00a0That is 112 kg.<\/p>\n

This makes the difference 30 v. 112 which I still think is small as you'd only need a car with 4 people in it to better the train figures. \u00a0Maybe the following is part of the answer:<\/p>\n

\"For national rail, the government data gives one overall average (it doesn\u2019t distinguish among types of train). \u00a0We use this data so that we can represent your journey no matter where you travel across the UK. \u00a0In reality, emissions from diesel and electric trains will be different, and we are in the process of introducing new electric fleets across the GWR network. \u00a0We are currently doing work to assess the carbon implications per passenger of this transition<\/em>.\"<\/p>\n

I was on an electric train for ~90% of the journey which means that I was right to be skeptical of the initial figures. \u00a0So hurry up Late Great Western, your electric fleet has been operating for a while now; it's time for more calculation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went to London recently by train (and returned). \u00a0On my ticket receipt, Last Great Western noted that they had contributed\u00a029.54 kg to the atmosphere on my behalf to get me there. \u00a0Had I gone by car, I'd have contributed...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7512\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}