Yesterday I bumped into Hemant Jain's blog post, here on the platform.
He shared a very interesting picture, by which the amount of emission caused by the European aviation industry and the Icelandic volcano eruption was pictured and compared. The devastating truth was that planes cause 46 times bigger harm to the Earth, than Mother Earth on her own expense.
And this made me thinking. Is it really that bad, not having commercial flights running for a couple of days? Of course, I understand the thousands of furious people who got stuck at airports worldwide, and the airlines themselves as they lose a massive amount of money daily, but I don't see this as a very bad thing. I do reckon that this could really be a chance for a change in the way we think about travelling.
As fuel prices raise, additional costs are added to plane tickets, forcing airlines to cut their budget, -in order to compensate their financial fluctuations- and to provide less services to costumers. This tendency sometimes leads to hilarious situations like the one with Ryanair, who announced not to allow costumers to use on-board toilets for free, hoping that they could turn natural human necessities into profit.
This is ridiculous and pathetic in a way that we depend so much on aviation that the only alternative to cover longer distances in this crisis is to hire a cab, and pay thousands of euros to get to Brussels from Oslo for example. It's because, as airplanes appeared on the sky, everyone was eager to fly, so long-distance-traveling was and yet in most cases is only possible with planes. We have to end this. We should pay much more attention to possible substitutes of flying, such as travelling by high speed trains.
Nowadays, this is how the European high speed railway network looks like. It might look very dense and promising, watching the yellow lines appearing all over Europe, but the fact is, that train could be a real alternative for plane where you guys see orange or red lines. Not so much, is it? These lines, capable of more than 250km/h are in France, Spain, The Benelux and Germany.
There have been several initiatives to expand these lines, like the English Eurostar project, what covered the renovation and expansion of the St. Pancras station in London, and the building of a high-end infrastructure from the Channel Tunnel to the heart of the English capital. This was necessary as the 2012 Summer Olympics were coming up, and of course as Eurostar services reached one of the most important, yet "unspoiled" territories in Europe in regard to high speed railways, England is now in Europe's blood circulation and is now much easier to go to. This is very important because the total time spent on travelling could be less if the journey is covered by train, since you don't have to arrive at the train station hours before the departure. Also trains are much more comfortable, offering more legroom, more places to go during the journey, and most importantly, it's much more spectacular. Watching unknown territories, while the bullet-shaped train covers 300 kilometers per hour, is even a bigger feast for the eye, than arriving above the clouds for the 100th time. And if you're concerned about the privileges and services on first class compared to the ones on planes, you shouldn't be, since several companies offer the same, or even higher quality to passengers.
Luckily more and more countries realize the fact, that it's game over for regional and domestic flights. Barack Obama back in 2009 announced that 8 billion dollars are going to be spent on developing the high-speed train system of the USA, in the next to years. Having only one train route capable of operating high-speed trains, the US is far behind Europe and even China. This situation is unacceptable as they would like to remain the number one economy among nations (which seams to be a vaguer and vaguer idea, watching China's constant development- but it's an other topic), and as in Obama's campaign alternative was a key word in every sense.
They are so in need for radical changes, that they even consult China, as the communist country has already built more than 1000kms of high-speed railway (capable of operating trains at 350km/h), and plans to establish a high-speed network consisting of more than 16000kms of railway by 2020.
More in connection with the USA and their plans with China to be found here:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE63F1R320100416
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/us/politics/17train.html?_r=1
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/18/map-of-potential-high-spe_n_167804.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/13/us-highspeed-rail-china-t_n_497854.html
I know it's a vague idea to hope that radical change will come, and in 20 years every country in Europe is going to be reachable with trains like Eurostar and TGV, since it took 5 days for the all-European committee to gather and deal with the problems caused by the volcano eruption. But maybe as a result of the economic processes, the shrinking amount of oil sources, and the USA standing up for this global initiative plus China planning to conquer the World also on this field, the dawn of bullet-trains would come, and change the way we think about travelling.