Passenger Aviation and High Speed Rail: A Comparison of Emissions Profiles on Selected European Routes

Abstract

Air transport has been constantly growing and forecasts seem to confirm the trend; the resulting environmental impact is relevant, both at local and at global scale. In this paper, data from various datasets have been integrated to assess the environmental impact of modal substitution with high speed rail. Six intra-EU28 routes and a domestic route have been defined for comparison. The airports have been chosen considering the share of the total number of passengers on flights to/from other EU Member States. Three scenarios have been proposed in the time period 2017–2025; aircraft types, distance bands, and occupancy rate are investigated on each scenario. The comparison with HSR service has been carried out only on passenger service and not for freight. The energy consumption and the consequent emissions for the aircraft have been estimated on the base of the available data for the mix of aircraft types, performing the routes. The results indicate the advantage of the high speed trains, in terms of direct CO2eq emissions per passenger km. Compared to a neutral scenario, with an annual passenger increment of 3.5%, the HSR substitution of the 5% and the 25% of this increment allow a GHG saving of 4% and 20%, respectively. Some of the analysed routes (e.g., Frankfurt Main–Paris CDG) have interesting GHG savings but the duration of the trip today is limiting for a real substitution. Moreover, there is general agreement that the extreme weather events induced by climate change will affect the functioning of the European transport system. In this sense, transportation by the rail mode is expected to play a significant role in strengthening the EU transport system, its resilience, and its reliability, as it is less immediately subject to the impacts of severe weather conditions.

Savings in per-passenger CO2 emissions using rail rather than air travel in the northeastern U.S.

“…The trend line, calculated from all city pair data, indicates that rail distance is approximately 30% longer than flight distance [similar to the 35% increase reported by Prussi and Lonza (2018)], with individual differences being considerably greater. For instance, the flight distance between Charlotte and Cincinnati is 335 miles, but the rail distance is 752 miles, about 2.25 times the flight distance.…”

“…Before comparisons of per-passenger CO 2 emissions from air and rail travel can be made, the difference between air miles traveled and rail miles traveled must be considered. As Prussi and Lonza (2018) noted, rail miles are generally longer than flight miles. This is because rail routes are physically limited by geographical features (e.g., mountains, water bodies) in ways that air routes are not.…”

“…They focused on travel in Italy and estimated energy consumption per seat-mile for HSR to be less than that for air travel, by at least an order of magnitude. Prussi and Lonza (2018) compared CO 2 emissions of air travel and HSR between…”

Could Biomass Derived Fuels Bridge the Emissions Gap between High Speed Rail and Aviation?

“…Two intra-EU cities pairs have been selected as representative examples for the comparison of the two transport modes. Four specific airports have been chosen in order to connect the cities-pairs, mainly for their relative proximity, both in terms of distance and for flight duration: no more than one and a half hour: These two routes were already analyzed, among others, in a previous [13], but in this paper time for commuting has also been added to the comparison. Table 4 shows the results of the HSR versus aviation comparison in terms of trip duration.…”

“…The time that is required for reaching the airport from downtown, plus the time from the arrival airport to the city center have been added for aviation to refine the quality of the comparison with HSR, for which stations are often in the very center of the cities. Data have been obtained by comparing the various tools [13][14][15][16][17][18].…”