Can Slow Travel Save the Planet?

Paul Theroux, among others, has written of his preference for train journeys over air travel: “Although it has become the way of the world, we still ought to lament the fact that airplanes have made us insensitive to space; we are encumbered, like lovers in suits of armor.” That passage from The Old Patagonian Express, published in 1979, came to mind as I read a compelling new story on Alternet about air travel, its role in global warming, and potential solutions to the problem. The story notes a UK study showing that the predicted rise in air travel in the coming decades is bad news for the environment: “[F]actoring in the projected growth of air travel, carbon emissions would have to be reduced to zero in manufacturing, ground transportation and private households to meet the British government’s 2050 green goals.” So what’s the solution?

For starters, writes Jay Walljasper, slowing down and increasingly using other forms of transportation, including trains:

While most people are not likely to stop flying, many in the environmental movement and even the travel industry question our overreliance on airplanes for trips that might more sensibly be made by other means of transportation. Mark Ellingham, founder of the popular Rough Guide travel handbooks, advocates that travellers “fly less often and stay longer.” In the vacation-strapped U.S., for instance, surveys show that people now take many long-weekend trips by air rather than going on one- or two-week holidays. That obviously creates far more greenhouse gases.

Ellingham advocates a Slow Travel movement, along the lines of the Slow Food movement, in which people savour their vacation experiences. “Travelling slower gives you a sense of place,” he told Sierra magazine. “Trains give you the chance to talk to people, to see a landscape unfold.”

The growing network of high-speed trains across Europe, Japan, Korea and Taiwan offer a vision of the future in which planes are used mainly for overseas and long-distance journeys, not short hops from Amsterdam to Paris, or Toronto to Montreal. The world’s high-speed rail leaders, France and Japan, are developing trains that travel 350 kilometres (220 miles) an hour. China has unveiled a maglev (magnetic levitation) train that reaches 500 kilometres (310 miles) an hour, whisking passengers between central Shanghai and PuDong airport 30 kilometres (20 miles) away. Construction is slated to begin soon on a 160-mile maglev line between Shanghai and Hangzhou.

Inspired by the success of the European and Asian trains, many other nations across the world, including Mexico, Brazil and Israel, are planning their own high-speed rail networks. Amtrak, the U.S. rail system, last year unveiled its Acela Express train, which hits a top speed of 150 miles (95 kilometres) per hour from Washington to New York to Boston.

Here’s hoping we in the U.S. continue to explore ways to promote rail travel, becoming ever more sensitive, as Theroux might put it, to space.

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