World Car Free Day is a global event which aims to encourage people to leave their cars at home and give other transportation options a try. The event is taking place in the UK this Friday, the 22nd of September.
Rail operator Northern is eager to encourage road users to give rail travel a go, especially for those making journeys in the North of England. Rail travel offers an environmentally friendly swap for the car with electric trains offering a top choice. Northern currently has a fleet of more than 100 electric trains, which were introduced back in 2019 with an investment of over £500 million to support its aims of achieving net zero in the future.
Rail services also run using Hybrid (diesel/battery) trains and Diesel trains, which have also been recognised as one of the top five forms of alternative transport to cars, so all of Northern’s fleet, some 345 trains, will offer a better choice for passengers regarding climate change during World Car Free Day.
A study which took place across the North of England reported approximately 81% of participants were interested in making changes to how they live and work in order to reduce the effects of climate change across the world.
CO2e Emissions for those travelling with Northern can be checked on the rail operators ‘Savings Calculator’ by clicking here. The special calculator uses Government conversion factors and environmental data from Northern’s fleet of trains, which are corroborated annually using external auditing.
Tricia Williams, chief operating officer for Northern, said:
“World Car Free Day is an important initiative to encourage all of us to re-think the way we travel.”
“We welcome around 95 million customers on-board our trains every year – the CO₂e emission saving of which is extremely significant.”
“Getting to work, whatever your work patterns are, is an area where we can make the biggest impact. Commuters already represent the biggest proportion of our customers – but there’s always more we can do to help convince others to join them and choose rail to travel to their place of work.”
“We’re investing in more cycle storage facilities, introducing convenience features such as InPost lockers and delivering an ongoing programme of station improvements to waiting rooms, accessible toilets and vending machines to improve the customer experience.”
Responses
So Norrthern are encouraging people to use the train, but no doubt they will fail to gear up for the anticipated additional travellers, resulting in even more overcrowding than usual. The rail industry in general is usually very non-reactive to planned events that can easily be priducted to result in additional passengers. Major sporting events shceduled months in dvance, but TOCs serving the venues fail to plan for additional passengers; a popular scenic route that in certain seasons is known to produced heavier passenger loads, but do the TOCs react and add additional carriages? No… …..”we usually plan to have 2-coaches on these services”, so when sufficient passengers to fill a four coach (or longer) train, they are crammed in in conditions that would be illegal for the carriage of animals, and as a result nobody gets to enjoy the scenery that the route is famed for!