A new campaign by Network Rail and rail industry partners aims to encourage more young people to choose the train when travelling, which will also help the fight against climate change.
Network Rail is running the “A Greener Future” campaign in collaboration with the Rail Delivery Group and the Campaign for Better Transport on social media, digital platforms, and outdoor advertising until next month.
The campaign is specifically aimed at Gen Z, and designed to show them how travelling by train instead of car will make a significant and positive impact on the environment, even in a single journey.
In practical terms, travelling by the train instead of a car will:
- save the same amount of carbon as boiling a kettle up to 455 times.
- save enough carbon to power a phone for up to eight years.
- put nearly five times less carbon emissions into the air.
With the government’s aim of achieving net zero by 2050, the campaign forms part of the rail industry’s efforts to achieve that aim.
That includes: reducing carbon emissions; investing in electrification, renewable energy, and biodiversity; and highlighting that the greenest form of public transport is by rail.
Rail is one of the greenest forms of transport, and we as an industry is working hard to make it even greener, by investing in electrification, renewable energy, and taking care of the rich variety of wildlife and plants that live along the thousands of miles of land that surrounds the railway.
We hope that this campaign will inspire young people that travelling by rail is part of the solution. That just one journey by train, rather than by car, can make a huge difference in helping protect the planet.
Martin Frobisher OBE, engineering and safety director at Network Rail
Travelling by train is a simple way to make a greener choice. When looking at the sustainability of different modes of transport our railways are hard to beat, and it’s one of the great benefits of making rail your first choice. We are committed to helping our railways to grow, with more people taking the train over other modes of transport we can all play our part one journey at a time.
Jacqueline Starr, Chief Executive Officer at Rail Delivery Group
Taking the train is already the greenest way to travel and with more rail lines being electrified, it’s only getting greener. Choosing the train is one of the simplest things you can do to minimise your carbon footprint and make a difference, one journey at a time.
Silviya Barrett, Director of Policy and Campaigns at Campaign for Better Transport,
The railway is the least carbon intensive way to transport lots of people or goods, and the industry is working to make it even more so in the future.
Moving more passengers and freight by rail is going to help achieve Net Zero. Get involved and make a difference, choose the train.
George Davies, Sustainable Development Director, Rail Safety and Standards Board
Responses
The disjointed railway continues these 6 esteemed organisations either mention how green or carbon effective rail travel is then along comes the ORR and hand Grand Union Trains permission to use Class 221 Super Voyagers and Class 222 Meridian trains along a route where there is full electrification you couldn’t make it up.
A bit confused on why Network Rail are apparently leading on this . It is the Train Operating Companies that sell tickets to customers and who have to address any failings with journeys being undertaken. Might be better if Network Rail were to stick with and be more focused on delivering SAFE and reliable infrastructure .. rather than leaving scrap rail on the track causing a derailment, at Wingfield getting the Red and Yellow aspects of a signal reversed and near Swindon leaving a trolley on the track which a train then hit.
We are the.most expensive in rail fares on the planet nobody takes the train anymore its outdated and cost a fortune to run.with so many problems to go with it leaves on the line engineering works signal failures floods landslip points failures drivers going on strike other than that what is there more to say oh and bosses and shareholders are rubbing their hands with all the money going in their hands
Les, you are right. I mean, why do we bother having railways when our roads and motorways are always free flowing at all times and in all weathers? And everyone drives safely and with due consideration for everybody else. And there’s always somewhere convenient to park whenever you drive anywhere. Hmm.
How about making train fares more affordable as well as improve service reliability? That will be a very big incentive to get people out of their cars.
This is all well and good, but when the rail company can’t run a train service to save its life, problems occur. Every time I decide to take the train rather than the car, there’s endless cancellations, excuse after excuse, it’s a gamble. The “new” and “refurbished” rolling stock we have, compared to other countries I’ve visited and lived in are more of a laughing stock. Reduce the greed, improve the service, THEN beg people to use the train again.
Travelling by train is certainly worthwhile (when they are not on strike) but, considering Britain as a whole contributes less than 1% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, changing from car to train travel will make no difference whatsoever to the World’s climate. In fact shutting Britain down completely and us all perishing would STILL make no difference to the world’s climate.