I’ve always had an interest in travelling long-distances by train.
When I was a child, some of my fondest memories of seeing my family in Cornwall (living, at the time, in Manchester) were based around getting the ‘big’ train from Manchester Piccadilly to Plymouth Station before the short bus journey out of Devon and across the Tamar into Cornwall. These journeys always seemed more freeing than the 6-hour drive down the M6 and M5.
When I started my PhD, I decided I would make the study as low-carbon as possible – choosing fieldsites which could be studied virtually, methods which required only me to travel allowing me control over the method of transport and by attending conferences by train wherever possible. The first opportunity came at the end of my first year.
I had already presented at a conference in Madrid, which I had, unfortunately, flown to. For anyone who has flown in or out of Bristol International Airport, you will know the interesting experience it is. A small set of poorly built sheds with a perfumery and Starbucks forms the main terminal building. Its long bridge to the airwalks (taking around 10-minutes to walk end-to-end) heavily laden with advertisements for places in South Wales and a surprising dearth of information for attractions in Bristol. The airport is somewhere I have only visited once more in my 3-years in Bristol, and that was two times too many.
An advertisement for a 1-day event in Zürich found its way into my inbox, “The Anthropocene: Between the Earth and Social Sciences”. I was beginning to explore the ideas of the Anthropocene and some of the key thinkers were going to be there. I had a friend in Zürich who I hadn’t seen in 2-years and she offered me a place to stay.
Now, to book the transport.
The flights from Bristol to Zürich were around £85, the train would cost £250. Would my department pay for this, or would the Travel & Subsistence Policy state the lowest cost method must be taken?
Going in full-pelt, I made a convincing argument that the statement in the policy of “lowest cost” does not often sufficiently account for the non-economic cost of a mode of transport. There were social and environmental costs associated with air travel that were insurmountable compared to the rather more easy option of simply going by train.
It turns out my fighting stance was not necessary, and my department agreed that, as I had a budget which was self-managed, as long as I didn’t book 1st class or buy champagne lunches, I could choose whichever mode of transport I thought was best. Things were looking up!
I booked the trains so that I would leave Bristol Temple Meads in the wee hours of the morning (around 6am) and would arrive in Zürich Hauptbahnhof at around 8pm, local time. Thirteen hours was all it took. I had a delicious lunch in Paris, and a very nice baguette on the train from Paris Gare de Lyon to Zürich HB for tea. Had I been more confident in crossing Paris on the Metro system, I could even have stopped off at a museum or gone for a walk along the Seine on my way through.
Going the other way, the journey took much less time (a word of caution though, never leave only an hour to get across Paris and check-in on the Eurostar!) leaving at around 11am, I got home at 10pm.
What I realised, perhaps most importantly, is that train travel is qualitatively different to air travel in more ways than I could have predicted. After thirteen hours travelling (alright, only about ten of those hours were actually on a train), I felt as though I had just caught a train to a neighbouring city, stepping off relatively refreshed and right in the heart of somewhere strange and foreign to where I had got on. If I had spent the equivalent time flying, I would have been exhausted. After being herded around airports, travelling to and from the city centres, buses, trains, air conditioning, perfumes, incessant announcements about the airlines particular offers on cigarettes and whisky, I usually want nothing more than to step into a shower and scrub myself for about the same amount of time I was travelling for!
The route was amazing too, picturesque, full of different languages, smells, weather, people and the odd glancing smile from someone in the row of seats opposite. The legroom, the comfortable seats, the complimentary (although often slow) Wi-Fi, the charging sockets and the ability to walk through the train all add to a much better experience.
For information, the route I took is here.
Low Carbon Academic 