Feeding the appetite for sustainable travel

On the eve of Earth Day, it’s gratifying to take a step back and realise how the conversation about sustainability has evolved over the past year. More than ever, as a society and as individuals we are evaluating the carbon footprint of our everyday actions.

This shift in our mindset is very much to rail’s advantage, of course. Transport is the largest contributor to UK domestic greenhouse gas emissions – in 2018 it contributed 28% of UK domestic emissions. While the long-term impact of the pandemic is still unclear, the main source of these emissions was the use of petrol and diesel in road transport – which has largely bounced back to pre-pandemic levels already.?

The rail industry knows it can’t simply rest on the laurels of its environmental advantage. Steps are being taken to decarbonise the industry further, and a recent report from the Rail Industry Association (which Trainline joined last month) reviewed the progress that is being made in this area.

Nonetheless there’s a growing appetite for sustainable travel options right now, and this is something rail can capitalise on.?

At Trainline, we have been doing our bit to help empower travellers to control their carbon footprint, and to make the choice of travelling by train even more of a no-brainer. Our aim is to harness data, so everyone can understand their own environmental impact and mange it. We give customers on our app and website details of the carbon footprint savings they make versus road travel for each journey. As a result, our customers are twice as likely to increase their train travel, having switched most often from car, in comparison with others who don’t use Trainline.

This is a growing issue for business travel too. Last November a Trainline survey found that two-thirds of employees would want their businesses to offer more sustainable travel options. And among young people in particular, this is important enough to affect their career choices – one-in-five respondents aged 16-24 said they would leave their existing employer based on an unfavourable business travel policy.

That’s why we also offer the same support to our partners through our Trainline Partner Solutions team. We can provide data on the carbon footprint of each journey, and we make this feature available to the growing number of partners who want to focus on sustainability as part of their own customer offering.

Every journey that rail can attract away off the roads or away from aviation is good news for the industry, and good news for the planet. And we will continue supporting that, by making booking train travel as seamless as possible.

Together, we want to help power a cleaner future for all.?