I like travelling by bike, but i am not the biggest fan of doing roundtrips, i much prefer moving further and further away. So on longer trips i will end up way far from home, and since travelling by train across Europe, can be a real ordeal (especially with a bike), i sometimes take a plane back home. I guess busses would be an option too from some locations, i personally absolutely hate travelling by bus though. Weak excuse i know.
I am able to rationalize to myself that it is ok to take that flight, i spent now weeks doing low impact travel and can end it with a boom and still probably had less impact then with my regular life at home (i have not really done the calculation tbh). Of course, if it is reasonably easy to get home by train i will definitely prefer that, and i absolutely don’t always end up taking a plane.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you ever take a flight?
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- you have the advantage of decent public transit it EU, take advantage of it – in the US, most often we simply don’t have the time to take “slower” options (we can go across the country in a few hours by plane or three long days by train – EDIt: or a grueling week long challenge on bus)
- prioritize your options, rank them by something like “level of guilt” and “level of tiredness” (in addition to “cost”, “convenience”, “availability”, “bike facilities”) – ex. trains get preference, planes are left for when you’re too exhausted to even think of anything else
- plan circular routes / loops / circuits rather than a there-and-back approach – you’re now facing “the last leg” or “closing the loop” rather than just figuring out how you’re getting home from some singular destination
- If there is a decent option for public transit, i will certainly use it, but that is sadly not always the case, not for international train travel at least. Like, going from Greece back home to Germany is a nightmare with trains, especially with a bike, unless you want to make train travel a big part of your holidays, which i don’t. Northern italy is “a breeze”, so is Switzerland, Austria, would always try to take a train from there.
- yeah that’s what i try to do i guess. It’s just sooo much easier (and cheaper and obviously shorter) with a plane sometimes.
- Loops and circular is not that fun for me, i really prefer getting ever further away.
I was thinking people here would bang me over the head a little more for taking a flight :)
I was thinking people here would bang me over the head a little more for taking a flight :)
“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” – solarpunk is as much about looking for practical solutions (as well as the little kludges that give you some breathing room to find a better solution) – you’re aware of the issues and you’re looking for better options so you’re at least headed in the right direction …
Are you really cycling far enough to warrant a flight? Is it about the journey or the destination? I would think you don’t do that kind of distance without loving the journey to the point of trivializing the destination. So for a given trip, you could just as well cut the outbound trip in half. It need not be a back and forth trip as the redundancy is what you want to avoid. So make it a triangular route.
Whatever your distaste is for buses, perhaps that can be remedied with small mid-trip stretches. Find a city pair where the journey is overall uphill, then book a bus just for a short segment of your trip. You get a more interesting window view for an hour or two than you would in a plane, and a moment to rest between cycling segments. You can do the same with ferries.
It’s also surprising to hear that you find it easier to take a bicycle on a plane than a train or bus. The fee for that must be small on buses and trains than on a plane. And hard to trust airline baggage handlers with your bicycle.
Might be worth looking into taking a blabla car, though it might be hard to find a ride who can spare the space for a bike.
Well i guess to me it seemed like it warranted a flight. I also don’t always take a flight back home. What is far enough to warrant a flight? It is very much about the journey, a destination is nice to have though, as in having some kind of goal, and a place from where i am able to make it home.
Right now i am thinking about two options, but both involve a flight again:
- take a plane to southern Spain or Portugal and end up home, either by bike or somewhere close enough to go by train
- take a train to Austria or Italy then cycle to Greece or Turkey then back home by plane
Of course both options could be seen as unnecessary decadence.
Taking a bike on a plane is quite easy, i think. And it is also cheaper than a train, like half of it (of course all depends on the travel). Buses… yeah. That is an option i kind of want to ignore.
edit: I took 6 flights since 2019, 4 were one way, one was a return flight.
I’m planning to fly transcontinental once every 8 years for the rest of my life, but I’m being pretty strict with myself for anything shorter than that and going train or bus. For me it’s not exactly about the personal impact as much as doing it to make it easier for others in the future to do better. So every time I “suffer” a little because I take an extra day to travel by train/bus, I just think about how my doing it makes it more likely that train service with bikes will get easier for the next person to do the same thing. (Also I live in the US so most routes are much much harder than pretty much anywhere in Europe from what I hear.)
Alright that sounds cool and there is something to it, showing presence in the trains with a bike, although when it’s the season they’re all booked out here. This usually doesn’t work when i don’t 100% know when i finish (and where) way in advance (unless i do the whole dismantling / packing deal).
You say it’s a plan, so you have not started doing this and took your last plane like yesterday, right :)
Haha, no I flew last in 2019. Did a 6 month tour in the US in 2021 and have just been doing more local tours or renting bikes since then. I’m planning on saving up and quitting work for a 3+ month journey around Europe in 5 years or so. That’s the plan at least, we’ll see whether life says otherwise ;)
This is a complex question with no easy solution that makes sense for everyone. A few notes from my personal perspective on it:
- What you do in terms of everyday life is where the greatest focus should be in terms of carbon footprint and what not. As an example, let’s say you drive, and decide to go someplace 500 km away on vacation. You think wow, a 1000 km round-trip is a lot. But if you’re putting 20K km/year mileage on the car just commuting, running errands around town, etc. that’s what really adds up for most people.
- If your vacation has an element of visiting family or friends, just do whatever it takes. Life is short.
- Hauling a bike around over different modes of transport sounds like a giant hassle. Is there any way to rent one at the destination? Failing that, maybe something like a small folding escooter might travel better?
I agree with the everyday life behaviour being the most impactful.
Renting is not an option, certainly not an escooter, haha. I mean i can disassemmble my bike to take it on most trains, but it is still a big hassle to lug it around, together with my other baggage, changing trains etc, and still train connections can be far from optimal
In some South Europen countries you find these dodgy small private bus tour organizers who carry (ex-)emigrants and their families to and fro. They tour to one or several places in Northern Europe with a small bus and trailer on a somewhat regular schedule, and you can probably fit your bike in the trailer, for less than the price of an air ticket. Can probably found on facebook or by asking in the local cafe of wherever your bike has carried you to.
Happy biking!
And to answer your question, do I ever take a flight. This is the first year I’ve really considered not flying and will probably opt for a bus. I just fly to visit my family and wouldn’t really do it for anything else, but even that felt wrong given that other options exist. I’d love to be able to take a train, but I can both not afford the money it costs and the time it takes. I only have a couple of weeks off.
The flight will happen with or without you… they won’t be gassing the plane up just to take you to and from, so I don’t see why hitching a ride on something that’s already going that way would be terrible
The flight will happen with or without you…
If enough people buys a ticket, they will schedule more flights, so this is not true.
they won’t be gassing the plane up just to take you to and from
Yes, they will. There are (somewhat rare) cases where person was only passenger on the flight.
Yes, they will. There are (somewhat rare) cases where person was only passenger on the flight.
Here is probably fair to admit that the flight would fly even totally empty, because it needs to get to the destination for some follow-up flight.
It might get worse - during covid, airlines in Europe were flying empty planes there and back just in order not to lose their contracted gate slots - the amount of fuel burned just for the fucking bureaucracy is mindblowing.
That take would certainly sooth my conciousness, but aren’t all bookable flights “already happening”? Unless nobody would book it? TBF i book my flights back last minute, because i usually cycle with loose plans and don’t even necessarily know beforehand where i will be going home from, so those flights would absolutely happen no matter if i booked it i guess.
Yeah I was going to say try to book last minute if you’re worried about that first part haha… but to be fair, airplane routes are canceled all the time because nobody uses them so that’s a good thing? I don’t know haha I think I’ve flown twice in my life so I’m probably not the best person to ask
they won’t be gassing the plane up just to take you to and from
Pilots are required to calculate the amount of fuel needed for the trip +30 extra minutes. The payload weight is part of that calculation. For small 4-person aircraft that means asking each person for their weight (yes, even women must answer that). For big commercial flights they just multiply the head count by an average. The fuel weight itself is also part of that calculation, which increases as the payload increases.
