Sustainable Travel - How To Make It Cheaper?

[Noflying.info]

Hi all.

As the reality of global catastrophic climate change becomes clearer, a voluntary 'no flying' movement has begun.

Ceasing to travel by plane is the single most effective way to reduce your impact on the climate, and 'slow travelling' the world by train or boat has become attractive to many travellers for this reason.

Travel by freighter is much more sustainable than air travel in terms of emissions. It also has great potential for technological advance, in terms of efficiency and capacity, that air travel simply does not.

But the current cost of freighter travel means that it prohibitive for many as a viable form of transport. How can we make it cheaper?

In 10 to 20 years from now we simply will not be able to travel using planes as we currently do. We need a sustainable option using boats for long distance travel. We need the option of efficient boats transporting large numbers of passengers in simple, cheap, comfort. How do we get there from here?

It seems a current hindrance is the fact that passenger labour cannot contribute to the work needed on a sea passage. Is it possible to go back in technology, to reintroduce boats that do require more labour to run - boats that passengers *could* work on to reduce the cost of their fare?

How much does the market need to grow in order for cargo ships - rather than cruise ships alone - to be able to transport people as their main cargo, in basic comfort (i.e. without the luxury of cruise ships) - is anyone ready to make the first move in this way?

'Eco travel' or 'responsible travel' seems to be booming. People still fly and some try to offset their carbon with various schemes. Yet the evidence is showing that such schemes do not work. We need a realistic, sustainable alternative to air travel.

People will still want to travel from the UK to the USA or Australia, or all around the world - they will have to do so without flying and freighter travel will be a vital component in this.

To repeat the question, how do we get there from here?

Jack Guest


 

[ambrosia]

Hi there,
Yes, I agree - container ships are definitely more sustainable modes of transport than planes! But don't forget, they also use fossil fuel, so they will be hit by the peak oil too. My own personal solution is to use ships for short trips, and ideally to do everything else by land (alas, time constraints tend to get in the way for most people). I think the more we use the passenger facilities on these ships, the more it will encourage others to take up travellers. For example, on 5 transatlantic voyages, none of them was full with passengers. So it's still a budding business. Speaking to the various officers, I get the impression that paying passengers are really big business for the shipping companies, and lots of companies would like to take them. So the more we travel the cheaper it will get. That's how computers became affordable!

Personally, I much prefer cargo ships and the no-frills experience. Cruise ships can have very polluting practices as well!
Cheers

[lunamara]

The sad reality is that shipping companies are less and less taking passengers. The new security restrictions and potential liability offset the fares paid. Also passengers can be a huge "pain in the neck" as often as good-natured. Some captains enjoy the novelty and some hate it.

[RealCdn]

I agree with lunamara - passengers can be a huge pain in the neck.  We were on a ship with a fellow passenger who fell into this category.  She liked nothing.  She wasn't happy when we were in port longer than she felt we needed to be.  She wasn't happy when we were sailing.  She didn't go off in most of the ports anyway.  And she was supposedly a frequent traveller (although I think she mainly did container ships with less than a day in port).

We (along with another passenger) were the good type of passengers.  I know, we all think that, but both captains (changed halfway) and a number of the crew mentioned it.  Of course we were easygoing, didn't complain (because there wasn't anything to complain about), gave the crew a heads up on a lot of the ports, and even took our turn singing karaoke in the crew mess.

The second captain was unused to passengers and when we left the ship in Houston he tried hard to get us to stay a couple of days.  As the trip had ended up being quite a bit longer than expected we sadly declined.  I don't think he was looking forward to having to meet his new passengers on his own!

Anne