LU Sustainable Travel Stories

Written by:
Pernilla Borgström and Cheryl Sjöström, Centre for Environmental and Climate Science

When we applied to go on an Erasmus+ staff training trip to Université Paris-Saclay, train travel felt like the obvious mode of transport for both of us. Primarily for personal reasons of wanting to travel as sustainably as possible, but also since the Erasmus+ mobility programme offered a (modest but welcome) funding bump for those choosing not to fly.

Planning our trip

Booking the trip was easy thanks to the university’s newly procured train travel agency. We sent them an e-mail specifying our preferred dates and modes of travel, and they got back to us quickly with a suggested itinerary. We chose to travel with Interrail passes (this is often the cheapest option), but with reserved seats on each connection, and the agency took care of the otherwise time-consuming task of getting us those reserved seats. It’s good to keep in mind that the prices the agency gives you are in DKK (Danish Krone), and given the current eye-watering exchange rate, you or whoever holds the budget will want to avoid ugly surprises when the bill ultimately shows up in SEK (we may or may not be speaking from experience…). 

An unexpected Brussels holiday

We set off from Copenhagen bright and early on the 3rd of December, with a smooth and sleepy ride to Hamburg. The “adventsfika” we’d brought along went nicely with the crisp, snowy views outside the window. Once in Hamburg, however, the chaotic energy of Deutsche Bahn kicked into gear, and our next connection to Köln was announced to have a 15 minute, then 30 minute, then 45 minute delay. We watched our intended connection time in Köln shrivel and disappear, which created some timeline tension as we wanted to be in Brussels in time to catch our Eurostar connection to Paris (the Eurostar Interrail seat reservations are mandatory, and quite pricey, so switching to another departure isn’t as straightforward as it is with the regular trains). 

The dream of catching that connection stayed alive through our trip to Köln, and a pleasant stop-over there, wandering through a snowy Christmas market just outside the station, and a potato noodle dinner. But the dream dwindled and died on the next train (to Brussels), also delayed. And so, we built a new beautiful dream, of catching the very last Eurostar from Brussels at 22.15. But alas, once again: dwindling, and death. We arrived in Brussels shortly after that train’s departure, and so booked a hotel for the night near the train station.

RER you ready for Paris rush hour?

After a few sweet hours of sleep, we caught the first Eurostar from Brussels to Paris the next morning. Thanks to friendly onboard staff, it was no problem to travel with our expired seat reservations on the “wrong” departure. We arrived at Gare du Nord on time, treated ourselves to a pain au chocolat breakfast, then got tickets for the regional RER train that was to take us straight to our first meeting at Université Paris-Saclay. Traveling from central Paris at peak rush hour turned out to be a true baptism of public transport fire; we not so much lined up as squeezed ourselves into the mass of people waiting by the doors, drifted with the crowd onto the train, then stood squished and unable to move for several stops before people started filing off. (An important lesson learned: don’t bring a cup of takeaway coffee to RER rush hour, your fellow passengers won’t be amused).

Train travel as an ice-breaker  

The RER trains became our friends during the week, as they took us to the different places we needed to go. Université Paris-Saclay consists of several different campuses, with quite large distances to travel between them, and with our handy Navigo ‘semaine’ pass (30€ for a week) we could easily travel between them on both trains and buses, jumping on and off with a blip of the card on the reader. In our meetings and interactions with staff at Paris-Saclay, we found that people were very interested to hear the why and how of our chosen mode of travel, and it proved to be a pretty good ice-breaker (especially in that first meeting, when we showed up sleep-deprived and frazzled yet very enthusiastic and happy to have arrived!). 

We were staying in the town of Massy, roughly midway between central Paris and Paris-Saclay, and with our Navigo passes, it was easy to go into Paris for a short visit when we had the time. The passes were also valid on the Paris metro – great value for money!

Smooth training through Switzerland

Our trip back home went much smoother than on the way down. A TGV got us to Basel in good time for our night train; perhaps too good, as we ended up waiting there around three hours with very little to do when the Nightjet towards Hamburg was delayed. This frazzled our nerves a bit and we started dreading a repeat of our involuntary Brussels holiday, but thankfully it was only a modest delay, and we were soon comfortably settled in our small Nightjet cabin, with complementary goodie bags of slippers, chocolate and – ojoj – fizzy wine!

In Hamburg we had just enough time to buy some pretzels, then stepped aboard our train towards Copenhagen, which departed beautifully on time and brought us smoothly back to Copenhagen.

What we’ve learned (or re-learned)

All in all, it was a great experience and one we’d happily repeat. Reflecting back on the journey, here are some things we think are useful to keep in mind when deciding to embark on a longer train journey:  

1. Travel time and expectations: we’ve both done enough long-distance train traveling to know that unexpected things can happen, and this time we were a bit unlucky on the way down, but we were also mentally prepared for possible issues arising. As Jessika Luth Richter put it nicely in a previous blog post, long-distance train travel does require you to think of time differently – of course it will take you longer to reach your destination than if you would fly there, but that extra time can be filled with useful and interesting things and experiences, such as work, books, long conversations (with both travel partners and strangers), music, day-dreaming, potato noodles… And from these things, new perspectives and ideas might arise. Accepting, but ideally also appreciating, the added time and the opportunities you get from it is key to a pleasant journey. Which brings us to a practical point of…
2. Turnover times: time pessimism is, sometimes, your friend. Especially the German trains are notorious for being delayed, so if you’re a nervous traveller it can make the journey more pleasant if you add some extra time at each stop, and at most of the big stations there’s enough to keep you entertained in or around the station for an hour or two if you end up having to wait. 
3. Extra expenses: it can be good to check beforehand how it works if you end up having to pay for hotels, taxis and more because of missed connections – this is especially unclear when traveling on an Interrail pass, and we found that the onboard staff on our delayed trains couldn’t really guide us through the process, as they referred us to station staff for answers, with the station staff in Brussels in turn referring us back to Deutsche Bahn. This would have been a bit easier to navigate if we’d known our full rights beforehand, and what sort of documentation (e.g. proof of delay) that we would need to ask for.

12 January 2024

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Written by:
Jessika Luth Richter, Associate senior lecturer, IIIEE, The International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics

I decided to stop flying within Europe in 2018, towards the end of my PhD. In part, I was influenced by many of those who have already written sustainable travel blogs here, including Kimberly Nicholas. I had been researching climate and sustainable consumption for years and just couldn’t justify the environmental impacts in a time of climate crisis.

Of course, Covid followed soon after so not flying became the norm for everyone. In 2020, I started working with the EU 1.5° Lifestyles project, in which the project partners pledged to travel as sustainably as possible – to “walk the talk” so to speak. Through the endeavor to travel as sustainably as possible, I have learned a few lessons along the way.

Take it easy on myself and think of time differently

Making a commitment to not flying for work didn’t go as planned from the beginning. My first meticulously planned itinerary from Lund to Helsinki ended before I’d gone even 100km, stopped in Hässleholm due to a fire on the tracks up ahead and no hope of getting to the ferry in Stockholm in the near future. The travel agency apologized and suggested I turn around to Copenhagen and take a flight. I learned quickly to leave some extra time to get to the destinations and build in a working day while travelling and long breaks when switching modes to grab a meal or a quick walk around a city (train stations are great for that – they are almost always in the center of everything). When I know I am going somewhere I book several days on either side in my calendar to avoid scheduling teacher or other on-site activities in case I need to be on route once I figure out my itinerary. Many trains now have wifi and the last train trip on the German ICE train felt like I was in a co-working space – everyone was working and I was compelled to also have a productive working day.

Flexibility is needed

Last summer a storm named Polly disrupted all travel to the Netherlands for a project meeting and sustainability conference combined (the project aimed to put the project meetings close to planned conferences if possible). Getting there required heavy use of the public transport apps in finding viable alternative connections. Having those apps to support me had come with a trade-off because my old phone had stopped being able to run them effectively (to be fair, after 7 years) and I had to buy a new phone before the trip to feel that I could handle disruptions if they arose.

Apps were not the only support along the way. Anytime I was interrupted while travelling, I found others in the same situation who helped me too. My travel to a conference in July in Zagreb was only supposed to be three trains and 24 hours. Five trains and 3 days later, I arrived after a lot of troubleshooting but with a group of other conference attendees I had met along the way. I had already met one objective of the conference – I had a great network of sustainability researchers and practitioners. Nothing breaks the ice more than being stranded for hours at an unmanned train station!

On the one hand, train travel through Europe gets a reputation for being unreliable. Certainly, the travel to project meetings proved the need to be flexible and understanding rights and options as a traveler. However, travelling in weather events interrupted all travel, even flying. On the trip to the Netherlands, it turns out the train was easier than flying when all the transport to and from airports is stopped. Which is to say, travel in general requires flexibility, sustainable travel included.

Determining what is sustainable travel can be tricky

It is important to me as a sustainability researcher to practice what I preach. Yet, even for me there can be times when it is hard to know what actually is the most sustainable option. The second time I was planning to go to Helsinki I was determined to take the train and ferry. At the time, another project I was involved in, Mistra Sustainable Consumption, had just completed a carbon calculator for travel. I tested it and was a bit shocked that my train and ferry trip would be very close in carbon emissions to flying the same route. I read a bit more about it and asked the researchers. The ferry calculations depended on the speed of the ferry, the fuel, and how emissions are allocated between freight and passengers. Considering this, I found that one ferry line between Stockholm and Turku had switched to a more efficient ferry that could potentially use biofuel. I booked an overnight train to Stockholm and then took the ferry to Turku/Åbo. Since it was a day crossing, it was very cheap to book a cabin with wifi as my office for the day. Instead of the night before the conference in Helsinki, I spent the night in Turku/Åbo and commuted to Helsinki in the morning.

Adopting a sufficiency approach to travel

In the last few years, I not only changed the way I traveled in deciding not to fly. I also changed how much I traveled. I now have to choose between conferences in the summer that before I might have flown from one to the other. I definitely experience the fear of missing out syndrome, but I have also found that while the quantity of travelling and meetings has reduced the quality has not. I now collaborate with some researchers that I have never met in person, and it still works.

During lunch at a 1.5 project meeting July in the Netherlands we were all remarking how great the next project meeting in six months was going to be. The meeting was planned at our Spanish partners in A Coruña on the northwest coast of Spain in November to escape the winter gloom. Then we started sharing our initial research on potential travel itineraries. Would we go overnight on a train, daytime on a bus and then overnight again? Or 24 hours on a bus? Some reluctantly admitted they could not attend without flying. The allure of warm sun was fading fast with the realization of the herculean effort and the irony of 20+ researchers flying to Spain to meet about 1.5° lifestyles. Then it was suggested maybe we should just have the meeting online.

So rather than finishing this piece from a train after our 3 day project meeting, I am finishing it from home. My colleagues attended the meeting together from the office and it actually finished early, giving me a bit more time to work on other things. Now instead of a swim in the sea in Spain, I am off to go ice-skating with my son.

1 December 2023

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Written by:
Kimberly Nicholas, Senior lecturer, LUCSUS (Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies)

You already know, dear reader, that if you fly, it’s your biggest source of climate pollution.

Just 1% of the world’s population are regular flyers— and they represent 50% of climate pollution from flights. (I was in that group until I put my frequent flyer card in a museum.) Eeeeeek!

After a big drop in 2020, we see flying rebounding fast right now. But we know that a “recovery” of business-as-usual flying means climate catastrophe. Flying needs to decline, because flying today is at odds with the big-ass reductions in emissions we need to make to avoid blowing all of humanity’s remaining carbon budget in the next 83 months. (ACK!)

A great place to start is to join the Flight Free Campaign, which started here in Sweden. Some chapters, like the UK and US, offer the chance to pledge to go flight-free for a year, to make a significant personal change and work for broader system change. (If work or family commitments mean you can’t go flight-free, you can also pledge to be flight-free for holidays.) Also check out the Stay Grounded campaign.

Some ways to get started or ramp up staying grounded, focusing on work flying:

• Start conversations about flying at work, and find at least one person who wants to work towards your organisation flying less.
• Get your organisation to use behavioural science to support flying less, following guidance from World Resources Institute to:
  • (1) Make virtual easy;
  • (2) Use positive social norms and pledges;
  • (3) Encourage senior staff to lead new norms by convening explicit travel-reduction conversations; and
  • (4) Formalize institutional policies and procedures, like changing budget templates or proposal guidelines.
• Ready to dive in? FlyingLessResourcesGuide.info is a one-stop shop for everything from practical guides to hosting low-carbon conferences, to getting your organisation or industry to fly less, to how to push for funders and incentives to support flying less.
• Join campaigns and communities like FlyingLess.org, which has fabulous resources and stories for academics flying less.
• Here’s 4 minutes of me talking about how our department is going about flying less, and here’s a whole podcast on Flying Less!
• Make institutional guidance like the Tyndall Centre decision tree to prioritise flights, and start conversations about equity. (Flying is usually distributed very unequally within organisations; their guidelines prioritise flights for younger and less advantaged scholars.)
• Get inspired by others who are already leading the way- like these universities who have implemented or are planning measures.

EuroTour23

I stopped flying within Europe in 2012. In fall 2023, I took a 3-week, 9-country overland tour, mostly by train, to give a series of talks and join meetings with policymakers, researchers, and climate communicators. Here are a few photo highlights. 

The text was first published in Kim’s newsletter, We Can Fix It, on facing the climate crisis with facts, feelings, and action. See the archives and subscribe.

The mobility to Paris was supported by the French Embassy in Sweden.

6 November 2023

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Emma Kritzberg, professor at the Department of Biology, took the train to a meeting on Mallorca. A journey that took 54 hours and cost double what it would have to fly a couple of hours to the Mediterranean island. Yet, flying was never an option. She has not flown once for work or privately in the last six years, a conscious decision she took to reduce her carbon footprint.

Interview with Emma and more details about her journey – staff.lu.se

14 June 2023

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