Responsible Travel: Is it better to take the Car, Bus, or Train to your Holiday Destination?

9 min readApr 20, 2022

This article was written for the Cycling Holidays Europe website’s “Destinations” blog and is aimed at cyclists considering their travel options to and within Europe.

On the one hand it’s easy to feel environmentally virtuous as a cyclist: campaigning organisations tell us that we are generally healthier, contribute more to our local economy, and have a lower carbon footprint than our four-wheel-dependent family and friends (and the four-wheeled versions of ourselves!) If you’ve made the switch in your day-to-day life, reducing car journeys, commuting or doing the school run by bike, how do you then balance the environmental books when it comes to travelling to your cycling holiday destination?

If you compare cycling to air transport cycling has a carbon footprint of about 21g of CO2 per kilometre whereas emissions from domestic flights work out as 133g per passenger kilometre [ 1] (not including secondary emissions) and although the amounts are reduced on long haul flights reduced carbon impact is outweighed by the vast distances involved.

While swapping just a few of your car journeys for pedal-powered ones can make a huge difference to your day-to-day carbon footprint (imagine if we all did it!) the fact is that any good we do in our daily life can be easily undone by any amount of air travel which, when it comes to planning a holiday, is often the lowest priced and most convenient route to a destination. If we don’t plan to start and end our cycling holiday on our doorstep how do we travel with a clear environmental conscience?

Alternatives to Short Haul Flights within Europe

Alternatives to flying from the UK to the European mainland mean swapping air travel for car, bus, or rail — with any Channel crossings (if travelling from within the UK) by ferry or the Channel Tunnel.

High-speed rail (such as the EuroStar or TVG) is significantly cleaner and greener than flying, emitting only 6g of CO2 per passenger kilometre but it’s not always possible to get a TGV from your start to end destination. Local rail services work out at roughly 41kg per passenger kilometre, which is comparable to the emissions from a car with four passengers. That means, in theory, loading your car up with your mates and driving to your destination has an average CO2 output that is comparable to local rail travel. However, it’s never that simple, because adding the shape and weight of four bikes to a car will have a negative impact on the fuel consumption which isn’t accounted for in these figures. Then there’s the bus/coach option along with some dedicated “bike bus” services, which transport you and your bike along set routes. But how “green” are these when some stats show that the CO2 output from a bus is comparable to a long-haul flight?

As anyone who’s started looking into this soon finds out there are lots of variations to consider. The question then is where to start!? Luckily, there are some really useful online tools to help with these types of calculations. We thought it would be interesting to see how the differences play out with a few possible holidays so in the remainder of this article we’ll take a look at a few and see how they compare. Then we’ll give you some sources of information that can be used to help you plan your trip.

Comparing Journeys by Car, Rail and Air

Now we’ll have a look at a few example journeys to see how they stack up across the different modes. The tool we used for this is the Eco Passenger travel simulator, developed in cooperation with the European Environment Agency in Copenhagen and launched in June 2008 — but there are other tools available. One of the reasons we like the Eco Passenger tool is that you can really tailor your trip, selecting passenger numbers, car type, and more.

Journey 1: Leeds to Tuscany, 2 people

In this example we’re a couple travelling from Leeds to Tuscany. We looked at two variations of this journey: one in a diesel car and another in a modern and “green” petrol car. The results in each case are interesting.

Rail comes out on top in both scenarios, however, when making the journey by car — irrespective of the type of car — your carbon footprint (vs flying) is reduced. Diesel cars perform worse in NO2 and hydrocarbons — but in terms of CO2, energy consumption, and PM10s even the smelly old diesel car performs better than air travel. Which factor you place the most weight on will depend on your priorities.

Journey 2: London to Stockholm, 4 people

In this example, imagine you’re travelling from London to Stockholm on a family-friendly tour then the train comes out top for CO2 emissions but the car actually performs better for every other environmental factor excluding the contribution to smog.

Tools to Help Plan your Trip

EcoPassenger

The Eco Passenger simulator we used for our examples above is a very thorough tool that can be configured according to the class of car (diesel, petrol, LPG and emissions rating), passenger load, preference for travel too and from the airport. For our purposes it’s a shame that we couldn’t add “self-propelled” to the list — but, unless you’re touring you are probably looking at one of these transport modes to get to your holiday destination.

Rail Travel Planning

One of the most widely used tools for planning your trip by rail is the ever-helpful Man at Seat 61 website. Other sites include Rail Europe and The Trainline. You can also book coach tickets via the Trainline BUT at the time of writing you have to plan your journey from the UK in two parts: first from your start location to one of the Eurostar connections, then onwards from Eurostar to the European mainland: an annoying extra step.

Another site — omio — says it books train, bus, ferry, and air travel tickets but we got zero results for bus or train alternatives to flights for our sample journeys, so this may not be particularly helpful!

Travelling by Coach or Bus

If you’re planning to travel to your destination via coach or bus you may find it’s better to arrange for your bike to travel separately — or pick up a hire bike when you arrive. The bad news is that The European Cyclists’ Federation (ECF) found that out of 61 different European long-distance coach companies only 10 operators took bookings for bikes and 28 either had no information available or didn’t take bikes at all. The other 23 allowed bikes that were boxed, which were then stored as luggage. If you are considering coach travel the starting point is Eurolines, with travel planning and ticket sales via their website and for general advice the Europe Bus website has some useful info relating to bus travel across Europe.

As an alternative to DIY trip planning and running the gauntlet of coach companies are dedicated bike companies offering set routes on set timetables that can transport you and your bike together. The main one is Bike Express, with various routes into France and Spain.

Other Factors to Consider

Transporting your Bike

Generally trains are accepted on local and regional train services but be sure to check before turning up with your bike. Generally there’s no need to book but again, it’s best to confirm this.

High-speed rail services may require advance booking and also charge you for transporting your bike. For example, in France the TGV accepts bikes free of charge if they are boxed (they are classed as luggage in this case) but not all services accept fully-assembled bikes and then they must be booked in advance since space is limited.

An alternative to this is to use a bike transport service. Examples of these are Send Bike (relatively new on the scene but with solid review feedback). Other providers include Nirvana Europe (a specialist bike transport company), Euro Sender (general shipping that also transport bikes), Bike Box Online, and Cycle Transfer.

Unfortunately bike services are suspended on Eurostar, which makes transporting your bike by rail rather tricky if you’re travelling from the UK — but the website says that they are expected to resume in May. This means the only option for leaving the UK with your bike is via a route that serviced by one of the ferries — and connecting with local rail services at the other end.

If for any reason you decide not to take your bike then there are always good local hire options, which has the advantage of supporting a local business and zero environmental impact (yes, shipping your bike also has an environmental impact!)

Travel Time

The other factor to consider is time. If you decide to take a “slow travel” approach, you have to make the journey part of the vacation. The journey time differences are considerable depending on the mode of transport you choose, which may not be practical if you have limited vacation time or a family to consider.

In most of the scenarios we tested rail journeys from the UK to the mainland took around 24 hours vs half that by car and less than half that again (6 hrs) by plane. If you have time adding a day isn’t the end of the world but that’s a lot of travelling and — if you’re part of a group — adding that extra overhead to your holiday might not work for some people.

Alternatives to Long Haul Flights

Unfortunately, there is very little you can do to reduce your carbon footprint if you’re traveling to Europe from the US, Australia, or elsewhere! If you are making the trip it’s likely to be a “bucket list” type trip so you can make it count by combining several trips into one: instead of making one trip a year consider one every two or three years but make it count and stay for three weeks instead of one. That has the added bonus of a trip you can remember and reducing the number of international flights.

Whilst they’re not a magic bullet you can make yourself feel better by paying into a carbon offset scheme, of which there are now many, or making a contribution to an environmental project. If you’re looking for something bike related World Bicycle Relief is one we like, which donates newly-made bicycles to people in parts of Colombia, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe through their Mobilized Communities programme.

Other ways to consider your impact include choosing a holiday or tour provider who shares your environmental ethos. Then of course you can shift the focus closer to home by working out your personal carbon footprint and doing more to reduce your the environmental impact in your day-to-day life.

We all have bucket list trips to make — and being conscious of their impacts is a good starting point.

Conclusion — it’s complicated!

Look, we’re a site promoting cycling holidays so we’re not going to try and persuade you that the right thing to do is stay at home. The world is a big place and actually many local economies are dependent on tourism to keep them afloat — a factor that’s been thrown into stark relief during the last two years thanks to Covid.

How we decide to travel depends on other factors too, such as where you’re travelling to and from, the time we have available, our budget, and other practicalities. You might really want to make the journey by train but it may mean only a short stop at your chosen destination.

Like most environmental decision making, it’s complicated but, if you are considering alternatives, we hope the contents of this article will help with your decision making and provide you with some links to useful tools to help with your planning.

[1] Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49349566
[2] Source: http://www.ecopassenger.org/

Photo by Kristijan Arsov on Unsplash