“Electric and hybrid flights are a core part of the solution to making short-haul travel more sustainable, and less dependent on imported jet fuel.”
“Electric and hybrid flights are a core part of the solution to making short-haul travel more sustainable, and less dependent on imported jet fuel.”
That is very much a “it depends”. Tracks are narrow, but very long: they have a much larger ecological impact that a runway. However tracks can handle a lot more people than a runway or two.
If the tracks are between two large cities (and the smaller cities on the way) then they are the much better option. This is the most common case by far - most people live in a large enough city to support high speed rail.
However building tracks to every small town for the few passengers that would use them is an ecological disaster and so planes like this running a few times a day to a large city (where you can then get on the trains) is the better ecological choice.
Of course in reality high speed trains are around 300km/h (world record is around 600km/h - but at those speeds the aerodynamics of altitude make the airplane better). I didn’t find a speed in the article, but I would make an educated guess that they are planning on 600-700kmh speeds. Which sounds fast, but if there is tracks the train wins because a station is likely to be closer than the airport plus there is no arrive one hour before your flight rule.
The article didn’t say capacity, but the picture suggests around 100 passengers. Either your town is too small for this, or your town is large enough to build tracks. In the first case you want 25 passenger airplanes. In the second case this is an ecological disaster - just build the tracks to the city.
No, it it not an ‘it depends’. There is absolutely no discussion that for these distances a train is a greener solution.