Facts and Quotes for your train bunting petition: to use or inspire you

For our joint project with Climate Rush we are creating bunting petitions in the shape of train carriages 7inches wide by 5inches deep. They can be hand embroidered, cross stitched any other crafty way you want to demand fair train fares for our society (as long its the correct size and on cotton). Here are some facts and quotes you can use or to help you inspire you to create you’re own. Instructions video, exmples and press release coming soon.

In 2007, 79% of the distance travelled by the average individual in the UK was done by car while only 7% was travelled by over ground rail. 

Only 55% of people in the UK have travelled by train in the past year.

Between 1997 and 2008, the cost of travelling by train rose by 46%, while the cost of travelling by car rose by 26%

UK rail fares are on average 50% more expensive than European fares.

British flexible tickets are three times as expensive as in Europe.

British season tickets are four times as expensive as in Europe.

Our government now spends twice as much on the rail network as it spent on British Rail before privatisation.

Passenger revenue has risen by 75% since privatisation, but only 7.5% of passenger revenue is invested back into the rail network.

Choosing the train rather than the plane cuts CO2 emissions by over 90%.

UK citizens currently take around 210 million flights a year – the same number as China’s 1 billion people.

The long term economic viability of the aviation industry is in question when rapidly increasing oil prices are brought into the equation.

The aviation industry enjoys tax breaks amounting to nearly £10 billion a year.
Paris is the most popular destination from Heathrow with 32 flights each day.

100,000 flights a year go between Heathrow and cities within 500 kilometres of the airport – destinations easily reachable by train.

Aviation is currently responsible for 13% of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK.

Aviation is the fast-growing contributor to CO2 emissions in the UK.
The average annual household income of Stansted passengers is £47,000, and low-skilled people and people on benefits, despite making up a quarter of the population, only took 6% of the flights.

In 2006, 36% of take-offs and landings at UK airports were for domestic flights.

QUOTES

Whether we like it or not, the ability to travel point-to-point on an individually-tailored timetable [in a car] is one of the great quality-of-life gains of the second half of the 20th century.
Philip Hammond MP (i.e. our Transport Minister)

Hammond must be dragged away from Top Gear and forced to spend some time watching the news.
Greenpeace UK

Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return.
E. M. Forster

Most men who have really lived have had, in some share, their great adventure. This railway is mine.
James J. Hill

Sherlock Holmes: We are a nation of railway pioneers, my boy.

Apple pie for breakfast – we can’t be poor after all! – The Railway Children

Try to imagine it as an adventure, all sorts of things might happen. – The Railway Children

“Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel.the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.”

‘taking the car is so much more convenient and much cheaper too’  – a passenger between York and London.