Environment

Buses and coaches have a major role to play in reducing CO₂ emissions from transport.

If car drivers switched from car to bus or coach for just one journey in 25 it would mean one billion fewer car journeys and a saving of 2 million tonnes of CO₂.  This would result in a reduction in congestion which would serve the national drive to reduce carbon emissions.

• Passenger cars produce nearly 60% of all CO₂ emissions from road transport in the UK.      (Source: Low Carbon Transport: A Greener Future 09)
• The CO₂ per car passenger kilometre is 130g CO₂, per bus/coach passenger kilometre it is 69g CO₂. (Source: Carbon Pathways Analysis)
• At 30g CO₂ per passenger kilometre the express coach is the most carbon efficient form of motorised transport resulting in less than a quarter of the emissions per passenger than equivalent journey by car. (Source: ECCM, E4Tech, Themba 2006)
• Average number of people in a car is 1.58, compared to 32 of a coach.                          (Source: Carbon Pathways Analysis, ECCM, E4Tech, Themba 2006)
• Reducing congestion shortens journey times. Average number of passengers on a bus is 9.3 National Travel Survey.  In a city a journey by bus can result in half the CO₂ emissions per passenger compared to the car, and this differential would be much greater with modal shift. (Source: National Travel Survey)
• Congestion dramatically increases CO2 emissions from road vehicles. Under heavily congested conditions tail pipe emissions can be increased by as much as 3 or 4 times. (Source: Bell M.C. Environmental Factors in Intelligent Transport Systems, IEE Proceedings 2006)

Carbon Calculator

Click here to compare CO₂ emissions from different modes of transport over various journeys.

(provided by http://www.transportdirect.info)