Interstate Bus Travel
Credit: Ray Jelliffe/Cartoonstock
Like all good environmentalists (and introverts), I prefer not to travel anywhere that is beyond walking distance of my house. When I am forced to leave the house for some unpleasant yet unavoidable reason (like having to go to work), I can generally navigate the trip via my local public transport network. I try to keep forays into automobile territory (a.k.a. rural Australia), or to other cities, to a minimum. There is no sense expending energy — either the fossil fuel or social kind — unless absolutely necessary.
Sometimes it is absolutely necessary. Funerals, for example. Or because your boss tells you to. There are also obligatory visits that must be made following the arrival of a new human. These are all perfectly acceptable reasons to travel. You may not want to travel four hours in a car to stare at a newborn but travel you must. We may be in the middle of a global warming crisis, but one must always compliment parents in person on their recently arrived contribution to the overpopulation problem. That's the rule if one lives in Australia.*
Another very strict Australian rule is that if you receive a wedding invitation, you must do everything in your power to attend the event at the allotted time irrespective of how far away it is, how much carbon you'll expend getting there, or how you feel about the couple getting married. Actually, I don't think that is a strict rule, but the further someone travels, the more likely it is they will get a mention in the speeches and this results in a lot of distant relatives and old school friends boarding interstate flights they really don't need to.
It is for a wedding that I am (begrudgingly) travelling interstate right now. As in, right at this very moment. I am writing these words while sitting on a bus. It is not currently moving, but when everybody has finished boarding and safely fastened their seatbelts, it will set out from the Australian city I live in to another one. I am not delighted to be here. There is certainly nothing wrong with this bus, but as it is nearly eight o'clock on a Friday evening, I would prefer to be in my house.
Personally, I didn't think it was absolutely necessary for me to go to this wedding. I'd weighed up the positives and negatives. Sure, I'd have an excuse to take a few days off work, but an interstate trip requires a significant amount of transport-related carbon. It also involves many hours of small talk. I decided it was more sensible to stay home.
Then I mentioned this to my sister. She told me I was going. She's younger than me and one should never argue with younger sisters so… now I'm on a bus. She's not on the bus. She boarded a flight to our birth city several hours ago and is most likely sitting on the couch at Mum and Dad's house right now quietly sipping a cup of tea.**
I should have mentioned to her before she bought the plane tickets that her return flights would emit more CO2 than many people (all non-Australians) do in a year. I should also have mentioned that it would be much cheaper if she took the bus. The reason I didn't mention these things was not out of politeness — it was because I didn't want to be on an overnight bus with a baby and a three-year-old.
I think I speak for all of my fellow bus passengers when I say that it is perfectly fine for babies to take the express route. Anyone without a baby that has also decided to take the express route and is now suffering a screaming six-month-old, well, you brought that on yourself. This bus is very quiet. We haven't even started moving or turned off the lights and people are whispering. Overnight bus travellers are clearly better versed at public transport etiquette than flyers. At the very least, the driver doesn't have to play a video at the start of the trip reminding passengers to be nice to him.
I also noticed that nobody is playing YouTube videos without headphones nor are they cutting their fingernails, which suggests their travel etiquette is superior even to the regular commuters on my local train line.
That said, I probably shouldn't be trying to promote overnight bus trips as the preferred mode of interstate travel based on the habits of travellers. Let's be honest - people are annoying everywhere and I was far less enamoured with my fellow passengers by the time we arrived at our destination. Someone on the bus didn't think to pack a handkerchief when they clearly had a cold and sniffled half the night. I was also in the unfortunate position of being behind a teenager who couldn't sleep and thought it only fair that nobody around her should either.
Some people would have been impressed by how many points of interest this fifteen-year-old was able to observe and provide commentary on while travelling down a dark highway through rural Australia at 3 a.m. None of those people were on the bus.
I'm not really talking it up, am I?
Well, no, but I'm also not trying to sell anyone a holiday. Hopefully this will inspire more people to stay home. For those that can't, if you've read up to this point you might at least consider your options before going straight to a website that compares flight prices.
If you have to travel long-distance, some sort of transport is required. None of them are wonderful. They will all involve queuing, public restrooms, long periods of sitting, cramped seats, and many other human beings. You could drive, of course. That might eliminate queuing and crowds, but it will add 'wasted time', 'high fuel costs', and 'increased chance of fatal accident' to the list. Until teleporting is invented, a long commute will be required, so why don't you at least opt for the one that has the lowest carbon, the cheapest ticket, and provides the best conversation topic?
Taking the bus was definitely the best decision. Not only did it enable me to feel quietly superior to the climate killers that flew to the wedding, but it also alleviated much of the pressure to come up with small talk topics all weekend. Everybody had questions about the bus. Nobody was interested in learning that a queue for the airport baggage drop was due to two auto-check-in machines being down. As a result, all the flyers had to think up something else to talk about when stuck in the bar queue behind their cousin's partner's mother's great-aunt. I did not.
An overnight bus is not going to give you the best night's sleep you've ever had in your life. Does it matter? We can all surely manage a little discomfort in order to save a huge amount of carbon. Aeroplanes need a lot of fuel to fly, as well as a big airport. That means that buses are not only better for the planet, they are also much cheaper. An overnight bus cost me $65 each way. My sister said she paid over a grand to fly herself, a baby and a toddler there and back.***
I also feel I saved a lot of time. Travelling to and from interstate bus-stops meant I didn't have to sort out getting to airports, going through security and figuring out transport at the other end. The bus took me from a city centre to a city centre. Had I come by plane, I would have wasted most of my Friday or Saturday. Instead, I finished work at the usual time, had dinner in the city and was in my arrival city in time for breakfast in the morning.
Sure, I sat on a bus overnight, but what do most people do between eight p.m. and six a.m.? Watch TV, eat a second dinner, ponder tidying up, and go to bed, usually. I wrote some of this blog then read a book on my Kindle. Many people plugged their phones into the USB sockets and watched TV or TwitTok videos. Some just sat and thought about things. There were no obligations to attend to and nothing to clean. It was all quite relaxing. I imagine I would have also enjoyed falling asleep to the gentle rumble of the bus had there not been a loud teenager in front of me.
Long-distances buses are not for everyone. As mentioned earlier, if you are carrying around a screaming baby, you are welcome to opt for a faster mode of transport. Everyone else should at least consider taking the bus instead of flying when they are travelling between Australian cities. It may not be the most comfortable night's sleep, but you'll be in such a halo of eco-warrior self-righteousness on arrival that it will feel like you spent the night in a nice hotel. You'll have saved money, had an interesting adventure, avoided the stress of flying, and will be able to get on with your trip with the personal satisfaction of having gone on a holiday without killing the planet.
There are a lot of small things that we can do to tackle global warming, but choosing not to fly is a very big one. Obviously, the best solution would be to ban unbearably happy people from thoughtlessly posting out wedding invitations to interstate friends and relatives, but that's unlikely to happen. Sensible amendments to marriage laws in Australia tend only to happen via tedious referendums. In the meantime, opt to take the bus or, if you can come up with a good excuse, just stay home with a cuppa and a good book.
The Quiet Environmentalist
Further Reading:
How your flight emits as much CO2 as many people do in a year | Carbon footprints | The Guardian
Should we give up flying for the sake of the climate? - BBC Future
*You will also receive travel requests that are perfectly reasonable to ignore. Sunday lunch invitations, for example. You are under no obligation to travel into automobile territory every weekend because your best friend decided to "get away from it all” but has since discovered that living in the country is lonely, boring, and quite hard work, and now expects all the sensible people that stayed in the city to drive out there regularly to visit them. In these situations, I would highly recommend pretending that you have started volunteering at a dog shelter every weekend. In fact, it might be worth taking that up as an actual hobby. You are clearly in need of some new, locally based friends, and dog pals are always an upgrade on the human kind.
**It's worth noting here that this comment was incorrect. I found out later that her flight was delayed, which meant she sat at the boarding gate for ninety minutes with two small children who were up past their bedtime. She didn't get to our parents’ house till close to one a.m., at which point she was so tired from carrying a screaming baby and an overstimulated three-year-old through airports that it was straight to bed. No tea was sipped.
***I don't think the airline charged extra for bringing a baby on board, although if airlines decided to start charging extra for people with babies as a means of discouraging them from flying, it would be perfectly understandable.
Published 07 April 2024
