What a misleading piece of writing.
1. They are counting international fuel in their calculations but not counting the number of foreign nationals carried.
2. As mentioned above the elephant in the room is the motor car which is most inefficient form of transport. It burned 460% more fuel than all domestic aircraft. Now think about that figure for a while.
3. There is no consideration of the efficiency of flying. ie you can easily fly SYD-MEL-SYD in one day and have time to conduct business. Every other form of transport requires an overnight.
4. There is no consideration of freight carried including bags and time critical items.
5. They have brought short range public transport into a debate about long range transport. Planes don't compete with people commuting from Bowral or Central Coast to Sydney or from Gold Coast to Brisbane. How efficient is a train on SYD-BNE vs an Aircraft? Or BNE-PER? Don't forget a plane does that on 2 x 2km of runway vs 1000's kms of railway.
6. They expect railways to be subsidised by the government but aviation can pay the entire economic cost of operating.
Here's an idea how about we run railways like aviation and let the end user pay for the entire cost of operating and see how cost effective it is then?
Last edited by neville_nobody; 13th Jan 2017 at 04:45.