Earth Day 2026 blog

Rails of change: why public transport is our climate lifeline
By Kerry Abel, TSSA Organiser

It’s not headline news, but just last month, forecasters confirmed the hottest day of the year so far, with thermometers hitting 19.2C in West London – a record for early March that had us reaching for summer clothes while the daffodils were still in bloom, lulling us into forgetting the floods that swallowed homes in Cumbria last winter, the "blood rain" sweeping up from the Sahara, and the stark fact that our climate has fundamentally shifted. At the time, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, issued a city-wide “high air pollution” alert.

This Earth Day (22 April), we are not just fighting for polar bears or rainforests. We are fighting for the commute. We are fighting for the school run. We are fighting for the air we breathe in our cities. What we do now will affect whether we win that battle or not.

The overheating engine of inaction

The environmental statistics this year are damning. We are seeing a rise in "heat mortality" – a crude term for people, often the elderly and vulnerable, dying because their homes and cities have become heat traps.

A key driver of the climate chaos is our transport system. As of 2024, according to the TUC, domestic transport made up 30% of total UK greenhouse emissions – the largest portion. In 2023, most of that was people using private cars or private hire vehicles (53%), 16% was HGVs, and 16% vans. In total, then, 85% of these emissions come from private, road-based transport.

To make things more urgent, the percentage of emissions coming from transport is going up: in 2019 it was 27%; five years later, in 2024, it was 30%. While the science screams for a rapid transition away from the internal combustion engine, change is coming at a glacial pace.

Yes, we have seen the headline figures. The commitment of up to £45 billion for the Northern Powerhouse Rail, sounds monumental. It is a recognition that the North has been starved of investment for decades. But a line connecting cities in the 2040s does nothing for passengers in Birmingham or Greater Manchester trying to get to work tomorrow without sitting in a traffic jam.

It also comes as DfT budgets in the here-and-now are slashed. Last year’s Spending Review saw day-to-day spend cut by 5% across the period, while infrastructure faces a 1% cut. Our infrastructure is crumbling under the weight of weather it was never designed to withstand, and investment is being tragically delayed.  

We are seeing "jam tomorrow" politics. Despite government talking points about growth, we know that true growth cannot happen on roads clogged with cars and vans. The Office of Rail and Road reported this year that while rail productivity is recovering, the industry is still expending huge sums without the radical overhaul needed to make trains the automatic first choice.

Rail jobs are green jobs: defend jobs, defend the planet

We should be screaming from the rooftops that public transport is a climate defence tool. Every time a car user switches to a train, emissions drop by three-quarters. But they won't switch if the service is unreliable or the price is extortionate.

In the past, environmentalists and unions were sometimes pitted against each other: "green" policies versus "jobs." But that’s a false choice.

As TSSA has pointed out, rail is one of the most productive sectors in the UK, generating £2.50 for the economy for every £1 invested. It supports over 640,000 jobs and contributes £41 billion to the economy.  When we build a new line or electrify an existing one, we are not just saving carbon; we are creating skilled manufacturing jobs in places like Derby.

Later this year, Great British Railways (GBR) is finally expected to launch. In theory, this is our golden ticket. By bringing "track and train" together, we end the fragmented chaos of the last thirty years where private operators argued with government infrastructure bodies while passengers paid the price. GBR should be the “guiding mind” needed for a rapid expansion of rail, meeting our climate objectives as we boost our economy and cerate jobs. But that opportunity is being squandered.

Instead, we are seeing job losses at Network Rail as budgets are cut for Control Period 5, and at Southeastern as the Train Operating Company is brought into an “alliance” with parts of the Network Rail Southern region. At a time when we should be expanding our rail network and investing in our infrastructure, it is nonsensical to suggest there should be job losses; the opposite is true.  

If GBR becomes only a streamlined new bureaucracy that runs the same old diesel trains on the same old sparse schedules, it will fail. Instead, the Government should use the new organisation to mandate that public transport is integrated; timetables between trains and buses should match up and make it easier to travel without owning a car. We need GBR to prioritise environmental investment and initiatives – giving themselves targets that increase public transport access and reduce pollution.

That should mean a rolling programme of electrification and an end to the "stop-start" funding that kills supply chains. A continuous pipeline of work brings down costs and keeps engineers employed, while enabling the benefits of scale to be realised with combined orders. For example, supporting TfL with a new order for Elizabeth Line Trains has helped to keep work in the UK, and supported our domestic economy.

It should also mean prioritising freight. Currently the government is talking about using rail to transport CO₂ for storage – which is vital – but we also need to get the thousands of lorries off the M6 and onto freight wagons.

Let’s work with City Mayors

Finally, this is a plea to our city mayors – Sadiq Khan in London, Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester, Steve Rotheram in Liverpool, and the new combined authority leaders like Tracy Brabin (Mayor of West Yorkshire). They have the power now under the new GBR framework to shape the network.

We don’t accept watered-down plans, or diesel trains on "zero-carbon" promises. Electrification needs to be prioritised now, not kicked down the road. City Mayors can use their powers to zone housing near transit hubs and demand that the £45 billion arrives on time.

On this Earth Day, as the sun sets through a haze of Saharan dust, let us look not to the sky for salvation, but to the railway tracks. The solution to the climate crisis is not a sci-fi technology; it is a reliable, frequent, electric train. Let’s fight for it.

What can we do?

As well as working with the government and environmental campaigns, we want to bring this emergency to the grassroots and get our reps and activists involved in the workplace. We know our reps respond creatively and with energy and enthusiasm to difficult problems in the past. We could use our army of Health and Safety reps to launch a series of environment inspections; our Union Learning Reps (ULRs) can take up initiatives that help workers get past the jargon used to make climate change look complicated and we could see Industrial reps negotiating policies that force their employers to act. Our pensions reps can argue for green investing and our Equalities champions know that where there is discrimination, workers suffer the effects of climate change differently.

Take action on 1 July

We are asking as many members as possible to take a photo of them taking the temperature of their place of work on Wednesday 1 July. This was the hottest day of the year last year. Please post your photos on social media and tag TSSA @tssaunion (Instagram); @tssa.bsky.social (BlueSky); @TSSAunion (X) or post to TSSA on Facebook.

If you want to request a free TSSA thermometer contact abelk@tssa.org.uk with TSSA ‘thermometer’ in your Subject line and include the address you want it sent to.