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Number of flight passengers in Germany increases despite ‘Fridays for Future’

Despite the growing Fridays for Future climate protest movement, which calls for less plane travel, the number of flight passengers in Germany is increasing.

Number of flight passengers in Germany increases despite 'Fridays for Future'
A flight departing from Berlin's Tegel Airport in August. Photo: DPA

The number of flight passengers since the start of “Fridays for Future” – kicked off by Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg in August 2018 – has gone up over the past year, according to the latest air traffic data from Germany’s Federal Statistics Office.

READ ALSO: Over 200 'Fridays for Future' demos taking place in Germany

In the 12 months between August 2018 and July 2019, there were a total of 125.1 flight passengers, according to the data analyzed by RP Online on Wednesday. That’s up from a total of 119.4 passengers between July 2017 and July 2018.

In April of this year, there were a total of 10.7 million flight passengers, up from 9.8 million in 2018. 

The Swedish concept of “Flygskam”, or flight shame, has still taken a hold of many people across the globe.

One in five Americans and Europeans say that are taking at least one flight fewer per year due to climate change concerns, according to a study by 6,000 Americans and Europeans by Swiss Bank UBS.

Nonetheless, the International Air Transport Association (IATA), an umbrella organization of airlines, predicted in September that the number of air travelers will double in two decades.

Cutting costs

Some say that the reason people in Germany have yet to cut back massively on plane travel is the low costs of tickets, especially for domestic and intercontinental flights.

The country currently has an aviation tax, which has been levied since 2011 at rates currently ranging from €7.38 to €41.49, but is still much lower than other EU countries such as neighbouring France. 

Several politicians, including German Environment Minister Svenja Schultze, have said that plane flights departing from Germany are therefore “too cheap”, criticizing that domestic flight tickets often cost less than train tickets.

Germany’s Green Party earlier this year proposed a plan to make train travel in the Bundesrepublik so attractive – and affordable – that domestic flights become ‘obsolete’.

READ ALSO: Trains instead of planes: Could domestic flights in Germany really become ‘obsolete’?

The Christian Socialists (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to Merkel's Christian Democrats, have also proposed a “penalty tax” for flights costing less than €50 in an attempt to cut carbon emissions.

Their ideas could soon achieve more wide-reaching support. On Wednesday morning, Germany’s Federal Cabinet adopted its controversial climate packet, through which it aims to reduce greenhouse gasses by 55 percent compared to what they were in 1990. 

The law stipulates that individual ministries – including Germany’s Transportation Ministry, which have long resisted specific targets for air travel – are responsible for achieving climate protection targets.

READ ALSO: Could cheap flights in Germany receive a 'penalty tax'?

Vocabulary

Air traffic data – (die) Luftverkehrdaten

flight passengers – (die) Flugpassagiere

increase/rise – (der) Anstieg

propose – vorschlagen

Umbrella organization – (der) Dachverband

We're aiming to help our readers improve their German by translating vocabulary from some of our news stories. Did you find this article useful? Do you have any suggestions? Let us know.

 

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‘Città 30’: Which Italian cities will bring in new speed limits?

Bologna has faced heavy criticism - including from the Italian government - after introducing a speed limit of 30km/h, but it's not the only city to approve these rules.

'Città 30': Which Italian cities will bring in new speed limits?

Bologna on January 17th became Italy’s first major city to introduce a speed limit of 30km/h on 70 percent of roads in the city centre under its ‘Città 30’ plan, first announced in 2022, and initially set to come into force by June 2023.

The move made Bologna one of a growing number of European cities, including Paris, Madrid, Brussels, and Bilbao, to bring in a 30km/h limit aimed at improving air quality and road safety.

But the change was met last week with a go-slow protest by Bologna’s taxi drivers and, perhaps more surprisingly, criticism from the Italian transport ministry, which financed the measure.

Matteo Salvini, who is currently serving as Italy’s transport minister, this week pledged to bring in new nationwide rules dictating speed limits in cities that would reverse Bologna’s new rule.

Salvini’s League party has long criticised Bologna’s ‘Città 30’ plan, claiming it would make life harder for residents as well as people working in the city and would create “more traffic and fines”.

OPINION: Italians and their cars are inseparable – will this ever change?

Bologna’s speed limit has sparked a heated debate across Italy, despite the increasingly widespread adoption of such measures in many other cities in Europe and worldwide in recent years.

While Bologna is the biggest Italian city to bring in the measure, it’s not the first – and many more local authorities, including in Rome, are now looking to follow their example in the next few years.

Some 60 smaller cities and towns in Italy have adopted the measure so far, according to Sky TG24, though there is no complete list.

This compares to around 200 French towns and cities to adopt the rule, while in Spain the same limit has applied to 70 percent of all the country’s roads since since May 2021 under nationwide rules, reports LA7.

The first Italian town to experiment with a 30 km/h speed limit was Cesena, south of Bologna, which introduced it in 1998. Since then, the local authority has found that serious accidents have halved, while the number of non-serious ones has remained unchanged.

Olbia, in Sardinia, also famously introduced the speed limit in 2021.

The city of Parma is planning to bring in the same rules from 2024, while the Tuscan capital of Florence approved five 30km/h zones in the city centre earlier this month.

Turin is set to bring in its first 30km/h limits this year as part of its broader plan to improve transport infrastructure, aimed at reducing smog and increasing livability.

READ ALSO: Why electric cars aren’t more popular in Italy

Meanwhile, the mayor of Rome, Roberto Gualtieri, has promised to introduce the limit on 70 percent of the capital’s roads by the end of his mandate, which expires in 2026.

In Milan, while the city council has voted in favour of lower speed limits and other traffic limitations on central roads, it’s not clear when these could come into force.

Milan mayor Beppe Sala this week said a 30 km/h limit would be “impossible” to implement in the Lombardy capital.

And it’s notable that almost all of the cities looking at slowing down traffic are in the north or centre-north of Italy.

There has been little interest reported in the measures further south, where statistics have shown there are a higher number of serious road accidents – though the total number of accidents is in fact higher in the north.

According to the World Health Organisation the risk of death to a pedestrian hit by a car driven at 50 km/h is 80 percent. The risk drops to 10 percent at 30 km/h.

The speed limit on roads in Italian towns and cities is generally 50, and on the autostrade (motorways) it’s up to 130.

Many Italian residents are heavily dependent on cars as their primary mode of transport: Italy has the second-highest rate of car ownership in Europe, with 670 vehicles per 1,000 residents, second only to Luxembourg with 682, according to statistics agency Eurostat.

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