Thomas A. FrederiksenMay 5, 2023

I’ve recently learned of a different way of limiting corporate travel, and I think it’s brilliant.

Every company travel policy I’d heard of until yesterday has been a variation on the same theme:

There’s an annual a travel budget. Management may or may not have priority and there may be limitations on who can travel together, but in the end the true limit is the amount of money in the budget.

The policy I learned of yesterday is almost, but not quite, unlike the others. The budget isn’t about money. It’s about CO2 emissions. Each department gets a specific amount of CO2 emissions for travel for the year.

The implications are interesting:

Travel within Europe has become train first as a natural consequence. Intercontinental travel has been reduced by a significant amount.

It’s an absolutely amazing policy and it should be the standard corporate travel policy everywhere.

Show threadJeremy KahnMay 6, 2023

@taf i live in Seattle and half my team is in San Francisco Bay area.

I would be happy to visit them more often if i could take the train. The carbon footprint is much smaller and travel is much comfier.

Biggest downside is that the trip is much longer, but i already work from decent Wi-Fi, so this would be like a mini retreat in both directions

Show threadraboofMay 7, 2023
@trochee @taf this might be a naive question, but why can't you?
Show threadJeremy KahnMay 7, 2023

@raboof @taf mostly it's that the co and its travel agency thinks I would prefer flying, and nobody else there imagines how this could be better.

Also, train travel SEA->SFO is 23 hours which is a national embarrassment -- should be half that

Show threadraboof

@trochee interesting. I've been in orgs that could arrange travel but mostly did so myself - sad to hear that's not always allowed.

Memorable experience with leaving travel arr. to them was the time they first tried to put me in the most expensive Hilton in London, far from the venue. When I told them that didn't make sense they put me in some other $$$ place and I was like 🤷. Glad I had that documented, as I was later scolded by my manager about the accomodation costs 🤦

May 7, 2023 at 3:37amWeb
Show threadJeremy KahnMay 7, 2023
@raboof mostly, American train system is so broken that there are basically no business travelers who take the train (outside of a small east coast corridor)
Show threadraboofMay 7, 2023
@trochee tbh it really depends on departure/destination location whether it makes sense even in Europe, but when it does I much prefer it!