A thought starter about environment and trains.

[Larry H.]

A couple days ago the St. Louis paper had an article about Amtrak opening a new stop at Arcadia Missouri.

It got me wondering about what would could happen if more routes and stops were included in the national system. We have only a couple hubs as it is and that is a big disadvantage to many. Plus more cites on the map would produce more traffic to utilize the existing and hopefully expanded routes. I wondered about the cost of a train compared to an airplane and also the effects that planes have in creating carbon which I understand is among the worst of the polluters if one is concerned about that.

A train it turns out uses 4,000 gallons in a 20 hour period. Whereas a Boeining 747 uses an astounding 9,541.55 in an hour! What really surprised me was that a new 747 cost around 350 million dollars each. I found where the superliner fleet of cars cost 320 million for 140 cars.

What I am curious about is mostly fantasy for sure, but if the world really would decide to cut way back on air craft pollution a case might be made for a much large system of interstate trains taking as much passenger traffic as possible. As it is, and another advantage to the train, is that it can pick up and discharge people who now have to drive often hours to reach a major airport, that cost of fuel and pollution is also a negative. Much longer trains would also be needed, more like the routes in canada where 22 cars is not uncommon. And as ours used to carry 5 or more sleepers plus coaches.

I realize a lot of people think they have to be somewhere instantly, but also read where some parts of the government are saying were going to have to forgo some things we take for granted now in order to reduce the carbon footprint. My guess is that would be very difficult to accomplish but still an interesting thought. I really have no support nor complaint about the climate discussions other than to wonder a rail system that used to carry people widely thought the nation might again be a possibility at some point.

The cost figures alone say its a idea worth considering, but how it would work and who would pay for it is a good question.

 

[oregon pioneer]

You are perfectly right about the relative cost and environmental benefits of rail vs. the system we have now (air travel as "public transit"). That is one of the reasons I prefer train travel, the other is I like to cross the landscape in real time rather than bound over it without seeing.

-BUT-

The nationwide rail system we once had, from local street cars to intercity rail beds, was dismantled in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century because oil and auto manufacturing companies had more political power than those who wanted convenient, affordable mass transit. Most of the rights-of-way have been vacated and turned into private land or municipal recreational facilities (Rails-to-Trails). The steel was sold to (mostly) China, to be recycled. What we have left is inadequate for true intercity travel. It would be difficult, costly, and nearly impossible *politically* to get that back, no matter how desirable it is.

I would still like to see the infrastructure that we have utilized more fully for travel purposes, and I think that may happen if our consumer society quits demanding enough goods to fill their infrastructure with freight.

 

[KmH]

Be sure to factor in the travel time factor, particularly for long distance travel.

For instance factor in the cost to build the infrastructure and train sets required to run high speed trains outside the Northeast Corridor.

People tend to be selfish and act without regard to the 'big picture'.

 

[west point]

It would seem that if Amtrak had more locations at the outskirts of cities they might increase their ridership once Amtrak gets enough rolling stock. We can see the number of passengers that board at outlying stations. Route 128, New Rochelle, BWI airport, Alexandria. Fort Lauderdale / Hollywood, Winter Park are a few examples.

 

[Maglev]

I have a theory that the more fuel is burned, the more profit is earned. Since businesses look to profit, trains must be the realm of government. But since the government is run for the benefit of businesses, Amtrak struggles.

 

[StriderGDM]

BTW, I'd stop with using gallons burned per hour. That's fairly meaningless.

Generally the value used is gallons per passenger mile.

For details on how various things shake out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transportation#Units_of_measurement

So consider something like the Concorde, could get to Europe twice as fast, but 1/5th as efficient (or on other words, to cover the same distance used 5x as much fuel as a 747).

Scrolling further https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transportation#US_Passenger_transportationwe start to see useful metrics.

Here we see that rail does in fact beat planes, but not be a huge amount. And consider that newer jets like the 787 are even more fuel efficient.

We have yet, to really see (as far as I know) such efficiency improvements in rail.

Interestingly, this shows cars better than busses, I've typically seen it the other way.

That all said, there's one factor NOT incorporated here that IS important, that's the source of the fuel.

I would posit, it's generally easier in certain areas (like the NEC and soon the HSR in California) to incorporate renewable energy sources for rail than for planes.

So this is one reason to encourage rail growth in certain areas.

Rail can win on efficiency in many cases, but cars are getting much better (and have a lot of room for improvement) and are in many cases helluva a lot more convenient. They're not going away any time soon. (They also can btw benefit from renewable sources like trains. In fact perhaps more so since a pure battery car like the Tesla is viable, a pure battery train, probably not. at this time.)

 

[Don Newcomb]

Until large sections of America's long-distance rail lines are electrified, as they are in Europe and Asia, this discussion will just be about the relative degree of efficiency. The disadvantage of aircraft is that they can't be electrified. Trains can be but it has not been economical to do so, except in some very highly traveled corridors.

 

[MARC Rider]

According to the latest monthly performance report (https://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/515/889/Amtrak-Monthly-Performance-Report-September-2016-Preliminary-Unaudited.pdf p. A-3.1), Amtrak reports "core diesel" consumption at 2.1 -2.3 gallons per mile. I'm not sure what "core diesel means, but I would guess that they're excluding switchers, setting up trains, maintenance trains, etc. They're reporting an average load factor of about 50%, which seems hard to believe for this regular rider of sold-out trains on the NEC, which means somewhere there must be trains with lots of choice about where to sit.

I'm not sure of the capacity of the typical long-distance train, but an 8-car Amfleet I train (6 coaches, 1 BC and a cafe) can hold a little north of 550 passengers. At a 50% load factor, that's 225 people, which would mean that with an average passenger load a diesel powered 8-car Amfleet I train would have a fuel economy of a little more than 100 passenger miles per gallon. For comparison, motor coaches get 6 miles per gallon (though I wouldn't be surprised to see more advanced models getting 7, 8 or even 10 mpg.) Given an average 50% load factor for a 50-seat motor coach, that would be 150 passenger miles per gallon. A single occupant car at 25 mpg would be, of course, 25 passenger miles per gallon, whereas the same car with 4 occupants would yield 100 passenger miles per gallon. A 7-person 25 mpg minivan would yield 175 passenger miles per gallon, better even than a bus. Of course, cars are rarely driven fully loaded, I once saw statistics that the average vehicle occupancy for cars is about 1.1 passengers. That 8-car Amfleet 1 train, if sold out, would yield 200 passenger miles per gallon.

It's thought that the claimed fuel economy (and thus greenhouse emission) superiority of rail is due to the lower rolling resistance of a steel wheel on a steel rail as compared to that of a pneumatic tire on tarmac or concrete paving. Apparently, the rail rolling resistance coefficient is about 1-2 kg/ton, whereas truck and bus tires are 4-9 kg/ton. Rolling resistance coefficients of car tires overlap truck and bus, on the higher end. Obviously rail does not have a 4-fold fuel consumption advantage over motor vehicles with pneumatic tires (except for rail vs. single occupant cars). Some of this is possibly due to the fact that, on a per passenger basis, trains are heavier than cars, trucks, or buses. At least that's the case in the US. Apparently, Amtrak trains (at least in 1975) weighed in at 7 tons per passenger, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_resistance#Comparing_rolling_resistance_of_highway_vehicles_and_trains) whereas my car, in single occupancy, is 2 tons per passenger. When my wife rides with me, it's only 1 ton per passenger. A motorcoach weighs in at ~50,000 lbs, so if a 50 passenger coach is at 50% capacity (25 passenger), it only has to move 1 ton per passenger. This difference in weight between trains and motor vehicles negates a good deal of the rolling resistance advantge of trains, particularly those with relatively small passenger counts. Reducing rail fuel consumption will probably require ways to reduce train weight, but I'm not going to discuss that more, as discussing the FRA requirements for US passenger rail cars is a whole thread of its own. The only thing to note is that the wiki article referenced above states that the N7000 Series Shinkansen, fully loaded (1300 passengers), weighs about 0.75 tons per passenger.

There's more to the positive environmental impact of trains than the fuel economy though. Fixed guideway systems, like rail, only take on or discharge passengers at discrete nodes (stations), which means that the system can generate large numbers of people on foot at the stations, thus facilitating a dense, walkable human habitat. In addition to the health benefits of walking, a larger proportion of people traveling on foot means fewer vehicle miles traveled, as the most fuel efficient car is the one that is parked on your driveway. A dense human habitat (at least for the vast majority of people who have urban type jobs) is environmentally superior to our current suburban sprawl model because accommodating universal use of motor vehicles requires a lot of land being paved over, which negatively affects all kinds of ecological processes and services. For example, paving a watershed beyond a certain point will lead to more frequent and severe flooding because rainfall cannot soak into the ground, but is rather diverted into storm drains. Of course, a dense urban environment is also paved over, but in a dense city, less paved land per person is required, thus allowing an area to retain more relatively undisturbed ecosystems.

The real issue here, is the comparison of a motorized transportation system based on a fixed guideway (of which rail is the most common) versus a more dispersed transportation system. In our increasingly crowded world, it's probably better to have most people rely on fixed guideway transport and walking.

 

[jis]

The big issue in the US is that it will take a significant revolution in habitation planning away from what is considered ideal in the US towards denser transit oriented development This is a political minefield which will take a lot of doing to overcome.

As for rail electrification, I think there is a tipping point effect, wherein if a certain percentage of the major routes are electrified it is more economical to electrify the rest. Unfortunately US is way on the wrong side of that tipping point whereas many countries in the rest of the world that have large rail systems are close to the tipping point or are on the electrification side of the tipping point. Those countries are better positioned to exploit the ease of transition of fuels from fossil to renewable, since those can be changed out without changing anything in the consumption side on electrified railroads.

OTOH, I routinely get 50 passenger miles per gallon in my Prius, improving by another 10% in the next generation, and much more so in pure electrics. So all that it takes is for me to make sure that I carry one more person with me to meet or beat 100 pm/g. Also, the pure electrics have the same fuel substitutability advantage of electrified railroads. Then again next generation trains are quite capable of beating Amtrak's miserable energy usage number using 20th century technologies, by quite a long shot too.

Of course the balance between road and rail would change even more in favor of rail possibly if the actual cost of building and maintaining the ROW is taken into consideration too.

 

[Alexandria Nick]

A train it turns out uses 4,000 gallons in a 20 hour period. Whereas a Boeining 747 uses an astounding 9,541.55 in an hour!

But that same 747 carries as many passengers as two entire Northeast Regionals and lugging six baggage cars worth of cargo five times as fast. Its practically apples and...heck not even oranges. Apples and cats.

 

[CCC1007]

A train it turns out uses 4,000 gallons in a 20 hour period. Whereas a Boeining 747 uses an astounding 9,541.55 in an hour!

But that same 747 carries as many passengers as two entire Northeast Regionals and lugging six baggage cars worth of cargo five times as fast. Its practically apples and...heck not even oranges. Apples and cats.

No, it carries one trainload of passengers at most, and wouldn't be able to fly with six baggage cars worth of cargo.