Trains v. planes in global warming
Anyone who flies a couple of times a year and takes the household carbon-emissions test Kelly Davis just posted below is going to flunk. And by flunk I mean you probably put more carbon in the atmosphere than the average American household. Unfortunately, there’s no green way to fly. The airline industry is already doing everything it can to reduce fuel expenses, and there are no good technological alternatives on the horizon. But we do have an alternative: trains. This well-documented blog post from Celsia has a good discussion of the high-speed electric rail network Europeans are implementing all over the continent. Trains, it seems, emit a tenth to a quarter as much carbon as planes per passenger-kilometer, and as we use cleaner means to generate electricity, those figures will improve.
So where’s our American train network? CityBeat ran a cover story recently that evaluated why California hasn’t got a high-speed train, a particularly ridiculous state of affairs since all of the cities in California exist in one long curving geographic line (except Sacramento, which creates hassles for the highway system too). A high-speed rail would be the ideal way to zip between San Diego and San Jose, L.A. and San Francisco, even Santa Barbara to Portland, Seattle and Vancouver. In other reporting I’ve done for stories in my past, train experts made a couple of useful points. One is that Amtrak has a terrible record, but we should stop blaming the management. From the moment it was established, Amyrak has been starved for funds in the face of highway maintenance money and airport money.
But on the bright side, these guys remained optimistic about the future of trains as highways become more crowded and global warming becomes a greater concern. In particular, they see a future for short links between major metro areas. In addition to the West Coast and East Coast, there could be Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison-Twin Cities, or Miami-Fort Lauderdale. We’re still pretty far from a high-speed rail reality in America, but the momentum for a transit solution is building, and rail seems like the best answer we have so far.
The car habit will be hard to break. The entire transportation infrastructure would have to overhauled. I’m all for it but I doubt it will happen until oil hits $200/barrell. Our country’s economy and security is vulnerable as its transport is very heavily dependent on oil.
I loved that cover story. Very interesting. It’s a shame that the rail plan was shelved, because I think everyone would be very surprised to see how many people would use it. I would take it up to the Bay Area several times a year if it was available.
I commute on the train, and it’s got a whole slew of advantages, with a few inconveniences thrown in. Unfortunately, I know the trains in use right now are not very clean, because I have to avoid the black exhaust soot from hitting me in the face as I board. But, I look around at the other commuters, and that’s a lot of cars off the road.
Car habit is not that hard to break if you are willing to take the plunge and break it. I did it. (That said, it does take a committed effort and specific planning. I wanted to move to Hillcrest/North Park, but stayed Downtown so I could walk to the train.) We are fortunate that the climate is so moderate here in San Diego, that means you can walk and bike for most of the year. The Flexcar is a wonderful option. And the NCTD will be opening up the new rail from O’side to Esco very soon. What I would love to see (may never happen), is another rail down the 15 corridor. Then connect everything in-between with trolleys.
Trains work well for Europe for a few reasons. One is that passenger service is given some priority over distance. In the states, the freight lines own all the track, so the passenger trains come last in line. This is part of the reason Amtrak has a poor on-time record.
Another is the distance issue. Current in service maximum speed for any train in the world is just shy of 200 mph (which assumes excellent track and grading conditions). At this speed it would take less than 2 hours from San Diego to Vegas, which is cool, but it would take over 8 hours to Chicago. This is all versus a 1 hour SAN-LAS plane flight or a SAN-ORD 3.5 hour plane flight.
A third issue is investment. Is there any interest by the public is the very large investment needed for high speed rail? It would be difficult if not impossible for private investment in this type of project, since there is likely no profit to be made.
Public transit in the cities is where the investment could be made, but this is still difficult in many US cities. Our cities are just much more spread out then European cities. Just takes more commitment from people. Course we could just live near where we work and it would get rid of a load of the gas used…but that is crazy talk