Planes More Fuel Efficient then trains for passengers

Vincent wrote:The McBride link doesn't appear to have even been submitted to spell-check ("polution"), so I doubt the work's conclusions would hold up if given any sort of peer review. I tend to roll my eyes when I see studies that assume that the average auto carries 2.6 passengers and gets 26 mpg and then use that standard to compare an auto's fuel efficiency against the numbers provided by Amtrak or the airlines.

I have to agree, this study referred to in the Mcbride link seems to be a farce of an article. Just some unsuccessful rant, posted online to draw any type of attention. The part of this that real gets me is how the author does not know about spell check and has total false facts, example...
EXCERPT: " In 1955 Amtrak passenger miles was 28.7 million. In 2000, it was 6 million" .... really Amtrak was around in 55 ?

I believe nothing this article states, as its facts do not match. Even Wikipedia has this one right..
From WIKI: The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak (reporting mark AMTK), is a government-owned corporation that was organized on May 1, 1971

Considering that the page opens with invalid time comparisons, it's hard to take the rest of the article seriously. Both the NY Times and Boston globe have tested the speed of bus, rail, plane for traveling from downtown New York to downtown Boston. IIRC, the plane "won" both times, but only by a matter of a 10-15 minutes, with the bus finishing a distant third. Now, this doesn't invalidate the rest of the article, but it does make one suspect that there is an agenda or lack of basic fact checking behind the article.

I find it interesting that Littleredcaboose continues to post non-issue posts and we discuss why it is or is not valid.

Actually , i find his posts thought provoking and interesting . not everyone is an expert or railroad employee . and sometimes , very simple questions make you stop and think , why do we do it that way , or why cant we do it another way .
I was at a plumbing workshop awhile ago , when a young man asked what we though was a stupid question . once we stopped laughing , and the tutor attempted to answer it , we found he actually had a very valid point , and it led to good discussion . some senior plumbers agreed it was not only possible to do it his way , but probably better than the traditional way of doing it even .
Sorry for the sermon .

Littleredcaboose wrote:http://www.geocities.com/dtmcbride/trav ... e-car.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_effic ... sportation
For a Plane carrying 200 passengers long distance (Buffalo-St. Louis) once the plane is in the air it does not have to deal in grade changes. Also equipment weight is less per passenger then it is on a train. Another factor is crew hours. Airline crews make more miles then Railroad Crews as they do as many as 5 legs a day covering a couple thousand miles.
Now dont get me wrong here--I am talking deisal powered trains here and believe that regional rail for trips of 2.5 hours is still the best choice.

This is not really an Amtrak topic at all, but a general transportation question (at best).

Well I am assuming that a long distance Amtrak hauls 200 passengers . Now you should also consider that when Amtrak was hauling heavyweight heritage cars that they burned fuel just to start the train. Add in like 20 or stops along the way and that adds up. A Airbus could shuttle 200 passengers 7 times in a day using the same crew if need be. When you compare labor and fuel costs the plane might come out on top in fuel and labor used per passenger. But if you compare a Accla with a plane the train might win in NY- Baltimore or Philly-DC or Boston to NY or even Harrisburg to Philly as far as fuel is concerned but would lose on cost of labor. We should also remember that Airline Deregualtion has been bad for airline unions as feeder airlines are subcontracted out to non-union entitys

Moderator's Note:

Please stay to the topic of operational efficiency, by whatever standards you wish to use, between rail and air.

Thank you in advance

There are really two problems with this discussion.

The idea of a single Amtrak efficiency number is useless. Are we talking about a standing room only Thanksgiving-eve train on the NEC with electric power or a diesel hauled regional train that is likely to have a much lower load factor? There are simply far more variables with a train than with an airplane where it is a question of the size and age of the jet and the average load factor.

The second and more important point in terms of global warming is that typically 2/3 of terrestrial carbon emissions are absorbed by plants and oceans, whereas this is not the case with aircraft. Therefore a plane whose fuel efficiency is equal to that of a given train is still going to be 3x more damaging to the environment.

interesting point , i hadnt heard of that ratio . planes tend to punch holes in the ozone layer too , whereas trains dont .
Has anyone got efficency fiqures for the different sorts of trains . electric , diesel , long distance , commuter , regional ???

David,

A good reference, obtained through David Lawyer's website, http://www.lafn.org , is this table copied from http://cta.ornl.gov/data/tedb28/Spreadsheets .

Table 2.12 Passenger Travel Energy Use 2007, energy intensity in BTU per passenger mile (rounded):

Cars=9218
Personal trucks=6304
Motorcycles=1853
Transit bus=4315
Intercity bus not given but believed substantially under 1000
Air, certified route=3103
Intercity rail=2516
Light and heavy rail transit=2577
Commuter rail=2638

David Lawyer suggests that transit bus is high due to the start-stop operation which includes much little-patronized off-peak service, while intercity bus is low becaue it is strictly limited in load factor by the for-profit requirement.

Thanks for that .
Hmmmm , if amtrak was allowed to include its thruway buses in its fiqures ....
must stop thinking like a politican !

I teach an environmental economics class at Salt Lake Community College. Posts here show how important (and controversial) transportation is in this field. But it is amazing how little attention transportation gets in the professional environmental econ literature. Thanks for the inspiration.