Neil Hopcroft

A digital misfit

“The group discovered that trains consume 60% more energy per person transported than cars, and take up 200% more public space per person transported.”

This is the kind of information I’ve been looking for for a while – sure, this is in a Car-biased editorial, but it is still real information[0]. The other factor they miss is that cars have relatively little wasted journey, in the sense that to catch a train you need to go to the station, and then get from the station at the other end. All of which has to be factored in to the equation.

Trains work for some circumstances, especially large urban areas, and they could improve traffic situations if they were used sensibly. Freight is an obvious thing to transfer to rail, the roads are being chocked to death by lorries trundling along at 50mph, a good railfreight infrastructure would deliver faster and more fuel efficiently – you gain from the economies of scale.

Is there any more research available about these trade-offs?

[0] I couldn’t find the original paper online, but I did find The environmental impact of high-speed rail, which shows some of his conclusions….eg over 600km it seems more efficient to use planes than cars or trains.


Categories: Memories.

/ 4 Comments

4 comments

  1. neilh

    Thats quite interesting – though it seems to be talking about a Vancouver transit system, an urban system, rather than long distance travel.

    Doubtless you can push the numbers one way or the other – whats interesting, from my point of view, is that the arguments I’ve heard from many environmentally minded people have been almost entirely made of “Well, its obvious that buses/trains are more efficient than cars”, without any actual numbers to back it up. Its nice, instead, to have to real numbers to play with.

    I don’t care strongly one way or the other which is more efficient – all the time it is affordable for me to run a car I will, it will be one of the last luxuries I give up when the money gets tight – but I do want to know what the difference is, and what factors are important in making the decisions about transport systems.

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  2. neilh

    The efficiency problem is one of distribution, the trains are pushed beyond bursting point at rush hour, and nearly empty for the rest of the day. One of the best things that could be done to improve the efficiency of the whole system would be to break the addiction to 9-5 office working. Stagger starting/finishing times, spread the rush hour, to the point that its thin enough its hardly even noticable.

    Energy production outside of cities is a major win for reducing pollution within the city, and it allows, for instance, static filtering that would be impractical in a moving vehicle. But, yes, the efficiency at the point of consumption does not reflect the efficiency of extracting movement from fuel – the whole thing needs to be considered.

    Also, there comes a point where the efficiency of a train doesn’t overcome the extra car journeys to the station and the lower occupancy rates of rural rail, I don’t know where that point is but gut feel suggests that, for London, it is a band at around the distance of Cambridge for radial transport, far closer in for non-radial. Again, I would like to see some numbers.

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  3. neilh

    Not sure what the 200% of space per person transported is about
    I think thats referring to the ground space taken up by the railway system, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense since I’m fairly sure theres more road than there is rail by area.

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  4. neilh

    Re: HS Article

    …more the environmental cost, really, rather than fuel cost, AIUI theres no tax on aviation fuel in this country, as opposed to the 70% whatever it is on petrol.

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