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Analysis Says Planes Might Be Greener Than Trains
New Scientist has an interesting piece up about the calculable energy costs per mile for various forms of transportation. Despite the headline ("Train can be worse for climate than plane"), the study it describes deals with highway-based vehicles, too: the authors attempted to integrate not just the cost at the tailpipe (or equivalent) for each mode of transport, but also the costs of developing and supporting the associated infrastructure, such as rails, highways and airports. Such comparisons are tricky, though; a few years back, a widely circulated report claimed that the Toyota Prius had a higher per-mile lifetime cost than the Hummer (see that earlier Slashdot post for good reason to be skeptical of the methodology and conclusions). I wonder how the present comparison would be affected by a calculation of (for instance) how much it would cost to move by plane the freight currently carried by trains.
This research is essentially stating that what is and is not "green" transportation is significantly dependent on the context of the layout of the region it is located in. This should be obvious but it is not hard to find people that think forcing everyone into the same transportation options regardless of objective context is sound environmental policy. Or in other words, attempting to force people to be "green" often generates more pollution than doing nothing at all, and if you do not change the underlying equilibrium that created the original distribution you will just piss people off as a bonus to your non-accomplishment.
The sad truth is that most American cities are ill-suited to public transportation at the fundamental design level. It would be like trying to make MS-DOS function as an enterprise server environment, the impedance mismatch is extreme. You can't hack an effective and economic public transportation system onto them, and taking a wrecking ball to three-quarters of the American landscape would be expensive beyond belief for a very modest benefit -- you would see more pollution reduction by simply shutting down coal power plants and building nuclear power plants. You have to build the green cities before you can demand people live in them, but for some reason politicians often seem to get that backward.
Even though I am all for green cities, punishing people who live in car-only suburbs is a non-solution because for the most part Americans have no practical choice but to live in such places. For some reason, the same people that refuse to allow the building of green cities as a matter of policy (or at a minimum show a complete lack of political will to propose such things) have no problem coming up with punishments for not living in cities they would not allow to be built. It is a bipartisan failing, even the extreme "environmental progressives" that control the politics where I live rabidly oppose any city development that does not look an awful lot like crappy suburban sprawl.
... and you forgot to mention something important. Trains are COOL!
Utter nonsense. Markets provably do not find the best solution, because they don't take into account externalities. (Also for the reasons Planesdragon pointed out).
In order to get a complete model of what costs what economically/environment-wise, one must include in their calculation every aspect of a mode of transportation, everything from the energy/cost/pollution needed to create the transportation through its maintenance and management, and not only the energy/pollution needed for the completed mode of transport per se.
For example, most all trains here (France) run on electric power, but most electric power is generated in nuclear power plants, but the creation of the latter required X amount of fossil fuels (mining, construction equipment, other forms of transport for materials and nuclear fuel). So if I wanted to compare this model to, say, air travel, I would have to measure the consumption/pollution created by plane production and plane fuel, and study not just the consumption/transport capabilites of the plane itself.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
The article neglects the way that the transportation infrastructure affects how much transport is needed. If you rely on cars and trucks for most transport you end up with low-density sprawl and hence a very high number of miles travelled. If you rely on trains and bicycles you end up with high-density development and hence a much lower number of miles travelled.
In other words, when comparing transport modes you can't assume that the amount of miles will be the same.
That's partly politics (the train companies usually have monopolies on their routes in the UK), but you're also not making a fair comparison -- you're using the air fare booked a month in advance (and for a specific flight with no flexibility or chance of a refund) with the train fare when you appear 10 minutes before the train leaves (and full flexibility etc). Booked in advance, a train from London to Edinburgh can be as little as £12.
Also, the train companies are subsidising unused service. There are 23 trains a day to Edinburgh from London, and most of them won't be anywhere near full, but planes are only run on routes that will be sufficiently full all the time -- there's little flexibility for the passenger.