https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport
that table is thoroughly fascinating. i mean all of them, there’s more than one table on that article
apparently walking is the most energy-efficient transport mode of all?!?!? apart from bicycles
what i find mind-blowing is that airplanes consume approximately the same amount of energy as cars and trains. I mean i can easily see cars and trains being on the same level, but i always thought that airplanes consumed like an order of magnitude more fuel than cars. considering how everybody keeps saying that “airplanes consume so much fuel” and such. crazy.
and also boats are less efficient than i thought? boats consume 16 L/100 km while cars, trains and airplanes consume 6 L/100 km?
This table is heavily biased against transit. First of all it is based on data from places that have by far and large underinvested inefficient underused transit in cities built for cars and not for transit. Secondly MJ/passenger/ distance is itself heavily biased against transit. Distance travelled is of no value in itself. Getting to places of interest is of value. Transit journies are on aversge shorter because transit oriented corridors allow for more compact urban layouts. Having to drive twice as far because cars need so much space, adds no value to going to the super market.
Buses seem to be shafted in that comparison by the fact that no one uses them in the US. Where I am, a bus gets just seven passengers only in the middle of the night. At other times, buses would be easily at the top of the table if not for the fact that our trains also move more than twenty people per car.
That’s because mass transit is, with very few exceptions, absolutely ass in the USA. People only use it as the absolute last resort. That skews the table a lot against any public transit.
That always sounded to me like a chicken-egg problem. People don’t use buses and subways, because buses and subways are populated by weird dirty hobos. Well guess what…
That’s wrong on so many levels I can’t even begin to unpack it.
Oh suuuure. Except maybe you haven’t noticed, but I can read English, and peruse US-dominated social media. In the threads on mass transit it’s always “truly these are complex and multifaceted problems”, and then outside that thread it’s “I had to use subway today with all the masturbating weirdos like a peasant”.
They are just not related. The crazies on the street are not disappearing if people all decide to use transit. How is that a chicken and egg problem?
Explain then how it is that there are no dirty smelly masturbating crazies on buses and subways in my country.
Crazies hang out doing crazy stuff in spaces that are conducive to such behavior. If normal people ride public transport because it’s expected that public transport accommodates normal people, then crazy behavior isn’t tolerated on public transport.
does your country have any social safety nets?
Easy problem to solve.
Increase the cost of gas to $100 per liter for consumers (exceptions for food delivery, etc) and use the surplus income to build better busses.
Boom. Everyone has excellent public transportation. And everyone uses it.
Your assumption that busses exist so they can be improved is quite telling. Huge swaths of the population, even living in million inhabitants+ cities, simply are not served by any form of mass transit.
The reason public transit works so well in Germany (where I did live for a bit) and Holland (visited and read about) is not because taking a car is more expensive. It’s because mass transit works well, it’s there when you need it, gets you to your destination in reasonable time and comfort, and is easy to use.
The very urban fabric in the USA is car oriented. Every little bodega has to have a dozen parking spaces built by law. Supermarkets have 3 to 4 times their store area wasted in parking lots. Everything is far apart because of this, so walking is impractical. With everyone driving to places, you need wide, fast roads, which makes biking places very unsafe. Every once in a while I see a white painted bike attached to a memorial in a light post, commemorating a life lost. And I live in the suburbs.
It’s not an insurmountable problem, the Netherlands did that in the 70s. But any solution that proposes a simple fix is doomed to failure. This has to be a concerted, intense effort to work.
Maybe it’s the same for commuter rail. It’s weird seeing average 33 passengers, when they were always standing room only while I was riding
Yeah, I’ve lumped them together in my mind, because subway is typically not called ‘train’ in my language. But the situation is about the same. Just looked it up: a subway car here has the ‘full capacity’ of over 300 people, commuter cars around the same, but probably less in practice. And the numbers sure push toward that during rush hour.
I don’t even get the first train line if another is amtrak and another is commuter. is commuter like the chicago metra maybe then light/heavy is a metro?
Maybe, but I’m not familiar with chicagos system
- Amtrak == intercity. Travel from one city to another, potentially long distance. Scheduled
- Commuter Rail == into and out of the city, over a large region. Typically Bring commuting workers in from suburbs and may be scheduled to prioritize rush hour
- heavy rail == “normal” trains, might be used as subway or surface. Typically travel from one part of a city to another, and operate continuously, with minutes between trains
- light rail == slower, cheaper, a tram. might be underground or a streetcar. Typically travel along neighborhoods, more local transit. Scheduled continuously with minutes between trains
Here in Boston
- I can take Amtrak to nyc, to Portland Maine, or to Albany and west
- we have commuter rail lines covering half the state to bring people from towns and suburbs into Boston.
- we have I think 3 “heavy” rail lines operating as subways, and on the surface as it leaves the city proper
- we have a light rail line operating in tunnels through the city center but on the surface as a tram or streetcar through various neighborhoods. For example students can hop on the get from one end of Boston university another
I think “metros” are a combination of “heavy rail” and “commuter rail” over a larger metro area. Fast and longer distance like commuter rail, but regular service like “heavy rail”
ok yeah then it makes sense. over here you have metra which runs on the same cargo rail as amtrak just more geared around commuting and then we have a metro line so that is like heavy. I think we had light tram type things at times but as far as I know don’t have any currently.
Urban sprawl, zoning laws, lack of dedicated bus lanes with safe and walkable stops, low frequency, comfort (seat, space, aircon/heat, chargers), and prices.
Comfort and frequency are the easiest to solve, prices, urban sprawl, zoning laws, and the like less so. Not to mention that labour rights must be improved for bus drivers.
Also the data seems to be from 2018. More than 50% of all new purchased city passenger buses in Europe are zero emission (usually electrified). And that number is higher in some other countries, with China being ahead of everyone.
yeah where I am at busses are pacted at rush hour and half full at least throughout the day with a long span around lunch being full again. It also has different size busses for various routes and time based on their metrics. Even has bus trackers so you don’t leave to early from your house waiting in the cold or heat.
This is misleading.
Airplanes are worse not because of energy consumption per person, but because of carbon equivalent units are magnitudes higher when nitrogen oxides are burned at a high altitude.
Why are those passenger numbers for the train so low? Here at least the railway moves something like 2000 passengers per vehicle on average. Over 3000 at peak times.
Sadly it’s missing bicycles and Falkor
Our World in Data has more useful figures that attempt to be comparable. In short, it very strongly contradicts that table.
yeah just looked this up. why the difference?
Airplane got a huge correction because emissions at high altitude is worse for the climate.
This part is a fairly new consensus, at some point air travel was even maybe beneficial for the climate due to formation of cloud cover.
Energy efficiency is not equivalent to CO2 emissions.
I didn’t expect that a train would be more efficient than biking. I guess the efficiencies of scale are hard to beat, but still.
I’m tempted to think the minimal biking infrastructure would help bikes, but infrastructure amortises nicely so probably not.
yeah idk if infrastructure is accounted for here… also maybe if youre vegetarian or something biking is more efficient
I’ve always thought that a 60 passenger bus with 2 people on it is never going to be as efficient as a car with 2 people. Probably closer to 2 cars with 1 each. And that’s a strikingly common situation in North America because they won’t buy a smaller bus and electric busses are still a dangerous concept for so many transit managers.
Speed is the problem for boats
ooh interesting! Today I Learned
boats consume 16 L/100 km
see also sailboats and economies of scale.
Yeah, the cost of a bunch of sailors eating rice and beans is far less than a diesel engine.
The bicycle vs velomobile (latter is more energy efficient in chart) is based on high speed. velomobile is heavier, and uses more energy at low speed and stop and go traffic. Parking the dam thing onto a sidewalk is an ordeal that takes energy.
It’s unclear that food energy used for exercise should count the same as fuel. Implies Wally lifestyle is bestest.
“On demand” is taxi-equivalents? Transit scores low with low occupancy busses. Air is optimized for most perfect economy, and chart likely created by that industry.
Why the hell would you park a vehicle on a sidewalk??
qualifies as a bicycle. OP’s velomobile has no power assist. It is a recumbent bicycle (tricycle usualy) with an aerodynamic shell around it.
And why the hell would you put that on a sidewalk??
Sidewalks are for pedestrians. Not bicycles!
to park it. lock up stations are on sidewalk.
That’s fucked
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For modes using electricity, losses during generation and distribution are included.
They should do this for the fossil fuel modes as well and see what that does to the numbers!
Yeah for the diesel/petrol/gasoline ones they’ve excluded energy wastage at the extraction point (eg if they have a flare), moving the oil to the oil refinery (from wherever in the world it came from), during the refining process (definitely a lot of energy used there), transporting the end product to wherever the filling station is, and finally pumping it into the vehicle.
But they included all the comparable costs for electricity. They wanted fossil fuels to look as good as possible. I’m extremely skeptical about data that suggests air travel is efficient when people have been talking for years about how wasteful and environmentally damaging it is.
They should also add the cost of harm done to the environment. Then it would be close to infinitely.
what i find mind-blowing is that airplanes consume approximately the same amount of energy as cars
The same logic could be applied to spacecrafts. The energy efficiency of a spacecraft travelling to Mars is approximately 10-50MJ/100km - between a car and a bicycle. Should everyone take a ticket to Mars rather than driving their SUV to work?
Planes and trains are also quite close to each other and in many cases cover the same routes. However, planes run 100% on fossil fuels, trains are often electric.
…What’s keeping us from having electric planes?
Technology, or rather, lack thereof. As others pointed out, planes need to bring their own energy supply and use additional energy for that. Weight is a very big factor for air transport’s energy consumption. Fossil fuels have a very high energy density, which make them great for bringing along. Once light weight battery tech (without excessively large sizes) becomes available, it should be no issue to electrify planes. Alternatively, find another source of electricity. E.g. nuclear has a much higher energy density than fossil, but obviously has it’s own issues, as do all other currently available tech options.
Weight. As you burn down fuel, the plane gets lighter, so requires less fuel/energy for the remaining distance.
With a battery powered plane, the battery is just as heavy all the time. It also has less energy density. This means wayyy less range with current tech.
I feel something like this could be a way…
Overhaul Planes
What if we had smaller planes? You could end subsidies for plane flights under 1,000/1,500 km, as planes are less energy efficent below those distances than train. You can also abolish flights for planes that are heavier than a certain weight, and subside investing in green plane fuel research. To make the transition smooth, you’d have to do this in phases, and ensuring CEOs are on board with it without corruption.
With flying, the security and having to travel to the airport (the airport requires a lot more specialised infrastructure), a journey for 1,500 km would take at least 3 to 5 hours.
Trains
Train stations by comparison, take up much less space and thus occur more widely. Thus travel time to them is less.
Therefore, accounting for security and travel time towards the station, a train can be equally fast, and doesn’t lead to ear pain for passengers. If they don’t stray too far, scenic routes are also possible, which is beautiful. As you curve downward a valley, the Mont Blanc reveals itself to you. Driving along rolling hills, past rustic pines and beaches, floral meadows and fair lakes and cities…
They should be massively more subsided to reduce prices. Avoiding overcrowding (which decreases comfort) could be done by only allowing as many to board as there are seats available.
High speed rails could be ideal for daytime travelling. They should be frequent and between many mid-sized and large cities. That is, up until the journey would be longer than a plane flight and its preparations. With longer distances between stops, sleeper trains would be handier, especially if their comfort is seriously improved.
What would sleeper trains need?
Wifi, chargers. You could have cabins for 4 people as the standard, with:
- banks that can be turned into comfortable beds
- a foldable table
- rubbish bin
- storage space
Interior should be simple, hypoallergenic but ‘cosy’. Not claustrophobic, unclean, or metallic.
A more luxurious option might be a private shower (as well baby diaper changing spot) and toilet, with more space. Breakfast served.
A direct journey thus would be handier for sleeper trains, or at the very least the time between transfers should be at least 10 hours (8 sleep, 2 for going to sleep and waking up). There could be transfer hubs for these sleeper trains where you have lounges that are for eating breakfast/dinner, letting children play, or for focusing.
Train stations require train lines between them, that’s the crux of the issue.
There is research into electric/hydrogen planes.
Honestly pretty sure their comment is AI generated, so dont waste too much time analysing it
Clearly the solution is lots of little batteries, so the plane can drop them as it flies.
Into the ocean, ideally. That way we spur growth in our mining sector to replace them all with new batteries every time. The shareholders are going to love us.
This might actually work? I imagine getting up to altitude is the most difficult and energy intensive step since the engines are operating at a higher power and the air is thicker.
Even if that’s only 10% or 15% of the overall energy usage, being able to drop the battery and have it return to the airport on its own for reuse could be a cool concept. You could also optimize that particular battery for take off & climbing, and have the main battery for cruising.
It just needs to be able to pilot itself back to a landing / catching structure 😄
There is actually a rocket that does this (the Electron). Uses batteries to power the fuel pumps, drops them as it goes up.
Also there are planes that drop rockets. Do you think we can use them to make the environment more friendly?
Dropping them with guided parachutes doesn’t sound crazy to me.
It does to me.
“Your flight has been cancelled on account of a moderate wind in the forecast somewhere between New York and San Francisco.”
What’s demand response?
My guess is taxis and things like Uber.
Something you have to call up/book to get anywhere
