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> There is simply no future in which passenger rail competes with air travel in the US. Even in circumstances where the distances are not too great, and the pol
by Pxtl 6y ago
> There is simply no future in which passenger rail competes with air travel in the US. Even in circumstances where the distances are not too great, and the political and bureaucratic hurdles are.
This ignores the existence of climate change. Air travel is not sustainable and air travel is least amenable to conversion to hydrogen or electric.
As you mention, the chief barriers to HSR in North America are political and bureaucratic, not practical. What's missing, then, is the political will to do hard things.
Governments used to be able to do things, when the situation demanded it.
http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly080730.htm http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly080730.htm
- throwawayboise 6y agoAviation accounts for 2.5% of global CO2 emissions. It's not low-hanging fruit. https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation
- Pxtl 6y agoI'm not arguing the point. We are far more able to tackle ground-vehicle emissions, home heating, and electrical generation. But eventually air travel's time will come, and HSR is the only alternative that's on the table.
- mlinksva 6y agoLess travel is also on the table. We should do all of the above. A hefty carbon tax is the holistic instrument, but I'll take any/all paths.
- philwelch 6y agoThere are also carbon capture and sequestration and closed-loop hydrocarbon fuel production using carbon-neutral energy sources. It’s completely false, unnecessary, and counterproductive to spread FUD about climate change requiring substantial reductions in quality of life. People are smart and resourceful enough to solve these problems.
- ancientworldnow 6y agoThe share of warming is higher than the pure emissions because of the aerosol effects and resulting heat trapping. Some estimates are twice as much.
- adrianmonk 6y agoAnd trains can't replace transoceanic flights. I don't know what percentage, but not all of that 2.5% can be eliminated with trains.
- ahelwer 6y agoA society that takes climate change seriously will replace international air travel with passenger ships featuring high-speed satellite internet and spacious work areas. Little-known fact, ocean travel is 3x more energy-efficient than even rail.
- gwbrooks 6y agoThere's no society on earth taking climate change as seriously as warranted if the worst projections are to be believed. And there's no precedent for the level of global cooperation -- which would have to transcend nation-level political realities -- required for meaningful change. I'm long on humanity. But not because I think we're all going to wake up and fix the climate in a coordinated manner.
- jandrewrogers 6y agoPeople value their time. There is a reason we replaced modes of travel that require days or weeks of travel time with modes of travel that only require hours. Society and culture has been heavily optimized around the fact that it doesn't take weeks to get to where you are trying to go. The world is global and distances are long. Few people want to be stuck on a passenger ship for weeks at a time, their objective is not to be sitting on a ship. It would make international travel completely infeasible for all but a minority. No one would be able to do simple things like visit family if it required a month or more of round-trip transit time.
- ahelwer 6y agoI'm not an idiot, I know why people travel by jet aircraft. These luxuries are irrelevant in the face of climate change. Society has been organized around jet travel. It can be reorganized around the reality of international travel requiring large time investment.
- TheCoelacanth 6y agoAll sources of CO2 emissions look small when broken down to that level of granularity.
- squidlogic 6y agoFrom the source cited, here is a breakdown per industry: https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector Energy usage for industry is 24% Road travel is 11% It seems aviation’s 2% is not the low hanging fruit.
- TheCoelacanth 6y agoBut passenger road traffic is only 7%. The rest is freight which requires a completely different solution. There is no low hanging fruit. We need to address every sector. No individual solution is going to cut more than a few percent of total carbon emissions.
- iancmceachern 6y ago24% industrial use is in my mind. A buddy of mine worked for a startup a few years ago that promised to go into large plants and do some trickery with the harmonic losses with the very large AC motors in a lot of the big equipment. Apparently there is a lot of losses in such things. They would install equipment to improve the situation in exchange for a portion of the energy savings over time, which was considerable.
- TheCoelacanth 6y agoExcept that also breaks down into 7% iron/steel, 3.6% chemical and oil, 1% food and tobacco and many other small categories. Is the same solution that cuts down on carbon emissions in making steel going to cut emissions when making fertilizer?
- iancmceachern 6y ago
- SECProto 6y ago> Aviation accounts for 2.5% of global CO2 emissions. It's not low-hanging fruit. Aviation accounts for 9% [1] of US transportation co2 emissions (and as they're emitted at high altitude, impact is likely more like 13-14%) [1] https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-...
- billytetrud 6y agoClimate change doesn't make trains any better. What we need is Skytran: https://www.skytran.com/ https://www.skytran.com/
- jcranmer 6y agoHow many times will people keep proposing PRT before they discover that it doesn't work?
- klausjensen 6y agoWhat's PRT?
- ggreer 6y agoPersonal Rapid Transit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit
- jcranmer 6y agoPRT is short for Personal Rapid Transit, and it's a form of transit that basically combines some sort of fixed-guideway-like system with small-capacity individually-routable pods instead of trains. As a result, it kind of ends up with the worst of both worlds: you have the infrastructure complexity (and cost) of a train with the throughput (or lack thereof) of single-occupant cars. (Musk's Loop idea is basically another iteration of the PRT concept.)
- javagram 6y agoMorgantown PRT has 20-person capacity cars. That doesn't seem so inefficient. On the other hand, it only operates as a PRT during off-peak according to the wiki page - during peak hours, it's just a standard scheduled service like a train or bus. That said, the Musk Loop type plans where the cabs/cars only carry 1-4 people - which seems similar to this SkyTran - is obviously inefficient and not really a realistic alternative to cars or mass transit systems.
- JJMcJ 6y ago> climate change Also peak oil, a largely forgotten issue. As fuels get more expensive, more efficient modes of travel will become cheaper relative to air.
- philwelch 6y agoPeak oil is “a largely forgotten issue” because it was a largely overblown issue to begin with. Fracking relieved the immediate supply pressure while reductions in demand will help matters even more.
- jandrewrogers 6y agoFuel shortages are unlikely to be a serious risk for centuries. Hydrocarbon reserves are measured in the trillions of barrels (in the US alone) and the different types are largely fungible at <$100 barrel inasmuch as you can convert them all into fuel. We may greatly reduce hydrocarbon fuel usage but it won't be because we ran out in my lifetime.
- philwelch 6y ago> This ignores the existence of climate change. Air travel is not sustainable and air travel is least amenable to conversion to hydrogen or electric. Which means you’d have to use hydrocarbon fuel. Which can be chemically produced from atmospheric CO2 and water if you have enough carbon-neutral energy. Or you could sequester an offsetting amount of CO2 if that would be more efficient.
- brudgers 6y agoIn North America geography is the primary impediment to passenger rail of all stripes. High speed rail is even more at the mercy of physical reality. Look at the article’s map. That empty distance between San Antonio and El Paso is nearly 900km of West Texas emptiness. There’s Del Rio and Van Horne as the biggest towns and Marfa as perhaps the most famous. When last was San Antonio to El Paso an important trip for someone you know?