5 ms·

Air travel is generally more energy efficient than trains, beyond a 300-400 mile range, depending on what you're traveling over/through. Track and right-of-way

Air travel is generally more energy efficient than trains, beyond a 300-400 mile range, depending on what you're traveling over/through. Track and right-of-way is a scarce resource with large amounts of embedded energy. The sky, not so much.

jltsiren 5y ago
That depends on passenger volume. Trains require massive initial investments, but the marginal cost per passenger is very low. Air travel is mostly about marginal costs, and it requires massive infrastructure at endpoints. For example, an aiport serving 50 million passengers/year is two orders of magnitude larger than a railway station with a similar passenger volume. And while the airport would be one of the 30-40 busiest in the world, the railway station would not be particularly noteworthy.
- beerandt 5y ago
  Yea, which is why trains costs are so sensitive to distance- it's massive up front cost is a function of that distance. It's not the stations, it's the rails and right-of-way. The problem most people ignore is that train marginal-increases max-out at some number of trains per day, before you need an additional set of tracks. And that happens at a much lower number than most people assume, especially if you're planning on sharing that track with other routes. And even worse if you have to use or cross a freight track. So not only does efficiency have a min bounds, but also a local-max bounds, where you need a large enough marginal increase to justify the additional rails. Whereas the airline equivalent is whether to schedule an additional flight. Which is easier to commit to than whether a new track is justified.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    >"Whereas the airline equivalent is whether to schedule an additional flight. Which is easier to commit to than whether a new track is justified." Except many world's biggest airports, like Heathrow, are operating at peak capacity and building another runway at heathrow is expensive, controvertial, involves relocating people's homes and is still a political football
    - beerandt 5y ago
      Air still has the advantage- runway is not a function of distance to the destination, and runways are not destination specific. So it's more appropriate to compare it to part of the station cost, along the lines of another boarding area & track, increasing arrivals and departures.
  - jltsiren 5y ago
    Train costs are sensitive to sparsely populated regions. As long as there is a sufficiently large city every hour or so, distances don't really matter. Multi-track railways are common near major cities. They are not that expensive, because adding another set of tracks increases the width of the corridor only marginally. The airline equivalent of a new set of tracks is building a new runway. Because that's often impossible, landing slots at busy airports have become very valuable. For example, airlines have paid tens of millions for a daily landing slot at Heathrow.
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      "Multi-track railways are common near major cities. They are not that expensive, because adding another set of tracks increases the width of the corridor only marginally." About a quarter of all railway passengers in Czechia take the suburban trains around Prague. We sorely need extra sets of tracks from all directions, because the current tracks are overloaded. Especially the faster trains from other regions do not mix well with the regional trains that stop every 2 km or so. But it is almost impossible to build those extra sets of tracks in a densely populated major city like Prague. Lots of NIMBYs, the needed land would be very expensive, many buildings would have to be torn down, plus the centre is a protected zone (historical buildings) and the protecting authorities fight tooth and nail against anything that changes the look and feel of the inner city. As a result, we are stuck with old infrastructure even if new one is sorely needed. There might be a way, namely, to build all the new tracks underground - but that would be very, very expensive.
      - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
        Do it as subways in a way like the new lines in Barcelona did. edit: By that I mean something like illustrated here https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%ADnia_9_del_metro_de_Barcelona#/media/Fitxer:Secci%C3%B3_t%C3%BAnel_L9.svg https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%ADnia_9_del_metro_de_Barc... Make them 15 to 16 meters in diameter to be usable by any train, or use 2 of them side by side. Problem mostly solved.
        5y ago
  - Clewza313 5y ago
    With dedicated track, though, those limits can be quite high. The Yamanote Line in Tokyo carries around 4 million passengers per day on two tracks.
    - beerandt 5y ago
      Yes- and imho, that's the way to do it. Make it competitive in terms of time and trouble and cost and usability. But it's still not going to be more energy efficient than air for most situations & destinations.
pyrale 5y ago
The key point, though, is that there should be no easy way for individuals to travel beyond 3-400 miles. It simply is not possible, today or in the foreseeable future, to travel this far without outsized environmental impacts.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  But...FREEDOM!

jltsiren 5y ago

That depends on passenger volume. Trains require massive initial investments, but the marginal cost per passenger is very low. Air travel is mostly about marginal costs, and it requires massive infrastructure at endpoints. For example, an aiport serving 50 million passengers/year is two orders of magnitude larger than a railway station with a similar passenger volume. And while the airport would be one of the 30-40 busiest in the world, the railway station would not be particularly noteworthy.

beerandt 5y ago
Yea, which is why trains costs are so sensitive to distance- it's massive up front cost is a function of that distance. It's not the stations, it's the rails and right-of-way. The problem most people ignore is that train marginal-increases max-out at some number of trains per day, before you need an additional set of tracks. And that happens at a much lower number than most people assume, especially if you're planning on sharing that track with other routes. And even worse if you have to use or cross a freight track. So not only does efficiency have a min bounds, but also a local-max bounds, where you need a large enough marginal increase to justify the additional rails. Whereas the airline equivalent is whether to schedule an additional flight. Which is easier to commit to than whether a new track is justified.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  >"Whereas the airline equivalent is whether to schedule an additional flight. Which is easier to commit to than whether a new track is justified." Except many world's biggest airports, like Heathrow, are operating at peak capacity and building another runway at heathrow is expensive, controvertial, involves relocating people's homes and is still a political football
  - beerandt 5y ago
    Air still has the advantage- runway is not a function of distance to the destination, and runways are not destination specific. So it's more appropriate to compare it to part of the station cost, along the lines of another boarding area & track, increasing arrivals and departures.
- jltsiren 5y ago
  Train costs are sensitive to sparsely populated regions. As long as there is a sufficiently large city every hour or so, distances don't really matter. Multi-track railways are common near major cities. They are not that expensive, because adding another set of tracks increases the width of the corridor only marginally. The airline equivalent of a new set of tracks is building a new runway. Because that's often impossible, landing slots at busy airports have become very valuable. For example, airlines have paid tens of millions for a daily landing slot at Heathrow.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    "Multi-track railways are common near major cities. They are not that expensive, because adding another set of tracks increases the width of the corridor only marginally." About a quarter of all railway passengers in Czechia take the suburban trains around Prague. We sorely need extra sets of tracks from all directions, because the current tracks are overloaded. Especially the faster trains from other regions do not mix well with the regional trains that stop every 2 km or so. But it is almost impossible to build those extra sets of tracks in a densely populated major city like Prague. Lots of NIMBYs, the needed land would be very expensive, many buildings would have to be torn down, plus the centre is a protected zone (historical buildings) and the protecting authorities fight tooth and nail against anything that changes the look and feel of the inner city. As a result, we are stuck with old infrastructure even if new one is sorely needed. There might be a way, namely, to build all the new tracks underground - but that would be very, very expensive.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
      Do it as subways in a way like the new lines in Barcelona did. edit: By that I mean something like illustrated here https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%ADnia_9_del_metro_de_Barcelona#/media/Fitxer:Secci%C3%B3_t%C3%BAnel_L9.svg https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%ADnia_9_del_metro_de_Barc... Make them 15 to 16 meters in diameter to be usable by any train, or use 2 of them side by side. Problem mostly solved.
      - 5y ago
- Clewza313 5y ago
  With dedicated track, though, those limits can be quite high. The Yamanote Line in Tokyo carries around 4 million passengers per day on two tracks.
  - beerandt 5y ago
    Yes- and imho, that's the way to do it. Make it competitive in terms of time and trouble and cost and usability. But it's still not going to be more energy efficient than air for most situations & destinations.

pyrale 5y ago

The key point, though, is that there should be no easy way for individuals to travel beyond 3-400 miles. It simply is not possible, today or in the foreseeable future, to travel this far without outsized environmental impacts.

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
But...FREEDOM!