3 ms·

Yes, if you measure JUST the travel you can state little CO₂ respect of other means (even if measuring pollution in CO₂ terms have NO scientific basis, it's don

by kkfx 4y ago

Yes, if you measure JUST the travel you can state little CO₂ respect of other means (even if measuring pollution in CO₂ terms have NO scientific basis, it's done just to make pollution a market for private profit) BUT if you count the total cost: - how much raw materials are needed, and processed, to build, and maintain, rails - how much people per train go, because rarely they run at full capacity and when they do people is not that happy for obvious reasons - how much raw materials, processing and energy is consumed by the side services needed Than things completely change. Than a STOL able to land on a natural surface pollute FAR LESS compared. Keep attention when you read research how this research is done because it's easy to stretch the reality to depict a result, mathematically true, but meaningless in practice sold as meaningful and really true in the broad sense. Start with a classic http://www.newgeography.com/content/006840-high-density-and-sustainability http://www.newgeography.com/content/006840-high-density-and-... than you can dig in the LITTLE we have on that topic, since some dislike certain research.

SECProto 4y ago
The source you cited doesn't mention trains or planes at any point.
- kkfx 4y ago
  Surely, but they clearly states that cities pollute far more than large spread areas, i.e. "rivieras". Did you see how unfit are big rails train/stations and big infra in general in a riviera? Being spread means that any "large artery" is not much fit to serve people.
  - SECProto 4y ago
    > Surely, but they clearly states that cities pollute far more than large spread areas No, your source is highly specific in that it is looking at grid emissions from cities in Australia, which has one of the dirtiest grids in the developed world at 527 gCO2/kWh. For comparison, the US is at 379, Canada is at 124, France is at 68, and the other European countries are somewhere in the 200-350 range. The results are very sensitive to this. The source even specifically covers some other things that make it irrelevant to extrapolate: > With regard to energy consumption overall warm weather causes may make Australia a special case due to its climate being very different to that in northern countries. If dwellings are too close together they are more difficult to cool whereas it is easier to heat them. The figure it uses to calculate emissions from rail transport is 105 gram per passenger-km. For Eurostar, that value is 6grams, due to higher ridership and much cleaner grid. Plus, the lowest carbon form of transport you can use is your own two feet. Next up is a bike, followed by an ebike. All of these rely on density, and are poorly represented due to sprawling development patterns in Aus (and North America).
jcranmer 4y ago
So I did some math. A railroad based on concrete sleepers would use about 265 m³ of concrete per track mile. Thus, were the North East Corridor fully 4 tracked and used concrete instead of wooden ties, it would consume about 50,000 m³ of concrete. A single airport runway at a major airport consumes about 55,000 m³ of concrete. That's more concrete than the entire trackage of an entire major rail line. Sure, there's a lot I'm not accounting for, but... railroad station infrastructure is far smaller than airport terminal infrastructure. And there's another dozen major airport runways worth of concrete to chew through, and I haven't even started tallying up the taxiways or terminal pads or staging areas, etc. I doubt there's enough viaducts, bridges, and tunnels along the railroad to make up all that extra concrete.
- kkfx 4y ago
  That's not the math I mean, that's the math of comparing a single railroad with some large airports hubs. Try comparing a sparse Riviera where most activities are remote or local, so at a very short range, typically with cars on 20km radius, and some other small activities are made by STOL witch do not demand much of airport, just a surface, a grass one is not the best but still work, the taxiways just a path to a space where you can park not differently than a car parking lot. The non-local part can be served by water (when possible) or by rails from a small hub to another depending on the territory. In such setup you still have commercial transports but people ones are FAR different than now, so the relative infra is far different. Since roads are mostly for short range activities there are no large viaduct, bridges, tunnels because there are no highways, no big cities to serve and so on. There are rail stations, harbors, sure, but FAR little than the actual large ones because there is no need to concentrate the network. In IT terms: did you remember the evolution from mainframe to clusters? Well does clusters demand more resources than mainframes? Are them concentrated? Networks in general have a common set of properties from roads to LAN/MAN/WAN passing through biological "networks", try the math in such terms.

by kkfx 4y ago

SECProto 4y ago

The source you cited doesn't mention trains or planes at any point.

kkfx 4y ago
Surely, but they clearly states that cities pollute far more than large spread areas, i.e. "rivieras". Did you see how unfit are big rails train/stations and big infra in general in a riviera? Being spread means that any "large artery" is not much fit to serve people.
- SECProto 4y ago
  > Surely, but they clearly states that cities pollute far more than large spread areas No, your source is highly specific in that it is looking at grid emissions from cities in Australia, which has one of the dirtiest grids in the developed world at 527 gCO2/kWh. For comparison, the US is at 379, Canada is at 124, France is at 68, and the other European countries are somewhere in the 200-350 range. The results are very sensitive to this. The source even specifically covers some other things that make it irrelevant to extrapolate: > With regard to energy consumption overall warm weather causes may make Australia a special case due to its climate being very different to that in northern countries. If dwellings are too close together they are more difficult to cool whereas it is easier to heat them. The figure it uses to calculate emissions from rail transport is 105 gram per passenger-km. For Eurostar, that value is 6grams, due to higher ridership and much cleaner grid. Plus, the lowest carbon form of transport you can use is your own two feet. Next up is a bike, followed by an ebike. All of these rely on density, and are poorly represented due to sprawling development patterns in Aus (and North America).

jcranmer 4y ago

So I did some math. A railroad based on concrete sleepers would use about 265 m³ of concrete per track mile. Thus, were the North East Corridor fully 4 tracked and used concrete instead of wooden ties, it would consume about 50,000 m³ of concrete. A single airport runway at a major airport consumes about 55,000 m³ of concrete. That's more concrete than the entire trackage of an entire major rail line. Sure, there's a lot I'm not accounting for, but... railroad station infrastructure is far smaller than airport terminal infrastructure. And there's another dozen major airport runways worth of concrete to chew through, and I haven't even started tallying up the taxiways or terminal pads or staging areas, etc. I doubt there's enough viaducts, bridges, and tunnels along the railroad to make up all that extra concrete.

kkfx 4y ago
That's not the math I mean, that's the math of comparing a single railroad with some large airports hubs. Try comparing a sparse Riviera where most activities are remote or local, so at a very short range, typically with cars on 20km radius, and some other small activities are made by STOL witch do not demand much of airport, just a surface, a grass one is not the best but still work, the taxiways just a path to a space where you can park not differently than a car parking lot. The non-local part can be served by water (when possible) or by rails from a small hub to another depending on the territory. In such setup you still have commercial transports but people ones are FAR different than now, so the relative infra is far different. Since roads are mostly for short range activities there are no large viaduct, bridges, tunnels because there are no highways, no big cities to serve and so on. There are rail stations, harbors, sure, but FAR little than the actual large ones because there is no need to concentrate the network. In IT terms: did you remember the evolution from mainframe to clusters? Well does clusters demand more resources than mainframes? Are them concentrated? Networks in general have a common set of properties from roads to LAN/MAN/WAN passing through biological "networks", try the math in such terms.