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There are however measurable impacts of both. France's high speed train network is powered by electricity which is primarily provided by it's nuclear energy po
by jpgvm 3y ago
There are however measurable impacts of both.
France's high speed train network is powered by electricity which is primarily provided by it's nuclear energy power plants.
When viewing it through this lens then it becomes obvious trains have less climate impact.
If that is what you are optimising for then one is better than the other.
You have to choose some metric, this just seems to be the one they have chosen.
- josephcsible 3y ago> When viewing it through this lens then it becomes obvious trains have less climate impact. > If that is what you are optimising for then one is better than the other. Yes, if the goal is to minimize climate impact at the expense of everything else, then this is logical, but that's not all that governments are supposed to care about.
- jpgvm 3y agoI guess that really depends on what their analysis was. If their analysis says something along the lines of "if we don't optimise for climate we all die" then I think it becomes pretty obvious what you optimise for. However we don't have this information, we can only speculate.
- smileysteve 3y agoCan you iterate on the everything else? Here are other than climate benefits: Traffic is reduced in most cases (reducing infrastructure costs) (airports tend to not be in city center like train stations). Road use is decreased. Fuel imports are decreased. Noise and air pollution are decreased. Strike risks are likely decreased. Infrastructure costs at smaller airports is decreased. Competition and end user costs are things that would be worse. (But France already have government granted monopolies for airports, trains, and airlines)