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OK, fine. How much CO2 would a train take if they laid rail down every suburban street and stopped at every house and took even longer than a bus? This is not

OK, fine. How much CO2 would a train take if they laid rail down every suburban street and stopped at every house and took even longer than a bus? This is not comparing apples and oranges and ignores all the existing sunk costs. Promote trains when we (in the US) build a rail system as well run as Japan's.

phartenfeller 3y ago
Do you expect a perfectly built out rail system to just spawn? No of course you need to start somewhere and articles like these are one argument to do so.
- protocolture 3y ago
  Shitty argument when they arent as capable as electric cars.
  - defrost 3y ago
    Poor response in the context of reducing CO2 emissions as a goal.
  - nicoburns 3y ago
    They're more capable in some ways. They can go a lot faster than cars, and they allow passengers to engage in a much wider range of activities while riding one.
    - rickydroll 3y ago
      It's possible for a train to go faster than cars but it's not guaranteed. for example, one of the most heavily traveled corridors is Boston to New York City travel times are: Driving: 3 hours: 51 minutes (plus pee breaks) Amtrak: 3 hours 55 minutes Boston to DC you have much better tracks on the NYC to DC segment driving: 8 hours (plus pee breaks) Amtrak: 6 hours 45 minutes as for a wider range of activities, only if you don't get motion sick. When I'm on a train, my only activity is staring out the window (and taking pee breaks)
  - acdha 3y ago
    That depends on your priorities. For example, not sitting in traffic is a nice capability as is the ability to eat dinner and have a beer on the way home. Anyone under retirement age should also value the capability not to make the world worse, too.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- karaterobot 3y ago
  It matters if adoption is at all important, which we can all agree it is. If the alternative is that you take trains between cities and bike everywhere else, that's a lovely dream to have, but it's not going to persuade people to give up their cars. To do an apples-to-apples comparison a solution relying on trains would have to do everything a solution involving electric cars can do (and, to be fair, vice versa).
Gare 3y ago
Electric trains are super efficient, so only 2x CO2 is actually quite good.
- stavros 3y ago
  Neither trains nor cars emit CO2. Electricity generation emits CO2. Trains and cars are completely irrelevant, and conveniently shift the debate away from "our power generation still emits CO2".
  - Gare 3y ago
    Mining raw materials, manufacturing and shipping also emits CO2.
    - stavros 3y ago
      Is that what the article refers to?
timeon 3y ago
Yes, bad urban planning is problem.
- mjevans 3y ago
  I agree. Bad urban planning is endemic in the US. We need to do better. However, we've got what we've got, and the correct solution for that is more electric cars and better urban planning, which is going to take a LONG time to have positive effect.
  - acdha 3y ago
    I agree that we need electric cars but I think it’s a mistake to think of urban planning as needing to have such long gone scale. Some things are slow like planning rail lines but other things can be quick if you have the courage to do things like what Paris or London have done. An express bus lane is paint and cameras on the buses to punish scofflaws. A good bike lane needs physical barriers but a quick build design converting a parking or traffic lane is very fast - what makes it slow is the insistence that not a single parking spot be lost or driver forced to go only the speed limit. Make it easy to build ADUs or upsize detached single family houses and you can double the number of people living in many neighborhoods in a decade or less simply by not preventing existing demands.
bamboozled 3y ago
So in Japan, they have stations, and people live within walking or riding proximity to the station. Works for tens of millions of people in Tokyo
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  Cool, but in the US we dont have a third the population living in one metro. Americans are not willing to give up space or their yard.
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    You suffer from the delusion that the way the US housing works is 'natural' and the result of the 'desire' of the population. But this isn't really the case. Suberbia was is a created artificial environment propped up by massive subsidies and supported with lots of other policies, on the local, state and national level. Sure its easy to live further out in suberbia because the friendly government plowed threw a minority neighborhood so you can have a highway to downtown. Those people not wanting highways across where they lived was not considered when people wanted to have a lawn. And of course those nice lawn didn't even pay for the highway either. The US was built for and with the train. And by 1940 US cities were not very different from cities in other places. In the 1950s something crazy happened and pretty much all of a sudden every town sprawled out 5x as far as it did the previous 200 years despite population growth being slower then before. But I guess that was just totally natural as people wanted larger yards.
    - HDThoreaun 3y ago
      > by 1940 US cities were not very different from cities in other places And people didnt like it > In the 1950s something crazy happened This was the response to not liking crowded cities while having access to cars > Suberbia was is a created artificial environment propped up by massive subsidies and supported with lots of other policies, on the local, state and national level. Sure, but those subsidies arent going away because the people who benefit have political power. The highways arent going away either. I certainly dont think suburbia is "natural." It absolutely is the result of the desire of the population though.

phartenfeller 3y ago

Do you expect a perfectly built out rail system to just spawn? No of course you need to start somewhere and articles like these are one argument to do so.

protocolture 3y ago
Shitty argument when they arent as capable as electric cars.
- defrost 3y ago
  Poor response in the context of reducing CO2 emissions as a goal.
- nicoburns 3y ago
  They're more capable in some ways. They can go a lot faster than cars, and they allow passengers to engage in a much wider range of activities while riding one.
  - rickydroll 3y ago
    It's possible for a train to go faster than cars but it's not guaranteed. for example, one of the most heavily traveled corridors is Boston to New York City travel times are: Driving: 3 hours: 51 minutes (plus pee breaks) Amtrak: 3 hours 55 minutes Boston to DC you have much better tracks on the NYC to DC segment driving: 8 hours (plus pee breaks) Amtrak: 6 hours 45 minutes as for a wider range of activities, only if you don't get motion sick. When I'm on a train, my only activity is staring out the window (and taking pee breaks)
- acdha 3y ago
  That depends on your priorities. For example, not sitting in traffic is a nice capability as is the ability to eat dinner and have a beer on the way home. Anyone under retirement age should also value the capability not to make the world worse, too.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
karaterobot 3y ago
It matters if adoption is at all important, which we can all agree it is. If the alternative is that you take trains between cities and bike everywhere else, that's a lovely dream to have, but it's not going to persuade people to give up their cars. To do an apples-to-apples comparison a solution relying on trains would have to do everything a solution involving electric cars can do (and, to be fair, vice versa).

Gare 3y ago

Electric trains are super efficient, so only 2x CO2 is actually quite good.

stavros 3y ago
Neither trains nor cars emit CO2. Electricity generation emits CO2. Trains and cars are completely irrelevant, and conveniently shift the debate away from "our power generation still emits CO2".
- Gare 3y ago
  Mining raw materials, manufacturing and shipping also emits CO2.
  - stavros 3y ago
    Is that what the article refers to?

timeon 3y ago

Yes, bad urban planning is problem.

mjevans 3y ago
I agree. Bad urban planning is endemic in the US. We need to do better. However, we've got what we've got, and the correct solution for that is more electric cars and better urban planning, which is going to take a LONG time to have positive effect.
- acdha 3y ago
  I agree that we need electric cars but I think it’s a mistake to think of urban planning as needing to have such long gone scale. Some things are slow like planning rail lines but other things can be quick if you have the courage to do things like what Paris or London have done. An express bus lane is paint and cameras on the buses to punish scofflaws. A good bike lane needs physical barriers but a quick build design converting a parking or traffic lane is very fast - what makes it slow is the insistence that not a single parking spot be lost or driver forced to go only the speed limit. Make it easy to build ADUs or upsize detached single family houses and you can double the number of people living in many neighborhoods in a decade or less simply by not preventing existing demands.

bamboozled 3y ago

So in Japan, they have stations, and people live within walking or riding proximity to the station. Works for tens of millions of people in Tokyo

HDThoreaun 3y ago
Cool, but in the US we dont have a third the population living in one metro. Americans are not willing to give up space or their yard.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  You suffer from the delusion that the way the US housing works is 'natural' and the result of the 'desire' of the population. But this isn't really the case. Suberbia was is a created artificial environment propped up by massive subsidies and supported with lots of other policies, on the local, state and national level. Sure its easy to live further out in suberbia because the friendly government plowed threw a minority neighborhood so you can have a highway to downtown. Those people not wanting highways across where they lived was not considered when people wanted to have a lawn. And of course those nice lawn didn't even pay for the highway either. The US was built for and with the train. And by 1940 US cities were not very different from cities in other places. In the 1950s something crazy happened and pretty much all of a sudden every town sprawled out 5x as far as it did the previous 200 years despite population growth being slower then before. But I guess that was just totally natural as people wanted larger yards.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    > by 1940 US cities were not very different from cities in other places And people didnt like it > In the 1950s something crazy happened This was the response to not liking crowded cities while having access to cars > Suberbia was is a created artificial environment propped up by massive subsidies and supported with lots of other policies, on the local, state and national level. Sure, but those subsidies arent going away because the people who benefit have political power. The highways arent going away either. I certainly dont think suburbia is "natural." It absolutely is the result of the desire of the population though.