10 ms·

Focusing on the cost-per-tonne for carbon reduction misses the broader value of railways. They're not just about reducing emission! They facilitate daily commut

Focusing on the cost-per-tonne for carbon reduction misses the broader value of railways. They're not just about reducing emission! They facilitate daily commutes, expand job opportunities, and help drive the economy. It’s a subsidy for businesses too.

dreadlordbone 2y ago
Doesn't having a car do this too?
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  Cars destroy walkability, cyclability, ability for kids to freely play outside, enable sprawl (hence more energy consumption hence more carbon emissions). There’s no free lunch with using more surface area, which cars greatly expand people’s ability to consume.
  - dreadlordbone 2y ago
    That's a goalpost moved from my response.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      The poster you responded to wrote: > They're not just about reducing emission! Cars increasing emissions seems to be a relevant disqualifier.
  - nsokolsky 2y ago
    True to a degree but cars also make parenting easier: you get bigger houses, bigger backyards, don't have lug your kids around on public transit, deal with the weather, don't need to worry about rail worker strikes, etc. All America's missing is laws that allow kids to walk to school and adding more sidewalks to enable this, but this is changing over time (see Utah's free range parenting law).
    - Aeolun 2y ago
      Do bigger houses make parenting easier, do bigger backyards? I’m inclined towards a large communual yard (a park, if you will) being many times more efficient at keeping them busy, especially if you have a single child. Lugging your children around on public transit builds character that chauffeuring them around in a car does not. They’ll be exposed to a variety of people and situations they’d otherwise never experience. Similar thing for the weather. I don’t want my children to grow up thinking that any kind of weather limits their options if a car is not available. I realize my opinions might be different if I were living in a US city, just wanted to give a different perspective.
      - xyzzy123 2y ago
        The other great thing about public transport is you don't have to "lug" / "chauffer" them at all after about 8 or so (what age makes sense depends on area and the kid of course). They can exercise some independence.
        Detrytus 2y ago
        Maybe that's true in small, peaceful countries like Denmark, but in the US children "excersising some independence" would likely be kidnapped, raped or killed.
        xyzzy123 2y ago
        Are you sure that's true? How do you know? How much does it depend on where in the US you are?
        danaris 2y ago
        This has never been significantly true, and becomes less true every year. The probability that any given child will be kidnapped or otherwise threatened by a stranger is minuscule compared to the chance that they will be abused, kidnapped, or killed by a family member.
- eertami 2y ago
  Anecdotally, I frequently take day (or weekend) trips to other European cities by rail. It is usually quicker than the roads but also crucially you can be productive on the train. If I had to drive my car there then I probably wouldn't bother.
  - netsharc 2y ago
    This reminds me of this Swedish office on a train https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HbrI3refig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HbrI3refig , made for a company which had an hour train commute from Stockholm. It's even got 8 telephone line (4 in and 4 out)! I guess a lot of people would use work booths/conference rooms on trains, but the price/profit has to work for both sides (the train company and users). As for trains, the old-fashioned 6 seater compartments offer more privacy for groups.
    - intellix 2y ago
      you could also work from a car if someone else is driving it like a taxi, but imagine the price difference to travel such a long distance every day over rail versus metro + rail. Another point I haven't seen mentioned much is safety. Rail is vastly safer than cars and results in less strain on the medical system.
      - beAbU 2y ago
        I like your taxi idea. I hate driving myself. We could bring down the cost of the taxi by putting more people in the car, to share the cost of the driver. That'll bring the costs down significantly. If the car is sufficiently large, we can get, say, 50 people in a car with a single driver. That should make the extra cost of the driver split between the 50 lassengers significantly cheaper. We could go further and link multiple cars together, with a single driver up front. They will be driving on one another's slipstream vastly improving fuel efficiency which will bring down costs even further. Imagine if we can get them to run on some sort of rail or metal track, which makes rolling resistance of the wheels basically 0. No more expensive rubber tyres that need replacing and yet again improved fuel efficiency. This will bring down the costs even further!
- dpe82 2y ago
  Having a car also entails massive subsidies; when taking that into account the all-in costs per unit traveled are basically always cheaper with rail.
  - thehappypm 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - geysersam 2y ago
      Almost every road project is paid by public money.
      - thehappypm 2y ago
        $200B/year spent on roads in the USA (federal, state, and local) for passenger vehicle miles driven in the trillions, plus truck miles. $4B/year spent on Amtrak for passenger miles in the billions. Roads are an order of magnitude cheaper
        geysersam 2y ago
        You can't just compare the entire multi purpose road network of the US to a single rail company. That's just not a serious comparison. Besides, you didn't include the cost of the vehicles or the cost of fuel for the cars. I presume the number for Amtrak include all operating costs. The truth is that different modes of transport have different strengths and weaknesses. In densely urbanized areas trains and trams are typically more efficient than cars.
        thehappypm 2y ago
        There are definitely places where rail is awesome, a great example is New York to DC. Better than driving or flying by a mile. But on a purely cost basis, rail is very expensive. It just more expensive for the government to build an operate rail than it is for them to build and operate roads. You’re right that part of it is because some of the cost is shouldered by the car owner. But, even in Europe, car ownership is very common outside of city centers. You can’t really expect there to be a rail station taking you from anywhere you want to go to anywhere else you wanna go unless you’re in an urban hub.
- postpawl 2y ago
  Trains scale better than cars in dense areas and offer more than just emissions reductions. Good rail infrastructure is a big part of makes a large city world-class and improves everyday lives. Subsidizing trains is better than a lot of other uses of government funds.
- layer8 2y ago
  A car is more expensive, and clogs the roads, which causes other costs to the economy and penalizes commutes.
- CuriousCosmic 2y ago
  No. This is something Texas is having to come to terms with right now. Cars and roads only scale so much before you physically can't move more people fast enough even with more roads and more lanes. Rail scales way better. So Texas is pushing a high speed rail line that will allow people to commute 30-90min into a city from locations that currently are 1.5-3 hours away. And at that allow those people to commute to cities on either ends of the line while still being a relatively accessible commute for anyone in between the cities. And of course as great as that is, the rail line will be able to relatively trivially scale capacity by adding more trains to the same line at a rate far above massively expensive road expansion projects that cost comparable to the entire planned rail line. So if you want to grow past a certain density you do have to start switching to rail and higher density does mean more business opportunities and generally greater options for prosperity for the populations in the area.
  - kyleee 2y ago
    Good comment except for the first word. Obviously cars enable all sorts of movement and economic activity, so why not just admit it? The rest of your comment is just talking about how rail may do all those things to a greater extent than cars. You don’t need to deny benefits of cars, it doesn’t bolster your arguments. Better to just be honest and then extol the virtues of rail and other transportation methods.
    - Aeolun 2y ago
      Of course a car does, but does that mean you should ignore all the benefits brought by bicycles? And if we go that far, should we overlook our own muscular locomotion? It all enables the same mobility after all.
      - nine_k 2y ago
        Cycling at 110F ambient temperature can be outright hazardous (speaking of Texas). Cycling at 80F is okay as long as you have a shower at the destination. (Most offices don't.) Also, cycling in a city, when you cycle for 2-3, maybe 5 miles, is fine. Cycling for 20 miles is pretty taxing and time-consuming, but in a low-density, car-oriented environment 20 miles correctly qualifies as "nearby".
- dxuh 2y ago
  Germany has a pretty high population density and the metropolitan areas have evolved around medieval cities, so they are sometimes very bad a carrying a lot of traffic. Getting around by car in lots of major German cities is a major PITA and parking your car there (if you live there) is just as horrible. Inside cities, public transport is much more efficient.
resonious 2y ago
Gp said they know about these other factors but doesn't know how to price them. Do you know a way?
- jordanb 2y ago
  "These things aren't important unless you can wedge them into my spreadsheet" is the time of consultant-brained nonsense that got us the world we're living in.
  - bigstrat2003 2y ago
    Nobody said that. But if you're gonna spend the public money, you need some way of determining "how much are we willing to pay for this good thing".
    - jordanb 2y ago
      Who's "we"? The public is mostly not made up of consultants and do not appreciate consultant logic being applied to everything. People would prefer to define values and then act on those values.
      - kurthr 2y ago
        So you would be good with spending more money and even increasing total carbon footprint, if it just felt good? Seriously, if you're not going to measure anything or use logic, I'm not sure how you can even call them "defined" or "values". It sounds like, "I saw it on TV/internet/billboard so it must be true".
        jordanb 2y ago
        I didn't say that. The OP argued "Actually this is bad because the cost per ton of carbon saved is higher than some other way to save carbon." The original replyer pointed out that "ways to save carbon" are not necessarily fungible and there are other benefits to subsidized rail travel. The followon dismissal was to throw back and come up with a way to "price" those other benefits. What I am objecting to is the entire chain of thinking that starts with trying to do simplistic, reductionist price comparisons and then refusing to consider other factors that don't fit in the pricing exercise.
nsokolsky 2y ago
How much of the increased rail use is helping increase GDP, though, rather than being purely leisurely trips with little long term value for the economy? More people going to hike in the forest on the weekend technically increases GDP but doesn't add much value to the economy overall.
- postpawl 2y ago
  Keep in mind there’s only about 50 miles of high-speed rail in the U.S. so far. With major cities like Dallas and Houston or San Francisco and LA still unconnected by fast rail, there's significant room to boost GDP and improve lives. Expanding rail isn't just about GDP growth, it's about enhancing daily living and connecting communities more effectively. As RFK famously noted, GDP measures everything ‘except that which makes life worthwhile’. Rail development does both, supporting the economy and enriching our lives.
  - oldpersonintx 2y ago
    no one has ever been able to explain who will be the daily rider for SF/LA or Dallas/Houston rail I don't mean people trying it out once, or tourists...I mean people who will commit to riding it daily
    - bluGill 2y ago
      Almost nobody will take that train daily, and it is stupid to think anyone would or should. However it is reasonable to expect the train will be crowded from all the people who take it less often. Companies send their people to other cities often for various business reasons. People take several vacations per year. Nobody is doing this daily - but the sum total of weekly, monthly, yearly, and once in a lifetime trips add up to a lot of people very day.
- bastawhiz 2y ago
  If I could take a train instead of a plane, I would. Doubly so if it saved me money. Savings for individuals means more money to spend on other things.

dreadlordbone 2y ago

Doesn't having a car do this too?

lotsofpulp 2y ago
Cars destroy walkability, cyclability, ability for kids to freely play outside, enable sprawl (hence more energy consumption hence more carbon emissions). There’s no free lunch with using more surface area, which cars greatly expand people’s ability to consume.
- dreadlordbone 2y ago
  That's a goalpost moved from my response.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    The poster you responded to wrote: > They're not just about reducing emission! Cars increasing emissions seems to be a relevant disqualifier.
- nsokolsky 2y ago
  True to a degree but cars also make parenting easier: you get bigger houses, bigger backyards, don't have lug your kids around on public transit, deal with the weather, don't need to worry about rail worker strikes, etc. All America's missing is laws that allow kids to walk to school and adding more sidewalks to enable this, but this is changing over time (see Utah's free range parenting law).
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    Do bigger houses make parenting easier, do bigger backyards? I’m inclined towards a large communual yard (a park, if you will) being many times more efficient at keeping them busy, especially if you have a single child. Lugging your children around on public transit builds character that chauffeuring them around in a car does not. They’ll be exposed to a variety of people and situations they’d otherwise never experience. Similar thing for the weather. I don’t want my children to grow up thinking that any kind of weather limits their options if a car is not available. I realize my opinions might be different if I were living in a US city, just wanted to give a different perspective.
    - xyzzy123 2y ago
      The other great thing about public transport is you don't have to "lug" / "chauffer" them at all after about 8 or so (what age makes sense depends on area and the kid of course). They can exercise some independence.
      - Detrytus 2y ago
        Maybe that's true in small, peaceful countries like Denmark, but in the US children "excersising some independence" would likely be kidnapped, raped or killed.
        xyzzy123 2y ago
        Are you sure that's true? How do you know? How much does it depend on where in the US you are?
        danaris 2y ago
        This has never been significantly true, and becomes less true every year. The probability that any given child will be kidnapped or otherwise threatened by a stranger is minuscule compared to the chance that they will be abused, kidnapped, or killed by a family member.
eertami 2y ago
Anecdotally, I frequently take day (or weekend) trips to other European cities by rail. It is usually quicker than the roads but also crucially you can be productive on the train. If I had to drive my car there then I probably wouldn't bother.
- netsharc 2y ago
  This reminds me of this Swedish office on a train https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HbrI3refig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HbrI3refig , made for a company which had an hour train commute from Stockholm. It's even got 8 telephone line (4 in and 4 out)! I guess a lot of people would use work booths/conference rooms on trains, but the price/profit has to work for both sides (the train company and users). As for trains, the old-fashioned 6 seater compartments offer more privacy for groups.
  - intellix 2y ago
    you could also work from a car if someone else is driving it like a taxi, but imagine the price difference to travel such a long distance every day over rail versus metro + rail. Another point I haven't seen mentioned much is safety. Rail is vastly safer than cars and results in less strain on the medical system.
    - beAbU 2y ago
      I like your taxi idea. I hate driving myself. We could bring down the cost of the taxi by putting more people in the car, to share the cost of the driver. That'll bring the costs down significantly. If the car is sufficiently large, we can get, say, 50 people in a car with a single driver. That should make the extra cost of the driver split between the 50 lassengers significantly cheaper. We could go further and link multiple cars together, with a single driver up front. They will be driving on one another's slipstream vastly improving fuel efficiency which will bring down costs even further. Imagine if we can get them to run on some sort of rail or metal track, which makes rolling resistance of the wheels basically 0. No more expensive rubber tyres that need replacing and yet again improved fuel efficiency. This will bring down the costs even further!
dpe82 2y ago
Having a car also entails massive subsidies; when taking that into account the all-in costs per unit traveled are basically always cheaper with rail.
- thehappypm 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - geysersam 2y ago
    Almost every road project is paid by public money.
    - thehappypm 2y ago
      $200B/year spent on roads in the USA (federal, state, and local) for passenger vehicle miles driven in the trillions, plus truck miles. $4B/year spent on Amtrak for passenger miles in the billions. Roads are an order of magnitude cheaper
      - geysersam 2y ago
        You can't just compare the entire multi purpose road network of the US to a single rail company. That's just not a serious comparison. Besides, you didn't include the cost of the vehicles or the cost of fuel for the cars. I presume the number for Amtrak include all operating costs. The truth is that different modes of transport have different strengths and weaknesses. In densely urbanized areas trains and trams are typically more efficient than cars.
        thehappypm 2y ago
        There are definitely places where rail is awesome, a great example is New York to DC. Better than driving or flying by a mile. But on a purely cost basis, rail is very expensive. It just more expensive for the government to build an operate rail than it is for them to build and operate roads. You’re right that part of it is because some of the cost is shouldered by the car owner. But, even in Europe, car ownership is very common outside of city centers. You can’t really expect there to be a rail station taking you from anywhere you want to go to anywhere else you wanna go unless you’re in an urban hub.
postpawl 2y ago
Trains scale better than cars in dense areas and offer more than just emissions reductions. Good rail infrastructure is a big part of makes a large city world-class and improves everyday lives. Subsidizing trains is better than a lot of other uses of government funds.
layer8 2y ago
A car is more expensive, and clogs the roads, which causes other costs to the economy and penalizes commutes.
CuriousCosmic 2y ago
No. This is something Texas is having to come to terms with right now. Cars and roads only scale so much before you physically can't move more people fast enough even with more roads and more lanes. Rail scales way better. So Texas is pushing a high speed rail line that will allow people to commute 30-90min into a city from locations that currently are 1.5-3 hours away. And at that allow those people to commute to cities on either ends of the line while still being a relatively accessible commute for anyone in between the cities. And of course as great as that is, the rail line will be able to relatively trivially scale capacity by adding more trains to the same line at a rate far above massively expensive road expansion projects that cost comparable to the entire planned rail line. So if you want to grow past a certain density you do have to start switching to rail and higher density does mean more business opportunities and generally greater options for prosperity for the populations in the area.
- kyleee 2y ago
  Good comment except for the first word. Obviously cars enable all sorts of movement and economic activity, so why not just admit it? The rest of your comment is just talking about how rail may do all those things to a greater extent than cars. You don’t need to deny benefits of cars, it doesn’t bolster your arguments. Better to just be honest and then extol the virtues of rail and other transportation methods.
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    Of course a car does, but does that mean you should ignore all the benefits brought by bicycles? And if we go that far, should we overlook our own muscular locomotion? It all enables the same mobility after all.
    - nine_k 2y ago
      Cycling at 110F ambient temperature can be outright hazardous (speaking of Texas). Cycling at 80F is okay as long as you have a shower at the destination. (Most offices don't.) Also, cycling in a city, when you cycle for 2-3, maybe 5 miles, is fine. Cycling for 20 miles is pretty taxing and time-consuming, but in a low-density, car-oriented environment 20 miles correctly qualifies as "nearby".
dxuh 2y ago
Germany has a pretty high population density and the metropolitan areas have evolved around medieval cities, so they are sometimes very bad a carrying a lot of traffic. Getting around by car in lots of major German cities is a major PITA and parking your car there (if you live there) is just as horrible. Inside cities, public transport is much more efficient.

resonious 2y ago

Gp said they know about these other factors but doesn't know how to price them. Do you know a way?

jordanb 2y ago
"These things aren't important unless you can wedge them into my spreadsheet" is the time of consultant-brained nonsense that got us the world we're living in.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  Nobody said that. But if you're gonna spend the public money, you need some way of determining "how much are we willing to pay for this good thing".
  - jordanb 2y ago
    Who's "we"? The public is mostly not made up of consultants and do not appreciate consultant logic being applied to everything. People would prefer to define values and then act on those values.
    - kurthr 2y ago
      So you would be good with spending more money and even increasing total carbon footprint, if it just felt good? Seriously, if you're not going to measure anything or use logic, I'm not sure how you can even call them "defined" or "values". It sounds like, "I saw it on TV/internet/billboard so it must be true".
      - jordanb 2y ago
        I didn't say that. The OP argued "Actually this is bad because the cost per ton of carbon saved is higher than some other way to save carbon." The original replyer pointed out that "ways to save carbon" are not necessarily fungible and there are other benefits to subsidized rail travel. The followon dismissal was to throw back and come up with a way to "price" those other benefits. What I am objecting to is the entire chain of thinking that starts with trying to do simplistic, reductionist price comparisons and then refusing to consider other factors that don't fit in the pricing exercise.

nsokolsky 2y ago

How much of the increased rail use is helping increase GDP, though, rather than being purely leisurely trips with little long term value for the economy? More people going to hike in the forest on the weekend technically increases GDP but doesn't add much value to the economy overall.

postpawl 2y ago
Keep in mind there’s only about 50 miles of high-speed rail in the U.S. so far. With major cities like Dallas and Houston or San Francisco and LA still unconnected by fast rail, there's significant room to boost GDP and improve lives. Expanding rail isn't just about GDP growth, it's about enhancing daily living and connecting communities more effectively. As RFK famously noted, GDP measures everything ‘except that which makes life worthwhile’. Rail development does both, supporting the economy and enriching our lives.
- oldpersonintx 2y ago
  no one has ever been able to explain who will be the daily rider for SF/LA or Dallas/Houston rail I don't mean people trying it out once, or tourists...I mean people who will commit to riding it daily
  - bluGill 2y ago
    Almost nobody will take that train daily, and it is stupid to think anyone would or should. However it is reasonable to expect the train will be crowded from all the people who take it less often. Companies send their people to other cities often for various business reasons. People take several vacations per year. Nobody is doing this daily - but the sum total of weekly, monthly, yearly, and once in a lifetime trips add up to a lot of people very day.
bastawhiz 2y ago
If I could take a train instead of a plane, I would. Doubly so if it saved me money. Savings for individuals means more money to spend on other things.