3 ms·
The subway itself is extremely poorly ventilated and all the cars are air-conditioned down to frigid temps (probably to make up for the ridiculously hot subway
by gergles 13y ago
The subway itself is extremely poorly ventilated and all the cars are air-conditioned down to frigid temps (probably to make up for the ridiculously hot subway stations) -- the waste heat sucked out of the cars just gets dumped into the tunnels and the trains act as pistons to shove the hot air into the stations.
- ErsatzVerkehr 13y agoThe air conditioners are, to a good approximation, just pumping energy out of the train cars that would be released anyway (i.e. the 100 Watts per passenger discussed below), plus whatever power they require themselves to run. Thus it seems very unlikely to me that train car air conditioning is a substantial contribution. One could argue that perhaps the passengers' metabolisms are increased slightly to make up for the extra heat loss due to a cooler environment. But this has got to be totally negligible with respect to the energy dumped by a stopping train.