From The FT:
Sir,
E.G. Nisbet (Letters, January 19) may wish to ponder why his (heavily subsidised) rail journey would cost him more than four times a comparable flight (after paying air passenger duty to the exchequer). His musings might lead him to conclude that one reason is the very expensive infrastructure (tracks and signalling) required to maintain the rail service; by comparison air traffic control and a couple of miles of track in the form of runways come pretty cheaply.
He might also reflect that this disproportionate use of resources, including the energy required to maintain the rail “system”, is one reason that the purported environmental benefits of rail might not be all they seem.
David Starkie, London, UK.
Which brings me back to a fundamental question: the knee jerk reaction of Greenies and NIMBYs is to prefer rail over air travel. Ignoring the practicalities that within conurbations rail or Tube is clearly the best form of transport, as is air travel over long distances, if we assume that 'CO2 emissions" is a relevant 'cost', has anybody ever done a full CO2 cost comparison between rail and air travel for a medium length journey over (say) 200 miles?
You'd have to include CO2 created in smelting steel for the actual rails and the heavy carriages, generating the electricity to power the trains and light the stations etc; and compare that with the CO2 emissions created in building the airport, manufacturing the much lighter aeroplanes as well as CO2 emitted by the jet engines. Focusing on that very last bit of the calculation on only one side of the comparison is meaningless.
Until I see such a calculation I am not convinced either way.
Jammy
2 hours ago
26 comments:
This all comes back to Pigou. You don't have to add up the CO2 at each stage, you just apply a cost to it (which we already do) and along with all the other costs, you can make a comparison.
I personally suspect that train is cheaper in terms of CO2, but because they're run as a non-competitive, top-down business with a large amount of union and government interference, they run like shit, so any CO2 saving is wiped out by inefficiency.
Tim,
I can't see how Pigovian tax works unless it's ringfenced into measures that reduce CO2.
MW,
With an LVT and a Citizens Dividend replacing rail subsidies I think it would be even clearer that Planes beat Railways.
TA, AC1, valid points but that doesn't answer the question: Has anybody ever done a full CO2-cost comparison, yes or no?
AC1,
It doesn't need to be ringfenced. It's just needs to account the costs to everyone else. How "everyone else" uses it is up to them.
We may, for instance, decide that while someone uses their car pollutes, that using that money to pay to educate children better is more important than fixing the environment.
(I'm not getting into AGW or not-AGW here, just the general point).
Mark,
I suspect that it would just be too complicated. Apart from the rails, you've got the CO2 of the bloke driving to work to make the rails. Then, the CO2 that went into making his car, including the bit of the CO2 of him going to work that is shared amongst all the bits of the cars.
Mark,
We can assume the answer to your question is no because if they had either:
1. Rail produces less CO2 than comparable air travel. In which case greeny weenies would have been shouting from the rooftops (literally) or;
2. Rail produces more CO2 than comparable air travel. In which case the air transport industry would have been all over it AND greeny weenies would have been crying foul, or;
2. Its about the same. In which case I suspect greeny weenies would still shout foul and the air transport industry would have made sure it was published.
I have seen some partial research on the subject and I believe DEFRA produces figures for at least some modes of transport that seek to include the costs of manfacturing the vehicle and infrastructure. Can't find it on DEFRA's site at the moment but will continue looking.
TGS,
It's not always that simple. The support for "green" policies is often more about ignorance, image, funding self-interest groups, anti-science or socialism.
I've got a park and ride near my house which has buses running to town with 2 or 3 people on each bus, but none of the 3 main parties will support its closure, despite it being neither financially, nor environmentally sound.
Carrying 10kg of something from A to B uses the same amount of energy, times a factor for speed, corrected by friction.
I have long pondered this and have decided that rail is not green if building and maintaining the infrastrucure is accounted for.
Rail is efficient on a trip basis - low friction, maximum gradients, slopes down and up from and to stations to aid acceleration/braking etc etc.
But again not as efficient (CO2 wise) for a family of four travelling on a motorway in a modern diesel saloon (low friction, controlled gradients etc etc) for a medium length trip going from London to Yorkshire for a holiday, as has been proved by a researcher whose name I cannot recall.
Rail is execellent for commuting to work - high useage. It is not so good for long distances and high speed (e.g. TGV) - because of low useage and the wheels vs the wings of an aircraft friction thingy.
I am open to debate on medium distance journeys because of the city centre to city centre advantage of rail.
BTW have any of you driven alongside the TGV through UK, France and Belgium? I have on quite a few occasions. How many TGV's have I seen? Two. the bloody thing is an engineering marvel, totally extravagant and used entirely by holier than thou Eurocrats on my money.
BTW 2. It uses less fuel to get a family of four overland from here to Australia in a Landrover than it does to fly them there, including the sea crossings. Mind you it would be bloody inconvenient and hard work to drive it and would take weeks.
BTW 3. Did you know that a Victorian triple compound steam engine in a ship was said to be able to take 1 ton of cargo 1 n/mile at 1 knot on the burning of one sheet of paper? No, I don't believe it either.
"The support for "green" policies is often more about ignorance, image, funding self-interest groups, anti-science or socialism."
That sentence is true. Mysteriously enough, it remains true if you substitute 'support' for 'opposition', and 'socialism' for 'conservatism'.
On Mark's qn - for construction/engineering projects, project cost is a decent proxy for CO2 emissions. That probably allows some back-of-the-envelopery comparing airport projects with high-speed lines, which I may do at some point.
On the original point in the FT, 1) international rail ticketing is messed up and needs sorting; you still can't get the best fares by booking through tickets but 2) on domestic rail, nearly all comparisons are lies: they compare fully-flexible rail tickets with inflexible pre-booked air fares, even though cheaper inflexible pre-booked rail fares are now available on nearly all peak and off-peak long-distance trains.
L, do you have any back-up for BTW2? I thought grams/passenger/mile was less for actual flying (once you're up in the air) than driving.
Figures I have is 1/2 tonne fuel per passenger flying. Equals two tonnes of fuel to play with.
2 Tonnes at 0.8kg / litre = 2500 litres @ 6 miles / litre = 15000 miles. Say 12000 miles to Oz. So allow a bit of extra and there you go! Ship is already going there accross indian ocean so extra fule cost is negligeable.
OK OK I know I know its a bit simplistic, but so are most greeny claims.
Found this:
"On my last flight to Chile from Madrid the pilot actually told us over the cabin speakers after we landed in Santiago,,,,,we had used 92 tons of fuel to fly from Madrid (about 6,200 miles). That was in an Airbus with about 340 passengers and crew on board and what looked like a good few tons of cargo coming out of the hold in addition to the checked-in baggage. Flying time was a bit over 111/2 hours,and we had an hour's refuelling stop in Beunos Aires. Being a Spanish airline (Iberia) he probably meant metric tons of 1000kg,or 2204lbs which is a little less than an English ton of 2240lbs. Airline fuel has a density of about 0.8 compared to water,if you wish to work through the calc yourself. By definition,one gallon of water weighs 10lbs,so one gallon of av-gas weighs about 8lbs. Working it through,92 tons/11.5hrs...gives 29 gallons per minute,or 0.68 pints per minute per passenger,at an average speed of 6200/11.5 =539mph,or very nearly 9 miles per minute,leading to 29/9 = 3.22 gallons per mile,or almost exactly 1/13th pint per passenger mile.These figures allow the cargo to go for free.No allowance has been made for it. Only passenger figures and fuel usage were used. The FAA currently sets 184lbs as the average passenger weight for airline boarding weight calculations. 340 pax= 340 x184 =62560lbs =28.38 metric tons. Passenger baggage,at 44lbs per person would be 44 x 340/2204 = 6.78 tons. So pax+baggage=35.16 tons. The Airbus 340-300 can load more than 10 tons of cargo in addition to passenger baggage. Short-haul domestic route aircraft like the ATP and Dash-8 generally have a full-tank range of 600-1100 miles. Some versions of the Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet have a range of more than 10.000 miles. A car averaging 40mpg with a 20-gallon tank will have a range of 800 miles.With 4 people in the car,that gives 5 gallons per passenger for 800 miles,or 5/800 =0.00625 gallons,or 1/20th pint, per passenger mile,compared to 1/13th pint for the flight. Making an allowance for cargo on the flight, it's more likely to be about an equal deal, since the aircraft calc assumed all the fuel was used for passengers. Having only two people in the car would make the plane an easy winner for fuel economy per person. The car would need to be doing around 70-80 mpg to be competitive. Commuter motorbikes of 125-250cc give around that level of fuel economy,and later versions of the Honda Cub 90 could do more than 150mpg at 50-55mph,and more than 200mpg at 30mph."
Any help?
L, your first estimate favours cars and ignores ship's fuel.
Your second post works out at 3.4 litres per passenger per hundred kilometer x 4 = 13.6 for four people. The most fuel efficient car is a supermini that only uses 5 litres for hundred kilometre on the motorway, so plane is much the same as a normal car, I guess.
I shall therefore call this one an honourable draw. Cars and planes are much the same over long distances.
But greenies and NIMBYs hate cars and planes alike! I still need train figures!
OK, here goes. If we look at the CO2 produced per passenger mile, then in order of less CO2 produced its Air, then Rail, then the Car.
But don't forget this is per passenger, so if I drive from London to Glasgow on my own, then I use more CO2 than either going via plane or rail. However, if I have at least 1 more passenger in my car then the CO2 produced is less then rail or plane.
Flying is more efficient than rail.
So whats the problem with flying? The problem is the distances involved, long haul flights are, well long. For example its 5851 km from Paris to New York.
This is based just on the CO2 from fuel, not including infrastructure CO2. And also assumes your flying on a modern jet.
So if you have more than 1 person in a car (assuming its not a gas guzzler) then its always better to go via car. If your on your own its always best to travel by plane.
But.... this is total BS, as it doesn't include CO2 costs to build the infrastructure (road, rail, airport) or the CO2 costs to manufacture cars, trains or planes. Or that airports are never near where you want to go, so you have a taxi/rail journey in addition. Did you know that the amount of fuel a car uses in its life time is roughly the same as to make that car!
If you try and google the data, everyone has their own spin on what they include/exclude to make their point.
I don't do long haul flights, I drive most of the time, fly short haul for longer journeys and use my bike to go on journeys ~<5km. When on the EU mainland, I use rail/bus a lot as its very relaxing and I get on fine without a car. If the UK had decent public transport then I would make a huge CO2 saving by not owning a car.
For my money the whole CO2 debate is BS. The real problem is we are running out of fossil fuels and we will have run out of fossil fuels well before CO2 levels bite us on the arse. The BS CO2 debate is a much easier pill to swallow than "your fucked we have no fuel".
> Cars and planes are much the same over long distances.
IIF you forget the time saved. Ignoring time saved is a most devious thing and financially ignorant thing to do.
MW 14:18 - Eggsaktly. If you have a kg of stuff to get from A to B it takes broadly the same energy if used by some sort of fuel burning engine driving a machine. Times a factor for speed and drag/friction. Consider this - racing cars are the most energy efficient cars on the planet. They must be otherwise one would become more efficient and then win all the time, because it is lighter, so the others play catch up. That really winds up greenies.
Actually this makes economic sense too, since fuel costs are universal, that is the cost of obtaining a joule of energy must even out whatever the source of that joule - oil, coal, wood, slaves (why would you burn slaves?), otherwise we would stop recovering that resource and use the more energy yielding one.
A,
"Did you know that the amount of fuel a car uses in its life time is roughly the same as to make that car!"
A Toyota Avensis can do about done 200,000 miles. That's something like 5,000 gallons of fuel, or about £25,000. A new Avensis costs less than £25,000.
I don't think I would automaticaly trust a calculation either - have seen to much dodgy arithmetic in the service of the Luddites. I doid see a newspaper report a couple of years ago saying that somebody had made such a calculation & come up with trains being slightly worse than cars because trains are less likely to be full & weigh a LOT more per seat than cars.
Tim,
My bad. £ are confusing, but point is still valid. After a quick fact check its very roughly 90% fuel, 10% manufacture based on joules. Or 80% fuel, 20% manufacture based on CO2. I've read the "more to manufacture" in a lot of places before and never checked my self. Opppppps.....
This is all most helpful, hardens my suspicion that there's not much in it plane, train or car, or indeed walking - even if we accept the dubious premise that CO2 emissions are relevant.
Neil Crang - true. Trains are fat and run empty a lot of the time. Car's are fatter than they need to be because of euro-safety bollocks. Most efficient is light vehicle, and for personal transport modules, with a small high speed turbo-charged diesel engine, and lots of gears.
Look, sorry to be boring about this but I am an engineer and I race cars. I have thought about this an awful lot and put various numbers into it.
Light cars, turbo diesel = best currently.
Trains = too fat, plus run empty a lot of the time and very less fuel saving, plus massive infrastructure cost, plus NBG over long distance. TGV hopeless as alignment shit and compensated for by huge power hence huge energy use.
Plane = good for long distance (lots of fuel used in take off, not much when cruising), low infrastrucutre cost and fly at V high load factors.
Ships =very good for bulk cargoes over long distances plus also good for containerised mixed cargoes between feeder ports.
Canals = very good like ships but slow and need to be level - dur! - as locks etc make them less good.
Sailing ships - lovely.
Lorries - not very fuel efficient but very time efficient. OK for warehouse to warehouse and very flexible. Low infrastrucure costs (have you seen the state of our roads let alone those that operate in undeveloped areas like old USSR, Far East and Liverpool.).
White vans = fastest means of transport known to man - or girl come to that. Have two speeds, foot on the floor in any gear or stop. Not at all fuel efficient, but very flexible and can double as canteen, workmens hut, living space or knocking shop.
Two wheels with engine - excllent for population control, and if you don't die you get wet.
Milk floats (AKA Toyata Prius) slow horrible to drive and full of even more horrible heavy metal and very un-green to make.
Bike = (two wheeled variety or female variety) - too physically demanding.
Limousine - very inneficient but good for meeting people (I mean for sex really) and for plutocrats and US presidents.
4x4's = Chelsea tractor w t e o old L-R Defenders used by me and my neighbours, who are proper blokes and understand these things.
Clarkson - twat.
James Martin = (Useless celebrity chef on Mille Miglia) with drop dead gorgeous Maserati A6GCS and no bloody clue whatsoeffingever = another twat.
and...oh I'm boring myself now...
L, that's a good (if unnecessarily exhaustive) list, and boils down to "People are perfectly capable of choosing the most appropriate means of travel for any particular journey and the chances are whatever method they choose is the cheapest (in terms of £-s-d or CO2 or time taken) as well."
That's why I didn't bother with a Transport Minister - we don't need one.
MW - Exactly. To paraphrase 'it's the free market stupid'.
A Toyota Avensis can do about done 200,000 miles. That's something like 5,000 gallons of fuel, or about £25,000. A new Avensis costs less than £25,000.
Fucking win. I wish the people who'd uncritically reported the study cited upthread in the media (paid for by, erm, the US indigenous auto industry in an attempt to shaft Toyota) had bothered doing those basic sums...
doid see a newspaper report a couple of years ago saying that somebody had made such a calculation
Unfortunately it was toss: it compared full cars to off-peak trains. Again, because the media are morons with an agenda (see my comment at 1343), it was reported uncritically rather than torn to shreds.
Lola,
"Milk floats (AKA Toyata Prius) slow horrible to drive and full of even more horrible heavy metal and very un-green to make."
They also only really work when you're doing lots of start/stop driving. e.g. around town.
The Times tested one from London to Brussels vs a BMW 520d, and the BMW just outperformed it.
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