The big difference is of course that you can electrify trains, as has happened in much of Europe and Asia, but not for most of Amtrak
tldr: The article is about a specific case that involves old trains + lots of space per passenger + very long distance + diesel engine.
Yeah, which is what you get in the US. Very different in Europe, where distances are shorter, passengers are packed tightly, and the trains are often electrified.
Just to note, this doesn’t apply to every journey, only the really long distance ones.
Amtrak is still the more climate-friendly option for the vast majority of travelers, who on average travel 300 to 400 miles, said Olivia Irvin, a spokeswoman for the rail company. (That is, not many people are crazy enough to go cross-country by train.) A 2022 Department of Transportation study found that traveling by train from Los Angeles to San Diego generated less than half the emissions, per passenger, of flying, or driving. For Boston to New York, an electrified route, taking the train generated less than a fifth the emissions of flying or driving.
The problem with electrification however is that while it on average half’s an railroads operating costs, it takes significant upfront investment. Given most of Amtrak runs over fright railroads, and even if it didn’t fright is by far the larger source of carbon, you need to convince said fright railways to make the upfront investment.
Since they are currently in a state of self described ‘managed decline’ as Wall Street and private equity loot the old giants for everything they can, we probably arn’t going to see much progress on that front until Conrail 2, nationalization repairs the US rail system after private companies messed it up round four.
Yes, per passenger there are more emissions taking the Amtrak train than flying if you average everything out over the route lengths, but not by route ridership. There are many parts of the equation where US and Canada rail are inefficient that any improvement in service would improve the numbers to quickly take over as the greener way.
The biggest is owing to the amount of travellers. Airlines try to cram people on planes, and they are known to overbook to get as many seats filled. Cross country train travel is generally less booked outside of popular weekends and holidays. Commuter trains have a reliable number of passengers coming in and out of the city making it very efficient.
The train engine itself is capable of pulling at least 2 or 3 times as many passenger cars without a noticeable impact to the travel time. If these intercity routes were more popular and ran more often with matched demand then it would be more efficient than planes. It’s just that this power is wasted. Freight companies like to make money which is why their trains are excessively long and they move ton-miles essentially as efficiently as they can because of that.
The windy rights of ways owned by freight railroads and the fact that Amtrak/VIA can’t have their way ever because of their bullying means we’re stuck playing by their schedules. That is the case until the US or Canadian gov grows a spine again and buys one of the class 1s. A government owned freight company can better coordinate to provide the important infrastructure upgrades that would make the journey even better, faster and environmentally friendly.
Ya, personally i’m in favor of turning all the class 1s into a subdivision of the post office. It is after all a well established government agency used to handling absurdly complex national and international logistics and parcel routing while maintaining buisness friendly reliability.
Maybe that way it would even take longer to reach the inevitable point where after having spent absurd amounts of taxpayer money fixing what private industry broke Congress sells a major railroad off to their friends at a small fraction of its value for the fourth time.
Seriously though, we need electrification and for the railroads to actually take single cars again instead of forcing everything to go by truck if we are serious about decarbonizing north american fright and industry. Some more route realignment, corner shaving, and track speed improvements along our existing Amtrack routes would also be a welcome investment. We’re getting some, but nowhere near as much as we should be.
One of the problems Amtrak is facing at the moment is a lack of rolling stock. The author notes that the California Zephyr was running full. It’s also running a shorter consist that it would have traditionally because of a lack of units. Increasing the length of the consist, assuming the engines can pull it, would reduce the emissions per seat. The ridership demand is there, the investment into Amtraks stock is, sadly, not.
Does high speed rail have the same problem? If not, sounds like more incentive to build high speed rail.
