OT: Trains - how green are they?

[Tim Streater]

Part of the mantra seems to be that trains are good and we should have more of them. You get the often quoted fact that a flight London-Paris takes ten times as much fuel as a train journey.

On the continent, they apparently view trains as a "public good", according to a letter I saw in the Times yesterday or so. This means they build them and subsidise them so that fares are low or lowish. The subsidies appear to be hidden, near as I can tell. They don't understand our "business" approach to railways.

This may be all very well, and the service is often good, but at what cost? Making something *appear* cheap does not actually *make* it cheap. Once I needed to go Cambridge-Glasgow on a business trip. I looked into a train journey, but it seemed to cost several times the cost of an Easy flight from Stansted. So I flew. Seems odd that an airline can make a profit under those circumstances whereas the train, even in the UK, is subsidised.

Then I think about the huge infrastructure required to get a train from Cambridge-Glasgow (or as many as needed, with changes). What does this cost to install and maintain?

So, are trains as green as is claimed? Does the figure in my "oft-quoted fact" stand up - or is it just the marginal cost? Is HS2 a good thing or just an advanced form of willy-waving?

[Huge]

No.

[The Natural Philosopher]

More than most 'green' people realise. The trains themselves are efficient, but the infrastructure is a significant cost in man hours, vehicle trips, and materials.

My guess is that is probably better than aircraft at least in terms of CO2 in the longer term.

You can run a train off nuclear power. But not aircraft.

BUT like all things green that are going to save the planet there are downstream or upstream costs that are inconvenient truths, so they get ignored.

[dom]

The answer isn't simple, and there are a lot of factors. If you want a high-quality examination of the facts, look at Sustainable Energy - without the hot air. ISBN 978-0-9544529-3-3, David J.C. McKay, Prof in the Dept of Physics, Univ of Camb.

The book is available as a free pdf:

"I'm concerned about cutting UK emissions of twaddle", says the author

- and he does - packed with solid reliable data (sources quoted and referenced), and totally cuts away the greenwash and eco-bollix to bring the facts of life into clear view.

Along with, "I didn't write this book to make money"

The book is free in both the free-speech and free-beer sense, the author encourages readers to freely re-use his materials for educational purposes.

[Tim Streater]

look there. Good pointer.

[Vortex7]

David McKay's book covers this.

Looking at the table on

individual trains come out pretty well.......so long as they're full.

D

[pete]

And there's the rub. Trains are hardly ever full. Outside of get-to-work/school times they have very few passengers. The last train I took (Reading to Paddington, weekday 11am-ish) had three or four passengers in my coach. I assume all the other coaches were the same - with the exception of a completely empty 1st class section.

ISTM the same applies to buses. When they're packed tight with strangers that you are getting to know much better than you or they would ever wish, they probably make money. However, for the other 12-14 hours a day I expect it would be cheaper and greener for the driver to ferry passengers around in a taxi - and cause less traffic congestion, too.

[Huge]

So, given that (wet finger in the air) 80% of trains run as near empty as makes no difference, trains suck. No surprise there, then.

[Man at B&Q]

But from the title you want green.

But you wanted green.

So what is it ypou want? Green or cheap?

Dunno, but your thinking seems to be as muddled as greenwash.

MBQ

[Tim Streater]

How do you figure that out, George? I'm asking a question.

How do you figure that out, George? I'm asking a question.

What makes you think I "want" anything? I want to know whether the train claims are greenwash or not. C'mon George, get a grip.

Ah, so you don't know and therefore cannot contribute anything useful. Piss off then.

[Ronald Raygun]

I think you miss the George's point. You may not "want green", but the question you're asking is about how *green* trains are, yet in your exploratory discourse you're talking about how *cheap* they are. You seem to be conflating these two different concepts.

In what way does an answer to how cheap they are help you answer how green they are?

[Jules Richardson]

Is anything? I doubt it, somehow. Are they better than some of the alternatives? Probably, in certain situations.

[Tim Streater]

They are in fact not different concepts, they are probably related. If a transport mode costs more (actual cost, that is, not fake subsidised cost) than another, then it must be using more of society's resources than the other, and so is likely to be producing more CO2 per whatever than the other mode.

To drive an extra train from London to Edinburgh (just to make it a one-stage journey example) may well require less fuel per passenger than flying an extra plane. But that's just the marginal cost. If you have to include a fraction of the maintenance cost of 500 miles of track, overhead wires, bridges, signals etc, then things *may* look different.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I spoke to him yesterday,. he's made..a little bit :-)

[The Natural Philosopher]

yep. last print run took total copies to 55,000. Not all sold yet..

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Tim Streater saying something like:

Fuck, no wonder it's so expensive with a ghost section of line. Maybe it goes to Hogwarts.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Planes if full are pretty good at passenger miles per lb CO2 actually.

Trais, if ull, are better..but how full are they?

[The Natural Philosopher]

commuter trains are massively profitable and massively passenger mile effective.

Social routes are the exact opposite.

[Jules Richardson]

Indeed, but perhaps still not as green as is claimed, because the claims doubtless leave out just about everything other than simple point-of-use calculations assuming an ideal system.

[Gareth]

If you just consider the fuel used for the journey then trains are a lot better, but if you take into account other factors, like building and maintaining the infrastructure, trains don't do so well.

full paper can be found here: