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Railways, energy, CO2 - Part 1 | 30 comments (30 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: Railways, energy, CO2 - Part 1 (none / 1)
As a baseline data point, my Honda Insight gets 3.3 l/100km, using 1999 car technology. With two passengers, that's 1.6 l/100km/passenger.

Another datapoint for a conventional car. I've just run the numbers on the road trip we did at Xmas and the petrol-engined Honda Civic we got about 7l/100km (40mpg in old money) on the ~1100km London-Munich route.

Given there were three of us, that works out at 55 g CO2/pkm which is within spitting distance of the long-distance rail number DoDo gives. Add another passenger (or upgrade to diesel and/or hybrid) and a car starts to be the best option in carbon terms as well as price.

Regards
Luke

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by silburnl on Thu Jan 24th, 2008 at 11:34:46 AM EST
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Re: Railways, energy, CO2 - Part 1 (none / 1)
If you compare cars above average load, compare to trains above average load. Those figures are for c. 50% loading.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Thu Jan 24th, 2008 at 11:40:27 AM EST
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Re: Railways, energy, CO2 - Part 1 (none / 0)
For general comparisons of different modes then of course you are right.

However I don't think that's a valid approach when making a personal decision between car or rail - the train will probably* be averagely loaded irrespective of whether I buy train tickets or choose to take the car. If my particular circumstances mean that I know that the car will be full, then that's a relevant factor in my decision.

Regards
Luke

[*] However as it happens in this particular case the trains were highly loaded (it was Xmas after all, so the overnight services out of Paris were fully booked on the dates we wanted, dunno about the day trains - in any case we had too much luggage to make either train or plane practical).


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by silburnl on Fri Jan 25th, 2008 at 01:22:48 PM EST
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Re: Railways, energy, CO2 - Part 1 (none / 1)
Do you include the difference in speed, and the work expanded by the driver, in the price ? You can do London-Munich on low speed trains, too, and then consumption becomes much better for the train (the old, ordinary lines are waaay less expensive to make)

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
by linca (antonin POINT lucas AROBASE gmail.com) on Thu Jan 24th, 2008 at 01:23:05 PM EST
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Re: Railways, energy, CO2 - Part 1 (none / 0)
Do you include the difference in speed, and the work expanded by the driver, in the price ?

Nope and those are, of course, highly relevant factors (especially considering the contra-flow nightmare that is the autobahn between Stuttgart and Munich just now).

Price for the car should also include a mileage rate (which will be significantly more than the marginal expense of the fuel) and there are also accommodation costs along the way (I suppose it's possible to do London-Munich in one massive leg, but I wouldn't want to be sharing the road with you in the latter portion of the journey - in our case we turned the need for an overnight stop into a virtue and had a sight-seeing day in Trier on the way back).

Once you factor all those elements in then the car isn't actually a low cost option at all - but I don't think these sorts of marginal and ancilliary costs feed in to the 'purchasing decision' in many cases.

You can do London-Munich on low speed trains, too, and then consumption becomes much better for the train (the old, ordinary lines are waaay less expensive to make)

True that, and we did London-Munich via Eurostar and the sleeper service out of Paris last summer which was great. I'm keen to try the high speed option however, with the new high-speed Paris to Munich service that's just started I reckon it's possible for us to do the trip door-to-door in about 10-11 hours. This is about twice the time it would take by air - which, given how god awful the flying experience is these days, makes the train a very competitive option for us even without taking carbon into consideration.

Regards
Luke

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by silburnl on Fri Jan 25th, 2008 at 01:43:50 PM EST
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Railways, energy, CO2 - Part 1 | 30 comments (30 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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