this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
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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.
It was called Conrail. And it was beautiful.