Now if only someone would put in a train from Africa to Australia... or a road perhaps?

I'm curious if the statistic at the beginning of this article (and its source) are a bit misleading. Does this take into account that there are SEVERAL families of four on this aircraft? We're looking at CO2 units/person/mile right?

It is very believable and I assume true that the train consumes far less and contributes far fewer C02 emissions than the airplane, but the preliminary statistic sounds excessive. Can anyone do some, or find some math to figure this out?

One of the factors with plane pollution is WHERE it is produced. From what I remember reading, all these emissions at high altitude are quite bad for the ozone layer.

Trains vs. plane can get a bit tricky, but train vs. car/truck is definitely a win in favor of trains (both in commercial and "civilian" transportation), AFAIK.

Ben - I agree. I fly a lot, but I don't own a car. I probably burn far less fuel than the average american driving 12,000 miles a year (a typical average) who never flies, so I don't feel all that bad about it.

That said, our lack of decent rail service in this country is a disgrace. Trips under 400 miles could all be replaced by high-speed trains that would be faster, more comfy and much more environmentally sustainable than either flying or driving. The highway lobby is so strong, and so well entrenched, that I fear we're going to be stuck with this for many years.

As for the altitude of the pollution...I'm guessing it's probably way worse to pollute the upper atmosphere than down low, but I don't think anyone has proven anything to that effect.

As a transportation planner in the United States ("boo, hiss"), we really want mass transit, commuter rail, and high speed rail, too.

There is no highway lobby telling us "no". There ARE a number of people telling us "let us keep our single family homes with side, front, and back yards on cul-de-sac streets".

Go tell your local government you want rail and transit-oriented development so we can start getting it, and stop necessitating all the flights and car trips.

I get all excited when I read articles like this. My hope is that it might scare someone enough to consider taking the train. What I think they find more scary is the Amtrak ticket price, lack of schedule, lack of desitinations and general unreliability of getting where you want on time.

I was lucky enough to live in Europe for a while, got used to the ease and low cost of getting around on a daily basis both for business and leisure.

I guess what I am really mad about is having to make a reservation in advance to jump on the train to NYC.

OK, there's a lot of problems with this thought that somehow it's wasteful to fly, and the specific statistics the author uses are also specious.

Now, he's obviously using data for the UK, but I'll use US statistics because they're easier to come by.

Start with this chart:
http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/2005/html/table_04_21.html

According to that, an international flight consumes 3,432 BTU/passenger-mile. Forgetting for a moment that a plane will fly whether the theoretical family of four flies on it or not, and assuming a round-trip air distance from London to New York of 6,940 miles:

4 passengers * 3,432 BTU/passenger-mile * 6,940 miles = 95,272,320 BTU

Per capita energy use in the US is roughly 333 million BTU/person (100 quadrillion BTU/300 million people). So, four people at the per capita rate is roughly 1.3 billion BTU -- or more than 13 times the amount of energy used for that theoretical flight.

If you want to restrict the data to residential energy consumption, it is about 21% of total energy consumption. So that takes it to about 300 million BTUs of residential energy consumption for four people -- more than three times the energy used for the round trip flight.

Even if you take into account that some energy consumed by residences doesn't put out CO2 directly (eg nukes and hydro), about 83% of residential energy comes from fossil fuels. So that still doesn't put the CO2 outout from that flight anywhere near that from a residence.

If you want to look at it compared to a vehicle, the private vehicle in the US gets about 20 mpg and the average household (of only 2.6 people) drives 21,000 miles per year. Gasoline is 125,000 BTU/gallon.

(21,000 miles / 20 MPG) * 125,000 BTU/gallon = 131,250,000 BTU

That's also more than the amount consumed in that flight -- and that's for 2.6 people. Normalize it to 4 people and you get a little over 200 million BTU.

Per dollar of GDP, the UK uses about 75% of the energy of the US -- so even adjusting for the greater average efficiency there (which is mostly due to climate and density differences), the numbers used still don't wash.

So, now that the statistics have been clarified, there's the issue of comparing a shared mode (eg, airplanes, trains, buses) with modes and choices which can be controlled on the margin (eg, car trips, household energy use). If four people get on an international flight, they only serve to reduce the amount of energy consumed per person. Very little extra energy is consumed from adding 600 pounds to a big jet. Same goes for travelling by bus or train -- and it's the reason that BTU per passenger mile figures for bus transit in the US are WORSE than for passenger cars. It's because of the low average ridership on bus transit.

Then there's the whole issue of trains and buses not being substitutes for planes -- especially on theoretical transatlantic flights. How would the author have that family of four get to New York? Swim? Sail? Take a cruise ship? No train or bus is going to get them there. So, it's kind of disingenuous to compare those modes, since they don't do the same things (not to mention the vast difference in speeds).

You could then go on to compare something like long-distance Amtrak (with its lovely diesel spew) to a modern jet aircraft. You could also look at safety figures.

In sum, not much value in these sorts of comparisons, and people shouldn't feel guilty about going out in the world and travelling -- it makes the world a better place. We should encourage it.

For those of us who would love to see a train revolution in America, are there any (at least semi-effective) groups out there that we could get involved with? Any recomendations?

Of course, I'll do some research myself, but a lot of you seem to already be in the know.

Thanks in advance.

This is why we need pulse detonation engines.

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/AERO/base/pdet.htm

Joseph,

I believe the real problem isn't the amount of power/fuel, it's the pollution. I believe that a jet liner produces many times more pollution per passenger than an automobile. Automobiles have fairly good emissions controls. Trucks and motorcycles have little or none, and little 2-stroke vespa scooters produce 10-20 times more pollution than a car, despite having 4-5 times better fuel economy.

"I believe the real problem isn't the amount of power/fuel, it's the pollution. I believe that a jet liner produces many times more pollution per passenger than an automobile."

I'd like to see some hard numbers on that, because I find that hard to believe.

The author was somewhat vague in speaking of "emissions", but then went on to focus on CO2 specifically, and fuel consumption is pretty much a direct analogue for CO2 emissions -- so my point still stands with respect to that pollutant.

And take a look at how much progress has been made with commercial aircraft vis-a-vis light vehicles over the years:
http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/2005/html/table_04_20_m.html

In terms of energy intensity, they're roughly at parity now, whereas there was a huge difference a generation ago.

Again, let's see the data, because all I can find at this point are reports from the EPA about contributions to local air quality, and the percentage contribution of aircraft in the six criteria pollutants is at par or lower than their average share of fuel consumption in all transportation.

And again, if the supposed alternative is long-distance rail, there's no way that the diesel engines of Amtrak are even remotely as clean as aircraft emissions.

I'll leave the number crunching for others, but I have serious doubts about the second assertion in this article. "One transatlantic flight for a family of four creates more CO2 than that family generates domestically in an entire year. Because of this many travellers are turning their backs on flying and going overland." Many travelers? Has anyone ever heard a single person say that their choice of air vs. land travel was influenced by the relative CO2 output of the modes of transportation? Seriously, people! That kind of absurd statement makes the environmentalist movement such an easy target for, well, normal people. So let's recap the real reasons why people would choose to take a train, bus or car over a plane: price, convenience, scheduling, comfort, time constraints, need for a car at the destination, reliability, weather, frequent-flier perks and safety. There may be some others, but CO2 output is nowhere on that list.

And again, if the supposed alternative is long-distance rail, there's no way that the diesel engines of Amtrak are even remotely as clean as aircraft emissions.

What's your logic on this? Both burn the fuel at high flame temperatures (thus lots of NOx), and both burn a fuel that is a non-volatile distillate (jet fuel, kerosene and diesel are all really close to each other in composition, they get pulled out of the cracking towers real close to each other) so thus produce roughly equivalent amounts of particulate. Turboprop aircraft will often get soot stains from the fuel on the wings aft of the exhaust (most/all turbofan jets don't let the exhaust gasses over the wings at all, so no soot can get deposited).

Perhaps the very high exhaust velocity of the jet compared to the relatively slow velocity of the diesel trains makes it appear as though the jets are burning clean vs. the dirty trains. I would consider that the trains might even be cleaner, since they could (theoretically) put in emissions control stuff in the exhaust, whereas the jet engines just take the fuel, burn it, then shove the hot gas straight through the turbines and out the back of the plane, where you couldn't put anything in line without compromising the high exhaust velocity needed to propel the aircraft.

""One transatlantic flight for a family of four creates more CO2 than that family generates domestically in an entire year. Because of this many travellers are turning their backs on flying and going overland." Many travelers? Has anyone ever heard a single person say that their choice of air vs. land travel was influenced by the relative CO2 output of the modes of transportation? Seriously, people! That kind of absurd statement makes the environmentalist movement such an easy target for, well, normal people.""

OK I HAVE A QUESTION?? i thought i saw it before and i did i did saw it... are people saying that they are going over land because transatlantic flights are too polluting? huh? how to yougo frmo new york to london by land?? by sea maybe, but by land? whywould ANYONE debate the emissions from an argument where people are choosing to drive their cars across the atlantic ocean?? makes NO sense to me. I think your car would get caught in the gulf stream.... you would defintely get a flat. and then when your car sinks, the sandwhich in the glove compartment will rot and put methane back into the atmosphere.... WHAT??

sorry ok im better now.... and thinking about good trains... and watching the japanese go 502 KmH with magLevs....

Dandy, I found a nice synopsis of this here:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~dujs/2004S/travelimpacts.pdf

The relevant comparison is in Table 2 on page 14.

Note, too, that the energy intensity data used in that report is out of date, as intensity for commercial domestic aircraft has come down about 600 BTU/passenger-mile compared to the figures they used. That should then make the emissions difference even greater than the figures they calculated.

Also keep in mind that Amtrak energy intensity data is aggregated for both electric and diesel trains. So, that's going to skew the true energy intensity data for diesel alone -- which is definitely higher than the overall average (which is just common sense).

So I stand by what I said.

Dandy, you might also want to reference this chapter from the Transportation Energy Data Book:
http://cta.ornl.gov/data/tedb24/Edition24_Chapter09.pdf

which comes up with much different energy intensity data than the ones in the National Transportation Statistics.

All, interesting to read the debate over air travel. In response, I am aware of a growing body of people who are seriously thinking about not flying, or reducing the amount they fly, because of CO2 emmissions. According to leading climate scientists we are fast approaching an atmospheric level of CO2 which results in a 'no going back' warm up scenario triggering severe climate related problems world wide, such as famine/drought/sea level rise. Only by reducing CO2 emmissions now, can we potentially avoid this. Because aviation fuel is untaxed it becomes financially attractive as opposed to car/rail travel.
Another challenge facing us is peak oil, British Petroleum predict peak oil to be in the next 10 years, with shortages in 40 years. Unless alternatives are found witin 40 years flying could be an exclusive transport for the mega rich -If we continue to structure our society based on air travel we may well pay the price in years to come.

I am a private pilot, and I now live in South America, where travel back to the US or to Europe requires flying.

For my recreational flying I use gliders. Although the five minute tow requires fuel, I can then spend hours running on solar energy (thermals). My longest flight was nearly five hours, only five minutes of those required fuel (a bit more than a gallon). Still, I understand this is an optional activity, so it's not my greenest behavior.

As for travel, I don't fly long-haul frequently: I've averaged one trip per year over the past 10. I do fly short business flights regionally about once a month. As a single passenger, driving would not save fuel, and trains are not available. I suppose I could starve, but this is not an option either.

To compensate, I spend effort saving electricity. In my building, a co-op with 40 families, I've proposed and was able to get them to make various changes which are saving about 24,000KWh per year. I've got another 10,000 targeted, and now I'm looking at neighboring buildings, electricity bills in hand.

I drive a small, 2,000-pound car. Fewer SUVs here and no monster ones, so the lower weight is acceptable. I would not drive such a light car back home. I also take public transport during the week as much as possible.

But the flying I do I can't give up. Aircraft today use half the fuel of 30 years ago, and all the civilian aircraft in the world put together use less than 3% of the world's oil, versus 40% for cars. It's only an issue at all because 1) Flying is expected to continue to grow, and 2) Aircraft pollute the upper atmosphere and form contrails. It is not, however, the most pressing issue today.

We are driving ourselves to death, not flying (yet). Down the road, aircraft will simply run on hydrogen. This has already been tested. It's very easy to run turbines on H2. The tanks are bigger, and would occupy part of the fuselage, but the fuel is light and this compensates.

This is why it's dangerous to let idiots have information. They think they know what they're talking about when they're completely wrong and they broadcast it to the public who believes them.

a 150 person jet liner gets around .4 MPG... which is around 200 MPG per person.

Maybe if you have a very high efficiency car and you're driving around a family of 4 you can approach this. But that's best case scenario.

It is much better for the environment to fly for long distance travel.. I hope those idiot hippies realize their stupidity is not only wasting their time but hurting the environment.

Its about time we ban commercial air travel and adopt greener transport technology. I believe that if all commercial air traffic were halted (as the days following 9/11) a noticeable positive trend in air quality and temperature would follow. It may even be enough to offset all other CO2 emmitters.

As a mechanical engineer with over 27 years experience, I know that jet engines are the least efficient combustion engines ever. They acheive enourmous thrust by becoming "fuel sprayers." Further, they apply their exhausts at the upper atmosphere, where their absorption is long delayed as compared with ground based polluters.

I like trains, small cars, bicycles (I have travelled cross country by bike), ships, AND lets bring back the lighter-than-air ships (with today's technology, we can make beautiful luxury airships safe and convenient).

Thank you for posting this type of article, because it is not covered elsewhere.

I work for Air Canada so you can take this with as much salt as you wish.

If the 3000 people Air Canada carries every day ONE WAY between Toronto and Vancouver drove in Toyota Camry's, 2 per car:

1. Fuel consumed by autos would be 117,000 litres more than by air
   
2. 260 tires would be sent to landfill at 100,000 km per set of tires
   
3. 22 car lifetimes would be consumed at 300,000 km lifetime (22 more cars in landfill)
   
4. 73,000 kg more CO2 would be produced
   
5. There would be one additional death every 24 days just due to the additional road miles (1.2 deaths per 160 million km) (15 people per year)
   
6. It would be necessary to increase road infrastructure, creating even more pollution and destroying natural habitat.
   

I have also seen documentation that travel by train creates more carbon emissions per passenger than travel by car with 1.6 people per car, but I have also seen numbers the other way on this.

Busses are apparently the most efficient means of transportation, but aforementioned deaths would be even higher if one had to sit beside a large stranger for 3 days who had not bathed since departure. ;-)

With regards to the Travel Impacts study done by Dartmouth (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~dujs/2004S/travelimpacts.pdf), I find the slant of the author to be quite unsettling.

This person is taking scientific data and skewing the writing to make the point he wants. While his HEAVY concern for the other kinds of pollution generated by travel are noted (Hydrocarbons, CO, NOx, SOx, etc.) the point still remains that Air Travel consumes more than twice as much per passenger mile than trains. This is a REALLY important distinction because CO2 emissions are the most threatening pollutant that the world is dealing with. While the point is taken that in terms of other pollutants, planes and trains are comparable, the fact remains that air travel is way more energy intensive and CO2 pollutive than rail.

Furthermore, if the postee was a worldly person, then he would know that in many countries, it is cheaper to fly than to ride the train, which really makes no sense. The problem intelligent, forward thinking people are trying to address is, how can we change our transit policy so that we can prevent global climate change. Of course, some choose not to ask that question, and instead ask for more of the same because of dogmatic beliefs. Which are you?

While air travel might seem more efficient than a car when flying from toronto to vancouver the point is really that people should neither fly nor drive so much.

However, there are also other problems with flying such as the increased fuel consumption during takeoff and landing (making flying from vancouver to seattle highly inefficient), the fact that CO2 emitted at high altitude is worse than sea level emissions, and the climate change impact of water vapour from jet engines is rather high.

As I read through all the comments posted, there is one other environmental consideration. The human environment. A few years ago my ability to fly and deal with crowds made me cringe.
Having traveled from NY to Grand Junction, CO, two years ago, what most impressed me was having a true, great American experience. I was lucky, I bit the cost bullet and traveled by myself in a roomette. I read three books (a real luxury), listened to music, worked on my computer, saw all kinds of wildlife and dozed off with feet up. My favorite part was breakfast and dinner. You are seated with strangers, and find yourself having great conversations and truly interacting with people instead of avoiding them. The Amtrak porters were also especially nice. The whole thing seemed so incredibly polite, i was shocked.

I couldn't help but think this was the way travel should be. We've been conditioned to wait in lines, feeling trapped before we even board a plane. Not so with the train. I'm sure others have bad experiences and complain the trains are late. (I heard a few people philosophize, "You don't take Amtrak to be there on time. Though mine actually was on time). Imagine if we could have more civil experiences through a form of travel that's enjoyable. Possibly, if trains became more popular again solely because of the experience, we could see greater numbers of people taking this mode of transportation. We would see the technology and efficiency that exists improve travel. I'd like to see the fuel comparison numbers then. Fares would come down, frequency and additional rails would increase, and perhaps we could all get to know the person next to us a little bit better. Kind of gives new meaning to the phrase, environmentally-friendly.

I'm strongly considering attending school in Vancouver, though I live in Toronto. This would come out to 4 flights per year... I looked this article up because I wanted to know the pros and cons of train vs. plane. So far, the article hasn't been too helpful and the posts are confusing.

From my limited understanding, I think that flying from Toronto to Montreal seems like a waste as compared to the train. I have no numbers to back it up, but it just seems like that to me...

Does anyone have any advice?

Maybe I'll just forget it all and go to school closer to home.

I'm traveling from Salem, Oregon to Seattle, Washington in a few weeks, and I've chosen to take the train.

My reasons for doing this were that I don't like to drive in Seattle, I don't like to deal with the whole airport hassle, and I live a comfortable 20 minute walk away from the train station in Salem.

I haven't crunched the numbers, but I'm fairly certain that it is more fuel efficient to ride the train than it is to drive one person in a car. That's not the reason I chose to do it, but it's kind of a nice additional warm fuzzy.

It also costs approximately three times as much to fly for a time savings of, maybe, an hour each way.

So, what I'm thinking is that it's probably most efficient and clean to walk or cycle short distances (a mile or five), ride the bus or take the train medium distances, and fly long distances. I'm not crunching the numbers, but then again, there's enough variability in the statistics and methods used for calculating this that one could probably make assumptions to "prove" anything that they want.