Comments on: Planes, trains, or automobiles? Green transportation choices are not clear cut

By: Scholars and Rogues » Planes, trains, or automobiles? Green … | India Updates

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:46:13 +0000

[...] the original post: Scholars and Rogues » Planes, trains, or automobiles? Green … Share and [...]

By: Scholars and Rogues » The Weekly Carboholic: ACCCE hired Bonner, but didn’t notify Congress of forgeries when they were discovered

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 04:20:05 +0000

[...] these complaints are actually the tip of the metaphorical iceberg. As S&R reported last month, GHG and pollution emissions vary with the total lifecycle of that transportation method. For this reason, replacing “clunkers” that aren’t truly clunkers could actually [...]

By: Brian Angliss

Brian Angliss — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:37:40 +0000

Agreed, Adam. There was so much to dive into in this study that it could easily take another two or three posts like this just to address half of the nuances I’ve identified. Stuff like the passenger variability is vitally important, as is trying to compare just long-distance transportation modes with other long-distance modes. And while I made a few back-of-the-envelope calculations about how much fuel emissions might fall (GHG only) in the article above, I could look further at the infrastructure numbers too, like estimating what happens to the GHG emissions of light rail (concrete railroad ties, specifically) when replaced with some other hypothetical tie material. And how might road/bus infrastructure change as a result of “peak oil” limitations on asphalt production from oil refineries?

I’ve read a few criticisms of this paper and the passenger-kilometer traveled metric that the authors used, and in general the criticisms are reasonable, if (IMO) lacking in some common sense. After all, comparing a large aircraft to a car or a long-distance diesel train is reasonable, but maybe not so much to light rail given that light rail is almost exclusively urban. This nuance is missing from the paper, but the data is still there – you just have to pull it out yourself.

This paper is an excellent next step into determining the lifecycle costs of transportation. Follow-on papers should dive deeper into the end-of-life questions that the authors didn’t address fully, address all of the things I’ve mentioned in this comment and more, and should broaden out the analysis to more types of vehicles (diesel-hybrid busses, for example), and so on.

I look forward to reading more about this in the future.

By: A Siegel

A Siegel — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:43:28 +0000

Excellent discussion of this study. What I really found of value was the bringing into the discussion of the entire infrastructure into the life-cycle cost comparison.

A good discussion (with 100+ comments) of it here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/7/3/749464/-Morning-Feature:-Mass-TransitOur-Lives-and-Footprints-(Plus-Kossascopes)

By: Martin Bosworth (martinboz) 's status on Monday, 20-Jul-09 15:30:48 UTC - Identi.ca

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:31:27 +0000

[...] http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2009/07/20/planes_trains_or_automobiles/ [...]

By: Dr. Slammy

Dr. Slammy — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:50:35 +0000

People generally, and Americans in particular, seem to be really bad at big picture analyses like this one. I now find myself slightly less excited about Denver’s light rail build-out. Compared to buses, it seems like not a great idea. The comparison, though, isn’t with buses, because culturally Denverites are never going to be huge on that. Compared to everybody in Aurora and Denver West DRIVING to work in their SUVs, rail looks better.

Good piece – let’s hope this study gets a lot more exposure than we all know it’s going to get…..