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Posted on 07/25/2007 1:16:59 PM PDT by sionnsar
Rail mass transit is supposed to be good for the environment. But a leading critic of Sound Transit's Link light rail project offers metrics that suggest the environmental costs are much higher than those of more vanpools, more carpools, more buses, and, particularly, more bicycling.Excavating a six-mile, twin-bore tunnel and hauling away the rocks and muck is like digging a huge hole and pouring money in it. The lesson has been confirmed by the Beacon Hill tunnel, an experience so sobering that it prompted Sound Transit, which is building light rail from downtown to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, to bail out of a First Hill station, to save $350 million and reduce risk exposure. Sound Transit pegs the cost to tunnel north from downtown Seattle at $500 million per mile.
Worrying financial costs aside, what about the environmental costs and benefits of rail transit? Surprisingly, rail’s environmental costs are quite adverse.
Start with the tunneling, which turns out to entail a prodigious outpouring of energy and release of greenhouse gases. To extend light rail service north from downtown, the next phase, Sound Transit will have to dig through and remove more than 600,000 cubic yards of rock and muck — equivalent to a pile of debris 350 miles long, three feet wide, and three feet high. Sound Transit plans to expend lots of energy digging and excavating that stuff: 17.4 trillion British Thermal Units, according to its environmental-impact statement, equivalent to the energy in 140 million gallons of gasoline. That much gas, or diesel, would fill 8,000-gallon tanker trucks lined up from Seattle to Canada. If all the energy consumed by tunnel-excavating and hauling is generated by gasoline or diesel, it will emit nearly 1.3 million tons of greenhouse gases, CO2, into the environment.
As an offset, Sound Transit claims it will save 14,000 tons of CO2 annually by running light rail trains on electricity, sparing the region emissions that otherwise would be generated by automotive traffic. Even if granted, it would take 90 years from completion of the line to break even on the energy transaction. If Sound Transit should manage to cut tunnel-related greenhouse emissions in half, by aggressive use of hydro electricity and human labor, an implausible proposition, it still would take 45 years to break even.
Moreover, the agency's calculations assume no improvements in automotive fuel efficiency. Yet Congress in this session might enact a measure to raise average mileage from 25 to 35 miles per gallon by 2018. That one conservation measure, a 40 percent per mile improvement even before the tunnel will be complete, would extend Sound Transit's greenhouse gas pay-back period to the year 2088.
Further, public transit's contribution to fuel efficiency is exaggerated. According to the U.S. Department of Energy's 2006 Data Book, per-passenger energy consumed by rail transit is only 19 percent more fuel efficient than today's automobiles (2,784 vs. 3,445 BTUs per passenger mile). If the improvements before Congress are enacted, shortly cars will be more energy-efficient. Bus transit already is 25 percent less fuel-efficient than cars (3,445 vs. 4,323 BTUs).
And the data make the energy performance of rail transit appear better than it really is. The reason is urban rail in the U.S. primarily is used in New York City, where it's more fuel-efficient than elsewhere, due to the packed subways. Here, the local rail energy consumption average is inferior to New York's.
The most cost-effective and energy-efficient transportation option, it turns out, would be making more productive use of existing capabilities. ...
I want my trains, damn the costs...Ron “Tax-to-the-Max” Sims
The “Bicycle Left” in Seattle is about a dozen latte-heads who want more people to take their bikes so they can take their cars.
Too bad this guy didn’t bring this up a few years ago.
This country is losing their sanity over this stupid CO2 nonsense. Thanks Al, I hope you get run over by an electric train.
Who cares about costs, as long as certain cottage-cheese heads feel gooooooooooooooooooooood about "saving the environment"...
/sarc.
Last time I calculated it, we could pay every rider $45,000 per year to stay home and do nothing. That would be cheaper than the Light Rail system for Seattle.
Seattle already has the monorail to nowhere
Maybe the light rail is a bad idea, but to use the term “carbon cost” undercuts your credibility from the get-go.
The Cho-Cho train we have going in down Phoenix’s main drag will move along at 22mph.
Well, Bicycling is OF COURSE the most efficient of getting around. There is no argument in that.
I will go further to say that driving your average car, alone, is more ecologically friendly than public transport. It also generates more money for the state and it’s programs, many of which will be dedicated to the betterment of it’s inhabitants (I’m clicking my heels here, I know)
But still, Bicycling is very efficient for short distances. Like, around the block. And unless you live around the block from a grocery store, pharmacy and gun store (We all have our priorities) then you’re also talking about a HUGE chunk of personal time occupied just getting around.
If I rode a bike to work, a mere 8 miles each way, then no one will argue that I am doing my part to save the planet. No one, that is, but my wife who will have to hear the alarm clock ringing at 5 am and watch me arrive at home at 8 o’clock, tired as hell. I couldn’t do anything else BUT work and go to work.
On the other hand, I used to work in New York City (a 1.25 hour commute on the train). Again, even with the increase in pay the amount of my own life that went un-lived made me so miserable that I would drive a sherman tank to work if it meant me getting home 20 minutes sooner. A public transportation commute in the NorthEast US rarely, if ever, saves you time.
On the issue of money, public transportation may not cost more than driving a 1957 Bel Air to work, out of tune and with the AC on - But it DOES cost more than driving my humble little Honda CRX.
On the last point, is the efficiency. A bus will plume out thick coulds of smelly exhausts for just about every seat on that bus to equal 20 more emissions controlled, modern vehicles on the road. I would be hard-pressed to find a difference in emissions. It’s when you take the weight of the vehicle and the number of occupants that the ratio gets really sticky.
Busses, even empty, weigh a ton. Trains are worse. Trains are almost as fuel efficient as airplanes, if it wasn’t for an airplane covering more ground.
-> Steven
As a personal pat on my own back, I ride to work on a 250cc motorcycle. I’m loving my commute more than ever, and it costs me $15 every 2 weeks to go to work. For about $20 every two weeks my girlfriend can ride a bike 18 miles each way to work.
Written by a lefty, for consumption by lefties. I just thought it was hilarious.
I used to be a cycle-commuter. Started involuntarily when both cars were out of commission.
First commute: only 5 miles, but from the top of a BIG hill. Easy to get there, hard to get back. Took about an hour at first, dropped to (forgotten) once I got strong enough to climb that hill while still in the saddle.
Second commute: 12 miles, one short steep hill getting there. (We were down to one car.) About an hour each way -- I was AWAKE when I got there. Sponge bath on arrival.
Third commute: ~8 miles, flat (5 miles on a riverside bike trail). 26 minutes on the bike. 29 in the car. Showers at work. Two cars again, mine was only driven on weekends. (Good on the wallet.)
Now I'm ~9 miles from work but in a semi-rural setting with two routes in: a 60 MPH country highway with small shoulders, or a very narrow somewhat winding thoroughfare. I rode the first summer, but gave it up.
That sounds like a lot, but isn't really. The US uses 20.8 million barrels of oil per day @ 42 gallons per barrel. Gasoline is 9.2 million barrels of that. That would be 850 million gallons of oil products consumed per day in the US.
The Seattle tunnel, being built over several years, is a very small portion of this useage.
The author in making his calculations also ignores the similarly tremendous looking energy inputs used to create the highway and road systems cars travel on.
The purpose of building a rail line is to haul a lot of people or goods by alternative means than roads between points, A, B, C, D, etc. A very heavily used 6-8 lane freeway might have 175,000 to 200,000 vehicles per day moving over it. If a rail line like Seattle's can carry 75,000 or 100,000 people, its the equivalent of half the cost and half the function of a major new freeway.
I think I like you already. ;-)
True, but those are mostly sunk costs.
The ignorance of looking at the alternatives in terms of relative CO2 output would be funny, if not so tragic.
CO2 isn’t something that ‘stacks up’ in the atmosphere, but is absorbed by the oceans almost limitlessly.
That's an apples and oranges comparison, because one happens to already be built and the other does not.
Those are sunk costs only for the lifetime of the materials. Then a total reconstruction is needed, usually a paving every 10 years and a total reconstruction every 40-50.
Once the rail tunnel is built, it will be a sunk cost too. And there is no record yet of a rail (or highway) tunnel needing to be rebuilt once constructed.
Publius ping
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