Trains are more efficient and less polluting than other transportation modes • Hacker News Board

Re: Trains are more efficient and less polluting than other transportation modes

#101

Post by gruez » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 12:59 AM UTC

bsanr wrote: post #59

gruez wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's relevant to mention [1] and [2]. A lot of things can get done if you aren't constrained by economic and political considerations. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19549466 [2] https://www.ft.com/content/ca28f58a-955d-11e8-b747-fb1e803ee...

For what it's worth, the Interstate Highway System and connecting roadways also receive special financial and political consideration, often and infamously to the detriment of working class/politically-disadvantaged middle class (and often minority) communities.

At the time, the alternative to the interstate were local roads which took 2-3x longer[1] (and probably at least 2x more expensive factoring in time, gas, and lodging), or commercial aviation which was crazy expensive[2]. What's the alternative to HSR? Planes which are in the same ballpark in terms of speeed and cost.

[1] https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/how-did-people-drive...

[2] https://www.travelandleisure.com/airlines-airports/history-o...

Re: Trains are more efficient and less polluting than other transportation modes

#102

Post by gbacon » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 1:00 AM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #63

gruez wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, but it's still relevant to note whether something is successful on its own accord, or whether it's being propped up by the government. If something can't be profitably done in a country as dense as China, there's no hope of it ever working in the US. At that point you might as well go with planes and spend the savings on carbon sequestration methods instead.

Rail is publically funded pretty much everywhere (i.e. it doesn't make a direct profit if you factor in infrastruture costs). Just because the market won't pay for it doesn't mean that it isn't worthwhile.

Anything can be said to be “worthwhile,” a political rather than an economic characterization commonly followed by handwavy appeals to unidentified stakeholders, intangible dividends, and vague but supposedly urgent need.

If customers are unwilling to pay the asking price for an offering, the value proposition is off. Perhaps the model is bad, the price too expensive, or the terms old-fashioned. “The market” is individuals seeking mutually beneficial trades: greedy capitalists and greedy consumers. If the trades aren’t happening, the necessary mutual benefit is not present. Forcing people to render services or accept services for terms they wouldn’t voluntarily agree to is not freedom.

Yes, voluntary persuasion is hard work.

Re: Trains are more efficient and less polluting than other transportation modes

#103

Post by jcranmer » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 1:00 AM UTC

temp-dude-87844 wrote: post #8

Most of the US freight rail system isn't electrified because the capital expenditures of doing so would be very large, and its return on investment in terms of direct monetary savings wouldn't materialize for many, many years. Since externalities aren't priced in, diesel-electric locomotives haul most trains in the US. More passenger rail isn't really being built in the US, because the capital expenditures of doing s…

> Most of the US freight rail system isn't electrified because the capital expenditures of doing so would be very large, and its return on investment in terms of direct monetary savings wouldn't materialize for many, many years.

There's a decent amount of mainline freight rail that was electrified 100 years ago but has since been ripped out. It turns out that electrification has a lot of operational constraints that make it a less-clearly-good proposition.

One obvious constraint is loading gauge issues--you need about another 2 feet of clearance for the wires. And if one bridge or tunnel along your entire route isn't high enough, you can't move along the double-stacked containers. You also need a lot of infrastructure for the tractive power substations, and if you don't have enough of them, you literally can't run more trains if the traffic demands it (and too many means infrastructure costs you're not benefiting from). The operational inflexibilities of electric locomotives in partially-electrified systems should have course be obvious.

That said, there are substantial benefits to having electric motors driving your wheels... which is why virtually all diesel locomotives are actually diesel-electric locomotives: electric locomotives that use a diesel generator onboard rather than hooking up to electrical catenary or third rail.

Re: Trains are more efficient and less polluting than other transportation modes

#104

Post by dashundchen » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 1:02 AM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #36

shereadsthenews wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you think of an American state with a growing population you can take the existing infrastructure as a given and plan for rail for your new capacity. Unless you are willing to say we're just not going to add transportation capacity for our new citizens, you face a choice of road, rail, or air. Rail is often a good choice. As for "far apart" this seems irrelevant. Ohio has a greater population density than does S…

I'm curious how long Europe's famous rail infrastructure will continue to be cost-effective in the era of Ryanair.

Germany recently finished upgrading a good chunk of the line between Berlin and Munich, dropping travel time from 6+ hours to under 4 on the sprinter.

Train service now has a marketshare of 46-30 vs flying, and widening. I'm certain it was reversed before.

People like fast center-to-center connections.

https://www.rbb24.de/wirtschaft/beitrag/2018/12/vde8-deutsch...

Re: Trains are more efficient and less polluting than other transportation modes

#105

Post by johannes1234321 » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 1:08 AM UTC

narag wrote: post #89

kposehn wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well put. Until they have a good reason, the major freight railroads (BNSF/UP/CSX/NS/CN/CP/KCS) will continue to be all-diesel. Also, as emissions requirements have gotten more stringent they've moved to rebuilding older power (which gets around the current Tier-4 requirements instead of buying as much newer motive power. In fact, a number of the most recent-gen units have been stored as they're often 15% less effici…

Excuse if this is an absurd idea, I really don't know. But... Wouldn't it be possible to use (giant) batteries? It sounds terribly dangerous, but possible?

There are experimental train engines with pantograph for mainlines and batteries for the "last mile" the issue is that for freight you often have heavy trains which need lots of power, pulling the required batteries would need lots of power as well, not to mention charging times.

More likely in the short term are electric engines, with a Diesel generator for the last mile (i.e. Bombardier TRAXX)

Re: Trains are more efficient and less polluting than other transportation modes

#106

Post by nicoburns » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 1:08 AM UTC

gruez wrote: post #73

nicoburns wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rail is publically funded pretty much everywhere (i.e. it doesn't make a direct profit if you factor in infrastruture costs). Just because the market won't pay for it doesn't mean that it isn't worthwhile.

>Rail is publically funded pretty much everywhere (i.e. it doesn't make a direct profit if you factor in infrastruture costs). You could argue that there are positive externalities to building high speed rail that make the public funding worth it. For commuter trains it's reduced congestion and cheaper housing (allowing people to move to the suburbs). Thus a train service can operate at a loss while still making mone…

For really long distances across sparsely populated areas like parts of the US, it probably doesn't make much sense.

I think thw biggest win would be in cities. People wouldn't need to take cars everywhere, so you build things more densely, etc.

Re: Trains are more efficient and less polluting than other transportation modes

#107

Post by jcranmer » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 1:10 AM UTC

shereadsthenews wrote: post #100

jcranmer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where HSR excels is in being able to service several city pairs on a single line. The Northeast Corridor is a great example: you can have a single train service all pairs of {Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, NYC, Boston} at negligible extra expense in time and money. Thus you can add in stops like Providence, which don't generate all that many trips on their own, simply because it is literally on the way to where…

The requirement for colinearity seems like something you made up. And, you don’t gauge travel demand for one mode based on another. They didn’t build the Golden Gate Bridge because there were many people swimming to Marin. Two well-connected cities with robust economies will enjoy strong travel demand.

There are many things that factor into how likely HSR is to be used. Intercity travel demand is one of the chief metrics, but you also have to consider the quality of intracity public transport. Indianapolis and Columbus as a city pair simply does not score very well on this metric; you'd put the billions of dollars investment to much better use elsewhere.

The point about collinearity is that you can make a strong demand by combining many individually weak demands. And this is the problem in the Midwest: the strong demand is Chicago, and it has a lot of moderate demand endpoints, such as St. Louis, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Detroit. But the real strong city pair is Chicago/NYC, which is already at the extreme margins of acceptable time, which means substantial detours to hook up the lesser demand centers is going to kill ridership.

Re: Trains are more efficient and less polluting than other transportation modes

#108

Post by AnimalMuppet » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 1:10 AM UTC

youeseh wrote: post #74

dorfsmay wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it have to be maglev? Does it have to be that slow? Modern trains with wheels on rails are typically between 200 and 300 km/h: https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-high-speed-rail-... *edit: replaced old link with a better one.

Parent commenter said, "maglev", so I stayed on that train of thought.

Pun intended?

Re: Trains are more efficient and less polluting than other transportation modes

#109

Post by tomjakubowski » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 1:11 AM UTC

jackcosgrove wrote: post #90

The main reason US cities rely on automobiles is because the "job watershed" of a private automobile exceeds the job watershed of train systems everywhere in the US, even New York City. The job watershed is the number of jobs within commuting distance, whatever your tolerance for a commute is, given a transportation modality. In some cities the automobile job watershed is 100x larger than the transit job watershed. T…

All of that is interesting but the article, and GP, were talking about interurban transportation, not commuting to work. The flexibility of bus networks (using road infrastructure that would needed anyway for commerce) is desirable to be sure in metropolitan areas, but not as applicable or useful to inter-city routes.

Re: Trains are more efficient and less polluting than other transportation modes

#110

Post by nicoburns » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 1:12 AM UTC

gbacon wrote: post #102

nicoburns wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rail is publically funded pretty much everywhere (i.e. it doesn't make a direct profit if you factor in infrastruture costs). Just because the market won't pay for it doesn't mean that it isn't worthwhile.

Anything can be said to be “worthwhile,” a political rather than an economic characterization commonly followed by handwavy appeals to unidentified stakeholders, intangible dividends, and vague but supposedly urgent need. If customers are unwilling to pay the asking price for an offering, the value proposition is off. Perhaps the model is bad, the price too expensive, or the terms old-fashioned. “The market” is indiv…

> If the trades aren’t happening, the necessary mutual benefit is not present.

Then why does the US governement fund roads? Because there's a collective bargaining / coordination problem. It benefits us overall if we have them, but that doesn't mean that a profit could be usefully generated from maintaining them, or that this is the best way of running the system (we want to maximise use of the infrastructure, not discourage use with high usage tariffs).

The is fundamentally an economic argument, albeit one that recognises value beyond monetary value.