Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Trains are more efficient and less polluting than other transportation modes

citylab.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 334 posts

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

#131

Post by jfoutz »

kposehn wrote: post #116
narag wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Power density is the main issue. There are some experiments with batteries, for sure, but you can't really create the same density of stored energy as diesel that would actually fit on a frame and can be recharged in some semblance of a normal time . IIRC it was bandied back and forth but you'd only get a few hours of peak load, vs a diesel which can run at peak power for days before running out of fuel.

I wonder if batteries, motor and third rail connections could be added to the flat cars that carry shipping containers. Skip the engine all together, and make trains fully dynamic. Probably not worth the cost.

It would be kinda cool to see a long train split in half , front and back taking different routes.

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

#132

Post by apatheticonion »

bronco21016 wrote: post #62

I’ve visited Europe many times and I do like how the region is so easily accessible without a car, largely because of trains, but there are many more factors outside of just having trains. European cities are far more walkable and accessible without a car. For decades the US has just not been built up in this way so just dropping trains in doesn’t suddenly make them preferred and thus viable. The reason people drive…

Excuse my ignorance, but my foreigner layman's opinion is that your cities ain't broke, the US is the richest nation on Earth. Y'all just need to tax better and spend wiser.

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

#133

Post by Gibbon1 »

jcranmer wrote: post #103
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…

Thing that solves those issues are battery powered locomotives. This idea generally invites disbelief but when you run the numbers it works because the power to weight requirements drop as vehicles get larger.

The result you can use overhead lines where safe, cheap and convenient and avoid them where they are not, like rail switching yards.

https://www.railjournal.com/regions/north-america/bnsf-and-g...

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

#134

Post by tomglynch »

kortilla wrote: post #84
luckydata wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming from Europe and stealing a large swath of largely unexploited land has done great things for the American economy. Unfortunately the majority of my fellow americans insist in believing it's all due to hard work and superior moral fiber, because everywhere else people are just lazy and corrupt :)

Land has been completely irrelevant to the success of the entire information economy and the US still dominates that. It has nothing to do with a “superior moral fiber”, it’s about having an environment that promotes innovation and businesses based on new innovations.

Irrelevant? Having the land to generate the dollars to begin the information economy sure was helpful...

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

#135

Post by kylek »

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…

I think this also has to do with EU cities being much older, and "grew up" prior to automobiles even existing/being wide-spread. American cities/sprawls are designed around the automobile (and maybe some sick idea of "the american dream" pushed by early industrialists)

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

#136

Post by melling »

gruez wrote: post #101
bsanr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Japan’s first high-speed rail went operational in 1964. I imagine if the US soon followed in half a dozen cities, rail would be looked upon quite differently today.

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

#137

Post by usaphp »

mabbo wrote: post #112

My wife and I took a trip to the middle of nowhere in Wales last fall. Train to Cardiff from London, then from Cardiff to our little cottage in the Pembrokeshire coast, I drove for 2+ hours in a rental car, learning to drive on the left. The day after we arrived, we learned we could have caught a train to Fishguard, a tiny village nearby, and then the local bus would have gotten us within a ten minute walk from our r…

> learning to drive on the left

I guess it depends on a person, but I did not have any issue driving in Thailand, it felt natural after 10 minutes.

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

#138

Post by gilbetron »

mamon wrote: post #4

Once again, Americans are "discovering" things other civilized countries knew and implemented for a long time :)

The US has the largest train network in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_tran...

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

#139

Post by throwawayjava »

ams6110 wrote: post #97
haimez wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not practical in the same space. What train or flight plans will you be canceling in favor of cycling?

None. That's the point. Just because something is cleaner does not make it practical. Passenger rail isn't happening in the USA. It would take huge investment, and flying would always win on route flexibility. Once you build a rail line you're pretty committed to it. Flight routes can be changed on demand. Just get over it. We'll never see widespread intercity rail in the USA.

> Once you build a rail line you're pretty committed to it

...sure. But also, once you build a 5+ million person metro area you're pretty committed to it...

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

#140

Post by melling »

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…

Planes only make one stop at the final destination.

The high-speed train between New York and Boston could make two or three stops, for example.

I think 9 million people travel between San Francisco and Los Angeles every year. Wouldn’t that be best served by trains?

As the US grows from 350,000,000 to 450,000,000 people, should we add a few more trains every day, or a few dozen airplanes?

Post reply on HN