By Andy May
The United States Department of Transportation tells us in their online report “Public Transportation’s Role in responding to Climate Change” that we should use public transportation to reduce our greenhouse emissions. This claim is also made in Time’s “Global Warming Survival Guide.” Even the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) recommended public transportation, in 2017, as “one of the best ways to reduce greenhouse emissions.” Public transportation does reduce congestion during peak traffic hours, but data from the National Transit Database suggests that cars are cheaper and use less fuel per passenger-mile traveled, so this claim is suspicious. Let’s examine it.
An APTA (American Public Transportation Association) report says:
“A single person, commuting alone by car, who switches a 20-mile round trip commute to existing public transportation, can reduce his or her annual CO2 emissions by 4,800 pounds per year, equal to a 10% reduction in all greenhouse gases produced by a typical two-adult, two-car household. By eliminating one car and taking public transportation instead of driving, a savings of up to 30% of carbon dioxide emissions can be realized.”
Even the Federal Transit Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation, says something similar:
“If just one driver per household switched to taking public transportation for a daily commute of 10 miles each way, this would save 4,627 pounds of carbon dioxide per household per year—equivalent to an 8.1% reduction in the annual carbon footprint of a typical American household.”
These quotes are so misleading, I’m tempted to call them criminal. Pay particular attention to the wording, especially “single person” switching to “existing public transportation” or “eliminating one car.” Wow! They framed that precisely, didn’t they? It’s a classic strawman fallacy.
Let’s examine the thesis in a more honest, straightforward and clear way. The goal is to transport people from home to work and back again. Is public transportation (bus or train) cheaper and does it use less fuel than driving in a personal car? We can save emissions (both greenhouse gas and true pollutants) by switching to natural gas or by using less fuel. A few transit buses use natural gas, but most use diesel, most light rail systems use electricity. Electricity is not very efficient, since only 32% of the primary energy used to produce it is delivered to the customer as electricity according to the EIA. Further, 30% of the electricity in the U.S. comes from coal, the dirtiest fuel according to the EIA. So, we will focus on the quantity of fuel used by cars, buses and light rail and the cost of each per passenger-mile.
Full disclosure, although I’m currently retired, I commuted to work by bus from 2008 until I retired in 2016. The decision to take the bus was not because of cost, although that helped. My company would either pay for the bus pass or parking and since the park-and-ride was a six-mile commute from my house and parking there was free, the bus was clearly cheaper for me personally. But, the main reason was to avoid almost two hours of driving every day.
Jeff Foxworthy, the redneck comedian, once said (paraphrasing): If you’re going 80 mph on the highway and every other car on the road is passing you, you’re in Houston on the Hardy Toll Road. The joke is a little old, today you could be on any of the Houston Toll Roads and the joke would still be true. Riding the bus was a relief, it was quality time to read or nap on the way to work and decompress on the way home. I enjoyed the bus ride and saved money at the same time.
But what about the cost to the community and the economy? The web site “Portland Facts” provides us with the data used to construct Table 1, which shows the total cost of commuting by personal car, light rail train and bus in 2007, in 2016 dollars:
Table 1. The passenger-mile cost of commuting by car, transit bus and automobile in 2007, in 2016 dollars. Source: Portland facts, AAA and the National Transit database (NTD).
Table 2 uses more recent data from the National Transit Database to show the same costs in 2016. Over the 9 years between the tables, the Toyota Corolla fuel use and cost per passenger-mile has stayed the same, light rail is now cheaper, but uses more fuel per passenger-mile (31.6 MPG versus 35.9 MPG) and the transit bus is more expensive but uses less fuel per passenger-mile (38 MPG versus 30 MPG in 2007). Both tables are in 2016 dollars, none of the costs are corrected for the difference in fuel prices. For those interested, the dollars in 2007 are 86% cheaper than the dollars today, that is the 2007 costs are multiplied by 1.16 to get to 2016 dollars.
By way of comparison, gasoline was about $2.40 in 2016 and $2.90 in 2007, but this difference is not considered in the tables. The miles-per-gallon values are computed by converting the volume of fuel used by buses and trains to BTU equivalents and then converting the BTUs to gallons of regular unleaded with 10% ethanol (E10 gasoline). The buses and trains use a variety of fuels, compressed natural gas, electricity, diesel and gasoline depending upon the city, but these can all be converted to BTUs of energy.
Natural gas, diesel and gasoline are primary sources of energy and their BTU equivalents are taken from this table in Wikipedia. Electricity is a secondary source of energy, the energy is created using coal, natural gas, nuclear or some other primary source and then transmitted to the end user for use. Creating electricity and transporting it involves a lot of losses and, on average, only 32% of the primary energy is delivered to the end user as electricity according to the EIA (see here for a discussion). For this reason, we used 10,666 BTUs per kWh to convert the electricity used by some light rail trains to gallons of gasoline equivalent, rather than the 3,413 given in the Wikipedia table. This is so the comparison of electricity to diesel, etc. is valid. Using this conversion factor, we are comparing the primary energy used to create the electricity to the primary energy used in diesel, natural gas or gasoline powered trains and buses, i.e. primary energy to primary energy.
Table 2. The passenger-mile cost of commuting by car, transit bus and automobile in 2016. Source: AAA and the National Transit database (NTD).
The automobile costs are from AAA brochures Your Driving Costs for 2007 and 2016. The values for light rail and transit bus costs are averages for the top ten systems in the National Transit Database (NTD), by size, in the U.S. The top 10 transit bus systems are listed in Table 3, the data shown is 2016 data. The spreadsheets used to make the tables in this post can be downloaded using the link at the end of the post.
Table 3. Some of the critical data from the National Transit Database for the top 10 transit bus systems in the U.S. Source NTD.
The top 10 light rail systems are listed in Table 4 along with some statistics. All the light rail systems listed are powered by electricity. Light rail lost riders between 2007 and 2016, but it did become cheaper.
Table 4. Some of the critical data from the National Transit Database for the top 10 light rail systems in the U.S. in 2016. Source NTD.
Table 5 shows the same data for the top 10 transit bus systems. Most of the transit buses are powered with diesel, but some are powered by natural gas, gasoline or electricity. Unlike light rail, transit buses have become much more fuel efficient and they have not lost riders.
Table 5. Some of the critical data from the National Transit Database for the top 10 transit bus systems in the U.S. in 2016. Source NTD.
The average number of passengers transported in a car trip is 1.59, as shown in Figure 1, this translates to about 40% of the passenger capacity of a Toyota Corolla. The Toyota gets about 36 MPG, so the per-passenger miles-per-gallon is about 57 MPG of regular unleaded E10 (Ethanol 10%) gasoline, as shown in Table 1.
Figure 1. Average occupancy of various passenger vehicles. Source: (Davis, Diegel and Boundy 2010). See page 8-10.
The NTD database supplies us with the amount of fuel used in the various light rail systems and transit bus systems. In Table 4 we see that the average light rail system gets 31.6 miles per gallon per passenger mile in 2016, this is 45% less than the miles per gallon obtained from a Toyota Corolla. The number of passengers per train is determined from dividing the passenger-miles from the NTD database by the vehicle revenue miles. By comparing this to the seating capacity in the train we see that, on average, these trains run at only 13% capacity. This is the reason for the poor mileage per passenger-mile.
In Table 5 we see the same figures for the top 10 transit bus systems in the U.S. Transit buses get even fewer passenger-miles-per-gallon than light rail systems in 2007, but much more in 2016. However, transit buses still only get 66% of the passenger miles-per-gallon of a Toyota Corolla. Again, the reason is low seat utilization.
Discussion and Conclusions
There is no question that transit buses and light rail systems reduce highway congestion. Just two passengers on a bus or train remove a car from the roads on average. Transit buses and light rail are most heavily utilized during rush hour, so when traffic is heaviest, they remove the most cars from the road. This is a big plus. Transit buses utilize existing roads, but light rail systems require the building of exclusive, new infrastructure. The data in Tables 1 and 2 clearly show that the problem with light rail is the large capital expenditure required, relative to cars and buses.
In 2007, the light rail systems discussed in this post cost 185 million dollars more than the transit bus systems. The light rail systems, in terms of capital costs, which are the tracks, depots, maintenance buildings and facilities, and trains basically, cost $0.98 per passenger-mile in 2007. By way of contrast, the transit bus systems only cost $0.18 per passenger-mile and the Toyota only cost $0.27. The transit bus systems only purchase the buses, land and buildings for the park-and-rides, they use existing roads. The light rail systems get 20% more miles-per-gallon per passenger-mile in 2007, but passenger cars do better on fuel than both public transportation systems. Transit bus fuel economy improved by 2016 and in that year, buses were more efficient that light rail. Further, the light rail systems run with fewer occupied seats, they are not as flexible in scheduling as transit buses. The data shows that the transit buses provide more flexibility, lower start up costs, and lower net traffic congestion than rail.
Transit buses typically have more stops, in more places than trains. Thus, passengers travel fewer miles to get to a bus stop than to a train stop. In some cases, passengers can walk or bike to a bus stop, but very few people live close enough to a train station to get there by walking or bicycle.
It is obvious from the NTD and AAA data, that personal passenger cars are the cheapest and most environmentally friendly way to transport people to work. They use less fuel per passenger-mile and the costs are much lower than for transit buses and rail. But, cars cause more congestion than public transit. The NTD data shows clearly, that transit buses are a cheaper and more convenient (to the passenger) way to transport large numbers of workers during rush hour. Light rail might be useful in some circumstances, for example transporting passengers from one large population center to a downtown work area, but since American cities tend to be very spread out, it seems more likely that transit buses are the best option for most cities. The reason to use public transportation is to reduce congestion, not to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or air pollution.
The 2007 and 2016 NTD databases and some derivative datasets used to make the tables and illustrations in this post can be downloaded here.
Work Cited
Davis, Stacy, Susan Diegel, and Robert Boundy. 2010. “Transportation Energy Data Book: Edition 29.” Oak Ridge National Laboratory. https://info.ornl.gov/sites/publications/files/pub24318.pdf.
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This topic is ripe for innovation because large gains can be made with low cost changes.
For example, what about a simple, remote coupler, bumper to bumper, that converts a string of idling, slow moving cars to a dozen cars moved along slowly by only one of them with motor running, able to be decoupled at the push of a button when the way ahead clears?
This idea took 2 mins of thought. Once we accept that we are all too romantic in our attachments to our shiny chromed cars, all sort of ideas can emerge. There would be a huge social change if all cars were made with a good wearing finish instead of ultra shiny, high maintenance paint. Drivers could nudge other along instead of frantically trying to avoid minute paint damage and then hold ups for inspections for insurance claims.
Badly needed is a holistic, lateral thinking study of variations to the engineering of the car as we know it now. Not by engineers fixated on fashion and style, as if cars bonded like pet dogs to owners. Geoff
Visions of bumper-cars at the amusement parks, I get.
But I see automated cruise controls with proximity sensors and braking overrides as a virtual version of that system. The problem is that those features (as well as rear camera) are not included in the base models too. This is a quandry of conscience vs $ for the automotive business.
People could buy the low cost finish that you envision if the wanted to.
The question is, how do you force people to start wanting the stuff you want them to want?
When I was a University Student (seems like a previous life) it took me and hour and a quarter to travel to or from Uni by train and bus. Then my grandfather bought me a car. After that, it took about fifteen minutes in the morning and ten minutes to make the return trip, (Less traffic on the toll bridge.) It cost me 10 shillings or a dollar a week for gas. Tell me how Public Transport was better.
A dollar for 125 minutes of gasoline.
Don’t take this in a bad way, but I think the analysis in this article has gone wrong at several points.
First, the article doesn’t deal with subway systems, only with buses and light rail. Subways usually have much lower energy consumption per passenger-mile than buses and light rail, because the latter move around empty half the time. In the US, light rail is often a boondoggle, that much is true; but it’s also the smallest form of transit in terms of how many people (or miles) it moves, and so not very relevant. Buses are a public service and they are not designed for low-energy consumption; they are designed to reach every nook and cranny in a metro area, getting where rail cannot get. So it’s only natural that buses have relatively low occupancy rates, and thus relatively high energy consumption.
Second, the article takes the average occupancy of cars, but the quote you are trying to refute dealt specifically with commuting. Look around you at rush hour: does the average commuter car carry 1.6 people? No way; that’s the average including things like family holidays. Polls in the US show that less than 10% of commuters carpool, and most of those carry just 2 passengers. So average occupancy of commuting autos is more like 1.1; this alone reduces the stated MPG of the Corolla, from 57 to 39 MPG.
Conversely, the energy consumption of buses, subways and light rail looks high precisely because they have to operate when / where hardly anybody takes them. So it’s perfectly possible for a bus to have higher energy consumption *on average* than a car, and yet for CO2 emissions to be reduced when someone switches from commuting by car to commuting by bus.
Another way to look at it is that transit, particularly rail transit, has relatively high fixed emissions because energy consumption is virtually the same whether someone rides a train or not, and doubling ridership does not require doubling the number of train trips. But *marginal* emissions, the additional energy consumption coming from a commuter who stops driving and starts taking the bus / train, are very small. Again, the fact that average passenger-mile emissions of transit and autos are comparable only tells you that, if you completely abolished transit, emissions would be about the same… but AFAIK nobody is advocating the elimination of public transport. It wouldn’t be possible anyway, due to the density of some cities, which takes us to the next point…
During commuting, mpg is quite a bit lower due to constant acceleration and deceleration. The EPA even has different MPG ratings for city and highway driving. The average US car doesn’t get 36 MPG on average, unlike the Corolla used as an example in this article. But even the Corolla doesn’t get 36 MPG in city driving.
(In fact, it seems the real-world Corolla doesn’t get 36 MPG even when averaging all types of driving: http://www.fuelly.com/car/toyota/corolla shows about 31 MPG, and as mentioned it will be lower for commuting trips).
So the average fuel efficiency of mass transit is even more meaningless. It’s not even worth the mental exercise of what-would-emissions-be-if-transit-disappeared, because if transit disappeared congestion in dense cities would get a lot worse… and so would cars’ MPG. In other words, emissions would increase.
Finally, the main point: passenger-miles are the wrong measure because by definition a world in which people switch from driving to the bus / train is a world in which stuff is closer, and thus a lot of car trips either don’t happen (because e.g. children can walk to school) or are much shorter. Compare the US with other high-income countries: Americans move about twice as many miles! 80 to 85% of passenger-miles in both the US and Europe are by car (Americans fly more, Europeans take the train more, but in absolute passenger-mile numbers the car is king in both places).
Yes, the US is richer so naturally you’d expect a richer population to be more mobile. But not 100% more mobile. Besides, Australia is about as rich as the US, but has much lower transportation-related emissions; whether that’s because they drive less km or they have smaller cars, I don’t have the time to research now, but both factors probably play a role and both are incentivized by dense cities. (Overall per-capita emissions in Australia are about as high as in the US because of coal burned for electricity generation, but oil consumption per capita is much lower).
(It may also be that denser cities have smaller homes. Probably undesirable for other reasons, but smaller homes definitely have lower energy consumption).
This is also obvious if one looks at differences between US states. The lowest emissions are in:
-New York, where the metro area as a whole isn’t very dense but half the jobs are in NYC, and driving to work has the lowest mode share of the US.
-California, where metro areas are the densest in the US.
Of course just because one person stops driving doesn’t mean jobs will automatically relocate from suburban campuses to a neighborhood with a train station. It takes decades to reshape cities. But it does happen.
None of this is to say whether one mode of city or transportation is preferable to the others. But yes, leaving the car at home and taking the train / bus will reduce emissions. If just one person does it, the reduction is easy to calculate from the energy savings. If lots of people do it, there are even more reductions due to the reconfiguration of cities into denser spaces.
Alberto, most of your points are good ones, just not relevant to my post. My post was just about the transportation debate in the U.S. I did not research the rest of the world. Passenger-miles is the only way to evaluate the question of the most efficient and environmentally friendly way to move people to work and back, in my opinion. The most absurd way is to take a “single person” and move him or her from their car to a bus or train, that argument is silly. Your assumed ridership of 1.1 people per car is wrong, 1.6 is the correct figure. Cars only operate when there are people to move, trains and buses operate on a schedule, empty or full. It is the low average occupancy of trains and buses that is critical. Light rail is the only sensible rail in most of the U.S., subways only make sense in older denser cities, like New York or Chicago, they would never be built most places. Light rail suffers from very high capital costs and the difficulty of getting bond issues permitted by the public.
I found a link for average vehicle occupancy as a function of vehicle type and purpose of driving: https://nhts.ornl.gov/tables09/fatcat/2009/avo_TRPTRANS_WHYTRP1S.html
If I am reading this correctly, driving whose purpose is “work”, which I think is mostly commuting, has mean occupancy rate of 1.13 for cars, 1.14 for SUVs, and 1.15 for all vehicles.
Thanks Donald, I see the table and what you mean. Since it has no explanation, I dug out the NHTS report. You can see the 2009 report here: https://nhts.ornl.gov/2009/pub/stt.pdf
Unfortunately, the table with the Avg. Vehicle Occupancy is not in the report, but it does have a link to the raw data and maybe I can figure out how to reproduce the table. I don’t like relying on a table with no discussion. It looks legit, but it is hard to tell. 1.15 seems low to me, especially since the establishment of HOV lanes and Van Pools.
HOV lanes don’t seem all that common; not all metro areas even have them at all. For example, I have yet to see one in the Philadelphia metro area, and there are definitely none in the majority of the Philly metro area that is in Pennsylvania. As far as I can tell, only two roads in all of Pennsylvania have HOV lanes, both in or near Pittsburgh, and Penndot says 2 occupants is enough to qualify. Van pools also don’t seem common. Everyone I know commutes solo or by mass transit. Another thing: A significant number of cars with more than one occupant are being driven for the purpose of transportation of only one occupant – taxis, Uber/Lyft/etc.
Very interesting and thought provoking – but I think there is one substantial adjustment to be made to the calculations. “Book” MPG figures for cars are way out for short journeys. Your Toyota Corolla is probably doing less than 20 m.p.g when you roll off the drive on a cold winter morning.
When I used to do a 20 mile commute (40 round trip) the electricity used to cost me less than £1 Sterling if I charged overnight (which my car was set to do). The motor and controller had no warm up issues, there was no street level emissions and if I was leaving early I didn’t disturb the neighbours with this strange task of “starting” the engine. Flip a switch and whisper off.
And before I get leaped on by the anti-EV thought police, the battery still has no detectable deterioration after 5 years and 60,000 miles (mine isn’t a Tesla, but for interest one Model S has 300,000 miles on it – https://www.motortrend.com/news/a-tesla-model-s-has-hit-300000-miles/).
For the record I consider C02 emissions irrelevant.
Check out this thread. Pretty much every EV that “gets” hundreds of thousands of miles has gone through several battery replacements.
https://twitter.com/hoonable/status/1019603617064607745
Alberto – if you look at the link I posted this one hadn’t
Sigh. There is one Edison incandescent bulb in a California fire station that has been lit continuously ever since it was first installed in the 1910s.
Absolutely meaningless for how often you need to replace the bulb in your desk lamp.
John Hardy, Plug in EV’s are good for regular commuting. I think they don’t sell very well due to range fear and long charge times.
Trucks need sensors to avoid running over cyclists.
The problem is on truckers and logistics.
https://www.google.at/search?q=trucks+cyclists+sensors&oq=trucks+cyclists+sensors&aqs=chrome.
https://www.google.at/search?q=trucks+cyclists+sensors&client=ms-android-samsung&prmd=isnv&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi1-o7Kx6rcAhUCfywKHeL3ApkQ_AUIESgB&biw=360&bih=560
money, money, money
An experienced cyclist stands at the intersection either clearly in front of the truck
or
safely behind the truck.
Dangerous are cyclists who lurk past the truck to the right:
the damaged ones are the trucker and the forwarding company.
Here are two ideas that strike me off the top of my head as being more worth pursuing than others discussed here:
1. Encourage nearby employers to promote car-pooling by creating a macro pool of all their workforce for potential riders to sign up for. Employ sophisticated software to make matches, especially over partially overlapping macro pools.
2. Encourage Uber & Lyft to function more like jitneys during commute times—e.g., allow them to tap into the pooled pool of employees advocated above, providing the service for a fee.
I believe there already is something called Uberpool in a few markets.
Car pooling only works at jobs where people always start and stop work at the same time.
Thanks to the two commenters.
Here’s an additional idea: deckless e-scooters, rentable by smartphone app. Making a commotion in Milwaukee, Santa Monica, etc.
Situations vary markedly but public transportation is frequently much less convenient. I experienced a real world commute where the time, door to door, was 15 minutes by car (both ends were fairly near freeway exits) but at least 2.5 hours by bus. The bus typically required long waits at bus stops and involved transfers from bus to bus three times each way.
Public transport leaves from the location you can’t conveniently get to, at the time you don’t want/need to travel, to the destination you didn’t need/want to go (nor nearby where you are actually were going), costing money you don’t want to pay, or requires you to pay in an awkward format that you can’t easily verify.
The comparison between transportation systems is correctly stated if a decision has to be made over which way to go. But that is rarely the case. When you already have a public transportation system installed, then moving passengers from private cars to the public transportation system is advantageous for every parameter. Cost per passenger-mile improves in the public transportation, emissions decrease, road congestion improves. It is all advantages. However moving passengers from public transportation to private cars is just the opposite and every parameter gets worse unless you dismantle the public transportation system, which is very unlikely.
So in the end it is correct that once a public transportation system is in place a higher utilization results in an improvement in every parameter considered, including greenhouse gas reduction. It is very important that the decision over installing a new public transportation system is correctly taken. Otherwise it leads to a worsening of the situation. But I guess that is common to every policy decision.
True, and this post was spurred by such a decision. The question of whether or not to build a light rail system in Houston. It is foolish to build it when buses and HOV (high occupancy vehicle lanes) already exist and light rail is less efficient than buses or cars. Moving people to existing public transportation systems is better, but obvious and silly. Public transport suffers because people don’t want use it and because to be useful they have to run when nobody is on them. That will not change for the reasons given in the comments above. I was in a perfect situation, my company paid for my bus pass, the park-and-ride was close and it was an express to downtown. Obviously, most people are not in that situation.
I think it is a very simple matter, Andy. High capacity utilization of public transportation directly correlates to population density for the areas involved. That’s why it works so well in Europe and Japan. In the US it will not work well outside the big metropolitan areas.
Once again, the warmists show their totalitarian roots.
All that matters is making “society” more efficient. If the individuals involved have to suffer, it’s not important.
The sharpest tool in the shed.
Logic tends to be a serial PoV and can break down with a chink in its axioms & assumes a level of omniscience (i.e. you know all the causes & conditions etc., that none of us do obviously do!).
Also check logical fallacies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies & Cognitive Biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
Nevertheless, my two pennies worth:
CO2 at currently average 0.041% is no problem from what I’ve read on this matter since the 70’s, sometimes almost wish we had more of it to green the world, but pollution is a problem no matter if we are CO2denialist or CO2warmists and there’s a spectrum in between; I’m lukewarm and think that the timescales are too long for mankind to know in truth how the climate changes with the different outputs from various species like humans, termites etc.
Our deluxe lifestyle relies on just how it is at the moment, but for sure there must be a time beyond probably our small lifetimes, that usable resource for this way of life will deplete to the extent they cannot be re-used effectively?
Would like to cycle to work, however the traffic isn’t all that friendly and looks quite dangerous on my trek in to work; and my ailing health is an issue currently. I could get there but getting back after a long day may well be an issue.
Maybe governments could incentive firms to ask workers to work at home if name begins with A to E on Mondays, F to J on Tuesdays …. U to Z on Fridays…. etc, to reduce pollution & save resources (just an idea folks).
I applaud Mr. May’s work. I am particularly grateful for his pulling together the $1.33/passenger-mile bus cost that Mr. May’s Table 3 implies.
But in my view it’s questionable whether in medium-sized cities transit systems actually ease congestion to any great extent.
True, they seem to if all you do is compare the number of lane feet commanded by car occupants as opposed to bus occupants. If you include 97 feet of inter-vehicle space, then a 480-inch bus with an occupancy of 5.8 requires only 24 feet per passenger, as opposed to 77 feet per passenger for a 192-inch-long Ford Fusion with an occupancy of 1.5. On a lane-foot basis, that is, buses occupy only about a third of what cars do per passenger.
As far as causing congestion, though, buses punch above their weight (or, rather, their length per occupant). They obstruct other motorists’ ability to see signs and other vehicles, they start and stop a lot, and their wide turning radii make them menaces at intersections where they turn.
Because they’re highly subsidized and used disproportionately by monthly-pass owners, moreover, their occupancy is in a sense overstated. Specifically, many riders’ trips would not be made if those trips’ marginal cost to the rider weren’t zero. (As a veteran, for example, I can ride the bus for free in my town.) That is, a bus passenger mile displaces less than a full car passenger mile. A survey I saw suggests that one bus passenger mile displaces only 0.54 car passenger mile.
Anyway, except in the densest (and consequently the most-expensive) cities the transit system barely makes a dent in overall transportation. Even if you think that every bus passenger mile displaces a full car passenger mile and ignore how much buses get in the way, the bus system in a medium-sized city may reduce congestion only by about a half a percent.
Bus systems encourage more resources to be diverted to transportation than would be the case in the absence of subsidies, and on average they cost more and result in more emissions per passenger mile than the vehicles they arguably displace.
My conclusion in that continuing subsidies of municipal bus systems makes society as a whole poorer.
My vote goes for personal, private, unlicensed, liberty ensuring, fast flying cars.
That’s what we were offered as the USA dream in the 1940s& 1950s, and I’m holding them to it.
If there are no designated bicycle lanes/trails…that’s all the more reason to keep the pushy, power-mad bicyclists off the roads and otherwise out of the way, i.e. not obstructing traffic.
They tore up many perfectly good (if the economics had been there) rail lines to make “biking paths” that are usually empty. If the watermelons are so all-fired enthusiastic about rail, why did they not object? And expect their ire to increase as they find out that restoring those rail lines will now be even more expensive. My idea of light rail transit was demonstrated in the movie “O, Brother”. Carry those watermelon politicians right out to the edge of the county on a light rail and dump them.
Its mathematical, blokes & lasses…
A bus maybe holds 75 people. It takes up the area (linear, lane) of maybe 2 cars with their usual car-to-car spacing. A commute car holds at most 5, but more usually 3 people (to get onto the prized HOV lanes). The average car, though including those commute cars, only holds 1.4 people. Statistic from the SF Bay Bridge commission 10 years ago. … “I remember things” …
Therefore, it takes 1 ÷ 1.4 = 0.7 mean car-spacings to transport people by car…
And 2 ÷ 75 = 0.0267 car-spacings to transport them by bus. Per person.
Making 0.7 ÷ 0.0267 → 27× better ROAD CARRYING efficiency.
The greater frontal area of a bus and length both contribute to higher Reynolds number (aerodynamic inefficiency), so in terms of fuel-per-passenger-mile, busses are not hugely more efficient than well-packed, lightweight, specifically fuel-efficient passenger cars.
But they have the (ahem) Trump Card for road-carrying efficiency.
Just saying
GoatGuy
“road carrying efficiency” is just one parameter.
Multiplying by the “coefficient of interference inefficiency” for all the bus starts and stops for drop offs and pickups that interfere with the flow of traffic is necessary to fully understand the net. {(27)x(Cii) = (27)x(.035) = 0.945} There is a net reduction for buses … 0.94%.
(and although a bus “maybe holds 75 people” … it doesn’t)
(and then there is the inefficiency of needing to bring your “bus pants” when you ride a bus)
You’re confusing inter-city buses with transit buses. In my town the average transit-bus occupancy is 5.8, not 75
That’s because to get a bus full for the densest part of the route it has to run nearly empty on the feeder parts. There’s not much way around this
Average car occupancy is 1.5-1.7, depending on whom you ask. Including inter-vehicle distance does make cars command three times as many lane feet per passenger. At 4 mpg, though, they’re less efficient: equivalent to a 15-mpg gas guzzler.
I was surprised the CDC made this statement ” Even the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) recommended public transportation, in 2017, as “one of the best ways to reduce greenhouse emissions.”
It seems to me that public transportation would do a great service for spreading diseases.
Interesting post and discussion. Some thought on both the post and the comments:
We’re not really considering ALL costs. Gasoline prices, for example, don’t include the (uncharged) costs of projection of geopolitical power into hostile parts of the world that happen to sit upon lots of the easily accessible oil. And the roads aren’t “free,” and certainly aren’t paid for fully by fuel taxes. They occupy lots of land on which no property taxes are collected, that’s not free either.
Buses not only aren’t paying the fuel taxes paid at the “public” pump, they (like tractor trailers) do a disproportionate amount of the damage to roads and highways due to their relatively massive weight. And you can add to the “inconvenience factors” for buses idiotic operating practices that make them more unpleasant than they already are. For example, when I lived in The Forgotten Borough and had the misfortune of needing to take the bus to get to the ferry (to get me to the subway to get me to my job), bus drivers with an already excessive passenger load (and, as a result, running so late on their schedule that the next bus was already catching up to them) were MANDATED to make every stop where there were passengers (instead of passing them and allowing the essentially empty bus chasing it to pick up those passengers), which led to the infuriating situation where the nearly empty bus just behind it would pass it by, leaving the people at the bus stop passed by the empty bus just behind stuck standing on a rolling sardine can instead of getting seats. And that bus route I took, with the shortest and fastest trip to the ferry you could find from where I lived, averaged about 12mph on a good day, which I could probably manage on a bicycle for the 5 miles I had to travel.
Some of the costs aren’t remotely realistic, either. The “car” fuel economy figures are a joke unless you’re talking about rural areas with light traffic. Where I live the Interstate traffic during rush hour is for much of its length stop and go, bumper to bumper traffic in which nobody is returning anywhere near their “rated” fuel economy, not even their “city” economy may be achieved much less their “highway” economy. Not to mention that few would tolerate driving a Corolla, which I can’t even comfortably fit in due to inadequate leg room (I’ve been in one, and don’t ever want to repeat the experience). Most personal vehicles would probably cut your fuel economy figures easily in half (if not more).
The lack of “heavy rail” in the study leaves out the best “mass transit” option. Heavy rail is the only truly “mass” transport, with enormous capacity compared with any other mode. And unlike buses and the present-day “light rail,” it can operate reliably on a schedule and at a reasonable rate of speed. As others have said, “light rail” is often poorly conceived and, like buses, is generally light density, underscoring its relative lack of utility. The original “streetcars” and other “interurban” railways were far more effective than “light rail” as conceived today, but the conspiracy (in this case genuine) of automakers, tire/rubber companies, and oil companies to buy up the “interurban” railways, scrap them, and substitute useless buses in their place (California being the classic case) deprived commuters of that option.
Biking isn’t realistic unless you’re only traveling short distances, and is only workable if you have a job where you can show up sweating like a pig. Where I live, most of the roads are narrow with basically NO shoulders, winding, and lined with lots of trees, limiting visibility and making bicycle use both impractical AND highly dangerous, so there’s that, too.
Of course, making this about CO2 emissions is completely pointless, since CO2 emissions are net beneficial and aren’t causing the “climate change crisis” the Eco-Nazis claim it is. The discussion around how to get to work should be about how to make it as quick and easy and pleasant as possible, to minimize aggravation and wasted time, not about how to virtue-signal about “carbon footprint” BS. My own commute is about 40 miles, 3/4 of which is done by “heavy rail,” with the rest in my personal auto. Even if there was a bus anywhere near my home, I wouldn’t use it, since it would turn a ~15 minute trip to the station into probably a ~ 60-minute ordeal.
Mostly good points, I disagree on heavy rail though. That only works in very high population density areas, otherwise the occupancy is very low, driving up cost per passenger mile.
I already ride a motorcycle (@ur momisugly ~70mpg) to the train station. Take the train in, then walk to work. I’m already doing anything that can reasonably be done. But it’s not to combat “climate change”. It’s to maintain my sanity. Driving in would have me barking mad in no time.
The American Planning Assoc (government planners) has long declared their purpose to be getting people out of their own vehicle and into public transit, to the point of deliberately mucking up (i.e. stalling, constricting) traffic flows.
It adds to their funding/staffing by creating a problem of nearly crisis proportions. It’s a blatantly Marxist premise.
Portland, OR is a prime example. The city doesn’t repair potholes because they want to discourage private cars. A single Portland state senator kept Oregon from cooperating with Washington to replace the outdated I-5 bridges over the Columbia River.
When I lived and worked in Toronto, I could walk to my office in the central business district in 35-40 minutes. I could take public transit (walk + streetcar + subway) and it would take between 25 and 45 minutes depending on traffic/time of day. I could have driven in 15 minutes but I would have had to pay $40 a day to park.
Cost of parking in crowded cities is one of the determinants of driving versus using public transit. I didn’t see that in any of Andy’s tables. Perhaps it’s not a consideration in the USA.
Smart Rock, Parking is expensive in downtown Houston, but generally the company you work for pays the parking, if you drive. Elsewhere in the city parking is free. I think parking costs are a problem in a few other U.S. cities, but it is not like Toronto or London.
Taking public transportation shows that you care more than other people do.
Priceless.
Before I retired, my car was my office, worked in the Greater Vancouver area. I clearly remember the traffic conditions from before, during and after the last transit strike. During the strike there was no public transit, no buses, no Sky Train. I wanted that strike to go on forever, it actually proved that public transit was the main contributor to traffic congestion and not the solution. Not that any public transit advocate would ever admit to it. Suddenly every trip by car took half the time going point a to b. No delays at traffic lights, zero traffic congestion.
Technology will come to the rescue, with autonomous aircraft, like giant quad drones, either taxis or privately owned.
Air taxis will however have to compete with the cost of parking your car for eight hours. Saving time however will be in their favor.
https://cora.aero/milestones/
California’s Kitty Hawk Cora autonomous electric air taxi is being tested in NZ.
Twelve lift rotors and a single pusher propeller for FW-borne flight. Meant for two adults, so passengers can share rides, aircraft pooling.
IMO battery technology will make significant incremental improvement about every five years for the next 20 years or so, or there will be a major revolutionary breakthrough, such as a pure graphene battery (some already claim to have achieved this, but I’m dubious), rather than merely graphene supercapacitors to speed up recharging of advanced battery designs.
Within the next five years, improved Li-ion configurations, such as the cylindrical batteries now coming on line, will occur, followed by Li-, Si- or Al-ion arrangements, with higher energy densities and safety and lower cost. Then will come solid state electrolyte batteries and Li-, Si- or Al-air or oxygen batteries. Theoretically, Li-air could just about equal the energy density of hydrocarbon fuels, with greater power density per unit mass.
The final stage, and revolutionary it would be, is pure graphene batteries, offering storage superior to today’s Li-ion designs, combined with the rapid recharging of graphene supercapacitors.
Might never happen, or could be here by 2040, if not before.
If you commute less than 20 miles, use an e-bike.
I’m using this one:
https://www.geekbuying.com/item/Original-Xiaomi-QICYCLE-EF1-Smart-Bicycle-Foldable-Bike-399991.html?Currency=EUR&gclid=CjwKCAjws8vaBRBFEiwAQfhs-JlWp6IcJJqQZCyLDw9XX0ZSGelME9biLnHKlYUEj0kdHGEyp7bn1BoCFc4QAvD_BwE#googtrans/en/de
I’m using it already for 6 months. It is light, fast and excellent quality. It is fun to ride it, green and healthy.
It is foldable as well.