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Indeed they did not succeed. They were widely abolished after WW2 throughout Europe. Trams were loud, screeching and badly maintained. Citys didn't want that wiring in the streets any more (that's why Bordeaux/France got a tram with a third (power)rail, that is activated by the weight of the train. This system failed to work at the day of opening, with the french president on board ..).
And, of course, streetcars are obstacles to driving, perhaps the most important reason to get rid of them.
These days a new tram line in Paris/France is opened, with HiTech trains, described as "superbe" by their drivers, very silent, very effective.
France is described as the new tram wonderland.
Not everyone threw away what they had.
By the way, I think Strasburg/Strasbourg uses the same type of train - they are very quiet, very convenient, but not that well suited for heavy ridership somehow. Just an impression for a couple of years ago.
For very different reasons. If you have experienced a ride on the East-Berlin tram before 1990 (during the GDR era) you will remember one. They couldn't abolish their tram because the socialist subjects had to wait more than 10 years until being rationed a car. So buses and street cars had to do.
In second-biggest western cities such as Nuernberg or Karlsruhe the tram was kind of tolerated for decades, though often majorities of car drivers were hostile to it. The main argument against it was municipal deficits in comparison to poor ridership/comfort and so on, but the real reason is, and was, that they were hindering individual (car) traffic.
The Karlsruhe region is an exception in Germany. Most regions could learn a lot from the planners of the Karlsruhe-Bretten-Pforzheim rail system, which is exemplary in entire Germany.
Unfortunately it is true what someone said: "Car drivers love transit. The others should give up driving and change to transit. The ultima ratio is, and is to stay, "cars first".
Transit will not work as an incentive, it will definetely not get drivers out of their cars; that is wishful thinking. Restrictive measures are necessary (and will not happen since in a democracy those who implement them will be voted out of office).
Our great poet Heinrich Heine knew it - already in 1843 - when he wrote:
"Womit man einlullt, wenn es greint,
Das Volk, den großen Lümmel."
He didn't know cars, of course. But he knew the people.
Car pooling with efficient small cars is at least as environmentally friendly as rail.
To illustrate my point. My small 5 year old Italian Fiat Punto not marketed in the US- but the best selling gasoline EU car in the mini segment weighs some 1000 pounds, 80 hp , EURO NCAP 4 star, emits 140 g CO2 per km (even 44.8 mpg average on my 2000 mile summer holiday in France). With 2 passengers well below 50 gram CO2 passenger km. The FIAT car fleet is by the way the lowest consuming car producer in the EU with an average 139 gram CO2/km - see table page 2 here. http://www.transportenvironment.org/docs/Press/2006/2006_10_25_car_brands_co2_en.pdf
Rail emissions:
Now most rail data for emission is in the range of 40 - 70 gram CO2/passenger km. This http://www.transwatch.co.uk/transport-fact-sheet-5a.htm
UK study gives ( table 1 : 14.4 gram times 3.67 = 52.8 g/passenger km )
So my humble conclusion is that Car pooling could be as good as rail - or even better, at least in terms of energy use and emissions and for reducing congestion.
regards
And1I see nuke as not more than 50% of US grid under any reasonable scenario.
Best Hopes,
Alan
- In UK 43% of passenger rail emissions and whopping 96% of freight rail emissions are due to diesel powered engines. Electrical trains are more CO2 efficient - south east is showing 12.5g/pkm vs 16.9g/pkm for intercity.
- The study is comparing real-world data for trains to theoretical data for lorries and cars. For example 10mpg for a coach and 50mpg. for a diesel car are not realistic real-world estimates, IMO. There is technological overhead, stop/go urban driving reduces MPG, etc.
- The biggest part of the CO and SOx emissions are from the diesel trains.
Conclusions: instead of moving rail to road transport, better electrify your network and build more carbon-free electricity generation. Increase the passenger rail load factor. Overall the potential for CO2 reductions in rail are an order of magnitude higher than for road transport.Only if you compare to ICE road transport. Electric vehicles use less electricity per passenger mile than rail.
You're making things much more complicated than they need to be. For instance, "materials costs, production costs, reproduction costs" seem to be redundant. "road infrastructure, public education, licensing, policing and health costs. " are all the same or cheaper for EV's. Policing???
EV's cost about $.02 per mile for electricity, versus $.10 for ICE's. They're simpler, and easier to make than ICE's: simpler transmission (the Tesla has only 2 gears), safer (no more hollywood exploding cars), have lower maintenance costs, negligible pollution at the vehicle and almost zero total pollution if powered by renewables. The Tesla is so expensive because they're only making about 200/year in the first year. Still, it's cheaper than comparable ICE sports cars.
The only barrier is batteries. Batteries are now light & energy dense enough to make the Tesla possible, but they're still too expensive (at $20k for the Tesla battery pack) to compete with really cheap gasoline - an EV would be competitive with gas at around $5-6/gallon.
The Tesla battery pack will likely cost about $.20-30 per mile, depending on miles/year. ICE's cost an average of $.10 per mile for fuel, and another $.35 per mile for everything else. All told, EV's probably cost about $.55/mile now, vs ICE's at $.445 (per IRS).
Battery costs are falling relentlessly 7-10% per year and are likely to fall faster with next generation li-ion chemistries with much higher cycle lives. Gas prices will rise, and the two lines will cross in the next few years. Of course, if you were to include all of the external costs of oil, EV's would be cheaper right now.
Someone make a real utility vehicle for the whole family that can compete with a well designed diesel or hybrid and we talk. We shall also talk about the extra power plants and power lines that will be needed to recharge that sucker once there are millions around.
:-)
No additional power plants and power lines would be needed to recharge: almost all charging could be done offpeak with current infrastructure (see the recent DOE/NREL study for verification), and additional power could come from wind.
Policing. Transit systems require policing. So do personal transport systems, including attendance at collisions. The point is that they need to be compared when preparing the balance sheet.
Download pdf on Rail Transit In America: Comprehensive Evaluation of Benefits. Chose Executive Summary or Full Report. Not exactly what you asked for, but close.
Best Hopes,
Alan
What are you concerned about in particular?
I.e. he's asking for a comparison of EV's with "an electrified rail mass transit system."
His first line seemed to imply a comparison with space-travel, which would suggest that EV's might be impractical, or inferior to present day vehicles. Apart from the basic question of battery cost (which I tried to address), I can't see any reason to think that way, so I was puzzled.
I'd be delighted to see a thorough-going comparison of all costs & benefits for EV's and rail. I think that's the thing that Stuart is trying to start to build.
EVs will have (when they arrive) minimal in any indirect energy savinsg by altering the Urban form. Most Urban Rail energy savings will be via indirect energy savings.
Alan
Again, I'm just trying to remind people that "road transport" isn't just Internal Combustion Engine cars, it is also EV's, and EV's are indeed among the solutions to Peak Oil.
I agree with "silver BB's". I think rail is great, though more for the indirect, hard to quantify benefits than for the direct costs like energy.
Rely solely on rail? 1) As you note elsewhere, it likely isn't going to get the required commitment, 2) it would be much more expensive than a pluralistic approach, and 3) rail is a centralized, government, long-term capital expenditure kind of thing, and EV's are a consumer-side kind of thing, and the two are going to happen simultaneously.
I think people will get very discouraged if they think rail is the only transportation solution, and I think it's a mistake to say so.
EV's will be much cheaper than scrapping the suburbs: they might cost another $100 per month at most. That's much cheaper than moving and losing one's home equity, paying much higher housing prices in the city, etc. I'm willing to pay 3x per sq foot to live in the city, but most aren't.
Some months ago I read Amsterdam intends even to use trams for freight transport (and to more and more keep the trucks out of the downtown area). So the Amsterdam tram may also be a hopeful story.
By saying "not succesful" I was trying to describe the past 50 or 60 years in Germany. The tram was abolished in virtually all major cities, as Hamburg or Berlin.
My personal view however, is that trams are by far one of the best means for urban transportation. There are new, modern trams in Nuernberg - really cool. But they are not cool for the average car driver.
Germany had the misfortune to have its major urban centres completely destroyed, at a time when urban planning philosophy was (post war) coming to favour the car. By contrast Austrian cities were not so badly hit (out of range of Allied bombers) and Dutch et al. cities were not targetted (friendly civilians rather than enemy civilians).
(there were similar effects in a number of British cities from the Luftwaffe bombings. The cities were rebuilt, but the tram systems never recovered from the damage.)
As of Germany that's not correct - quite the contrary. Since more and more buses were needed during the war the tendency to close down tram lines was significantly slowed! (Shutting down trams had begun long before the war - just at the time when car traffic started growing - or better: sprawling).
Trams were about the first means of transportation to take up service again even in totally destroyed cities as Hamburg or Berlin, and stayed in service until end of the sixties.
At first they were lots of incidents with cars, not used to look at the "new kid in town".
But don't you have problems with pedestrians getting hit? You rarely see tracks level with the platform around here, because Americans, always in a hurry, will try to run across the tracks and beat the train. (I used to do it myself, until they raised the platform so high you couldn't climb down any more. Probably on the advice of their lawyers.)
We are in population overshoot anyway right? Lets get the stupid people off the planet 1st.
I get so mad at people that make a big deal when I plane crashes. I'm always like, "Dude..... Airplanes are the safest thing in the WORLD. Cars.... cars WILL kill you"
But plane journeys tend to be far longer per journey.
On a per journey basis, the death rates are much closer (I don't have the stats to hand). Planes don't crash that often, but when they do, the effect is gigantic.
Interesting that the number of deaths per aviation incident is steadily rising-- planes are bigger, and when they do crash more people are killed. This is true even if we strip out 9-11 (the largest aviation incident in history).