One gallon of fuel in your lawnmower will mow about half your yard.

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: feralkid

Originally posted by: Eeezee
.



one thing the Europeans don't understand is how to sell those last few seats on a train at a discount price. Empty seats is missed profit!)

One thing you don't understand about European Rail is that seats aren't all sold in advance, and that anyone can walk into a station and buy a ticket for the next train. That is one convenience of rail vs air travel.

You may see empty seats, but at the next stop new passengers may get on and there may be standing room only.

That's Europe where the population densities far surpass those in the majority of the US. Here, you will not be filling those empty seats nearly as much. In the end, there are good reasons to construct a mass transit system in the US, but after taking into consideration the whole picture you will see that the pros do not outweigh the cons.

Life will not be cheaper. Life will not be more convenient. Life will just not be better and that's the bottom line.

 

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: techs
(you have to download it and play, at least on my computer)
http://www.csx.com/share/media...eGallon30-REF24555.mp3

One gallon of fuel in your lawnmower will mow about half your yard.
One gallon of fuel in a CSX train will move one ton of freight about 423 miles
From the CSX website.

Why is America so anti-train? By my figures, using an average of 150 pounds per person, that's about 13.3 people, 423 miles on a gallon of fuel.
That seems pretty efficient to me.
How does that stack up to an airplane?
And why aren't we expanding intercity rail links? Seems it could really cut down our dependence on foreign oil, plus help our balance of payments.

Best case for an airplane is 60-100 passenger-miles per gallon depending on the plane and seating configuration, but that does not take into account items like taxi and holding patterns. The overall average, including taxi and holding patterns and diversions, etc as calculated by the FAA is 48 passenger-miles per gallon when averaged across the entire US fleet.

Using your numbers for the train, it's about 32 passenger-miles per gallon, and that probably is the same type of "best-case" scenario that yields the 60-100 passenger-miles per gallon for aircraft.

It should also be noted that these figures are slightly deceptive because they depend on the trains or planes being mostly full. For example, a 747 cruising at 576 mph burns 3378 gallons of fuel per hour. If it's full at 500 passengers (a very dense configuration) that's over 85 passenger-miles per gallon. If it has "only" 400 passengers, that's 68 passenger-miles per gallon. And if it were only 100 people on the plane, that's only 17 passenger-miles per gallon. In all of the above cases, the plane is still burning the same 3378 gallons at cruise.

For both trains and planes, the variance in total fuel consumption is small when load is added, so adding more of a load increases efficiency because the overhead fuel consumption is very high and the marginal increase from an additional person is very low.

Still, the airplane is more efficient assuming that both are fully loaded. And faster.

Also, one gallon of fuel in my lawnmower will last about half the summer. I fill the two-gallon gas can at the beginning of the year and it doesn't run out for the summer.

ZV

 

[Throckmorton]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Trains work in Europe because they have a much higher density than us Americans. We are spread out all over the place, they live in tightly packed cities.

Pop per km2
Europe 112
US 31

Now if you took Alaska out of the equation our density would jump dramatically, but I am sure we would be way behind Europe.

Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

The size of the country is a separate issue from the sprawl of American cities. The distance between cities makes long distance passenger rail impractical compared to flying.

American cities have been encouraged to sprawl into massive and non-functional suburbs because of the emphasis on highway building as opposed to the light rail we had previously. In fact, US automakers lobbied to kill commuter rails. Now we're stuck with the consequences.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: Throckmorton

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Trains work in Europe because they have a much higher density than us Americans. We are spread out all over the place, they live in tightly packed cities.

Pop per km2
Europe 112
US 31

Now if you took Alaska out of the equation our density would jump dramatically, but I am sure we would be way behind Europe.

Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

The size of the country is a separate issue from the sprawl of American cities. The distance between cities makes long distance passenger rail impractical compared to flying.

American cities have been encouraged to sprawl into massive and non-functional suburbs because of the emphasis on highway building as opposed to the light rail we had previously. In fact, US automakers lobbied to kill commuter rails. Now we're stuck with the consequences.

Light rail can only do so much. The increased standards of living and the desire to not live within a city would be a cause for people flocking to the burbs. That and we have a geography that makes urban sprawl very easy.

 

[winnar111]

We've dumped about $30 billion into Amtrak subsidies over the years. Taxpayers are paying up to $400 per passenger on some lines.

It's another nonviable piece of garbage pork propogated by Congress.

 

[JS80]

Originally posted by: Vic
How big is your yard? A gallon of gas should be able to mow at least an acre.

Anyway, it appears that people are still unaware that much of necessary investment in improving our rail system is already done or underway by the major private railways (BNSF, CSX, UP, etc). Most any freight mainline in the US could run passenger trains above 100 mph as long as Amtrak had the right cars. Not bullet train speeds, but still moving.

Cost per mile and trains win. But even the fastest trains won't get across the country in even a quarter the time as jet plane can.

lol i was thinking he must have a plantation.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: Throckmorton

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Trains work in Europe because they have a much higher density than us Americans. We are spread out all over the place, they live in tightly packed cities.

Pop per km2
Europe 112
US 31

Now if you took Alaska out of the equation our density would jump dramatically, but I am sure we would be way behind Europe.

Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

The size of the country is a separate issue from the sprawl of American cities. The distance between cities makes long distance passenger rail impractical compared to flying.

American cities have been encouraged to sprawl into massive and non-functional suburbs because of the emphasis on highway building as opposed to the light rail we had previously. In fact, US automakers lobbied to kill commuter rails. Now we're stuck with the consequences.

Light rail can only do so much. The increased standards of living and the desire to not live within a city would be a cause for people flocking to the burbs. That and we have a geography that makes urban sprawl very easy.

Agreed. People don't live in the burbs because of some vast conspiracy to sell cars. They live in the burbs because the city sucks. The city sucks because its more expensive, the quality of life is worse, its a worse place to raise a family then the burbs and most people just plain can't afford to live there without reducing their standard of living a lot.

When you think about how expensive taxes and real estate are in the cities, paying for the gas to not live in them starts to look like a bargain.

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: soccerballtux

Originally posted by: mizzou
the rail system should be integral to grading the infrastructure of an advanced society

we fail miserably in that category

I think only until now when fuel prices for gasoline have surged so high that we are finally looking back to trains and finally deciding that if we simply put the effort at revitalizing our sometimes CENTURIES old rail system, it will provide an immense payback.

Moving freight by Truck long distances in my opinion should be a logistic nightmare.




Why aren't we expanding intercity rail links? A lack of public support, a lack of public sentiment to increase taxes to fund this new system, and a lack of interest.

Well that all changed this last year though didn't it =)

*EDIT* high speed rail trains will come eventually, but keep in mind the countries which have integrated them in their societies are MUCH smaller then us or their governments have much more control vs. public sentiment

It's not worth the cost either. The taxes on their gas that fund things like the rail system (Great Britain I'm looking at you) don't help the rail system much. For the cost of riding Britrail, if we were in the states, we could have just payed for the untaxed US gas ourselves and driven there, and come out about $200 ahead. What's worse, buying tickets with a student discount (and not getting a traveler's pass), cost as much as just flying directly there at the last minute would have cost here in the states.

Nah, in the UK we just screwed up the rail system by closing half of it in the 60's, and now we're realising we made a mistake and trying to improve it.
It's also not about how you pay for it, but how good it is.
Look at somewhere like Japan where their trains run almost to the minute and being late is an incredibly rare thing.
Money doesn't solve all problems, which the UK doesn't necessarily seem to have realised.

(Although there was also a Digg article on the US healthcare "system" saying that while the US spends a lot on healthcare, it doesn't necessarily spend it in the right way - on prevention - and wastes a lot on curing things that should be preventable, or at least have their occurences reduced. Money isn't the be all and end all of making things work well.)

 

[Slew Foot]

You must have one f'n huge lawn.

 

[daniel49]

Originally posted by: techs
(you have to download it and play, at least on my computer)
http://www.csx.com/share/media...eGallon30-REF24555.mp3

One gallon of fuel in your lawnmower will mow about half your yard.
One gallon of fuel in a CSX train will move one ton of freight about 423 miles
From the CSX website.

Why is America so anti-train? By my figures, using an average of 150 pounds per person, that's about 13.3 people, 423 miles on a gallon of fuel.
That seems pretty efficient to me.
How does that stack up to an airplane?
And why aren't we expanding intercity rail links? Seems it could really cut down our dependence on foreign oil, plus help our balance of payments.

convinced me I'm refitting a train now to mow my yard.

 

[Zorba]

Originally posted by: Zenmervolt

Originally posted by: techs
(you have to download it and play, at least on my computer)
http://www.csx.com/share/media...eGallon30-REF24555.mp3

One gallon of fuel in your lawnmower will mow about half your yard.
One gallon of fuel in a CSX train will move one ton of freight about 423 miles
From the CSX website.

Why is America so anti-train? By my figures, using an average of 150 pounds per person, that's about 13.3 people, 423 miles on a gallon of fuel.
That seems pretty efficient to me.
How does that stack up to an airplane?
And why aren't we expanding intercity rail links? Seems it could really cut down our dependence on foreign oil, plus help our balance of payments.

...

Using your numbers for the train, it's about 32 passenger-miles per gallon, and that probably is the same type of "best-case" scenario that yields the 60-100 passenger-miles per gallon for aircraft.

...

ZV

Need to check your math, the train is a best case of 5626 passenger-miles per gallon. Need to multiply the 13.3 and 423, not divide.