Cars and Trains

It turns out that modern cars are actually less polluting than modern trains, according to a recent British study. How did the environmentalists' favorite mode of transportation become an environmental bad idea?

Roger Ford, of Modern Railways magazine, said one reason for declining energy efficiency was the impact of health and safety and disability access regulations.

The introduction of crumple zones, disabled lavatories and seating rules for trains travelling over 100mph had added weight and reduced capacity.

Priceless! And when people start taking this advice to heart and driving more, there's a new model of traffic flow that more accurately predicts driving conditions.

Thanks to InstaPundit and GeekPress for the links.

Comments

[Neb Okla]

Trains in the US rarely compete with cars - they mostly compete with trucks.

And I wonder how busses compare? The average COTA bus I see has two or three people in it and belches more black diesel smoke than just about anything on the road.

Interestingly, old locomotives are becoming a rare sight on American railroads. Why are the railroads upgrading their locomtoive fleets?

The tightening noose of EPA standards.

They're a lot cleaner than Steam Engines, that's for sure. 😛

[sydhe]

Actually it indicates diesel-powered cars are more efficient than English trains. (I'm skeptical until I see a second confirming study.)

I wonder how efficient a diesel-powered car is going 215 mph.

[EcoDude]

Save the Environment, Drive a Hummer!

[MarkW]

Well, but the figures are *per seat*, and the problem is that in cars, at half or more of the seats are typically empty. I don't know what the ridership is like on the trains in the comparison, but you have to assume it's better than that (if it wasn't, the railroad would just remove passenger coaches until those remaining were mostly full--no?)

[garym]

The method of comparison is certainly strange. As sydhe notes, the study compares trains with diesel cars, which get better MPG than gasoline-powered cars. Also, it doesn't say how many passengers are assumed to be in the diesel car for the fuel-per-seat comparison.

I'd want to know a lot more before drawing any conclusions from the study.

[KentInDC]

MarkW,
You were quicker than me, but:

The title is a little misleading. It should say that a FULL car is more efficient than a FULL train. The article said that cars use less fuel per SEAT (instead of passenger) than trains. A large percentage of cars have only one or two people inside, while trains tend to have a higher percentage of seats occupied. If the inter-city train has spare seats, it takes a miniscule amount of fuel to add a passenger - much less than a car would consume on the same trip.

[garym]

I've been on some late-night trains that were nearly empty, particularly toward the suburban end of their run. Which mode of transportation has better seat utilization isn't as obvious as it may seem.

[joe]

Yes, modern cars (that is, those built during the period when governments have required fuel efficiency) are enormously fule efficient. The safety regs imposed on trains, for which the decline in fuel mileage is blamed, are echoed in those imposed on cars during the same period. But, as the market has demonstrated tens of millions of times in the past 20 years, it is entirely possible to build a car that meets the most stringent safety regs and gets good fuel economy (sadly, most of this demonstrating has been performed by foreign automakers). We're at the point in design and materials that sheer mass is no longer the dominant variable. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that similiar improvements in fuel efficiency could be achieved in trains, if the manufacturers were motivated to do so.

The per seat comparison is sketchy - the standard measure is passenger miles. Also neglected is the fact that, during peak hours (when most of the miles are racked up), the cars spend a great deal of time idling, though the study seems to assume unimpeded travel the entire way.

Also, the diesel car element is interesting - diesel engines get insane mpg. It's impossible to tell from the article what the comparison was done in. Watts? Mpg?

Bottom line - steel wheels on steel track have less friction (and therefore greater efficiency) than rubber wheels on asphalt. Many people driven by one engine is more efficient per person than everyone having their own engine - basic economy of scale. The conclusion Hanah draws is wishful thinking, supported by painfully selective reading.

Neb, replacing diesel buses with natural gas, hydrogen, electrical, or fuel cells is currently occuring all across the country.

[Ruthless]

And wouldn't the extra pollution involved in building and maintaining highways versus railway tracks need to be included?

[KentInDC]

Ruthless,
I assume you are kidding, but you could also say that laying and maintaining track adds pollution when one already has roads. Roads can be paved with asphalt, which is a byproduct of refining petroleum, while steel rails are made to order and require large amounts of energy to produce.

[Ruthless]

KentInDC,
I'm not smart enough to be kidding, but the fact of the matter is we HAD railways before roads.

[fyodor]

Who gives a flying crapola? Tax or fine the actual pollution being created and let God and the free market sort out the rest.

[Dave Potts]

Hooray for Fyodor!!!

[JD]

Well, the bulging brains at H&R have mostly taken everything I was going to say, but - I was going to raise the issue: per seat-mile or per passenger-mile? Obviously, seats != passengers for both cars and trains. Cars are at least kind of divisible: if 1 to 5 people decide to stay home, you can take a car or five off the road. If five fewer people decide to take the train, you still have to run the whole train. And building rail is hideously expensive: Light Rail Costs Approach $70 Million per Mile. Other sources put the cost of light rail lower, but just about everybody seems to agree that heavy rail is more expensive.

I thought this comment was interesting:

Prof Roger Kemp, who led the research, said that in its efforts to improve performance after privatisation, the rail industry had "taken its eye off the ball" environmentally.

If rail is or was more environmentally friendly back when it was run by the government, I doubt that was because the government cared particularly about being Earth-friendly while the wicked capitalist will gladly rape Mother Earth for another nickel. Remember, we're talking about the British government, which gave us the Concorde, which got something like 17 passenger-miles per gallon and couldn't be run profitably long-term, whereas private industry gave us the 747, which gets about 100 passenger-miles per gallon and is still running.

[Skeptikos]

If there is one thing I learned working R & D in the Pharma industry, it's look at the inconsistency. This is the kind of article that we would have thrown away immediately. Why. Look at the graphic in the bottom third of the article.

It's more than just the confusion towards passenger miles vs. passenger seat. The chart heading is "Fuel Consumption per passenger: London to Edinburgh" Than right below it, it states "per seat". Either the people who compiled this are stupid, or negligent. In a private for profit science environment, you can't waste time with that kind of error. If they make a mistake like that, how many mistakes will they make when you dissect the data?

I cannot take anything nor anyone serious who would make that kind of descriptive error.

Like I said they are either lacking in the ability to conceptualize the data, or they are deliberately mishandling it. Either way, just another piece of politics.

Either way, the only real data I can glean from this article is that I can confidentaly feel sorry for Prof Kemps students.

[joe]

"I've been on some late-night trains that were nearly empty, particularly toward the suburban end of their run. Which mode of transportation has better seat utilization isn't as obvious as it may seem."

You have to look at the rail system in its entirety to draw meaningful conclusions. If the availability of an outbound 7:30 PM train causes 3X as many people to ride the 5:00-7:00 trains, the presence of that late train is important, even it is half empty every night. People don't want to take the train to work if they're afraid they won't get home if they end up staying in the office late.

Kent, laying track is a much smaller project than laying asphalt - especially when you consider that the level of service you can get out of a double track would require six or more lanes of highway, including interchanges and overpasses (and stormwater drainage). What's more, the energy used in maintenance is much higher for highways, which need to be resurfaced every couple of years, compared to rails, which last for 100+ years, and need only a grinding every decade (?) or so.

fyodor, give me a 50/50 split in funding for rail vs highway projects, and I'll take that offer. Otherwise, you're putting a thumb on the scale. Actually, you'd have to apply that retroactively to make up for the $trillions already spent to promote auto travel. Basically, if you say "let's stop fighting" only after you land a good punch and knock your opponent down, you're not actually advocating pacifism.

[Skeptikos]

An addendum to my comments:

It doesn't matter to me whether it's a green mishandling data (as is so often documented by the amazing R Baily) or your garden variety Prof, you gotta call those who use junk science down to the mat and knock some logic and percision into them.

[joe]

JD, the cost of a full-sized highway in an urban area (that is, on that can provide the same level of service as rail) is comparable to the $70 million/mile figure you provide.

The flip side of your "if five people stay home" idea is that, if the number of people making the trip doubles over 10 years, you just add some cars to the train, while the highway people are stuck with either painful, polluting backups, or another urban highway project (with its enormous cost, huge takings, and sacrifice of urban land/jobs/homes to the transportation needs of the commuters).

[fyodor]

How about a 0/0 split? 🙂 As for "let's stop fighting," should I give you a free pop after realizing I shouldn't have hit you? Heh, well no metaphor is perfect and neither is any solution to a situation involving past favoritism. But more wrongs don't right past wrongs!

[Skeptikos]

0/0 split? I tend to lean towards M Freidman on issues like this, do what can be done, work with what can't. Where we are right now, all private roads and all private rail and all private transportation would have an interesting effect where I live (Chicago). Presently it wouldn't work. Nice dream though, and no doubt Marx's dreams were nice too. Ahh but the application of the extremist position is always the sticking point (does anybody actually read Hayek?) When we see a viable plan (that wouldn't bring things to a screeching halt/crash) we should implement it. For me the goal is a freemarket efficent world. A nice dream. Until someone works out the practical application, I will muddle along with a traditional model. And I will apply what abilities I have to understanding it all.

But I am not willing to step off the cliff without a parachute. That is one of the many reasons that people don't vote Libertarian. Radical departures are fine. If they work. For now most of what I hear sounds like so much pie in the sky dreaming.

[Phil]

The flip side of your "if five people stay home" idea is that, if the number of people making the trip doubles over 10 years, you just add some cars to the train, . . .

There are some implicit assumptions there, too, that can't always be met. I'm sure you're familiar with the travails of DC's Metro system. Despite the fact that they're crowded like a train bound for Auschwitz, the system continues to run 6-car trains on a system built to handle up to 8-car trains, because a) their suppliers can't meet the demand for more cars, b) they can't afford the cars anyway, c) they certainly can't afford the additional maintenance costs or the additional wear on the tracks, and d) nobody is trained to handle the 8-car trains.

What's more, no matter how demand for the system grows, 8-car trains are the upper limit; the platforms in the Metro system aren't built to handle trains any longer than that. Extra cars would extend past the passenger platform, so they'd have to spend the money to build new platforms at every single station. Either that, or run trains a lot more often, meaning buying a lot more cars, which puts them right where they are now.

RIght now, Metro is talking about phasing in tests of the 8-car train system . . . by 2010. By then, demand will have increased to the point where you need 10-12 car trains. (And they'll still be "fixing" the Mixing Bowl, I'm sure.) So "just add cars" is not always a panacea.

[digamma]

8-car trains are the upper limit; the platforms in the Metro system aren't built to handle trains any longer than that.

On New Jersey Transit, conductors often announce, "Passengers in the last two cars must walk forward to exit." It's not that hard, and most people will choose that over standing. If fear of lawsuits won't let passengers walk from car to car, you can designate certain cars to stop only at a certain subset of stations. (Philadelphia's Market-Frankford Line has a variation on this idea.)

I feel strongly about getting government out of the way of public transit. Here's the thought experiment I used to propose when I lived in Philly: if I were to drive a van up to a corner where a bunch of angry commuters were waiting for a late SEPTA bus, and offer to drive the route for half of what SEPTA was charging, how many city, state, and federal laws would I be breaking for helping people save money and get to work on time? (Hint: I'm not in the Transport Workers Union.)

[Jimmy Antley]

"Bottom line - steel wheels on steel track have less friction (and therefore greater efficiency) than rubber wheels on asphalt. Many people driven by one engine is more efficient per person than everyone having their own engine - basic economy of scale."

So, Joe, you fancy yourself a mechanical engineer, do ya? The bottom line is how much fuel is burned per passenger-mile, which indeed the article drops the ball on.

Joe, friction is not what you're alluding to - it's rolling resistance (of the steel on rail vs. rubber on pavement). The lower the friction is between wheel and rail, the bigger the damn locomotive has to be to avoid spinning out. i.e. The load on the driving wheels must be larger when the friction coefficient is lower. True, rolling resistance for steel on steel rail may be less than in pneumatic tires, but that depends on a lot of factors.

Once you're past 40-50 mph, the rolling resistance, bearing friction, etc. becomes not as important as air drag, hence the improvements in aerodynamics of cars (and some trains) over the last 25 years.

As to one engine vs many engines, that pretty much depends on how big. Those locomotives have engines that are much bigger than the one on your Vespa, Joe.

Anyway, I will agree the article needs more numbers, for this argument to be won by anybody.

[Ruthless]

Hanah,
Did this whole thing originate from Onion?
You can level with us.

[Kevin Carson]

joe,

I agree with fyodor. Instead of a 50-50 split, why not just eliminate funding from general tax revenues altogether? Let rail and highway traffic each fund all their costs with user fees, so that all costs of maintaining the existing system or expanding it are funded by those it serves--on the basis of the cost they impose on the system. And while we're at it, take away the ability of railroads, highways, or airports to use the eminent domain power.

[Remy]

Putting aside the graphs, seats vs passengers questions, and the finer points of rolling friction: it costs me about the same to drive my 8-cylinder gas guzzler 450 miles as it does to take the train, bus, or to fly. Add on the additional costs of getting to and from the station, parking, and dealing with transportation in the destination city and the gas guzzler wins hands-down.

The cost difference between rail and highway is somewhat moot in that gasoline taxes pay for highways and rail construction is either government subsidized (therefore I've paid the taxes, just as I have for the highways), or the costs are included in the ticket price.

I'm gonna keep driving.

[MALAK]

Gas lawn mowers still pollute more than either of 'em.

[KentInDC]

s.m. koppelman,
So, from where does the electrical power come? Coal? It would be virtually impossible to build a major new coal-fired power plant, not to mention the environmentalist opposition to mines. Hydroelectric plants? The dams are being torn down and good luck ever getting another approved in this country. Nuclear? In my fondest dreams. Natural gas? It is more efficient to use it directly in the bus. Wind or solar power? Not yet economical for large-scale energy production and there has been opposition to both from environmentalists and the NIMBYs - and both do have significant environmental problems. Oil? See natural gas. Geothermal? There is some promise there. There are obvious limits to "natural" geothermal sources, but we are approaching the point (if we are not already there) that we can drill far enough to tap the heat of the earth's core. However, I can imagine Al Gore writing a book saying we are going to cause earthquakes by tapping the heat that comes to the surface whether we use it or not.

If and when we do perfect storing and shipping large quantities of hydrogen, Iceland will be far wealthier than Brunei or any Middle Eastern country. Look for the scaremongers to hold up the introduction of hydrogen, too. Invisible flames ARE a little scary.

Jimmy Antley,
I wasn't really advocating going to bike transportation, but trying (and obviously failing) to point out that there are places for all forms of transportation - it is not as if we are going to abandon the highways or railroads because one is superior. I prefer riding the train in many cases because I prefer reading and napping to driving. However, the train doesn't go everywhere I want to go and it is a big hassle and waste of time to wait for connecting trains, rent a car or take a cab, etc. I would also consider riding a bike to work if not for having to share the road with cars and trucks.

[Jimmy Antley]

Kent: Yeah, I know, I was just commenting that I really like biking, and it's a damn shame it's so dangerous due to cars. Indeed, in many cities, it can relieve some car traffic.

Trains are really fun to ride, but I guess not enough people are willing to pay what it really costs (on X-country trips, I mean) to make it pay for itself. Or, could it be because it's run by the government? Government's usually very efficient, isn't it, or do I have my head up my ass. No, don't answer that!

[Lisa Simpson]

Hey, Koppelman, be nice to Hanah. I really doubt she chain-smokes out of a long holder and wears a cape with a $ pin on it. Plus her name is a palindrome that's not Bob. 🙂

[Ztev]

OK , the additional comparison was that new trains were HEAVIER per seat than the new A380.
This changes completely the earlier metric which was Fuel per SEAT. No saying how much fuel the 550 seat A380 uses. Must be far too much to even mention. Then again crossing the pacific by train ??. Whats the fuel per passenger for the Queen Mary 2. I would take that choice any time

The other quibble I have is the trains consumption at a steady 125mph is compared with that of the car at say 60mph. But trains have timetables and car drivers have to travel through citys to get to the final destination at a lower efficiency
Lets compare the train at 60mph too
Cars too have been getting heavier per seat, but their engines were less efficient. Stick a modern diesel in my 30 yr old car and wow even more efficiency???

[joe]

Kent, with your little "highway" pissiness, and Jimmy "misnomer" Antley, you have a call from Dr. Pedantic.

[Jimmy Antley]

Yeah, well, I'll send him over to you after he helps me out to cure your case of the Mondays.
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plus maybe he can get that corn-cob out of your rear-end so's you can think straight.

[KentInDC]

Jimmy Antley,
It's only pedantic and pissy when someone other than joe does it. I wonder if he even noticed that I was using the same phrases he used earlier in the thread.

[KentInDC]

Ruthless,
Railroads have only been operating a couple of hundred years; roads have been around for thousands. It is true that a few routes had rail before roads, but it is also true that some routes have never had rail and will never get it because there isn't enough traffic to justify a spur, but folks still want to get there (Farms, for example.). Automobiles also make us much less dependent on someone else's timetable.

If energy efficiency and/or pollution is the ultimate criteria, why isn't anyone suggesting that we abandon trains for barges and bicycles? Bike trails can be built for a fraction of the price of highways or railroads and the rivers are already there. It might take a little longer, but so does waiting for train connections - especially when the train only runs to your destination twice a day.

[Kevin Carson]

joe,

Transportation subsidies only create apparent efficiencies; what they really do is provide a vehicle by which the inefficiencies of centralization and large-scale production can be externalized on the taxpayer.

Because of government's underwriting of the distribution costs of big business, we buy stuff produced at a big factory a thousand miles away, when the total unit costs (if they were all included in the balance sheet, instead of being shuffled around) would be less for the same goods produced at a small factory twenty miles away.

Economy of scale is a calculation made in the context of a whole package of costs and returns. Government intervention to absorb some of those costs, in effect, shifts economy of scale upward artificially. But the costs are still there. Costs can't be destroyed, only shifted: TANSTAAFL.

I don't think the choice is between subsidized centralization and squalor. If the government wasn't intervening on behalf of the administrators who run the centralized machinery, a lot fewer resources and labor would be poured down the rathole of unproductive and unnecessary distribution costs. And if the government wasn't intervening to reduce the bargaining power of labor and to privilege the owners of land and capital, you'd be keeping a big chunk of your labor-product that currently goes to rent or dividends. If it weren't for the inefficiencies imposed on the system from above in the interest of the parasites, I think it's a lot more likely the average worker could purchase what he consumes today with only 20-25 hours labor a week.

[Patrick]

I prefer riding the train in many cases because I prefer reading and napping to driving.

I prefer riding the train in all cases to driving, which is why I live in the one remaining American city where I can do that. Someone up there made the very good point that there is no one-size-fits-all transportation solution. Unfortunately, we have decided that the automobile will be our one-size-fits-all solution, with the result that all cities of under 1,000,000 or so population (and which therefore cannot justify the expense of subways) have paved over huge amounts of land for highways and parking lots, and thereby removed much of the reason for traveling there in the first place. I am perfectly certain that the car can be a better solution for certain city-to-city scenarios, just as certain as I am that the car has destroyed the life of many American cities.

[s.m. koppelman]

Bike paths along rivers and along canal and railroad rights-of-way are a great idea. That's why they're popping up all over the country.

Go to a densely-populated metro area and for every near-empty suburb-bound night train (often going out in order to be there for a morning run), there's a rush-hour train with 30% more passengers than seats.

Try that with a car.

[s.m. koppelman]

You know, golden retrievier puppies have nothing on Reason interns. The dewy-eyed eagerness, the Ayn Rand haircuts, the way they get all excited showing off their autographed photos of Milton Friedman and senior Cato analysts.. I love the way they'll embrace any astroturf "study" they find at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box if it's got that antigovernment sheen. It's so cute!

[joe]

"it costs me about the same to drive my 8-cylinder gas guzzler 450 miles as it does to take the train, bus, or to fly. Add on the additional costs of getting to and from the station, parking, and dealing with transportation in the destination city and the gas guzzler wins hands-down."

If you're going from downtown Boston to midtown Manhattan, the gas guzzler loses hands down. If you're going from the Boston burbs to Westchester Co., the car wins. But then, the timing comes into play as well, with train schedules and highway rush hours in the Boston, Providence, New Haven, and New York metro areas. There's really no one size fits all solution.

Kevin, transportation systems have always (as in, since pre-historical, pre-literate times) been subsidized by the government, for as long as there have been governments, for one simple reason: the money put in is paid back many times over in greater efficiencies and opportunities. I'm not willing to have a salary that is a tenth what I ear today, just so I won't have to pay taxes. I guess it's about values.

Jimmy, "rolling resistance," also known as "rolling friction." Did you actually think I was talking about sliding the wheels down the surface?

Kent, "roads" have been around for thousands of years, but highways have not. The two are so significantly different, functionally, economically, and in their impact on the development of surrounding areas, that it's irresponsible to conflate the two. When we're talking about moving considerable numbers of people around a metro area, Elm Street isn't really part of the discussion.

[joe]

sm, do you think they'll wait for this story to drop off the site before they post another column about the "junk science" behind toxics reduction and the greenhouse effect?

[KentInDC]

joe,
I was addressing the claim of Ruthless that "the fact of the matter is we HAD railways before roads." That is not a true statement. His or her response was to my post stating that roads can be paved with asphalt. A highway is a type of road according to Webster. Highways can also be paved with asphalt. However, since you brought up the issue, there are references to "highway robbers" at least as far back as the 16th century. I assume they robbed people on "highways." A horsedrawn rail system was built in England in 1748 and the first steam powered train was built in 1804, also in England.

Oh, those hydrogen and electric powered buses that you say are replacing diesel buses all across the country - from where does the energy come to dissociate the hydrogen and charge the batteries? It is irresponsible and an indication of wishful thinking to not look at the big picture.

[s.m. koppelman]

The point of electric and fuel-cell buses (and trains and cars for that matter) is not that they necessarily consume less energy than a state-of-the-art gasoline or diesel equivalent, but that they move the pollution to a central powerplant where it can be easily filtered and mitigated.

Thousands of electric or alternative-fuel buses concentrate nearly all their emissions (greenhouse gases and excess heat thrown off by conventional engines alike) at the powerplant, where the gases and toxins can be captured comparatively easily and reliably. You get a city with cleaner air, suburbs and countryside downwind with cleaner air, and the emissions can be measured and controlled at a single point so that the Victorious Libertarian Overlords can make good on their promise of extracting compensation from the powerplant owners for any externalities they don't address.

Or is that goal of making polluters pay according to the harm done just a convenient talking point to cover for a corporatist agenda?

It's possible that sometime in the future, fuel-cell or ULEV hybrid-powered buses will run virtually as cleanly and as cheaply as overhead-powered electrics and the like, but the market ain't offering those right now. And current battery and fuel-cell technology would make for some mighty heavy buses.

[Jimmy Antley]

Joe, rolling friction is a misnomer - it's not friction at all, and as I said, air drag is what you need the horsepower for, at any decent speed. So, how's it relate to your argument at all? Don't try to BS an engineer, please.

KentInDC: The bike path thing is not going to solve all the transportation, but is indeed really exciting, as the only thing keeping many people from biking is the danger from cars. I used to ride 8-9 miles to work on a longer route than direct to work (for safer streets), and on busy days I'd catch up with the same cars at work! (that was a blast).

The A380 (if it flies) will not compete with trains, as trains do not cross the Atlantic or Pacific. Better to compare to a Canadair Regional Jet - the 50-seater burns about 700G of Jet A per hour (both sides) as an average on a trip it's built for (say 800 statute miles). Speed is about 500 mph, with no wind.

Keep in mind that 100 miles in an airplane equals ~120 miles on the road unless you're going exactly North, South, East or West in the Plains. i.e. it's more of a straight line - unless there's weather or air traffic control problems.

So, that's 500 mi/hr / 700 mi/hr = 0.71 Gallons per 50 seat miles. If you have 70% load factors, 35 passengers, that is, then it's 25 passenger-miles per gallon. That's the way to do these comparisons. So, on long trips in the US, flying is more fuel-efficient than single-driver SUVs, even single-driver large/medium sedans and pickups. But, not if there are 2 or more in the ground vehicle. Then flying only still beats two people in an Excursion, Humvee, or high-speed Case backhoe (the next in SUV's ;-}

[Jimmy Antley]

We still need the numbers on fuel burn of a passenger-car-pulling modern locomotive, and how many coaches one or multiples can pull, average speed of the trains (including stops as someone mentioned), and load factors on these trains.

Look it up, do the math, then get back with me.

[Andrew D. Todd]

To: KentInDC (June 23, 2004 01:05 PM):

Very considerable quantities of electricity go into space heating and space cooling. Over the span of a year, space heating and cooling is essentially a thermal oscillation problem. Using high-grade energy to solve an oscillation problem is in general a wasteful practice. It is better to use something equivalent to a flywheel or shock absorber. Geothermal heat pumps solve the heating and cooling problem by tapping into the thermal mass of the underground soil, using it in effect as a thermal flywheel. In most of the United States, the stable underground temperature is somewhat below the comfort zone, so a geothermal heat pump can provide air conditioning at very low power requirements, acting as a mere heat exchanger. In winter, the availability of a "cold sink" at fifty or sixty degrees enables the heat pump to operate at a comparatively high coefficient of performance. During the 1970's the Canadians developed the idea of "superinsulation," that is, insulating a building to the point that the heat-producing activities inside (human metabolism, use of hot water, cooking, etc.) would keep it warm in winter.

Further, electric resistance water heating is in widespread use. This is a textbook case for solar power, with a sufficiently large hot water storage tank. People use electric resistance heat because the heating element itself is small and cheap, and because it was assumed that energy was nearly free, but when one moves to the assumption that energy is something one wins in battle (*), electric resistance heating becomes a dubious idea. If you go about it the right way, you can build a house that taps into the natural energy flows, and exploits them. Retrofitting an existing house is naturally more difficult, but still, a great deal can be done with reasonable payback periods of ten years or less.

(*) "the only thing more terrible than a battle won is a battle lost" - the Duke of Wellington, after Waterloo.

The trick is to reserve high-grade energy, such as electricity and gasoline, for high-grade uses, such as transportation and electronics. One great virtue of geothermal heat pumps and suchlike is that they are NIMBY-proof. Everyone has a small installation in his back yard for his own use.

To: Jimmy Antley (June 23, 2004 12:48 PM)

I don't know about fuel consumption, but typical figures for train horsepower are something like the following:

Northeast corridor: 10 hp/ton, that is 800 hp for an 80 ton car with 80 seats, to achieve speeds in excess of 100 mph. A train of ten cars or so, pulled by a 9000 hp electric locomotive. That is, 10 hp/seat, compared to 100-200 hp/seat for an Italian sports car of comparable speed. I gather from the formulas in Baumeister and Marks, _Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers_, 1967, p. 11-37 that aerodynamic displacement drag is more important than aerodynamic viscous drag.

Crack intermodal train (TOFC) run by Union Pacific and BNSF for United Parcel Service, 5 hp/ton, capable of 70 mph, to compete with Fed Ex trucks with two drivers (one driving, one sleeping in back).

Slow freight, eg. coal train. 3 hp/ton. 50 mph? Of course the best coal roads are basically downhill from the mine to the power plant, consequently, there is lot of scope for attaining 70 mph with a gravity assist. Trains sometimes experience uncontrolled runaways on long 1% grades, accelerating under gravity to something in excess of 70 mph, and then derailing.

[KentInDC]

Andrew D. Todd,
I took a class on energy law in law school and suggested eliminating the tax deduction for mortgage interest as a means of reducing energy consumption (Of course, I would want it to be matched by a reduction in tax rates.). I have no doubt that there would be a reduction in the number of new first generation ancestral mansions and the accompanying energy demand. (Note: I have nothing against first generation ancestral mansions. I simply think our tax code should not be used to promote disproportionate spending on housing.)

As far as "superinsulation" goes, most large office buildings are air conditioned year-round because the buildings do not have enough surface area to dissipate the heat generated by lights, people, etc. I live in a high-rise apartment building and rarely turn on the heat in the winter. Straw bale houses can be heated at much lower cost than conventional housing, and use waste materials to boot. However, most people take out mortgages when buying homes and I think it is pretty difficult to get a mortgage or insurance on such homes. There is a mansion near Huntsville, AL that was built in the 1930's with straw bales.

So, what do you think about drilling miles into the ground to tap some serious energy? I read about 15 years ago that some scientists were predicting that as the next major energy source, but have not heard much more about it.