I order to reduce consumption of fossil fuels, how about getting people to travel by railroads?
Question by Lowell P: I order to reduce consumption of fossil fuels, how about getting people to travel by railroads?
This also could save people money, considering the high cost of gasoline. In the late 1930s streamlined steam and diesel trains inspired people, helping them to see that the economy was starting to recover. Since then, both steam and diesel technology have improved dramatically, vastly cleaner now. Just view color photos of the City of Portland, Burlington Zephyr, New York Central Hiawatha and other examples. Perhaps authentic replicas would attract riders?
Best answer:
Answer by Chem Flunky
I suspect functional upgrades would do more–make sure the trains come on time, have schedules convenient for most riders, and so on. And make sure train stations and trains are reasonably pleasant places to be. Possibly including coffee shops on the train, that sort of thing.
What do you think? Answer below!
There is no train here.
But there is a planned extension of the electric train system which will be built by 2020, or maybe 2025.
That costs money.
Once that happens many people around here will stop driving their cars to work / shops.
But feeder systems to train stations is really needed.
I guess I can hope …
Warren Buffet bought a mighty big chunk of the RR system when nobody had any faith in it.
Me suspects that he sees what’s on the horizon.
rail is far more efficient than any other form of transport. You just need more of it.
China is already on the way to solving its long term transport needs by investing in the most modern rail system in the world. It will have by 2015 every regional city over 500,000 connected by high speed rail. With good effective feeder systems. Some of these trains will be traveling at over 400km per hour.
Other less developed countries like the US should take note….
many of the tracks; and most of the former stations are gone. commercial rail is doing fine. passenger rail doesn,t do well, compared to cars and planes. i traveled by rail as a kid in the 50,s. it was great. this country was extremely short sighted when allowing passenger rail to deteriorate. commuter rail lines are also quite successful in major metropolitan areas. the Japanese and the Europeans are examples of success stories with passenger rail. this country will never reach that level of rial travel.
Sure. Build a railroad to my front door and I will use it.
I know very little about trains but… what runs the trains? Aren’t most of them electric? Yea, I think they are… where do they get the electric power to run the train? If you got more people to ride trains you would not save any fossil fuel at all. You would simply shift the cost to someplace else. Its the same deal with all electric cars. Yea, you don’t have to put gas in them but you do have to plug them in to charge the battery. What charges the battery? the power grid. And where does the power grid get its electricity to charge the electric car? Most likely from a coal fired power plant…
Rail makes sense for freight transport and for very short-haul passengers, but it has a major drawback in that you have to start and stop the whole dang train at every scheduled station. The other drawback is that of changing transportation modes at stations if they are farther apart than people wish to walk. I think that self-driving cars that communicate with each other are going to modify the transportation situation radically. Traffic densities can be higher, decreasing the relative infrastructure costs, and by decreasing the distance between cars at high speeds, fuel efficiencies can approach railroads. Users need only a single transportation mode from doorstep to destination, and the appropriate machine for your transport needs will self-deliver. There’s also the little bonus of eliminating drunk-driver fatalities.
Rail is only efficient if you exclude certain factors:
1. proximity to final destination (ie: even if I take a train to get ALMOST there, I still need to fet to the final location)
2. starting and stopping. The advertisements that so many tons can move so many miles on a gallon of fuel are somewhat misleading. It averages out a bunch of factors. But the practicality of human transport to various stations is very different than moving by cargo.
3. cost of new lines. Do you count the cost of building rail lines in the calculations of efficiency? It’s much cheaper to pave a new road than to install a similar spur of rail.