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by ufmace
1300 days ago
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Regarding trains, I don't think that's really accurate. Yes, a train that's completely full gets excellent effective mileage per passenger for that trip. But how often are they anywhere near full? In reality, trains and buses have to make a huge number of runs either completely or virtually empty in order to have a regular enough schedule for anybody to be willing to depend on them. We need to know the effective fuel consumption of all runs actually made per total actual passenger-miles transported over the course of at least a week, maybe more like a month. And that's before we account for any additional trips needed for personnel movements, car and track servicing, and other such things. |
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The Bart number may have been during peak only so fair point there, I can certainly look for the systemwide average. [1]
The Caltrain number is average over FY2016-2018, from their sustainability report page 5. [2] They completed roughly 436M passenger-miles per year, and consumed roughly 4.4M gallons of diesel. Clocks in around 100 passenger-miles per gallon. I'm sure its worse now with the COVID numbers. I think it's a fair ballpark point of comparison though, and you can consider the Bart number an upper limit.
You're of course right its a function of ridership. An average freight train gets over 400 miles per gallon per ton of cargo.
[1] https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/GreenSheet.pdf
[2] https://www.caltrain.com/about-caltrain/sustainability