Honda has fully deployed its fleet of Auto-Max® railcars, achieving a significant reduction in the fuel consumption and CO2 emissions associated with its automobile distribution activities in the United States.

oh thank heavens they're "fully deployed"!

they only started using them 8 years ago.

Minivans hold people. Trains are only efficient when transporting dense cargo.

A major reason why a railroad train is usually a lot more efficient for hauling freight than passengers is due to weight and space requirements. Hauling live people takes up a lot of interior space so that people can move about and have space to read, walk, etc. But freight just requires the space to store the freight. For bulk commodities like coal, there is little air space between the coal lumps.

The weight of the passengers in a train is often only a few percent of the total weight of the train so the heavy rail cars and locomotives exact a high toll in energy consumption. In contrast to this, for high density freight, the weight of the freight may constitute roughly half the weight of the train. So the heavy rail cars don't accrue the high weight penalty that they do for passenger rail.

• Passenger train cars have almost double the specific rolling resistance of freight cars due to the low weight of the "cargo" (passengers).

• Passenger trains travels at higher speeds than freight and a doubling of speed will quadruple the aerodynamic drag.

• Passenger train cars are heated or cooled (air conditioned) and lighted while freight cars are usually not.

• intercity rail (42mpg based on 17.9 passengers per vehicle) is about 27% more fuel efficient than cars (33mpg, 1.57 p/v)
  
• commuter rail (45mpg, 32.9 p/v) is about 36% better

ah but you missed the point. 23mpg is not good mileage. the minivan class could be doing much better, without resorting to hypercar extremes. and honda's really reaching by giving itself new credit for a logistics choice it made a decade ago.

electric trains are probably more energy efficient at the same speed but i don't know by how much. the point with them though as with other transport changes is fuel-switching.

Any truth to this?

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

Amtrak: 2,709
Commuter rail: 2,743
Rail transit: 2,784
Domestic air routes: 3,264
Cars: 3,445

Since passenger rail efficiency largely depends on ridership, and since ridership has increased since 2005, these figures probably understate the efficiency advantage of rail.

There are also energy costs of infrastructure (roads, highways, parking, etc.) and operations (policing, emergency response, maintenance, lighting, etc.), which are generally higher for motor vehicles on a per passenger basis.

In addition to the primary effect of more efficient vehicles, there is the secondary effect of VMT reduction from transit oriented land use. A study by APTA found "The net total effect of public transportation on energy savings is then estimated at 4.16 billion equivalent gallons of gasoline per year" or the equivalent of three percent of total U.S. gasoline consumption.

On freight efficiency, the AAR says "Freight trains move a ton of freight an average of 436 miles on a single gallon of diesel fuel." More from the Freight Rail Works campaign and Freight Railroads and Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

Ped Shed Blog

Since privacy and habeus corpus has been canceled by the bushco team, yes you are now free to be kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by your own government.

That's pre-1776 freedom!  Thank your favorite fearless leader, bush and friends!

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

"... can move a ton of freight 400 miles on one gallon of gas..."
Any truth to this?

Depends if you make the assumption that the train is full.

On average, railroads can move one ton of freight 423 miles on one gallon of fuel. This is a rail industry statistic calculated by dividing the 2006 annual revenue ton miles (1.772 trillion) by the fuel consumed (4.192 billion), which equates to the industry average of one ton of freight 423 miles on one gallon of fuel. (The 2006 data was the last full year for which total industry data are available.)
Revenue ton miles are those miles for which railroads are compensated for moving freight. (We move empty cars to reposition them, and we move company materials for which we are not compensated). The industry did not include fuel consumed by passenger trains -- just freight trains.
http://lucididiocyblog2.blogspot.com/2008/03/423-miles-ga ...

But then again, thats still a hell of a lot better than 8mpg with a bigrig truck.

-David Ahlport

PRT and Cybertran are better than light-rail in that they are smaller/lighter (like cars), more flexible, less-capital-intensive and automated. PRT is more flexible than Cybertran, but even PRT is not as flexible as traditional automobile taxi service (nor "autotaxi", though it is similar in some ways to the latter). I think PRT would work well in Manhattan in combination with street-stacking. Street-stacking adds multiple street levels above a base level. Ordinary multi-level parking-garage construction-techniques (featuring efficient, garage-smooth "street" surfaces) can be used. At least some of the levels could be designated PRT-exclusive.

With the street-stacks extending up into the sky, office-workers, hotel-guests, apartment dwellers, etc. could simply exit their building at their given floor-levels and catch a PRT, rather than take elevators (or, at least, elevators in their own buildings) to ground level. This way, there need not be a five-o'clock-rush to get to the ground lobby.

What do you think?

BTW, I could not find information on JAD. Could you please tell me what that is?

in the event of fast sea rise i think they'd be screwed, they have so much important infrastructure underground. rather than raise the roads all the way around the city they'd probably isolate the harbor with a barrage like in cardiff, but, you know, bigger, as is their way. well, they'd have a big silt issue.

anyhow it's a tougher problem for them than for london and other big cities that aren't right on the water.

This statement is somewhat misleading.  Although technically true that the cargo on frieght trains makes up a grater percentage of the weight than passengers do on passenger trains, passenger trains still weigh less, especially when comparing full trains from each category.

In this way, passenger trains (in general) use less fuel and are more efficient.

But that's not takin' into account how much energy would be used if the freight/people had to be shipped by road vehicles if they didn't use trains, or the fact that many passenger trains don't use the same energy sources as freisght trains (like electric passenger trains), and other factors.

To put it simply, it would be better and more efficient if almost everything (both passengers and freight) were shipped by train (as opposed to cars, trucks, or planes)

...the US economy would collapse, due to excessive transit-rigidity and excessive transit-latency. Rail means monopolies. Over-the-Road (OTR) means myriad independents, competing to provide the most-efficient service.

Have you ever wondered why business chooses to spend more to ship by truck and plane? Do you honestly think that many, if not most, of the businesses that choose to ship by truck have not already tried rail?

Post-tensioned multi-story garages flowing nothing but PRT's would be expensive to build and maintain? Post-tensioned concrete construction is light, fast to build, and cheap. The 2009 NYC budget is NYC $59.1 Billion. Perhaps a billion every year could add substantial multi-level PRT capacity, without denting the budget too much. In the beginning, it might simply be restricted to the skyscraper districts, so that people could get from one skyscraper to another -- something that they cannot do now, because of NYC's permanent gridlock.

Hapa wrote: street stacking is much more expensive to [...] maintain

Why would garages flowing rubber-tire PRT's need maintenance? If titanium dioxide were added to the concrete mix, it would not even get dirty.

Hapa wrote: NYC isn't starving to drive more.

Are you kidding? "Gridlock has few defenders."

Manhattan continuously improves density by adding building-levels. This is good, because it enables efficiency. The problem (bottleneck) is that the density improvement only takes place on the building-footprints. The street-footprint density never improves. This is because the streets always stay at a single level. The result is periodic elevator-gridlock and permanent street-gridlock. Street-stacking solves both.

Imagine someone wanting to go from the 70th floor of one building, to the 80th floor of another building.

By your subway system, he would:

1. Descend 70+ floors to the subway level.
   
2. Transit.
   
3. Transfer.
   
4. Transit again.
   
5. Ascend 80+ floors.

By your multi-level PRT-guideway system, he would:

1. Transit.
   
2. Transfer.
   
3. Transit again.
   
4. Ascend only 10 floors.

By my multi-level PRT-flowing street system, he would:

1. Transit.
   
2. Ascend only 10 floors.

The functional difference between my elevated PRT system, and yours, is that mine allows the PRT's to flexibly travel (randomly turn) just like taxi-cabs, whereas your system forces the PRT's to rigidly follow guideways. Perhaps a middle ground could be reached where your system would be enhanced to allow random-turns at intersections, or where my system would be paired-down to hug the buildings but still allow random-turns at intersections.

Here is another enhancement idea: center-of-intersection elevators for the PRT's, which would then also use those center-of-intersection blockages as traffic-roundabouts.

At least some of the levels could be designated PRT-exclusive.

you then said you were actually saying this:

Post-tensioned multi-story garages flowing nothing but PRT's would be expensive to build and maintain?

how does "some" mean "nothing but"?

"at least some" is a minority of traffic. that's how i read it and responded.

as for the rest, what isn't based on that misunderstanding -- me writing about increasing personal car traffic in the city, you taking it as rejection of PRT -- beyond that i didn't say very much.

i only made a casual first effort at picturing a stacked system that allowed sunlight to reach the ground, because i like sunlight. i didn't say anything about guideways! only snow and rain protection.

I can hardly imagine a more sad dystopian vision for the city, all in the service of yet more pointless scurrying around in machinery.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

Upgraded buses and subways could fill in the rest.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

I don't understand why certain parts of suburbs/towns could also not be immediately declared "NEV-only", many areas don't need speeds over 30 mph (20 mph is even better, safety and pedestrian-wise).

Public transit, even with PRT or Cybertran, will often take a little more time than driving (though not the double our current transit system does). But many people will choose it anyway, not just because of costs, but for lowered stress, and ability to read a paper or browse the internet while they ride. Conventional transit offer this too in the abstact. But in practice you may not get a seat and thus have no more opportunity to read the paper than when drivings (which scarily enough I've seen people do).

Also conventional transit offers several stress points that can match or exceed the stress of driving, that Cybertran or PRT eliminate. If you leave five minutes late in a car you are five minutes behind. If leaving five minutes late makes you miss a bus or a train, that can cost you from fifteen minutes to an hour depending on when the next one is due, how connections run. Also once you are on a bus or a train, there are still the twin worries when you transfer (and most do): will you miss your transfer connection? Will your transfer connection come late and make you late, even though you left on time?

With Cybertran and PRT you either have no tranfer, or your transfer will arrive when you do  and wait for you to get on. Automated, routes programmed on the fly transit fufills the promise conventional mass transit makes, but often does not keep.

though I fully endorse the redevelopment of effective long-distance rail systems in the US for both passengers and freight, you've got to remember the freight efficiency numbers cited in Grey's link above are heavily weighted (hah!) by the kinds of stuff that are hauled by today's rail freight systems, e.g. long-distance point-to-point heavy bulk commodities such as coal, lumber, grain, and apparently, SUV's; and that the inevitably far higher fuel costs of end-point distribution from the railhead are not included.

Only: But we are looking at freight rail displacing long haul traffic only. Short haul traffic is seperate. I guess a way to look at it is that more long haul rail increase short haul trucking by a few percent.  In terms of the weight:  A lot of stuff we would switch from truck to train are comparatively heavly (dairy, juices, frozen foot, computers and electronic equipment.)

If you are shipping feathers, or insulating foam, trucks actually may be more efficient, and hopefully would still be used for those things. But that really is a tiny percent. New Furniture, especially today when most furniture is shipped disassembled - heavy. Stationary: heavy. Sundries - heavy. Pots and pans and dishes and silver right backed - heavy. Tupperware and plastic goods are mostly light I guess. Napkisn are light compared to volume. Toilet paper and Kleenex are heavy compared to volumes. Paper towels: try lifting a 16 pack of large rolls if you think they are not at least moderate in weight. And if we cut down on SUVs we will be shipping cars instead for some time to come.