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Save the earth, drive your car?

Adding lots of train and bus lines to car-congested roads would seem to be an environmental slam dunk. If only the math would cooperate.

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Mass transit in the Northeast was hit hard by Sandy. New Yorkers had to do without the subway, for example, but now the transit system has mostly recovered. It’s a perfect time to be thankful for the extensive network of public transportation that exists in the city. In fact, it means that New Yorkers have one of the smallest per-capita carbon footprints in the U.S.

But you’re probably sensing a hidden side here, right?

"Mass transit can be an incredible boon for the environment," says Eric Morris, a regular contributor to Freakonomics and a professor of urban planning at Clemson University. He told Freakonomics' Stephen Dubner: "It can also not help the environment or maybe even hurt the environment."

Wait. What?

“Obviously, the energy expenditure in moving around a transit vehicle per passenger mile depends on the number of passengers," Morris continues. "Whether you have one passenger in a bus or 40 passengers in a bus, you're going to be expending almost the same amount of energy.  So it all depends on the ridership and the occupancy that transit vehicles and, for that matter, autos carry."

So here comes the rub. The average American car carries 1.6 people -- not many, of course, when you're comparing it to mass transit. On the other hand, the average bus carries only 10 people. And a bus burns a lot more fuel than a car. Not exactly what mass-transit advocates would have us believe.


Click through to see how your state commutes. Explore the interactive map.


Which led Morris to this rather surprising conclusion: "Typically, moving a passenger a mile by bus requires roughly 20 percent more energy than moving a passenger around by car…So, just in terms of energy expenditure, bus actually fares worse than car."

And trains? Trains are on average better than cars, roughly two-thirds of energy per passenger -- although that number is warped a bit by the New York City subway, which is just a monster of efficiency.

The caveat here: it’s hard to make an apples-to-apples comparison, since transportation is so complex. But here's Eric Morris's point: In terms of energy efficiency, mass transit is not the panacea that a lot of people would like to think. Yes, it works great in a dense urban area like New York, but Morris argues that we've already picked a lot of that low-hanging fruit, and that light-rail systems in places like Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Memphis actually do worse than cars in terms of energy efficiency, simply because they're underused.

"In general, pumping up ridership by constructing new transit systems or adding new transit service has to be looked at very skeptically," he says. "On the other hand, if we can persuade more people to leave cars and move onto the existing transit system that we already have, that's a complete win for the environment."

There are a lot of trade-offs here that are hard to measure. A few examples: commuting time, land usage for parking, the cost of ownership of different kinds of vehicles, and the traffic fatalities that come with car travel.

And you’ve got to consider your success in what Morris says -- persuading people to leave their cars. As the Onion once put it: "98 Percent of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation for Others."

So if liberals hate the idea of discouraging mass transit, here's an idea that conservatives can hate: you can compel people to leave their cars by raising tolls and gas and parking taxes to incentivize more people to ride the transit systems we've already spent billions on.

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mwade's picture
mwade - May 11, 2013

"...if most of us would quit our cars then the buses would carry a lot more people and their energy consumption would make better sense for the planet."

"If" is the operative word here. IF there were a bus or rail terminal near enough to my home and my work...IF my work schedule closely aligned with the bus schedule...IF I did not have to spend more time waiting at terminals for transfers from line to line than the total time spent on a car commute... IF the bus schedule left me the flexibility to work late or leave early as needed..."

But the point of the news story is that all these IFs don't exhist in the world today. As long as it is faster and cheaper to use a car people in the real world will continue to do so, A point alluded to near the end when the story suggested higher tolls, taxes and parking fees.

Regarding the "superioity" of electric hybrid buses, the efficiency of hybrids declines as vehicle size increases, so gains in mileage are negligible. Diesel is superior. Batteries for hybrids require lots of neodymium, lanthanum, terbium and dysprosium. These rare earth minerals used to be mined in the USA, but environmental regulation made this prohibitively expensive. China, unencumbered by environmental regulation now produces 96% of the world's rare earth minerals. There is environmental damage associated with this.

If you choose hybrid buses, you have the right. But don't delude yourself that you are somehow doing something good for the earth.

What really works? Small light cars with smaller engines. How do you market the Smart Car to take SUVs off the road?

delly's picture
delly - May 11, 2013

I am sorry but I cannot agree with that. Sure, the buses carry an average of 10 people but if most of us would quit our cars then the buses would carry a lot more people and their energy consume would make better sense for the planet. I found a challenging debate on this http://www.bestcustomwriting.com/admission-essays and I stick to my opinion that public transit is better than personal cars for the environment.

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raspberry ketones's picture
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raspberry ketones's picture
raspberry ketones - Dec 4, 2012

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elija92's picture
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homebuilding's picture
homebuilding - Nov 28, 2012

I agree that the fuel use of an internal combustion bus, when fully loaded, is only slightly more than when empty. Further, it probably uses just as much fuel at 5 mph as at 20 mph.

However, an electric/hybrid bus uses far less, when loaded lightly, particularly in very low speed city traffic. This is in addition to general efficiencies of the electric motor that puts a far greater fraction of the energy used into forward motion--whilst the internal combustion, universally, wastes about 75%, sloughing it off as heat.

Some cities have transponders, giving priority green lights to public transportation.

The electric bus motor makes NO heat when stopped
The bus never needs a parking place in the city core.
The forty people on board a bus take far less space on the street when compared to spread out in forty cars that need to be parked in the city core.

Do better !

jwsmith1984's picture
jwsmith1984 - Nov 20, 2012

Several questions:

What is one's time worth?

What is mobility worth for someone who doesn't have a car?

What is the gas mileage of a car stuck in traffic?

What does a road cost? Or a parking garage? What are the emissions created in their construction?

The professor's point is well taken, but efficiency is a many faceted measure.

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