Article on Transportion and What's Green...

BB.

Interesting article that compares the fuel usage of various forms of transportation... As you can guess, the smaller/lighter/more aerodynamic the vehicle, the better... What ends up being interesting is that Mass Transit is actually around (or in some cases worse) in fuel economy vs the standard automobile.

Is Green U.S. Mass Transit a Big Myth?

As part of my research for an article on robotic cars, I've been looking into the energy use of various forms of transportation.

What I learned about public transit in the USA shocked me. I've been a fan of public transit, taking it where it's practical for me, and feeling green about it. That transit is a significantly greener way to get around than private car travel almost goes without saying in our thoughts and discussions.

Disturbingly, this simply isn't true. I started by pulling out various numbers on the energy used per passenger mile of various forms of transportation. These numbers can be found in places like the U.S. government bureau of transportation statistics figures and the Dept. of Energy Transportation Energy Data Book (Especially table 2-12). I've also found tables broken down per city....

-Bill

niel

Re: Article on Transportion and What's Green...

unfortunately quite true and here in pittsburgh the local news was highlighting them for long time idling of the busses while complaining of the need to raise fares to pay for the higher fuel costs. they were going to do a skybus here many years ago and i remember riding in the prototype they had in one of the county parks as a kid. this would've been more preferable to them riding the streets, but they did create and extend a busway for the busses and any official or emergency traffic to use exclusively. what took about 50 minutes before now takes about 15 minutes for me, but unfortunately, not all areas are serviced by this yet.
cars can maneuver much better on the roads around here most of the time as with winter as an exception and the necessity to stop for passenger egress also cuts the time and consumption except when following one of them on the way to wherever you're going to.
well i can go on with this, but i'm not even familiar with small town mass transits. there must be a better answer somewhere to this.