Daily Archives: August 14, 2007

In an press release Monday, Madison Wisconsin Mayor Dave Cieslewicz announced that he was giving up on the idea of building a streetcar in downtown Madison. This must be a big disappointment for former Portland City Commissioner Charles Hales, who is trying to put two kids through college by selling streetcars to cities like Madison.

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Does rail transit save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Based on the results for 2005, the answer seems to be mostly “no.” These results are found in two downloadable spreadsheets: the National Transit Database summary (1.4 MB) and a summary spreadsheet for rail cities. You can also download a spreadsheet with the calculations of BTUs and CO2. A brief explanation of the spreadsheets and a guide to abbreviations can be found at the end of this post.

Here is a summary of the results:

.   Mode            BTU/PM    CO2/PM
.   Guideway        10,573     2.05
.   Commuter Rail    2,766     0.50
.   Light rail       3,458     0.67
.   Heavy rail       2,692     0.52
.   Motor Bus        3,733     0.66
.   Trolley bus      4,004     0.77
.   All transit      3,276     0.60
.   Automobile*      3,445     0.54

* As noted in part 1, “automobile” is the average for passenger cars, not including light trucks (pickups and SUVs).

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