Rail advocates say we need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on high-speed rail to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from flying. But there is probably a more cost-effective way of reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from flying, such as using aviation fuel that emits fewer net greenhouse gases.
Of course, there’s no reason to think that high-speed rail would reduce greenhouse gas emissions anyway. The best study on the issue found that the huge amount of greenhouse gases emitted during construction would require 71 years of savings to balance out. But rail lines must be extensively rebuilt every 20 to 30 years, and I don’t see that the study factored the greenhouse gas emissions of such reconstruction into the analysis. Continue reading
