Rail, Energy, & CO2: Part 2 — Results for 2005

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).

Of course, as always, summaries can be deceptive without more detailed analyses. But I think we can drop much further consideration of the mode known as “automated guideways.” Of the three guideways in the database (Detroit, Jacksonville, and Miami), Miami’s does best, but it requires more than 6,000 BTUs and emits more than 1.25 pounds of CO2 per passenger mile.

On average, light rail is about par with autos, though of course some lines are better and some are worse. Only commuter rail and heavy rail use, on average, less energy than cars, but they don’t save much in the way of greenhouse gases.

Most trolley bus routes are concentrated in urban cores where transit usage is particularly heavy. So it is surprising that they do so poorly. Of the four cities that operated trolley buses in 2005 (Boston, Dayton, San Francisco, and Seattle), only those in San Francisco matched cars for energy efficiency, though not CO2 emissions.

The urban area part of the NTD spreadsheet reveals that transit systems, taken as a whole, use less energy than the auto in only a handful of urban areas: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago (barely), Boston, Atlanta, San Francisco-Oakland, Phoenix, and Honolulu. Only New York, Phoenix, and Honolulu (barely) emit less CO2 per passenger mile than the average auto.

Of course, all of these urban areas except Phoenix and Honolulu have rail transit, so this might be considered a validation of rail transit. But what really makes most of these rail regions exceptional is the concentration of jobs.

It is also worth noting that most of the regions with efficient rail systems also have exceptionally efficient bus systems. In Los Angeles, the buses do far better than autos while the rail lines lag behind. In Atlanta the buses and rail system both do better than autos. The New York MTA bus system does better than most of the region’s commuter-rail lines.

Los Angeles buses do well because they carry an average of 16 people, compared with the national average of 10. Atlanta buses may do well because most of them use compressed natural gas rather than Diesel fuel.

Take a look at the rail summary spreadsheet to get a better idea of how well transit works in each urban area. This spreadsheet is just a summary of the NTD spreadsheet, and it leaves out many of the smaller bus agencies in regions like New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco-Oakland. But it is a lot easier to review than the giant NTD file.

The charts below further summarize the results for each of the three main types of rail transit.

A majority of light-rail systems consume more energy per passenger mile than the average passenger car, represented by the dotted line. Click to see a larger chart.

A few cities — Houston, Minneapolis, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Diego, St. Louis — have installed new light-rail systems that seem fairly energy efficient. But light rail is a loser in Baltimore, Buffalo, Dallas, Denver, Newark, Sacramento, and San Jose, not to mention the older lines in Cleveland and Philadelphia.

Only three heavy-rail systems are exceptionally energy efficient. Click to see a larger chart.

New heavy rail systems in Atlanta, San Francisco, and Washington seem to be efficient, but not those in Baltimore or Miami. Atlanta’s is not much more efficient than its buses and Washington’s is only slightly more efficient than autos, so the only real winner among new heavy-rail systems is BART.

Most commuter-rail systems for which data are available are energy efficient, but no data are available for the newer commuter-rail lines. Click to see a larger chart.
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We have no commuter rail data for any city with new commuter lines (Dallas, Ft. Lauderdale, L.A., San Diego, San Jose, Seattle, Washington). I suspect if we did we would find the same thing as for light and heavy rail: not much gain in most cases.

Regions with older rail systems — Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh — are a mixed bag. Rail does okay in Boston and New York, but it is marginal in Chicago and does poorly in the other cities. Since buses are fairly efficient in Boston and New York, it seems likely that a transit-friendly urban form — meaning a high-density job center, not high population densities — is what makes transit efficient in these cases.

These results suggest that, if your bus system is not very energy efficient — think Baltimore, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Miami, Sacramento, and San Jose — then rail is not likely to do much better and will probably be much worse. Transit agencies in these regions should focus on improving their bus ridership before even dreaming about rail.

Most of the cities where new rail lines appear to be successful had highly successful bus systems when they began building rail. As I’ve noted previously, rail must be supported by feeder buses, and so the energy efficiency of transit systems must be considered as a whole. We’ll find out later this week what this means for these cities.

The NTD summary sheet is divided into three parts. Rows 1 through 1368 are mode-by-mode, agency-by-agency listings of costs, trips, passenger miles, energy consumption, and CO2 emissions. Rows 1371 through 1379 summarize the results by mode. Rows 1381 through 1752 summarize the results (where available) by urban area.

The Rail summary spreadsheet takes the passenger miles, BTUs, and CO2 data from the NTD spreadsheet for all commuter-, heavy-, and light-rail systems for which those data are available. It also includes the major bus systems in those cities. It does not include many minor bus systems, so the totals for some urban areas may differ slightly from the totals in the NTD summary sheet.

Here are a few of the less obvious abbreviations used in the spreadsheets:
AG – Automated Guideway
BTU – British Thermal Unit
CO2 – Carbon Dioxide
CR – Commuter Rail
DR – Demand Response
FB – Ferry Boat
HR – Heavy Rail
IP – Inclined Plane
LR – Light Rail
MB – Motor Bus
PM – Passenger Miles
TB – Trolley Bus
UZA – Urbanized Area
VP – Van Pool
VRH – Vehicle Revenue Hours
VRM – Vehicle Revenue Miles
VT – Vintage Trolley

Here are the factors I used to calculate BTUs and CO2 emissions. The factors are all per gallon except for electricity which is per kilowatt hour. If you have a hard time reading this table, you can download it in the form of a Word document.

.              BTUs/unit    CO2/unit
.   Diesel      138,700      22.384
.   Gas         125,000      19.564
.   LPG          95,500      12.805
.   LNG          90,800      13.360
.   Methanol     64,600      19.608
.   Ethanol      84,600      11.324
.   Bunker      150,000      26.033
.   CNG          35,500      23.598
.   Kerosene    135,000      21.537
.   BioDiesel   126,206       7.319
.   Electricity  10,339       2.000