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| Re: What's the obsession with making the subway go EVERYWHERE? (1363454) | |||
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Re: What's the obsession with making the subway go EVERYWHERE? |
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Posted by ElectricTraction on Thu Aug 20 19:44:08 2015, in response to Re: What's the obsession with making the subway go EVERYWHERE?, posted by Q4 on Thu Aug 20 11:29:01 2015. They probably weren't much farther time wise than they are today. How fast did the trains go back then? Also, back then, they didn't really have cars, today we do, so we'd never build any type of mass transit into relatively unpopulated areas.Certainly nowhere anywhere near NYC qualifies, but at some point, you're not breaking even on the energy used to run the trains versus just driving. Shore Line East is about a break-even right now versus everyone just driving. The solution there is electrification, other lines can use DMUs to bring that ratio way up. The NYC subway claims 1/8th the greenhouse gas emissions per passenger-mile compared to cars. That equates to around 160mpg, which is VERY impressive. Most systems get nowhere near that. All that being said, it may not actually be 160mpg per pax in terms of actual energy consumed, because the power is generated from a mix of gas, some of which is combined cycle, nuclear, and renewables, and gas puts out about half the GHG's (arguably) of oil/coal, so if you go BTU for BTU, it might be more like 80mpg per pax, or about the same as a Boeing 737. Still impressive and even if there were the physical space, it still beats everyone driving Prii around. Back to what they did in 1920-something, they didn't have a lot of other options, so the railroad it was. I bet dollar for dollar and BTU for BTU, the railroads of that day performed poorly compared to today's motor vehicles, much less today's commuter rail systems, much less today's NYC subway. |
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