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      Home Transportation and Infrastructure

      Urban transit turns out to be an energy hog

      Boosters regularly tout a laundry list of transit benefits; one might not stand up to scrutiny

      Randal O'ToolebyRandal O'Toole
      January 25, 2020
      in Transportation and Infrastructure
      Reading Time: 5 mins read
      A A
      Urban transit turns out to be an energy hog

      With the exception of only a few large urban areas, transit is generally less energy efficient than personal vehicles.

      Share on FacebookShare on TwitterLinkedInEmail
      Transit is often touted as a way to save energy. But since 2009 transit has used more energy, per passenger mile, than the average car. Since 2016, transit has used more than the average of cars and light trucks together.

      Automobiles and planes are becoming more energy efficient each year. But the annual reports of the National Transit Database reveals that urban transit is moving in the opposite direction, requiring more energy to move a person one mile in each of the last four years.

      Transit has been less energy efficient than the average car since 2009. Light trucks (vans, pickups, SUVs) may soon become more efficient than transit as well. 2018 automobile data are not yet available; 2017 numbers are estimated from this report; prior years are from the Transportation Energy Databook.

      The reason for this is simple: ridership is declining, but transit agencies aren’t proportionately reducing miles of transit service. As a result, the average occupancies of buses and other transit vehicles has declined in every year since 2013. While transit agencies may be purchasing more fuel-efficient vehicles, the increase in average efficiencies per vehicle mile can’t make up for the loss in passengers.

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      Transit occupancies have steadily declined since 2013. Bus” includes commuter bus, rapid bus, trolley bus, and conventional bus (which the FTA calls “motor bus”). “Rail” includes commuter, heavy, light, and hybrid rail and streetcars, but not monorail or automated guideways. “All” includes all transit, not just bus and rail.

      These numbers are based on the National Transit Database, which reports the number of gallons of Diesel fuel, gasoline, natural gas, and other fuels as well as the number of kilowatt-hours of electricity that are used by transit systems across the country. I’ve converted these numbers to British thermal units (BTUs) using standard factors, such as that a gallon of Diesel fuel has 138,500 BTUs.

      For electricity, I also took into account the fact that two-thirds of the energy used in a power plant is lost in generation and transmission. In other words, in order to deliver 1 kilowatt-hour (3,412 BTUs) of energy to a customer, an electrical system must consume the equivalent of 10,236 BTUs of fossil fuels or other energy at the power plant. Electric motors tend to be more efficient than internal combustion engines, but when the losses from generation and transmission are accounted for, the efficiencies are about the same.

      Energy Consumption by Mode

      The calculations show that ferries and streetcars use huge amounts of energy per passenger mile, as do automated guideways (i.e., people movers), which aren’t shown in the chart but average even more energy per passenger mile than ferries. Buses and light rail are well above the average automobile.

      Ironically, the most energy-efficient transit mode–van pools–is the one that is based on conventional automobiles rather than large buses or railcars.

      Commuter and subway/elevated trains (heavy rail) appear to be more efficient, but this is largely because commuter- and heavy-rail numbers are dominated by New York where occupancy rates are high. Commuter rail lines in such regions as Dallas-Ft. Worth, Miami, and even Philadelpha use far more than the average amount of energy per passenger mile, as do heavy rail lines in Baltimore, Boston, Los Angeles, and Miami. Perhaps the biggest surprise is the DC Metrorail, the nation’s second-most heavily used rail system, which consumes almost 25 percent more energy per passenger mile than the average light truck used in 2017.

      Rail BTU Use and CO2 Production

      Rail SystemBTUsGrams CO2
      COMMUTER RAIL
      Alamont1,04476
      Albuquerque3,834281
      Boston2,736200
      Chicago Metra1,977158
      Chicago N. Indiana2,852190
      Connecticut9,741713
      Dallas-Fort Worth4,876357
      Denver2,776178
      Los Angeles2,600190
      Maryland2,952181
      Miami4,012294
      Minneapolis North Star3,318243
      Nashville6,452472
      New Jersey Transit2,728108
      New York Long Island RR1,85751
      New York Metro-North2,75278
      Orlando6,212455
      Philadelphia DOT2,44087
      Philadelphia SEPTA4,879175
      Portland-Boston2,622192
      Salt Lake City2,758202
      San Diego3,118228
      San Francisco1,430105
      Santa Rosa SMART2,335171
      Seattle1,638120
      Virginia Ry Exp1,788131
      HEAVY RAIL
      Atlanta2,11188
      Baltimore14,579552
      Boston3,417127
      Chicago3,391126
      Cleveland4,674302
      Los Angeles4,34090
      Miami5,138223
      New York MTA1,77034
      New York PATH2,38955
      Philadelphia PATH4,760110
      Philadelphia SEPTA4,026144
      San Francisco1,87939
      San Juan2,14177
      Staten Island5,344103
      Washington4,342232
      Light Rail
      Baltimore6,933263
      Boston3,421127
      Buffalo7,601146
      Charlotte4,091150
      Cleveland15,223982
      Dallas5,584286
      Denver3,796243
      Houston4,388224
      Los Angeles3,33769
      Minneapolis-St. Paul4,227197
      NJ Hudson-Bergen4,682108
      NJ Newark5,643130
      Norfolk7,592253
      Phoenix2,07683
      Pittsburgh10,831388
      Portland2,74334
      Sacramento5,153107
      Salt Lake City4,699336
      San Diego2,28347
      San Francisco4,31190
      San Jose5,200108
      Seattle1,60715
      St. Louis4,182327
      STREETCARS
      Atlanta19,672816
      Charlotte8,706319
      Cincinnati13,674882
      Dallas-DART26,3831,350
      Dallas-McKinney4,051207
      Detroit14,542730
      Kansas City3,269256
      Kenosha32,9382,094
      Little Rock40,9612,167
      Memphis18,009787
      New Orleans3,337165
      Philadelphia4,857174
      Portland2,71533
      San Francisco5,761120
      Seattle13,641125
      Tacoma5,14047
      Tampa8,759381
      Tucson12,907515
      Washington56,9973,041
      HYBRID RAIL
      Austin2,773203
      Denton5,264385
      NJ River Line2,530185
      Oakland3,194231
      Portland3,812275
      San Diego2,689197

      Energy Consumption by Urban Area

      The numbers for individual urban areas are even worse for transit. Among the largest 100 urban areas, transit is more energy-efficient than cars only in New York, San Francisco-Oakland, and Honolulu. Transit in Atlanta and Portland is less energy-efficient than cars but more than the average light truck. Just about everywhere else, transit is a real energy hog. The adjacent table has numbers for the 54 urban areas. Among smaller urban areas, Stock- ton (which is the 102nd largest area) appears to be more energy efficient than cars, but only because the Altamont Commuter Express is attributed to Stockton.

      Even where rail transit appears to be more energy efficient than driving on an operational basis, this doesn’t account for the energy costs of construction. Urban roads carry far more passengers over their lifetimes than rail lines, so the energy cost of construction per passenger mile is much higher for rail transit. Rails must be rebuilt about every 30 years, which also requires large amounts of energy. Heavy use of steel and concrete also has a high greenhouse gas cost.

      Urban AreaBTUsGrams CO2
      New York2,34194
      Los Angeles4,218287
      Chicago3,395197
      Miami4,854324
      Philadelphia4,435210
      Dallas-Ft. Worth6,482441
      Houston4,066290
      Washington4,459277
      Atlanta3,172204
      Boston3,477202
      Detroit4,601326
      Phoenix5,296389
      San Francisco-Oakland2,616115
      Seattle4,101280
      San Diego3,648240
      Twin Cities4,479300
      Tampa-St. Petersburg5,601417
      Denver4,027279
      Baltimore4,425269
      St. Louis5,062378
      San Juan4,483314
      Riverside7,231581
      Las Vegas4,274341
      Portland3,270159
      Cleveland5,821417
      San Antonio6,013466
      Pittsburgh5,242341
      Sacramento6,642392
      San Jose4,531264
      Cincinnati5,399394
      Kansas City6,895523
      Orlando5,000370
      Indianapolis6,844500
      VA Beach6,032419
      Milwaukee5,329389
      Columbus7,309565
      Austin5,103373
      Charlotte4,687305
      Providence4,746347
      Jacksonville6,514488
      Memphis6,811495
      Salt Lake4,011293
      Louisville5,101372
      Nashville5,472396
      Richmond4,397344
      Buffalo4,875309
      Hartford4,958363
      Bridgeport5,671413
      New Orleans6,598458
      Raleigh6,156443
      Oklahoma City5,971449
      Tucson5,293383
      El Paso4,714390
      Honolulu2,746200

      Greenhouse Gases

      Though transit is less energy efficient than cars, it emits slightly fewer greenhouse gases per passenger mile than the average car. Transit was actually worse than the average car as recently as 2010, but by 2014 it had reduced its climate footprint by 25 percent.

      It accomplished this partly by converting from Diesel to other fuel sources, originally biodiesel but more recently compressed natural gas. In addition, the nation’s electric industry has converted from heavy reliance on coal to heavy reliance on natural gas. Both of these changes reduced greenhouse gas outputs per unit of energy. Since 2014, however, declining transit ridership increased greenhouse gas emissions per passenger mile by about 7 percent.

      The main transit energy trend over the last decade has been the replacement of Diesel fuels with compressed natural gas, which paralleled the electric industry’s conversion from coal to natural gas.

      Calculations of greenhouse gas emissions are straightforward for most fuels since burning a gallon of gasoline, Diesel, or natural gas results in specific outputs of carbon dioxide. For electricity, I presumed that the electricity used by a transit agency is generated by a the combination of power sources used in the agency’s state, as reported in the Department of Energy’s State Electricity Profiles. Even if a transit company claims that it buys renewable energy, the reality is that electricity is fungible, and renewable energy consumed by a transit agency means less renewable energy for someone else.

      While transit scores better than automobiles overall, this is only because of New York, which produces some 44 percent of transit riders and whose electricity profile claims to emit less than half the national average of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour. However, New York doesn’t generate enough electricity to satisfy its needs and must import some, and the greenhouse gases attributable to imported electricity is unknown.

      Two-thirds of all states are net electricity exporters, and some major exporters such as Texas and Wyoming generate most of their electricity with fossil fuels. Many of the importer states, including California and New York, generate most of their electricity from non-fossil-fuel sources, but their imports are probably more dependent on fossil fuels.

      For a sensitivity analysis, I assumed that electricity brought into net importer states was generated by the national average of fuel sources. Under this assumption, electric-powered transit generated 22 percent more greenhouse gases in California, 15 percent more in New York, and about 7 percent more in Massachusetts, Maryland, and Virginia, while Washington DC transit generated 17 percent less greenhouse gases. For the most part, these numbers aren’t big enough to fuss about, especially since we can’t accurately estimate the mix of sources of energy that is imported into the various states. The greenhouse gas emissions shown in the adjacent tables are based on state electricity profiles with the caveat that the actual numbers in California and New York are probably higher while DC is probably lower.

      Based on the state profiles, transit is more greenhouse-gas-efficient than cars nationwide, but it is more efficient than cars in only seven out of the nation’s 100 largest urban areas. Further, transit is more greenhouse-gas-efficient than light trucks in only three more urban areas. Thus, driving a car or light truck is more greenhouse-gas-friendly than transit in 90 of the nation’s 100 largest urban areas (and all but a handful of the smaller ones).

      The results of my calculations of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions for each transit agency, mode, and urban area are in my 2018 Transit Database summary spreadsheet. For details on how to use this spreadsheet, see this policy brief.

      Via: The Antiplanner
      Tags: Climate ChangeTransit
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      Randal O'Toole

      Randal O'Toole

      Randal O’Toole has has written numerous books and research reports on transportation and land‐​use issues, including Gridlock: Why We’re Stuck in Traffic and What to Do about It. He is also a rail fan who helped restore the world’s third‐​most powerful steam locomotive and who once personally owned five railroad passenger cars. Described by U.S. News and World Report as a researcher who “has earned a reputation for dogged legwork and sophisticated number crunching,” he has been a leader in innovative thinking on environmentalism, natural resources, and urban land use.

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