l'll speak up for airplanes, or at least airliners in particular. I concede the point they mostly burn non-renewable fuels, but they make excellent use of the resources. Rhetorically speaking, one can cross half the planet in half a day, for not much money, in a mode of transport that is the safest on the planet (typically an order of magnitude safer than cars as I recall).
Although don't forget that "for not much money" is partly because air travel is so subsidised. Fuel tends to be largely untaxed, even though fuel taxes on other modes don't really cover the externalities
In terms of fuel per passenger unit of distance, air travel is very efficient, the reason why there are so many emissions is the amount of distance you can travel.
Fuel makes up a significant amount of the aircraft's weight at takeoff on long haul flights.
Yeah, that's why I put them in lawful. If we can get them to be more sustainable (maybe green hydrogen fuel), then they'd basically just be super fast and super safe sky buses, whereas they're currently extremely polluting sky buses.
If I recall correctly, aren't high speed trains the safest? At the very least, I recall that the Shinkansen has never had a single safety incident in its entire history, and as for the TGV, there have been a few derailments and a terrorist attack.
After figuring in all the time it takes to earn enough to pay for a car, time spent maintaining it and gasing up, as well as the actual time spent driving, you still only get about 4 miles per man hour.
I wonder if there's data out there on life expectancy for people who walk a lot vs those who drive everywhere. I bet the miles per man hour would go down even further if you factor in years of life lost from being sedentary behind the wheel instead of walking.
The running cost of a vehicle is less than a dollar per KM, if you buy second hand you're not losing much money to depreciation, and it takes me an hour to do an oil change, which I do every ten thousand KM.
I saw them around here somewhere. I haven't bothered to run them personally, but after ditching my car and WFH, suddenly I can afford to support my wife and child while they both go to school - by way of explaining why I haven't put the assertion under a microscope.
Couldn't conjure up the source I got it from though. After some random figures looked up and shitty napkin math, I would only be able to argue for about 22 miles per Mhour for the average American.
The GO Train pictured in your lawful neutral served 35,234,400 passengers in 2022 and covers 526km connecting 27 cities (rough count).
The old diesel-electric fleet was replaced for higher efficiency/lower emission units about a decade ago and these models are now being converted into even lower emission units.
In the next decade a large portion of tracks will be electrified.
@uriel238@Album yeah! Let's vote for a high speed rail, give the contract to a racist antisemitic jerk who will dig a few feet of test tunnel then throw a party with flamethrowers.
Yeah, I heard the GO trains are undergoing some massive upgrades to provide better frequency and through-running lines. I wish they would do something to modernize the sorely lacking Exo trains here in Montreal. At least we got the REM now, though.