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A comment on Fast Train to Failure: California’s Mismanaged High-Speed Rail Project. Parent comment

Re:Fast Train to Failure: California’s Mismanaged High-Speed... by captainperl on Thursday December 06, 2018 @10:48PM (#18624978)
> There is also the environmental impact to consider. Air travel has a much larger emission profile compared to train travel

I'm not sure that's true.

Heavy locomotives require a lot of fuel, and aircraft turbine engines are fairly efficient these days (airplanes roughly get 1% more efficient per year, compounded annually.)

Railroads also divide the landscape, which has a highly negative impact on wild-life roaming and migration patterns.

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Re:Fast Train to Failure: California’s Mismanaged High-Speed... by tomarr on Friday December 07, 2018 @02:30AM (#18625779)
It definitely is true, these are electrified lines and rolling resistance is low. For equivalent distances elsewhere emissions are 80-90% lower with rail over air transport. With the potential for solar in SoCal there is no reason this could not be even better.

Dividing the landscape is a separate issue. It can be mitigated against (tunnels, habitat bridges, route planning), but alone it's not an excuse to stick with emission heavy modes of transport.

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