The pricing is nuts, though. A one way train ticket for that route is $36. The same trip via car takes about the same amount of time and $20 in gas. The train is a nice luxury for one person, but for the whole family it becomes very expensive.
Passenger rail in the US is absurd.
And in the US, I’m a decent fraction of that ($13) just to take the commuter rail into the city one way.
And my 30 mile train into Manhattan is $14
$36 one way for a 5 hour train seems pretty cheap.
You can also rent a car when you get there for something like the same amount for the day and not worry about the wear and tear part.
Driving 1 person is already close to the price of a train ticket. Driving 2 people is ~50% discounted. Driving 2 people, and then not having to rent a car/taxi, is something like a ~75% discount.
With a real carbon tax, these numbers would look a lot closer to eachother.
https://theicct.org/blogs/staff/planes-trains-and-automobile...
They report some 80 passenger-km per liter of Diesel equivalent energy, compared to 13 passenger-km in a modern hybrid. Both values include the energy production, utilization and energy expenditure for infrastructure.
This assumes a modern network with electric trains though. I'm not sure if the article you cited still uses diesel-powered trains to arrive at such extremely different figures.
Taking a bike is a much easier thing to do if you want easy access to the inner burbs and urban core of Portland.
Regardless of what you think of these fares (it is cheaper if you book in advance), considering HMRC allows you to write off 45p/mile and it is slightly over 800 miles, only the anytime return is really more expensive if travelling for work vs a car. Plus you'll have £30-40/day parking in central london on top, so apart from the first class return the train (even at its most eye wateringly expensive) is cheaper than a car.
Long-distance rail travel seems to be fairly expensive. Is that kind of trip cheaper somewhere comparable?
So that’s the comparison I guess. It’s not fair, but it’s also sort of reasonable, given car ownership here.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/fossil-f...
In the US, like many countries, these are very substantial:
I add the cost of “development” financing/spying/regime change as part of the cost of oil, and the U.S. pays for all of that, which is a de facto subsidy.
Don't forget wear and tear on the car, though.
The IRS sets mileage at 58 cents/mile. That's $100 for Seattle to Portland.
The IRS has to come up with a fair number that translates all those fixed costs into per/mile. It is a good financial number, but worthless for this discussion.
Buying new tires are a thing. Even if you buy cheap tires and get good life out of them (and that combo is...rare, you get what you pay for), that's, say, $400 ever 40,000 miles, that's a cent a mile right there..and tires are usually more expensive than that and don't last that long.
The most obvious cost of wear and tear though is that eventually the car needs to be replaced. More miles = sooner replacement.
It depends on the car, but typically you are looking at $.20/mile for fuel, and $.05 for all other maintenance (including tires).
The average new car payment is something like $550/month. The average used car is somewhat less of course. Most people are making payments. Insurance is $500/year if you have a perfect driving record, many people pay more. These costs have nothing to do with how far you drive.
A few years ago I calculated my actual per/mile cost for my car, it was $.15/month, even though I bought it new (I track every fill up, though at 46mpg my fuel costs are less than average). The car had 200,000 miles on it to spread all the fixed costs across, and had been paid off for a few years.
The point is the marginal cost to drive a car you already own is low.
PS: Your insurance costs are fantasy land. The average US driver pays almost $1500/hr. I haven't had so much as a speeding ticket in a decade and live in a safe small town and am still over $1k/yr.
Sub in an eBike for the commuting & errands, its quite doable to go car light or car free (esp. if Car2go, Lime pod or another service is available in your city).
Less car ownership on the horizon; 1)Cities are congested 2)The congestion in the suburbs is even worse than driving in downtown 3)For years the solution was to build more highways, but land for doing so is running out 4)Car ownership is no longer cool 5)Ride sharing and renting is become easier (GPS, Internet, Smartphones) 6)Cars have become safer, but the joy or riding in them has been killed. It's like being trapped in an egg carton.
Still, even at the full rate, two people back and forth, it's still cheaper to drive.
I wish we'd install more rail corridors. Especially outfitted with business and luxury amenities. I'd travel by train everywhere I could to avoid planes and long distance driving.
The problem with the US is not that rail travel is expensive (it is not), but that gas is waaaaayyyyy too cheap. (In Germany you pay around 6.20 USD/gallon)
Most of the rest of the world has gone down the "multiple unit" route, where there are smaller motors in each car, under your feet, and there are no dedicated locomotives.
And BTW, even many high speed trains, including tgv duplex and the acela u nention are effectively locomotive hauled trains.
One notable exception is the Bombardier/Talgo 350 (known in Spain as "the Duck" for obvious reasons).
I believe the Acela replacement (avelia liberty) uses powercars as well.
They are not multiple units or likely to be if they were refurbished tomorrow. The reason being that the stock is not in 24/7 use. It does the one long night journey then gets parked all day.
The train out of London gets split to serve different bits of Scotland, so you do get some shunting around going on when they do things to the train.
It doesn't go that quickly as a train because there is no need. Being in Euston at 5 a.m. is no fun, might as well be there at 6 a.m. with some sleep had.
So the loco that pulls the train can be any old freight thing. Although now it is likely to be a Class 73 diesel electric that can use electrified track as well as diesel. Note that there i no electric track all the way out to Scotland.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_unit
And it’s still not annoying, at all. It’s very quiet, and I personally find the sound of electric motors much more tolerable than anything involving combustion.
On a plane, the engines are right there out on the wing screaming and conducting that sound directly into the airframe next to you. With a train, the engine is way up front, hundreds of yards a way, separated by several linkages.
The end result is that a train car is as quiet as a coffee shop. I love it.