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Re:The New Austrian Railways' Intercity and Nightjet Sleeper... by reddog on Monday July 01, 2019 @08:17PM (#20330985)
With a real carbon tax these numbers would actually be further apart. I was surprised to learn that in the real world trains are not more efficient than a the average car when measured in passenger mile per gallon equivalent. And trains are much less efficient when compared to a high MPG cars like a Prius. In fact I'd be willing to bet that there are only a few of city/regional public transportations systems in the world that are more energy efficient than just taking your Prius.

https://theicct.org/blogs/staff/planes-trains-and-automobile...

Re:The New Austrian Railways' Intercity and Nightjet Sleeper... by phlo on Monday July 01, 2019 @08:41PM (#20331108)
Interestingly, the Swiss railway system publishes real-world figures on its Co2 efficiency per passenger-kilometer. [https://www.mobitool.ch/de/tools/vergleichsrechner-15.html, german-only, un nfortunately]

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.

Re:The New Austrian Railways' Intercity and Nightjet Sleeper... by c22 on Monday July 01, 2019 @10:56PM (#20331773)
But that's just looking at fuel efficiency. What about the carbon cost of manufacture? How long does a train car stay in service vs a prius? What is the cost to manufacture a train car vs individual prii for n passengers?