July 4 at 5:56 pm
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Evan Parker, Aaron Schaub, Kishore Balakrishnan and 9 other people liked this
For comparison, this morning I flew a 767 with 40 tons of freight 3100 miles and burned 10,000 gallons of fuel. That comes out to around 12.4 ton-miles per gallon. - Chris Johnson
So, hopping a freight is going to be the new hip thing? How does this compare to passenger trains? - ⓞnor
Since the 436mpg number is total ton-miles divided by total gallons of fuel used by the industry, a gallon of diesel can haul a ton of freight far more than 436 miles. - Gabe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... - ⓞnor
Wow, that wikipedia page is very interesting -- cars, trains, planes, and buses are surprisingly similar, though the passenger number for buses seems kind of low. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... - Paul Buchheit
Passenger trains are much less efficient than freight because they have to expend a lot of energy going faster and providing power for lights and A/C. Still, trains are the most efficient form of passenger transport (2100 BTU/passenger mile vs. 3182 for airplanes) in this country. - Gabe
Wikipedia says vanpools and motorcycles are both more efficient than rail. (I wonder how many passenger-miles per gallon a zeppelin gets...) Maybe a lot of cities run near-empty buses along many routes, and that pushes down the occupancy (and efficiency) numbers? - ⓞnor
I suspect that vanpools are so efficient because they just use a full van to transport a bunch of people from point A to point B rather, so they are generally full and have direct routes. - Gabe