Why isn't train travel as easy and comfortable as it is in Europe?

Dear EarthTalk: If train travel is so much less polluting than driving or flying, why are passenger rail options in the United States so limited compared to Europe? And is anything being done to shift more travelers over to American rail lines from cars and planes?

Jeffrey Orenstein

Bradenton, Fla.

It’s true that train travel is one of the lowest-impact ways to get from point to point short of walking, jogging or bicycling. In the early part of the 20th century, with car and air travel both in their infancies, taking the train was really the only practical way for Americans to get from city to city. And take the train they did: By 1929 the United States boasted one of the largest and most used rail networks in the world, with some 65,000 railroad passenger cars in operation across some 265,000 miles of track.

But a concerted campaign by U.S. carmakers to acquire rail lines and close them, along with a major push in Congress to build the world’s most extensive interstate highway system, combined to shift Americans’ tastes away from rail travel and toward cars. As a result, while Europe focused on building its own rail networks, the United States became the ultimate auto nation, with more cars per capita than anywhere else in the world. By 1965 only 10,000 rail passenger cars were in operation across just 75,000 miles of track.

In response to the declining use of America’s rail network, the U.S. government created Amtrak in 1971 to provide intercity passenger train service across the country, running mostly on pre-existing track already in use for freight transport. Today Amtrak runs some 1,500 rail passenger cars on 21,000 miles of track connecting 500 destinations in 46 states. In 2008, upward of 28 million passengers rode Amtrak trains, representing the sixth straight year of record ridership for the publicly-owned rail line. Despite this growth, the United States still has one of the lowest inter-city rail usage rates in the developed world.

But that may all change soon. In the spring of 2009, President Obama allocated $8 billion of his stimulus package toward development of more high-speed rail lines across the country, citing the need to reduce both greenhouse gas emissions and reliance on foreign oil. Currently only one high-speed rail line exists in the United States, Amtrak’s Acela Express, which can reach speeds of 150 mile per hour on its Washington, D.C., to Boston route. The success of high-speed, high-efficiency “bullet†trains in Asia and Europe — where train rides can be as fast as flying but without the long waits and security hassles — has helped convince American transportation analysts that the United States should also take the high-speed rail plunge.

The first round of federal funding will go toward upgrading and increasing speeds on existing lines, but the majority of it will be used to jump-start construction of new high-speed lines in 10 corridors across the country, including in northern New England, across New York state, across Pennsylvania, in and around Chicago, throughout the Southeast, and up and down the length of the west coast.

A 2006 study by the Center for Clean Air Policy and the Center for Neighborhood Technology concluded that building a high speed rail system across the United States (similar in scope to that proposed by Obama) would likely result in 29 million fewer car trips and 500,000 fewer plane flights each year, saving 6 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions — the equivalent of removing a million cars from the road annually.

CONTACTS: Amtrak, amtrak.com; Center for Clean Air Policy, ccap.org; Center for Neighborhood Technology, cnt.org.

Dear EarthTalk: To what extent does human population growth impact global warming, and what can be done about it?

Larry LeDoux

Honolulu, Hawaii

No doubt human population growth is a major contributor to global warming, given that humans use fossil fuels to power their increasingly mechanized lifestyles. More people means more demand for oil, gas, coal and other fuels mined or drilled from below the Earth’s surface that, when burned, spew enough carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere to trap warm air inside like a greenhouse.

According to the United Nations Population Fund, human population grew from 1.6 billion to 6.1 billion people during the course of the 20th century. (Think about it: It took all of time for population to reach 1.6 billion; then it shot to 6.1 billion over just 100 years.) During that time emissions of CO2, the leading greenhouse gas, grew 12-fold. And with worldwide population expected to surpass 9 billion over the next 50 years, environmentalists and others are worried about the ability of the planet to withstand the added load of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere and wreaking havoc on ecosystems down below.

Developed countries consume the lion’s share of fossil fuels. The United States, for example, contains just 5 percent of world population, yet contributes a quarter of total CO2 output. But while population growth is stagnant or dropping in most developed countries (except for the United States, due to immigration), it is rising rapidly in quickly industrializing developing nations. According to the United Nations Population Fund, fast-growing developing countries (like China and India) will contribute more than half of global CO2 emissions by 2050, leading some to wonder if all of the efforts being made to curb U.S. emissions will be erased by other countries’ adoption of our long held over-consumptive ways.

“Population, global warming and consumption patterns are inextricably linked in their collective global environmental impact,†reports the Global Population and Environment Program at the nonprofit Sierra Club. “As developing countries’ contribution to global emissions grows, population size and growth rates will become significant factors in magnifying the impacts of global warming.â€

According to the Worldwatch Institute, a nonprofit environmental think tank, the overriding challenges facing our global civilization are to curtail climate change and slow population growth. “Success on these two fronts would make other challenges, such as reversing the deforestation of Earth, stabilizing water tables and protecting plant and animal diversity, much more manageable,†reports the group. “If we cannot stabilize climate and we cannot stabilize population, there is not an ecosystem on Earth that we can save.â€

Many population experts believe the answer lies in improving the health of women and children in developing nations. By reducing poverty and infant mortality, increasing women’s and girls’ access to basic human rights (health care, education, economic opportunity), educating women about birth control options and ensuring access to voluntary family planning services, women will choose to limit family size.

CONTACTS: United Nations Population Fund, unfpa.org; Sierra Club’s Global Population and Environment Program, sierraclub.org/population; Worldwatch Institute, worldwatch.org.

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