Are trains and railroad solarpunkable?
Are trains and railroad solarpunkable?
A lot of people point to trains efficiency as a way forward to minimize the environmental impact of the transportation sector. But are trains and railroad solarpunkable? Or is it just another "all eggs in the same basket" industry?
Most railway systems are publicly owned and that seems to work best in the world we currently live in. Smaller systems, like trams and metros are operated by cities and even smaller ones by groups for the fun of it. It really is not that much of a problem, if you do not exclude people working together in coops, local governments and so forth in a solarpunk future. That will be necessary all over the place. For longer distances you need either lots of smaller systems agreeing on standards or a large one run by a large organization. Both can be made to work.
Yea, urban trains can work really well. With somewhat overlapping services.
But for longer distances i don't really understand why today's fares are higher than using a car share between 2 people. I've seen that kind of pricing weirdness in Portugal, Spain, England and France, and that does not sound efficient at all.
The issue with cars is that they cost a lot in taxes, insurance, loss of value of the car and upkeep, which adds up to a lot of money. With a cheap car you are talking 500€/month or 50Cent/km and more for more expensive ones. Basicly all public transport passes are under 500€/month many are significantly cheaper. That does not include parking, which is rightly expensive in cities, as parking spots could also be housing and so forth. That alone can make public transport cheaper. Long distance trains including hsr are often relativly cheap, if booked early enough.
People tend to underestimate car costs a lot.
The high prices are mainly a result of the push for high-speed trains that are exponentially more expensive to built and operate than regular speed trains. And to make things worse... the push for high-speed trains has resulted in the decommissioning of a lot of regional regular speed lines, meaning that now often you have to make a detour with a high-speed train to reach the same destination, and thus you are not actually faster at all.
But for longer distances i don’t really understand why today’s fares are higher than using a car share between 2 people.
Fuel is heavily subsidized, trains are not. When you get a full tank you're actually paying only part of the real price.
Additionally, people tend to underestimate how much owing a car costs. City nerd has a video about it.
A lot of trains are already electric, you just need to use renewables to power them.
Trains have some weird environmental impacts, but they all can be mitigated through careful planning. Electric trains can be 100% renewables-powered, take less space for the level of transportation they can provide, are easily integrated next to green spaces, etc.
One problem trains face is steel. From a harm-reduction standing, trains use less steel than cars, but if we're going to look at it from a solar punk perspective, we can't ignore the energy it takes to prepare hundreds of miles of track that needs to be repaired and replaced regularly. The challenge here is effectively with manufacturing, and it can be mitigated with efficient electric or hybrid furnaces with careful consideration as to the disposal of slag.
Another challenge is that trains disrupt natural environments. Tracks would need to be elevated, put underground, or other features would need to be included to minimize impact on the natural environment.
Something else considerable is that trains produce and distribute pollution. Brake dust, lubricating oil, and other man-made waste makes its way to the tracks and beyond. Environmental cleanup would have to be part of the plan for a solarpunk train system.
One thing that attracts me to the solarpunk ideology is these kinds of questions. Everything is linked to everything else, and even "obvious" solutions to today's problems aren't without their own potential pitfalls.
I wonder if maglev trains are a good solution to reduce the production of all the dust, lubrication, etc that comes from a wheels-on-rail sort of train. You don't have spining wheels with bearings all exposed to the outside. Rather than using maglev for high speed, we could use it for its reduced environmental impact. Obviously it would be a lot more resource intensive to make each mile of track, but once it's established and matured as a technology it could be much lower maintenance. Also the noise pollution would be much less.
I would love to see train tracks with solar panels above, the infrastructure could be used for energy transport as well to load balance between localized generation networks. There's certainly a lot more that could be done with rail lines, the key is not to expect one size fits all solutions and to work on developing integrated networks with whatever suits the local situation best.
Not one size fits all but as the climate continues to heat you could easily put a walkway along the tracks (through the city? God I can dream) that shades both the walk way and train. I've seen this in a few hot climate places and it's always brilliant to me.
Yes, picture this but with local plants: https://inhabitat.com/europes-grass-lined-green-railways-good-urban-design/