Built like a Mercedes (?)

In each case where I've criticised them, I've shown what the problem is by
quoting it. At a certain point, it becomes silly to continue debunking a
person who has little regard for accuracy.

--
Max

"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)

 

Yup, saw it before. And I'll repeat where it fails:

1) It does not take into account the capacity any mode of transport. This is
to say, it checks efficiency at a given level of use, but it does not
provide figures of efficiency at peak capacity. It would be easy to say an
auto was inefficient while transporting one person, however this forgets its
ability to carry two or more. Same follows for the rail system. If you are
to call an auto efficient while used to capacity, then you must also look at
the rail car for efficiency at its peak use. This document fails to do so.

2) It assumes that a railcar will be empty half the time. This is a false
assumption, particularly in light of the fact that they alow for the bus to
have an average based on varying loads over total time in use. Thus the
figures for railcar efficiency are flawed. If a bus/lorrie will have
passengers/load in any given direction, so will a rail car.

3) It seeks to convert electric power to diesel fuel, which is impossible.
First off, not all diesel engines are equal, which is to say, they vary in
efficiency. Thus the calorific value of diesel fuel becomes irrelevant,
since not all engines will convert that energy perfectly or at the same
level of efficency. Therefore, the conversion formula is flawed. Second,
electric power is a very different source that a diesel engine. It can be
generated from sources other than diesel fuel, thus varying its efficiency
of production. As such, it cannot be compared strictly to the energy in a
gallon of diesel fuel, or the cost of that diesel fuel.

Thus this source is flawed in its conclusins.

fact sheet one:

Oh joy, the lack of realism is hilarious. One thousand motor coaches? Thats
a mile of busses. All burning 10 miles per gallon. To go 10 miles, thats
1000 gallons. A ten railcar train would haul 1000 passengers (sources
suggest it would be more), and burn 70 gph. A 10 mile trip at 60mph would
take about 10 minutes (allowing for speed up and slow down), thus burning 7
gallons. To move 50,000 people, thats 350 gallons of fuel. This assumes a
diesel locomotive is used; I suggest that electric rail is more efficient.

If its that inaccurate in its first paragraph, I think I'll stop there.

Fact sheet two

Unfortunately, you CANNOT exclude motorcyclists or pedestrians. As such, 5.2
versus 3.94 is exactly what it is, more deaths on the motorway than the
railway. Suggesting that you can simply eliminate certain forms of death is
false, it cannot be done in reality, and the figures are flawed if one
excludes those numbers.

Fact Sheet nine

It is a flawed conclusion to figure costs directly from railcar to
motorcoach when the mtor coach won't last as long, nor carry as many
passengers per trip.

I'll spare you a boring run down of the rest, as I've not the time or energy
to go through a document already proven to be biased and inaccurate.

Well, yeah, except its not.

First, he leaves out two very important variables: Rolling and wind
resistance.

Second, his makes a totally false assumption regarding tractive effort and
friction transfer of energy.

Lastly, its not accurate because its based on COST rather than EFFICIENCY.
You limeys seem intent on killing rail transport because you subsidise it.
You would rather spend the money on yourself and your cars. But who builds
the roads??

I said it before, it may COST more to build an efficent means of transport,
but the net effect of reducing energy use and ultimately dependancy on
"foreign oil" is well worth the initial investment.

If you prefer to be comfortable in your present mode of transport, then
don't complain about being uncomfortable in spending money on diesel fuel.
Your line of thinking is consistant with 1950's United States, where you
build more motorways (interstates as we call them) and put less into rail.
Now, we are seeing the result of that decision. Perhaps you stubborn English
could learn from our mistake? It appears the reasonable English have already
figured it out.

Until you find a source that refutes my locomotive fuel usage rates, I'm
done playing your silly denial game.

--
Max

"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)

 

A whole load of infantile rubbish not worth responding to.

Huw

 

I have the Cummins ISB, which is one generation back. Having noted the
better efficiency of diesel fuel over gasoline, I made the decision to buy a
higher cost vehicle in order to increase my efficency long term. This fails
to mention the benefits of having a viable vehicle long after most have worn
out. I get about 22MPG when hauling a load on the trailer at 55MPH. I'll
average 19.5 MPG over a long distance trip with speeds of 75MPH and periods
of travel in urban traffic.



--
Max

"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)

 

<clare at snyder.on.ca> wrote

I'll respond once only.
I have posted the best UK and official US government figures that are
available and which are appropriate or links to them. Nothing more to be
said really. Three of you are being just plain silly.
I can see it makes you feel big and important. Sorry but you are not. You
are just your average netkooks and bullies who probably have social
problems. Seen it all before.

Huw

 

Max you have been away from it too long. A passenger loco that drive's the
gen set for heat and ac in the coach's 100 gal. per hour and that is high.
These loco's are being phased out. A passenger loco with a Cummins donkey to
drive the gen about 45 gal per hour. No passenger loco runs wot unless
pulling a hill or leaving a station.
A frieght loco is much higher in consumption but I doubt reach's 100gal per
hour.

Roy

 

You probably have, at your closest rest area.

 

The actual level of use in the case of trains. Also for buses in some cases
but in others it assumes less than 50% seat utilisation.


but it does not

If you investigate the site it gives you the peak capacity of lines into
stations and all other relevant data.

It would be easy to say an

Other fact sheets do exactly this. It does not take effort or more than a
few seconds to find what you want.

No, it does not.



This is a false

Slightly less than 50% occupancy is what I find there.


Thus the

Of course. You seem unable to interpret the data.

I have given the formula which is explained in detail on the site.

Oh man! Get a life. If you are down to that level where you cannot assume an
average then you are really scraping the bottom of the barrel





Thus the calorific value of diesel fuel becomes irrelevant,

There is less than 10% difference in efficiency between the best and worst
large modern loco diesel. In these calculations this is irrellevant.




Second,

As I have already explained in another post. In fact the whole calculation
is explained on the site and if you cannot comprehend it then go to a school
because I am not your teacher. It is sufficient to say that whatever the
energy source, the amount of energy consumed is the same as expressed in kW
or horsepower.



thus varying its efficiency

The cost is not relevant to the energy consumed which was your argument when
it suited you. In this case it is the correct and only conclusion.

You can distort the figures all you like but they are plain. You may well
suggest that electric is more efficient but that is dealt with in comparison
to coaches in the fact sheets.

But that is exactly what the railway figures do and why figure for accurate
comparison is 3.75v3.94. To compare like with like. The railway figures do
not include deaths due to crossing point collissions, pedestrian collissions
or anything but train passenger deaths due to crashes or other accidents. It
is also true that if coaches were segregated to paved over railway lines all
figures for coaches would improve drastically where they are already better
than for trains.

That is all dealt with. All the costs are catered for and the coach wins
hands down. And that is without even taking account of the massive direct
and fuel subsidies given to rail while coach and other road traffic
contribute billions to the nations coffers.

I admit that this page is more anecdotal and has a few embellishments. Fuel
consumption and other comparisons in the fact sheets stand though. Most are
not even disputed by the rail lobby so why you should carry the burden is
rather amazing.

Very little of the percentage of tax raised by motor transport is ploughed
back into the road system. Indeed only a fraction of the total early road
tax [of UK£155 per vehicle] is spent on the roads in total. On the other
hand billions of Pounds are spent subsidising the rail network every year.
Without the subsidy rail would shut down in weeks.

The energy use for bus transport is far less as already well illustrated.
However you are correct that there may be strategic and other advantages
such as the ability to use non fossil fuel energy that may override cost and
actual energy efficiency deficiencies of the train.

Rail will almost never be competitive again with road transport. Only in
certain specific applications is rail competitive and efficient. At the risk
of repeating myself once more, those are bulk material transport such as
ore, chemical, lumber, etc from the site of production to the processing
site, and in congested city centres where the subway system is proven to be
efficient if not cost effective.

I don't think we need to follow the USA in anything we do. We've already
followed you to war so don't push it.

I am not denying anything. I have provided cogent and well presented figures
for trains and officially gathered and collated US government figures for
car use. Stick it where the sun don't shine for all I care but do stop
bitching about it.

Huw

 

ah, and yet you just did. i thought that might happen.

 

These engines are at their most efficient between 1500 and 2000erpm where
they actually produce power at around 215g/kw/hour which is way better than
most small car engines. The only drawback that I can imagine is a supposed
[supposed because I have never driven one in a light truck application]
narrow rev band. I assume that it revs more than 2350 in your truck. In the
tractor maximum power is at 2200 but yours must surely reach somewhere
around 2750 no-load with max power at 2600? If this is the case it needs a
lot of gears or it needs to be revved to the governor before upchanging
[assuming a stick shift] under load up hill?

Huw

 

Truckers?

Huw

 

So even you, the author, do not deny it was infantile rubbish. That is most
informative in itself.

Huw

 

now, how does even a brit like you come up with that interpretation?

 

Ran the largest empire in the history of the world for one.

The UK owns more of the US economy than any other country too.

Graham

 

Save us from what ? exactly ?

You are indeed one serious fantasist.

Graham

 

talk about today pooh butt, not ancient history.

then you better hope we don't **** it up.

 

what a stupid comment.

no, as i said, i can not compare to you in that category. i take my
hat off to your fantasisism.

 

LOL, I don't think he is going to get that one.

 

What a stupid answer. i.e. you don't have one. No surprise there !

Graham

 

If you had read and understood the information I provided you would not

I understand how they tried to convert the electric use to fuel in gallons.
I dispute its validity for the reasons I've already stated:

1) It is impossible to accurately measure the load on an electric rail
system

2) It is impossible to accurately convert watts to gallons by any method,
least of all one that assumes certain constants that are in fact variables.

As such, anything that attempts to directly compare one unit of transport to
another, rather than using a yearly consumption figure for the whole
industry, will be inaccurate.

--
Max

"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)