The Thursday Aug 12th WSJ had a report on the various airlines and airliners giving their seat miles / gallon of fuel. I have often been skeptical of the various fuel consumption figures put out by the various groups with an axe to grind. The source that the WSJ used was 2009 US DOT figures. However the report did not make it clear whether NM or Statute miles were as both were mentioned. So take these numbers as you will. First some observations to muddy the waters.
From the WSJ article
A. The average major airline fuel consumption is about 64 seat miles / gallon. Delta’s average is 60, A 767-400ER is 96.9 (configuration unknown) for a 3450 mile trip, a B737-900 (cattle car all coach sardine packing) is about 99 for a 1150 mile trip. (note WSJ did mix Nautical Miles and statute miles in report and hope they did not mix them up in their report).
B. Mileage is very dependent of passenger loads due to the additional weight of more passengers requiring more fuel reducing the mileage. (ex B727 empty burns about 1.5 times fuel full of passengers vs empty for any stage length, B767 about 1.4 times)
C. Short trips take more fuel because climbing from sea level to 10K ft takes about 2-1/2 to 3 times for the same distance as it does fuel in cruise (ex climb to 10K ft 1200 gallons cruise same distance 400 gallons) . Also lower cruise altitude uses more fuel. (Ex Shuttle flights BOS – NYC – WASH depends on aircraft type but cruising at 18K 300/100 miles –at 38K 125/100m
A 4 seat auto gets 40 MPG? While I’m sure you can find a couple of brands that fit that parameter, it sure is not even close to the norm. When you compare mass transit to private automobiles you have to take into consideration that mass transit fills most of the seats most of the time. Private automobiles are single occupant most of the time. Stand on the side of the road of your choice and observe the traffic. Most are single occupant and about a third of the vehicles are single occupant SUVs.
A meaningful comparison among the transportation options requires a much more detailed investigation.
About half of Greyhound’s buses are MCI D4500 and G4500 buses. They seat 55 passengers. Their Prevost X3-45s seat 50. Their load factor appears to be about 60%.
Delta’s load factor last month was 88.3. Airtran’s was 86.4. American’s was 88.6 for June, domestic flights.
Can you explain:
Replacing old baggage cars with new is a wash. Adding sleepers is worse than adding coaches to the fleet in terms of seats per train foot. Adding baggage-dorms in place of any other non-revenue car is also a wash. I must be missing something.
The load factor is a real issue/problem. Amtrak’s prez says that the trains are running “full” yet the load factor can’t crack 60%. It looks like Greyhound runs about 60% as well. This suggests that there in something intrinsic in the kind of network Amtrak and Greyhound operate that makes load factors much about 60% nearly impossible. So, calculating vehicle miles per gallon is really kind of meaningless. It’s passenger miles per gallon that get the job done.
Too bad we don’t have fuel by Amtrak route.
Amtrak is not going to win the “green” game with 55 ton, 4 axle passenger cars.
Due to some problems with my computer I will repost my last post then clear it.
[quote user=“oltmannd”]
Interesting numbers.
About half of Greyhound’s buses are MCI D4500 and G4500 buses. They seat 55 passengers. Their Prevost X3-45s seat 50. Their load factor appears to be about 60%.
Thanks for the numbers I edited original post.
Delta’s load factor last month was 88.3. Airtran’s was 86.4. American’s was 88.6 for June, domestic flights.
These loads come about because of 1. a very smart hub and spoke system so seats can be controlled by substituting equipment and 2. varying number of flights to each destination from each hub.
Can you explain:
Replacing old baggage cars with new is a wash. Adding baggage-dorms in place of any other non-revenue car is also a wash. I must be missing something
Changing to a Baggage Dorm allows the viewliner sleeper space used for off duty crew (6-14 ? ) in present sleepers to be sold without changing train length. As well unused dorm rooms may be sold if other sleeper space full. Adds revenue seat miles available without any additional cars.
Adding sleepers is worse than adding coaches to the fleet in terms of seats per train foot.
Yes that is true. Someone needs to do a study on number of coach seats in a car and the fare and compare that to a sleeper both minimum room load and maximum load I dn’t have the time.
The load factor is a real issue/problem. Amtrak’s prez says that the trains are running “full” yet the load factor can’t crack 60%. It looks like Greyhound runs about 60% as well. This suggests that there in something intrinsic in the kind of
If I were to guess, a corridor train such as the Hiawatha, running one locomotive, uses about 1.5 gallons to the mile.
The average passenger load a while back was around 100 per train. That train, then, used to be at 2000 BTU/passenger-mile. Recently, with the adding of cars (train length is up from 4 cars to 6 cars) in response to demand, the average load (based on passenger boardings) is up around 150 per train. Thus they have improved to 1400 BTU/passenger-mile (adding the two cars probably changes fuel consumption very little on account of the weight and aero drag factors of the ends of the trains). Intercity buses, however, are reported in the 800-900 BTU range.
With this business of load factor, airlines “turn away” a lot of business (ever try getting a cheap airfare on the day you want to travel?) because they are “the only game in town”, and I don’t know if we want to make trains comparably inconvenient by running such high load factors. With respect to transit system load factors, they are nowhere near 100%, even though you think “all the seats are taken whenever I get on!” Load factors are more around 25%, and there are operational reasons for this, mainly the directional character of the daily commute and the need to provide minimum levels of off-peak service.
By comparison, cars are said to average about 3000 BTU/passenger-mile and airlines about 3500 BTU/passenger mile. On that basis, I would accept the premise that a well-patronized one-locomotive corridor train, on average, does about twice as good as an auto and somewhat more than twice as good as an airline, and a similar assumption of fuel efficiency is made in the Vision Report.
But the Amtrak network, on average, does not do as well as 1400 BTU/passenger mile – figures I have seen put it around 2750 BTU/passenger-mile.
You’d think we could check on that-- doesn’t the locomotive have a digital fuel “gauge” on the side, near the fuel tank? Before boarding the train in Chicago walk up and take a look, and look again in Milwaukee.