“At 25 mpg, a personal vehicle would have to carry 28 passengers to have the equivalent fuel efficiency of a train.”
I’ve seen one of those. Isn’t it called a bus?
I’ve seen one of those. Isn’t it called a bus?
No a passenger bus doen't get 25 mpg like I stated in my off-the-cuff example.
But in my effort to google the actual mpg for a typical bus, I came across a very informative Wikipedia article that provides comparison data for different modes of transportation: Fuel efficiency in transportation
Under the heading title "trains" I found this excerpt:
A trial of a Colorado Railcar double-deck DMU hauling two Bombardier Bi-level coaches found fuel consumption to be 128 US gallons (480 l; 107 imp gal) for 144 miles (232 km), or 1.125 mpg-US (209.1 L/100 km; 1.351 mpg-imp). The DMU has 92 seats, the coaches typically have 162 seats, for a total of 416 seats. With all seats filled the efficiency would be 468 passenger-miles per US gallon (0.503 L/100 passenger-km; 562 passenger-mpg-imp).
And under "buses" I found this:
A diesel bus commuter service in Santa Barbara, CA, USA found average diesel bus efficiency of 6.0 mpg-US (39 L/100 km; 7.2 mpg-imp) (using MCI 102DL3 buses). With all 55 seats filled this equates to 330 passenger-mpg, with 70% filled the efficiency would be 231 passenger-mpg.[40] At the typical average passenger load of 9 people, the efficiency is only 54 passenger-mpg and could be half of this figure when many stops are made in urban routes.
One could quibble for eons about how these statistics are calculated, but at least trying an objective apples-to-apples comparison at maximum seating capacity shows:
468 mpg for the train with all seats occupied
330 mpg for the bus with all seats occupied.
The train wins.