Trains Verses Planes

A professor here, Francis Vanek, gave a talk last week mostly supporting plug in hybrid vehicles. In it however was a graph that was pretty shocking to me. It is comparing the energy use per passenger mile on trains, planes, and buses.




You would expect that trains would be significantly more efficient than planes than planes are, and in fact they are. However not many people use the train meaning you are comparing empty trains to full planes. This makes me feel a little better about all of those plane rides. A shame the graph doesn't have cars though.