Tuesday, January 18, 2011

The efficiency of mass transit may surprise you...

Here is an interesting string of blogs that I picked up regarding the relative efficiency of various means of transportation:

- Discusses San Jose Light Rail versus automobile, and others, very clean graphics

- Illustrates that light rail in the United States is terribly underutilized and thus very inefficient

I was very surprised to see how much cars have improved, efficiency-wise. In the last 30 years, cars have become 30% more efficient!

Electric vehicles are the clear winner, however. Check out this graph from Coyote Blog:
energy graph

Even more interesting is that my bicycle is less efficient than an electric scooter. I wonder if this is due to regenerative braking? Maybe this is a mistake.

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