Rail Transport: Why Can't We Learn from Europeans?

Early this week, I noticed a number of my favorite bloggers linking to this Elisabeth Rosenthal essay at Environment 360, on the mysterious greenness of European nations. The average American, as it happens, produces about twice as much carbon dioxide each year as your typical resident of Western Europe.

Rosenthal attributes much of this difference to behavioral factors relating, it seems, to Europeans' unique tolerance of inconvenience. She writes:

But even as an American, if you go live in a nice apartment in Rome, as I did a few years back, your carbon footprint effortlessly plummets. It’s not that the Italians care more about the environment; I’d say they don’t. But the normal Italian poshy apartment in Rome doesn’t have a clothes dryer or an air conditioner or microwave or limitless hot water. The heat doesn’t turn on each fall until you’ve spent a couple of chilly weeks living in sweaters. The fridge is tiny. The average car is small. The Fiat 500 gets twice as much gas mileage as any hybrid SUV. And it’s not considered suffering. It’s living the dolce vita.

She later adds:

Also, in Europe, the construction of most cities preceded the invention of cars. The centuries-old streets in London or Barcelona or Rome simply can’t accommodate much traffic — it’s really a pain, but you learn to live with it. In contrast, most American cities, think Atlanta and Dallas, were designed for people with wheels.

What makes this particularly remarkable is that she opens the essay by discussing an experience she has in Stockholm, in which she insists on taking a taxi from the airport, which ends up being much slower and more expensive than the train.

Brad Plumer frames the piece as a fascinating read in light of the "lifestyle taboo," writing:

It's not considered the height of political savvy here in the United States to point out that European lifestyles are greener than our own. Don't expect that line in an Obama speech anytime soon. Too many facets of European life—the cramped apartments, the clotheslines for drying laundry—would likely strike suburbanites as inconvenient, burdensome, or even downright primitive...

Rosenthal wonders whether similar measures could fly in the United States: "I believe most people are pretty adaptable and that some of the necessary shifts in lifestyle are about changing habits, not giving up comfort or convenience." Maybe so, but this sort of talk still tends to be taboo in mainstream U.S. green circles. Josh Patashnik wrote a terrific piece for TNR last year on Arnold Schwarzenegger's brand of "pain-free environmentalism" in California—it's all just peachy to talk about swapping out coal-fired plants for solar-thermal stations, but ixnay on trying to rein in suburban growth or coax people into smaller homes.

I see several problems with Rosenthal's essay and with Brad's framing of it. One is that it's not really correct to attribute the huge gap in per capita emissions between America and Western Europe to the charming European habit of drying their clothes on clotheslines.

As Brad notes, power sources play a major role, whether one is talking about greater use of natural gas, the French nuclear industry, or Iceland's geothermal capacity.

Climate is extremely important. Western Europe is fairly temperate relative to much of America (and especially compared to the dirtiest parts of the country). In the same way, Californians are much greener than Texans, thanks to the moderate conditions along the heavily populated Pacific coast, which reduce the number of days on which home heating or cooling is needed.

But there are lifestyle issues involved, particularly where transportation and land use are concerned. And contrary to Rosenthal, it isn't that Europeans have opted for inconvenience. Rather, they have chosen different conveniences, as her Stockholm air train anecdote makes clear.

It is incorrect to say that an overabundance of land drove America to sprawl, and to drive. The Netherlands is dense of necessity, of course, but in Britain and France and Germany there is ample countryside, which might easily be home to sprawling subdivisions.

But Western Europeans have largely chosen not to encourage such growth, opting instead to tax gas at high rates, invest in transit, and protect center cities from the threat of urban freeways.

I think it is very difficult, objectively, to demonstrate that their choices have produced ways of life that are clearly less convenient than American lives. It is clear that Europeans tend to have better health outcomes than us, and they die in car accidents at much lower rates, and of course they're enjoying levels of wealth similar to our own while producing half as much carbon.

The obvious retort to this line of thinking is that perhaps that's all true, but like it or not America is now sprawling, and any effort to make the country greener by pursuing European land use and transportation options would be very difficult. In a similar vein, it is argued that attempts to push Americans into such a life via gas taxes or carbon prices would wind up being very painful.

But this is not quite right. As I have pointed out before, America will more or less need to build itself all over again by 2050 in order to accommodate population growth. Just because most of America is currently sprawling doesn't mean that most of the America built between now and mid-century has to look the same.

It's also not clear that increasing the push factor on households has to be especially painful. Taxes on drivers can be levied in a progressive fashion, if some revenues are used to fund transit options while others are refunded to lower and middle income households to help offset the added cost of driving.

Congestion tolling would mean higher government revenues and reduced driving, but it would benefit rich and poor alike. As with tax revenues, tolls could be used to provide a cushion against the increased cost for lower income families and increased investment in transit. Higher income households (which will tend to place a greater value on work hours lost to congestion) would enjoy a speedy ride into the office.

If the federal government worked to address limits on urban growth in green cities like New York and San Francisco -- limits which also serve to make housing in such places extremely expensive -- then America could grow denser and greener by improving access for middle-income households to some of the most dynamic metropolitan economies in the country.

Perhaps not all of the policy changes needed to reduce America's carbon footprint will be a walk in the park, but efforts to improve land use and transportation decisions are likely to be some of the most benefit-rich aspects of the climate change fight (as you'd think most people would realize, given the obvious pain of congestion, high gas prices, driving fatalities, and isolation among those unable to drive, among other things).

This storyline -- that changing lifestyles to enhance walkability will be painful -- makes it harder to pass good metropolitan policies and easier for politicans to fall back on the lame argument that Americans simply won't tolerate anything other than the sprawling suburban patterns which have dominated new development in recent decades.

And by reinforcing the idea that some of the most promising and least painful policy changes that can be made are unlikely to "work" here in America, writers and politicians alike ensure that more of the hard job of cutting emissions will fall to the parts of the economy where there are no good alternative options, and where change will be painful for households.

Rosenthal's essay is odd yet revealing. She instinctually attributes European greenness to practices Americans would dub backward, while pretending that the very convenient and green transport options she finds are built, and presumably used, by Europeans based on some peculiarity in their culture that we lack.

But we could build trains! In any given legislative sessions bills are introduced that would move the country toward the level of convenience Rosenthal enjoyed in her train ride to the Stockholm airport. It's just that they don't pass, because "it's not considered the height of political savvy" to embrace those policies, because Americans seem to think that their American-ness will render such conveniences inconvenient.

"Trains won't work here," because "Americans love their cars," and so high quality rail lines aren't built, and so Americans continue to drive. And then we sit around wondering what it is about the European character that makes them enjoy using clotheslines so much.

Comments

[La Marque:]

New York is green? with exurbs in Pennslyvania and Washington has exurbs in West Virginia and Pennslyvania. SF and San Jose have people driving as far as 90 miles one way to work because they can only find affordable housing that far out.

Oct 01 09:36 AM

[Harry76:]

Arrogance!

Oct 01 10:43 AM

[Trane250:]

Ryan Avent wrote: "But we could build trains!"

Ryan, can you give me the name of one American company that designs and builds its own passenger cars or subway cars or integrated train sets? I'll clue you in, there are none. The last one, the Budd Company of Philadelphia, shut down around 1985.

Oct 01 11:06 AM

[Jimbo:]

I am a deep skeptic about AGW but I do believe the "Age of Oil" is coming to a close.I was born in a small house on a STREET CAR LINE running between St. Albans, W.Va. and South Charleston, W.Va. I have read that in 1930, you could take a street car in Portland, Me. to the end of the line and hop on another line. It was allegedly possible to keep doing this until you got all the way to Milwaukee, Wisc. Incidentally, down here in Florida we have always used a "solar dryer" (clothes line). Good, reliable, and reasonably cheap public transport requires the proper density( which Europe frequently has) and the public's willingness to use it. I have noticed, in my frequent trips to Europe, that Europeans do like their personal hydrocarbon conveyances (motor cars).

Oct 01 12:22 PM

[fireball:]

europe is a nice place to visit.
when green is better financially i choose to be frugal. what disturbs me is so many seem to want govt. to enforce what they think is the best policy.
mind your own business and take care of yourself and yours is a vanishing virtue it seems.
government like fire is a dangerous servant and a terrible master.
america was the haven for those with enough courage to undertake the adventire to seek freedom to escape tyranny. those who were content with inbred monarchs an overbearing church or starry eyed meddling socialists stayed put.
if one wishes to live like an ant with all the other ants so be it. just do not try to force it on everyone else.

Oct 01 12:32 PM

[Valley Boy:]

For a very recent update, see portlandonline.com for the article titled "Transportation Secretary LaHood Visits Portland."
That is dated July 2 of this year. The article mentions "the first modern streetcar built in USA in 60 years" by "local union workers at Oregon Iron Works in Clackamas County." The new streetcars are servicing a new route in downtown Portland, an area with tightly congested streets.


On Oct 01 11:06 AM Trane250 wrote:

> Ryan Avent wrote: "But we could build trains!"
>
> Ryan, can you give me the name of one American company that designs
> and builds its own passenger cars or subway cars or integrated train
> sets? I'll clue you in, there are none. The last one, the Budd Company
> of Philadelphia, shut down around 1985.

Oct 01 12:47 PM

[auto44:]

I am more conserned about the BS footprint than the carbon foot print.

Oct 01 01:02 PM

[jerrydd:]

You all can pan my ideas but next yr your gas will be $4-5/gal and I'll still be paying $.02/mile ;^D And you will be back in recession from the high price of oil, how much will you lose then?

Oct 01 01:53 PM

[evergreen16:]

Good luck with building trains in US. Seattle is building light-rail and it takes more time than soviet era 5 year plans. And we're not talking about rail system similar to european - just few miles and two branches, that maybe done in 10 - 15 years, if there is no delay.
As redicules as that sounds, the worst thing is that the train is so slow, that it's slower than a bus on a rush hour today. Don't even ask about the price tag.
While in Europe, I see metro system connecting every part of the city any where you want to go, not just downtown like in US. Every year they extend the rails to many other parts of the city at fraction of the cost in US.
Something is very wrong here.
This of course is a huge disadvantage for US. Terrible transportation options leave us the only choice to sit in the traffic and polute like there is no tomorrow.
We need to stop and think.

Oct 01 02:00 PM

[bpickard:]

Lots to ruminate on in both the post and the comments.

One thing about the US. We are the most productive country in the history of the world because we are the most flexible, the most responsive, and the most mobile. Personal transportation (not the fuel that powers it) is one of the large reasons why we are more responsive and flexible than any other society. I have more choice because I can go where I want to when I want to. I can work in the Seattle area anywhere, not just where the trains go. Transit may not be a good idea in the long run - it may retard a recovery.

So let's perfect thorium powered nuclear reactors and buy battery powered cars that look more like '57 Chevy's than golf carts.

Oct 01 02:15 PM

[Valley Boy:]

I think your ideas on personal transit have more merit than the light-rail systems we have here in California. Most of those systems are not attracting the level of traffic the planners envisioned; buses are easier and cheaper to use. And I'm sure the planned statewide rail system will be a boondoggle. I would think that elevated monorails and personal transit systems would work in some downtowns depending on how many stops they provide at places that people are interested in: bus terminals, museums, civic buildings, convention centers, airports, train stations, system transfer points, plazas, financial districts, etc. Maybe someday the transit officials can retire the failing light-rail systems in favor of more practical systems.


On Oct 01 01:53 PM jerrydd wrote:

>
> You all can pan my ideas but next yr your gas will be $4-5/gal and
> I'll still be paying $.02/mile ;^D And you will be back in recession
> from the high price of oil, how much will you lose then?
>

Oct 01 02:41 PM

[Trane250:]

On Oct 01 12:47 PM Valley Boy wrote:

> For a very recent update, see portlandonline.com for the article
> titled "Transportation Secretary LaHood Visits Portland."
> That is dated July 2 of this year. The article mentions "the first
> modern streetcar built in USA in 60 years" by "local union workers
> at Oregon Iron Works in Clackamas County." The new streetcars are
> servicing a new route in downtown Portland, an area with tightly
> congested streets.

These streetcars are being built using designs, tooling and parts being supplied by the Skoda Works of the Czech Republic.

Oct 01 02:47 PM

[candooman:]

I agree with bpickard. We need more nuclear plants ... uranium, thorium, etc. so we can replace the coal plants and other hydrocarbon powered plants ... to provide electricity as we switch to electric cars, appliances, etc. We need to build more electric trains for short and long distances. We need to reduce our reliance on diesel powered trains as much as possible. Nukes take a long time to build but they are the only ones that can replace big chunks of fossil fired plants, hence the fastest way to drastically reduce our CO2 foot print.

What we need to do is pursue all avenues - solar, wind, nuclear - in parallel to bring down our CO2 foot print as rapidly as we can. Current bills in our House and Senate does not include nuclear which seem to indicate a lack of political will or understanding of the big picture.

Oct 01 04:02 PM

[candooman:]

The statewide rail is a boondogle in the sense that few people will use them. We would have better return on our money if the funds were used to expand our light rails within the cities. More people will use them if they can get to where they want to go with in walking distances of stations. Expanding them will accomplish this. New York, Boston and Chicago rails are well used because of this but a better example is the system in Toronto. A combination of subway, light rail and electric buses.

One thing I do not understand is why we do not use elevated light rail in cities when it is so much cheaper and safer than surface light rail. They work well in Las Vegas and Chicago.

Oct 01 04:12 PM

[Valley Boy:]

Yes, Trane250, it sure seems like European train-lovers are in on American transit deals. An article in today's latimes.com titled
"L.A. Mayor praises light-rail car plant" lends support to that idea. The article mentions "a planned construction of a light-rail car manufacturing plant along the Los Angeles River" to be built by "Italian rail-car maker AnsaldoBreda."

Oct 01 04:16 PM

[Valley Boy:]

I agree with you. Most of the surface-level light-rail systems are not doing well for ridership here in California. But one outstanding successful system is the Bay Area Rapid Transit. That system has no street or road crossings and is otherwise disconnected to the street network by either subway, viaducts or street dead-ends at the BART right-of-way. That is of prime importance in enabling the speed of the rail cars. People are interested in speedy transit at a reasonable price.


On Oct 01 04:12 PM candooman wrote:

> The statewide rail is a boondogle in the sense that few people will
> use them. We would have better return on our money if the funds were
> used to expand our light rails within the cities. More people will
> use them if they can get to where they want to go with in walking
> distances of stations. Expanding them will accomplish this. New York,
> Boston and Chicago rails are well used because of this but a better
> example is the system in Toronto. A combination of subway, light
> rail and electric buses.
>
> One thing I do not understand is why we do not use elevated light
> rail in cities when it is so much cheaper and safer than surface
> light rail. They work well in Las Vegas and Chicago.

Oct 01 04:31 PM

[Trane250:]

I heard that Ansaldo was dickering to buy a factory in Schenectady, NY from SuperSteel, which assembles rail & transit cars for Kinki-Sharyo of Japan for the NYC transit system.

Ansaldo just discarded the well-respected name of Union Switch & Signal of Pittsburgh in favor of their own. Union Switch is a world leader in the design and manufacture of train & transit control and operating systems.


On Oct 01 04:16 PM Valley Boy wrote:

> Yes, Trane250, it sure seems like European train-lovers are in on
> American transit deals. An article in today's latimes.com
> titled
> "L.A. Mayor praises light-rail car plant" lends support to that idea.
> The article mentions "a planned construction of a light-rail car
> manufacturing plant along the Los Angeles River" to be built by "Italian
> rail-car maker AnsaldoBreda."

Oct 01 04:55 PM

[whooper1:]

Europeans statistically live longer because they don't include accidental deaths in their calculations. We do. A better comparison would be to compare the life span of Britons living under socialized medicine in the UK with the live span of persons of British ancestry living in the US under a free market system.

Oct 01 05:07 PM

[Valley Boy:]

I'm beginning to get the idea that Europeans must figure that their transit market, including rail car manufacturing, is nearing a saturation level and that making American investments would be key to their future growth.


On Oct 01 04:55 PM Trane250 wrote:

> I heard that Ansaldo was dickering to buy a factory in Schenectady,
> NY from SuperSteel, which assembles rail & transit cars for Kinki-Sharyo
> of Japan for the NYC transit system.
>
> Ansaldo just discarded the well-respected name of Union Switch &
> Signal of Pittsburgh in favor of their own. Union Switch is a world
> leader in the design and manufacture of train & transit control
> and operating systems.

Oct 01 05:55 PM

[terravario:]

Russ Wetherill offers few facts to support his position compared to those who have contributed significantly to the convincing body of scientific knowledge that drives the climate change debate today. He employs the reasoning that a year or two of cooling is enough to discredit study after study and robust model results that show an inexorable trend upward of world temperatures and CO2. His downward trends (in temperature only) are no more than noise on 1000 year curve. We already know the sun is in a quiesant period and that the earth's orbital position may cool the earth for the next few years. What happens when we re-emerge from this period of quiesance and CO2 is at 450ppm? I do not wish to be insulting, but what I am hearing from Wetherill is a restatement of the real drivel and junk science parroted by the ditto-heads at the Rush Limbaugh School of Climatology.

I think Avent raises the right questions. What I would like to ask is whether, when all of our capital assets are depleted to pay for oil to fuel our individualistic transportation excesses, we will be able to afford the mass transit systems that could be run soley on renewable energy and meet our future needs for convenient and inexpensive modes of transportation. I would rather invest that money now than later.


On Oct 01 12:49 AM Russ Wetherill wrote:

> With such drivel, it is hard to know where to begin my rebuttal...
> But, I'll try.
>
> First, since when did carbon dioxide become known as the poison that
> the left wing nuts would have us believe? Plants require carbon dioxide
> to live. Plants produce oxygen from a process called photosynthesis
> which takes energy from the sun combines it with CO2 resulting in
> oxygen and carbohydrates:
>
> carbon dioxide + electron donor + light energy → carbohydrate + oxygen
> + oxidized electron donor
>
> Higher carbon dioxide levels result in more plants which produce
> more oxygen. For oxygen breathers, like, say, humans, more oxygen
> would be better than less. Right? Increased carbon dioxide emissions
> seem like something we should encourage instead of lionize, doesn't
> it? Over the history of the earth CO2 levels have been much much
> higher and the earth not only survived, but thrived. In fact, the
> CO2 levels have been as high as 7000ppm, while today they are around
> 385ppm. The ideal level for plant production is around 1000ppm, which
> is used in commercial greenhouses. CO2 is not a pollutant any more
> than a circle is a square.
>
> Furthermore, the earth has been cooling for the last decade, or haven't
> you noticed this? Has the carbon dioxide level been dropping for
> the last ten years, or rising? Is there a positive correlation between
> carbon dioxide levels and temperature? From 1940 to 1970 the earth
> experienced a general cooling trend and yet the carbon dioxide levels
> were increasing during this time. Care to explain this before you
> force everyone to change their lifestyles, bankrupt the country,
> and waste valuable resources solving nonexistent problems?
>
> So, moving on to the question of planes, trains or automobiles. Why
> won't trains work in America? Instead of talking down about America,
> perhaps you should ask Americans why they don't want to be forced
> to move into a cramped apartment in an over-crowded city and be forced
> to go to work in a cramped train full of swine flu ridden people
> (I spent some time working in Germany, so I know whereof I speak).
> Maybe, just maybe, it's because they don't want to.
>
> Unlike Europe, this is still a free country, and people have a right
> to choose how they will live out their lives. No one has the right
> to force others to change their behavior by confiscatory forms of
> taxation, as you suggest; especially when the green movement is based
> on junk science, halve truths and outright lies. Al Gore was wrong:
> the debate isn't over, it's just getting started -- and America is
> waking up for the fight.
>
> California recently approved a ballot measure to build a high-speed
> rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Eight billion dollars
> were approved to build a train that, like Amtrak, will never show
> a penny of profit. What's worse is that the due diligence report
> from an independent taxpayer group found that the real cost is on
> the order of 80 to 90 billion dollars.
>
> This independent taxpayer group also found that the ridership estimates
> of the state were unrealistically high since they were based on ridership
> percentages of Japanese and European commuters. What makes this unrealistic
> is that the Japanese and European commuters already rode the train
> to work every day - it was just a slower train. California ridership
> would have to draw hundreds of thousands of new riders every year
> to meet these estimates.
>
> And why on earth should the European way be the American way? Why
> can't we have the independence of cars without the inconvenience
> of trains? Cars are getting more safety features all the time. Some
> new concept cars are incorporating auto braking and collision avoidance
> systems similar to commercial aircraft. Why are cars equal, if not
> preferable, to a trains - trains crash too? Electric cars, while
> not yet economically viable compared to gasoline powered vehicles,
> have great promise. There is no sound reason to supplant an entire
> industry until there is either a valid economic benefit to converting
> to electric cars or an overriding concern about pollution. Neither
> case has been made, or, in my opinion, is likely to be made any time
> soon. But, when electric cars are clearly superior to gas, then the
> change will be made by self-interested consumers, as it should be
> in a free economy.
>
> Why not put our heads together to solve the actual problems we are
> confronted with instead of creating fictional problems which scare
> the public into wasting valuable resources and further pushing jobs
> overseas, just to be like Europe? Or, alternatively, the small minority
> who wish to live like Europeans, might consider living in... Europe?
> Just a suggestion.

Oct 01 07:57 PM