"Low Carbon Transport" policy announced (including rail electrification plans)

[newme]

One thing they seem to skip over with all these various electrification schemes, car and train. Is where are we going to suddenly get the additional electricity from?

 

[Hocus Eye.]

One thing they seem to skip over with all these various electrification schemes, car and train. Is where are we going to suddenly get the additional electricity from?

Don't worry about it, you will be able to buy Geiger counters in Pound Shops soon.

 

[davesgcr]

Having had a decent sleep - I can confirm a class 253/4 does 6/7 litres of diesel per train mile on average - not bad actually for a payload of 560 or so passsengers.For a 1970's era train thats good

By the way it costs about £15 to bring one to a stand from line speed and open up again to cruising speed.

Of course the new express electrics can regenerate on braking putting 15% of juice back into the overheads - per passenger seat they will be lighter , recyclable and not spit oil and carbon particles into the pure Welsh and West country air. NO hassle in carting oil around the place to fuel them and with all the environmental issues that has in tems of spillage precautions and so on.

Its got to be the way forward. (not that one is biased in any way)

 

[starfish2000]

Erm

These "patchwork upgrades dont work, the west coast main line is being hailed in the adverts as a success and in the Rail Industry newspapers, they are saying they still need to spend more to get it up to scratch. Its a fucking joke the only people who will benefit are the guys who own the buses that will be providing "rail replacement coaches". Most of those drivers are retired casual workers with a PSV on shit wages so, the bus company owners will become millionaires from the taxpayer.

All we need are 3 High speed rail routes, electrified, purpose built, none of this ridiculous fucking around. High Speed 1 has been far more successful a project than the WCML, because they've just been able to get on with it.

 

[Oswaldtwistle]

One thing they seem to skip over with all these various electrification schemes, car and train. Is where are we going to suddenly get the additional electricity from?

Thats pretty much another thread in its own right but IMHO we have to go nuclear. It's much safer than in the past.

 

[Wolveryeti]

All we need to do is persuade the US to invade Saudi and Russia and then we'll have access to all the oil and gas that we could ever need.

Because invading Iraq didn't at all completely rape the supply network and send prices skyrocketing...

 

[Cobbles]

There was an interesting point made on R4's Home Planet this afternoon - a listener queried whether anyone had considered the environmental impact that the electrification would generate (e.g. diesel bus train replacement miles; manufacturing a whole slew of leccy train sets; miles of steel for the overhead works and gawd knows how many thousands of cubic metres of concrete).

One of the panellists waffled on about carbon capture technology for concrete manufacturers (not relevant - it'll be a lowest cost tender so any old stuff will do) but that was as far as the discussion went....

So, if the new trains produce 30% or 50% less CO2 but the electrification works generate x million/billion tons of CO2, how long will it take them to work off the initial carbon deficit?

5 years? 10 years? 3 decades? a century and a half? - has anyone bothered to guesstimate this?

I raised teh same point with TIE in relation to the carbon deficit that will have been generated before Edinburgh's tram system begins to reduce car journeys by up to 3% per annum.

I was told that it wasn't a valid consideration - why not?

If someone's bothered to work out a cash ROI on the basis that in 40 years the maintenance savings of electric versus diesel trains will justify their purchase, why is there no interest in working out an environmental ROI?

 

[teuchter]

Well - for one thing you have to factor in that the trains will need to be replaced anyway - whether diesel or electric - in the next 10 - 20 years.

 

[roryer]

There was an interesting point made on R4's Home Planet this afternoon - a listener queried whether anyone had considered the environmental impact that the electrification would generate (e.g. diesel bus train replacement miles; manufacturing a whole slew of leccy train sets; miles of steel for the overhead works and gawd knows how many thousands of cubic metres of concrete).

One of the panellists waffled on about carbon capture technology for concrete manufacturers (not relevant - it'll be a lowest cost tender so any old stuff will do) but that was as far as the discussion went....

So, if the new trains produce 30% or 50% less CO2 but the electrification works generate x million/billion tons of CO2, how long will it take them to work off the initial carbon deficit?

5 years? 10 years? 3 decades? a century and a half? - has anyone bothered to guesstimate this?

I raised teh same point with TIE in relation to the carbon deficit that will have been generated before Edinburgh's tram system begins to reduce car journeys by up to 3% per annum.

I was told that it wasn't a valid consideration - why not?

If someone's bothered to work out a cash ROI on the basis that in 40 years the maintenance savings of electric versus diesel trains will justify their purchase, why is there no interest in working out an environmental ROI?

This is a fascinating point Cobbles.

I'd personally be very interested to find the real cost of a car in terms of lifetime emissions.

The motor industry often quotes c02 per mile figures, but to just take this and estimate total milage would be misleading, as this is just tailpipe emissions and doesn't include manufacturing, which should include the whole supply chain from the mining of ores to assembly with all the transportation and manufacturing processes in between, costs of disposal, and most glaringly.. infrastructure (roads, concrete, bitumen, building the plant machinery to make the roads, etc.).

The same apply to all transport modes of course, which is why bicycles are simply the most amazing invention ever as they use few materials, manaufacturing is fairly simple, and all they need in terms of infrastructure is a fairly narrow path.