With the high price of gasoline, more people are now riding trains then ever before. I hadn’t before seen any fuel efficiency numbers for Amtrack, but here are some from the NYT:
Oil costs hurt Amtrak, too. Fuel is projected to reach 11 percent of Amtrak’s budget this year, up from 6 percent in 2004. The railroad is not radically more energy-efficient than other means of travel. Amtrak can move a passenger a mile with 17.4 percent less fuel than a passenger car can, and about 32.9 percent less than an airline can, according to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Some people drive SUVs and other big vehicles because they need to; others drive them as ego-inflating status symbols. Here is a quick way to tell the difference: people who now want to trade in their big gas hogs for smaller, more efficient vehicles obviously aren't driving their gas hogs out of necessity. Think of this the next time you hear people complaining that the high cost of gasoline is causing them to consider shopping for a better-mileage vehicle: they are merely whining over the loss of their ego-inflating status symbol. You should ignore their whining. They should have been driving a more efficient vehicle a long time ago.