European Railroad Discussion > Energy Consumption: Trucks vs. Rail?

It looks like there is a lot of text on how much more efficient rail transportation is than transportation of goods on roads. On this knowledgeable forum, would anyone know where to find the cold facts on the several factors involved? And maybe some real life comparisons on energy usage?

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From an old EMD promotional item: "On American railroads, one ounce of diesel fuel will move one ton of freight five miles".....

Bob

ATSF100WEST......Out

Great start, and here we tumbled right into measurement issues :)

- Ton in metric measurements is different from U.S. two kinds of tons.
- Looks like Europeans mostly measure how many liters per 100 kilometers the consumption is.

I'll do the conversion later with some more time to spend. And both Caterpillar-EMD and GE have just gone better going ever further with one ounce of diesel fuel, right?

Picture by Gerry.

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I don't think the question is simply one of fuel efficiency, there are also regulations around working hours, truck weights and driver competence which have an impact on road vs rail economics. There was a scare story doing the media rounds yesterday about pre-Christmas shortages in the shops because of a lack of HGV (Heavy Goods Vehicle) drivers caused by new competency obligations.

You are right on this, the issue is extremely complicated. Just for this reason I'm trying to limit the consideration to just adhesion now, nothing more. We all know that rail has less adhesion than road surface. But to get real life data, I think we need to think about consumption of similar fuels, supposingly meaning diesel oil, unless you all have a better idea how to measure this. I think I have manufacturer access to the trucking figures, so we are just missing part of the current rail data.

Picture by our friend Focalplane. (If you read this please join the TOC community again!)

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Units of measure certainly play into this. In the US we would usually look at "Ton-mile per gallon". All 3 of those would need to be converted for the rest of the world. Below is a section of text that was blatantly lifted from the CSX railroad website. This seems like pretty good data from the rail standpoint. Looking at it from this view should give a good overall average fuel use that includes idle time. I'm not sure how good the truck data is because they don't present a much background on how it was derived. I would guess that in Europe fuel prices may well have driven large trucks to be a little more efficient.

Stephen

Calculating Fuel Efficiency

Ton-mile per gallon is a unit of measurement to describe the efficiency of hauling freight by various modes of transportation.

The rail industry tracks and reports revenue ton-miles in the “Annual Report to the Surface Transportation Board” (commonly referred to as the R1 Report). The “Ton-Miles of Freight” annual value is reported in Schedule 755, line 110 of the R1 Report. The rail industry also tracks and reports annual fuel usage in the R1 Report, Schedule 750, line 4. These two reported values are used to determine a system-wide train efficiency value.

For example, in 2013, the CSX ton-miles of freight reported in the R1 Report = 226,641,034,000 ton-miles and the CSX 2013 reported fuel usage = 481,864,807gallons.

The 2013 CSX system-wide train efficiency metric equals (226,641,034,000 ton-miles) divided by (481,864,807gallons) equals 470 ton-miles per gallon.

In other words CSX trains, on average, can move a ton of freight nearly 500 miles on a gallon of fuel, based on our 2013 revenue ton miles and 2013 fuel use.

For example, a heavy-duty diesel truck that hauls 19 tons of freight a distance of 500 miles would consume approximately 71 gallons of diesel fuel. The efficiency of this freight haul would be calculated as:

(19 tons times 500 miles) divided by (71 gallons) equals 134 ton-miles per gallon.

This efficiency might be stated as “a truck can move a ton of freight 134 miles on a gallon of fuel.”

Similarly, a typical train might haul 3000 tons of freight 500 miles and consume approximately 3200 gallons of diesel fuel. The efficiency of this freight haul would be calculated as:

(3000 tons multiplied by 500 miles) divided by (3200 gallons) equals 469 ton-miles per gallon.

This efficiency might be stated as “a train can move a ton of freight 469 miles on a gallon of fuel.”

In this example, the train is approximately 3.5 times more efficient at hauling freight.

"...rail has less adhesion than road surface." But the crucial factor is that once a train is in motion, there is far less friction. And because freight cars "draft," like automobiles on a race track, wind-resistance is less per unit of weight. All of which gives rail a 4-to-1 advantage.

I don't want to pour cold water, but this does seem to be such a limited question as to be almost pointless. Obviously, on a simple like for like basis, rail freight with its much smaller rolling resistance will be more fuel efficient, unless the tare weight of the vehicles is so much greater as to outweigh the benefit. However, fuel is only a small proportion of marginal freight operating costs, even including externalities such as pollution.

The point is that for any particular freight traffic the nature of the load, the distance, the value of time in transit, the infrastructure costs (both loading and conveyance) and performance characteristics will affect profoundly the overall assessment of the most appropriate mode. One should also not forget that perhaps there some goods that not be moved at all!

spflow Wrote:
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> I don't want to pour cold water, but this does
> seem to be such a limited question as to be almost
> pointless. Obviously, on a simple like for like
> basis, rail freight with its much smaller rolling
> resistance will be more fuel efficient, unless the
> tare weight of the vehicles is so much greater as
> to outweigh the benefit. However, fuel is only a
> small proportion of marginal freight operating
> costs, even including externalities such as
> pollution.


The Tare weight is irrelevant, the figure includes just the weight of the cargo, but includes all the fuel used including that used by switching locomotives which generate no ton-miles. It also includes the fuel used to move totally empty freight cars back for reloading. In the US fuel is the largest cost item, with crew costs a close second. I would be very surprised if energy costs were not the largest cost item for European freight train Operating Companies.


> The point is that for any particular freight
> traffic the nature of the load, the distance, the
> value of time in transit, the infrastructure costs
> (both loading and conveyance) and performance
> characteristics will affect profoundly the overall
> assessment of the most appropriate mode. One
> should also not forget that perhaps there some
> goods that not be moved at all!

Probably, but that is determined by the cost to move something versus the value to some entity of it being moved.

Tare weight is extremely relevant because it affects the basic technical efficiency of the entire operation. Energy is expended shifting cars as well as load - if the cars weigh nothing then the fuel and most other costs will presumably be much less in total, and thus per loaded tonne km (or ton mile).

As for European rail freight costs, it is true that fuel prices are more realistic over here, but I suspect that given the average distances and nature of the rail
systems over which freight is operated the dominant costs are still track access and terminal costs. Short fast trains cost money to run! This must be why modal shares are so different compared to North America.

great pic of the w/b approaching berry on the Seligman sub. the music mountains look great in the background........

66

There are a lot of factors that weigh against rail being competitive for freight in Europe, Intercity Passengers too for that matter. First is Geography, 50% more people with significant sized cities well distributed across the landscape and less total Land Mass. Even with the EU there are still different regulations between countries. Each of the railway companies operates in a relatively small geographic area, though with Open Access that is beginning to change slowly. Megatrucks in Germany and Sweden 60 metric tonnes Gross Vehicle Weight. Low Cost truck drivers from lesser developed countries able to drive anywhere in the EU. The railroads in the USA would face much greater competition if Mexican citizens could drive trucks carrying cargo from anywhere in North America. Switzerland does better than the USA in railway modal share, 61% to the US 43%, and with minimal bulk traffic. Of course Switzerland has heavy restrictions on Large Trucks, No Sunday driving and a higher tax.

What CSX does makes me crazy. What you are hauling makes a lot of difference. CSX is dealing in averages. An intermodal train will not come close to moving a ton of freight 500 miles. A coal train will do better than that figure.

You still will have an advantage in energy efficiency with intermodal versus truck, but it is not anywhere close to CSX's feel good number.

ts1457 Wrote:
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> What CSX does makes me crazy. What you are hauling
> makes a lot of difference. CSX is dealing in
> averages. An intermodal train will not come close
> to moving a ton of freight 500 miles. A coal train
> will do better than that figure.
>
> You still will have an advantage in energy
> efficiency with intermodal versus truck, but it is
> not anywhere close to CSX's feel good number.

True, but a ballast train contributes zero to the ton-mile figure, but does contribute to the diesel fuel used figure. The same is true for that GP38 kicking cars in your local freight yard. And you know the same is true about that train with three locomotives tied down on a siding burning 4 gph each that hasn't moved because of no rested crews.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/17/14 08:04 by SOO6617.

I think we have a very good discussion here! The issue that has been one of the driving factors for different kinds of transportation industries, which is the most effective mode when volumes go high enough.

I like the CSX example very much based on what I do elsewhere. When the volumes go high enough the general picture hides all the variations and the clear true overall situation between the different modes starts form. I think that even though CSXT may have their own interest in this, it will serve them better to be honest and report what they actually see. And I believe that they can do very advanced calculations, because they need to refine their every day operations continuously. So what we see is quite a real figure based on huge amount of input. I think what SOO here says and what I agree still needs some clarification: when you take a large enough sampling of something the small single happenings and exceptions don't any more weight so much, you actually get the whole bigger picture with everything built in.

And like any management wishes to see the clarified figures, this CSXT data has those figures put very simple and true: 3,5:1. Only after having this figure can we start having calculations on effects on different factors. These the operators even in Europe know extremely well from their calculations, but won't for obvious reasons publish.

I've also seen just about the same comparison in one of my rail history books: In the early days of industrialization there were three modes competing head on, rails, roads and waterways. Of these rails and roads could be built basically anywhere. It was measured that two horses could pull one or two wagon loads of coal on road surface but around 5-6 on reasonably level track. These were obviously based on true experiences and measurements, trial and error. And the results interestingly still hint to the same direction as the present day CSX measurements.

Below a pair of present day CSXT coal trains, picture by Gerry.

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Hay got some C36-7s in MOP paint

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Interesting pictures! How different the C36-7s look in UP scheme!

shay2977 Wrote:
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> Hay got some C36-7s in MOP paint