The technology for electrification of transportation is extremely well proven and widely used (more so outside the US) and, from an energy BTU/joule point-of-view, highly efficient. Well-established modes of electrified transportation in use today provide many more freight ton-miles/BTU and passenger-miles per BTU than the competing rubber-tired, oil-burning transportation alternatives.
The ratio in energy efficiency is so great, especially when electrified rail is substituted for “18 wheeler” tractor trailers and single-occupancy vehicles (SOVs), that minimal, if any, expansion of the national electricity grid will be required to reduce U.S. national oil consumption by 10%, or about two million barrels per day.
Electrified transportation is also much more environmentally benign as well. Central power plants are more efficient thermodynamically and their emissions can be more easily controlled. Electric motors are dramatically more efficient than internal combustion engines.
There are three viable electrified modes available in the USA today: (1) urban rail – rapid/heavy rail, high-performance light rail transit (LRT), and streetcars, (2) electric trolleybuses, and (3) electrified inter-city railroad lines (predominantly freight, but with a passenger component).
Hm, if only GM hadn’t killed the US’s light rail system:
Today the U.S. public transportation system is the worst in the industrialized world. Early in the 20th century there was a well- functioning trolley or rail system service in most cities, running every few minutes, often down the center of the street with automobiles relegated to the sides. In 1922 only one in ten people owned a car. Alfred Sloan, then president of General Motors Corporation, set out to fix that, to create a new market for cars. In order to get rid of electric streetcars and motorize city transportation, he bought up the biggest bus manufacturing and operating companies.
From 1926 to 36, he bought and destroyed the New York rail system. Creating a trend toward smelly and slow buses was a tough sell, but in the mid- 1930s, the bus company National City Lines was founded, with a front man named Roy Fitzgerald. Joining the General Motors Corp. behind the scenes were the Standard Oil, Mack Truck, Phillips Petroleum, & Firestone Tire Corporations. Over a couple of decades, National City Lines bought transit properties, fired employees, raised fares and cut back schedules, until it controlled transit systems in over 80 U.S. cities.
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