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John Benson
John Benson
Expert Member
Top Contributor

Zero-Carbon Trains

zero-carbon_trains.pdf
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In my writings I tend to classify electric vehicles and other vehicles that match the above title by their location in our transportation networks. That is:

  • Road Vehicles
  • Tracked Vehicles
  • Aircraft
  • Maritime Vehicles (a.k.a. ships and boats)

World-wide most tracked vehicles are already electrified. If a government agency is going to the trouble of laying a track system, it is not that much more expensive to put in an electric supply and equip the locomotives and/or train-cars to tap into that supply. Also, once this is done the operating cost is generally much lower than fossil-fueled trains.

The reason that diesel-electric (a generator driven by a diesel-engine driving electric traction motors) is dominant in the US (etc.) is that we have very long distances between metro-areas in many regions, and having just passive tracks in these stretches reduces the cost of installing and maintaining these tracks by a huge amount. Also, these sections are mostly used for freight, not passengers.