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Source: National Transportation Statistics, Chapter 4, Bureau of Transportation Statistics
By moving more people with fewer vehicles, mass transit has an inherent advantage in energy conservation and efficiency. Sharing rides through public transportation can save fuel. Transit also decreases the need for constructing and maintaining more transportation infrastructure, manufacturing new vehicles, and extracting more fossil fuels, meaning fewer environmental impacts and further energy savings.
The transportation sector is one of the primary users of energy in the United States. With the growth in energy usage by many emerging world economies, the demand for scarce resources is increasingly outstripping available supply.
Petroleum use in private vehicles and growth in vehicle miles traveled are among the main drivers of the growth in energy usage in the United States. Public transportation encourages energy conservation, as the average number of passengers on a transit vehicle (10 for bus, 25 for a rail car) far exceeds that of a private automobile (1.6). Even as a single transit vehicle consumes more energy than a private vehicle, the average amount of energy utilized per passenger is far less.
In fact, a study by ICF International found that in 2004, taking transit saved 947 million gallons of fuel that would have been used if transit passengers had driven cars instead.1
Source: National Transportation Statistics, Tables 1-29 and 1-31, pp. 45 and 48.
Congestion relief through the use of transit also saves fuel as vehicles stuck in gridlock waste fuel and generate emissions. The Texas Transportation Institute’s 2007 Mobility Report estimates that if public transportation service was discontinued nationwide and the riders traveled in private vehicles instead, urban areas would have suffered an additional 541 million hours of delay and consumed on the whole 340 million more gallons of fuel in 2005. The value of the delay and fuel that would be consumed if there were no public transportation service would be an additional $10.2 billion congestion cost, a 13 percent increase over current levels.2
Footnotes:
1 - The Broader Connection between Public Transportation, Energy Conservation and Greenhouse Gas Reduction, ICF International, funded through Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Project J-11/Task 3, February 2008.
2 - Texas Transportation Institute 2007 Mobility Report
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