Reasons for this could be:
- low average number of passenegers
- buses have old inefficient engines because of underfunding/underinvestment
it’s also much easier for a city to electrify its bus fleet, vs convincing private citizens to go electric with their personal cars.
I’m curious how/where this data comes from, seems like it would vary a lot, e.g. Seattle and SF have some electric busses using catenary wires, Chicago has diesel-electric hybrids, Bogotá has dedicated lanes so busses aren’t sitting in traffic, etc. Different cities will have different mode share, too, so some systems will have more riders. In Chicago, the train system is distributes inequitably, leading to a higher mode share for the train in wealthy areas and a higher mode share for the bus in poorer areas.
No one’s designing specialty engines for buses. They just pick a model from their catalog(s) that is within specs, and most of those are seeing the same kinds of efficiency gains as other internal combustion engines.
If anything, they’re somewhat exempt from the higher emissions standards of cars, so they might actually be more efficient, passenger-mile-per-gallon. Or at least, that would be my first guess.
Bicycle travel beats all others, I was expecting yo see it on the graph.
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The emissions by bicycle are dependent on how you get your food. EDIT: This is what I mean
More surprised about how low emissions ferries are per passenger. Especially that it beats out trains.
Maybe trains are using inefficient engines? Eurostar performs quite admirably.
Eurostar is electric. Then again, aren’t most trains in the UK?
Some are, lots aren’t.
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I vaguely remember that a travel bus takes like 14-20liters per 100km or something like this which makes it extremely low per passenger
But on the other other hand, having a bus available - whether it’s full or not - makes it more viable for people to live a car free lifestyle, which in turn makes them less likely to use a car, which in turn leads to higher bus use. Or so the story goes.
does anyone have an alternative source to validate this?
Aha, the australian one seems to have better numbers for buses
Terrain and altitude of the area studied could affect these numbers as could age and maintenance state of the fleet.
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It’s worth noting this is the grams per passenger-kilometer cost. The most efficient kilometer is the kilometer you don’t take, so a plane trip to a nearby vacation spot is going to be less efficient per-kilometer than going around the world, but much more efficient overall.
Surprised motorcycles aren’t better. Even driving like a lunatic mine got great gas mileage
There’s motorcycles out there that use as much gas as normal cars
Nitpick, but imagine making a color coded graph and choosing 3 shades of the same color :)
Honestly the whole thing seems pretty stupid, other sources have numbers that seem more sensible. This is the first I found ;)
