MARTA Most Energy-Efficient Heavy Rail System in Country
Decatur Metro | December 13, 2010 | 5:51 pmYou never know what you’ll find digging through federal documents. Like this bar chart from page 18 of Chapter 2 of the Transportation Energy Data Book – 2010 that I referenced in the last post.
Assuming that “Oakland” here is actually San Fran, it looks like all U.S. heavy rail systems are present and accounted for on this list. Anyone know how Atlanta got itself to #1 on this list, and why this claim isn’t more frequently shouted from various high-density rooftops?
Sadly, my first guess at an explanation is that MARTA has so many fewer stops and only 2 main lines, so maybe less stopping and starting of trains in the station helps for efficiency? I hope it is some other, more calculated and innovative reason though!
Not so efficient when you consider that most people have to either ride a bus or drive a car to get to one of the few stops that our tiny rail system offers. To me, it’s the most useless rail system in the country.
If you have no car, MARTA is great. Everything is relative, you know. Also, MARTA passengers learn how to “shop along the routes,” so they don’t need to go too far for most of their basic necessities. The bus-train connections are similar to all other public transportation systems that I have used in the U.S., and I can’t fault MARTA for their excellent service during this economic freak show we are living in.
Chira, I agree with you 100%. I don’t drive, have a car or want a car and I’ve managed to live in Atlanta for 12+ years just fine. Even though it doesn’t hold up to most other transit systems I’ve used, MARTA is not as “defective” as many say. A lot of it is expectations. If you live five miles from a train station, well, that’s too bad for you, but if you choose someplace closer, like I did many years ago, knowing I wanted and needed access to trains and buses, then it works. In closing, yes, I agree MARTA is screwed up, but the people who seem to moan about it most often seem to be those who ride it least.
I agree, Wendy D. Marta is pretty decent all things considered. My experience with other systems is limited to NY and BART, and while NY is an apples to oranges comparison, I’d take MARTA over BART (granted, my usage is less than a dozen trips on BART). People complain about MARTA not going anywhere, but many people made the choice to live in low density exurbs that heavy rail simply doesn’t work for (indeed, more than a few people moved in those areas so as NOT to be near MARTA.)
BrianC, what do you think MARTA does better than BART? BART and the DC Metro are my other comparisons that I’ve used the most apart from MARTA, and I’d rank them Metro, BART, MARTA, with a big gap between BART and MARTA. I like MARTA, and want to see it suceed, but to me the items that push iMARTA well below BART are area of service, much better cross-line coordination (you can actually switch lines w/in a few minutes of your train arriving, much unlike my experience with MARTA- and we only have 1 cross-over point!), and more crazies/disruptives riding the trains. Plus BART actually manages to coordinate w/ special events so when you get out of an event at the Colessium, there are multiple, extended trains to move the crowds, usually ready and waiting. That has not been my experience on MARTA after concerts, football, festivals, etc.- and those types of events are just the time MARTA could be recruiting new ridership built on positive experience… and I say COULD be cultivating new ridership.
As I noted, my experience with it was limited (and most of it about ten years ago), but I had problems getting to where I wanted to go and the waits between trains were long. Of course, MARTA has gotten worse in this respect lately because of cuts; I don’t know what if any cuts BART has made. If you say BART is better, I’ll take your word for it.
Although, I agree our public transportation could be better. But nothing is more usless than Jacksonville, FL’s people mover. It doesn’t even stop at the stadium and I have never seen anyone ride it.
Any relationship between BTU and miles per gallon, or some other measure I might be familiar with?
Ahh, found it:
Gasoline:
1 Gal Gasoline (mid grade) = 125,000 Btu’s
1 Gal Ethanol = 76,000 Btu’s
1 watt = 3.412 Btu
1 KW = 3,413 Btu/hr
So if I read this right, MARTA uses around 1/2 kW, or less than $0.10 worth of electricity to move the average rider along its rails?
Neat find, DM!
Thanks for the conversions- I just can’t resist one quibble:
I think you mean MARTA uses around 1/2 kW-hr (kiloWatt-hour) per passenger mile.
A Watt is a unit of power, that is, of energy use per unit time. (specifically, a Watt is a Joule per second). A 100-Watt lightbulb left on for 10 hours consumes 1 kiloWatt-hour.
Interesting. Especially I wonder about the point about made because fewer stops, since NY is next most efficient. And from my years living in Cleveland, I found their system just as frustrating as Atlanta’s, useful only for going downtown and to the airport. But it’s at the opposite end of the energy spectrum, so it must be something else than extent of the system. Hmmm…
Probably related to MARTA not wasting energy on functioning escalators.
DOH! you beat me to it.
I have to think that running trains so infrequently, seldom replacing lights when they burn out, and having few functioning escalators or elevators helps. Still, I defend MARTA…. come on, Atlanta is a city that was essentially built in the suburban car boom, not during a time of more limited mobility like NYC or Boston. We have an immense amount of ground to cover and rail simply cannot cover it all, especially as the rail system didn’t grow in tandem with the city over a century. I use mass transit wherever I go and you have to cut MARTA some slack for coming in late and having to deal with the sprawl that is Atlanta.
Marta: Its more efficient because it is all downhill…
[smirky grin]
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!
Nanny state.
Isn’t MARTA’s rail one of the newest on that list? I’d think that would have something to do with efficiency.
That was what I was thinking too Brian.
But I also think there’s real truth in Richard’s statement above as well. Limited public transit shifts energy consumption from the “system” to the individual. This, in combination with the system being relatively new, may be what elevates it to the top of the list.
Very cool stats — it’s always nice to see Atlanta on the top of a ‘good’ list! I was really impressed with one of the links you included:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_rapid_transit_systems_by_ridership
In that chart, you can see that MARTA’s weekday ridership-per-train-mile exceeds that both San Fran’s BART and Baltimore’s BMS. Even though the population of both those cities (and their respective metros) is higher than Atlanta’s.
Yeah, you’d think MARTA would trumpet these kinds of successes.
Government, even good government, is notoriously bad at selling itself. Meanwhile, for-profit colleges take government loan money, invest an unconscionably small amount in the students, but get away with it because of glitzy advertising, poor regulation, and gullible Americans.
I totally agree with you, except for Baltimore being larger than Atlanta. Baltimore metro has 2.7 million (not counting DC, since it has its own rail system elsewhere on your linked list).
You’re only considering the numerator, energy use. What about the denominator, passenger-miles? Maybe the passengers in Atlanta just travel longer distances on average than the other systems. I don’t know Atlanta well enough to speculate why that may be, but I know Cleveland and would almost guarantee it has more to do with low ridership than high energy use. Passenger miles can be found by mode in the National Transit Database, but I don’t feel like looking it up right now.
that could be at least part of it, I agree. If you look at the chart linked to by Darin, you’d see a category for weekday ridership per mile. And Atlanta and Cleveland are very different in that. But Atlanta isn’t close to the most ridership per mile (it’s middle of the pack).
Maybe if you do some calculation (playing with what others here mentioned) taking into factor the number of stations?
“and more crazies/disruptives riding the trains”
While I agree with this (and also noticed that the homeless population in SF was better behaved), you can’t really blame that on MARTA; it speaks more to the poor social services in GA.
agree on both the obervation and the reasoning
It seems there is some disbelief in the graph among the posters? I do.
Maybe the crowded trains between terminals of the airport train is somehow worked into the charts math. Or perhaps it’s our use of coal coupled with some estimates about ridership based on capacity.
I really find it hard to believe that Marta uses less electricity per passenger than the NYC system. Whenever I ride the metro it’s got at least double the Marta load even at off times.
I read through the report referenced and it has little in the way of back up, references and details about the calculations. I’d dig a little deeper dm.
whoa, since when does Cleveland have a heavy rail system? I
always thought the Rapid was light-rail…