Freight Trains are Three or More Times More Fuel-Efficient than Trucks

Here are just a few thought-provoking energy-efficiency facts from the Association of American Railroads website:

1. A freight train can move a ton of freight an average of 436 miles on a single gallon of fuel. That’s close to four times as far as it could move by truck.

2. A train can take the load of 280 trucks off the road. That’s like removing 1,100 cars from the road.

3. Each ton-mile of freight moved by rail rather than highway reduces greenhouse gas emissions by two-thirds or more.

You can also visit the association's "Carbon Calculator" page to calculate exactly what a trainload of freight hauled by rail might save the environment. I calculated a 100 car train, moving fresh and frozen food across the U.S. (from Los Angeles to Charleston) and the tool calculated that "968 Tons of Carbon Dioxide were saved by moving this freight by rail instead of by truck." This savings would amount to 22,523 seedlings working 10 years to remove the same amount of waste.

View the Carbon Calculator at:
http://www.aar.org/Environment/EconomicCalculator.aspx