Airports Matter Too

Ryan Avent pretty thoroughly takes down an op-ed Ed Glaeser had in last Friday’s Boston Globe. I wanted to add something to this little bit at the end of Ryan’s response:

Glaeser makes the same mistake in complaining that Amtrak is only 17 percent more fuel efficient than airlines. But efficiency varies with ridership; a full train on a medium distance run is much more efficient than a plane ride over a similar distance. In energy terms, it makes little sense to run a mostly empty train across the country at slow speeds, but that has nothing to do with the potential advantages of a quality high-speed rail network.

Another important point to make about the 17 percent is that that’s concerning airplanes versus trains alone. It doesn’t consider how environmentally friendly/unfriendly airports are versus train stations (train stations win). Airports tend to take up a lot of room and be some ways away from where people live. They require way too much space and create congestion/pollution by requiring people who either work there or use airplanes to travel to drive all the way there and back.

By contrast, train stations don’t take up nearly as much space and can be built in the direct downtown area of a city or close by which results in way less pollution.