Neat. One thing that isn't addressed however is the sustainability of the energy source. Until we have electric airplanes, trains will continue to have a lower carbon footprint.
You can make hydrocarbon fuel for airplanes if you have electrical power. There is no risk of running out, you can make it literally from thin air! All the atoms necessary are in air (although obviously there are easier sources).
On top of that we could save our oil for airplanes and use other fuels for land vehicles - doing that we'd have effectively unlimited amounts.
> Until we have electric airplanes, trains will continue to have a lower carbon footprint.
Being electrical does not automatically mean less CO2. I'm not following your logic.
While I believe battery-powered cars like the Tesla S make more sense than hydrogen/fuel-cell based cars, perhaps fuel cells make sense in airplanes. For cars, the weight of batteries are an advantage as they provide down-force and can be readily charged by virtue of being close the ground where there's infrastructure, in stark contrast to flying at 36,000ft where infrastructure is non-existent.
Addendum: The infrastructure issues that come with fuel-cell distribution and refueling would be eliminated thanks to the centralized nature of airports.
While I'd love to see a shift in a more sustainable direction, I wonder if we're going to be close to that anytime soon.
Weight makes them worse , use more energy to move accelerate slower.
Intuitively the train should be more efficient, right? So the question imo is why does the data say otherwise: Is there less market pressure to make efficient trains? Is this data wrong? Is this intuition wrong?
(edit to include questioning the intuition itself, i.e. based on the reply comment)
Ever notice how every wheelie cart on a plane has not one but two locking handles to secure it? How about the ram air turbine [1] which is used almost never but weighs hundreds of pounds? Seat frames are still made mostly of metal, whereas if weight were the only consideration they would probably be carbon fiber.
This is one reason why U.S. trains have (relatively) 'harsher' requirements than other countries where track is not shared to such a high extent.
Separately, this degree of track-sharing is one of the reasons why average passenger rail journey speed has decreased in many places over a 100-year time period!
Obviously, in both cases, there are many many factors involved - but, an important element.
How ever, moving all to electric powered, at least allow us to replace a single thing (electric generation stations) to something more clean, like a mix of solar/wind/geo/hydro power sources + nuclear)