Michael Tobis wrote: > I think the fascination with SUVs is understandable but misplaced. > America runs on trucks; rail freight is antiquated and visibly > mismanaged. It is only used for very low value goods (ironically, coal > among them). Truck traffic almost certainly dominates liquid fuel > demand, and certainly dominates the cost of road construction.
I'm sure it is a large component, unfortunately the stats source I found didn't have USA truck figures but in almost every other developed country goods transport is ~20% of the private vehicle figure (by mileage) with Japan being the outlier at ~50%, presumably because of the low private vehicle use. However, the billion tonne-kilometre figure for the USA is included, it is "only" 10 times greater than the UK, which is about the same as the ratio for passenger-kilometres. Interestingly (and surprisingly to me) USA has an extremely high rail freight mileage. http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/intcomparisons/ (and lots more on linked pages, but UK-focussed) James --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
