You might have noticed it was a little quiet around here yesterday. That is because I was on a train all day. I have traveled back to the heartland for the season to spend some time with my family and celebrate consumerism on a massive and out of control scale Christmas.

I spent a bit of time thinking about my yearly trip home, one I usually do by car. I wanted to try and find the most convenient and greenest way to travel. Here is a bit of my thought process.

Planes are inconvenient and frankly nerve wracking to be on this time of year. Trains are slower, and don’t offer as direct routes to places you want to go. Car travel can be fun if you have multiple people to help with the drive (I don’t), but it is still slow, still bad for the environment, and very subject to the vagrancies of weather. Or you could take the bus, which for a 1500 mile trip is not fun, trust me.

So basically traveling half way across the country is going to be a pain no matter what. I threw out flying almost right away. I hate flying, I hate the idea of burning kerosene and then placing the resulting mess directly into the atmosphere, I also always seem to get the second stage molestation search when I fly. With that out of the way it was a breakdown between bus, car and train.

I next got rid of bus travel. I had done long distance bus travel before and it was pretty uncomfortable. They are cramped, they don’t offer any amenities, and they often take forever to get places due to the many and frequent stop, both for picking up passengers and for traffic lights. They are also very subjected to weather. If its really bad weather, your bus trip is going to take an eternity.

So it was down to car, and train. Taking a car would take about 12-13 hours of non-stop driving (assuming I went a bit above the speed limit the whole time), and from experience several tanks of gas. Taking the train was going to take 20 hours, mostly because I got my tickets late and couldn’t get the most direct route.

Eco Breakdown:

View Larger Map

The map above is by car. It is about 1500 miles round trip. My car gets about 28 mpg on the highway. so thats roughly 54 gallons of gas, or 1080 pounds of co2.

The best numbers I could find for equivalent MPG figures for trains (the one I was on was electric) are about 39 passenger miles per gallon. Our train was fully sold out (people even had to stand in the isles sometimes), so assuming 39 mpg traveling 1500 miles by train would equal about 39 gallons of gas, or 789 pounds of co2.

That was enough to put the train ahead in my opinion.

Comfort breakdown:

I have driven this trip several times, and let me tell you it is brutal. Even if you don’t get any bad traffic, bad weather, or have anything go wrong with your car, it is mentally and physically draining to drive non-stop for 13 hours. Your back hurts, you get sleepy and are in danger of nodding off (with resulting crash), if it snows, or rains, well its a mess.

Having taken the train I have to say it was pretty nice. I had a huge comfy chair that reclined way back into a bed like thing (even had a foot thing that folded up for more comfort). I got up and walked around several times stretching my legs and seeing the sights from the window without worrying about other cars. There was a food cart, and a lounge that sold drinks. I met some cool people and had a great time.

It was very easy to sleep, as the gentle rocking of the train makes you very comfortable. It was quiet, easy to get on and off the train (no one touched me in any place I didn’t want them to) and there was lots and lots of room for my luggage (I didn’t have to check anything and then have it get lost). They even had power plugs along the isles so you could plug in your laptop or dvd player (which many people did). I read almost an entire book, ate well, and slept well. I got to Ohio feeling pretty good.

Money Breakdown:

Car: 54 gallons of gas x $3.30 = $178.20
Train: my tickets cost $291 (I spent 12 extra dollars to have them deliver my tickets to my office, but got a AAA discount of about $24)
Plane: The cheapest tickets I could find were about $300 and due to my lateness in getting them they were significatly higher when I was looking to buy them.
(while technically bus was cheaper, there was no way you were going to get me on that thing for another 24 hour crazy ride)

Summary:
I would have to say, that train travel is hands down the best form of traveling I have done to date. It is better for the environment than traveling by car, and assuming that we someday move over to renewable energy as our main form of energy, electric trains would beat just about any form of travel that burned something in the eco-department. I really liked my journey, it was relaxing, I was very comfortable, and had great service.

I would fully recommend traveling by train for all your holiday (and other) long distance travel needs.

(ps: just as a crazy though I did briefly consider riding my bike home, but quickly got rid of that notion when I saw how long it was going to take, and how cold it was in the midwest)