How Green Is Amtrak? Well, It Could Be Greener

Long-distance passenger train travel has languished in the United States ever since the automobile and airplane took their places as the preferred modes of transportation. But several factors have come together in the last few years to make travel by rail more attractive.

First off, with the astronomical rise in the price of oil we saw over the course of 2009, many turned to train travel as a cheaper alternative than either flying or driving. Second, with the new restrictions and fees airlines have put on luggage, traveling with anything more than one bag has become a real headache on planes. Lastly, many people are turning to train travel as a low-carbon option of traveling long distances.

Although Amtrak may be the greener choice of the three, some questions still remain about the company’s overall environmental policies; and this is exactly what The Good Human argued today in an epilogue to a round-trip cross-country trip aboard Amtrak.

David’s argument went something like this: while train travel is a greener choice, Amtrak still has a long way to go in terms of greening what goes on inside the train itself. He writes:

“So while your trains are more efficient than traveling by air or car, and you are certainly doing your part to increase your efficiencies, I am afraid you are neglecting a big part of your environmental footprint - the inside of your trains. And as much as I wanted to, I could not have lugged all that plastic off the train myself, so it went right in the trash, where it was probably headed straight for a landfill in whatever city we stopped in.”

If I may, I suggest that Amtrak is not entirely to blame here. Our system of propping up airlines and giving priority to commercial freight over passenger rail has doomed the train to play second (or even third) fiddle. Trains are not money-makers and Amtrak is no exception. From the sounds of it, they are cutting some of their greener practices to shave a little off their expenses, but at what cost to the environment?

All those great trains in Europe and Asia that Americans love so much are great because the countries they operate in recognize the need to sink some money into them for them to be an attractive option (yes, that means subsidizing). But if we can subsidize banks, the auto-industry, insurance companies, to name a few, can’t we give a few more bucks to Amtrak?

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Image: Caveman 92223 via flickr under a Creative Commons License

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