Conserving Energy and Preserving the Environment
Bureau of Transportation Statistics: US D.O.T.
THE ROLE OF TRANSPORTATION
I. Introduction
1 As the United States strives to achieve greater energy efficiency and independence and to improve the environment, the role of transportation has become paramount. America consumes more energy and produces more pollution in mobility and travel than in any other activity. It follows that any serious effort to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and make significant additional progress on the environment must address the way Americans travel. This study examines the role of public transportation in conserving energy and reducing pollution. The data show that traveling by public transportation, per person and per mile, uses significantly less energy and produces substantially less pollution than comparable travel by private vehicles. We find that increasing the role of public transportation can provide the most effective strategy available for reducing energy consumption and improving the environment without imposing new taxes and government regulations on the economy or consumers.
2 Our communities, the economy and much of our lives are organized around our ability to travel easily and efficiently from home to work or school, to shop or play, to receive medical care or just for the sheer pleasure of traveling. (1) This freedom has certain costs that accompany its many benefits. (2) Vehicles, public and private, have to be purchased and operated; (3)roads must be built and maintained; laws must be enforced so many people can travel at the same time; and (4) hundreds of thousands of accidents inevitably occur.
3 The most fundamental costs of mobility, however, involve the energy required to move people and goods over any distance, and the pollution released as this energy is burned. As shown in Table 1, in 2000 Americans consumed more energy moving from place to place than industry used to produce all of its goods. All forms of transportation also consumed almost four times the energy of all residential uses and more than six times the energy of all commercial uses. Moreover, petroleum products provide virtually all of the fuel used for transportation, while other sectors use more diverse, efficient, and environmentally friendly sources of energy.
4 Energy and environmental costs are built into all forms of mobility by mechanical means, but personal and political choices can reduce the fuel and pollution "overhead" associated with a given level of mobility. The primary approach for lowering these costs involves developing and using technologies that reduce either the fuel required to move people and goods, or the amount of pollution associated with burning that fuel. The most prominent regulatory strategies developed to advance this approach are the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) and auto-emission standards for private automobiles. The non-regulatory strategy with the greatest potential for achieving the same results is greater use of public transportation, because on a per-person, per-mile basis, public transportation is much more energy efficient and much less polluting than private automobiles.A Note about Categories and Years
5 In comparing public and private transportation, we include vehicle travel within metropolitan areas; we do not include trips between metropolitan areas. The category of public transportation used here covers all buses, commuter rail and light and heavy rail within a metropolitan area. The category of private vehicles used here includes passenger cars and "other 2axle 4-tire vehicles," which covers SUV s and light trucks.
6 In each case, we use the most recent and comprehensive data available. The energy section draws on 1998 data on travel by private and public transportation, because 1998 is the latest year for which data on energy consumption by private vehicles is available (1999 data on energy use by public transportation systems is available). The analysis of public transportation and the environment draws on 1999 data, because that is the most recent data available on pollution emissions by public and private vehicles.
7 (5)The most recent data show that the current use of public transportation is a major source of energy savings. Moving a person over a given distance by public transportation consumes, on average, about half the energy of moving a person the same distance by private automobile, sports-utility vehicle (SUV), or light truck.
8 Over the 42.5 billion passenger miles traveled on public transportation in 1998, the energy benefits add up to nearly 107 trillion British thermal units (BTUs). 2 As we will show, these energy benefits are comparable to the energy consumed by various manufacturing industries. These energy savings are also equal to 99 percent of the energy used by the beverage and tobacco industries, and more than four times all the energy used to manufacture apparel. Finally, these energy benefits are equivalent to about one-fourth of the energy used to heat American homes in 1997 (the most recent data).3
9 Greater use of public transportation can offer a powerful conservation strategy that could substantially reduce our dependence on imported oil. There is no other technology or approach other than increased use of public transportation that, for every trip it is used, has the energy impact of nearly doubling the fuel efficiency of automobiles.What is the primary TONE of this passage?
Responses
A comically satiricalcomically satirical
B strident and militantstrident and militant
C factual and persuasivefactual and persuasive
D bitter and disappointed