Compiled jointly by the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER) and the International Union of Railways (UIC) Rail Transport and Environment: Facts and Figures makes a compelling case for the environmental impacts of rail compared to road or plane travel. The article clearly lays out easy to understand numbers and breaks the issues down into sections: climate change and CO₂ emissions, energy efficiency, electricity mix, land take, local air pollution, noise emissions, subsidies and external cost, and core statistics from European transport.

                Rail outperforms road and air travel in almost every category. Consuming on average three to ten times less CO₂ than road and air travel, rail presents a much less CO₂ intensive means of transportation. Road and aviation transportation averages two to five times the amount of energy than rail transportation. Consuming fewer resources continues when the land required to run a train is examined; railway infrastructure occupies two to three times less land per passenger or freight unit than other modes of transportation.  When the prospect of all electric trains are considered rail is even more appealing since electric cars and planes are not feasible on a large scale at this time. Electric trains produce no local air pollution, and if produced using renewable energy sources the electricity required to run a train does not produce the long term resource scarcities that are on the doorstep for fossil fuel powered road and air transportation.

The goal of this page on the Community of European Railway Infrastructure Companies (CER) website is to highlight the benefits of railway infrastructure projects. To that end, the focus of the text is to compare greenhouse gas emissions from rail travel to those of road travel. Aside from several extra spacings, this page is sleek and well organized, and succinctly conveys its main points. The entire website has many pages and PDFs that would be helpful, should the reader decide to conduct further research. However, the title of the organization as well as the lack of evaluation of the negative impacts of railways indicates a bias. While this page is a fine source for solid figures that demonstrate the benefits of rail, its ultimate goal is marketing their products to the general public, and therefore certain important information is likely omitted.

Wildlands CPR is an organization that focuses on reducing and preventing the harmful impacts that roads and railways have on the environment. Their website provides background information about what these harmful effects are as well as the ways in which Wildlands CPR is working to counteract those effects.

Wildlands CPR’s website is broken down in a way that is easy to understand. Information regarding current projects is available as soon as the website is opened. Each project has information about what goals have been set, what has been accomplished so far, as well as background information about why each project is important. Some of the projects listed include reducing the impact that road development has on watershed areas and working with parks to reduce the use of off road vehicles in the parks to protect plant and animal life.

While the website is very large and contains a large amount of information, its organization allows the user to easily maneuver through the information available. This makes the website just the right size no matter how much information is available. Because of the wealth of information available on this site it is able to widen its target audience to include both experts and people looking to learn the basics of what the impacts of road and rail on the environment are.

Overall I believe this is a very useful website that is constructed in a way that allows many people to use it for a variety of different reasons.

The introduction of roads in areas inhabited by wildlife will undoubtedly put huge pressure on the local fauna. Only strong, lucky and clever individuals will be able to adapt and survive. This image shows a young owl waiting for mother owl to come back to their home, an underground water drainage network. Daily road traffic and floods are two of the major threats this owl family has to face on an everyday basis.    

The Environmental Protection Agency created this website page, titled On the Road, in order to educate readers on the environmental impacts of transportation. It focuses on the harm and pollution vehicles create on a daily basis and how to to reduce these damages. This page serves as a base of information for those looking to be more environmentally friendly, as well as economically smart. With the continuously rising gas prices, its important to have information out there that can be easily accessed for people trying to find more fuel efficient vehicles.

The website is well organized and easy to read. Viewers can find what they are looking for based upon the headings in bold and links to other pages with more information. There are links to the EPA’s data on improving gas mileage, current ozone levels, and automobile emissions. This informative website succeeds at educating the general public in a clear and concise manner.

It’s no secret that passenger trains in America have not had the same level of success as their European counterparts. The infrastructure wasn’t established well enough before the introduction of affordable automobiles, and the larger distances between major cities made the costs too high to entice families to forgo their private car full of cheap (at the time) gas.

However, as more and more trains are being derailed (figuratively) by failing companies, the decommissioned tracks are being repurposed to support healthier recreation trails where there was once pollution and wildlife danger. The program working to get more people on their feet and their self-powered wheels is called Rails-to-Trails, and could hopefully take something that began as an industrial invader of the environment and turn it around to promote more outdoor experience and nature sympathizers.

A bike waiting for adventure at the entrance to Rails to Trails, Road D

The question remains: is a human trail any less impacting on the environment than train tracks?

India’s extensive network of trains keeps the country connected and accessible for many people.  It reaches a large network of the country’s locations and socioeconomic classes.  However, as symbolized by this person trapped between the two railways, public transportation can be constraining and limiting in other ways for overlooked populations due to a reorganization of space access.  In developing transportation infrastructures, it is crucial to examine the effects to all populations, both majorities and minorities.

Photo credit: Leah Todd in Varanasi, India