The Future of Rail

Opportunities for energy and the environment

IEA 2019. All rights reserved.

IEA 2019. All rights reserved.

Motivations for increasing the role of rail transport

Urban rail

In the urban context, rail transport systems outperform road-based transport in all respects: efficiency of transport, lower energy requirements and fewer toxic emissions. Urban rail has unmatched capacity to transport large volumes of passengers (passenger throughput), and generally a relatively low energy use per passenger-kilometre travelled (Figure 3.1). Where reliant on electricity as a fuel, urban rail does not give rise to tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gas (GHG) or local pollutants, avoiding the associated environmental and health issues. Urban rail can also contribute to enhanced road safety and lower accident mortality.

Figure 3.1 Energy intensity and passenger throughput of different urban transport systems

Note: MJ = megajoule; km = kilometre.

Sources : IEA (2018) and Rode et al. (2014).

Key message • Metros, commuter rail and light rail all have high throughput capacity, higher than most alternative urban transport options and are important where traffic volumes are high.

In terms of transport policy, the high passenger throughput capacity of urban rail creates opportunities to mitigate congestion while providing access to and travel within cities.1 There are associated indirect economic benefits: reduced time-loss in traffic and cost savings arising

1 Congestion reduction is achieved by successfully drawing activity to high throughput and generally more space-efficient modes, which reduces overall (lower-throughput) private car and taxi shares. Shifting people that were using personal vehicles onto metro lines both reduces the number of personal vehicles on the road and enables the reallocation of road space for other uses.

IEA 2019. All rights reserved.

from the easy proximity of economic actors. There are concrete examples of congestion improvements. For example, in Beijing, where car registrations far surpass designed road capacity, each new metro opening has significantly decreased congestion, reducing delay times by an average of 15% (Yang et al., 2018). Similar congestion reduction was observed in the city of Guangzhou with the opening of its metro system and the trend accelerated when the metro

system was expanded (Yang, Zhang and Ni, 2014). It is possible to evaluate time lost in traffic. Page | 99 For example, in the case of New York City, it is estimated that USD 13 billion per year is lost as a

direct result of traffic congestion (PFNYC, 2006).

Conventional and high-speed rail

Shifting long-distance trips from aviation (primarily short-distance flights) and cars to conventional and high-speed rail is generally energy efficient and can deliver significant environmental gains. High-speed rail offers the only established low-carbon alternative to aviation, a sector that is one of the most challenging to decarbonise, for the transport of large volumes of passengers over distances of up to about 1 000 kilometres. About 60-80% of present high-speed rail activity can be shown to derive from shifts away from conventional rail and planes, with the remainder from avoided road traffic (10-20%) and induced demand (10-20%) (Givoni, 2013). There is some evidence of substantial (even nearly total) high-speed rail substitution for air traffic (Figure 3.2). More broadly, Figure 3.3 shows that countries with existing high-speed rail lines tend to have proportionately fewer short-haul flights than countries without high-speed rail. This is consistent with the observation that high-speed rail is most competitive with competing modes for trips with travel times ranging from 1 hour up to 3.5 hours (Givoni, 2013; UIC, 2018).

Figure 3.2 Average change in passenger activity on selected air routes after high-speed rail implementation

Change in aviation passenger-km (%)

Sources: Xia (2016); Börjesson (2014); Givoni (2013); Chen (2017); Commissariat Général au Développement Durable (2016).

Note: The periods of time vary from line to line in this figure, which needs to be taken into account when comparing these elements.

Key message • High-speed rail lines can reduce aviation activity on the same corridors by as much as 80% within a short timeframe of becoming operational.

The Future of Rail

Opportunities for energy and the environment

IEA 2019. All rights reserved.

IEA 2019. All rights reserved.

Freight rail

Increased efficiency and fewer emissions are also the main benefits from a shift of freight transport activity from road to rail. This stems from the lower amount of energy per tonne-kilometre needed to move goods on rail (Figure 3.4). Rail is the most established sustainable alternative to trucks, also one of the sectors that is more challenging to decarbonise for the transport of large volumes of freight over long distances. The energy and environmental case is not as compelling as in the case of a shift from maritime transport to rail, since the two modes have similar energy intensity per tonne-kilometre; but rail can rely more readily than shipping on a diverse mix of fuels and energy carriers. In addition to energy efficiency, diversification and environmental gains, shifting road transport to rail can deliver positive impacts on congestion, particularly that arising from long-distance truck movements.

Figure 3.4 Global fleet average freight energy intensity and relative size of transport activity, 2015

Notes: Lde = litres of diesel equivalent. In this figure, total transport activity in 2015 by billion tonne-kilometres is 26 for trucks, 10 for rail and 99 for shipping.

Source: Analysis based on IEA (2018).

Key message • Rail uses around 10% of the energy required to transport a unit of freight by trucks, and is the only transport mode offering serious competition with trucks for land-based freight.