I’m not even going to check the other one; you’re clearly dishonest, Gordy.

What sort of bogus irrelevance are you on about?

Commodities tend to fluxuate in price more or less in unison. How is burning LG or Coal for electricity going to be anymore or less volatile in pricing than oil/gas?

And if volatility in pricing is causing problems, why not invest some money into futures to give certainty to pricing rather than spending billions for new fleets of electric vehicles?

In practice in the real world, that is not true. All sorts of trips in the US that involve trains also involve cars. For some systems such as Denver’s RTD, that’s the predominant experience for riders. Others like Washington’s Metro have more of a mix.

I don’t understand

Because as Upton Sinclair noted, it’s impossible to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. Your Tobacco Institute-grade number massaging on construction emissions, your jumping to conclusions all while pretending to be a skeptic when the results don’t match what you want… it’s shoddy.

Right. It doesn’t seem to have increased density, either. Hence my statement that “This study found that adding rail transit produces little if any increase in density.” Again, if you think there is a more comprehensive study that challenges the conclusions of the study I cited, produce it.

Imagine two regions. One has 5 million people distributed uniformly across 20,000 km^2. Another has 20 million people distributed across 200,000 km^2, but 90% of its territory is a natural preserve. Which is denser in practice?

I don’t understand how you think this question explains why you think “perceived” density is what matters rather than actual density. Do you have an explanation or don’t you?

You’re thinking about American practice. But the study is Australian, where practices are different: richer people live closer in.

No, I’m not thinking about any country’s “practises.” I’m talking about emissions per person for different types of residential building. The study found that detached houses have lower emissions per person than any form of multi-story, multi-unit residential building.

You seem to have missed the point. Yonah Freemark pointed out that the total energy consumption and emissions attributable to cars includes more than just emissions from operation. I pointed out in the response that the evidence indicates that when total emissions are compared, cars become more favorable relative to rail transit. Non-operational emissions from rail transit are 155% of operational emissions. Non-operational emissions from cars are only 63% of operational emissions.

What this shows is that even if cars were zero-emissions, construction infrastructure for them would make them worse than rail transit.

Nonsense. It doesn’t show any such thing.

Not exactly true. Trains and buses commonly need a layover space, but only for trip recovery time in case of the bus. For a peak-time only commuter train, it would be morning to afternoon and overnight. Even if a train is parked at a platform while being turned, it can put limits on service that can be accomodated.