Globalisation means more production. More production means more sales, at home and abroad. To sell more, good have to reach thousands of markets. To get them there, you need transport "" lots of it. |
The question no one asks is what effect more transport will have on the environment and if the energy for such transport has to be based on fossil fuels, should we be relying more on rail or roads? |
And, partly, because no one asks, the result in India has been a shift towards road transport, regardless of the impact on the environment. But a report* is now available that seeks to find out what this impact is. |
The study is perhaps the first of its kind. "It explores the economics of environmental and social costs and attempts to monetise them in a manner relevant to Indian conditions." |
The authors say they came up against the usual Indian problem "" no, or bad, data. So "we have used data from other countries for constructing an Indian scenario... where there has been multiplicity of data, we have tried to reconcile it to the most appropriate in the situation in India." |
Although the authors say their purpose is not say whether rail is better or road, the message is clear: take a train if you want to cause less damage. |
The main findings are given below: |
Rail consumes 75 to 90 per cent less energy for freight traffic and 5 to 21 per cent less for passenger traffic. Thus, energy consumption on rail for freight traffic varies between 0.12 and 0.39 megajoules (Mj) per net tonne kilometre (NTKM), while for road, it varies between 1.13 and 1.58 Mj per NTKM. For passenger traffic, energy consumption on rail varies between 0.16 and 0.20 Mj per passenger kilometre (PKM), while in the case of diesel bus, it varies between 0.19 and 0.22 Mj per PKM. |
If 15,000 passengers and 15,000 tonnes of freight per day carried by road were to shifted to rail, the savings would be 614,522 litres of diesel oil per day. |
The differential between road and rail costs for passenger traffic in the base year 2000 is Rs 1.62 per PKM. For freight traffic, the differential in unit costs increases to Rs 2.09 per NTKM. |
The daily overall saving in respect of freight traffic in the base year 2000 is between Rs 0.73 million and Rs 17.99 million. For the same year, the daily savings in respect of passenger traffic range between Rs 0.80 million and Rs 4.19 million. |
A comparison of diesel and electric traction shows that electric traction accounts for higher CO2, SO2/SOx and TSP emissions if the polluting effect of the use of coal for power generation at thermal plants located in urban areas is transferred to the transport sector. This effect gets neutralised if gas is used as fuel for generating power. Electric traction is, however, much cleaner than diesel traction when other noxious pollutants, such as CO and NOx are considered. |
But there is a downside to rail as well. On average, passenger coaches require seven times more steel and freight wagons require almost two times more compared to road vehicles for carrying equivalent volumes of traffic. The steel requirement for rail infrastructure is also much more than roads. |
This means higher energy inputs at steel plants. The major pollutants emitted in the production of steel are CO2 , CO, NOx, SOx and TSP. |
Also, the widening of roads by two lanes requires almost 2.5 times more land than for rail track doubling. The cost of rail doubling is almost half of the cost of four-laning of roads. So what should be done? The report says the first requirement at the policy level is to recognise that "transport stresses nature in multiple ways...and that these external costs need to be built into the cost of transport service." |
But since this is not done, the modal choice is not influenced, resulting in "intermodal distortions". Ideally, says the report, the user should pay the full marginal resource cost of his transport. |
"Pricing transport services on the basis of their comparative resource cost would lead to creation of an efficient system in which the total transport demand would be met at a minimum resource cost to the economy." |
*Environmental and Social Sustainability of Transport: A Comparative Study of Rail and Road in India , Asian Institute of Transport Development, New Delhi (aitd@vsnl.com) |
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