High Speed Rail - Center for Neighborhood Technology

High Speed Rail and Greenhouse Gas Emissions – CCAP & CNT
Figure 1 U.S. Potential High Speed Rail Corridors 5
Methodology
Using passenger projections and diversion rates, we calculated the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions saved
from passengers switching to high speed rail from other modes—air, conventional rail, automobile and
bus—and subtracted the estimated emissions generated by high speed rail to estimate high speed rail’s net
emissions impact. A more detailed description of this formula is available in Appendix C.
Passenger Projections
Most of the high speed rail corridors have created planning documents for their proposed systems. We
used these studies to model the potential greenhouse gas impacts of high speed rail. Our model used each
corridor’s projected passenger levels, as well as information on the transportation modes those passengers
were diverted from (air, automobile, bus, conventional rail, or whether passengers were induced to travel
based on the availability of high speed rail). We initially intended to use current travel patterns to build
our estimates for future travel patterns given the availability of high speed rail, but we found that most of
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Map of potential high speed rail does not include existing Northeast high speed rail between Washington, New York and
Boston.
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