On: Japanese railway company starts testing 249mph bullet train speeds

[mikeash]

That depends entirely on how your electricity is generated, right? For example, French trains presumably do a lot better than merely 10x.

[jessriedel → mikeash]

Agreed, though my impression is that most of the highest speed trains are in Japan, which nationally runs roughly 80% on fossil fuels.

And per Carbon Engineering, it also depends on how your hydrocarbon fuel is generated too :)

[Gibbon1 → jessriedel]

Whack thing about Japan and fossil fuels is it's totally untapped geothermal.

[microcolonel → mikeash]

Depends on how many passengers are on the train. Here in Ontario, the provincial trains along the busiest corridor in the province (probably the country) are, anecdotally, about 5% full per average unit distance travelled, even at peak times in the busiest legs of the corridor, you're likely to see about a fifth of the seats empty.

I doubt the GO train's passenger load factor is as good as AmTrak, for example.