There are a number of case studies which evaluated the greenhouse gas emission for three traffic systems, i.e., railway, automobile and aviation in Japan. Most of these studies, however, addressed only the emission at the service operation stage. In this study, we evaluated the amount of the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere not only at the service operation stage but also at the construction, manufacture and maintenance stages. The evaluation was performed based on the Japanese Input-Output Tables and various statistical Tables for 1985 to 1997. Moreover, we compared the efficiency of energy of railway, automobile and aviation at the service operation stage. We found for the emission of carbon dioxide that the total emission by passenger automobiles and trucks was remarkably high. The ratio of the emission at the service operation stage to the total emission was more than half with the automobile and aviation systems, but the ratio was less than half with railway systems. In terms of emission per unit transport volume, the total emission was considerably low with railways and buses, while it was very high with passenger automobiles, trucks and airplanes. As for the efficiency of energy, it was shown that railway, particularly, that of rail/wheel system was the most efficient with respect to energy consumption when compared with automobile and aviation.

Copyright (c) 2002 Railway Technical Research Institute