What’s the best way to get somewhere? I went on trip a couple weeks ago where I had the opportunity to research this question. I traveled by car, bus, train, plane, SUV, van and helicopter.

So which was the best? I guess that depends on your criteria. Comfort, speed, and convenience come into play. Since so much of our impact on the environment comes from transportation, I was curious about the gas mileage per person for each mode.

I started out from my house in west Arcata with big plans to walk to the bus station. My wife Becky had offered to drive me, but I really wanted to walk, since it’s less than a mile. I lashed my skis to my wheelie duffle bag and started dragging the contraption down the front walk half on the wheels and half on the bottom of the duffle. It clearly wasn’t working so Becky ordered me to get in the car and I didn’t argue. Our Subaru Impreza gets 20 mpg in the city, and my wife had to drive about two miles to get me to the transit center and get back home. That was one-tenth of a gallon of gas.

Next it was onto Greyhound. It turns out that Greyhound has streamlined their schedule in the last year or two. There is only one bus a day, but it takes only six hours and 40 minutes to get to Oakland for about $35. When you consider that it costs about $146 in gas and car wear and tear to drive the 300 miles to Oakland1, saving only one hour, the bus is a pretty good deal right now.

The bus ride down was OK in terms of comfort. I brought my own food so I didn’t have to eat at the Taco Bell and McDonalds where the bus stops in Willits. I used my noise canceling headphones and earplugs to dull other passengers’ chatter and block out a loose, rattling mirror above the windshield. On the return trip I unexpectedly ran into a friend I hadn’t seen in a while and got to chat it up the whole way home. With the bus getting about six mpg carrying about 50 passengers, we probably got 300 passenger-miles per gallon (passenger-mpg), and I used about a gallon of gas. This was the most efficient leg of the trip.

The friend I was staying with in Oakland picked me up at the bus station, drove me to his place, and drove me to the BART station the next morning, for about four miles in his VW station wagon. I was thankful for the ride given how my luggage carrying system wasn’t working out. His car gets about 22 mpg, city, for another fifth of a gallon of gas.

The next morning I caught BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) to the airport. It was great to take advantage of service to the airport that was not finished back when I lived in Berkeley. I wheeled my duffle and carried my skis over my shoulder to get through the stations and on and off the trains. You aren’t allowed to eat on BART, so I read my book and people watched.

It’s about 27 miles from Oakland to the SFO at about 225 passenger mpg equivalent for the equivalent of about a tenth of a gallon (BART runs on electricity so these calculations can start to get messy if you take it too far). It took about an hour.

At SFO, after finding out that flights to Canada depart from the domestic terminal instead of the international terminal (Canada isn’t really a separate country, is it?), and rushing to check-in on time, I hopped onto the Canadaire Regional Jet, the same kind of jets that serve Arcata, and flew off to Calgary seated next to my friend, Kent, who had connected in SFO from
Santa Barbara.

We had a beautiful flight with views of the Cascades, Selkirks and Canadian Rockies. At the time (earlier this winter), snowpack was pretty thin on Mount Shasta, so it was nice to see from the plane that the situation was better the further north we went. We spent the rest of the flight catching up with each other’s lives. For air travel, I found estimates of 50 to 60 passenger-mpg, which on a 1,018-mile flight in two and a half hours adds up to 18 or so gallons of jet fuel, by far the biggest fuel expenditure, but also the longest and fastest portion of the journey.

At the airport in Calgary, Kent and I met up with two more travel companions and rented “the beast,” a Ford Expedition. We got a big vehicle because we were concerned about fitting all of us and our gear, including skis, in a smaller vehicle (rental cars don’t always come with roof racks), and we wanted four wheel drive for the icy Canadian mountain roads. This was the biggest vehicle I had ever driven. As we careened down the Trans-Canadian Highway, I had the impression of guiding a large mass down a slippery highway with major consequences for any mistake. Parallel parking in Banff, we discovered that “the beast” had a much-required distance sensor on the back to prevent you from crushing the vehicle behind you. At 17 mpg highway (68 passenger mpg with four people), we each burned up 2.4 gallons in the 165 mile, four-hour drive.

After a night at the Kicking Horse Lodge in Golden, British Columbia, we and the other guests on the trip loaded into a van for the forty mile ride up to Rogers Pass. The windows frosted up so we couldn’t see any scenery, but with 12 passengers, we got 204 passenger-mpg, and started to get acquainted with the folks we would be spending the week with.

Next was the fun ride in the helicopter up to the lodge. A seven minute, 15-mile ride up the canyon where you didn’t want to forget any critical gear, because you would be stuck without for the week. This was by far the most fun leg of the trip (besides the skiing of course). The pilot shut down and gave our group a safety talk, and then started shuttling passengers and gear into the remote backcountry lodge. I got to ride in the front! At about 3.5 mpg, five passengers packed into the whirlybird each got 17.5 passenger-mpg for the trip in, which is almost a gallon each, just to go 15 miles!2 Holy fuel consumption!

Once up at the lodge, we did all our skiing under our own power for the week. Of course we had to eat food, and food has its energy costs, but until the obesity epidemic in North America is over, or we figure out a way to render human fat into usable fuel for internal combustion, I’m not going to calculate fuel consumption for skiing under my own power.

Of course, I had to make the whole return trip to Arcata as well. I added it up to 46 gallons of petroleum burned, and 920 pounds of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. This turns out to be only slightly over the average per capita emissions per week in the U.S.3 Of course I was responsible for other emissions for the trip, such as heating in the places I stayed, and the energy required to grow and deliver the food I ate. But I traveled over 3,000 miles and didn’t go that far over the average! This was my biggest trip in the last year.

There seem to be a few lessons from this. Number one, Americans are causing a lot of emissions in their everyday life. How else could we be getting per capita emissions that add up to nearly 3,000 miles of travel every week?

Number two, even if you don’t have a super efficient vehicle, you can be very efficient by filling that vehicle with people, especially for longer trips. You can really reduce your fuel consumption and emissions by carpooling. Even in the Ford Expedition, a vehicle I usually have the urge to spit on, when I see one, because of its ridiculous misuse and inefficiency, we got 68 passenger-mpg by carpooling with four people. That is way better than a single-occupant Prius! So even if you are not willing to ride the bus (which is a great deal, believe me), go on Humboldt Craig’s List (or the Craig’s List of your destination), post your planned trip, and/or use the search term “Arcata” and get yourself some carpool partners for your regular driving and longer trips. There are plenty of people to rideshare with, especially to the Bay Area.

The number three lesson is that riding with good company makes for easy travel. My flight to Calgary while catching up with Kent, the Greyhound ride where I unexpectedly ran into my buddy Alex, riding with my friends in the Expedition while viewing the Canadian Rockies in moonlight, those were the memorable rides that went quickly even though they were long legs of the journey.

So what’s the best way to get somewhere? It’s a matter of opinion, but a full vehicle with some good friends along is a good way to go.

Happy travels!

1Based on IRS mileage reimbursement for 2007 ($0.485 per mile).
2Based on 160 km ground speed and 100 l/hour fuel consumption of the Bell 206B Helicopter.
3The U.S. ranks fourth in per capita carbon emissions behind Australia, Luxembourg and Canada, at 23.4 tons as of 2003. globalis.gvu.unu.edu/indicator.cfm?IndicatorID=199

Chris is waiting for a dry day to print out his thesis on acid-free paper and submit it for binding. Then he will have to come up with some other excuse. He sits on the Arcata Transportation Safety Committee.