Pollution by Travel Mode: The Thanksgiving Edition

In case you missed it yesterday, my colleague Daniel linked to this excellent graphic posted by Matthew Yglesias over at Think Progress. The image was created from a table in the “Vision for High-Speed Rail in America” plan originally presented in April 2009. Of course, the country’s bullet train network has become just a bit more politicized since then. But on a day when nearly everyone in the United States travels somewhere, somehow, it seems appropriate to compare transportation methods.

Yglesias makes a rational economic argument in favor of bullet lines: If airfares were adjusted to include the cost of pollution (say, through a greenhouse gas tax), then high-speed rail becomes a much more competitive alternative to flying:

Pollution by Travel Mode: The Thanksgiving Edition » INFRASTRUCTURIST