Post-trip statistics

23Mar08

Start	Finish	Mode	Distance (km)	Cost ($)
Edmonton	Vancouver	Train	1153	209
Vancouver	Seattle	Bus	230	43
Seattle	Portland	Train	279	36
Portland	Salem	Bus	74	11
Salem	Sacramento	Train	718	59
Sacramento	Richmond	Train	50	19
Emeryville	Merced	Train	197	29
Merced	Yosemite	Bus	103	24
Yosemite	Merced	Bus	103	24
Merced	Bakersfield	Train	265	32
Bakerville	Los Angeles	Bus	179	21
Los Angeles	San Diego	Train	193	29
San Diego	Los Angeles	Train	193	29
Los Angeles	Santa Barbara	Train	153	21
Santa Barbara	San Luis Obispo	Train	171	25
San Luis Obispo	Emeryville	Bus	368	34
Emeryville	Salt Lake City	Train	1169	68
Salt Lake City	Denver	Train	859	82
Denver	Chicago	Train	1618	119
Chicago	Buffalo	Train	863	72
Buffalo	Toronto	Train	158	37
Toronto	Ottawa	Train	453	90
		Total Distance	9549
		Dollars/km	0.063776312
		Total carbon emissions (kg)	467.901
		Total value of rail pass	1113
		Money “saved”	504

Hopefully this will be useful to anyone researching the North American Rail Pass (which I got for $609 Canadian). Obviously, I got good value out of it — and even seeing all those cities, the trip emitted less than half the carbon of a flight. However, if I had a purchased this pass in high season, as a non-youth, for $999, I would have only been “saving” $114. With that, it’s not so clear it’s worth limiting myself to 30 days, and losing the ability to travel by cheaper modes (such as Greyhound or commuter trains in SF and LA) at some points in the trip.

Interestingly, Amtrak trips seem a lot cheaper than VIA trips of comparable distances; I would expected the Canadian government to be better at a subsidizing a money-losing public corporation than the Americans, but apparently not. Based on that, I would say that the Canada-only pass ($450) is actually much better value, if all you care about is cheaply getting what would normally be overpriced.

Disclaimers:

-distances are based on highway distances between cities; Google Maps doesn’t calculate rail trips (yet)

-prices are pulled from hypothetical bookings on the Amtrak and VIA sites; these prices do vary

-emissions are based on a rate of 49g/km, which is mentioned as a liberal estimate here

-US and Canadian dollars are treated as interchangeable

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