Is it better to drive, fly, take the train,
or take a bus?

Which is fastest, cheapest, and greenest?

There are many ways to get from Point A to Point B, and each one offers a different amount of speed, safety, comfort, cost, and environmental impact.  How could you begin to compare all these different variables?  Well, you don't have to, because we've done it for you.

Summary of choices

SHORT Trips compared  (NYC to Philly), One-way
	Airplane	Train	Bus	Car
Speed
Cost
Safety
Comfort
Environmental Impact				*

LONG Trips compared  (NYC to Los Angeles), One-way
	Airplane	Train	Bus	Car
Speed
Cost
Safety
Comfort
Environmental Impact

*Car's env. impact per person is less when multiple people travel, perhaps better than the train, but never as good as the bus. (more...) 

If you want to see how we got those results, just keep reading.

Where to find these choices

Train.  The U.S. has one main carrier, Amtrak, though you can also go from New York to New Jersey on Septa, and from New Jersey to Philadelphia on NJ Transit.

Bus. A few choices:

• All/most United States: Megabus, FlixBus, Greyhound*
    *Greyhound suffers from horrible customer service and if another bus company serves your area, I highly recommend you use them instead.
• Northeast only (NY, NJ, PA, DC, MA, VA): Chinatown bus lines, BoltBus

FASTEST:  Bus or train (short trips), Plane (long trips)

Remember that driving time is wasted time—you can't do anything useful while driving.  But when you take a plane, train, or bus, you can read, study, work, or sleep.  That's especially true on a train where you can get an upgrade to a "roomette" cabin which includes a bed.  A plane might take 3 hours while a train takes 11, but if you spend 8 hours of that sleeping in a nice bed on the train, then the train is a better option.  You won't have to hassle with airport security, you might not have to check your baggage, your mobile phone will likely work throughout the trip, and you won't have the cost of a hotel room.

We'll use three sample trips:

• Short: New York to Philadelphia (102 miles)
• Medium: New York to Detroit (509-615 miles)
• Long: New York to Los Angeles (2467-2791 miles)

The mileage is given as a range because air miles are usually less than driving miles.

Waiting time at the terminal includes layovers.

CHEAPEST COST:  Bus or Car (short trips), Plane or Train (long trips)

Another thing to consider is that when multiple people travel, the price per person gets cheaper when you go by car.  There's usually no price break for multiple people on a plane, train, or bus, since each person has to buy their own ticket.  But in a car you can divide the cost by the number of people.  (An exception is that Greyhound sometimes offers a 2-for-1 "friend rides free" promotion, so if two people are traveling that's worth checking into.)

I include a little calculator below so you can figure the cost for your own particular trip.

SAFEST:  Plane

COMFORT:  Train

Electrical outlets for planes and trains are fairly similar:  Always available in first or business class, sometimes available in coach class.

We'll rank cars as second-most comfortable, because you have the ability to stop whenever and wherever you want.  The plane, of course, ranks dead last.

LEAST ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT:  Bus or Train

Let's say you have a 23 mpg car.  That already beats the plane at 22.6 mpg.  But what if two people are traveling?  On the plane it's still 22.6 pMPG per person, since we're already accounting for the fact that the plane carries multiple people, but put two people in a 23 mpg car and suddenly we're getting 46 pMPG.

The most efficient way to travel in the U.S. is by bus.  Inter-city buses get a whopping 125 pMPG.  By conttast, Amtrak trains are far behind at 57 pMPG.  (I suspect the potential is higher, because I suspect the trains don't usually run close to full.)

Now let's put all this together:

I have more on the environmental effects of flying, as well as a carbon footprint calculator that lets you compare the impact of driving vs. flying.

Sources & References

• Airfares from Orbitz. Flight times courtesy OAG.
• Train fares & schedules from Amtrak.
• Bus fares & schedules from Greyhound.
• Driving miles between cities from Google Maps.
• All prices were checked in October 2008.

Safety

• 1949 air fatalities and 6 billion miles flown from 1988-2006 (NTSB, "Aviation Accident Statistics", Table 6, U.S. Air Carriers operating under 14 CFR 121). That's 103 deaths per year, or 90 deaths per year if we exclude the passengers on the 9/11 flights.
• 848 billion passenger-miles flown per year (Bureau of Transportation Statistics, June 2007-May 2008)
• More detail about U.S. air crashes from NTSB, including city, carrier, and type of aircraft.
• Fatalities by air carrier, including international operators.
• 21,491 avg. car occupant deaths and avg. 1,439,628 million passenger vehicle miles traveled from 1988-2006, from Traffic Safety Facts 2006 (PDF), NHTSA.
• 718 avg. bus deaths from 1988-2006 ( avg.), from Traffic Safety Facts 2005 (PDF) and 2006 (PDF), NHTSA.
• 330,137 million bus-miles traveled from 1990-2006 (19,420 avg.), from BTS.
• 83 passenger rail deaths from 1994-07 and 168,783 million passenger miles from 1994-2006 (5.9 deaths and 12,983 million miles avg.) (BTS, Table 2-38: Railroad Passenger Safety Data).  If we include data from 1990-1993 the fatality rate is much higher (8.6 deaths/yr.), because of a large Amtrak crash in 1993 that killed 42 people.

Environmental:

• U.S. aircraft used 19,704 gallons of fuel and traveled 848 billion passenger miles in June 2007 to May 2008, which works out to 43 pMPG.  Note that David Lawyer gets 45.6 pMPG for 2005 using the DOE's Transportation Energy Data Book.
• Radiative forcing factor (1.9)   (Oxford University report (PDF), p. 7; Carbon Independent)
• Bus MPG:
  
  1. 125 pMPG according to David Lawyer
  2. 225 pMPG if we take the average 3-6 mpg x 50 passengers
  3. 240 pMPG according to the American Bus Association
• Amtrak MPG:
1.  56 pMPG per CNN (2015)
2.  57 pMPG per Lawyer (2015)
• Typical U.S. car from my carbon calculator sources.