For Amtrak riders, canceled trains have become a familiar side effect of the extreme weather fueled by climate change. Earlier this year, historic flooding in California disrupted the Coast Starlight again, for nearly a month, along with other Amtrak routes in the Golden State. In the past couple of years, wildfires, coastal erosion, heat waves, and mudslides have closed or altered routes around the country for days, weeks, or months at a time. The federally chartered passenger rail operator tallied more than 450 disruptions from climate shocks between 2006 and 2019, costing the company $127 million in revenue from 1.3 million lost customers. Last year, Amtrak projected that it would sustain another $220 million in climate-fueled losses over the coming decade.

This is a much bigger problem than the frequent headaches and occasional heartbreak that come with canceled trips. If the United States is going to slash its carbon emissions to net-zero by 2050, as President Joe Biden has proposed, it will require a transformation of the country’s largest source of greenhouse gases: transportation. And that transformation is far less likely if passenger rail, one of the climate-friendliest travel options, isn’t able to withstand the extreme weather its widespread adoption could help prevent.

A recent federal report on decarbonizing the transportation sector said that America will have to “[f]ully leverage the potential for efficient travel modes like rail” to meet its climate goals: On average, Amtrak is 34 percent more energy-efficient than flying for every mile a passenger travels, and 46 percent more energy-efficient than driving. The precise carbon savings vary by route, and depend on whether a train runs on electricity or diesel fuel, but taking Amtrak can be half as carbon intensive as flying. As climate change worsens, Amtrak will be in a unique position to help reduce transportation emissions. But that will require it to figure out a way to guarantee reliable service across the country in the face of mounting disasters, while also expanding service to win over drivers and airline customers who today see passenger rail as either a curiosity or a last resort. And Amtrak will have to do all that without owning most of the tracks it operates on.

“We want to grow passenger rail in America,” said Adie Tomer, who leads the ​​Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank. “Rail is cleaner. But the adaptation need is here right now.”

Read the full article about how climate change disrupts Amtrak trains by L.V. Anderson at Grist.