>"Diesel buses are very energy efficient. Electrified rail is surprisingly inefficient."
I would really like to see a citation, because I find that extremely hard to believe.
I would really like to see a citation, because I find that extremely hard to believe.
But you also have to factor in that most buses run for a lot longer than the average car, sometimes decades and millions of kilometers. Most of the time they're not even "put to pasture" because they're worn out, but because newer buses are more efficient and have more creature comforts. So the older buses are brought in when for instance there is rail maintenance and you have to replace a train line with buses. In comes the old stock, still pulling its weight.
This also ties in to the environmental load of producing new cars/buses, you need a lot less raw material to make a bus that moves 60 people, compared to the cars needed to move 60 people.
That's why old stock is cycled out regularly, to improve efficiency and reduce pollution on the busiest lines. The the older buses get moved to more sparse routes, with less busy schedules and less stop-and-go.
Where I live, a surprisingly big problem is actually that too many people ride the buses during rush hour. Sometimes you just have to wait for the next bus to come and hopefully have some space for you. I'll admit that's really a luxury problem to have.
Public transport is vastly better for the environment and for congestion, unless nobody uses it. That takes investment, but politicians are way too quick to say "well no one's using it now, why should we invest?".
In actuality and outside of those artificial limitations, rail is one of the most efficient forms of transport we have, especially electric rail.
No, they use diesel motors for almost a century because they are more efficient and cost effective.
As for the rest, that is due to historical reason, back when those networks were established, we didn't have the electrical grid and power available. We do now.
The main reason they still use diesel is because it's cheaper to keep the existing gear running, rather than replacing everything. Electric trains are so much more efficient (in modern kV systems), it's not even funny.