this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2026
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Surprised ferry by car is so low. Cars seem to take up so much space on ferries even when they're much fewer than the passengers.
Boats are very efficient transportation it seems
Around where I live, ferry crossings are often short, so many of them are battery powered.
This is the best contribution, but it doesn't explain some of the principles..
for the same mission surface will be less-costly than air.
Within shipping, displacement-mode boats ( slowest moving-through-water regime ) will be least-costly ecologically, & then hydrofoils, then other speedboats ( which have to push their hulls through the water, unlike hydrofoils, which lift them out-of-the-way of the water )..
Within air, prop planes are least-costly, turbofans at the costly end, helicopters higher than that..
but the question requires one to consider the mission, too:
For moving donated-organs, air's absolutely cheaper than surface, if surface means losing the donated-organs, right?
Mission is the basis for solving costs, see?
Casual-touring, well then surface makes much more sense..
Some want to eradicate air-travel, or at-lease all fuel-based air-travel, but that'd break some dimensions of the economy..
( no more quick emergency-response to hurricane-wrecked islands, for 1 thing )
Oh, & electric aircraft ( short-haul, nowadays, & I don't imagine that'll ever be running cross-pacific flights ) would be MUCH less ecologically-costly than normal turbofans..
In short, surface 1st, if you can spare the time, but if not, then try to do electric aircraft, or prop instead of fan.
Prop is presuming NON-leaded gasoline, but the prop-piston engines usually are leaded ( 100LL, aka low-lead ), unless they are the new generation of diesels..
Leaded gasoline needs to cease. ( Canada has said that in tests manganese-based substitute-for-lead works, but the US rejected that. I trust Canada, on this one. )
The info about prop-planes is only in case any reader of this is thinking about chartering a small aircraft to get somewhere..
_ /\ _
I don't think anyone wants to actually abolish all air travel, even for emergencies.
The same argument is always thrown at people opposing cars. "But what about ambulances?"
The tiny carbon footprint of emergency services doesn't matter at all for the global climate.
What matters are the millions of flights whose only purpose is to fly people to another continent, where they then lie next to a hotel pool for a week before flying back.
Since it says per person per km I assume it only counts modes moving people? So not transportation of cargo or emergency services. Of course these should be counted in a different way and I don't think anyone would suggest replacing emergency or medical planes with any other mode of transport regardless of emissions. A source for that graph would be nice though, so we actually know what was counted.
With a ship, buoyancy carries the weight for free (energy wise) unlike a plane so if all you're focussed on is air pollution then ships are far better for the environment.
In theory I guess, but in practice we have diesel engine ships and all sorts of dynamics with pollution (e.g., using more dirty diesel that's forbidden but not in international waters etc).
I'm fairly sure air travel is still more polluting. The energy needed to fight gravity is immense.
You mean bunker oil not diesel. First, it is what is left over from fracking so in itself isn’t polluting much extra in production. Then, as a ship is buoyant, it burns much less fuel per ton-km so it pollutes exponentially less than any other form of motorised transport. Planes are at the other end of the scale.
Actually air is buoyant too, and water has much higher resistance. I still don't know what the answer is, and I'm guessing "it depends", like so often.
If a boat travelled as fast as a plane the extra resistance would likely make it less efficient. And the whole shape would be designed to be most efficient at speed, so you couldn't carry that much in the first place.
For an aircraft to travel as slow as a ship it would also need to be radically redesigned, and would likely be a lighter-than-air design since low speed makes reliable lift hard.
Zepplins, derigibles, blimps, and balloons are fairly efficient per surface mile. (Less so depending on how they achieve buoyancy...)
Well, there's this:
https://www.statista.com/chart/32350/greenhouse-gas-emissions-by-mode-of-transport/
... but a ferry is not a cruise ship.
I would imagine they would be lower on this chart than the cruise ship, cruise ships are kind of notorious amongst ship types as being just obscenely resource intensive / wasteful...
... but basically outside of WA/BC... there just aren't that many ferry systems in North America, whereas they are more common elsewhere...
Maybe there are more/better studies done in Japanese, Korean, etc, that focus on the kinds of tech and ships and fuels used in ferry systems around there?
The number you'd get out of the kind of calculation there, it could change a lot based on the overall design / route / intended speed of the ship, the kind of engine used (it could potentially have a hyrbid electrical drive system), the blend of fuel used, etc etc.
If you would be sailing, it would probably have the less impact on the environment. But a Diesel powered ferry ? I have no idea how it compares to air flight. The train is probably better than both ferry and plane in this case.
Rail is the most carbon efficient land transport, but anything on the water will beat it on emissions.
Assuming both use on board combustion engines, yes. But a train connected to a majority green energy power grid is probably more carbon efficient than most boats.
For strictly passenger vessels yes, but once large amounts of cargo get involved shipping takes the win every time.
A ferry or other regular short-run vessel can be electrified too. The tour boats at Niagara falls switched to pure-electric a few years back, and they're plugged in to recharge during onboarding and off boarding.
Yes, that's as far as I was thinking as well.
Ferry wins
Depends how long you can hold your breath.