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Wed 16 Apr 2025
Rail commuters experience dramatically improved air quality on board trains and at stations following rail line electrification, a study has found.
Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, analysed the air quality aboard the San Francisco Bay Area’s Caltrain commuter rail line, which was recently electrified. They installed black carbon detectors at a number of stations and carried air-quality detectors aboard the trains.
For four weeks, they tracked the rapid improvements in air quality as old diesel locomotives were replaced by new electric trains.
In total, the team measured an 89% drop in carcinogenic black carbon exposure on the trains themselves and a significant reduction within and around the station monitored.
Caltrain operates the busiest commuter rail system in the western US, carrying millions of passengers a year along its 47-mile route between San Francisco and San Jose. Over the course of six weeks in August and September 2024, the system retired all 29 of its diesel locomotives and replaced them with 23 new electric trains. The debut of the new trains was the culmination of a $2.44bn modernisation and decarbonisation project that first launched in 2017.
“The transition from diesel to electric trains occurred over just a few weeks, and yet we saw the same drop in black carbon concentrations in the station as California cities achieved from 30 years of clean air regulations,” said study senior author Joshua Apte. “It really adds to the case for electrifying the many other rail systems in the US that still use old, poorly regulated diesel locomotives.”
In the UK, approximately 38% of the rail network is electrified equating to around 3,769 miles of track. This puts the system behind many European contemporaries despite the relatively small land mass.
According to calculations from the researchers, the reduction in black carbon exposure could cut excess cancer deaths by 51 per million people for riders and 330 per million people for train conductors. For reference, the US Environmental Protection Agency has a policy that any exposure that increases the average individual’s cancer risk by more than one per million is considered unacceptable.
The majority of US commuter trains are still powered by diesel fuel, despite the fact that electric trains are quieter and more reliable and produce fewer greenhouse gases than diesel locomotives.
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