Energies 2011, 4, 239-253; doi:10.3390/en4010239 OPEN ACCESS energies ISSN 1996-1073 www.mdpi.com/journal/energies Article Comparison of Ferry Boat and Highway Bridge Energy Use Wayne D. Cottrell Department of Civil Engineering and Construction Engineering Management, California State University, Long Beach, 1250 Bellflower Boulevard, Long Beach, CA 90840, USA; E-Mail:
[email protected]; Tel.: +1-562-985-5118 Received: 18 November 2010; in revised form: 15 January 2011 / Accepted: 20 January 2011 / Published: 27 January 2011 Abstract: Passenger ferries serve a variety of transport needs in the U.S., such as providing vital links across bodies of water, and supplementing highway bridges. In some cases in which there is a ferry connection but no bridge, a bridge would be impractical; in other cases, a bridge might be feasible. The paper compares the energy consumption of ferries and motor vehicles on bridges, to determine which link is more fuel efficient. One finding is that limited data are available on ferry boat fuel consumption: despite there being 208 ferry boat operators in the U.S. as of 2008, only eight were providing energy use data to the National Transit Database. Examinations of three of the systems found that the passenger-MPG of the ferries ranged from 2.61 to 14.00 (1.11 to 5.95 km/L), while that of the motor vehicles on adjacent highway bridge connections ranged from 25.34 to 32.45 (10.77 to 13.79 km/L). Data from the eight systems are used to develop a ferry MPG model.