Hi Paul,
I'm dead beat tired today so I'll have to get back to you on Friday.
Sorry
Scott
What James Howard Kunstler expresses is a valid point of view, that there are signs that we are at Peak Oil and the downslope of the peak will result in wrenching changes. I have concerns regarding Mr. Kunstler, however, from the standpoint of the passenger train advocacy community embracing his way of getting that message out. To sum up the airlines in the words "they are toast" seems like a rather flippant and colloquial way of expressing an opinion on a serious subject.
Following up on connections between Mr. Kunstler and rail advocacy, the Midwest High Speed Rail Association had featured him as a keynote speaker, and I did a Google on him to learn more of his perspective. I came across his Web site, which was filled with much stronger words than "they are toast." He seemed very angry with the current Presidential Adminstration, largely, I gather, because that Adminstration hasn't embraced his vision of Peak Oil, and Mr. Kunstler expressed his anger with words I should not and shall not repeat here on this forum. There are many reasons for expressing difference of opinion, grievance, and protest with the current Adminstration, but there are avenues of expression that are decent and honorable and others that are not, and in my opinion, Mr. Kunstler needs to temper the zeal for his cause with some civility. I e-mailed MHSRA about the wisdom of having Mr. Kunstler point and center of rail advocacy by featuring him as a speaker given his Web site, and in response, there was some (metaphorical) restless shuffling of feet.
I contrasted James Howard Kunstler's approach to Peak Oil with that of Amory Lovins. I see Mr. Kunstler as being mainly about words, some of them angry words, others of them words that shall not appear here; I see Mr. Lovins as being about concepts, computer simulations, building of energy-saving prototypes. Were I to have any influence over the passenger train advocacy community, I would much prefer to see Mr. Lovins as a model of how to speak publically for the cause than Mr. Kunstler.
Amory Lovins, who takes Peak Oil and Global Warming seriously as anyone else, has been advocating energy efficiency on all fronts, is advocating construction of a 200 MPG car, and he is at early stages of building a prototype. Is this an example of the type of "technological fix" on the "wrong road" that Mr. Kunstler is decrying? Are people in the train advocacy community so focused on trains as the solution, that we are opposed to efforts to build more fuel-efficient cars?
Apparently James Howard Kunstler embraces trains of all kinds as a solution to all things Peak Oil and Global Warming, but I gather he implicitly assumes that trains are energy saving. David Lawyer, a self-professed environmentalist and also a person who takes Peak Oil and Global Warming seriously (I relate the two because the most direct solution to Peak Oil would be to use coal, either directly in things like steam locomotives as discussed as great length on another Forum page or indirectly through synthetic fuels or electrification or railroads or storage-battery cars). I posted a link to David Lawyer who has some insights into train energy efficiency and whether trains by themselves are the solution to the energy crisis -- Google David Lawyer and you will quickly find his page.
As to the technology to build a 200 MPG train, in my parent post I pointed a path from the current 50 MPG train to a 100 MPG train using off-the-shelf equipment, a path to a 200 MPG train using the Alan Cripe Fastracker streamlined lightweight train, and perhaps a path to a 400 MPG train if this is combined with airline-style ticketing and load factors. This 400 MPG train, however, will not offer dining car, lounge car, sleeping car, or baggage car service, it won't have 125 ton "battering rams" at each end to solve with the grade crossing problem from the perspective of train crew and passengers, it may not ride like a 6-axle heavyweight Pullman, and while it may have more legroom but it will be similarly crowded as an airline experience. I presented these numbers to sound out forum members on to what degree fuel efficiency was an advocacy point for trains, and if it was, what compromises were people willing to make to get there. See David Lawyer on the WW-II era when trains did well, by load factor and passenger miles, but did poorly in terms of public acceptance of the experience.
As to 46 PMPG being an apples-and-oranges comparison because it does not take into account energy to build and maintain the guideway, then everything becomes an apples-and-oranges comparison because one can always draw a larger circle on what contains the transportation system and then throw up ones hands that this larger system is either not quantified or somehow favors trains by some intuitive consideration.
My message to the passenger train advocacy community: this is not the only point, but it is a central point if MWHSRA is featuring James Howard Kunstler as a speaker, is that trains are greatly energy saving over other modes. If we are advocating trains as energy saving, we had better have some data that they are energy saving. If the trains are marginally energy saving, we better have better arguments than to say there is an energy crisis on one hand but 46 PMPG on the other hand is good enough. If there is a case to be made that trains are major energy saving in the guideway, how about having some numbers on that rather than, what I tell my engineering students who indeed want to "save the world" through 'technology fixes", is simply "waving one's arms about." To say that there is some energy saving in the guideway but not support this with quantitative evidence does not clinch the argument.
If trains are only marginally energy saving, I ask that we don't claim that they are greatly energy saving and then turn around and attack people disputing that claim. If energy efficiency is central to train advocacy, I ask that as a community we have a plan by which trains could increase in energy efficiency. If the long-distance trains are primarily about having a "civil" alternative to cramped airlines that is perhaps not energy saving, the advocacy community needs to be open about the long-distance trains having a different purpose than solving the energy crisis.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Paul Milenkovic wrote:Scott:As the immediacy of Peak Oil is an important concern to you, evidenced by your citing James Howard Kunstler, what is your opinion regarding the 2700 BTU/passenger mile energy usage of Amtrak (equivalent to 46 passenger miles per gallon)?For sake of argument, lets assume that every automobile is occupied by only one person. Is it your opinion that if everyone switched to a 46 MPG transportation conveyance, be it an Amtrak ride or a ride in a hybrid vehicle that this would save us from the consequence of Peak Oil or the Long Emergency?Or do you believe that the fuel efficiency of Amtrak could be much better than 46 passenger miles per gallon by more people riding it or by technological changes such as streamlined lightweight trains? Or are you advocating widespread electrification of railroad lines and the required increased production electricity by coal or nuclear? France famously has the TGV as well as 80 percent nuclear electricity -- is this a viable path for the US?Based on either a historical precedent or the experience of our European and Asian trading partners, what percentage of automobiles passenger miles do you believe can be substituted by transit and trains? If part of the effect of trains is to facilitate higher living densities, what reduction in overall passenger miles do you see by that effect?In terms of taking action to deal with the Long Emergency and believing in technological fixes, Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute believes the problem is real, and he is promoting a technological fix -- he believes that a lightweight carbon fiber hybrid automobile could achieve 200 MPG: so far he has conducted computer simulations, and I understand he is working on a prototype car. I don't have ready access to a copy of The Long Emergency so I will ask you -- does James Howard Kunstler have ideas on the correct response to Peak Oil in the transportation sector, and what does he see as the breakdown in passenger miles and fuel usage between modes now and in 20 years? Does he see major reductions in passenger miles through living patterns and what are those reductions?
Scott:
As the immediacy of Peak Oil is an important concern to you, evidenced by your citing James Howard Kunstler, what is your opinion regarding the 2700 BTU/passenger mile energy usage of Amtrak (equivalent to 46 passenger miles per gallon)?
For sake of argument, lets assume that every automobile is occupied by only one person. Is it your opinion that if everyone switched to a 46 MPG transportation conveyance, be it an Amtrak ride or a ride in a hybrid vehicle that this would save us from the consequence of Peak Oil or the Long Emergency?
Or do you believe that the fuel efficiency of Amtrak could be much better than 46 passenger miles per gallon by more people riding it or by technological changes such as streamlined lightweight trains? Or are you advocating widespread electrification of railroad lines and the required increased production electricity by coal or nuclear? France famously has the TGV as well as 80 percent nuclear electricity -- is this a viable path for the US?
Based on either a historical precedent or the experience of our European and Asian trading partners, what percentage of automobiles passenger miles do you believe can be substituted by transit and trains? If part of the effect of trains is to facilitate higher living densities, what reduction in overall passenger miles do you see by that effect?
In terms of taking action to deal with the Long Emergency and believing in technological fixes, Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute believes the problem is real, and he is promoting a technological fix -- he believes that a lightweight carbon fiber hybrid automobile could achieve 200 MPG: so far he has conducted computer simulations, and I understand he is working on a prototype car. I don't have ready access to a copy of The Long Emergency so I will ask you -- does James Howard Kunstler have ideas on the correct response to Peak Oil in the transportation sector, and what does he see as the breakdown in passenger miles and fuel usage between modes now and in 20 years? Does he see major reductions in passenger miles through living patterns and what are those reductions?
Paul,
In order to do justice to Mr. Kunstler I will have to quote him at length. Please keep in mind that the transportation chapter is toward the back of a book in wich he explains why there will be a "Long Emergency", to get the full story I recomend reading the book yourself. Ok here it goes...
On the topic of automotive transportation Mr. Kunstler writes:
"The twenty-first century will be much more about staying put than about going to other places. This idea is astonishing to many Americans today, who have been in motion on wheels more or less continuously for their whole lives, whizzing from driveway to parking lot to curb-cut carwash to big-box store and home again, often several times a day, year in and year out. Not many years from now, the automobile will be a much-dininished presence in our lives. I believe cars will still exist, but in far smaller numbers. They may run on various things, including whatever non-cheap gasoline or diesel is still available. As discussed in Chapter Three, replacing the curent internal combustion car fleet with hydrogen-powered fuel-cell cars is unlikely to happen under the current laws of thermodynamics. Cars using regular electric motors are a better bet, though the battery problem limits their range, and to some extent their existence in any numbers is predicated on a renewed nuclear power effort. That in itself may be impossible to accomplish in a nation with an impotent central government....
The American motoring system has been able to work because everyone from the lowiest burger flipper to the richest CEO could participate. The cost of running it were democratically borne by everybody. Will ecomically hard-pressed citizens who can't keep a car going tolerate their taxes going to maintain highways that only the elite can aford to drive on? If tax revenues decline broadly along with incomes, and don't cover the cost of repairing highways, where will the money come from? How will we fund all of those state DOT projects?.....
I believe that the interstate highway system will reach a point of becoming unfixable and unmaintainable not far into the twenty-first century. The resources will not be there to keep up the level of service at the minimum necessary to prevent cascading failure. I think we will all be shocked by how rapidly its deterioration proceeds. It will happen at the same time that the economics of mass car ownership become untenable, and the two failures will be mutually reinforcing...
Not even counting the interstate highway system, there are more than 3.8 million miles of paved roads in the United States, all of it funded politically. Today, while the United States is relatively flush, the federal DOT considers 18 percent of federal highways to be in "poor" or mediocre" condition, whereas 29 percent of the thousands of bridges are "structurally deficient" or "functionally obsolete". In the Long Emergency, the highways will still be there. They may continue to be usable at low speeds by cars and other vehicles for a long time after the initial process of failure begins. But we will no longer buzz around on them unthinkingly at 70 mph the way we did in the late twentieth century" pp. 263-266
About railroad infrastructure Mr. Kunstler writes:
"An obvious answer to the decline of the car-and-highway system would be to revive the American railroad network-once the envy of the world, now a world-class embarrassment....
If we made the choice to rebuild the U.S. railroad system, in an austere economy the infrastructure would be much less onerous to maintain than our vast highway system. The trains could be powered with electricity produced by nuclear power plants. Though I believe nuclear power would soften the post -cheap oil crash, I would not bet on the likelihood of getting a new generation of nuclear plants ramped up in time. Therefore whatever railroad system we manage to cobble together would not be electrified....
If the American railroads are to revive at all under the conditions of the long Emergency, they will probably do so in a piecemeal way as a stitched-together patchwork of regional lines...
One final thing worth noting on the subject of rail: From 1890 to about 1920, American localities managed to construct hundreds of local and interurban streetcar lines that added up to a magnificent national system (independent of the national heavy rail system). Except for two twenty-mile gaps in New York state, one could ride trolley lines from New England clear out to Wisconsin.....The salient point, however, is how rapidly the system was created in the first place, and how marvelously well it served the public in the period before the automobile became establised. Light rail of some kind-which does not require elaborate roadbeds-may become the basis for regional transportation systems of the future. Lines can be laid along the existing right-of-ways of any of our roads, from the interstates to the streets of our towns, and they can usefully transport people and freight...." pp. 266-269
Finally on the subject of comercial air travel, M. Kunstler can be sumed up with just three words "...they are toast." p. 270
Ok, my hands are cramping up, I recomend that everyone should read this book from cover to cover to see why this author believes we are heading for rough waters.
Two more things, first going back to the BTU numbers issue, any technology that can be developed to make a super fuel efficient car could be addapted for rail use. Instead of building 200 mpg cars that will have to navigate busted up roads why not instead build a 200 mpg light rail vehicles that can cary more people on cheaper right of way?
Second, I have already stated my opinion of the 2700/BTU energy consumption stats in earlier posts. I said that these figures do not take into acount the energy and resources needed to suport these competing modes of transportation. I believe I used the phrase "you are comparing apples to oranges here".
SRen,
One book a trend does not make. All kinds of people get their views published. Some of them are creditable; some of them are not.
As I have said repeatedly, I don't know what the future will bring. However, I don't think that Armageddon is just around the corner. Neither do most of the people with whom I worked or with whom I interact at the University of Texas.
I worked for the electric utility industry for decades. This is the world that I know best. We faced and face many challenges. But from the Edison Electric Institute to my company's first line supervisors, which includes hundreds of engineers, technicians, IT people, etc., everyone that I knew and know believes that we can overcome the many problems that beset the industry. And technology will be the enabler. The same applies to the other problems that are and will be a challenge.
When someone claims that there is only one scenario for the future, I am suspect. No one knows the future; they can only put together likely scenarios of how things might be.
"The Art of the Long View" by Peter Schwartz and "The Fifth Discipline" by Peter Senge are excellent introductions to scenario planning and systems thinking, which are important models for developing and assessing scenarios.
SRen
I did not say that rerouting buses was smoke and mirrors. It is one of several tactics to get more people to ride the light rail trains and, therefore, help justify the cost. But many people, because they don't understand how the system works, are led to believe that the increase in public transit ridership, following the opening of a light rail line, is attributable solely to the light rail line, when this is not the case.
Interestingly, when the first two DART lines were opened, some people, who rode the bus from their neighborhood to downtown, found their commute time was increased because of the rerouting of the bus and the required transfer to the train.
DART's light rail ridership has been increasing steadily. May 2008 saw an increase of nine per cent over May 2007. But system wide ridership in 2007 was less than ridership in 2006.
The use of words like bizarre, ridiculous, etc. do little to promote discussion. Moreover, email and forum etiquette equates the use of bold letters, all caps, and color, especially red, with shouting.
Clearly, maintaining our roadways in Texas, as well as building new ones, is challenging. To say that they are falling apart is a stretch. Actually, except for those in the center of some of our cities, they are in pretty good shape.
Since we don't know what alternative fuels may be developed over the next decade or two, it is impossible to say how expensive they will be. They could be very expensive, or they could be relatively inexpensive.
The pattern of cities in Texas does not lend itself to wide spread use of rail for public transit. The populations density is too low. Our cities were built around the automobile. This is why, except in a few instances, buses, as well as improveed auto and highway technology, is the wave of the future in Texas. However, where existing rail facilities can be used, I support rail, especially commuter rail, which is what is happening in Austin and Houston.
There is a big difference between funding highway improvements and building light or heavy rail systems. Most of the drivers in Texas pay user taxes, as well as the federal and state taxes, that are used to build and maintain the federal and state highways in Texas. Most of the cost of the light rail systems in Dallas and Houston were or are borne by non-users.
Whether Texas spends an appropriate amount for social services has nothing to do with a discussion of transport solutions. Numbers, however, can be deceiving. Many of the social services that are delivered by government agencies in other states are delivered by community organizations and churches in Texas.
Unless I am quoting from a national document, i.e. Amtrak's Monthly Reports, FAA Annual Report, etc. I confine my remarks to what I know best, which is Texas.
The United States is the third largest country in the world with the third largest population. It is the largest multi-cultural society in the world. It is diverse. I would not have the nerve to comment on conditions in a part of the country with which I am not familiar. That includes most areas outside of Texas, although I have lived in seven states as well as D.C. But times have changed, so I confine my comments to Texas.
Samantha wrote: Interestingly, approximately 40 per cent of the people who use the buses, as well as 20 per cent of those on the light rail line and 13 per cent on the TRE, are captive riders. They are low income people, for the most part, who do not have an alternative. The opening of the Orange and Green lines will increase ridership on the light rail line. And DART will make a big to do about it. What they won't broadcast so loudly is the fact that a significant percentage of the new riders will be coming off buses that are re-routed to connect with the new rail lines as opposed to going downtown or to another end point. Nevertheless, the lines will attract new riders, especially if gasoline stays at $4 a gallon, until they can switch to more efficient vehicles or ones that are powered by alternative fuels.
Interestingly, approximately 40 per cent of the people who use the buses, as well as 20 per cent of those on the light rail line and 13 per cent on the TRE, are captive riders. They are low income people, for the most part, who do not have an alternative.
The opening of the Orange and Green lines will increase ridership on the light rail line. And DART will make a big to do about it. What they won't broadcast so loudly is the fact that a significant percentage of the new riders will be coming off buses that are re-routed to connect with the new rail lines as opposed to going downtown or to another end point. Nevertheless, the lines will attract new riders, especially if gasoline stays at $4 a gallon, until they can switch to more efficient vehicles or ones that are powered by alternative fuels.
Samantha,
First of all, rerouting busses to act as feeders to the light rail lines is exactly what needs to be done to make mass transit more attractive to more people. I find it bizarre that you are sugesting that this is some sort of "smoke and mirrors" gambit to make transit's numbers look good.
Secondly I am happy to see that you are conceding to the fact that as gas becomes more expensive people will switch to mass transit. Unfortunately you are still stuck on the idea that fuel efficient cars and alternative fuels are going to be a permenant solution.
Hear are some facts that we can not get away from:
These are basic facts Samantha, you can not get around them.
On another note, after reading your all of your statements about why this and that won't work in Texas I am begining to see why your home state seems to be in a dead heat race with Alabama for being the state with the worst public services in the nation.
Samantha wrote:You might be be correct. Or you could bewrong. No one knows for sure what tomorrow will bring. I am betting your prognosis is wrong. So are a lot of other people.
You might be be correct. Or you could bewrong. No one knows for sure what tomorrow will bring. I am betting your prognosis is wrong. So are a lot of other people.
Ok, on what evidence are you and "a lot of other people" using to assume that my prognosis is wrong? I honestly hope that my prognosis wrong too, but from the facts that we are looking at it is foolish at best and wreckless at worst to bet against it.
Before we wrap up this discussion I would like to recomend an interesting book that sums up my side of this argument, it is called:
The Long Emergency
by James Howard Kunstler
Copyright 2005
printed by Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN 0-87113-888-3
There are other books about peak oil and its consequence but this one is by far the most interesting. Of course turn about is fair play Samantha, if there are any good books you can recomend to me that support your view that future technological advancements will save us all I would like very much to read them.
Thank you
Harvey
The population of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, which is served by DART, TRE, and the T, is approximately 6.3 million people. Most people do not use public transit because they don't live near them nor are they going where it goes. But they pay for it every time that they buy something that attracts sales tax.
As expected, a higher percentage of people who live near one of the rail or bus lines use the system if they are going where the tracks or bus routes go. And the number of riders on the three public transit systems in the Metroplex has increased significantly over the past year. But the percentage of people in the Metroplex who use public transit remains low. The North Texas Central Council of Governments reports that approximately two per cent of the Metroplex population uses public transit. Having lived in North Texas for more than 32 years, this squares with my experience.
The challenge for public transit in Texas is the pattern of our cities. They are spread out for a variety of reasons and lack the density that makes public transit, especially rail, a good option. To get a significant portion of the population to use public transit would require a massive shift in housing patterns and lifestyles. I am skeptical that it will happen, although some folks will move to town and some will move to new multiple dwelling units near the new rail lines.
I support rail where it makes sense. I was a strong supporter of DART, and I was involved in getting the referendum passed to bring it about. But the cost of light rail is high, and because the population densities are relatively low, the subsidy required to support it is high. I have concluded that while light rail is viable in some situations, primarily where traffic congestion makes building more highways cost prohibitive, rapid bus technology may be better suited for many if not most public transit environments in Texas.
"People said" no one would ever take a train or subway in LA too. You've done better before as the Devil's advocate.
DART says they had 10.3 million trips in May, 2008. Unless that's a fabrication, an average of 332,000 trips a day are made by transit for a city of 1.3 million people of all ages, or 13% of the total population without getting into the number of people actually making trips or transit trips originating outside the City of Dallas.
Saying only 2% of the population uses DART Rail belies the fact that this amounts to 39,000-65,000 daily trips on average (1.5-2.5%) in a broadly defined northeast-southwest corridor and Fort Worth - Dallas commuter line. This corresponds with using the City's population. Maybe when opened the Green Line will boost that percentage into the realm of statistical significance. To make rail relevant for the whole urban area you need more lines.
SRen wrote:Current renwable energy sources will only provide a fraction of the energy our civilization needs and even the most enthusiastic supporters of renewables admit that new technology will not be able to replace fossil fuels.
Current renwable energy sources will only provide a fraction of the energy our civilization needs and even the most enthusiastic supporters of renewables admit that new technology will not be able to replace fossil fuels.
The electric energy needs of a typical suburban house can be met with a few hundred square feet of commercially available PV cells. PV cells are not an economical replacement for fossil fuels with current prices, but that is very likely to change within the next 10 years. The energy needed for a 40 mile commute can be generated by a couple hundred square feet of present day PV cells in the lower latitudes of the US, and battery technology is available for such a car.
For long distance travel with renewable energy sources - the Olympian Hiawatha covered a third of its journey powered largely by hydro power.
I got your point. You missed mine.
Clearly, you don't live in Texas. If you did you would know that public transit, especially rail based systems, will not work here, except in a few locales, given the layout of our cities. Dallas has the best public transit system in Texas. After an investment of billions of dollars in the light rail and the commuter rail systems, a blazing two per cent of the population uses it.
Good old boys and gals like myself will give up our pick-ups. But most of us will opt for Smart Cars or something like it as opposed to using public transit. I say most of us. I have used public transit for 39 of the 41 years that I worked for Corporate America. And I still use it whenever I can.
Dear Samantha,
You do realize that durring prehistoric times there were not enough people living on the planet to threaten the exhaustion of any natural resources; right? I am asking you this because you keep missing my point about what the global shortage of energy and natural resource supplies is going to have on our civilization.
As I mentioned in my last post, current "Convention Wisdom" states that given enough time, reseach, and money we will be able to overcome any problem with technology. As I said before, this belief worked well when material and energy supplies were so cheap and plentiful no one had to give these basic issues a second thought.
Unfortunately the human race is moving into a new era in wich shortages for everything is going to be the norm. It is unfortunate that people such as yourself are wedded to the 100 year old conventional wisdom that states that technology will save us from all problems.
Technological advancement requires raw materials and energy. The computer industry as we know it today would not exist without oil bassed plastics and cheap fuel to ship products from locations with supper cheap labor to US markets.
The idea that our world's energy needs will be solved with some new technological advancement is a dangerous assumption to make. Current renwable energy sources will only provide a fraction of the energy our civilization needs and even the most enthusiastic supporters of renewables admit that new technology will not be able to replace fossil fuels. Clearly the human race is going to have to go back to doing things on a smaller scale.
Part of this paradigm shift will be the realization that single occupant vehicles and the vast infrastructure needed to suport them is unsustainable. People will rely on public transportation not because they want too but because they will have too.
That being said, I am happy to hear that your neighbors purchased SMART cars, they will come in handy when they need to get to the nearest train station or light rail depot.
New technology is almost always beyond the reach of the market place at the time it is discovered. They key to making it affordable is acceptance and mass production, which almost always lower dramatically the cost.
The first computers were so expensive and labor intensive that only the U.S. Army and a few research centers could afford them. But the cost came down and, ultimately, they became available for the masses.
I have been a pilot and student of aviation for decades. I never read anything to suggest that the early aeronautical engineers envisioned anything like the Boeing 747. Or that airplanes would supplant trains as the preferred mode of travel, especially over long distances.
The comparison between pre-Wright understanding of flight and Intelligent Highway Systems was illustrative. It is about a vision of the possible. Many if not most of the great inventions came from people who defied the conventional wisdom. They did not root themselves in old technologies; they envisioned a new way. So it could be with Intelligent Highway Systems in select locations.
Some experts say that we are near the peak of oil production. Others say we are 40 to 60 years away. No one knows for sure.
During the Stone Age there were probably men and women who believed that the world was running out of stones. Fortunately, people with greater foresight discovered better alternatives. And they made the switch to them before the supply of stones was exhausted. The era of cheap oil is over, and we will switch to other fuels long before the world runs out of oil. Hopefully, we will do it in a rational and thoughtful manner.
The U.S. needs to invest in public transit, including rail, where it makes sense, which for the most part is in large cities and relatively short, high density corridors. But for most parts of the U.S., better alternatives exist or will be developed.
In Texas less than two per cent of the population uses public transit. And it is likely to stay that way for a long time to come. How do I know? I don't for sure. But two of my neighbors, good old truck loving boys, just bought Smart Cars. They are not going to take a bus or a train to work.
I do not dismiss the importance of seating capacity; but seating comprises a whole range of issues from boarding to comfort appropriate for the travel market as well as fuel economy.
If you have 70-passenger coaches and ridership for a given run averages 150 passengers; how many cars are you going to assign to the train? If 100-seat cars are contemplated to improve the theoretical fuel efficiency, how will that work in the above example? At what point does fuel efficiency override service and business is turned away? With Amtrak, average loads vary for each run; and variances in loads occur for each trip. Theoretical fuel efficiency is moot. Of course, a couple trains operate at near-capacity and approach the optimum; but the service is judged for what is achieved on the whole - currently around 46 pm/gal for the Hiawathas.
I share your concerns for the issues.
Apparently I overestimated the understanding that all members of this forum should have about the up coming converging crisises our nation is about to face. I am refering to the imminent coming of world peak oil production, the imminent issue of diminishing natural resourses, and the growing national debt.
Samantha you missed my point entirely, I agree that if we throw enough money and energy into the development of an Intelligent Highway System such a thing could be built. The point I was trying to make was the fact that the implimentation of such a system would be so expensive and the logistics to make it work would be so immense that the whole idea is impractical. All of this and I have not even brought up the fact that world engergy and natural resource supplies are about to peak. I think it is interesting that you made a comparison between the the pre Wright brothers era "conventional wisdom" about powered flight and my views on the Intelligent Highway. Lots of people understood Bernoulli's principle of lift before the first flight at Kitty Hawk, what got the Wright brothers into the history books was that they were the first ones to apply a suitably powerful gasoline engine to the engineering challenge. After the Wright brothers flew, the new "conventional wisdom" was that anything was technologically possible given enough time, money, and research. Durring the era of plentiful oil and other natural resource supplies, this assumption held up quite well. However I am sad to report that the era of "anything is possible" is almost over.
China and India are both trying to industrialize their economies just as world natural resource supplies are about to peak. With in the next 10 years, it won't matter how much you dig, drill, blast, etc. etc., world demand for many critical resources will exceed supply. We are already seeing the consequences of this situation as the sky high prices of petroleum and copper clearly show.
The resources we need to make an Intelligent Highway System possible are rapidly diminishing. It is crazy to put our limited tax payer dollars into a super advanced system that will be completely useless to most people in the near future. Even if the nation attempts to convert the entire vehicular fleet to electric propulsion we are going to run into problems when we try to find enough copper to make the electric motors for all of these machines.
The BIGGER point I am trying to make is that this nation is sleepwalking into a transportation crissis of a size not seen since the gas rationing era of World War II. The time to prepare for this inevitable crissis is to start building up mass transit networks NOW!
This is why I brought up seating capacity as a means of determining potential fuel efficency, when I said this I was thinking of the near future when the nation will need the most fuel efficient forms of transportation to move as many people as possible. If we have another transportation crisis like what we experienced durring WW II we will need to act now to make as much passenger rail capacity as possible to keep people moving. All of this bickering that has been occurring on this form is just wasting time, and time is running out.
Train run fuel consumption may be helpful in evaluating operations and implementing fuel conservation practices. Run data also may provide a benchmark for measuring operations, yet questions such as whether to shut down engines can be found the other way around by calculating the hours spent at idle or standby fuel consumption rates.
Some railroads get locomotive information including throttle setting and braking by satellite telemetry. I don't know if the event recorder data can be downloaded routinely or even as a sampling; or if this is necessary routinely except to monitor operating practices.
In the long run, it all boils down to the system and the sum of its parts.
fredswain wrote:I wouldn't look at "potential" anything as a basis for comparison. How much a bus or train CAN carry is irrelevant.
Autobus Prime wrote:Anecdotally, you and I know that people don't like city buses.
I'm not trying to beat you up, I'm sure you meant it innocently, but please be careful when you talk about what other people know. I don't know that people don't like buses. I'd tend to agree if you said that I know that people don't like public transit, since most people don't use public transit there must be some of them who based their decision on a dislike. Again my theme here is that the bus is not the enemy, or at least the bus is the enemy of our enemy.
I've got 2 anecdotes that go both ways:
1. SEPTA had a survey which said that the route 15 riders overwhelmingly wanted buses instead of a return to streetcars. It turns out that the survey choices were between air conditioned buses and unrefurbished PCC's with no air conditioning.
2. SEPTA was replacing late night subway service, 30 minute headway, with night owl bus over the same route with 15 minute headway. Several comments in the newspaper were from people who felt that waiting on the subway platform was safer than waiting on the street corner. I found that sentiment surprising since the anecdotes I was used to were from people who were fearful of the crime in subway stations.
When I was a kid, and talked about how I liked to go for trolley rides, all my friends would tease me. The memory from grade school was they'd always say "trolleys are slow".
Patrick Boylan
Free yacht rides, 27' sailboat, zip code 19114 Delaware River, get great Delair bridge photos from the river. Send me a private message
The overall load factor of 100 passenger per train for the Hiawathas may be acceptable to Amtrak because states are underwriting the cost; but what about the public's interest? Shouldn't Wisconsin and Illinois promote public goals such as mobility, safety, fuel conservation and emission reduction, and highway congestion mitigation with rail travel? Weren't these underlying justifications for maintaining and improving rail passenger service between Chicago and Milwaukee?
The load factor is a performance measure that can be used to identify problems and opportunities. It measures how well goals are achieved. I have proposed a pricing strategy, not for the purpose of improving a measure; but for achieving goals represented by the measure.
Fuel conservation and traffic mitigation can be achieved in a small way, given the present scale of operation, by diverting travel from highway to rail. If lowering off-peak one-way fares would double ridership, filling more of the seats already available in the fixed consists running between Milwaukee and Chicago, fuel efficiency would rise to a respectable 92 passenger-miles per gallon. Furthermore, daily ridership, much of it diverted from auto use, would increase from 1,400 trips to 2,800 trips.
Since multiple occupancy vehicles would be unlikey to switch, 100 vehicles would be removed from I-94 in the hour the train ran. This represents only a small 1.67% of capacity, a little less than two cars a minute, for a 3-lane roadway.
Reduced monthly and 10-ride tickets have been offered for a long time. The monthly ticket price of $321 would seem to be instrumental in attracting over 300 passengers on #330 and #339 and represents $7.30 a ride for 44 trips. This is quite a bargain compared to the one-way fare of $21 that seems to me to stifle use. This is not congestion pricing; and the ridership amounting to 43% of the total impacts revenue.
Given the willingness to encourage commuter use, why not similarly encourage off-peak utilization? If a monthly ticket discount of 2/3 garners a threefold increase in riders, could a 1/3 discount of a regular ticket double ridership for occasional riders? This would be revenue-neutral and costs would not increase. Reducing one-way fares may attract a few more occasional riders on the peak trains that cannot exploit less-expensive commuter tickets; but the major impact would be on the other trains.
One question is whether peak commuters would absorb an increase, "congestion pricing," while reducing one-ways by a third. For example, $8.50/trip would come to $374/month ($0.099/mile, a 16.5% increase), $117.75/10-ride ($0.137/mile) and $13.85 ($0.161/mile) one way.
By comparison, the Valparaiso commuter service was averaging 150 passengers per train before Amtrak reduced service in 1987.
I said, "The amount of energy used in building a highway or railway line, when depreciation over the life of the project is considered, is probably marginal compared to the energy used in operations." I did not say anything about maintenance.
It is true that energy is used to maintain a highway, or any infrastructure for that matter, including a railway line. I have not researched the per passenger mile maintenance costs for the airlines (planes, airports, air navigation systems) and the railways nor the vehicle miles traveled for the highways. Whether there is a significant difference in the unit cost, which would include energy, is problematic.
A high speed railway line, such as Amtrak's NEC, is maintenance intensive. I would be surprised if the maintenance cost per passenger mile on the NEC is significantly lower than the per passenger mile charge for the airlines or vehicle mile traveled for the highways. This would include the capitalized energy, which again would be a one off for the maintenance project, unless it is continuous maintenance such as snow removal. In any case, it is probably a minor percentage of the energy consumed by the operating vehicles over the initial or extended life of the asset.
I believe that I said electronic guidance systems for selected highways are a possibility. GM has tested the concept. Of course, it is not ready for prime time, and it may never be, but to say it is a ridiculous notion puts one in the same league as those who said that powered flight was ridiculous. And that would have been most people prior to 1903. Wouldn't they be surprised to learn that today people can fly from Austin to Melbourne, Australia, for example, with more than 400 other people, in a little over 17 hours, with only one stop, at more than 35,000 feet, while having a glass of wine and enjoying a movie at their seat? Or sleeping in a fully reclining bed if they can afford business or first class! Airplanes have come a long way since the Wright brothers did their thing. It is unlikely that anyone in 1903 could have seen how aviation would develop to the extent that it has today.
In 1966 the firm that I worked for on Wall Street bought its first IBM mainframe computer. It replaced 825 NCR operators. Today my laptop computer, which cost a tiny fraction of the cost of that mainframe, has more horsepower than it had. No one would have believed it in 1966.
If one believes that the technology development curve has peaked, then the notion that electronic guided highways are a possibility must seem unreasonable. But I believe that we are not at the end of the technological developments but still close to the beginning. So I am going with the dreamers. Just like the ones who ignored the argument that powered flight and computers were not possible or feasible.
Scott,
You asked whether persons in cars without guidance equipment would violate the Intelligent Highway System by entering the roadway. Actually, this might be controlled at entrance ramps with open tolling technology and barriers.
The more fundamental question is whether IHS poses de facto economic discrimination. The highway industry has perpetuated the myth that public roads are for everyone, overlooking the facts that segments of the population cannot drive and others not as competent as may be desired must be accommodated, and justifies general pulic support in taxation. A person who can barely afford a junker, licensing, and insurance cannot afford the considerable cost of the telemetry, guidance, and speed control systems required for IHS driving. IHS will be particularly burdensome for people inversely proportional to incomes.
I second your comments regarding highway costs and energy consumption not ending with the initial construction. However, you missed the costs of policing, emergency road services, sweeping and trash removal, and mowing and gardening.
Dear Samantha
I beg to differ that fuel consumption for building and maintaining hiways is a one off event. Anyone who has driven on the Interstate hiway system can atest to the massive perpetual maintenance and expansion projects that are needed to keep the freeways functional. In addition you must consider snow removal, salting, and sanding of all roads durring the winter months.
Plus you must factor in the massive amount of freeway infrastructure that is "functionally obsolete" that is in dire need of replacement (remember that big bridge colapse in the Twin Cities?).
On a final note Samantha I want to make a comment on something you wrote about in another post, that of so called "Intelligent Highway Systems" or IHS for short. As I recall you stated that the future of American transportation will rely on cars that can drive themselves using sophisticated onboard auto pilot computers linked with guidway computers imbeded in the streets.
Even on its own terms this scheme is ridiculous! Never mind the cost of installing all of this computer hardware in our Interstate System and the vast motor fleet and then the debuging and maintenance that this system will need. One has to wonder: What is to stop people from driving unequiped vehicles on these automated systems; after all many people operate vehicles without proper licenses and insurance but that doesn't stop them from getting out on the road.
As James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency wrote "Proposals such as IHS demonstrate how overinvestment in technological complexity can continue far beyond the appearance of obvious diminishing returns." (p. 266)
On the load factor question, I am not by any means taking the position, "Oh, the load factor is low, no one is riding Amtrak." The load factor is just one variable in the operation of a transportation system.
For example, a given highway may be jammed up at rush hour, but there may be only two cars on the road at 3 AM. We don't say, "Oh, this highway is underutilized because no one is taking it at 3 AM." Also, when people form an opinion as to the capacity of the highway, they naturally base it on the jammed-up rush hour experience rather than the 3 AM experience. One difference is that a highway just sits there and doesn't require fuel to put into motion; to provide a similar capacity to be available when people decide to use it, you need to put train cars in motion.
As to the idea of lowering the fare to increase utilization of the train, the Hiawatha train is already at capacity, at least at peak times as evidenced by the initiative to add a train car to the consist. To increase the load factor, one would have to play the airline game of offering lower fares for off peak runs, raising the fare and perhaps turning people away for peak times. Aviation is intrinsically an energy-intensive mode, and the airlines have achieved "reasonable" passenger MPGs by cramming in seats and aggressively filling those seats.
Railroading is intrinsically much less energy-intensive, allowing railroad operations to offer more space, operate at lower load factors for the convenience of passengers, and provide amenities on the long-distance runs. The passenger train has a much larger weight budget of pounds per seat or pounds per passenger to achieve roughly comparable fuel economy as aviation. The concept I have trouble getting any consensus on is that passenger trains start out with a much larger weight budget, but that larger budget can be quickly spent on all of those things that people regard as intrinsic to trains, and you end up with Amtrak being roughly comparable in energy efficiency to other modes rather than having enough of an advantage that would justify ramping up Amtrak funding on the basis of energy concerns.
Your veracity is not being question; it's the numbers that conflict with my unscientific experience that nevertheless raises doubts. Furthermore, this related to the discussion regarding long-distance trains, specifically the Builder and Southwest.
I saw recent Hiawatha monthly ridership and, indeed, the averager number of passengers per train is about 100. I've seen enough Hiawathas go by to know that 100 passengers on average can't be far off the mark. Trains 330 & 339 may carry three times the average; but that becomes an even harsher criticism of the service.
A monthly ticket between Chicago and Milwaukee costs $321, the equivalent of $7.30 for 44 trips a month. I wonder how many people would ride the Hiawathas if the one-way fare was reduced from $21 to $12? Or to $14?
Whether anecdotal experience creates an impression or illusion, it raises doubts about the veracity of presentations to the contrary.
Is my veracity being questioned here? It is simple math. Pick whatever number you believe represents the passenger boardings on the Hiawatha. I rounded the number to 500,000 -- it has been lower in prior years, ridership has been up lately. People pretty much ride this thing end-to-end, so riders divided by seats equals load factor. There are 7 trains a day in each direction except for Sunday when there are 6. 98 trains/week times 52 weeks in a year is 4992 one-way train trips/year. 500,000 divided by 4992 is 100.16, which I rounded to 100. On average, throughout the year, about 100 passengers ride the Hiawatha train.
You have a different set of numbers, different conclusions on the energy efficiency of these trains, tell me what they are.
To give you an analogy of where being a believer in something gets you, consider Feynman's critique of the Space Shuttle. He wanted someone to tell him their best engineering estimate of the rate at which they could expect to have an accident with one of those things. He talk to sources who estimated the accident rate to be 1 in 25 launches; he talked to some NASA engineers who believed it to be 1 in 100. Those numbers are not picked out of the air -- there are many more non-Shuttle rocket launches, and those figures are optimistic for those other rockets. He talked to the Shuttle managers, who believed the accident rate to be 1 in a bajillion, and they would not even allow themselves to be pinned down on roughly how much a bajillion was.
The actual accident rate has been somewhere in the range between the 1 in 25 and the 1 in 100 -- nowhere near the 1 in a bajillion.
Same thing here. When I crunched the numbers to come up with an engineering best-guess as to the fuel economy of the Hiawtha, it comes out to around 50 passenger MPG. This doesn't sit with people, because if I had asked people what it was, I would probably be told it was multiples higher than that. Maybe I am way off on the load factor and shouldn't believe the numbers I get from WisARP through WisDOT on ridership, and the train gets closer to 100 MPG. It doesn't really matter because the thing would need to get in excess of 200 PMPG to make a serious impact on transportation energy consumption.
My emphasis was on filling the existing seats, not adding a couple more rows to improve fuel efficiency without adding another car. That alternative didn't come to mind. Given tight equipment supply, maybe it's better to have seats to sell than turn people away and get better mileage to boot.
My limited recent experience with Amtrak is that the trains, both long-distance and Midwest Corridor, have been pretty full and need to be given a break regarding energy consumption that is related to train weight.
Of course the train in nearly full the times you are on it. Andecdotal reports of load factor have a known observation bias. The times that the train is nearly empty are the times you are not on it because no one else is riding it either.
Some people look at a train with 50 percent load factor and see a train half full. Others look and see a train half empty. I look at such a train and see a transportation service that is flexible enough to accomodate peak demand.
Part of the reason flying is so uncomfortable is that not only are the seats packed close together, it seems everytime one is on one of those things, it is nearly full, with people who take on too much carry-on luggage and hog the arm rest and the whole experience of being crowded together with strangers. Aviation achieves the fuel economy that they do because the run such high load factors, using the trick of selling a seat in the same cabin for widely different prices depending on that passenger's willingness to pay. Ever notice that when you book airline seats it is like haggling at the souk? Oh, I could get you out Tuesday at 1 PM, but that flight is $600, but if you were willing to take the Tuesday 6:45 AM flight, the fare would be only $450.
The airlines get away with this because a cheap seat is more important to people than the convenience of not having to get up at 4 AM to make the 6:45 AM flight. We put up with a lot from the airlines because for a lot of the distances we are trying to cross, the airplane is much faster than any surface alternative, even with taking the airplane on the airline's preferred time and the TSA lines and so on.
The train I numbers I crunched for the Hiawatha were for the ridership numbers that are touted by the advocacy community that this train is in great demand. A fifth car was recently added, the result of some hard lobbying by our WisDOT to get Amtrak to scare up another Horizon car, because ridership was such that the train was at capacity -- at peak times. They don't switch cars out of the consist at off-peak times.
If the Hiawatha gets 3 times the fuel mileage of a (driver-only) Prius for (the train at) peak load, so what? It is not operated that way, unless it is the position of the advocacy community that Amtrak should be playing the same game as the airlines to make sure that the train is packed. HarveyK is perhaps advocating this, but is the rest of the community on board? Is achieving high load factors, perhaps at the expense of increased inconvenience in the style of the airlines, an agreed-upon goal of the advocacy community? Are we OK with turning passengers away from Amtrak to achieve load factor, because that is what airlines do with respect to airplane travel?
There are a number of things that can be done to move Amtrak fuel efficiency from parity with fuel-efficient makes of cars to a substantial improvement in fuel efficiency. Load factor is obvious. Increasing the seating density and cutting back on lounge, sleeper, baggage car, dining car is another. Streamlined lighweight trains offer another avenue as do DMUs. I can see each of these measures facing opposition in the advocacy community -- Amtrak is not providing enough seats, I was turned away when I wanted to travel, Amfleet equipment is "Cramfleet", the lounge, sleeper, baggage, and onboard dining service is the whole reason for taking trains, lightweight trains ride roughly, DMUs put the crews and perhaps passengers in peril in grade-crossing collisions.
Is parity with fuel efficient cars good-enough to advance the cause of increased Amtrak funding? Should higher levels of train fuel efficiency be a goal of passenger advocacy or are we happy with things just the way they are? If higher train fuel efficiency is a goal, what tradeofs are we willing to make with respect to the inconvenience resulting from higher load factor, seats closer together in coach, capital money for new corridor trains at the expense of making do with the existing LD equipment, curtailment of energy-inefficient Amtrak route segments?
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