1) the writer is an employee of a company which could be an operator or owner of all or part of Amtrak. He's got a need to fill.
2) Yeah, Republicans are spouting the concept of private enterprise and private operator and private this and that but no private anything, including freight railroads, have said "boo" to this anthem.
3) Amtrak has not taken advantage of anything simply because it can't.. No matter who runs it, who is CEO, who is in the White House, who is in the Senate or the House, no one gives Amtrak anything but hassels, yellow lights, pats on the back and shivs in the budget. It can't stand up because it is so cramped with politicians and politics.
RIDEWITHMEHENRY is the name for our almost monthly day of riding trains and transit in either the NYCity or Philadelphia areas including all commuter lines, Amtrak, subways, light rail and trolleys, bus and ferries when warranted. No fees, just let us know you want to join the ride and pay your fares. Ask to be on our email list or find us on FB as RIDEWITHMEHENRY (all caps) to get descriptions of each outing.
7j43k The opening line is quite interesting: "America’s leading freight railroads are plotting their return to passenger service as Amtrak faces a threat from privatizing politicians in Congress..." Yeah, they want to rake in the money like they were in the '60's. Not. It sounds a bit to me like the railroads will be willing to do passenger service as long as the government guarantees a profit. Nice work if you can get it. As far as what I feel about Amtrak--I'm a railfan, so I pretty much like it. I think it would be swell if I didn't have to subsidize it. Then I could spend those bucks on something else. Turning to a "civilian" (my wife): I took her on a trip from Oakland to Chicago via Portland. We had a compartment. She has said that she's not planning on doing anything like that again. On t'other hand, we just took the Acela (first class) from DC to New York, and we both enjoyed it a lot. Plenty of overhead storage, really nice attendant (or whatever the name is), clean cars, and we arrived on time. So, in summary, I guess I, too, have a mix of positives and negatives. Ed
The opening line is quite interesting:
"America’s leading freight railroads are plotting their return to passenger service as Amtrak faces a threat from privatizing politicians in Congress..."
Yeah, they want to rake in the money like they were in the '60's. Not.
It sounds a bit to me like the railroads will be willing to do passenger service as long as the government guarantees a profit. Nice work if you can get it.
As far as what I feel about Amtrak--I'm a railfan, so I pretty much like it. I think it would be swell if I didn't have to subsidize it. Then I could spend those bucks on something else.
Turning to a "civilian" (my wife): I took her on a trip from Oakland to Chicago via Portland. We had a compartment. She has said that she's not planning on doing anything like that again. On t'other hand, we just took the Acela (first class) from DC to New York, and we both enjoyed it a lot. Plenty of overhead storage, really nice attendant (or whatever the name is), clean cars, and we arrived on time.
So, in summary, I guess I, too, have a mix of positives and negatives.
Ed
IF Amtrak stays around, I would hope they paint their cars to match the cars of the famous trains they took over because some people might like the steel blue, but it wouldn't hurt to add different styles on their lines. Keep would be passengers interested and probably book many tickets in the future
Mr. LMD, Owner, founder
The Central Chicago & Illinois Railroad
The LION has thought of this before.
The railroads want to *CONTROL* passenger trains on their lines. Maybe park them on a siding while their freight trains make money?
They would probably rather be rid of the passenger trains altogether, but are in a position to take them over just to get rid of AMTK.
ROAR
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
I read this a few minutes ago and I think if Amtrak is cut, even tho i hate the railroad, it would be a disaster on the NEC. I think if Amtrak wants to expand even further into the country, they should:
-don the colors of the famous train they took off. (ex. The Green Diamond from the IC, Amtrak have all green cars)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2012/03/15/railroads-republicans-muscling-out-amtrak/
What do you feel about amtrak because it is a hit and miss in my book.
"Paul M.:To anyone who is new around here, we have a research engineer with over 30-years experience, an accountant from the electric-power utility industry with an even longer work history along with international experience, and an employee of a major U.S. railroad lurking around this forum, all of whom are railroad enthusiasts and passenger-train advocates in their own way, and any assertions about passenger trains will be subject to much more intense scrutiny than your local circle of passenger-train advocate friends."
From what I've read on here, we have an engineer who belittles almost every proposal for higher speed passenger service, an accountant from the utility industry who though critical of Amtrak, has a realistic view of short to medium distance corridor services and a railway employee, who has actually ridden a modern passenger rail system in Germany (as have I and others). In most research endeavors, appeals to authority without supporting data are often, though not always, suspect.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
Paul Milenkovic schlimm: Aside from the subsidy, I would suggest that your numbers may work for purely electric cars, but not for hybrids. To compare with electrified passenger rail corridors, highway mileage is the comparable figure. While a hybrid such as a Prius gets great highway mileage (48mpg),that is almost totally with a gasoline engine. Consequently it would produce far more CO2 as well as other pollutants than a train carrying 400 passengers powered from green energy sources. This would be true per passenger/mile and probably even on a 1:1 comparison. One person in a Prius at 48 highway MPG is using 2600 BTU/passenger mile, which is about what Amtrak is averaging, using some electricity from a mix of sources and more Diesel fuel, which is a petroleum product. If you are talking full-electric or plug-in hybrid cars, there is potentially more savings at higher capital investment. The same is true if you are talking electric trains.
schlimm: Aside from the subsidy, I would suggest that your numbers may work for purely electric cars, but not for hybrids. To compare with electrified passenger rail corridors, highway mileage is the comparable figure. While a hybrid such as a Prius gets great highway mileage (48mpg),that is almost totally with a gasoline engine. Consequently it would produce far more CO2 as well as other pollutants than a train carrying 400 passengers powered from green energy sources. This would be true per passenger/mile and probably even on a 1:1 comparison.
Aside from the subsidy, I would suggest that your numbers may work for purely electric cars, but not for hybrids. To compare with electrified passenger rail corridors, highway mileage is the comparable figure. While a hybrid such as a Prius gets great highway mileage (48mpg),that is almost totally with a gasoline engine. Consequently it would produce far more CO2 as well as other pollutants than a train carrying 400 passengers powered from green energy sources. This would be true per passenger/mile and probably even on a 1:1 comparison.
One person in a Prius at 48 highway MPG is using 2600 BTU/passenger mile, which is about what Amtrak is averaging, using some electricity from a mix of sources and more Diesel fuel, which is a petroleum product.
If you are talking full-electric or plug-in hybrid cars, there is potentially more savings at higher capital investment. The same is true if you are talking electric trains.
I think you've missed my point. Are you actually saying that ~267 Prius autos (1.5 passengers per car) on the highway, carrying the 400 passengers an Acela would carry, burning gasoline almost totally, would not emit far more hydrocarbons than an electric train using green (wind, solar, etc.) energy or even one relying on electricity from coal, oil, gas and nuclear?
Paul Milenkovic DwightBranch: Don't take my word for it: http://www.csx.com/index.cfm/responsibility/environmental-leadership/ I think you are very wrong. Because of the much lower surface area of contact between wheel and rail (about the size of a dime) and far lower friction the mechanical energy required to move a similar weight on rails is much lower than for rubber tires on pavement. I used to watch switchmen push covered hopper cars around by hand in the ICG Bloomingon yards. I also drove a semi when I was a student, try to push that by hand, empty or not. I have studied the energy efficiency of rail and other modes of transportation since my days as an engineering undergraduate nearly 35 years ago when a professor of Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University suggested I purchase a copy of Hoerner's Fluid Dynamic Drag, and my copy is either on the bedroom floor as we speak where I keep bedtime reading or in my home office under a stack of papers somewhere. The resistance of the steel wheel on steel rail is about a factor of ten lower than that of a pneumatic tire on concrete, but that is only at very low speeds. At passenger trains speeds, there is considerable aerodynamic drag, which supplies the majority of the resistance for all modes -- auto, bus, train, airplane. Furthermore, Hoerner reasons that there is a non-trivial aerodynamic drag in comparison to the rolling resistance from the rotation of train wheels and the wheels acting as centrifugal air pumps, but Hoerner also refers to a large anomoly in train resistance at higher speeds (anomoly being unaccounted increase) that he speculates is the coupling of linear motion into the side sway that is characteristic of trains and derived from the way cone-tapered wheel sets with solid axles are self-steering and exhibit kinematic "hunting." Trains should be favorable from the standpoint of aerodynamic drag because one train car is in the wind shadow of the train car ahead of it, and Hoerner devotes a great deal of page space to theoretical treatment of that effect along with the drag achieved in practice with the kinds of trains we have in operation. Railroads, especially in the U.S., have long been skeptical of streamlining as the shrouds and covers increases maintenance expenses by making it harder to access various parts, and maintenance has long been a much larger expense in railroading until the runups in fuel prices starting in the mid 1970's. 2nd-gen Shinkansen, TGV, and ICE trains are light weight and carefully streamlined as a result of wind tunnel tests, and some of the very favorable energy efficiency CO2 emissions reported for these trains may result from these optimized designs, even when operated at high speeds. How that streamlining impacts the maintenance costs is not known, but maybe that is a maintenance man-hour vs fuel cost trade that pushes you in the direction of finely tuned streamlining for HSR and aviation. If you have looked at the underbody clutter of an Amfleet coach, U.S. passenger cars are streamlined not nearly as much, and Hoerner goes into great detail in interference drag effects and how the detailing of a train, auto, or airplane can result in much higher drag than the theoretical minimum. The other consideration with passenger rail is that passenger trains are much heavier on a per seat basis than any other mode of transportation. That weight incurs losses in accelerating the train to speed or when climbing even modest hills, and even an electric train using regeneration recovers only a portion of that weight-induced energy consumption. U.S. passenger trains, furthermore, are perhaps twice as heavy as anything in Europe or Japan on account of the FRA safety standards. Those standards may be waived for a completely dedicated HSR line with positive train control, although it is hard to see those standards ever being waived for anything that interacts with freight with the train lengths and loadings in the U.S.. Who wants to be the person waiving that seeming unnecessary requirment and then a grisly accident takes place? The other cultural aspect to trains is that there is an expectation, especially in the advocacy community, regarding trains being a particularly comfortable and spacious accomodation, where one is free to leave one's seat and walk around, perhaps walk to a dining car or the entire Talgo car dedicated as a "bistro car" on the 86-mile Chicago-Milwaukee train, if the Talgo is ever put in service there owing to the political in-fighting in Wisconsin. The one and only time I was ever on HSR was in Japan in the late 1980's, and I rode in one direction in the unreserved coach, which was 5-across seating, not as crammed in as a regional jet, but comparable in elbow room and seat pitch to the last time I rode a DC-9 jet, which was a year ago. Maybe all of that "walking around room" and train cars devoted to dining and other amenities is a requirement of non-HSR trains given the culture of what is expected of train travel in the U.S., and maybe if we had HSR with airline trip times, we would go to 5-across seats as they do in Japan? Would 5-across seats in a 1 Hr 35 Min Hiawatha train trip from Chicago to Milwaukee be a reasonable way to accomodate the burgeoning ridership, or would the advocacy community raise strenuous objections? If we had HSR, would the advocacy community object to going to much higher seating density as they do in Japan in trade for the much shorter trip times? The other thing you need to factor in is load factor, how many seats are occupied. Airlines get their seemingly favorable energy efficiency these days by packing people in, both with short amounts off leg room and running planes nearly full all the time, which imposes all manners of inconvenience with regard to travelling at the times you want to. The France TGV has airline-level load factors, but I do not have any personal experience on how hard it is to book a TGV ride on the day and time you want and whether the nearly-full TGV train is similar in experience to riding a nearly full jet. David Lawyer (the guy who has looked into transportation energy efficiency in real-world data I linked to) suggests that trains run at percent-seats-occupied levels not that different than automobiles. Do we really want to run trains as full as airplanes, with the inconvenience of planning your trip on when the airline has cheap seats and the Greyhound-Bus aspect to modern airline travel of being stuffed into a tube in close quarters with people you don't know? With respect to your link to CSX discussing the energy efficiency of trains, trains are a particularly energy efficient way of moving things that are dense and heavy at low speed, i.e. freight and especially bulk freight. To the extent that trains need to be heavy to be safe (and also because of the shock and vibration aspects of steel-on-steel contact -- efforts at light weight trains such as Talgo and the United Aircraft Turbo Train have frequently been criticized by commenters on this forum as sacrificing ride quality), to the extent that there is a cultural expectation that we give passengers lots of personal space in a high-weight conveyance to begin with, and to the extent that streamlining works against doing maintenance operations on trains in a cost-effective manner, passenger trains may not effectively utilize the low-rolling resistance property of the steel wheel on steel rail mode. I could check out the "carbon calculator" linked on your other post. I had checked out the carbon calculator of the California HSR Authority and commented at length on another thread that in my engineering judgement, the numbers were overly optimistic. In my opinion, the carbon calculator made unrealistic carbon consumption assumptions regarding automobiles, since by the time the CHSR is operational, cars will have made substantial strides in fuel efficiency owing to President Obama's rule making on more stringent CAFE standards. As to argument-by-authority, I have been participating in passenger train advocacy since the late 1960's, and I have been making calculations and looking at data on transportation fuel efficiency since the mid 1970's because the energy efficiency aspects to transportation is one topic I am truly passionate about. If someone has some hard data on this topic, I am really interested in seeing it. Another thread suggested that Amtrak Diesels all have digital readouts visible from platform-side of their fuel levels, and it should not be to hard to ride the Hiawatha or Pacific Surfliner and get those readouts upon embarking and disembarking the train? Are there Amtrak conductors on this forum who could get this info -- I would like to know Station A, Station B, the fuel burn, the time and date, and the consist. To anyone who is new around here, we have a research engineer with over 30-years experience, an accountant from the electric-power utility industry with an even longer work history along with international experience, and an employee of a major U.S. railroad lurking around this forum, all of whom are railroad enthusiasts and passenger-train advocates in their own way, and any assertions about passenger trains will be subject to much more intense scrutiny than your local circle of passenger-train advocate friends.
DwightBranch: Don't take my word for it: http://www.csx.com/index.cfm/responsibility/environmental-leadership/ I think you are very wrong. Because of the much lower surface area of contact between wheel and rail (about the size of a dime) and far lower friction the mechanical energy required to move a similar weight on rails is much lower than for rubber tires on pavement. I used to watch switchmen push covered hopper cars around by hand in the ICG Bloomingon yards. I also drove a semi when I was a student, try to push that by hand, empty or not.
Don't take my word for it:
http://www.csx.com/index.cfm/responsibility/environmental-leadership/
I think you are very wrong. Because of the much lower surface area of contact between wheel and rail (about the size of a dime) and far lower friction the mechanical energy required to move a similar weight on rails is much lower than for rubber tires on pavement. I used to watch switchmen push covered hopper cars around by hand in the ICG Bloomingon yards. I also drove a semi when I was a student, try to push that by hand, empty or not.
I have studied the energy efficiency of rail and other modes of transportation since my days as an engineering undergraduate nearly 35 years ago when a professor of Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University suggested I purchase a copy of Hoerner's Fluid Dynamic Drag, and my copy is either on the bedroom floor as we speak where I keep bedtime reading or in my home office under a stack of papers somewhere.
The resistance of the steel wheel on steel rail is about a factor of ten lower than that of a pneumatic tire on concrete, but that is only at very low speeds. At passenger trains speeds, there is considerable aerodynamic drag, which supplies the majority of the resistance for all modes -- auto, bus, train, airplane. Furthermore, Hoerner reasons that there is a non-trivial aerodynamic drag in comparison to the rolling resistance from the rotation of train wheels and the wheels acting as centrifugal air pumps, but Hoerner also refers to a large anomoly in train resistance at higher speeds (anomoly being unaccounted increase) that he speculates is the coupling of linear motion into the side sway that is characteristic of trains and derived from the way cone-tapered wheel sets with solid axles are self-steering and exhibit kinematic "hunting."
Trains should be favorable from the standpoint of aerodynamic drag because one train car is in the wind shadow of the train car ahead of it, and Hoerner devotes a great deal of page space to theoretical treatment of that effect along with the drag achieved in practice with the kinds of trains we have in operation.
Railroads, especially in the U.S., have long been skeptical of streamlining as the shrouds and covers increases maintenance expenses by making it harder to access various parts, and maintenance has long been a much larger expense in railroading until the runups in fuel prices starting in the mid 1970's. 2nd-gen Shinkansen, TGV, and ICE trains are light weight and carefully streamlined as a result of wind tunnel tests, and some of the very favorable energy efficiency CO2 emissions reported for these trains may result from these optimized designs, even when operated at high speeds. How that streamlining impacts the maintenance costs is not known, but maybe that is a maintenance man-hour vs fuel cost trade that pushes you in the direction of finely tuned streamlining for HSR and aviation.
If you have looked at the underbody clutter of an Amfleet coach, U.S. passenger cars are streamlined not nearly as much, and Hoerner goes into great detail in interference drag effects and how the detailing of a train, auto, or airplane can result in much higher drag than the theoretical minimum.
The other consideration with passenger rail is that passenger trains are much heavier on a per seat basis than any other mode of transportation. That weight incurs losses in accelerating the train to speed or when climbing even modest hills, and even an electric train using regeneration recovers only a portion of that weight-induced energy consumption. U.S. passenger trains, furthermore, are perhaps twice as heavy as anything in Europe or Japan on account of the FRA safety standards. Those standards may be waived for a completely dedicated HSR line with positive train control, although it is hard to see those standards ever being waived for anything that interacts with freight with the train lengths and loadings in the U.S.. Who wants to be the person waiving that seeming unnecessary requirment and then a grisly accident takes place?
The other cultural aspect to trains is that there is an expectation, especially in the advocacy community, regarding trains being a particularly comfortable and spacious accomodation, where one is free to leave one's seat and walk around, perhaps walk to a dining car or the entire Talgo car dedicated as a "bistro car" on the 86-mile Chicago-Milwaukee train, if the Talgo is ever put in service there owing to the political in-fighting in Wisconsin.
The one and only time I was ever on HSR was in Japan in the late 1980's, and I rode in one direction in the unreserved coach, which was 5-across seating, not as crammed in as a regional jet, but comparable in elbow room and seat pitch to the last time I rode a DC-9 jet, which was a year ago.
Maybe all of that "walking around room" and train cars devoted to dining and other amenities is a requirement of non-HSR trains given the culture of what is expected of train travel in the U.S., and maybe if we had HSR with airline trip times, we would go to 5-across seats as they do in Japan? Would 5-across seats in a 1 Hr 35 Min Hiawatha train trip from Chicago to Milwaukee be a reasonable way to accomodate the burgeoning ridership, or would the advocacy community raise strenuous objections? If we had HSR, would the advocacy community object to going to much higher seating density as they do in Japan in trade for the much shorter trip times?
The other thing you need to factor in is load factor, how many seats are occupied. Airlines get their seemingly favorable energy efficiency these days by packing people in, both with short amounts off leg room and running planes nearly full all the time, which imposes all manners of inconvenience with regard to travelling at the times you want to. The France TGV has airline-level load factors, but I do not have any personal experience on how hard it is to book a TGV ride on the day and time you want and whether the nearly-full TGV train is similar in experience to riding a nearly full jet.
David Lawyer (the guy who has looked into transportation energy efficiency in real-world data I linked to) suggests that trains run at percent-seats-occupied levels not that different than automobiles. Do we really want to run trains as full as airplanes, with the inconvenience of planning your trip on when the airline has cheap seats and the Greyhound-Bus aspect to modern airline travel of being stuffed into a tube in close quarters with people you don't know?
With respect to your link to CSX discussing the energy efficiency of trains, trains are a particularly energy efficient way of moving things that are dense and heavy at low speed, i.e. freight and especially bulk freight. To the extent that trains need to be heavy to be safe (and also because of the shock and vibration aspects of steel-on-steel contact -- efforts at light weight trains such as Talgo and the United Aircraft Turbo Train have frequently been criticized by commenters on this forum as sacrificing ride quality), to the extent that there is a cultural expectation that we give passengers lots of personal space in a high-weight conveyance to begin with, and to the extent that streamlining works against doing maintenance operations on trains in a cost-effective manner, passenger trains may not effectively utilize the low-rolling resistance property of the steel wheel on steel rail mode.
I could check out the "carbon calculator" linked on your other post. I had checked out the carbon calculator of the California HSR Authority and commented at length on another thread that in my engineering judgement, the numbers were overly optimistic. In my opinion, the carbon calculator made unrealistic carbon consumption assumptions regarding automobiles, since by the time the CHSR is operational, cars will have made substantial strides in fuel efficiency owing to President Obama's rule making on more stringent CAFE standards.
As to argument-by-authority, I have been participating in passenger train advocacy since the late 1960's, and I have been making calculations and looking at data on transportation fuel efficiency since the mid 1970's because the energy efficiency aspects to transportation is one topic I am truly passionate about.
If someone has some hard data on this topic, I am really interested in seeing it. Another thread suggested that Amtrak Diesels all have digital readouts visible from platform-side of their fuel levels, and it should not be to hard to ride the Hiawatha or Pacific Surfliner and get those readouts upon embarking and disembarking the train? Are there Amtrak conductors on this forum who could get this info -- I would like to know Station A, Station B, the fuel burn, the time and date, and the consist.
To anyone who is new around here, we have a research engineer with over 30-years experience, an accountant from the electric-power utility industry with an even longer work history along with international experience, and an employee of a major U.S. railroad lurking around this forum, all of whom are railroad enthusiasts and passenger-train advocates in their own way, and any assertions about passenger trains will be subject to much more intense scrutiny than your local circle of passenger-train advocate friends.
Another thoughtful and thorough explanation from Mr. Milenkovic. He is as mindful of the opinions from the guys and gals who work the trains as a fellow professional engineer.
Paul Milenkovic
Many interesting points, just to be brief, I think dedicated rights of way would solve a lot of the problems you mention regarding weight and wind resistance. Passenger trains that interact with freight trains in the US in any way (most of them) must be (mandated by the FRA) built to withstand a buff force of (I believe) 800k lbs. which makes them enormously heavy. I recall an article by Don Phillips in Trains in which he repeated the name the French engineers who designed the Acela trains and worked out its bugs secretly had for it: Le Cochon (the pig). I am afraid for example of the cost cutting being used in CA by routing the HSR line down freight tracks in LA and the Bay Area instead of a dedicated right of way, which will necessitate that they use heavy trains like Acela instead of off the shelf tried and true lightweight trains like TGV or the ICE trains in Germany. And as regards wind resistance lightweight articulated cars can be streamlined much easier than Acela with its heavyweight frame. I rode both the TGV and ICE in Germany, they were more like airplanes or commuter trains than our Amtrak inside, I remember snack booths at the end of cars and they obviously flew even though the ICE was on tracks over 100 years old where I was, on the Rhine River line. Packed full of weary, glum German businessmen. But exceedingly efficient.
DwightBranch Don't take my word for it: http://www.csx.com/index.cfm/responsibility/environmental-leadership/ I think you are very wrong. Because of the much lower surface area of contact between wheel and rail (about the size of a dime) and far lower friction the mechanical energy required to move a similar weight on rails is much lower than for rubber tires on pavement. I used to watch switchmen push covered hopper cars around by hand in the ICG Bloomingon yards. I also drove a semi when I was a student, try to push that by hand, empty or not.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
oltmannd This has gone far enough that I'm thinking Godwin's law can't be too far away.
This has gone far enough that I'm thinking Godwin's law can't be too far away.
"Mess with the best, die like the rest" -U.S. Marine Corp
MINRail (Minessota Rail Transportaion Corp.) - "If they got rid of the weeds what would hold the rails down?"
And yes I am 17.
Paul Milenkovic The problem is not that automobiles are so energy inefficient, the problem is that we use them too much because they are so much more convenient than other choices.
The problem is not that automobiles are so energy inefficient, the problem is that we use them too much because they are so much more convenient than other choices.
BTW, try it, it is fun:
http://www.csx.com/index.cfm/customers/tools/carbon-calculator/
dakotafred DwightBranch: There isn't a reputable scientist anywhere who denies that human-caused release of Carbon Dioxide gas into the atmosphere causes the global temperature of our planet to rise. This post is itself a greenhouse gas. A favorite ploy of the 'warmers' is to say "there isn't a reputable scientist," etc. But there is -- are. Name one. A hard scientist- physicist or chemistry not a "meteorologist". And one peer reviewed. The guy the AEI was sending around was a weatherman with a bachelor's degree. All we need to know about 'man-made' warming is this: Carbon dioxide comprises less than one-half of 1 percent of atmospheric gases, fewer than 500 parts per million. You could look it up. Mankind, working just as hard as he can ... in India, in China, in the U.S. and everywhere else ... accounts for about 3 percent of the CO2 total. Your math is wrong, but even if it weren't, what seems like a small amount (3% in your statement, if it was how much the global temperature rose over 1990 levels would cause Florida to be submerged. Look it up. In short, if we're warming -- itself an unanswered question about which reputable climatologists disagree -- man ain't responsible. And what we do with the railroads makes no difference at all except with air quality in a few cities. Again, I know of know accredited, peer reviewed hard scientist who would agree with you. Anywhere.
DwightBranch: There isn't a reputable scientist anywhere who denies that human-caused release of Carbon Dioxide gas into the atmosphere causes the global temperature of our planet to rise.
There isn't a reputable scientist anywhere who denies that human-caused release of Carbon Dioxide gas into the atmosphere causes the global temperature of our planet to rise.
This post is itself a greenhouse gas. A favorite ploy of the 'warmers' is to say "there isn't a reputable scientist," etc. But there is -- are.
Name one. A hard scientist- physicist or chemistry not a "meteorologist". And one peer reviewed. The guy the AEI was sending around was a weatherman with a bachelor's degree.
All we need to know about 'man-made' warming is this: Carbon dioxide comprises less than one-half of 1 percent of atmospheric gases, fewer than 500 parts per million. You could look it up. Mankind, working just as hard as he can ... in India, in China, in the U.S. and everywhere else ... accounts for about 3 percent of the CO2 total.
Your math is wrong, but even if it weren't, what seems like a small amount (3% in your statement, if it was how much the global temperature rose over 1990 levels would cause Florida to be submerged. Look it up.
In short, if we're warming -- itself an unanswered question about which reputable climatologists disagree -- man ain't responsible. And what we do with the railroads makes no difference at all except with air quality in a few cities.
Again, I know of know accredited, peer reviewed hard scientist who would agree with you. Anywhere.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
DwightBranch it behooves us to curtail the release of Carbon Dioxide gas into the atmosphere. And one major way to do so is through the use of steel wheel on steel rail transportation, by far the most efficient system of transportation available.
it behooves us to curtail the release of Carbon Dioxide gas into the atmosphere. And one major way to do so is through the use of steel wheel on steel rail transportation, by far the most efficient system of transportation available.
But steel-wheel on steel-rail transportation is only marginally more fuel efficient than other choices. If you want the low-down on this, check out http://www.lafn.org/~dave/. Historically, automobiles have been more energy efficient than the modes they replaced, but because automobiles are so convenient, the total amount of passenger miles has just exploded.
Ultimately, a program to provide trains to replace automobiles has to be coupled with a plan to curtail automobile usage, through gasoline taxes, zoning restrictions, and so on. Maybe the real reason the anti-train people are so hopped up is that the trains-as-saving-the-environment program is in the long run a question of curtailing automobile usage by making it much less convenient. It is not so much that people love cars that they love their freedom -- their freedom to take on jobs without having to relocate, the freedom to have two income earners in the family with jobs in different places, the freedom to "have a place up north" that they can hop into the car and visit, and so on.
Even some of the people favoring trains have "issues" with curtailing autos. On other threads I had filled in the details that in the brief, 6-month political window where Madison, WI was going to get passenger service, the local train advocacy group people just went ballistic with WisDOT about the decision to change the Madison train station from Dane County Regional Airport to the Madison Downtown.
DwightBranch There isn't a reputable scientist anywhere who denies that human-caused release of Carbon Dioxide gas into the atmosphere causes the global temperature of our planet to rise.
gabeusmc well all the electic cars and such that suppousdly help this fasle thing called golbal warming would be worthless where I live. A prius does not get through three feet of snow. A hummer gets through and to me thats more important than worring somthing, that if it existed, we could do nothing about. anyway wasn't this about amtrk, not false scintific theorys?
well all the electic cars and such that suppousdly help this fasle thing called golbal warming would be worthless where I live. A prius does not get through three feet of snow. A hummer gets through and to me thats more important than worring somthing, that if it existed, we could do nothing about.
anyway wasn't this about amtrk, not false scintific theorys?
There isn't a reputable scientist anywhere who denies that human-caused release of Carbon Dioxide gas into the atmosphere causes the global temperature of our planet to rise. We know that Carbon Dioxide gas (some other gases even more so but they are released in smaller quantities) absorbs infrared radiation from the sun at a rate substantially greater than the other major components of our atmosphere, nitrogen and oxygen gases; and, we know at roughly what rate human activity such as use of automobiles and coal-fired power plants (the two major sources) release CO2 gas into the atmosphere. It is then simply a matter of mathematics to multiply the two factors as a component of the overall atmosphere to come up with the rate at which the atmosphere will become warmer. And those calculations have been remarkably accurate. Given this fact, and that we humans and other organsms (including our food sources) have adapted ourselves to the climate we now have it behooves us to curtail the release of Carbon Dioxide gas into the atmosphere. And one major way to do so is through the use of steel wheel on steel rail transportation, by far the most efficient system of transportation available.
henry6 My snark about defense was in referenct to another post above. But reality has to set in somehwere that we have saturated the air and the land and must make changes before we kill ourselves off. Many point to our current weather problems as being a result of Global Warming being a reaction to our unabated polluting habits.. I visit the NY area, not live there. So I do see and feel the erosion on a time lapse rather than it creeping around me. Social planners, civil engineers, scientists, and others have noted the need to take action to slow our polluting ways or eliminate as much as possible. Most of the time they point to automobiles, trucks, and buses as being the largest segment of contributors to the problems of pollution and Global Warming; my time lapse snapshots makes me concur. So, what is the investment of a couple hundred billion dollars worth for survival of the society? Should it be measured in mere dollars and cents in an investor's portfolio?
My snark about defense was in referenct to another post above. But reality has to set in somehwere that we have saturated the air and the land and must make changes before we kill ourselves off. Many point to our current weather problems as being a result of Global Warming being a reaction to our unabated polluting habits.. I visit the NY area, not live there. So I do see and feel the erosion on a time lapse rather than it creeping around me. Social planners, civil engineers, scientists, and others have noted the need to take action to slow our polluting ways or eliminate as much as possible. Most of the time they point to automobiles, trucks, and buses as being the largest segment of contributors to the problems of pollution and Global Warming; my time lapse snapshots makes me concur. So, what is the investment of a couple hundred billion dollars worth for survival of the society? Should it be measured in mere dollars and cents in an investor's portfolio?
Paul Milenkovic henry6: So, what is the investment of a couple hundred billion dollars worth for survival of the society? Should it be measured in mere dollars and cents in an investor's portfolio? Is that your plan, to invest a couple hundred billion dollars? What in all seriousness do you think you are going to get for a mere couple hundred billion dollars? The Vision Report proposed investing 500 billion in order to boost Amtrak from .1 percent up to a full 1 percent of auto passenger miles, saving one half a percent on automobile gasoline consumption in the process, with commeasurate reduction in pollution. I am not talking about profit motive and greedy investors and stingy taxpayers and the like. The kind of reform you want, of making meaningful inroads on pollution and congestion and road paving over will have long-term costs in the multiple trillions of dollars and will be in serious competition with needed health care expenditure for our aging population. Am I greedy because I am 10 years out from retirement and would like to see Medicare fully funded as a higher priority over a national HSR network? I keep picking on the Vision Report as the Gold Standard of what people in the advocacy community want. If there are economies of scale and you think we can get a lot more trains for a lot less money, I would like to hear about it, and especially what departure from business-as-usual you support.
henry6: So, what is the investment of a couple hundred billion dollars worth for survival of the society? Should it be measured in mere dollars and cents in an investor's portfolio?
So, what is the investment of a couple hundred billion dollars worth for survival of the society? Should it be measured in mere dollars and cents in an investor's portfolio?
Is that your plan, to invest a couple hundred billion dollars? What in all seriousness do you think you are going to get for a mere couple hundred billion dollars?
The Vision Report proposed investing 500 billion in order to boost Amtrak from .1 percent up to a full 1 percent of auto passenger miles, saving one half a percent on automobile gasoline consumption in the process, with commeasurate reduction in pollution.
I am not talking about profit motive and greedy investors and stingy taxpayers and the like. The kind of reform you want, of making meaningful inroads on pollution and congestion and road paving over will have long-term costs in the multiple trillions of dollars and will be in serious competition with needed health care expenditure for our aging population. Am I greedy because I am 10 years out from retirement and would like to see Medicare fully funded as a higher priority over a national HSR network?
I keep picking on the Vision Report as the Gold Standard of what people in the advocacy community want. If there are economies of scale and you think we can get a lot more trains for a lot less money, I would like to hear about it, and especially what departure from business-as-usual you support.
But isn't that the question, or questions? Invest or not invest? If so, who? How do we guage the return on investment? Or are we just putting words on the internet pages?
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
All I know is my freight train is either blocked or delayed by either the Northbound or Southbound Crescent almost every day. When the train finally goes by it is dirty and there a only a few passengers on board. It is nothing like the original Southern Crescent which was a class act. The pride of the railroad!
The country would be much better off if Amtrak was relegated to owning and maintaining the tracks of the Northeast Corridor. The government could treat the tracks just like a highway or any municipal airport and appropriate funds to maintain, enhance or add capacity as such. Private train companies just like the airlines at any major airport could lease space or capacity to run their trains. Amtrak could provide dispatching on the Northeast Corridor just like the Air Traffic Controllers in the airline industry which are government paid employees.
Then let the states decide if they want corridor service outside of the Northeast Corridor and negotiate with the host freight railroads to operate the trains, not Amtrak.
henry6 So, what is the investment of a couple hundred billion dollars worth for survival of the society? Should it be measured in mere dollars and cents in an investor's portfolio?
schlimm Aside from the subsidy, I would suggest that your numbers may work for purely electric cars, but not for hybrids. To compare with electrified passenger rail corridors, highway mileage is the comparable figure. While a hybrid such as a Prius gets great highway mileage (48mpg),that is almost totally with a gasoline engine. Consequently it would produce far more CO2 as well as other pollutants than a train carrying 400 passengers powered from green energy sources. This would be true per passenger/mile and probably even on a 1:1 comparison.
Paul Milenkovic Someone here please convince me that subsidizing Amtrak results in more quantifiable environmental savings then taking the same money and giving tax breaks on hybrid or electric cars. By my reckoning, if Amtrak saves 1000 BTUs/passenger mile at 20 cents subsidy/passenger mile. If a hybrid or electric car saves 1000 BTUs/passenger mile, a $10,000 tax credit for a plug-in hybrid amounts to 7 cents/passenger mile. Hence the hybrid car subsidy is three times more effective than subsidizing Amtrak. Why are we giving money to Amtrak if saving the environment is a concern?
Someone here please convince me that subsidizing Amtrak results in more quantifiable environmental savings then taking the same money and giving tax breaks on hybrid or electric cars.
By my reckoning, if Amtrak saves 1000 BTUs/passenger mile at 20 cents subsidy/passenger mile. If a hybrid or electric car saves 1000 BTUs/passenger mile, a $10,000 tax credit for a plug-in hybrid amounts to 7 cents/passenger mile. Hence the hybrid car subsidy is three times more effective than subsidizing Amtrak. Why are we giving money to Amtrak if saving the environment is a concern?
henry6 Then we must learn or be enticed or taught to use that track capacity...I have a feeling this will eventually happen, especially in densely urban areas for commuter and regional travel because circumstances will demand it. With my Ridewithmehenry group I get down the the NY area at leaset six times a year just to ride trains. Each time we encounter more and more usage of commuter trains between outlying stations and not just in and out of the city, especially on MNRR and LIRR lines but also on The Corridor with NJ to Trenton and to SEPTA. NJT's Midtown Direct and Sec. Jct. have also made regional travel easier, even less costly, for many with NJT inerline fares, and good LIRR connections at NYP and even the MTA easy access to GCT and MNRR; Amtrak at NYP is a given. As highway congestion continues (there can be no more new highway contstruction in the area because there is no more land and air polluion is high) and gas prices rise, there has to be more and better coordination and schedule application to accomodate more regional rail travel. It will happen because it has to happen. If it doesn't happen, then there will be gridlock at best, total lack of breathable air and gridlock at worst.
Then we must learn or be enticed or taught to use that track capacity...I have a feeling this will eventually happen, especially in densely urban areas for commuter and regional travel because circumstances will demand it. With my Ridewithmehenry group I get down the the NY area at leaset six times a year just to ride trains. Each time we encounter more and more usage of commuter trains between outlying stations and not just in and out of the city, especially on MNRR and LIRR lines but also on The Corridor with NJ to Trenton and to SEPTA. NJT's Midtown Direct and Sec. Jct. have also made regional travel easier, even less costly, for many with NJT inerline fares, and good LIRR connections at NYP and even the MTA easy access to GCT and MNRR; Amtrak at NYP is a given. As highway congestion continues (there can be no more new highway contstruction in the area because there is no more land and air polluion is high) and gas prices rise, there has to be more and better coordination and schedule application to accomodate more regional rail travel. It will happen because it has to happen. If it doesn't happen, then there will be gridlock at best, total lack of breathable air and gridlock at worst.
No doubt NJT and the LIRR make good use of the available track capacity at peak times. They are packing >1000 people on a train and running them on 4 minute headways. That's a lot of people - worth about 8 highway lanes.
Compare that to one Amfleet train with 600 or so people and an Acela with 300 in an hour. That's worth 1/2 a lane of highway.
henry6 If you have a bucket being filled by the tablespoon and reduce it to being filled by the teaspoon, it will be filled just slower. So other measures also have to be taken. Unless you've been across NJ or anyplace else in the NY metro area and taken deep breaths, you can't know how much air pollution is effecting people and the rest of the environment. We've got to do more than just reduce from tablespoons to teaspoons. As for privatizing defense? Why not? Why not hire mercenaries and other private enterprises to hire, train, and deploy troops? Halburton and others stand by ready to make a buck on international clashes and already have been hired for certain jobs in defense? Why not have our government give up total responsiblity to our citizens in the name of money? Sounds like a good American scheme to me.
If you have a bucket being filled by the tablespoon and reduce it to being filled by the teaspoon, it will be filled just slower. So other measures also have to be taken. Unless you've been across NJ or anyplace else in the NY metro area and taken deep breaths, you can't know how much air pollution is effecting people and the rest of the environment. We've got to do more than just reduce from tablespoons to teaspoons.
As for privatizing defense? Why not? Why not hire mercenaries and other private enterprises to hire, train, and deploy troops? Halburton and others stand by ready to make a buck on international clashes and already have been hired for certain jobs in defense? Why not have our government give up total responsiblity to our citizens in the name of money? Sounds like a good American scheme to me.
I have lived and worked in the greater NJ-NYC Metropolitan Area. With respect to air pollution, Los Angeles is much worse. And they think they have to regulate paint. And Diesel locomotives.
How is the cause of passenger trains advanced by snark about national defense? We do, indeed, have a large portion of the expeditionary war mission privatized, and yes, this is controversial. I have offered an explanation of why U.S. defense expenditures are as large as they are that does not rely on conspiracy theories or sarcasm. There is an arguable position that we could spend much less on national defense, but were we to do that, health care at this time is a more pressing need for the money than trains, and for saying that people call me a right-winger?
But maybe, just maybe, passenger train advocacy could compete more effectively in the political sphere if trains were not regarded as an end in themselves, if more realistic claims could be brought to the table, and if criticism of the cost-effectiveness of trains were taken more seriously.
henry6 As highway congestion continues (there can be no more new highway contstruction in the area because there is no more land and air polluion is high) and gas prices rise, there has to be more and better coordination and schedule application to accomodate more regional rail travel. It will happen because it has to happen. If it doesn't happen, then there will be gridlock at best, total lack of breathable air and gridlock at worst.
As highway congestion continues (there can be no more new highway contstruction in the area because there is no more land and air polluion is high) and gas prices rise, there has to be more and better coordination and schedule application to accomodate more regional rail travel. It will happen because it has to happen. If it doesn't happen, then there will be gridlock at best, total lack of breathable air and gridlock at worst.
If air pollution from automobiles is such the overwhelming problem, why the Tier 4 regulations on railroad locomotives? Why the regulations on the drying of paint?
Automobiles are highly regulated and the amount of their emissions have been so greatly reduced to the point that we are going after railroad Diesels, lawnmowers, and the hydrocarbons (V.O.C.) of drying paint.
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