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NARP Endorses CAHSR, Guestblogs the CAHSR Blog
Friday, July 18, 2008
NARP Board Member Dennis Lytton and I will be guestblogging on the CAHSR Blog over the next couple weeks as its primary author is out of town. The timing is auspicious; last week, NARP’s Executive Committee approved a resolution endorsing California’s High Speed Rail project and Proposition 1, the ballot measure that will provide $9 billion in initial construction funding and $950 million to improve existing intercity and commuter train service. I will be working with citizen activists in California to help promote Prop 1 in the coming months.
You can read my first post here.
—Matthew Melzer
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Off-Shore Attacks on Light Rail
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
“What’s going on here is a battle between commuters who want to get to work and a bunch of people who don’t want to look at trolley cars while they play golf. If the public understands that’s what this fight is about, then the Purple Line will be built.”
—Ben Ross, president, Action Committee for Transit (Montgomery County, MD)
This quote, one of the more effective rebuttals to anti-transit advocacy that I’ve seen, appeared in a July 13 Washington Post article about a strange web site fighting the Purple Line. The Post reported that “the site’s owner is listed as a company based in the Madeira Islands off the coast of Portugal that allows clients to register Web sites anonymously…State tax records shed a little more light: Its founder is a board member at Columbia Country Club in Montgomery, whose 100-year-old golf course would be bisected by the transit line.”
Perhaps the Columbia Country Clubbers should visit Newton Massachusetts, where the Woodland Golf Club, founded in 1896, has long coexisted first with steam and diesel-powered commuter trains and, since July 4, 1959, with the Riverside branch of MBTA’s Green Line.
Next to the above article, The Post ran a nice report on plans for streetcars in Washington, DC, with a map showing potential linkage (at Silver Spring) with the Purple Line. Some trolley cars could even enter service late next year, said the headline.
—Ross Capon
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Cars and Planes
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
The New York Times just published two reports that implicitly underline the need for more trains and which should help guide the US towards sounder overall transportation policies.
Sunday’s (June 29) Week in Review (under big article on Nigerian oil production problems) has a bar graph showing gasoline pump prices for 27 nations (once the page loads, click on the graph to enlarge it), plus—for most of them—tax and non-tax portions of those prices and “cost to fill the 26-gallon tank of a 2008 Chevrolet Tahoe”.
The eye-opener: US tax (federal + average state) is 49 cents a gallon vs. $1.26 in Canada. European per-gallon taxes range from $3.37 in Spain to $5.57 in Netherlands.
The cost to fill that Tahoe ranges from $6.50 in Venezuela to $104 in the US, $189.80 in Spain and $261.30 in the Netherlands.
The total per-gallon pump price is $8.98 in Germany, $8.78 in France and $8.71 in the UK.
(The latest AAA average US prices can be found here where current, day before, and month and year before prices are shown for regular, mid, premium, diesel and E-85, plus a BTU-adjusted figure for E-85 to reflect its lower energy content. There is also a graph with a one-year history for cost of wholesale, “national average” and crude oil. Finally, there’s a link to click “for information on using public transit to reduce fuel use.”)
On Saturday, June 28, a front-page story gave comprehensive overview of planned airline service reductions: “Travelers Face Deep Flight Cuts by Summer’s End”
Some key quotes: “[Labor Day] is when significant cuts in the airlines’ fleets and schedules will begin taking effect, making for a particularly jarring end to summer.
“Across the United States, airports from La Guardia in New York to Oakland in California will be affected by flight cuts, bringing the industry down to a size last seen in 2002, when travel fell sharply after the 9/11 attacks.
“Over all, the cuts will reduce flights this year by American carriers by almost 10%, industry analysts estimate, with even deeper cuts in store for 2009.
“‘The U.S. industry is undertaking a historic restructuring,’ Gary Chase, an industry analyst with Lehman Brothers, wrote in a research report Friday. Air fares, which are up about 17% this year on average, may rise as much as 40% within the next four years, Mr. Chase predicted.”
A related story gives tips for those planning to fly.
—Ross B. Capon