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Case for Trains and Public Transport Grows Stronger
Friday, May 30, 2008
This week saw three particularly good media boosts to the case for sensible transportation or Americans’ readiness for such. First, the Outlook section of Sunday’s (May 25) The Washington Post carried a column by author James Howard Kunstler, “Wake Up, America. We’re Driving Toward Disaster.”
The paragraph of most direct interest is this:
Fixing the U.S. passenger railroad system is probably the one project we could undertake right away that would have the greatest impact on the country’s oil consumption…If we don’t get the passenger trains running again, Americans will be going nowhere five years from now.
Kunstler has been saying similar things for some time, but it is good to see his views get aired in The Post.
If anyone doubts his comment about airlines, consider that AP’s David Koenig reported May 22 that “even though most of the big airline companies have large cash stockpiles, analysts suggest they could burn through their cash and go bankrupt by early next year.”
The Washington Post had a May 27 front-page story about the explosion in transit ridership around the nation’s capital, including car-dependent outer suburbs. The top-of-page-A1 headline was “Stung at the Pumps, More Hop on a Bus; D.C.’s Outlying Transit Systems Rush to Add Capacity; Metro Worried.” (The worry is about trains being “overwhelmed” if gasoline hits $5 a gallon.)
Finally, also May 27, the radio program To the Point had an excellent discussion of the energy situation in which most of the panelists (including the Wall Street Journal’s reporter) said Americans need to drive less and use public transit more. Listen to “The Future of Energy: Is the U.S. Prepared?” here.
The panelists were:
- Neil King: Diplomatic Correspondent, Wall Street Journal
- Juli Niemann: Oil Analyst, Smith, Moore & Company
- David Sirota: author, ‘The Uprising’
- Robert Manning: Professor of Finance, Rochester Institute of Technology
Panelists agreed it was outrageous that the U.S. with less than 5% of world population is responsible for about a quarter of world oil consumption. Interestingly, Ms. Niemann, the principle advocate for expanding oil exploration and drilling within the U.S., said this should only be allowed under strict government regulations which would significantly increase costs. Mr. King said the U.S. consumes roughly 20 million barrels a day and produces only five. He said it is widely believed in the industry that, if the U.S. started taking advantage of all domestic oil opportunities, by 2020, we would still be producing only about five MBD because new production would simply offset declines in existing fields.
--Ross Capon
Posted by NARP
Tags: airlines, james howard kunstler, news media, oil,©2006 National Association of Railroad Passengers | » NARP website
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