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TRAINS: A travel choice Americans want

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Flag Stops: Foresight and Oversight

Monday, August 10, 2009

Our slightly-delayed news and views roundup shows that going green does save green, that oil production may peak sooner than expected, and that LaHood’s thinking is still on the right track.

  • Implementing a number of known practices for cutting carbon emissions from transportation would actually save money within 15 years, with savings increasing as time goes on, finds a new report on the subject. Nearly a year in the works, the paper contains necessarily limited cost-benefit analyses of various strategies, including expanding public transportation offerings, without bias towards any particular method. It is geared mainly towards transportation within metropolitan areas, but also looks at high-speed rail and highway tolling ideas for intercity travel.
  • The International Energy Agency’s chief economist says that the impending oil crisis will come sooner than expected, with production peaking in 10 years. Petroleum prices will escalate rapidly as the remaining oil becomes harder and more costly to extract, stunting the recovery of the economy. All the more reason to ramp up efforts to ready our transportation system to move more people and goods on little or no oil.
  • Los Angeles Times business columnist David Lazarus reminds us that re-training America will take not just more and better trains, but policies that make driving less attractive and cities and towns more compact.
  • Streetsblog uncovers some pieces that seem to be missing from a Harvard economics professor’s analysis of a theoretical Texas high-speed rail line—primarily that he neglected to seriously consider the less palatable alternatives: more highway and airport capacity.
  • In a speech to the National Association of Counties, Transportation Secretary LaHood reiterates his commitment to reducing the number of miles Americans travel by automobile and to greater parity between highway and non-highway investments. Giving local governments more say in where transportation dollars are spent generally results in less of a bias towards asphalt.
    • American journalists marvel at China’s new high-speed train, which are a testament to the impact a major investment can have.
  • LCL: Trains for America gives a tongue-in-cheek endorsement to our call for full 2010 Amtrak funding; on the Pere Marquette‘s 25th anniversary, officials, businesspeople and residents along the line express their desires for additional service; an Ogden, Utah, columnist enumerates why riding the California Zephyr from to Chicago beats flying, and longs for the Pioneer to call once again at his hometown; the Allegheny Trail Alliance has a survey with which it hopes to demonstrate the demand for being able to bring bikes on board Amtrak trains, even to or from unstaffed stations; NARP Council member Jim Loomis reports on his latest Amtrak journeys—including a tight Chicago connection and some good reasons to head to the Quiet Car; yet another little-known danger lurking on the highways; and a travel writer’s look at the plethora of fun rail trips that can be taken in southern California.

    • —Malcolm Kenton

    Posted by Malcolm Kenton

    Tags: alternatives, carbon, china, climate change, economics, energy, high-speed rail, peak oil, petroleum, roundup, trains, travel,

    Bringing Trains into the “Energy Mix”

    Monday, June 14, 2010

    In a Washington Post Business section column yesterday, economic policy expert Ezra Klein drives home a truth that is unwelcome to many Americans: gasoline in the U.S. is actually too cheap because prices do not account for the societal and environmental costs associated with its use. The Gulf oil disaster is one of the more visible externalities (to use the economist’s term) of the oil market.

    Klein quotes Ian Perry of the think tank Resources for the Future: “We’re pretty much stuck with our dependency on oil. We don’t have any substitutes. Even if we hugely increase the price on oil, we’d only have limited impact on it. People need to drive and get to work.” Therein lies the flaw in the thinking of those who look at Big Oil as the only problem: it’s not just oil that we are over-dependent on—the U.S. cannot maintain its addiction to driving.

    To simply switch to a cleaner, greener fuel source while continuing to consume energy at our present rates would be impossible—we can’t generate that much energy from renewables within a workable time frame. We need to get serious about using less energy, and there’s no getting around the gross ineffeciency inherent in a transportation system that is so unilaterally oriented towards motor vehicles. As Dr. Wolfgang Meyer, who studied the question of “green fuels,” concludes, the amount of infrastructure needed to power the current U.S. auto fleet on renewables is off-the-charts impossible.

    A world-class passenger train system—intercity trains connected with local and regional transit supporting walkable, bikeable communities—can move Americans quickly and comfortably using a small fraction of the energy that our mobility currently consumes. Trains must be a key component of the “clean-energy future” President Obama is advocating. We must take every opportunity to remind our elected officials to make it so.

    —Malcolm Kenton

    Posted by Malcolm Kenton

    Tags: alternative fuels, big oil, conservation, consumption, ezra klein, gas prices, gulf oil spill, passenger trains, petroleum, transportation, unsustainable,

    Misdirected Priorities

    Tuesday, July 06, 2010

    The New York Times reminds us of the extent to which oil extraction is one of America’s most heavily-subsidized activities. Imagine how much the quality of our lives and our environment would improve if these perverse subsidies were eliminated and part of the savings redirected to investments in an expanded network of modern passenger trains.

    —Malcolm Kenton

    Posted by Malcolm Kenton

    Tags: deepwater horizon, energy, environment, oil subsidies, petroleum, priorities, transportation,

    The Bigger Crisis We Must Address

    Friday, November 25, 2011

    CNN World’s “On the Move” column features a worthwhile debate between two experts who support high-speed rail. One, Friends of the Earth’s Tony Bosworth, tempers his support for HSR with skepticism that it can draw enough people away from cars and planes, and that governments facing defecits and financial stress will be able to undertake such large infrastructure projects:

    Photo by L.C. Nottaasen on Flickr

    One of the main factors is cost. Despite soaring fuel prices, motoring and flying are still expected to be cheaper than high speed rail. If faster rail travel is to become a realistic alternative it must be affordable too.

    The UK’s [planned London to Manchester] high speed rail link is expected to cost a whopping $54 billion. But living as we do in cash-strapped times there’s surely a strong case for investing some of that that money in less grandiose, but more effective, projects.

    Affordability and cost-effectiveness are important considerations. Several high-speed rail lines around the world, though, manage to be financially sound and attract lots of riders while offering very attractive fares. Most notably, France’s TGV more than covers its operating costs and owns more than half of the air-rail travel market on its key routes, while its lowest fares are cheaper than driving (especially considering France’s higher gas taxes) and flying.

    » read more...

    Posted by Malcolm Kenton

    Tags: clean transportation, energy crisis, high-speed rail, mode share, national debt, oil consumption, passenger rail, petroleum,

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