We’re 90 Years Behind
One of the more clever arguments against high speed rail (and passenger rail as a whole) is that we don’t really need it to reduce our crippling dependence on oil. Instead the market will magically innovate enough hybrid and electric vehicles to meet the energy demand currently satisfied by oil. How we will afford widening the freeways to add all these cars to the roads in the coming decades – and how a nation mired in a Depression will afford them – is usually left unsaid, because there’s no answer to those questions. No answer is needed, because it’s not intended as a realistic policy proposition – instead it’s a rhetorical device. “Look at the hybrids and electrics! See, we don’t need a train!”
But even if one were to address the issue of how people would actually afford the vehicles and how we would afford to widen the freeways to handle the increased traffic (our freeways are already at capacity in the state’s urban cores), there is a far more fundamental problem: we will run out of oil before these alternatives are developed to a point where they can satisfy our existing energy demand.
At least, that’s what UC Davis researchers concluded:
The global oil supply is set to run dry 90 years before replacements such as renewable energy are ready to satisfy the same amount of demand, according to UC Davis researchers.
Current policies that set targets for batteries, hydrogen, biofuel and other alternative energy sources won’t be enough, a study published Monday says….
The technologies in the market “may not be able to occupy a sufficient enough niche in the market by the time we need them to,” Niemeir said in an e-mail.
Their study is based on an assessment of market conditions and government incentives – and incentives for renewable energy are being scaled back all over the world as a consequence of the global Depression, as foolish and short-sighted austerity budgeting is leading to cuts in funding for things like renewable energy subsidies, feed-in tariffs, tax credits, and so on.
There’s a deeper problem, however. Oil is not easily replaceable because it has a greater energy density than other fuels. What that means is a certain amount of oil – let’s say a pound – yields much more energy than almost any other comparable form of fuel, certainly more than renewables. This is one reason why hydrogen fuel cells have never taken off as a replacement for gasoline-powered vehicles – you need to store a LOT more hydrogen on board a vehicle to get the same driving distance that you do with gasoline.
Electric vehicles have improved their range, sure, but that simply raises the same problem again – where do you get the energy to generate the electricity? You need to burn a lot more coal, or have a lot more solar and wind generation facilities, in order to match the energy yield of oil. Oil production is notoriously dirty and risky, as the Gulf Coast was reminded earlier this year – but its overall physical footprint is actually much smaller than coal, wind, or solar. California will have to be covered in solar panels and wind turbines in order to generate enough electricity just to replace our current level of oil usage. NIMBYs will object even more loudly than they already have, and the cost will be astronomical.
What this means is that it’s just not practical to assume that we can drive as much in the 21st century as we did in the late 20th century. We are going to have to drive less as part of the transition away from the oil economy. And high speed rail helps enable that, at a lower cost with a lower carbon and physical footprint. HSR opponents deny this reality (which why they are called “deniers”) because they cannot bear to part with their beloved 20th century ideas, beliefs, assumptions, and practices. Even though the evidence is staring us in the face that we must adapt to new circumstances and make some changes, we’re told we absolutely cannot do it because it will “lower our quality of life” or “ruin our communities.”
We are 90 years behind in the development of a sustainable transportation network. There is literally no time to lose.
A little off topic – will anyone be writing a rebuttal to the Oakland Tribune for their recent editorial panning HSR?
YesonHSR Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 8:38 pm
A MediaNews group paper that ran a number of Anti-Prop1A articles before election 2008..I guess the masters in Denver told them to fire another round ..even in Alameda county prop 1A passed in the 64+ range.Just goes to show how out of touch with local opinion these out of state right wing owners are
synonymouse Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 11:07 am
The Bay Area big cities and their newspapers are very wary or outright oppose the hsr because they are major BART supporters. Wake up – BART is in direct competition with the CHSRA for funding. When push comes to shove there is no such thing as “earmarked”.
And as far as Kopp in particular is concerned he has a long, long track record which demonstrates his loyalty is to BART over the hsr and that he is antagonistic to Caltrain. So any alleged ethical improprieties on top of his questionable allegiances and priorities stand out all the more.
Jerry Brown is going to have to wrestle shortly with the hsr issue and especially the likelihood of ongoing subsidies and government operation. The state budget deficit is now up to $25 billion.
YesonHSR Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
The Liberaterian /Neocon owners of MediaNews group could care less about BART..or HSR if its not sucking oil its not worth it
StevieB Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Jerry Brown will not be governor when high speed rail operation starts because of term limits. Many things can happen in the next 9 years before operation starts but the Brown administration will not be part of budgeting operations. Perhaps the Chinese will operate the line with operational efficiency and reap a huge profit while paying billions into California coffers for the concession. The money will finance extensions to Sacramento and San Diego. Nevada casinos will connect to the line near Palmdale. Millions will benefit from efficient rail transportation and California’s economy will increase to eliminate budget deficits. This scenario is as likely or more as that of subsidy.
I never understood this argument against high speed (or any other) rail in general. And you are correct when you say opponents have this ‘belief’, it’s a belief, a faith, not based in fact or logic. That’s why using facts or logic doesn’t, and won’t ever sway them.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 10:42 pm
I concur. If you haven’t been here much before (and I don’t recognise your name from earlier, so pardon me if you have seen this), I am of the opinion that much of this “faith” is generational. The people who have it and who fight so hard against rail as you see were largely born between the late 1920s and the early 1950s. They would have come of age between about 1950 and the first oil shock of 1973, an era when cars were very ascendant and rail in general was supposed to be so out of date. This “faith” or outlook is nowhere near as strong in people over and under this age group, which is currently between about 60 to about 90 (it was between 40 and 70 twenty years ago).
Another poster here has commented that this group is nearly extinct, but I have to disagree with him, there are still a lot of 60-somethings around, and this low end of the pro-auto group is largely what is having such fits about rail in general.
Other commentary on this:
http://capntransit.blogspot.com/2010/10/failure-of-right.html
http://capntransit.blogspot.com/2010/10/failure-of-left.html
yoyo Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
another way to say it is the people of that age group (60~90) won’t be around to enjoy the HSR when it’s finally built. They also won’t have to deal with the consequence of peak oil, climate change, and huge deficits; problems they left behind.
Next generation be damned, they will vote to protect their interest.
Andre Peretti Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 3:40 am
Jonathan Alter said: “Logic can convince but only emotion can motivate”.
HSR opponents don’t have to worry about facts and figures. They know that stirring up people’s emotions is far more effective. People are more likely to believe a lie that comforts their prejudices than facts that contradict them.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 7:47 pm
New project–use emotion to build support for rail in general (and HSR especially).
I have ideas, though not enough time to put them down here; I would tend to take a historic/nostalgic approach, recalling grand style. I also have an idea banging around in my head about the new “rail generation” becoming or being a “found generation” (which is a play on “lost generation”). But even I’m not entirely sure that’s appropriate for a citizenry that seems to be short on historical education.
Any thoughts?
Andre Peretti Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 5:30 am
As a foreigner I have no lessons to teach you but here are my thoughts:
What used to distinguish America from other countries was its “can do” spirit. It has built the country and made it a world reference.
The anti-HSR represent just the opposite: the “can’t do” defeatist spirit. This is utterly UNAMERICAN, yet they are the ones who wrap themselves in the American flag. This should be reversed. They should appear to the public as wimps clinging to a bygone era while you are the ones who take up the torch and step into the future. Emotion must be on your side, not theirs.
Nathanael Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 9:05 pm
I plan to drive my new electric car to the train station. It will make an excellent vehicle to drive around town, and around my semi-rural area, and to get from my isolated city to the nearest city with a train station.
It’s no substitute for high speed rail. Who wants to drive enormous distances, with all that stress and so hard on the back? For intercity travel, I want to take the train.
I agree, this bizarre attempt to set electric cars against trains is simply irrational, and indicates some underlying paranoia. Those of us who aren’t within walking or biking distance of the train station, due to living in small rural cities, will take our electric cars to the train station.
Trains are comfortable. Trains are civilized. Trains are efficient. And trains can also be cheap, and they can also be reliable. Cars? Hah.
I just wasted 45 minutes of my life trying to reason with bloggers @ a san diego newspaper. ugh.
political_incorrectness Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Man those people are very uninformed.
Robert Cruickshank Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 3:35 pm
Newspaper website comments are the Vietnam War of the Internet. Easy to get sucked in, difficult to leave, impossible to win.
jimsf Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 4:49 pm
I had to finally walk away. I can’t have a conversation with idiots and ideologues. All they do is lie. They lie about their motives, they lie about their reasoning, they even lie about how they really feel and why they feel that way instead of just telling the truth. Just another batch of people whom I would have removed from the State of California permanently if I could.
YESONHSR Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 6:12 pm
Was that goof Rider on the board?
adirondacker12800 Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 7:51 pm
Just another batch of people whom I would have removed from the State of California permanently if I could.
I’m sure they feel the same way about you…..
jimsf Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
And I couldn’t find the back up info fast enough to debunk them. What can you do when we live in a world where a woman who wants to run for president brings cookies to private school students in response to public schools banning sweets for health reasons when we have an epidemic of obesity and diabetes in children and people cheer the cookie gifting move on her part.
Its like we live in opposite land.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 9:17 pm
I don’t have the info on airports, but I do have plenty on cars and driving. It’s been posted here before, but it’s also available from some comments I made on the Nine Shift website; feel free to copy and past my material should you have occasion to do so, and just let the numbers speak for themselves, as Dave suggests below. It’s fun to watch the clowns try to argue against things like this, although also frustrating that the news people don’t publish this material like they should. Why should you and I have to do their work for them?
http://nineshift.typepad.com/weblog/2010/10/are-you-subsidizing-others-to-drive.html#comments
This brings up a question for Robert. Might it be a good idea to have some sort of reference section, a collection of “white papers” and links, along the lines of the commentary I have on Nine Shift, as a permanent part of the web page, along the lines of the glossary section? It might be of some help to people like Jim who need to look up numbers quickly, but don’t know where to find them fast.
Here is a British site (light rail) that has such material available. Of course, you are free to use what I’ve been posting, and if you want, I can put together the generational perspective (again!), with tweaks and tuning for such a permanent or sem-permanent use.
http://www.lrta.org/
Derek Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
Something like this, but for HSR: http://www.grist.org/article/series/skeptics/
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 9:33 pm
Whew! That’s more detailed than I had in mind. I do think we may need to keep it simpler, not everybody is going to have time to go through that “matrix,” but it may be useful at that. . .
jimsf Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 4:54 am
Ill post that link on the newspaper blog – but it wont do any good Im sure. Then they’ll all come after me again lol.
Dan S. Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 11:55 pm
I think it would be useful to have a web page that listed all the HSR systems in the world and their operating profitability (or losses). I keep hearing opponents saying that HSR is a money-loser, but I know it’s not. It would be nice to be able to say here (follow link) is a list showing how most HSR systems around the world are profitable.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 12:32 am
The Japanese systems are easy – the mainland JRs are investor-owned, so they post profit and loss statements on the net, in English. Those statements will show systemwide profits after depreciation, interest, and taxes (none of which the US road network has to pay).
egk Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 6:39 am
Speaking of profitable – just a reminder that it doesn’t need to be HSR. Any rail option that is time competitive with the car will make money these days:
http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2010/10/07/rail-birthday-amtrak-new-train-gets-one-year-profit-party/
It really is sad that the right wing won’t use appropriate government investment to let the market work its wonders in this domain.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 7:10 pm
Yes, yes, Amtrak has a small number of off-NEC lines that break even operationally. They’re a small minority of corridor trains.
Nathanael Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 9:09 pm
They’re the “fast enough, frequent enough, reliable enough” trains. Pretty straightforward, that is.
I really wonder how Seattle-Portland is going to be doing once the Pt. Defiance Bypass gets built (which is taking too damn long, and is the most delayed of the major improvements) — it’s already time-competitive with driving and flying, and I’d expect market share to really start to take off once the biggest reliability obstacle is removed.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 11:53 am
Not really… the most frequent corridor trains are Keystone, the Surfliner, and Empire South, allof which are money losers. Empire South is also one of the fastest corridor trains.
The Virginia services overperform, because of the direct connection to the NEC. The Lynchburg line also benefits from not being close to an Interstate. I’m not sure why the Lincoln Service and the Carolinian sometimes profit.
By the way, what the Lynchburg extension’s success means is that Amtrak should be looking at establishing Chicago-Kansas City corridor service using the Southwest Chief route. The Chief is already the fastest way to get from Chicago to Kansas City on the ground, but it’s not frequent enough and it’s hobbled by having to schlep to Los Angeles.
dave Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Been their and done that? I’ve learned my lessons. Don’t argue or reason with idiots, doesn’t work. I just put my opinion along with actual facts and they do the talking for me even though I always get ridiculous responses in return, I just ignore them.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 6:15 am
Tickled those brain cells again–didn’t Mark Twain say something along those lines, that it was like trying to teach a pig to talk, but all it did was waste your time and annoy the pig?
Nathanael Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 9:10 pm
Remember, in that sort of letters column, you aren’t really responding to the nuts, you’re providing facts for the casual readers so they hear something *other* than the nuts.
….but but but but…being stuck in traffic and burning oil is my favorite pastime!
=P
Nathanael Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 9:11 pm
We’ll build a special theme park ride for you, a road filled with stopped cars. You can get into one of them and push a button to burn oil and belch smoke. :-)
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 10:15 pm
Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho!
I’m just glad that Proposition 23 did not pass.
O/T: Dumbarton Rail may be back.
http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_16568495
Robert Cruickshank Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 3:39 pm
Excellent news. It’s a great project that fills a significant regional need. Obviously there’s quite a ways to go, particularly in securing the funding, but I am all in favor of it.
YesonHSR Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 9:27 pm
Have you heard anything regarding going after some of this money possibly being returned from Ohio and Wisconsin? And also what about the 3 billion from the New Jersey tunnel being canceled is dedicated truly the rail and can it be used for high-speed rail?
Alan F Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 6:50 am
No, the $3 billion of federal New Start funding that was awarded to the ARC project can’t be reallocated to intercity passenger rail. New Start is FTA money for local and city transit, not FRA money. There is already a land rush from states and cities looking to get a piece some of the $3 billion for local transit projects.
The $800 million that might be returned from Wisconsin and $400 million that is all but certain to be returned from Ohio is HSIPR stimulus money, so it will be reallocated to high(er) speed rail projects. La Hood made that very clear in rather blunt letters to Govs elect Walker and Kasich. If all $1.2 billion is returned, CA might get a piece of it, but, IMO, most of it should go to further improvements for partially funded corridors in the mid-West and mid-Atlantic: Chicago – St. Louis, Chicago – Detroit, Empire corridor in NY state, Keystone East in PA, maybe some modest amounts to SE HSR in NC and VA.
Nathanael Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 9:13 pm
There’s such a long list of good “HSR” projects vying for money; I just hope it gets allocated so as to *complete* projects, rather than spread around too thinly. Although I’d rather the money went to NY for our long list of Empire Corridor projects, I wouldn’t complain if the Richmond-Raleigh corridor was funded.
rafael Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 5:38 am
I’m not convinced this news is really all that good. Even though ridership projections have been revised upwards, Dumbarton Rail still isn’t properly integrated into a larger plan for commute-period public transportation between the East Bay and the peninsula. Using car to BART + BART to Union City + Dumbarton Rail to RWC + Caltrain + corporate shuttle to work doesn’t sound like an appealing proposition to me. It would probably still take longer door-to-door than driving, especially if you carpool.
In addition, if RWC is to have four tracks for Caltrain + HSR, either dedicated or used for overtakes, a number of issues still need to be resolved:
- First, can Sequoia Station in RWC accommodate six tracks either side by side or stacked or, will Caltrain have to integrate its peninsula timetable with services from across the Bay such that trains from the East Bay can run all the way to SF, with all the implications for platform heights?
- Second, will the schedule for northbound HSR trains be affected by eastbound Dumbarton rail trains or, will the tracks involved be grade separated?
- Third, does it make sense to build a new, seismically safe, double track rail bridge(or tunnel) across the Bay and then not use the – admittedly tight – southern turnoff of the Dumbarton wye at all?
There’s only so much money to go around for capital projects right now. To my mind, it makes eminent sense for Caltrain and CHSRA to anticipate in their scenario planning that there may well be a new Dumbarton rail link at some point in the future and that demand for new services such as Oakland-San Jose via Palo Alto or SF-Sac via Altamont may well emerge after it is built.
IMHO, two relatively inexpensive ways to alleviate commute-period congestion on the Dumbarton road bridge in the short term would be
1 – shift traffic from the vehicular lanes to the existing bike lane by subsidizing sales of (electric) bicycles to qualifying commuters and/or,
2 – expand express bus services on the carpool lanes, e.g. by leveraging secondary roads to connect residential areas in the central East Bay directly to clusters of employers in the peninsula, many of which are currently sited along the 101 rather than the Caltrain corridor.
yoyo Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 3:09 pm
Due to good timing of the project (during recession) BART’s warm springs extension seems to be significantly under budge, at least the tunneling phase. The track/station bid should be in early next year. I think if the whole budget continue to be way under budget, maybe the funds they “borrowed” from the Dumbarton rail project can be returned.
Peter Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 4:24 pm
I think that was listed in the article as one of the funding sources for Dumbarton Rail.
Jack Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 10:02 pm
I know. Just wanted to point out that it’s a good idea to build infrastructure during downturns.
How we will afford widening the freeways to add all these cars to the roads in the coming decades
Numbers bandied about for the amount of passengers the intercity trains currently carry on the NEC come out to “add a lane to I-95 or it’s alternates like the NJ Turnpike” Nice round numbers are 800 lane miles at 25 million a mile ( which is low considering what you have to build ) …. 20 billion dollars.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 9:58 pm
And that is just ONE corridor, and that’s only a low, low initial construction figure–doesn’t include maintenance, traffic problems during construction, traffic you’ll still have after construction, ultimate limits due to right-of-way width, continued problems with the fuel supply, oil wars, finance problems with alternate fuel vehicles (even we even get those).
And that low, low, construction figure may or may not include bridges. You cross an awful lot of streams going down the east coast, and some of them aren’t small; I think the Susquehanna is about a mile wide at Havre de Grace. That’s like crossing the Mississippi above New Orleans, and the Susquehanna has ice in the winter, too, which can do a wonderful job of scouring (and just plain pushing) at bridge piers.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 9:59 pm
!!@#$%&!! IF we even get those alternate fuel cars. . .
rafael Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 7:23 am
Why would all of those new-fangled electric cars be added to the existing fleet? Isn’t it far more likely that car buyers will consider replacing their existing vehicles with more efficient ones once gas prices reach the apparent psychological pain threshold of $4-$5 per gallon and/or their current vehicle has reached the end of its service life?
Also: electric cars are not a drop-in replacement because even propulsion systems based on the most modern motors, power electronics and Li-ion batteries can only offer an operating radius of 30-40 miles between refills IFF you drive very gently and avoid using the A/C. Sure, you can add a gasoline-powered emergency generator – sorry, range extender – but that adds even more cost.
If you really want to tackle US dependence on oil and the massive land/environmental footprint of the car/air culture, you need to look at radical alternatives such as progress towards walkable mid-rise neighborhoods/commercial parks + infrastructure for (electric) bicycles + reliably funded cross-linked transit + car sharing (Zipcar et. al) + affordable high speed rail w/ reliable broadband internet access on board.
The headline that the US is 90 years behind in all this is also quite misleading. On the one hand, the SEC requires oil companies to be extremely conservative in their published estimates of “proven reserves”: only what could be profitably recovered using only already-mature technology at estimated future world market oil prices may be counted. To avoid lawsuits, companies tend to pick very low numbers. If and when oil prices rise due to structural demand or structural political constraints on supply, the “proven reserves” go up even if no new oil has been discovered. In addition, the prospect of high prices prompts the industry to invest more in looking for new sources, typically reservoirs but increasingly renewables as well.
On the other hand, the US is in some ways better placed than Europe or Japan to accommodate a shift to a 21st century transportation model. Outside the Acela corridor, US cities and suburbs tend to have far wider streets and far more parking spaces than either of the others. That means there’s more land not already occupied by buildings that could potentially be repurposed for bicycles and/or transit and/or car sharing.
Second, the US is already the world’s largest market for hybrid electric cars and the largest prospective market for all-electric cars. In due course, consumers and transportation planners will figure out that (electric) bicycles plus the infrastructure to support them deliver more bang for buck, except – perhaps – in the context of car sharing. All those short trips tooling around town do add up to a significant fraction of gasoline consumption per capita.
Third, even in California, on-road fuel taxes are still well below those of other industrialized nations, providing a potential mechanism to discourage private car ownership and high annual mileage while simultaneously funding investments in alternative modes of transportation. Right now, raising gas taxes is the third rail of politics. On the flip side, radical spending cuts in entitlements and defense are just as threatening to elected officials’ job security.
Risenmessiah Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 10:31 am
What’s going to happen is that eventually homes will be designed to be far more self-sufficient energy wise. A lot of people are going to be “off the grid” using a combination of solar and other energy conservation techniques. Electric cars with a range of up to 250 miles will just be charged in your garage overnight using the house’s internal power source.
On the flip side, in urban areas, there will be still be highly connected grids for electricity, transit, and the like. It will just be denser, and not car friendly. Thus, there will be a noticeable urban/suburban split that has been blurred recently because local jurisdictions don’t cooperate and the state takes a noninterventionist approach.
The hard part isn’t going to be the technology. It’s going to be crafting infrastructure that reinforces a hard urban/suburban/rural ethos nationwide.
Dan S. Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 6:15 pm
rafael, I’d just flip your one to three, both in terms of effectiveness and in terms of radicalness. A gas tax increase is both the most fair and straight-forward way to transition our energy priorities as a nation and is also the most anathema to political discussion by any of the gutless leaders who deign to hold high office in this country. Not to mention the citizenry itself, which is showing an impressive degree of self-serving ignorance and willful indifference on this issue.
Just in time to prove my point, I see that politicians require complete retirement of their careers and full liberation from their constituencies before they can voice an honest or reasonable opinion about the fiscal realities facing the US, in this case a discussion that even touches on the inviolable gas tax itself.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/us/politics/11fiscal.html
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 7:54 pm
A friend of mine told me a while back of a Dutch politician who had retired, and said something along the lines of, “We know what we have to do to solve many of our problems. The difficulty is figuring out how we can be reelected after we take the actions the problems require.”
Nathanael Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 9:17 pm
Wrong about the range. Tesla’s $100K car and its forthcoming $50K car can get you 200 miles between charges, or so. Given that the fear is “I won’t find anywhere to recharge”, nobody’s going to make trips longer than 100 miles in them to start with.
Which means, well, yeah, they’re no substitute for longer-distance trains. And they’re the maximum you’re gonna get for the forseeable future.
And of course for shorter-distance travel, the limiting factor on cars is congestion. Which means they’re hopeless in significant cities.
So electric cars are suitable for a rural or outer suburban application, being able to drive to the nearest city with a train station. And that’s it.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 10:18 pm
And the congestion problems also mean we still need trolleys, suburban light rail lines, and possibly also interurbans, too.
No getting around it, we’ve hit the wall with cars, time to do something different.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 10:51 pm
References; general link:
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/
Electric car link:
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/05/the-status-quo-of-electric-cars-better-batteries-same-range.html#more
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 11:01 pm
Some people wouldn’t like the styling of Baker and Detroit electrics. Me, I see nothing wrong with them; they would fit right in with steam trains, trolleys, interurbans, and riverboats, all additional forms of transportation that can incorporate the best of civilized living. . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_Electric
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Electric
Hey, Detroit Electric is back!
http://detroit-electric.com/
Isn’t it neat how this company is doing something along the lines of what I suggested as a marketing strategy for HSR–recall the past, and use it as a basis for the future? Check out that they are using that old (and now retro) logo from the early days. Of course, the cars they are proposing still look like modern jellybean cars. . .yes, I know it’s at least partially about aerodynamics, but they still all look alike anymore. . .
Alan F Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 7:24 am
The New Jersey Turnpike widening project from Exit 6 (PA Turnpike extension connection) to Exit 9 in East Brunswick is projected to cost a cool $2.7 billion. Now, this is more than adding a lane, it is widening the ~25 mile 6 lane wide stretch from Exit 6 to Exit 8A to 12 lanes and another 10 miles north of there from 10 to 12 lanes. The 6 lane segment from Exit 6 to Exit 8A is a huge bottleneck believe me, I have been caught in it for holiday travel many times. But there is a certain audacity in going from 6 lanes to 12 with 12 lanes to run all the way down from far northeastern NJ to the lower central NJ connection with the PA turnpike. If 12 lanes is not enough in a generation, if a Gov. Christie type is in charge, then I guess the next step would to be pave ALL of central New Jersey.
That they can spend $2.7 billion for a 35 miles stretch of a Turnpike without much of a public fuss versus the fight over a few billion for HSR shows that the highway lobby is still in ascendancy.
Nathanael Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 9:19 pm
You know, how about converting that Turnpike to a high speed rail line? If you take *12 lanes* of width, one could surely run *two tracks* on fairly soft curves…. and think of all the spare real estate you’d recover. Stations would fit in the Turnpike footprint too.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 12:37 am
To what end? The legacy line is perfectly good for HSR, other than the curves in Elizabeth and Metuchen. It’s cheaper to ease those curves than to build 100+ km of HSR even on an existing freeway ROW, to say nothing of approaches from the stations to the freeway.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 3:32 pm
There’s no available ROW along much of the Turnpike – it’s asphalt from edge to edge. When it opened it was three lanes in each direction.
Slightly off topic – Boeing halts test flights of the supposedly fuel-efficient 787 Dreamliner…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11728915
LA Times: Ethics agency investigating trips by California high-speed rail officials
The state’s ethics enforcement agency disclosed Wednesday it is investigating several present and former leaders of California’s $43-billion bullet train project to determine if they violated regulations on receipt of gifts.
The investigation follows reports in The Times that officials with the California High-Speed Rail Authority took overseas trips paid for by foreign governments jockeying to help their homeland firms secure state contracts.
Though not providing specifics, Fair Political Practices Commission Executive Director Roman Porter said based on the paper’s reporting, his agency has “undertaken a proactive investigation.”
The inquiries are focusing on California High-Speed Rail Authority Chairman Curt Pringle and board members Quentin Kopp, Lynn Schenk and Tom Umberg, according to the FPPC’s website. Former authority executive director Mehdi Morshed, who retired earlier this year, also is being investigated.
Full story here: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/11/ethics-agency-investigating-trips-by-high-speed-rail-officials-.html
CARRD raised the issue of gifts at the board meeting during public comment asking Mr. van Ark to get ahead of the issue and proactively report any possible violations. Lynn Schenk later in the meeting asked van Ark to hire a full time compliance person to ensure they were following the law.
Peter Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 8:09 pm
So, the penalties for any confirmed violations are $5000 per violation? This is supposed to be big news?
dave Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 8:19 pm
I’ve always wondered, why do you and Elizabeth always bring links to this blog about the doom and gloom of this project? Like it pleases you to see it hurting? I’ve never seen either of you bring good news. Not that we don’t want to be factual, but it says alot. hmm, I wonder.
Peter Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 8:32 pm
They’re NIMBYs who don’t want the project to succeed at all. CARRD used to hide behind a veil of “neutrality”, but they’ve become more and more obvious in their opposition. I wouldn’t call them extreme, they’re not at the Richard Tolmach/Morris Brown level of crassness, but they’re definitely not neutral anymore.
Reality Check Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 8:44 pm
@Dave, you’re kidding right? Because whatever CARRD and/or its principals might claim, they’d love to see HSR die. “Done right” is nothing more than a fig leaf for most people or groups using that phrase to disingenuously deny their aim is to kill. Check out the YouTube videos of the HighSpeedBoondoggle.com group’s TEA-party-like rally in Burlingame, and you get a clear sense of this:
Boodoggle rally (part 1)
Boodoggle rally (part 2)
Boodoggle rally (part 3)
It’s been clear to me that “done right” is nothing more than “code” for kill the goddamn thing dead … now!
HighSpeedBoondoggle ran another full page ad in today’s Daily Post, by the way.
Nadia Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 9:06 pm
@Dave – We asked them to proactively report their violations so they could get ahead of the problem. If you listen to the public comment I gave at the meeting in Sacramento, you’ll notice I purposely did not expose the people who violated the code – we made them aware of the violations and asked them to take action.
I post this stuff here because the hope is that the supporters can use positive peer pressure to improve this project and ensure they don’t screw it up for CA and the rest of the United States. Most people on this blog support HSR, but that doesn’t give the Authority a license to violate the laws just to complete their project. That won’t help the project and I’m assuming as a supporter you don’t want that either. But maybe I”m wrong about that…
@Peter – $5000 violations aren’t the issue – the problem is they have 2 board members holding incompatible offices and now at least one other board member who illegally took gifts from contractors. This does NOT help and they need to scrub this project clean if they want any credibility – doing something proactive about this would go a long way.
BTW, if we were NIMBYs why would we bother to introduce ideas like CSS or use our 2 min of public comment at meetings to make suggestions on how to improve things? Instead, we’ve made it a point to talk to as many people involved with the project as possible and offer constructive suggestions.
An example: many months ago we spent 2 hrs on the phone with the web developer the Authority hired to re-do the website offering suggestions on how to make it more useful and user friendly. For example, we suggested that upon entering the web page, you could put in your zip code and it would spit out info about the closest segment near you, when are there upcoming meetings, who to contact for questions, etc. Obviously, they didn’t take the suggestion – but at least we’re trying.
@ Reality Check – CARRD was not part of the HSR rally you are referring to.
Peter Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 9:23 pm
$5000 violations are precisely the issue with the “accepting gifts” post that you made.
That has absolutely nothing to do with incompatible offices, which is a legitimate issue, but one that will mostly go away by the end of this year, when Pringle is no longer Mayor of Anaheim. Katz will most likely have to choose which position is more important to him. And that’s it.
Nadia Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 9:52 pm
sorry – I didn’t state that clearly – what I meant is that the “big deal” isn’t the $5000 violations – the combined effect of accepting gifts and incompatible offices together pose a problem that they should move to rectify quickly.
By the way, I have no problem with BOD members going abroad to learn about HSR systems – I actually think it is a good thing – but they should pay for that out of their own expenses so that the eventual foreign operators or suppliers decision isn’t tainted by gifts.
I do, however, think it is a problem when the board members have accepted gifts from contractors working directly on this project – which is what happened (the documents are on our website). Especially since they have a strict NO GIFT policy. These guys are all pros and they should know the rules. In fact, they recently reviewed these rules in fact and they failed to see the problems.
Peter Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 10:01 pm
Ok, so what do you think the remedy should be? Should the Board’s past decisions be thrown out? Do you think the Board members should be prosecuted for something?
I’m just confused as to what you think should happen now. If they “clean their act up”, then what do you think should happen? Are all of your complaints mooted?
Peter Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 10:06 pm
Because unless there is a remedy, your only possible purpose is to undermine the project overall.
Pat Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 10:28 pm
@Peter –
Nonsense! A perfectly reasonable purpose is to demand government officials follow the law.
If they don’t follow the law they the government officials should be fined or jailed.
If there are any tainted decisions, the decisions could be revisited. This does not mean that the project is “undermined”. Transparency and a clean government should be demanded no matter what the project is. No one should get a free pass just because the project is “good”.
Look at all the CIA operatives that engaged torturing and other war crimes. None of that has been prosecuted because the Iraq/Afghan War was “good”.
Peter, you are condoning law-breaking by demanding “get-out-of-jail-free” cards for ethic rules violations. How about you just demand that the ethical rules be followed in the first place?
Peter Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 7:26 am
You misunderstood. I was asking what the consequences are, not stating there shouldn’t be any.
Peter Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 7:50 am
I’m just thinking of the ethics rules for lawyers, for which there are definite consequences for violations thereof.
Practically speaking, there is no point in screaming and yelling about ethical violations when there is no consequence for their violation.
It’s like the whole “incompatible offices” thing. It doesn’t appear to me that anyone was even aware of the law when they first started violating it. All the Board members appear to have presumed, albeit incorrectly, that they were probably covered by the same type of exemptions that allowed them to hold multiple offices in other situations.
I’m not arguing that because of that, the Board should get a free pass. I’m just pointing out that there’s a lot of smoke being made over issues that will resolve themselves quite quickly (Pringle ceasing to be Mayor, for example), or the Legislature will step in and resolve the problem by exempting the CHSRA Board from the law, the same way they exempt all the regional transit board members.
“Peter, you are condoning law-breaking by demanding “get-out-of-jail-free” cards for ethic rules violations. How about you just demand that the ethical rules be followed in the first place?”
Yes, of course all public officials should comport themselves to the highest standards of ethics. I’m pointing out the practical problems of enforcing ethical rules that (a) have no consequences for their violation, (b) make no sense, or (c) are so obscure that no reasonable person would be placed on notice as to their existence.
Pat Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 10:33 pm
@Nadia –
The people here are all fanbois that think the HSR board walks on water and can do nothing wrong.
I have never seen Robert or the other usual suspects, ever, ever look critically at the BoD decisions. If you criticize the CAHSR BoD you must be a NIMBY, anti-HSR or in bed with the oil companies.
Just look at Reality Check /Peter’s response.
Joey Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 10:57 pm
The people here are all fanbois that think the HSR board walks on water and can do nothing wrong.
Believe me, this is increasingly not true. There are a growing number of people here (I am one of them) who staunchly believe that HSR is not only desirable but necessary, but have lost all confidence in the Authority’s ability to make reasonable decisions.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 11:24 pm
I have never commented on the Board of Directors because I’m not from California, and thus do not feel qualified to do so. However, I do know something about railroads, and railroad opposition, having lived next to the former for almost my entire life and living through the latter first hand. Much of what I see here in the east is also apparently in the west. That’s why my comments and occasional questions run the generalist way they do.
I understand the concerns you bring about following laws; I am an auditor for the state of West Virginia, which makes me something of an enforcement official. Needless to say, I think proper proceedures should be followed. At the same time, there are members of the opposition who take a lot of shortcuts, don’t always tell the whole truth, have been known (in the case of the road lobby) to bribe people, did destroy transit systems (National City Lines case), have exibited an age or generational bias or prejudice, and have personally insulted me to my face. They have also successfully blocked rail projects that would have been better than pursuing more roads. They play dirty and like it.
Do I wish things were different? I can’t tell you how much I wish that was so! From what I’ve read here, Robert, Clem, and myself should be appointed to the board; we would do the job right, with compatable platform heights and off-the-shelf control systems to start with (although I’m afraid I would disappoint the Peninsula crowd with wanting to avoid tunnels and trenches due to cost reasons). You can guess what the chances of us getting those positions are! At the same time, I have come to the opinion that if we really shoot for perfection for some of this, we’ll get nothing, nothing at all, and we’ll be stuck in our cars, just where the oil and auto industries want us, while we send people to die just so we can drive.
Do I see a similar fight to clean up the highway department? Does such a fight exist? If it does exist, why does it seem to be so low-profile? Why is it (apparently) only here, in regard to rail?
dave Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 11:59 pm
Not at all, most of us agree the Authority isn’t perfect, I’m all for fixing it. The problem is that most people who bring these things up on here come off as saying the project thus far is unreliable and “not done right” because of the staff used in approving these plans. It’s like the Authority is being watched by vultures for one mistake so they can fly all over it and take it to the news as a way to smear them instead of skipping all of that and really going directly to them to fix the problem.
Robert Cruickshank Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 7:14 am
I don’t spend my time playing the opposition’s game of “bash the board” – but at the same time I have not defended everything that they have done, and remain open to some sort of reform of the Authority and its board, something I hope and expect to see happen in 2011 with a new governor.
Part of this stems from my own personal politics – I don’t really care about who reported what about which trip. I just don’t. I want the HSR project built and that to me is FAR more important than whether ethics laws were followed to the letter.
At the same time, because I want the HSR project built, I do find it concerning when the Authority board alienates potential allies and supporters through poor decisionmaking and poor public outreach. Just because I won’t play the FUD game doesn’t mean I wink and nod at every action by the board.
YesonHSR Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 8:38 am
Please the Nimbys and their backers are non-stop with ANY excuses about how “horrible” things are about HSR…look at that Mayor in PaloAlto with his constant negative spins..bolth sides are not Angels
StevieB Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 11:48 am
Palo Alto Mayor Pat Burt said, “If we were as voters promised a high-speed rail system, but instead we have a train system that goes back and forth between Fresno and Bakersfield. Is that what we were promised?” He implies that the initial segment is a complete railroad instead of the starting point of a statewide system.
Peter Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 12:36 pm
He is an idiot and a liar.
Nadia Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
C’mon – Brian Stanke of CA4HSR in the same interview said “The voters of California didn’t say, build a quarter of a project and make it the best quarter of a project you can. They voted to build the whole project. We need to plan to build the system out, not plan to build half the system and then stop.”
Clearly they probably both said much more and were edited down to a sentence or two each.
Van Ark in the board meeting made it very clear that the money available will NOT cover the cost of buying train sets or even building a maintenance facility because it is a system and you need to lay down a certain amount of track to be able to warrant the expenditures. In the meantime, they are trying to work out a deal with Amtrak to run trains on the tracks they lay down in order to satisfy the “independent utility” clause of AB3034.
If we only have enough money for a CV section and nothing more, are we following the mandate of the voters? That is a fair question. The mandate was to build a system (and develop the business plan on how to get it done). We don’t have a plan for financing the full system and according to the Audit hearing van Ark doesn’t expect to be able to complete a new business plan until April 2010. Should we expend public funds without a plan or should we wait and make sure the business plan is finally able to come up with something that doesn’t violate the mandate to NOT have subsidies.
These are tough, complicated issues that can’t possibly be summed up in a 1 sentence answer.
Peter Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
No one is planning on building only the CV. We’ve known from the start that funding was limited. Morshed’s plan to start building every section at once was not practical.
We only have money to for a CV section NOW. We know that the Feds won’t be doling out a lot of money anytime soon. I think it’s time for the Authority to start getting more concrete funding offers from SNCF, Siemens, China, Japan, and any other interested parties. That’s the only way we’ll be able to build the entire system.
synonymouse Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
Unrealistic in the current climate. California is $25 billion in the hole. The Repubs will immediately try to throttle LaHood’s spending.
Jerry should do the right thing by the voters, spell out just how many billions are going to be required and put the whole project back before the voters to verify if they really approve blowing that much dough on a borderline at best scheme while in a fiscal emergency. Jerry has to recognize this could be the mother of Big Digs and would be his legacy.
Peter Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Au contraire, this is EXACTLY the time for these types of negotiations! This would be exactly what the GOP wants: private financing of large infrastructure projects. If a compromise can be struck between the White House and Congress to fund infrastructure upgrades, which everyone knows and agrees are necessary, then the Feds would probably be willing to issue loan guarantees to improve the loan terms. Mica has already said he is a big supporter of PPP, and has expressed support for “true” HSR. I think the timing is perfect.
synonymouse Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 3:14 pm
There is simply not going to be any private financing of the CHSRA scheme because it will not be profitable. It is a clone of BART on a statewide scale – same mo, which is political patronage machine, PB, militant public employee unions contributing heavily to said political patronage machine.
No private entrepreneur will be willing to put up any monies that are at-risk. Taxpayer funded guarantees or some other kind of consideration will be necessary.
Why should the taxpayers fund a project which might very well end up being sold, most likely at a loss?
StevieB Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
It may be time to learn to say “please” and “thank you” in Chinese. China is very willing to construct and operate California rail using their technology and trains. China made no mention of taxpayer guarantees.
Nathanael Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
I think perhaps syn should stop making stuff up.
Reality Check Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 10:57 pm
@Nadia — sorry, I wrongly implied CARRD was part of the HighSpeedBoondoggle’s Burlingame rally (I actually didn’t know one way or the other). Of all the watchdog groups, CARRD is the classiest one … but I can’t seem to shake the gut impression that its principals would breathe a big sigh of relief if the project were to die and be shelved for the indefinite future.
@Pat — I guess I “must be a NIMBY, anti-HSR or in bed with the oil companies” … because I think HSRA and PRP are screwing up lots of really important things very badly. Like Clem and Richard, I’m really unhappy about a number of bone-headed key design/policy/alignment decisions (unethically/dishonestly sandbagging/killing Altamont, lack of track/signal/platform-sharing with Caltrain, way suboptimal vertical alignment and station-designs, etc., etc.).
YesonHSR Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 9:22 pm
The boondoggle rally and this website is organized by that guy name RussCohen.. he at one time ran for city Council of Burlingame.. this whole thing was a Burlingame city sideshow even the mayor was there.. I doubt there was 400 people there just for that.. bet some passing by and wanted to see what all the commotion was about.. either way out of an area 4 million people and the county that passed high-speed rail by 65% this is your usual group of trackside NIMBYs and other ideologically opposed crowd.
dave Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 12:21 am
The guy who put this rally together said he voted for it. I almost choked when he said that, that’s just a lie. He would not even think about voting for this project now or in 2008. How do I know, I just have a felling. I don’t need to talk to or hear someone talk too long before I sense what their all about.
If you watch all of their video’s like I did (had too much time today), even when you try not to judge them or call them names and TRY to listen to their arguments you just can’t. It’s suicide to stand their and try to think like them because it’s just so badly misinformed or just a big pile of lies. I caught these people purposely lying to the audience and everyone agreeing. Nobody at this rally wanted anything to do with HSR, they only accept it in a tunnel because it’s the next best thing. You can tell this when the speakers said they support HSR, they almost got chased off the stage with their muskets.
dave Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 12:22 am
feeling, dang.
YesonHSR Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 8:29 am
Very true and alot of the “horrible” spin about HSR replayed over and over..Here in the BayArea with such high votes for HSR these people always say “they voted yes” they just dont want to be painted as a nayasyer with theiir true views
Elizabeth Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 9:08 pm
We are the transparency and accountability people. We are not the cheerleaders. We are not the tunnel or die people. We focus on the rules and the process with the hope that leads to a good solution.
I believe hydrogen’s greatest failing is not the size of its storage but the tremendous amount of energy necessary to make it. Battery electric cars use around one-fourth the amount of electricity that a hydrogen car would need if its hydrogen were manufactured from (electric) hydrolysis.
However, there is one bright spot. Some owners of the Tesla Roadster, one of the only production electric cars available, report that they are able to completely offset their electrical usage with solar panels. It’s not clear that everyone will have equivalent results, but at least it’s possible.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 8:57 pm
A fun thing to throw in is to ask “How do we pay for the road system if the vehicles on it don’t use gasoline and don’t pay fuel taxes?” This is and has been a problem for the various highway departments for years, and the problem wasn’t even caused by something as radical as electric or hydrogen cars; it was brought about by people buying a lot of little 4-bangers instead of V-8s in the 1970s and 1980s.
Whether or not you are a fan of rail and HSR, you do need to come up with something different in road pricing, something not dependent on fuel consumption. Fixed gas taxes made sense in the days when you had low inflation and everybody drove Flathead Fords and Stovebolt Chevys, and they still made sense in the days of small-block, Y-block, and Wedge-Head V-8s (Chevy, Ford, and Plymouth engines, respectively), but they don’t make near as much sense today.
Nathanael Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 9:25 pm
Well, OK, here goes.
Local access roads to be funded by (very) local property taxes.
Upgrades relative to that for the benefit of automobiles — that means more than a two-lane road, or extra width or shoulders, anything you wouldn’t get in an obscure cul-de-sac — to be funded by new taxes on the sales of automobiles.
Major upgrades which are not expressways or bridges — roads wider than four lanes anywhere — to be stopped and removed. That is simply catering to congestion, and it’s an error.
Expressways and major bridges to be tolled.
Seems like some combination of this would work nicely.
@Robert –
Please don’t call hydrogen a fuel source. Hydrogen doesn’t supply energy, H2 *stores* energy. Energy must be used to extract the hydrogen from water or some other fuel stock. A portion of that energy is returned when the hydrogen is recombined with oxygen in the fuel cell.
Because this process has a net negative loss of energy, hydrogen should really be viewed as a battery, not a fuel.
The real question to ask is where is the energy going to come from to crack the hydrogen bonds to get the raw H2. Iceland, with their copious geothermal energy, could get the H2 without burning coal/oil. But most other countries would not have a carbon-free way of cracking the hydrogen bonds.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
Important questions, indeed. Water is one of the most stable chemical compounds on the planet; in other words, it’s hard to break it up, and of course, once it is broken up, the hydrogen will anxiously want to combine with the oxygen again given an opportunity (re: Hindenberg). I recall that for the electrolosis breakdown being discussed, it takes 7 units of electrical energy to get 1 unit of hydrogen energy, so unless your electrical source is at least 7 times cheaper than your hydrogen, you’re in the hole.
Most commercially available hydrogen currently comes from breaking down natural gas. It’s somewhat cheaper than the electrolosis method, but it’s still not that cheap, you’re still tied to a fossil fuel with its ultimate supply limits, and you still have the infrasturture problems of supplying all the gas stations and equipment to refuel a new motor fleet. And on top of all that, you still have to find a parking space. . .
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 9:44 pm
!!@#$%&!! No edit function!! Can’t correct typing and spelling errors! !!@#$%&!!!!
I’m no computer whiz, but I’ve noticed a couple of sites that do have edit functions that only allow you to correct your own posts. Below is a favorite one of mine that does incorporate this feature.
http://www.rypn.org/
http://server.rypn.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=1
Basically, you have to register with a user name and a password. This registration and login allows you to post, edit, and also to look up other posters and send personal messages and/or e-mails off the main page. This particular site also requires a sort of interview with the moderators; they’ve had problems with passionate people, too!
wu ming Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 10:40 pm
consider the lack of an edit f(x) a quiet admonition to measure twice before you cut once.
Scott Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 7:35 am
“Because this process has a net negative loss of energy, hydrogen should really be viewed as a battery, not a fuel.”
Every process has a net negative loss of energy. Its called entropy, aka the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Eric M Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 10:01 am
Not the way BMW built their hydrogen car
Off topic, has anybody notice Caltrain posted Peninsula Rail Program HST Station Meetings presentations on its website.
Also off topic, but a special for Robert–The Monterey Branch of the Southern Pacific:
http://www.abandonedrails.com/Monterey_Branch
Looks like Robert would have a NIMBY problem in Monterey, too. . .sheesh! What’s the big deal about bringing back what used to be there? “Dude, where’s our train?”
http://www.montereypeninsula.info/delmonte/proposals.html
Monterey Branch freight train, reportedly near a place called Castorville, in steam days.
http://www.yesteryeardepot.com/SP2554.JPG
If you’re also an old movie fan like me, you might also want to check out the film, “Clash by Night,” starring Barbara Stanwyk with a secondary lead actress, one Marilyn Monroe, much of which was filmed in Monterey in about 1950. Its opening sequence is almost a short documentary on the fishing industry in Monterey at the time.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 10:56 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clash_by_Night
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx_qikliZ2s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02MWHkKvo3w
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 9:17 am
Out of curiousity, how much of Monterey in 1952 that shows up in “Clash by Night” is still there? Are some of those locations still recognizable, including the house that Stanwyck walks up to near the end of the clip?
jimsf Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 3:01 pm
She’s always amazing
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 5:50 pm
Indeed she is, and so is the rest of the cast–Paul Douglas, Robert Ryan, Marilyn Monroe, all of them in this flick.
Stanwyck had what seems to have been an unusual quality. She seemed “bright,” as in smart, as well as pretty. I think she would have been a most interesting person to meet.
This one is a personal favorite, and like “Clash by Night,” has a great cast. The plot has some pretty large holes in it, but the movie is still fun. . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVTF5XIpqL0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EQ4KHUKi1I&feature=related
Stanwyck was 75 when she received a special Oscar; how did she manage to look so good that late?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBhPI95FDZw
I haven’t checked them very much, and I must say Robert is very tolerant of us going off topic on things like this for fun, but have you noticed it seems the opposition sites never have anything like this? Do you get the impression that I have, that the opposition is only angry, only frightened, only bitter? Do you get the impression the opposition doesn’t know how to laugh?
Robert Cruickshank Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 7:22 am
There are a few NIMBYs around here, and I’m fighting them too. Their main concern is with Window on the Bay Park, located next to the commercial fishing wharf. That park, along with our section of the Monterey Bay Recreation Trail, was created with the use of state passenger rail funds we received in the late 1970s to purchase the old SP Del Monte ROW in order to someday return passenger rail service to the region.
Now I can understand that, after 30 years, people don’t want their park bisected by a light rail corridor. Fair enough. That’s why TAMC proposed putting the tracks on the side of the park, right next to busy Del Monte Avenue. The impact on the park would be extremely minimal – and in fact the park would be expanded as TAMC would buy a few buildings that the city has already identified as targets for purchase.
The city council is going to vote sometime in the summer of 2011 whether to allow TAMC to use the park for the light rail system. If they vote no, then the city might be forced to repay the state for the funds they gave us over 30 years ago to purchase the ROW – money the city does not have.
So we’ll see what happens.
J. Wong Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 8:46 am
I always thought they should run something like the Napa Wine Train to Monterrey, maybe from San Jose.
Drunk Engineer Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 6:22 pm
You mean historical, museum rolling stock operation, with slow and infrequent service? Sounds like a job for Amtrak.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 9:52 pm
Actually, it might be a good demonstration to run this with old, historical equipment to show how we’ve regressed; I would even go so far as to suggest this is a service in which you could use late-model steam locomotives, provided the track is up to using these engines at speeds up to 80 or so, perhaps a bit faster. I still recall how impressive it was to ride behind a steam locomotive on the Chesapeake & Ohio in the 1970s, watching it outrun tractor-trailers on the parallelling West Virginia Turnpike between Cabin Creek and Kanawha City (the latter just outside of Charleston, the state capitol). Nice long train, too, something like 24 cars, most of them from the 1920s, with plenty of rivets stitching them together, a fair number of them real heavyweights with six-wheel trucks. About half of the cars had natural air conditioning, i.e., you opened the windows; they let in some magnificent sounds, although you also let in all manner of smoke and cinders from a coal-fired locomotive, particularly around the third car (guess how I know that).
C&O 614, the last steam passenger locomotive built by a commercial locomotive works (Lima-Hamilton, 1948), in excursion service in New Jersey:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhGoR1cpdrM&NR=1&feature=fvwp
Union Pacific 844; what’s notable here is how easily the engine is working, not breathing hard at all; valve motion hooked up to run on relative thimblefuls of steam, light, clear fire, throttle nowhere near wide open (hence almost no noticeable exhaust chuffing, what you hear in the soundtrack is mostly rod bearings, which typically clank away like this at all speeds).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl736E_VnB4&feature=fvsr
Chartered photo freight trains, Michigan; not really high speed steam operation, not passenger operation, but a wonderful evocative feel for steam railroading as we steam freaks love to imagine it–nice weather, good-sounding engines, and all the stuff around, like vintage tractors, stations, grain elevators, old trucks–all that suggests that Monterey line does look like a good candidate for a steam operation, if you could get Union Pacific to go along.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXJ9eKwYSpU&feature=related
Alon Levy Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 12:43 am
Those trains were faster not because they were better, but because the lines were properly superelevated for express passenger trains. Today, when they’re superelevated for coal trains, speeds are much lower, especially in mountainous areas.
More OT: HSR supporter Jim Costa declared victory in the 20th Congressional race today.
Adding to the OTness: For whoever asked for it (I think it was thatbruce) I’ve mostly completed a railroad map for Oregon in Gmaps.
thatbruce Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Most nifty and welcome ;)
OT: For those interested in noise – the engineers debuted some noise information during the Morgan Hill City Council Study session on Nov 3rd. It is on the Authority’s website under the SJ-Merced section in the library.
I’d be very interested in hearing from the technical folks on this blog about the information presented.
If you’d like to watch the presentation, you can see it at http://vimeo.com/16491077 starting at min 53.
For background – during that meeting the engineers explain they will be building the system for 220 but that they will only go 185 through Morgan Hill and Gilroy due to sound issues (which is news). You’ll occasionally hear a voice off to the right side chiming in – that is Rod Diridon.
Peter Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
That is interesting. I’m glad they’re now being somewhat more forthcoming about noise impacts.
Would it make sense, when coming from Pacheco, to slow from 220 to 185 then back to 220 and then back to 185, back to 220, and then back down to go into San Jose? I have the feeling this is setting up going to an East Gilroy station, negating most of the easy-transfer-bonus for any connecting transit to Monterey and Santa Cruz County.
I wonder if the FRA is ever going to release its updated noise handbook.
Robert Cruickshank Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 9:51 pm
Word on the street is a Morgan Hill station might come back on the table. Agree that anything but a downtown Gilroy station is hugely problematic for us here in the Monterey Bay area, which is slated to provide a significant portion of the riders for a Gilroy station (whereas Morgan Hill is too far out of our way if we’re headed to the Central Valley or SoCal).
adirondacker12800 Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
There’s no reason why the train from Monterey has to go to the existing Caltrain station.
Peter Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Where else is it supposed to go? Especially if Capitol Corridor takes over the Caltrain service between Gilroy and San Jose as part of extending to Salinas, not stopping in downtown Gilroy would be stupid (skipping the Gilroy commuters).
Robert Cruickshank Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 4:04 pm
Exactly. The Gilroy station needs to be multimodal, and unless the Capitol Corridor and the Coast Starlight are going to be routed on new tracks to serve an east Gilroy station and then returned to the UP Coast line, it’s not going to work.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 4:26 pm
To the HSR station where Caltrain and any legacy Amtrak services will go.
Peter Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
So you’re saying Caltrain and Amtrak should no longer serve downtown Gilroy, but instead should build new track out to a new East Gilroy station and reconnect to UPRR on the other side? In other words, double the environmental impact, and double the cost for that area? That’s exactly why they decided to not carry forward the Gilroy Station Loop alternative.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
the thriving metropolis of Gilroy should have two train stations? Ya can call one Grand Central Terminal and the other one Pennsylvania Station…..
Peter Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 5:42 pm
No, YOU want Gilroy to have two stations. The rest of us want a sane, single, multimodal station.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
IF all the trains, as in “To the HSR station where Caltrain and any legacy Amtrak services will go.”t there would be one train station. I realize the concept of having more than BART serve A station is a bit hard to grasp for Californians but HSR, Caltrain, whatever manages to hang on and fester from legacy Amtrak, can all use the same station. Work it right and they can all merrily use the same platforms! Imagine that, diesel fumes wafting through the catenary. Amtrakl passengers using level boarding! They might even do this thing called cross platform transfers…..
Peter Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 6:11 pm
“I realize the concept of having more than BART serve A station is a bit hard to grasp for Californians”
Fuck you.
The idea is to not move the station to a beetfield location in order to connect it to future services coming from the south. Have you ever even looked at the map?
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Easy on the language, Peter, and easy on the blood pressure, too. (I should know a little about it, I have a touch of it and need to get rid of some weight.)
Peter Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
My blood pressure is fine, thank you.
I’m with Spokker in that online decency is overrated.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 7:02 pm
and the services from the south can go to the HSR station where the Amtrak and Caltrain trains go…..
Peter Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 7:38 pm
Again, are you suggesting the trains from the south go to a new beetfield HSR station and skip the downtown? Because they can’t do both.
Joey Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 5:29 pm
The station loop would not have had double the environmental impact. It would have avoided the impact of running trains at full speed through downtown while avoiding the impact of building a large station complex in the areas east of Gilroy.
Peter Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 5:41 pm
It would have had essentially the same footprint impacts in terms of severance of parcels, etc. Also note that it appears that the Authority is no longer planning on running trains through Gilroy at full speed.
Joey Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 7:08 pm
185 isn’t far below full speed.
Joey Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
The Coast Starlight doesn’t stop at Gilroy.
Peter Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 5:43 pm
It probably will when Gilroy has an HSR station…
Peter Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 4:54 pm
The Peninsula Rail Program’s noise and visual impact update is interesting, too.
Nadia Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 8:12 pm
thanks – the PWG meeting was cancelled (Giant’s game and low attendance) so perhaps this is what they were going to pass out.
Drunk Engineer Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
Nadia,
I’m not an accoustics expert, but the noise impact is quite excessive. If engineers cannot muzzle the decibel level coming from Rod Diridon, it will have detrimental effect on the project. Retirement would appear to be the best solution.
Nadia Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
LOL – did you watch the whole video or just that piece? He definitely does a lot of talking in this meeting…
FOXBusiness news agrees we are behind the world in High Speed Rail. Jenifer Bloom notes that we are behind Europe.
Opponents claim it is the cost of passenger rail that is holding us back in a country with a $14.3 trillion gross domestic product, the largest on the planet. She notes California has shown support unlike any other state and compares to Switzerland where taxpayers agreed in a series of referendums to contribute a total of $1,300 each for the base tunnel project. Switzerland is making sacrifices to build high speed rail crossing the country that takes unwanted vehicles from its roads. If Switzerland, a country with less population than Los Angeles County, can invest billions in transportation then California should take notice. The time is now for California to improve transportation.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 7:40 pm
This is interesting–are true conservatives, i.e., Fox News members, beginning to see the light?
Some of the things that stand out about the critics here (in the comments section) and elsewhere are how ignorant they are of the real costs of driving, apparently ignorant of the prospects of unaffordable oil, and generally quite arrogant (and angry) in their attitude of just thinking “trains are no good here.”
I wonder how that generational or age pattern we’ve spoken of fits; there isn’t quite enough in the comments for me to judge ages, which you can sometimes do.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 8:24 pm
Fox News members, beginning to see the light?
The ones in Washington DC want to escape to New York. The ones in New York want to get back as fast as possible. The fastest way to do that is with Acela. Or when they are spending their own money a Regional.
Donk Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 8:26 pm
This is great. I see some momentum building behind the comments from Mica, that slow rail is a waster of money but true HSR may not be. As long as the Republicans have something to bash that Obama has done, namely funding the slow rail projects, they might let true HSR off the hook. This way they can look good by apparently shooting down Obama’s plan. If Obama had only put money to CA and FL, maybe they would have instead said that money should be spread around, just to be seen as opposing Obama.
Peter Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 7:39 am
Maybe that was Obama’s sinister plan all along… Muahahahahaha!!!
jimsf Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 4:21 pm
He’s pretty smart, they might get totally played in the next two years. who knows.
wu ming Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 7:09 pm
as long as it gets the CAHSR built, i’m happy. i feel bad for the people in the midwest who are going to get crushed by the lack of stimulus + eventual spikes in gas prices, though. it’s going to hurt a lot of regular people, many of whom didn;t vote for the austerity crowd.