"Never before have so few with so much promised to take away so much from so many and then laugh their asses off as the so many with so little vote for the so few with so much." A James Pence Quote
"American Politics, a sport for the rich and enslavement for the rest of us." A James Pence Quote
Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence
If we reduce our oil consumption by 5% a year over each of the next twenty years, that allows use to be free of our oil addiction if we choose to be. But as I observed last week, since 60%-70% of our oil consumption is in transport, that means that in each decade, seven out of the ten 5% reductions have to come out of transport.
I set forward three of the seven for the coming decade last week: the Steel Interstates, national funding for sustainable power local transit corridors, and a target of 5% "Active Transport" - pedestrian and cycle transport.
I have written at some length on the Steel Interstate, but this was the first airing of the rest of the proposal. I promised to go into more depth this week ... and that's what I aim to do today.
Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence
There was recently a fight over the 3C starter line for Ohio's High Speed Rail system, which Governor Strickland won ... and the presumptive Republican nominee for Governor took this position:
... GOP challenger John Kasich, who said money awarded to Ohio for the 3C rail project could be better spent on Ohio roads and highways.
These are High Speed Rail funds. Arguing that they could be "better spent on Ohio roads and highways" is a blatant effort to mislead Ohio's voters into thinking that this $400m will stay in state if Republican sabotage of the project succeeds.
And it seems that coverage has buried one of the ledes in this story - getting the presumptive Republican nominee on the record as a slimy politician willing to mislead the electorate in his efforts to sabotage investment in Ohio transportation infrastructure.
This is an important fight for the dream of an Appalachian Hub ... since the Ohio Hub is a northern anchor for the system, and the potential ridership with the Ohio Hub in place is substantially greater than the potential ridership without it.
Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence
Last week I presented a draft of a national Steel Interstate plan. The focus was on the Institutional Framework required to be able to build it, including the source for the interest subsidy to finance its up front capital cost.
Possibly lost in the wall of words was an important point, which was focused on by some commentary: the users are paying the capital construction cost. As a country, we need it, so as a country, it makes sense to find a way to jumpstart it and have it available for the oil prices shocks that are coming in this next two decades.
... but once it starts getting used, that's what will cover the original construction cost. One way we can tell we are heading toward Economic Freedom is that it helps pay for itself.
It often seems there is a deep canyon lying between what we can do and what needs to be done as a community, as a local region, as a state, as a national region, or as a nation.
But the Steel Interstate is a national program that a coalition of determined groups of advocates scattered across the country could get going. It bridges regional interest conflicts, and offers a way to advance some of the interests of so many - Interstate motorists, advocates of freedom from cars, organized labor, the largely disorganized army of the unemployed, advocates of ecological sustainability, advocates of mitigating climate chaos, and Progressive Patriots, to name just a few.
Of course, I want to talk process, but it seems to be network maps that catches people's interest. So how I will go about this is alternating Map and Process.
Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence
When looking at the famously mis-titled "Vision for High Speed Rail in America" map trotted out last year, showing those of state-planned High Speed Rail corridors that have already applied for and received official designation as High Speed Rail corridors ... there are ghosts on that map.
The Ghosts of Trains Past, also known as the Amtrak long distance routes.
As discussed on November 8th of last year in Rescuing the Innocent Amtrak Numbers from SubsidyScope, some of these ghosts are healthier than others. One of the ones in the most dire shape is the Cardinal, responsible for the only line on that map that enters either West Virgnia or eastern Kentucky.
Why it does so badly, and how it might be fixed up a bit, after the fold.
Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence
Today's Sunday Train is focusing on attacks that have been launched against Ohio's 3C plan, which was granted $400m in the HSR round of Stimulus II grants. There are attacks from Republicans, engaged in their usual games of negotiating in bad faith and basing critiques on focus group testing of talking points rather than substance. There are attacks from "transport experts", calling for all of our HSR spending to be focused on the coasts with no systems developed to serve the needs of flyover country.
There is even an attack launched against the award of funds to Ohio by President Obama's Department of Transportation paradoxically by a kossack who goes by the name of "Ohiobama".
So today is focused on examining the attacks and seeing what there is to them. And lest it seem that this is a single-state issue, many of these same arguments may be used against all of the plans already in place between the Rockies and the Appalachias, as well as the Pacific Northwest and the South Atlantic Coast.
Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence
I've been like a hare chased by a hound this weekend, darting this way and that, so while I've got a lot of topics I could be writing on, I've got nothing coherent for a full fledged diary. So this week will be bits and pieces and this and that.
Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence
Disclaimer: Nothing said here should be taken to imply that airport/train connections are the primary transport task for either light rail, mass transit, conventional intercity rail, or high speed intercity rail. In other words, the focus of an essay in a regular weekly series on one particular topic does not imply anything along the lines of "most important thing".
However, recently, I keep running into the issue of taking the train to the airport. I read an recent article in an air travel industry publication that focused on the airport connections associated with the projects funded in the $8b HSR funding. I read an older piece about the proposed intermodal station in Chicago that would allow our Ohio trains to get to O'Hare. And the proposal to terminate the California HSR at the redesigned Lindbergh Field came up as part of the discussion at the California HSR blog.
So with the Super Bowl coming up to distract things, I succumbed to what was clearly fate, and am going to discuss taking the train to the airport.
Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence
{I'm still sick, so I am going back to a 24 July 2006 dKos post, slightly updated (additions/amendments in braces and italics like this paragraph) to recall why the Sunday Train goes out under the "Living Energy Independence" banner.}
All to often, the idea of Energy Independence has its priorities reversed. Scratch under the surface, and all too often the question lurking is, "How can we get as close as possible to Energy Independence without any real changes in the way we live and move?"
Stop and think about that ... really think about it, with your heart instead of your habits of thought. People - good people - are fighting and dying right now in Iraq {and Afghanistan} in a failing occupation, following a successful invasion ... in pursuit of a continued Energy Dependence policy.
In your heart, do you think that is a fair price to pay? If you do, do not read any further.
Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence
What is the CEI? It is the "Cost Effectiveness Index", used to evaluate applications for capital improvements in transit. As described by Yonah Freemark at The Transport Politic:
In reviewing transit capital projects to fund with New Starts grant money, the Federal Transit Administration evaluates proposals from a variety of perspectives. Since 2005, it has placed an overwhelming focus on one criterion, requiring a medium "cost-effectiveness" rating, which values predicted overall travel time saved by commuters likely to use the new service.
... but there's a problem with that.
Of course, this goes directly to last week's Sunday Train looking at Dr. Dan's Rail Plan, since fixing the flaw in the CEI is a big part of the nitty gritty to getting the 90%+ of the money Kentucky pays into the Federal Transit Fund to be able to come back for transit projects in Kentucky.
Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence
Doctor Dan Mongiardo, Kentucky's Lieutenant Governor, has announced that he is running for the Democratic nomination for the Kentucky Senate race, to take on whoever wins the Republican nomination to challenge for the seat that Senator Bunning (R-Big$$$) has announced he is giving up.
Lots of politics to unwrap in that paragraph, which I'll leave to the political wise-guys. The Sunday Train today is about Dr. Dan's Rail Plan.
As far as I can tell, Dr. Dan's Rail Plan has four main parts, and regular readers of the Sunday Train will recognize much from each of the four parts:
Support for expanding Kentucky's existing and potential Amtrak routes into 110mph Emerging Higher Speed Rail corridors
Support for regional rail services to complete the above state rail map
"Hybrid Light Rail" to provide cross-metropolitan local rail services, principally to Louisville
Heavy investment in complementary local transit, including bus rapid transit and a high frequency driverless monotrain system for Kentucky.
Last year, I told VP Joe Biden about the Sustainable Electric High(er) Speed Rail I wanted for Christmas (cf. links below). It involved electrifying the 30,000+ miles of STRACNET, and establishing 100mph Rapid Freight Rail paths, including support for running 110mph or 125mph long haul electric passenger services on the Rapid Freight paths.
In short, I wanted Joe Biden to take Alan Drake's plan and just fracking DO it.
I didn't get it for Christmas last year - but then, I guess he was only VP-elect last 25DEC08. The post today is to look at the progress toward the goal. The answer, surprisingly, is that we have made substantial progress. Certainly we are not halfway there, yet, but we are much further along than I expected to see.
Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence
I've been reading James McCommon's Waiting on a Train. And in cowed deference to the FCC, I will put the disclaimer up front that, yes!, I was more likely to read it and talk about it because Chelsea Green gave me a free review copy - since I would otherwise have had to wait until both it and I was in the library at the same time ...
... {of course, making me more likely to read it and talk about it is a gamble, since I'm not going to change my view of it because its a free copy - so if you have any publisher friends, warn them that if they reckon a book is a piece of garbage, they'd be better advised not to send a review copy}
The Chapter that is inspiring today's Sunday Train is "Amtrak Cascades: it's all about frequency".
I return to 2007 for "America was made for HSR" (Agent Orange links retained as the other blog I was posting to at the time is no longer up)
Wow, what a ride. Sometimes on Thursday ...
Thursday 22 March 2009, that is ...
... it felt like the America was made for High Speed Rail diary was going 200 mph itself. And I kept the ride going, cross posting the diary on the Euro and Booman Tribunes. And based partly on comments here and partly on comments there, kept polishing up the map.
Like the first diary, this is only a sketch, and 200mph routes are not the be-all and end-all of passenger rail, and this isn't a silver bullet ... but damn if it isn't one silver BB that is cool as all hell.
Now, I'm going to say the lessons follow below the fold in no particular order, so that if you see an order, I can call it serendipity, and if you don't see any order ... I told you so. ...
... (and anyway, any excuse to use the word serendipity is a good excuse, it's such a lovely word ... and you'd never believe how I stumbled across it ... but that, dear readers, is another story) ...
... with some additional reflections from late 2009.
Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence
Programming Note: I recently received for review a copy of Waiting on a Train by James McCommons, published by Chelsea Green Publishing. I'll likely be talking about it next week, but til then, you can read James Kunstler's Intro online at AlterNet.
Back in early September, I discussed the Steel Interstate in the context of the Appalachian Hub. The concept of the Steel Interstate is electrifying main rail corridors and establishing 100mph Rapid Freight Rail paths.
The broadest application of this concept is the proposal to Electrify STRACNET, the STrategic RAil Corridor NETwork.
The Appalachian Hub, recall, is a hypothetical Emerging / Regional HSR passenger rail network, modeled on the Midwest Hub and Ohio Hub plans.
And it is hypothetical, of course, because the state governments of the Appalachian regiona have been laying down on the job. The High Speed Rail corridor planning framework established under the Clinton Administration in the 90's is a bottom-up system, with states establishing High Speed Rail commissions, advancing plans to the stage of gaining designation as a HSR corridor, sorting out the financing, and applying for Federal funding.
A few weeks back, SubsidyScope, "launched by The Pew Charitable Trusts, aims to raise public awareness about the role of federal subsidies in the economy", pursued its mandate into transport subsidies, coming out with a study with the headline figure of $32 subsidy per passenger for Amtrak.
Why Amtrak? Why not provide a headline figure on federal subsidy per motorist or airplane passenger? Critics of the report suggest that the answer is simple - consider, for instance, Charleston WV mayor Danny Jones:
Jones admits Amtrak relies heavily on subsidies, but so do other modes of transportation, he said.
"I think it's just easier to see how much of it's subsidized with Amtrak," he said.
And there is a lot of merit in that. Further, SubsidyScope is not focusing on Government subsidy, but on Federal subsidy. Not only is it harder to analyze government subsidies to driving and flying, given how many direct and indirect subsidies there are to take into account - but many of the subsidies are at the state and local government level, so for SubsidyScope's purposes they "don't count".
But its worse that that. Even accepting SubsidyScope's twisted framing of the issue of government subsidies - the actual core part of the analysis that they themselves perform is hopelessly bad. The gory details, and then the numbers that pity forced me to rescue from the clutches of SubsidyScope, below the fold.
The big knock against high speed rail is, of course, that it does not run door to door. This is, of course, why the passenger air transport market is such a strategic target ... it is an existing fuel-inefficient mode of transport where everyone travels as a pedestrian. And a well designed high speed rail system will deliver the target market among pedestrian travellers from as close or closer to their origin, and drop them off as close or closer to their destination.
But those are not the only passengers that HSR will be catering to. A term I have heard railfans use for this type of activity is "recruiting" patronage, so, after the fold, I step through some of the important current, and potential, recruiters.
Let construction or upgrade of a rail corridor be proposed, and almost immediately the cry goes up, "but we can't afford it! It costs too much!".
Confusing the response to this cry is that there are two quite different types of "cost too much" - real, and financial.
There first "cost of rail" question is the real cost question: what is the full economic benefit, including all material and energy impacts saved versus other alternative, versus the full economic cost.
___________
Note: The first kind of "cost versus benefit" question is the kind that Ed Gleaser fumbled so badly when he assumed Zero Population Growth in east Texas, no congestion today between Houston and Dallas on the intercity road network, either deliberately or through negligence bypassed important intercity transport demands along the route of his corridor, and presumed that the only available option was the most capital-intensive type of rail corridor, the all-new, all-grade separated, Express High Speed Rail corridor.
____________
The second "cost of rail" question is the financial cost - given the complex, sometimes ad hoc, and often inconsistent sets of rules we have established for allocating resources for both investment in transport infrastructure and paying for transport operations, how do we "pay for" construction or upgrade of those rail corridors that our best analysis of cost and benefit indicate are wise investments.
That second question is what I am looking at today.
Transport For America (t4america.org) has a call to action out on the Climate Change Bill. "ACES" passed the House, and the corresponding (but of course not identical) legislation is presently up for consideration in the Senate.
The basis of the call for action is straightforward:
1% of the revenues raised by the Carbon Fee is permitted to be used for clean energy transport - not even mandated, but optionally may be used for that among a range of other options.
Transport is responsible for 30% of the CO2 emitted
thus, "You can't solve 30% of the problem with 1% of the funds
Now, about 14% of carbon fee revenue is dedicated to emissions reduction, so that is 7.2% of the emissions reduction budget allocated that is the maximum allowed to be spent on installing existing clean energy transport. Based on CBO estimates of carbon fees, the maximum amount that states would be allowed to devote to clean energy transport is:
$391m in 2011; rising to
$1.3b ($1,323m) in 2019
By contrast, the bill authorizes utilities to tax customers by $1b-$1.1b a year over 10 years to finance the installation of Carbon Sequestration Technology, which is the excuse given for permitting continued construction of coal-fired generating plants. (source: 1Sky analysis, pdf)
This means:
The most promising single opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in transport inside a decade, electrification of the STRACNET long haul rail freight network, is entirely out of bounds for any funding
Funding for electric rail and trolley bus passenger transport requires first gaining approval through Federal programs that discriminate against energy-efficiency
Today, the focus is on one lovely rhetorical ploy used by anti-rail advocates to try to put one over on people with limited experience with trains. This relies on the false framing that "trains is trains", and uses something that is true about a particular kind of local rail transport to mislead people about 110mph Emerging High Speed Rail in particular.
Randall O'Toole, working for The Cato Institute (Sourcewatch), recently completed another of his series of propaganda pieces against High Speed Rail, for the "Show-Me Institute". Sourcewatch does not have much on the "Show-Me Institute", but it does note that in 2006, a contribution of $50,000 to the "Show-Me Institute" appeared in the annual report ... of the Cato Institute.
And what is this shell game?
High capacity, high frequency local mass transit rail systems yhtive best with high population densities
Therefore the higher the population density, the better for High Speed Rail
Therefore the Northeast Corridor shows the best that is possible for High Speed Rail
Didja catch it? Local mass transit rail and intercity High Speed Rail share people sitting in carriages with steel wheels running on steel rails - nowhere near enough in common to support the weight of the "therefore".
In reality, the Northeast Corridor could well be over the threshold where population density starts to undermine High Speed Rail operating ratios.
There was recently a fight over the 3C starter line for Ohio's High Speed Rail system, which Governor Strickland won ... and 
It often seems there is a deep canyon lying between what we can do and what needs to be done as a community, as a local region, as a state, as a national region, or as a nation.
Today's Sunday Train is focusing on attacks that have been launched against Ohio's 3C plan, which was granted $400m in the HSR round of Stimulus II grants. There are attacks from Republicans, engaged in their usual games of negotiating in bad faith and basing critiques on focus group testing of talking points rather than substance. There are attacks from "transport experts", calling for all of our HSR spending to be focused on the coasts with no systems developed to serve the needs of flyover country.
I've been like a hare chased by a hound this weekend, darting this way and that, so while I've got a lot of topics I could be writing on, I've got nothing coherent for a full fledged diary. So this week will be bits and pieces and this and that.
Disclaimer: Nothing said here should be taken to imply that airport/train connections are the primary transport task for either light rail, mass transit, conventional intercity rail, or high speed intercity rail. In other words, the focus of an essay in a regular weekly series on one particular topic does not imply anything along the lines of "most important thing".
All to often, the idea of Energy Independence has its priorities reversed. Scratch under the surface, and all too often the question lurking is, "How can we get as close as possible to Energy Independence without any real changes in the way we live and move?"
What is the CEI? It is the "Cost Effectiveness Index", used to evaluate applications for capital improvements in transit. As described by Yonah Freemark at 
Doctor Dan Mongiardo, Kentucky's Lieutenant Governor, has announced that he is running for the Democratic nomination for the Kentucky Senate race, to take on whoever wins the Republican nomination to challenge for the seat that Senator Bunning (R-Big$$$) has announced he is giving up.
Last year, I told VP Joe Biden about the Sustainable Electric High(er) Speed Rail I wanted for Christmas (cf. links below). It involved electrifying the 30,000+ miles of STRACNET, and establishing 100mph Rapid Freight Rail paths, including support for running 110mph or 125mph long haul electric passenger services on the Rapid Freight paths.
I've been reading James McCommon's 
The broadest application of this concept is the proposal to 
A few weeks back, 
Let construction or upgrade of a rail corridor be proposed, and almost immediately the cry goes up, "but we can't afford it! It costs too much!".
Today, the focus is on one lovely rhetorical ploy used by anti-rail advocates to try to put one over on people with limited experience with trains. This relies on the false framing that "trains is trains", and uses something that is true about a particular kind of local rail transport to mislead people about 110mph Emerging High Speed Rail in particular.
