Joseph Romm has made a number of very good points in his new Salon piece (and accompanying Gristmill post) on the problem of peak oil. He is, in my view, quite correct that oil prices will continue to increase based on supply and demand fundamentals. He is right that alternative oil source development would be a monumental mistake, and that biofuels are unlikely to be much help either. And I'd like to strongly associate myself with his statement that a solution to the climate problem is also a solution to the peak oil problem.
But I strongly disagree with him when he writes,
We have the two primary solutions to peak oil at hand: fuel efficiency and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles run on zero-carbon electricity.
It is entirely unreasonable to believe that automobiles will not remain a key part of the nation's transportation system for the foreseeable future, and so there are good reasons to support policies encouraging fuel efficiency and plug-in technologies. At the same time, our best hope for near-term reductions in emissions is a significant increase in transit investment.
An obvious advantage to transit is that it doesn't require the development of new technologies (although new rail technologies are constantly being developed). Old trains running on old systems in places like New York, Boston, and Washington are reducing per capita emissions and oil consumption this very moment. Most transit systems are electrified, suggesting that as the grid gets cleaner, so too will transit. And there is massive latent demand for new transit construction. All that's required to jump-start investment is a shift in federal funding priorities. A 25 percent reduction in federal highway spending would clear the way for a tenfold increase in annual federal transit spending -- sufficient to produce a sea change in the way cities build their transportation networks.
Commitment to transit is also key because it solves problems that automobile efficiency and electrification do not; namely, epidemic congestion and poor land use. We can't afford to ignore either. As a nation, we lose $80 billion a year in household and business wealth due to congestion -- a financial resource that could be spent enriching our lives or solving other problems. The addition of hybrid or electric vehicles to automobile fleets will do nothing to slow the growth in this figure. Hybrids contribute to traffic jams, in which dirtier cars sit alongside clean ones, idling away, wasting fuel, and spewing carbon.
By reducing the price incentive to conserve fuel, hybrids and plug-ins will generate an incentive to increase vehicle miles traveled. This increase may not entirely erase efficiency gains, but it will be counterproductive in other ways. Sprawl makes it more difficult to walk and bicycle between destinations, and it reduces the utility of transit -- all better options for the environment. Sprawl is also associated with an increase in house size, and therefore in the energy required to heat and cool homes. And there is the environmental loss associated with greenfield development to consider.
This stands in stark contrast to experiences with new transit lines and systems. Transit-oriented development has given rise to walkable communities, boosted property values and tax bases, reduced trips and per capita emissions, and insulated residents from increases in congestion and the price of gas. The demand for transit has not nearly been sated, and increases in driving costs will continue to make public transportation an attractive solution for most American cities.
Obviously, transit won't work for all cities or for every neighborhood. We have been sprawling for over half a century now, and that has placed millions of Americans in environments insufficiently dense to support public transportation. But as people like Brookings Institution scholar Christopher Leinberger have pointed out, premiums on home and office rents in walkable areas indicate that the market would like to see more density in neighborhoods and a transportation system fit to accommodate that density.
We should give the market what it wants. Transit investments help to solve several problems at a stroke -- not just the climate problem and the peak oil problem, but also the congestion problem and the sprawl problem. This is no fantasy. Right now, despite a federal government hostile to transit investment, cities like Dallas and Charlotte are developing public transportation systems. Despite government funding that heavily favors highways, Los Angeles is busy expanding its transit systems. New plans are being developed in Albuquerque, Atlanta, Detroit, Norfolk, Phoenix, and Raleigh, among many others. I hope that within a few decades we will have rolled over the nation's entire vehicle fleet to all electric automobiles. In the meantime, we should help local governments deliver alternatives right now, by clearing the way for construction of new transit capacity.
Nigeria’s oil pollution is stark example of resource curse, says Amnesty International
Comments View as Flat
Jon Rynn Posted 3:52 am
01 Apr 2008
Why is it forgotten?
A few months back, I managed to get both Romm and Nordhaus to agree on something (via the comments section): they both "like" public transit. But that was evidently the end of it. If you check the major environmental websites, at best there is lip-service to transit.
I'm beginning to think that a major impediment may be ideological. Transit must involve the government, to build the systems, obviously. Even though it can be argued that the times are ripe for arguing for greater government involvement in the economy,, transit is too government-oriented for the current conventional wisdom, apparently in the environmental arena as well.
I'm not arguing for Soviet-style intervention, and many here have talked about all kinds of interesting ways for the government to be involved. I'm simply pointing out that when environmental groups concentrate on "government-led market-based solutions", they usually ignore "government-led construction-based solutions", most particularly, transit.
I suppose the other problem may be the political calculation that the environmental "audience" is mainly suburban, and so wouldn't be interested in transit. But as Ryan points out, even suburbanites are more and more open to new transit systems.
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Ryan Avent Posted 4:34 am
01 Apr 2008
I can't figure it out, either
The constituency is clearly there. I can see why politicians might be hesitant to argue in favor of transit; it sits in the "urban issue" category that only inner-city leaders are allowed to talk about on the campaign trail. That doesn't explain why so few intellectual types embrace transit. It's odd--transit is a far more realistic and cost-effective solution to these problems than some other ideas which get tons of airtime.
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:30 am
01 Apr 2008
What's particularly strange...
...is that light-rail and other transit initiatives are happening without the benefit of any organized "progessive" push, and then there was this 12 billion dollar bill that went through Congress too. It's one of the few environmentally-oriented ideas that the public is interested in.
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WWAGD?! Posted 5:34 am
01 Apr 2008
Deus Ex Nuclear
Forget saving your carbon pennies, greeners...this guy has figured out how to generate electricity directly from radiation efficiency.
Now radioactive waste is fuel for your electric bike!
http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn13545-nanoma ...
"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual." -- Galileo
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Tom Philpott Posted 6:40 am
01 Apr 2008
Big Green and transit
I always assumed the Big Green groups has decided that transit was a non-starter with the public (which i suppose it was when gas was $1/gallon). Now that things are changing and evidence is turning up that people want transit, I have no idea why NRDC, etc., seem to have no use for it. I guess since they're already pushing hard for one big gov't program--biofuel--they're sheepish about asking for another. The difference, of course, is that we can see examples of public transit everywhere that work, whereas biofuel looks increasingly ridiculous.
Ron Steenblik's group figures that we're dropping upwards of 6 billion per year on biofuels, a number slated to rise steadily over the next 15 years. Can you imagine if transit infrastructure had that level of support?
Victual Reality
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NiraliSherni Posted 7:18 pm
01 Apr 2008
Very good post
And i totally agree with you when you say "so there are good reasons to support policies encouraging fuel efficiency and plug-in technologies. ". This is the reason that i think that more companies should be trying to provide us the opportunity to shift to greener means of transport, by putting their resources to developing and producing greener vehicles such as EVs etc.
-http://www.zapworld.com
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spaceshaper Posted 12:02 am
02 Apr 2008
More:
Yes, a very good post. Couple of thoughts I'd like to add to this discussion:
First, I suspect that one of the reasons that public transportation is such a hard sell in this culture is the frequent use of the phrase "mass transit" by its proponents (thankfully, none so far in this thread). This is a culture of individualism, and few people want to think of themselves as part of a herd, delivered Metropolis-style to their place of mass employment by a relentless piece of unthinking, unfeeling machinery. The days of such concentrated delivery of ant-workers to the factory gate are gone - the watchwords of our culture are diversity and pluralism, and this applies to our transportation needs as much as anything else. "Mass transit" inevitably skews perception toward large monolithic centralized systems rather than the flexible systems we actually need and are fully capable of creating. Furthermore, the phrase is simply not accurate: it doesn't fit taxis for example, which in some form or another are an essential part of any comprehensive public transportation network.
So I'd like to make a plug for "public transit" or "public transportation" as the standard term of art.
My second point follows closely from the first. We cannot afford to abandon the suburbs. There's just too much invested there, culturally and emotionally as well as financially. Neither can we afford to leave them as they are: the personal automobile infrastructure around which they have been built will not be sustainable in the long term whatever the automotive fuel. We need adaptive re-use programs for the suburbs which will make them resource-efficient. This means building schools in the midst of where the homes are (yes, this means they will likely be smaller and perhaps have less focus on athletics, neither of which would probably be a bad thing) and developing all the other resources of daily life in close physical proximity to the people who need them.
So to me, Joe's analysis for dealing with peak oil needs two additional legs, not one:
- Excellent, comprehensive multimodal public transportation systems designed with overall system efficiency in mind.
- Thoughtful re-purposing of our existing building and development infrastructure as well as intelligent regulation of new development in order to reduce the overall volume and intensity of the transportation needs which those systems will serve.
Handily enough, that tripos would go a long way toward necessary reductions in transportation-related carbon emissions too.The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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Jon Rynn Posted 12:23 am
02 Apr 2008
On suburb adaptation --
This is an interesting line of thought. I know that there are several New Urbanist type projects being done in sprawl-y situations -- we were just in the Norfolk Va area, very sprawly, but Virginia Beach just put in a "Town Center", which was a new urbanist project, and downtown Norfolk is getting some "walkable" development. So the question for the suburbs is, can centers be retrofitted? (I did a post on this a while back).
The second question is, can bus rapid transit be brought to the suburbs, and part of that is, where? Not all suburbs are created equal. Some, as in parts of Long Island, are right next to a commuter railroad. Some really used to be towns, and their town centers can be revived. So it really is a large issue.
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Jon Rynn Posted 12:32 am
02 Apr 2008
and "mass transit"
spaceshaper, I'd go even further and maybe replace "public transit" with something that is more concrete, visual, and perhaps, somewhat attractive to the public: "trains". This conjures up high-speed rail, light rail, subways, commuter rail. Or, if you also like buses, "trains and bus rapid transit", even if people don't know exactly what that is, it sounds different than buses, which suffer from a "smelly and noisy" image problem.
But I still think there is a deeper problem: trains,etc (uh oh, another phrase!) perhaps conjures up 1) government and 2) cities. The images of both need to be expanded to include something positive and beneficial.
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John Dewey Posted 1:12 am
02 Apr 2008
Town Centers? just nostalgia and hype
I haven't seen Virginia Beach's "Town Center", but I have seen the one in the affluent suburb of Southlake, TX. From in front of the storefronts it appears similar to the nostalgic view most people have of small towns. But instead of mom and pop retailers it houses Banana Republic, Williams-Sonoma, Crate and Barrel, and numerous other chain retailers.
About 150 townhouses have been built adjacent to the town center, within easy walking distance. That's enough for locals to claim this is a mixed use development.
The reality? Southlake's Town Center is just another shopping mall. The parking lots to the north are huge, and crammed with vehicles. Shoppers drive to the Town Center from all over Southlake and also from the five adjacent suburbs.
How is Southlake Town Center any different from Grapevine Mills Mall or Vista Ridge mall or any other mall in the north Texas? Large apartment complexes surround every shopping mall I've seen, and house many more residents than do the few high-priced townhomes around the Town Center. The customer base of this Town Center and the other suburban ones I've seen is primarily vehicle-based.
Town Centers may be nostalgic, but they are still just suburban shopping malls.
If the Virginia beach Town Center is really any different, I wonder why it required 3,200 parking places in a covered parking garage. Surely not for the 175 condos and 341 apartments it is trying to sell and lease.
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:18 am
02 Apr 2008
Put the parking underground or in buildings...
...and put some "town" type buildings in there -- like a post office, library, and make sure there is a supermarket, but I guess the other problem is that the residential area has to be able to increase in the immediate, walkable vicinity.
I think New Urbanist projects have been criticized for many of the reasons you cite, John, but Ryan has written about development outside transit hubs (I think we discussed that one before), and I was trying to find something positive. It may be that areas with "old town centers", like here in Evanston, Illinois, that declined and then had a renaissance, are better bets.
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amazingdrx Posted 1:38 am
02 Apr 2008
Mass transit
Safety is the biggest problem. Safety of the train or bus itself and personal safety on the train or bus. Only pricey mass transit of the executive type is safe in this respect.
With the poor growing ever poorer and warehousing substituted for schooling, low level violent street crime is on the rise. And of course it will invade mass transit. It's cold outside, the homeless and desperate can sleep, ride, and victimize the elderly and the weak.
Another result of the great bushwacking. A safety net for the desperate is far cheaper than crime, the "justice" system, and incarceration.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Ryan Avent Posted 1:49 am
02 Apr 2008
Retrofitting suburbs
Jon, it's not easy to do this, but it is possible, and often quite successful. Washington provides many good examples, some of which have been built in isolation, many more of which have been built around Metro stations. Two key things about such efforts: 1) suburban development is rough on local budgets, and so local governments are increasingly looking at densification as a means to boost tax base and reduce per capita infrastructure spending; and, 2) as I note in the post, rent and price premia for these new walkable developments indicate a lot of unmet consumer demand.
A planned extension of Metro's Orange Line, recently nixed by the FTA (strongly anti-transit under Bush) would have paved the way for one of the most significant land-use shifts in recent history. Tysons Corner, a car-clogged suburban shopping mall and office park, would have been turned into a gridded downtown, served by four Metro stations. The federal share of the project was quite small relative to comparable highway plans, but the Bushies never seem to fail to make the wrong decision in such cases.
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:51 am
02 Apr 2008
Let's hope the next administration...
...is a little more forward-thinking.
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Fred Camino Posted 2:53 am
02 Apr 2008
mass transit once flourished without government
I'm beginning to think that a major impediment may be ideological. Transit must involve the government, to build the systems, obviously. Even though it can be argued that the times are ripe for arguing for greater government involvement in the economy,, transit is too government-oriented for the current conventional wisdom, apparently in the environmental arena as well.
But what is so insane about that statement is that mass transit requires no more government involvement than car-culture, and in fact, at least historically, it involved significantly less.
If you recall, before the auto, the United States had a much smaller government. Cities also had extensive urban rail, run by private companies. Los Angeles, the current hub of everything car-culture for the last 60 years, used to have the largest urban rail system in the world, over 1,100 miles of it. And it was all the product of private enterprise - government at any level was not involved. The right-of-ways were purchased, the tracks were built, and the service was operated all without public monies.
Then came the Great Depression, and the New Deal, and the government decided to make automobiles the de-facto national mode of transportation. Thousand upon thousands of miles of auto-roadways were built, not by private companies, but by Federal and Local governments, using public monies. Not surprisingly, by the end of the 1950's, private interurban rail transit in the United States was dead. How could it survive in the face of heavily subsidized competition in the form of the government sponsored car-culture?
Mass transit did return, as subsidized "public transit", to meet the needs of those who could not afford the high cost of entry into the car culture. Thus mass transit became not a mode of transportation, but a mode of mobility welfare. To put things in perspective, whereas Los Angeles used to have 1,100+ miles of urban rail before the government got involved, we now have 73 miles of urban rail. And it costs untold billions in tax payer money.
So what happened was we went from a completely private and functional transportation system to an inefficient and completely government run transportation system. Do not be fooled when car-culture wonks tell you that the automobile is not subsidized, for it has always been subsidized. Mass transit, on the other hand, was born and functioned off the American ideals of private enterprise, and the subsidization of the car mutated transit into the form we see today.
People will say, "the interurbans died because they could not be profitable in the marketplace". Well, number one, it was not a fair marketplace and, number two, when is that last time you saw a profit-loss report for an auto-roadway? Was the Arroyo-Seco Parkway - the first freeway built in the US - profitable? Of course not.
The question is, can our transportation system ever return to its roots? I'm doubtful. Things will only get more convoluted as everyone vies for a tiny piece of that shrinking funding pie. But, imagine if you will, had the government not intervened in the first half of the 20th century. Imagine had our transit system been allowed to grow naturally. I picture a balanced system where cities remained compact, the most economical modes of walking, bicycling, and mass transit were used on a daily basis, and personal automobiles were used for weekend journeys on private roads out to the nearby low-density countryside.
A man can dream, can't he?
MetroRiderLA - The Los Angeles Transit Oriented Lifestyle Blog
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Jon Rynn Posted 3:21 am
02 Apr 2008
Back to the future
Basically, the civilization took a very wrong turn about 80 years ago when it became apparent that a one-time gift from past, oil, was very abundant. Had that not happened, we'd be discussing different modes of transit, not cars.
The good news -- I think -- is that you can point to, at least, the pre-1920s America in which rail of all sorts provided a very well-functioning system. It's an example of something that worked.
I don't know why NYC's subways used to be private and had to be taken over by the government -- maybe the same reason, building of roads. I think the only way transit could be built by private companies at this point would be if the automobile was banned inside cities, otherwise investors would think the risk was too high.
But you bring up a good point -- government in the service of cars/suburbia is somehow not big bad government (sort of like the military for the right), but transit seems like big bad government -- I think.
So is the problem cultural -- people just have to want to be able to get around without driving a car? (I certainly want to).
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Gar Lipow Posted 3:31 am
02 Apr 2008
Mass transit Government
> Los Angeles, the current hub of everything car-culture for the last 60 years, used to have the largest urban rail system in the world, over 1,100 miles of it. And it was all the product of private enterprise - government at any level was not involved. The right-of-ways were purchased, the tracks were built, and the service was operated all without public monies.
Highly misleading. Cable companies purchased franchices from governments along public roads and right of ways.(They also sometimes purchased private rights of way, but these were trivial compared to the public ones.) Often they were granted for a fraction of their value. I think this was a good deal for cities - even though there were periodic scandals associated with streetcar franchises. However to pretend that the streetcars were purely public entities is nonsense.
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John Dewey Posted 4:23 am
02 Apr 2008
Forget mass transit, embrace sprawl
And a dream is all it is. What doomed streetcars in the U.S. is dooming them everywhere in the world where property is available for expansion: prosperity. Few people, given the choice, will live crowded together when they can enjoy the freedom of their own private space.
Movement to the suburbs predates the automobile. Cities spread along rail lines far away from central business districts. Once economical personal transport became available, and once incomes rose to take advantage of it, sprawl took off.
Government may have built highways, funded by user fees in the form of tolls and gasoline taxes, of course. But highways and roads are what voters wanted, expressed through their elected officials.
Personal transportation is simply more convenient. Voters will continue to petition government for more road money. Automobile and energy companies will continue to meet consumers' demands for that transport.
If we somehow run out of fuel for internal combustion engines - which I think is unlikely for many decades if not a century or more - sprawled suburbanites will be using electric cars.
The intelligent action for planners is to match consumer's desire for single-family detached housing with the suggested reduction in fuel availability. That can easily be accomplished by the de-centralization of workplaces. Geographic dispersion of workplaces and homes allows workers to live in the homes they desire and also enjoy short, inexpensive commutes.
Sprawl is the solution to rising energy costs and the alleged GHG crisis.
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Fred Camino Posted 4:34 am
02 Apr 2008
re: Mass transit Government
So private companies worked with governments to get land at a discount along public right-of-ways... they still built and paid for the "roads", aka tracks, that supported the transportation mode. So maybe not a "purely" private venture...but still not the same as government sponsored transportation system.
MetroRiderLA - The Los Angeles Transit Oriented Lifestyle Blog
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:18 am
02 Apr 2008
So, John, it is indeed cultural
I never liked living in suburbia, and there are certainly many people (don't have any figures) in Manhattan and other cities that don't. In fact, property values in dense city centers are even going up now, while they are going down in exurbia. So some people like it, some don't -- as long as I have a choice, it's cultural.
If you are being overly optimistic, and peak oil (and peak coal) and climate change are immediate problems, then it doesn't matter what people want, the society will have to adapt (and I don't have a crystal ball, it could very well involve electric cars and suburbs).
I like to think that part of the problem is that cities have been underfunded and badly designed, and that reversing those problems might convince another chunk of the population that they prefer walkable neighborhoods to sprawl. So rethinking cities and towns is, at the very least, prudent.
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John Dewey Posted 5:42 am
02 Apr 2008
Let each culture pay its own way
I agree that people have different desires. I do not agree that your property value assessment is valid across the U.S. Certainly those cities which have retained strong central business districts will see higher property values near center cores than in the far suburbs.
Housing in close proximity to workplaces continues to be more valuable. What has happened in the more modern cities is the dispersion of workplaces. Free markets and the availability of inexpensive land has combined to allow homebuyers with different desires both live in the neighborhoods they desire.
My issue with planners and environmentalists is their insistence that the predominant culture subsidize the minority one. It is apparently their intent to force change onto my culture, which is not going to happen. In the meantime, subsidization of your culture in modern cities have given us boondoggles such as Dallas light rail, a system that has cost $5 billion but only serves 30,000 people a day.
I try to have patience with the insistent argument that proper urban planning will change my culture to be closer to yours. If it were just argument, I wouldn't care. It's when you reach into my wallet to fund your new urban experiments that I get bothered.
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:58 am
02 Apr 2008
That's the art of politics
We have millions of people, each with different immediate concerns, desires, long-term goals, and God knows what else. Each wants/expects society to go in a particular way. The problem is to 1) pay for the societal infrastructure, and 2) do it as democratically as possible. So we engage in discourse as part of a process of trying to figure out the best way forward for the society as a whole.
Since we each have individual desires but the society tends to go in one general direction, we argue over that general direction. Now, it seems to me that when the large majority of citizens plus the elites are tending in one direction -- surburbia, for instance -- it's almost impossible to change that.
Societies that have a consensus on how things should work sometimes hit limits which reality imposes -- say, if oil runs out and there is no alternative, or if some other critical resources (like the climate) turn against a particular civilization, which has happened plenty of times in the past. Chances are, business-as-usual will prevail, and many (including myself) are very pessimistic about what that means.
Now, my pocket has been picked by the military my entire working life, and by plenty of other business (like highways) I don't like either. But since we only have democratic politics as a way to figure out what to pay for and how (and it's much better than a dictator doing it), everybody's pocket has been picked as far as they are concerned.
I doubt that whatever is being spent in the Dallas area on public transit, relative to the entire budget, is particularly burdensome. However it happened, some money got funneled to public transit -- and as we've been discussing here, it probably had very little to do with environmentalists, the big organizations aren't very interested in public transit. For all I know, more pressure came from local businesses then any organized political group.
If by some miracle the society decided to follow the advice of environmentalists (or some of my "utopian" ideas), it would certainly be because of a very large consensus within the society, particularly if, as I suspect, most of the elites would not be supportive. So I really wouldn't worry about a nondemocratic regime being imposed on society -- the bigger worry is whether the global ecosystems (and that includes resource availability) will support what we have now.
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Pangolin Posted 5:59 am
02 Apr 2008
Personal Rapid Transit
The problem with expanding streetcar networks is that we've grown accostomed to burying our infrastructure under our streets and much of it has to be re-routed when you plant light rail on top of it.
Personal Rapid Transit systems could operate on very light overhead monorails and offer distributed point to point service in individual pods. There is nothing new to this technology as this is exactly how large car parts are shipped around assembly plants.
Advantages of Personal Rapid Transit
I personally favor the jpod concept as it has the coolest website and would potentially have a very small footprint. The individual pods could be built cheaper than a Tata Nano and the rail would be cheaper than maintaining the streets that they would pass over. The only drawback to these systems that I can see is that they make sense in a world where we prefer to the option that causes the most damage and costs; autos.
Put the Carbon Back
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Jon Rynn Posted 6:37 am
02 Apr 2008
Interesting -- why in the air, though?
I once played with the idea of a prt on the ground, attached to an underground cable that could also have communications (and the internet) in it, a friend told me it was impractical. If it was on the ground, and small, it could theoretically be loaded onto a high-speed or commuter train (maybe I didn't look through the site enough).
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Pangolin Posted 9:22 am
02 Apr 2008
Traffic Avoidance, footprint....
One of the biggest hassles streetcars have is trying to avoid drivers, bicyclists and pedestrains. They actually have to be built heavier than the functional weight to improve vehicle and passenger survivability. A suspended car can be built just light enough to secure the passengers or load.
A suspended monorail is a proven system that trades a 4 to 8 foot asphalt, rail or concrete track for a 12 inch steel beam. There is no sweeping or clearing of tracks, no grade adjustments, no grade crossings, no tunnels and no bridges (it's all a bridge). Overhead suspension provides an automatically stable ride as the car always adjusts to align with the direction of force on curves; no track banking or grading required.
If needed cars or freight units can be lowered to any point under the track with off the shelf winch control systems. That means that palletized freight could be delivered from a heavy rail siding to stores completely automatically and electrically powered. Think of this next time you have to maneuver around a beer truck parked in the middle of an urban street.
Suspended rail deals with grade changes better than anything else. A ravine with a creek in it isn't a bridging problem and neither is a winding ridge descent; just jump the gaps. It's a real consideration in areas where roads crawl up switchbacks and suffer frequent rock slides. Common here in California.
These systems can go up faster than anything comparable. There's no tearing up of streets, no extensive digging of tunnels. A borer digs holes for pylons, prefabbed pylons arrive on trucks and are set in the hole with concrete, a week later another truck delivers and sets prefabbed rail sections. Keeping the system light speeds construction and allows wider area coverage.
Somebody just has to build ONE and we can test it out. It would cost less than one day of the Iraq war.
Put the Carbon Back
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JMG Posted 11:40 am
02 Apr 2008
Take the Streets!
I agree with a comment posted somewhere (can't remember where) that PRT and all other solutions that force pedestrians to abandon the streets are failures. Pedestrians and non-motorized users are not the problem on the streets, so why should they be denied the use of them? People in motorized wheelchairs aren't able to enjoy the streetscape, to smell a flower, to chat on a bench, to stop and have a coffee or play a game of chess -- so why deny those pleasures to people on foot?
Because that is what WILL happen if PRT schemes get going -- the thinking will be that pedestrians are intruders and there is no longer any reason to provide any public space for people. People using the pods would be expected and then eventually forced to use specific staircases closest to their destination, and then have to run for their lives at street level, which has been given over to the motorized hordes.
Screw that. People own the streets. Cars are the guests. We should make them behave, not let them take over.
Save your community: Cut greenhouse gas emissions 5% per year.
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:45 pm
02 Apr 2008
Shouldn't prt be part of a carless city?
It would seem that prt would make bikes and pedestrians safer, if there were no cars (or very few). At least that's what Pangolin seems to be arguing.
By the way, according to this site, vehicles that move 20 mph or less are much safer than vehicles that move more than 20 mph (5% of people hit by a vehicle going 20 mph are killed, vs. 45% at even 30 mph), and the slower speed blends in much better with the rhythms of city life.
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Gar Lipow Posted 3:12 pm
02 Apr 2008
PRT
>I agree with a comment posted somewhere (can't remember where) that PRT and all other solutions that force pedestrians to abandon the streets are failures.
PRT does not force people to abandon streets. Many PRT solutions are designed to be suspended -meaning pedestrians and that class of PRT don't interfere with one another when using them. Or do you mean the need to leave to street to use them constitutes abandonment? that can't be what you mean, cause that would imply that the NY subways are a failure. Monorails and conventional light rail do tend to take up street space. (Monorails need really substantial support.) Of the possible rail solutions, only ultra-light rail can be put on crowed narrow streets surrounded by buildings or hills, without taking space from pedestrian traffic. Of course it can be implemented badly - just like any technology.
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JMG Posted 3:34 pm
02 Apr 2008
As a REPLACEMENT for cars, fine
But not as an add in. Build big parking lots at the PRT terminals and barricade the city center so that people have to take the PRT into the center (or bike, or walk, or take the subway ...).
Save your community: Cut greenhouse gas emissions 5% per year.
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Pangolin Posted 4:07 pm
02 Apr 2008
Let's Disneyfy some hapless city
I'm volunteering San Francisco since I grew up there and the place has since turned into an overgrown, adult-themed, amusement park. Plus parking is already impossible.
I Pangolin, secret and sole heir to Emporer Norton, ruler of San Francisco, the Farrolone islands and all lands east to the San Jauquin River, North to the Russian River and South to the Salinas Vally, do herby proclaim this:
Your cars are hereby banned to be replaced by PRT podsicles that shall fly over your party friendly streets on silver rails. All your freeways shall be converted to football (soccar to you yanks) feilds except for that nasty bit of triple-overpass in Oakland that should be reserved as an autombile-holocaust memorial.
Be free from endless traffic jams on your bridges. Be free from the insane circling for a parking space within walking distance of your destination. Be free from the MUNI and it's pierced, tatted and paper rustling masses. No longer shall you fear missing the midnight train for PRT systems never sleep.
Anybody who defies my edict shall be sentanced to endless jarring of thier spines as potholes shall overtake your roads and render them useless. Your cars shall take the food from the mouths of your children and your trucks shall sit idle in their excess.
So mote it be.
Put the Carbon Back
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Jon Rynn Posted 10:53 pm
02 Apr 2008
All hail Emperor Norton the 2nd!
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John Dewey Posted 3:07 am
03 Apr 2008
$5 billion is "particularly burdensome"
I'm sorry, but I don't see how $5 billion can be casually tossed aside as "not particularly burdensome". A 1% sales tax is particularly burdensome when used so ineffectively.
Just dedicating some fixed amount of money for mass transit should not be the goal of any planner or any community. Mass transit was alive and well and functioning before light rail transit was proposed. Those who required such transit were already using the Dallas bus system, which worked quite well.
DART promised that the light rail trains would reduce congestion. Their propaganda brochure claimed that 150,000 vehicles would be removed from the freeways. At most 30,000 have been removed, and only if we believe that every light rail rider represents a vehicle removed from the freeway. We know that's not true because a significant number of bus riders were moved to trains as bus routes were redesigned after light rail implementation. We also know that some light rail riders are using the close in train stations as free parking spots after they've clogged the freeways for most of their commute.
Most light rail opponents do not object to mass transit, just to expensive, inefficient mass transit. Buses are flexible and inexpensive. Light rail trains are ineffective toys that help the environmentally-conscious feel something has been accomplished - and generate huge payoffs to engineering, construction, and train companies.
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Gar Lipow Posted 3:48 am
03 Apr 2008
Vehicle reduction
If the trains are actually replacing buses, reducing the number of buses, by switching bus riders to trains (while not reducing total transit use) that reduces congestion one heck of a lot. Getting one bus off the road, provided the riders are still using transit, and not being driven into cars, relieves a lot more congestion than getting one car off the road.
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amazingdrx Posted 4:01 am
03 Apr 2008
Bike lanes
And plugin three wheel bikes, enclosed with light clear plastic safety shells. That beats the weird boondoggle of PRT.
People that don't ride bikes can be pedicabbed around town by plugin bike cabbies. plenty of young people would love this job.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Jon Rynn Posted 4:18 am
03 Apr 2008
Returning to the scene of the original crime
I see from this article on Dallas light rail, that part of the financing is coming from a 1% sales tax. I also see that your area "authorized DART to issue up to $2.9 billion of long-term financing to upgrade and extend the LRT system, in a proposal that passed by a margin of 77% in favor, 23% opposed", so it certainly seems democratic, even if it is a mistake, as you argue.
According to this article, the Republican Senator was on hand while the Feds gave DART a check for $700 million. Maybe they like pork so they'd show up in any case, but it hardly seems as if the business community is up in arms. The previous article quotes a major developer, who is profiting from the light rail -- "As Dallas becomes more urban and people move back into the city, more of them are willing to ride the transit."
It's very difficult to tease out the consequences of these things. Maybe the freeways would be more congested, but some people are moving into Dallas, partly because of the light rail. I can see where the 1% tax would be annoying, but you may discover in coming years that there are several positive consequences.
The more people that live in the city proper, the less that are in the suburbs, the less congestion there is. I suppose the response to this is, "they could just use the light rail money to put in more highways". Putting more highways in general doesn't help -- even more neighborhoods are put up in the vicinity of the highway.
But some of this simply gets back to a social decision about where we think we are heading. I think that gas prices are going to keep going up, up, up, and encouraging more car use is a loser, in the long-term. If the society decides that we want to keep building more and more highways further and further out, then that's what will happen -- until the oil runs out, or asphalt becomes too expensive (and maintenance of the current road system already ain't too good).
There is one peculiar aspect of light rail that even light rail enthusiasts can't really explain -- the public preference for light rail over buses. It may be because light rail is less "smelly and noisy", although electric buses are neither. Bus rapid transit has been very successful, it may be that that would have been a better decision for Dallas.
But all I can say at this point is, it's a very interesting situation, I appreciate the counterarguments, and I hope that, in the long-term, it works out.
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Jon Rynn Posted 4:20 am
03 Apr 2008
amazingdrx, does anybody sell
3-wheeled plug-ins with a plastic exterior?
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John Dewey Posted 4:43 am
03 Apr 2008
light rail advocates get paid much more than I do
If people are moving into the Dallas because of the light rail, they certainly are not using it. Again, daily ridership is only 60,000, representing 30,000 round trip passengers - in a metro area of 6 million people.
Sorry, but I have to disagree. Geographic dispersion, not geographic concentration, is the solution to urban congestion. When workplaces are dispersed, much more affordable housing can be built close to workplaces. Moving jobs to the suburbs - which is exactly waht is happening nationwide - keeps commuters out of already congested cities.
Thank you for that consideration of my argument.
Light rail continues to be voted in over BRT because the print news media buys into it. Local newspapers continue to feature the propaganda of DART and rail advocate organizations funded by special interests.
Light rail requires much greater financial commitment - and allows much greater financial rewards. Light rail beneficiaries pack public meetings with professional advocates. Individuals who object in meetings - as I have frequently - get a fraction of the coverage given to DART officials and rail lobbyists.
Local newspapers have published several of our letters opposing rail transit. But every time they do, they follow up with 3 or 4 counter letters within a few days. Never do newspapers give much credence to the simple facts of light rails ineffectiveness.
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John Dewey Posted 5:02 am
03 Apr 2008
Propane buses - neither smelly nor noisy
Propane buses produce fewer hydrocarbons and less smell than diesel buses. Propane buses require no infrastructure construction, other than refueling and maintenance stations.
Propane as a transit fuel
Why use propane?
I have no financial interest in promoting propane, other than the benefits of its cost efficiency to me, a taxpayer.
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Chella Rajan Posted 7:53 pm
06 Apr 2008
Technology + social change
We can't do everything with technology alone. We need land-use changes and behaviorial shifts as well. But broad changes in policy and behavior will in turn occur only if sufficient numbers of individuals and groups reorient their cultural frame to think about their consumption and technology choices within the context of sustainable futures.
In a paper on this topic published in Energy Policy (http://ssrn.com/abstract=956145), I wrote :
"A major shift in outlook and practices of mobility need be neither utopian nor the result of some dark ideological program of persuasion; rather, it is highly probable that increased understanding of the imminent sustainability crisis alone will spawn new forms of collective reasoning to make personal adjustments seem obvious and necessary. Moreover, such change would likely come into view within the social imagination as an expression of new conceptions of success, well being, and the ``good life'' rather than as a denial in the quantity or quality of goods and services consumed. In short, it is timely to begin considering behavioral concerns as well as technology, largely because doing so
may actually help overcome some of the institutional and political barriers that currently seem intractable."
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