National Train Day was marked this year on May 10, so it's not too incredibly late to mention two new books of note: John Stilgoe's Train Time: Railroads and the Imminent Reshaping of the United States Landscape that came out in the fall says that rail is "an economic and cultural tsunami about to transform the United States." Maybe that's a little grand, but rail is definitely on the ascendancy, since it can move people and freight at a fraction of the energy usage vs. petroleum.
Also, Radio Ecoshock's March 28 edition of its useful weekly podcast had a recording (skip to minute 11 for the presentation) by authors Richard Gilbert and Anthony Perl at the launch event for their new book Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight without Oil. They are forecasting a grid-tied and electrified (increasingly from renewables) rail system among four revolutions coming in transport:
The high prices of oil could cause at least four kinds of transport revolution:
- Now, almost all transport is propelled by internal combustion engines. In the future, transport will be propelled increasingly by electric motors, using electricity increasingly generated from renewable resources.
- Now, almost all land transport is by vehicles that carry their fuel on board: petrol (gasoline) or diesel fuel. In the future, much land transport will be in electric vehicles that are grid-connected, i.e., they are powered while in motion, from wire or rails or in other ways.
- Now, almost all marine transport is propelled by diesel engines. Their use will continue but with assistance from wind via sails and kites.
- Now, air travel and air freight movement are the fastest growing transport activities. Soon, they will begin to decline because there will be no adequate substitute for increasingly expensive aviation fuels based on petroleum oil. Air travel and air freight movement will continue, but at lower intensities and mostly in large, more fuel-efficient aircraft flying a limited number of well-patronized routes ...
The above excerpt and more are available at the book's site.
The Q&A session of the audio is also pretty interesting. Among other topics, they discuss the coming contraction of air flight, and the pointlessness of airport expansions, like the one in Vancouver, B.C., in particular.
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Comments
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Jonas Posted 1:08 am
04 Jun 2008
Add innovative ideas like the electric 'super bus' developed at the TU Delft, which will use its own road track, and we're off for a very efficient future.
Electric cars too are the way forward.
Electrifying mobility not only means we can plug in carbon-neutral renewables like wind or solar, we can even go carbon-negative via biomass. Each time we were to use this carbon-negative energy in our car, bus or train, we would be actively removing historic CO2 from the atmosphere!
However, the most important task ahead is designing dirt-cheap electric cars for the developing world. If we don't succeed, we will see flex-fuel Tata Nano-like cars by the tens of millions over the coming decades. And that means ethanol or biodiesel, mixed with oil and coal-derived liquid fuels, which are all pretty inefficient. Much better use the biomass for the production of carbon-negative electricity to power EVs and towns. We need an ultra-cheap electric Nano (at least if we assume that we can't persuade developing middle classes not to buy individual cars - for the foreseeable future they will buy cars, simply because they are the ultimate symbol of the 'modernity' they are beginning to experience.)
So this is really an important challenge our engineers must take and they must succeed: develop hyper-cheap EVs for rapidly developing nations.
Else, the climate benefits of us in the wealthy West switching to mass transit or EVs won't make much of a difference.
The bulk of the growth in transport energy and mobility over the coming 50 years will occur in 'developing' countries like India, China, Brazil, South Africa and many other countries of the Global South.
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:24 am
04 Jun 2008
Something rich countries could certainly help developing countries with: set up trains, light rail, bus rapid transit, etc. No offsets, trading credits, just help the countries build the things so that they need less cars -- and it's much more efficient, anyway.
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Erik Hoffner Posted 2:52 am
04 Jun 2008
Erik
The Orion Grassroots Network: 1,200+ grassroots groups working for conservation & more
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jgray008 Posted 6:20 am
04 Jun 2008
In another case, I read how Ohio is looking into rail service between Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland. It is great that this is finally happening, but all of these cities are huge metro areas that are so interdependent. How on earth did we get here?
I hope we can finally get some sense and make projects like this happen once and for all.
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Pangolin Posted 10:10 am
04 Jun 2008
I'm a big advocate of suspended monorails and PRT schemes simply because I had to live through the massive disruption caused by installation of BART and other light rail schemes. With monorails you drop pylons and hang rails and with standard rail you tear up every inch of road along the route and reroute all the subsurface infrastructure. It's not pretty.
PRT schemes offer not only widely distributed passenger rail but distributed freight delivery that could automate delivery of pallet sized loads to local loading docks. This could mean a great deal of savings in road maintenance as it is the larger vehicles that cause the majority of wear.
Unless somebody comes up with a bio-asphalt we are soon going to discover that our federal, state and county governments cannot afford to lay down miles of crude oil asphalt as a driving surface and all of those electric car schemes will suffer accordingly. They all like nice smooth roads as much as your basic SUV does. Luckily they provide a nice resource of recyclable steel that can be used for track and rolling stock on the new rail we have to lay.
The big question is going to be "how much of our world are we going to tear up to lay down new railbed?" Unless we look again at monorails the answer is quite a lot.
Put the Carbon Back
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:12 pm
04 Jun 2008
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hapa Posted 1:59 pm
04 Jun 2008
the proposals for PRT, because they're very light cars, use very light structures. we find ourselves building a great deal in the imagination and it starts adding up, much of it using metal or concrete, and building new elevated rail corridors inside cities or between, for full-weight trains, might be too much, considering. elevated bustransit, like at airports, shuttling people to important places from city-limits intercity depots, might be better -- loop service with elevated stations and various entry/exit ramps for returning to street-level -- might be less resource intensive and allow greater route flexibility.
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Gar Lipow Posted 3:05 pm
04 Jun 2008
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hapa Posted 3:19 pm
04 Jun 2008
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:57 am
05 Jun 2008
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Erik Hoffner Posted 3:43 am
05 Jun 2008
http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/prtquick.htm
I wonder though about cases where it'll be less about tearing up the ground for new rail than about unearthing lines that have gone unused for a while and refurbishing them. Oh, and converting all those rail trails back into transport lanes? That could be unpopular. Around here, there aren't a lot of commuters that use the rail trail to get to work, but there are some. Mostly it's about exercise.
Erik
The Orion Grassroots Network: 1,200+ grassroots groups working for conservation & more
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Kristina & Jason Makansi Posted 3:51 am
05 Jun 2008
Pearl Street::Jason and Kristina Makansi
Read Lights Out reviews
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amazingdrx Posted 4:17 am
05 Jun 2008
This is the way to go to replace car and even airplane travel and eliminate their GHGs. With light commuter rail that "flys" in the tube on an air cushion. These high speed rail cars are built more like aircraft than trains.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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hapa Posted 7:11 am
05 Jun 2008
@jrynn: density is excellent. sustainably building, what, 12–15 NYCs to house america would be pretty tough.
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Jon Rynn Posted 7:25 am
05 Jun 2008
And the problems you note in terms of mode change is very important, but I think it can be at least ameliorated with high-quality public transit. In NYC, seniors take the bus as opposed to the subway -- but it's much better than being stuck if you really shouldn't drive and you're in the suburbs.
I've often wondered why public transit is not made so that it's easier for packages and strollers (believe me, I have not enjoyed taking a stroller with two little children on a bus). The key, I think, would be to 1) have the buses/light rail at street level, 2) have a place for packages/strollers spread throughout the vehicle, and 3), ideally, some sort of standardized shopping cart that would fit into some sort of standardized slot on the bus or light rail.
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ahtist Posted 2:41 am
18 Jun 2008
Selfish note--I am looking forward to riding the Desert Wind again : ). Service from Colorado to Los Angeles, at the moment, does not exist--you have to go to Sacramento, stay overnight in a hotel, and then ride south on the Starlate. It takes 3 days! (Still better than the plane)
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ahtist Posted 2:43 am
18 Jun 2008
Selfish note--I am looking forward to riding the Desert Wind again : ). Service from Colorado to Los Angeles, at the moment, does not exist--you have to go to Sacramento, stay overnight in a hotel, and then ride south on the Starlate. It takes 3 days! (Still better than the plane)
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