buses

by

Study: World has 9 years to avert [climate] calamity


First, I must give credit to the Boston Globe, November 12, 2022, p. A4, for that heading, it being, excepting the setoff word, climate, a direct copy of its subtitle to “War may have put climate goals out of reach.”

I found this article absolutely stunning until I read its contents and then did a bit of research. It amazes me the amount climate change deniers still in the world today. Even more, those in political power who take no, or little action towards changing their nation’s responsibility towards reducing our greenhouse gas epidemic. It must be noted that most scientists, probably an overwhelming number, are agreement over our impended doom from these emissions.

The chart below lists the greenhouses emission by each country’s total in descending order. Notice the United States, which claims to be doing so much, is in the number 2 position! This is entirely unacceptable. Number 3 India is an interesting case that along with its status on this chart, it also has the ignominious reputation of have amount the 10 most polluted cities in the world, mixed in are Pakistan and other 3rd world countries.

Conservative Americans are amount the first to deny global warning and liberals are shouting about it. But in truth, it is the liberals who are failing the most simply because most compromise on issues where holding your ground is called for.

For the United States, there needs to be a much more concerted effort to reduce CO2 emissions by about 80% and well before 2031, the deadline. The United States cannot be a world leader in this fight when it comes in 2nd in total emissions worldwide. But the above chart is only referencing CO2 pollution. The chart below is referencing Methane pollution for the purpose of this discussion. I have not been able, thus far, to find a country-by-country accounting for this sort of pollution. In the United States, however, two of the most prolific forms of this comes for natural gas leakage at drilling sites and their pipelines, and also from fracking where the search for oil always finds a collection of natural gas which is supposed to be burned off but that only adds to the CO2 pollution.

For at least 30 years now, Europeans have been taking the problem with pollution seriously. Many cities, excepting England, have taken the tack of making their inner cities less friendly to automobiles, and in some cases, banning them altogether. In place of automobiles, they have doubled down of rail transportation and well set out bicycle ways.

Such tactics in the United States would be met with heavy opposition and politicians bent on saving their political butts would bend to that opposition rather than doing the right thing.

Consider, there is no city in the United States that can properly handle 4 lanes of traffic entering its limits with any ease at all, leading to a 40-mile commute taking as much as 1.5 hours or more. All cities on the East Coast plus Chicago, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, and a host of other cities cannot continue to maintain these roads and the problems that go with them for much longer.

Consider that the average length of a railroad coach is 67′ and that of an automobile almost 15′. Simple math tells us that even the 4 automobiles, were each carrying 3 individuals totaling 12 total is a far cry for the 60 to 100 passengers a single railroad car can carry. A rapid transit car can carry at least 50 people, light rail cars and buses the same. Highway maintenance on average, costs $14,500 per year. By shutting down one lane of a 4-lane highway in both directions for 25 miles saves $750k per year. Now, take the New Jersey turnpike which extends 41 miles from the Garden State parkway to Exit 7, Bordentown and is 8 lanes wide. Remove the 4 inner lanes in each direction, a total of 328 miles, and you have a total savings of $4.7 million a year. New Jersey has an exemplary commuter rail system as well-as an extensive bus system.

In probably every city their existing commuter rail, rapid transit, light rail and buses systems would have to be both modernized and expanded first. But this would give the public several years to plan on the eventual shut down of highway traffic lanes.

Such a bold step forward would cost in the 10s of trillions of dollars to properly implement. Couple that with all cities denying entry to their city center by private automobiles, another public screaming point, and inner-city pollution declines dramatically.

Right now, when it comes to public transportation, the United States is little more than a third-world country. Countries like Italy, Germany, Holland, France and a host of others, put the U.S. to shame in their approach to public transportation. Even China, the world’s greatest polluter, has a rail transportation superior to ours.

Why is this true. First, it America’s continuing love affair with the automobile, next, politicians of all stripes failing to inform the public of what should, by now, be painfully obvious, global warming is happening, and at an ever-increasing rate, just ask Floridians.

There is, however, one form of public transportation, which is one of the largest polluters in the U.S., the nation’s airlines! How do we reduce that? Simple, convince Americans to take AMTRAK on medium length journeys over air travel. This, of course, will require a heavy investment in AMTRAK but the rewards far outweigh the costs. Already, the Northeast Corridor of AMTRAK, from Boston to Washington DC, is heavily traveled by businessmen as well as private travelers. But routes such as Cleveland to Chicago, Atlanta to Miami, Dallas to Houston, Chicago to St. Louis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Detroit.

Americans, living near to large cities, must learn a new way of getting around or be culpable for getting the globe to “point of no return,” that point where warming accelerates at a rate no one can stop. Is that nine years hence? I do not know but it seems many scientists are thinking that way. Who are you going to believe, your next-door neighbor, you politicians, or the scientists?

I am only showing the pollution type below, that of “particulate matter” and in this case, that of plastics.

On final note on this. When I was taking a course in Astrophysics at Harvard University, my professor made a point of saying that anything which produces heat adds to global warming. That polluter is nuclear power and everything else which has the side effect of producing heat.

by

Should Steetcars Ply the Streets of Boston Again?


Boston should have far more street car lines than the 5 existing lines. When buses were taking over in the 1940s and 1950s, their maneuverability and low maintenance were good reason to use them. But there is a certain charm, at least, but a new economy with the return of streetcars. Many cities, El Paso, Dallas, Sacramento, Portland OR, and other cities have rebuilt their streetcar lines. New Orleans, which at one point had only its St. Charles route for streetcars, has returned them to the city streets and is still expanding. Certainly if streetcars were so uneconomical and the public so much against them, they would not have sprung up in these cities and thrived. There must be something else in play, something city planners here in the east are missing.

I think Boston should consider returning trolley to the streets of Boston and surrounding communities rather than limiting them to the exclusive rights-of-way as present. One area, which is growing and lacking in ground transportation, is the seaport area. This area is ripe for a streetcar line which could be built along the area’s broad streets. If you look at a map, a line could run in a circular route, starting at Summer Street at South Station, and continuing out to Black Falcon Pier, turning left on Tide Street and then left again on Northern Ave, then Seaport Blvd to Purchase Street where it would turn left until it reached Summer Street. There is a wealth of people who work in this area and another large group, visitors, who depart South Station looking for easy transportation around the seaport area but finding none. And if the MBTA got just a little bit creative, it would find a way to shuttle these streetcars underground at South Station making a very convenience connection to the Red Line.

The MBTA under the agreement struck with the Federal Government promised a return of the Green Line from Brigham Circle, where it ended for a long while, back out to Forest Hills. Businesses along the route complained it would tie up traffic and reduce parking spaces. Each of these argument could have been allayed by the MBTA at the time but instead they simply caved in to public pressure.

The present MBTA proposal for extending the Green Line to West Medford is extremely flawed and the expense involved shows this. The MBTA would do much better but simply putting the tracks into the streets, McGrath Highway out to Broadway, left of Broadway and out Boston Ave to West Medford. The need for building new stations eliminated, construction costs could be kept to a minimum. And with proper planning, road closures could be kept to a minimum. And as for the branch off to Union Square, that could easily be continued to Porter Square.

One thing streetcars have over buses in spades is lifetime. The eldest MBTA buses go back to the early 1990s where as some of the streetcars date back to the 1970s with the Mattapan Line cars dating to the 1940s. The point being, a properly maintained streetcar can easily have 3 times the life expectation as any bus.

Making the a little more interesting, the City of New Orleans orders throwback style streetcar which look old but have all the modern conveniences and are ADA approved. The City of San Francisco found the actual old streetcars valuable as a tourist draw and use them rather extensively. Those cities used their imagination and probably reasoned properly with the public to gain its support.

While downtown Boston certainly is far from ideal for a return of streetcars, when you go just a few miles from center city you find roads more than broad enough to hand both automobile traffic and streetcars. Washington Street, Tremont Street, Massachusetts Avenue, Beacon Street out to Watertown Square and many others could easily be converted but the MBTA has to want to and has to do its homework.

While this may sound like pie in the sky, the operation of streetcars today is far less than that of the bus. And who knows, the public may actually welcome their return!