gasoline

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What is AMTRAK’s Future?


AMTRAK was formed in the 1970s to take over the nation’s private railroad’s passenger network. For years those railroads had been unable to make a profit on most, if not all, of their passenger routes. It is worth noting that America was one of the few countries world wide that still had privately run passenger service.

Support for AMTRAK has been weak since its inception. Many senators and representatives from states that were either marginally served or not served at all wanted to end AMTRAK entirely. It has been recognized since AMTRAK’s inception that certain routes would pay for themselves and make a profit as well. One such route is referred to as the Northeast Corridor, Boston to Washington D.C. The trains on this route typically run at or near capacity. But the same could not be said of the long distance trains even though these trains frequently ran full. The problem was simple, in order to break even the fare charged would have been exorbitant. And some routes were eliminated for this reason, Chicago to Los Angeles via Denver and Las Vegas. Denver to Portland Oregon. Chicago to Miami are among those eliminated.

The first, and probably the most important issue, is how we and Washington DC view AMTRAK. Instead of viewing AMTRAK as a national necessity, as happens in Europe and Asia, it is viewed as an unnecessary luxury. Our national psyche desperately needs to change its view so that in falls in line with the rest of the world.

The second problem is the AMTRAK footprint and level of service needs to be expanded. Such an expansion would initially cost in the billions of dollars but in a budget that is in the trillions of dollars our lawmakers can surely figure out how to get it done. What they now see as a luxury will in the next 20 years become a necessity as the price of long distance travel rises to levels 4 and 5 times what it is today.

Fuel prices are the variable that sets the price for all forms of travel. Through fracking the U.S. has been able to extract oil from old fields that had been considered dry. But such extraction is very limited. This sort of oil extraction will soon be on the decline which means at the same time the U.S. will again be reliant on oil from foreign countries. We are a decade away from $5 per gallon gasoline prices. Airline fuel prices will also rise at the same rate or more. When that happens air travel will become prohibitively expensive for those people who can only fly once a year or less.

Rail travel will become the most cost effective way of moving people and goods from one point to another. But for AMTRAK to be a truly effective railroad, it must serve all large and medium size cities in the U.S. Presently it does not come even close to this but now it the time to act. The longer America waits to enact such travel, the more expensive it will become.

Simply put, AMTRAK must now become a national necessity and it is up to the public to demand service to their city that has no service or to demand a level of service that meets their travel requirement.

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Our World in 50 Years


There are three generations whose ability to impact positive change in the United States has either gone to zero or is on that track. I’m a baby boomer, born in 1949, which means the majority of my generation is either retired of contemplating it. The generation ahead of us has, for the most part, embraced their retirement and only gives thought about our country during national elections. Then there is the generation right behind me. Their age range is about 30 to 55. The youngest end still has a chance to make strong positive changes while the older end, if they are not actively engage in public policy, are not likely to join in.

 
The future of our country lies in the hand of those who are now in high school and country. We need them to be as well-educated and actively involved in government as possible. History teaches us that a large portion of discoveries, inventions, and activism happens to this age group as soon as they finish their education. But my generation, and those generations around mine, are leaving a legacy which is in desperate need of a large influx of new ideas. The ideas of those presently in power are simply not working to a large degree.

 
What will our work look like 50 years from now? First of all, recent history has shown our planets oceans have risen enough that ocean-front cities are experiencing flooding at ever increasing levels. My own city, Boston, Massachusetts, has just this last winter seen flooding of city streets with water from the ocean that has entirely overwhelmed the ability of the city’s storm drains to remove these waters. That the level of our oceans in continuing to rise in indisputable. What will our children have to do?

 
First of all, they are going to need to occupy and become a majority of every country’s leadership and embrace the fact of global warming an man’s contribution to it. Their’s will be the challenge to improve and expand upon renewable energy sources which do not contribute to global warming: wind farms, solar panels, geo-thermal, and water both from the planets rivers but also from the ocean, a well-know but entirely undeveloped source of energy.

efully, the internal combustion engine will be mostly, if not entirely, obsolete worldwide. It will have been supplanted by electric automobile. But to do that effectively three things have to happen: first, batteries capable of operating automobiles at highway speeds must be good for 450 miles. At present 200-250 it about the best. Secondly, the price of these automobiles must be brought into line with what the average consumer can afford. With an average price tag of around $40,000 at the low end, such cars are simply out of the range of the average consumer. But with such cars available, cities, towns, and villages are going to have to accommodate charging stations in their public parking lots, at a reasonable fee of course. And lastly, as the price of oil rises at first, such demand should fall with the advent of the wide-spread electric automobile. This in turn should mean lower diesel fuel prices which will keep our trucking and railroad industries viable. But even their, the Hybrid diesel engine must come into wide use and still have the ability to haul heavy loads.

 
I believe that in 50 years the most notable global crises will be a food shortage. But at the root of this will be two things: expanding deserts and extreme water shortages worldwide, even in the United States. One solute to the water problem is the desalinization process of turning ocean water into fresh water. Right now such costs are prohibitive but that does not mean with our young people and their new idea, the cost of such a process cannot be reduced to where the economics of desalinated ocean allows the flow of huge quantities of water to feed the world’s farmland. Man can develop friendly ecosystems but he has to be willing to pay for the initial costs. My generation is not so inclined but hopefully the next two generations will see this differently.
These three things, energy, food and water, are guaranteed to be at the root of future wars if we do not start acting in a positive manner now and in the immediate future.

 
If you happen to read this and are between the ages of 15 and 30, I do not envy the challenge ahead of you but I believe that when you see the enormity of our failures you will take on the challenge and succeed like we never have.

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What Happens When Oil Runs Low?


Many experts believe we have discovered, and quantified, pretty much all the oil available on Earth.  If that is true, and there is good reason to believe it is, at our current rate of consumption, it is unlikely we will make it half way through the century with affordable fossil fuel.  Think of it this way, in the past 20 years we have used as much oil as we did in the 80 years prior to that.

I filled up my tank today.  It cost me about $35.  It occurred to me as I finished pumping that the money I had just spent on gasoline is equal to half a day’s pay for a lot of people.  And with the price going up as it is, it will not be long before a tank of gas will be equivalent to a lot people’s pay for a full day of work.  That means a 20% outlay of gross income for gas?  That is a problem.

Now consider that aircraft use a petroleum derivative that has historically cost 25% more per gallon than what you put in your car.  True, it is aviation grade fuel, kerosene actually, but the point is, the consumer pays for that fuel in the price of the ticket of course.  Now think down the road to 2050.  By that time oil has become a lot more scarce than it is now and the price of fuel has taken many people out of the car ownership market.  Those people are not going to be opting for a high-priced airline ticket either.  The thing is, until someone comes up with something revolutionary as a fuel for aircraft, they are stuck with petroleum.  While automobiles will be switching to batteries, ships to nuclear power, aircraft do not have any alternative on the horizon.

I think as soon as 10 years from now you will be seeing the effects of skyrocketing aviation fuel causing a steady decline in passengers as tickets become too expensive.  Many airlines will go under, small cities will lose air service all together, and you may well see the re-introduction of trans-oceanic passenger travel as an affordable, though slow, method of overseas travel.

How many of you heat your houses with oil?  That is going to be a problem.  And even natural gas, though far more plentiful now, is not renewable.  Do we switch back to coal-fired furnaces or will industry give us affordable solar alternatives?  Will the nuclear power plant suddenly become popular?

 

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Why We Need AMTRAK, and More of It!


There was a time when you could get on a train in your hometown and travel to just about any other town in the United States.  That was before the Interstate highway system, and before America started its love affair with the automobile.  To be fair, travel by passenger train was on the decline before either of those two things happened.  The nation’s improved road system of the 1920, the emergence of the intercity bus, and the emergence of the truck all had an effect on passenger rail traffic.  But the Interstate highway system and low-cost air fare were the death knell for intercity passenger rail.  By the time AMTRAK came into being in 1971 intercity passenger rail service was on life support.  Only four railroads opted out of the initial AMTRAK system: the Boston & Maine Railroad, the Southern Railroad, the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, and the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad.  AMTRAK cut the existing routes in half and started business as a government entity.

From its inception there was acknowledgement for the need of certain “corridor” passenger rail service.  These were seen as likely money-makers for the new system.  The original plan was to somehow turn a profit on the other non-corridor routes.  That was pure pie-in-the-sky thinking of course.  During the Reagan years there was a movement to shut down AMTRAK entirely if it could not live without a subsidy, which it could not of course.  Gasoline was still relatively cheap in those days and it was generally assumed that our transportation infrastructure could survive quite well without AMTRAK outside of a few named corridors.

Fortunately forward thinkers of the day kept the system alive.  The Clinton administration brought some long overdue cash infusion into the system.  A true high-speed route from Boston to New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC was put in place.  That high-speed still pales in comparison to high-speed trains in Europe or Japan but it is still pretty good.

Over the past 10 years patronage on AMTRAK has climbed significantly, particularly in the corridors, the Northeast, Detroit/Chicago/St. Louis, and San Diego/Los Angeles/San Francisco.  Even more, the government has identified a number of other potential corridors that need to be developed in the future on top of improving the existing ones.

True high-speed rail will make AMTRAK competitive with the airlines in what is referred to as “short-haul.”  Cities like Chicago and Detroit, or Chicago and St. Louis with true high-speed rail can be two or three hours apart on the train.  High speed rail would also make an overnight trip New York to Chicago and other mid-west cities possible.  You could board a sleeper at Penn Station in New York at 8 in the evening and arrive in Chicago by 8 the next morning.  Even better, it is from one downtown location to another.  Some good planning and using existing technology will give Americans a via alternative to both the automobile and the airplane.

We are approaching $4 a gallon gasoline.  But people also need to realize that aviation fuel prices are also rising and will be reflected in air fares, even on discount airlines.  The upward movement of fuel prices is unlikely to change ever again.  There will be fluctuations, of course, but in the long-term prices are going to rise considerably as world demand rises and world supply plateaus and falls.

The time will come when Americans will be clamoring for more rail service because they will realize it to be the most affordable transportation available to them.  But our investment has to come now.  The price of that investment has to go up as the years pass.  One time investments in the straightening of railroad rights-of-way, necessary for good high-speed rail, is at its least expensive right now.

The necessity for a good and comprehensive passenger rail system in America is not speculation.  It is going to be a necessity at some future date, that is an absolute.  How we deal with our future is a choice we have to make now.  Economically, the amount a fuel needed to transport 1000 people between any two cities via rail is far less than any other mode of transportation that now exists.  That translation will become evident to all Americans in the future.  How well we are able to deal with it in the future is dictated by our actions now.

If you want to see what a first class rail system looks like go to Europe.  Get on a train in Paris and go to Rome.  The entire trip, the same distance as New York to Chicago, takes 12 hours.  The New York to Chicago trip takes 18 hours.  There are two trains from New York to Chicago, and four Paris to Rome.  There are actually many more trains between Paris and Rome, those four are just the high-speed trains.  In the U.S., there are only two New York to Chicago trains regardless of speed.

It is time Americans came to accept what Europeans and Asians have known for decades.  Americans have to accept the fact that we need trains, more of them, and faster.