public transportation

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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.

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What is is Biden’s $2.6 Trillion Infrastructure Plan?


Republicans recently declared that only 7-8% of Biden’s $2.6 trillion request will actually go to infracture claiming the rest will go to Democrats pet projects. So what is the truth.

First off, I cannot see how Republicans came up with 7-8%. The bill calls for 24% to go to our nation’s transportation: roads, bridges, public transit, rail, ports, waterways, airports and electrical vehicles. The only portion of that which is questionable is the investment in electic vehicles unless it is directed towards the government’s purchase of such vehicles. The other parts are unquestionably urgent infracture needs.

Then there is $400b for home care services and workforce. I think this portion, though a good investment, belongs in a different congressional request.

Then there is $300b for manufacturing. Biden and the Democrats need to remove this portion as well and present it as another bill. Those two, the $400b for home care/workforce and $300b for manufacturing, reduce the bill to $1.9t, already more platable to Republicans.

Next there is $180b earmarked for research and developement. The idea behind this portion is to help in climatology and other notable projects. This part is tangentally important to infrasture but again needs to be part of a different bill.

There is also $100b for digital infrastructure. Again, tangental to into main infracture but important in its own right, not here.

Then there is $100b for workforce developement. This most certainly does not belong here. That is $1080b which should be removed for this bill and takes us down to $1.5t. Please do not worry that the numbers I have put for do not add up, that is intentional. This is just to show that Republicans are at least partially correct in pointing out that this bill, as presented, does not accurately or properly state pure infrastructure needs, those that the public at large need now.

In 1933-35 President Roosevelt got three bills passed to help the nation recover from the depression, the National Recovery Act (NRA), the Works Progress Administration (WPA) of 1935, and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The WPA built many of the roads and bridges still in existence today which puts them at 90 years of age. Engineers were reluctant then, as now, to allow for anything they built to have more than a 50-year life span. We are long overdue.

In 1953, drawing upon his experience as a General in Europe, and seeing Germany’s autobahn, Eisenhower helped develop today’s Interstate Hiway System. In each case of the afore mentioned project, millions of Americans were put to work. Biden’s bill will do the same as our infracture, both transport and utility, is in desperate need of either replacement or upgrading, will put million of Americans to work for years to come. It is a worthy bill but each side, Democrat and Republican must accede, and find a middle ground where both sides are relatively happy. More importantly, that Americans will quickly see a strong positive result.

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Dealing With Traffic Congestion in America’s Cities


Even though I am addressing the growing problem of congestion in America’s cities, I am going to refer almost entirely to Boston as it is the city I am most familiar with.  In an article in today’s (August 5, 2012) Boston Globe entitled “Teh cure for congestion”  p. K10 by Derrick Z. Jackson, the method Stockholm Sweden used is put forth.  In 2006, it states, Stockholm began a 7-month trial where it charged each automobile entering the city about $1.50 on off-peak hours and about $3 during peak traffic hours.  It used 18 city entry points armed with cameras that took photos of the license plates of cars entering the city and sent the charges to the registered owners.  Public opposition t this idea ran as high as 75%.  But at the end of the trial period the amount of traffic entering the city had been reduced by 22%, and when the measure was put to the vote, the public passed the measure to make it permanent.

In 1991 I attended a professional conference initiated by then Senator Paul Tsongas at the University of New Hampshire where professional traffic management specialists put on a symposium.  At the time Boston’s “Big Dig” was in its infancy.  Even so, for reasons that eluded rational and reasonable explanation, the plan for the North/South rail link had been discarded.  And this in spite of the fact that it had been fully engineered and was included in the original plans.  For those of you unfamiliar with Boston, the city has two rail terminus, one called North Station and the other, South Station.  This is, and never has been, a rail line that links the two which has meant passengers coming from north of Boston have had to use other means of transportation to get them to South Station so they could continue the journey, if the so desired.   The additional cost of the North/South link, had it been carried out, would have cost in the tens of millions of dollars in a project that ended up costing over $15 billion.

But such short-sightedness, and political chicanery, not unusual in the world of Massachusetts politics.  To the contrary, anyone who lives in the state knows only too well the state in known for its political patronage which Bay Staters have been at a loss to do much about.

Curiously, Boston is home to one of the foremost schools for urban planning which exists within the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Moreover, the U.S. Department of Transportation has one of its larger research and development centers in Cambridge at the Volpe Center.  M.I.T. and the Volpe Center sit side-by-side not coincidentally.  But Massachusetts, in its infinite wisdom, has seldom seen fit to avail itself of these facilities most likely because its political influence does not extend to either.  By extension, if you look at other major American cities, you can find other private facilities which would welcome public monies in a state’s efforts to deal with its transportation problems.  These institutions, having no political agenda, would likely give a comprehensive and reason response to any transportation problem which is happening the city and state in which they reside.  And for far fewer dollars than corporate America can deliver with a product that would challenge any.

All major cities need a comprehensive system of rapid transportation.  By definition, that means subways systems and street cars, and any other facility whose movement is affected little, if at all, by street congestion.

Boston’s subway, the oldest in the nation, though by definition is a rapid transit system, suffers from its own form of congestion which during rush hours frequently renders it little faster than the street level automobile.  Worse yet, the infrastructure of the subway system itself is in need of extensive repair and rebuilding.  This, of course, is costly.  Worse, the system, the MBTA, is currently in debt to the tune of over $100 million.  The political response to this problem has been to raise fares, reduce service, and leave the long-term problems unanswered and unaddressed.  Other systems, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Chicago, I have little doubt, suffer from similar problems.

What Americans do not understand, and which was brought out in detail at that 1991 conference, is that is costs many times more to maintain the nation’s roads per mile than it does to maintain the right-of-way for rapid transit and commuter trains.  Even more, public transportation has the ability to carry many more people between any two points per hour than even the best highway.

Why don’t Americans abandon their cars for the more economical and fiscally responsible public transportation.  Unfortunately public transportation has the tendency to be unreliable, uncomfortable, inconvenient and largely unattractive.  The “park and ride” facilities are frequently too small and inconveniently located.  Those that are heavily used tend to fill up early which provides a disincentive to the later commuter to even consider them.  In Massachusetts, for example, there is only one parking facility, the Interstate 95/Route 128 facility, that resides immediately next to a heavily used highway.  But there are more than 10 places where the commuter rail intersects with an Interstate highway.  Urban planners know, or should know, that easy of access is key to ridership in public transportation.  But Massachusetts, which has been increasing the size of its commuter rail had done absolutely nothing to address this.

The incentive to use public transportation, as shown in Stockholm, must be balanced with a disincentive to use the automobile.  Any person who has ever traveled to western Europe or the Far East and used their public transportation systems, knows how superior those systems are to any that presently exist in the United States.  In the world arena of public transportation, the United States is little more than a third-world country.

One thing the American public needs, to help it embrace public transportation, is knowledge of the cost to maintain a road per mile.  Politicians never give out such figures even though they have easy access to those figures.  Our roadways, as every American must know, are deteriorating faster than they can be rebuilt.  Roads that are in desperate need of rebuilding are patched which in itself is expensive.  Roads deteriorate not just from age, but also from the volume of traffic they carry.  The greater the traffic load, the faster the deterioration.  And that is extremely expensive.  Conversely, rail transportation can withstand increased use far better and much longer.  It only makes sense to shift traffic from roads to rails.

America would do well to take the lessons learned in Stockholm and other European and Asian countries that have adequately addressed their country’s transportation needed.  The solution to America’s traffic congestion is not easy but it does exist.

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The Immediate Need For Greatly Improved Public Transportation


When I was a kid, I remember my father buying gasoline for twenty-five cents.  That was in the late 1950s.  Then, in 1967 and early 1968 I worked at a service station where I saw regular gasoline prices at thirty cents.  But that was when we imported less than 50% of  our oil.  In 1974 we saw that changed suddenly with the organization of OPEC.  Whatever people may think of OPEC, it was formed as a result of American and British oil companies in the middle east indubitably sharing their profits.  The main American company was called the Arab American Oil Company, or ARAMCO.  Justifiably the hosting nations took exception to the many decades of foreign oil interests in their countries.  Our import oil prices doubled which led to a quick increase at the pumps, from an average of 35 cents to 55 cents.  I remember rationing and long lines at the oil pumps.  The 24-hour service station temporarily ceased to exist in many places.  That meant traveling at night required a lot of planning when you were going long distances.  At the time I was traveling from Virginia to Massachusetts.

I do not see such things happening again in our immediate future but it is in our future.  There is no debate that it will happen, just when it will happen.  America’s foray into the world of alternative sources of portable energy have been slow, mostly because at present the demand for such vehicles is still small.  Also, Americans have adjusted to increasing oil prices rather smoothly and without a lot of complaint.  The American love affair with the automobile has yet to end but it has been altered slightly.  The old behemoths of the roadways are largely a thing of the past although relative gas economy really has not increased all that much.  Large and mid-sized American cars are still wont to get much over 22 miles to the gallon in urban operation, and not a whole lot more in highway driving.  For as much as automobile companies like Toyota and Honda boast about how economical their small car are, are they are, they still pale to known possibilities.  But the known possibilities, electric primarily, lack for power and are somewhat limited in their distances.  The problem is a simple one, once you leave your home with an electric automobile, the availability of a place to recharge you automobiles batteries are minimal.

That said, we have in place, somewhat, a public transportation system that can to some degree offset the use of automobiles.  Unfortunately, most of the public does not understand the basic necessities of building, operating, and support of a comprehensive public transportation system.   Simply put, Americans are spoiled by the Interstate highway system and lack confidence in the present public transportation system to fill their needs.  The lone except to this are their airlines.  Americans are very knowledgeable where airlines are concerned.

I read in the Boston Sunday Globe today that a plan for high-speed rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco is meeting with a high degree of opposition.  Cited as the reasons are the high price of building such a rail link and the link’s lack of service to many of California’s major cities.  It is obvious to me that the people have missed the most basic idea of the rail link, how to provide high-speed, in excess of 120 MPH, service between its two largest cities.  The planners knew that building such a link along the coast, which would link most of California’s major cities, would have been unreasonably costly.  But putting the line up the central valley and avoiding the coastal mountains, allowed a much lower price tag and a sure way to gain the high speeds necessary to make it a true high-speed rail link.

America trails the rest of the world in high-speed rail and other forms of public transportation.  It is understandable that people living between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River may not see the need for increased public transportation in their areas.  But the  people in the rest of the country absolutely need it and sooner than later.  Our day of gasoline reckoning is much closer than many want to admit but when it gets here unless we have made proper plans, we will be hurting for a long time.

Let me be clear on one point.  Public transportation systems almost without exception bring in less than 50 cents in revenue for every dollar spent.  Most public transportation systems have not covered their operating costs since the 1950s and some even before that.  That means tax dollars make up the difference.  We have to accept that for our future and learn how to properly fund our public transportation.  What every American has to understand that public transportation exists for the common good.  There is a trade-off regardless of what you support.  If you decease public transportation then you necessarily increase the use of private cars on our streets and highways.  Those are your only options.

All of our urban transportation systems were designed in the early 20th Century when most Americans lived in urban areas.  The mass production of the automobile shifted our population centers and created the suburbs.  In the early 1900s when you left the city you were almost immediately in the country.  That is no longer true.  If you look at the rail route from New York City to Philadelphia you find almost a continuous urban and suburban type of population.  In 1900, you left New York and Newark urban areas and went into the countryside until you reached the small city of Trenton.  Then back into the countryside until you reached Philadelphia.  There is virtually no countryside left along that stretch with the invention of the suburbs and their linking highways.  Even more, the now populous urban centers in Florida, Texas and California were virtually non-existent in 1900.  In the case of California, an extremely well planned and extensive public transportation system was virtually dismantled by 1960 and has cost the state billions of dollars to just start its recreation.

In the early 1990s U.S. transportation planners gathered and invited urban planners from Europe and Japan to help identify and plan a comprehensive U.S. system of public transportation.  All forms of public transportation were taken into consideration to include bicycles and pedestrians.  To put this all in perspective, the U.S. is roughly 3.7 million square miles and Europe is roughly 3.9 square miles in area but there is no comparison between the two in transportation.  While the U.S. has a vastly superior road system, it has a vastly inferior public transportation system.  To be fair, the population of Europe is more than double that of the U.S.  But that only excuses the U.S. relative to those areas west of the Mississippi.

Massachusetts has invested billions of dollars in its public transportation systems, primarily the MBTA which now carries more than $3 billion in debt.  The MBTA is threatening serious service cutbacks if the status-quo is maintained.  At the heart of the problem is an aging system, both in infrastructure and equipment.  Reductions in service only provide a disincentive to the public to use the system.  The MBTA, of course, is not the only system that is being forced into making such decisions.  People want a high level of public transportation but do not understand how much it costs to maintain such a system.  Large fare increases can only be offset but increased tax subsidies.  Such subsidies are generally collected at the gas pump in the form of state and federal taxes, and sometimes city taxes.  People in urban states wonder why their gasoline taxes are higher than the more rural states and this, along with road maintenance, is precisely why.

the AMTRACK system has been under attack almost since its inception.  It has been threatened with elimination numerous times if it did not cover its operating costs with its fares.  Such a suggestion is ludicrous.  It also goes against the basic premise of public transportation, a service for the public good.  Long distance AMTRACK service has been the most seriously attacked.  Such attacks are penny wise and pound foolish.

People need to understand that the standards used for freight service and passenger service are extremely different.  The standard for passenger service requires a certain type of rail be used and that the rail be at a particular condition as regards the speed of service allowed.  That is, while freight service at speeds between 40 and 60 MPH maximum are acceptable along a particular route, passenger service along that same route at such speeds is unacceptable and unsupportable.  The concerns for the right-of-way in determining the speed at which a passenger train can travel is the weight of the rail per foot, the age of the rail, the signaling available, the upkeep of the rail bed, and the straightness of the rail.  Freight trains can operate safely in lesser conditions.

Then there is the capital equipment needed.  A single six car train with a diesel-electric engine can cost close to $5 million or more depending on use.  They have a lifetime of about 20 years.  They must be maintained and maintenance costs for any particular piece of equipment necessarily goes up with age.  Again simply put, imagine yourself having to maintain a car you bought in 1992.  That is exactly what many transportation systems are having to do with the rail and bus equipment.  It defies logic except that funding for new equipment is not supplied.

I am putting this in terms of rail transportation because railroads are abandoning rail lines that are no longer profitable.  The thing is, some of these lines are extremely desirable in terms of inter-city and long distance passenger travel.  But once abandoned, these rights-of-way will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to resurrect.   Not only that, the cost of bringing a line in disuse to a level where passenger service is viable is very expensive and that price will only increase as time goes on.  What I am saying is that even minimal service along many routes is desirable in the long-term.  Those long distance trains that ply rural states such as Montana and Wyoming may seem like a waste of funding but they are not.  There is a level of maintenance that is happening that when the need for these routes increases it will be no great problem to increase service along them.  That day will come.  It is not an “if” but a “when.”

There are three investments which need to be made now.  The first is in urban transportation, the second in inter-city transportation, and the third in long distance transportation.  The price tag will be in the many tens of billions of dollars per year but it is an investment that will yield large returns for all Americans.  Such investments will reduce the wear on our roads and highways.  It will decrease our need for imported oil.  It will guarantee us a via transportation system in an emergency.  It is a delayed gratification benefit which is always one of the best benefits anyone can experience.