Jimmy

I have a little purple sticky-note half stuck to the shelf above my laptop on my desk that says “Europe has it right: disconnect track from train service”. I often leave myself such notes in the middle of the night (in those few minutes between when I put my computer to sleep and when I put myself to sleep), sometimes reminding myself to do things (I’ve had a pink one up for the past week that says “laundry” that I can remove now, actually), sometimes ideas for screenplays (two lime green notes have been up for the whole semester with ideas for my current project) and, sometimes (as in this case) ideas to turn into blog posts.

Not as many make it into blog posts as should.

But in this case, I was reading, for about the millionth time, some of the Wikipedia pages for several European high speed rail companies and remembered something I was going to blog months (or even years?) ago (and maybe I did, but I don’t recall doing, and can’t find any place where I did, so): the idea of treating rail infrastructure/tracks as completely different from the trains that run on them. The European Union is just getting into doing this by making their member states’ various HSR agencies and companies separate the ownership of tracks and the service of running trains into two different agencies/companies (using France as an example, this means that the ownership of tracks has been transferred from SNCF (the agency that owns the TGV) to an new agency, the RFF, but both agencies are still owned by the French government), the benefit of this setup is that it will allow new companies to directly compete on the level of train SERVICE, without having to build their own (entirely useless and wasteful) track systems. So now (or, in a couple years, since the new rules don’t actually go into effect in the EU for another year or two), for example, a new company could form, buy some train-sets and give the TGV service in France a “run for its money”, using the same tracks as TGV, but not having to be at the mercy of TGV/SNCF (which perviously owned the tracks in what anybody could see was a conflict of interest) in terms of scheduling and track use fees, since all that is now (or will be) handled by a separate company whose sole purpose of existence is to manage, maintain and otherwise oversee the tracks, but nothing more.

And I think that’s what we need in America: federally owned and maintained tracks and signaling infrastructure and private companies using that track for freight, cargo and passenger services. (To be fair Amtrak already uses tracks it doesn’t own across most of the country, so this is not an entirely new concept.) Aside from a toll road here and there (my state’s local toll road, the 80/90 Indiana Toll Road was recently sold into privatization on a 99-year lease) and possibly a few airports (I haven’t done an exhaustive study of them all, but Google searches on several big ones revels them to be owned by the local city government) all transit infrastructure in the USA aside from rail infrastructure is government owned. Given my belief that transit infrastructure should be publicly owned (how else are we to get to stores to spend and keep the economy moving? Or to play, work, travel, etc.? It’d be laughable if ever time I stepped into the street outside my home I had to pay someone) I find it strange that a huge component in America’s shipping and even passenger travel system is privately owned. I think that, just like in Europe, if the tracks were owned by a third party (I’m voting federal or at least state governments, but there might be an argument for it being a private company…anyone want to try to persuade me?) I think that would foster better competition in the rail freight industry, take some strain off of rail freight companies (if all they have to focus on is their own trains rather than also having to maintain trackage it would make those businesses more streamlined and probably more efficient at their core business: quickly getting freight to the end users, which down the line is you and me, the consumer) and possibly, by extension, remove some strain from the Interstate highway system (if we can use federal dollars to improve the rail system rather than waiting for rail freight companies to do so it could conceivably speed up the rail system and remove the need for as many trucks on the roads) and, lastly, as much as the freight companies are told they have to give Amtrak the right of way (by way of a federal law) it sure seems to me (after sitting on more sidings than I care to remember on the one and only Amtrak trip I’ve ever been on [I was really excited to take the train before that, now I'm still excited to take a REAL train, but after comparing experiences on Amtrak and the Eurostar in Europe I've come to the conclusion that Amtrak does not represent real train travel in any way more than the tracks the trains run on]) that a third party managing the traffic would make Amtrak’s trips smoother.

This is all to say nothing of the need for high speed rail in America. But I think that the same model could be applied to higher-speed trackage, and, in fact, that federal ownership of the nation’s tracks could make upgrading those tracks to support higher-speed travel much easier than it is now (just look at the fastest trackage in America: it’s owned by Amtrak in the Northeast).

Most of my blog reads probably know of my interest in PRT/Podcars, so today I was surfing around on links off a blog post about PRT and I ran into a website called PRTProject.com. Naturally, I was excited. It’s always fun to see new and interesting websites about the concept.

When I stopped being excited and started understanding, for the first time, half of the arguments against PRT is when I read the second section on the main page. The part where the website author informs us that rather than compliment existing road-based transit (the car, the bus, the taxi, etc.) PRT replaces said systems.

Oh. My. F’ing. Goodness. I am truly panicked about the fact that, according to the site counter, 8717 people other than me have read that site and been so entirely mislead about an amazing transit concept as to turn entirely away from it for life (I’m assuming that part, because if I had no understanding of PRT I’d run screaming from the idea based on the information on that website).

I am not a huge car fan, but even I can’t fathom having it completely taken away from me in favor of tracks built into the street carrying publicly-run Podcars. My skin crawls at the thought.

AND I LOVE PODCARS.

OK, background for those confused: PRT is not meant to replace ANY type of transit, rather it’s a concept (that will be proven or disproven at London’s Heathrow Airport in the coming months) that solves quite a few problems that current transit systems don’t (the problem of how to get to a lightrail stop 5 miles away, for example, or how to get across a large corporate/university campus or a large airport or a small town that can’t support any larger transit systems*). Podcars are a beautifully scalable concept, but never in a million years will they, should they, or could they replace ALL cars on the streets of a town. (Masdar City being an exception to this rule whose successfulness is still to be seen.) The beauty of having lots of transit options is just that, OPTIONS. People who enjoy driving should be able to drive. A PRT system should not take that right away from anybody.

[*I used a bunch of small-scale implementation possibilities as examples because I think that's the way PRT will first prove itself, but I think it does hold the potential to cover an entire city. I just think that any kinks will need to be worked out on smaller systems first.]

For some reason (that quite frankly does escape me) it seems that PRT/Podcars is a much more controversial topic than other transit systems (although there’s quite a bit of bickering over HSR in the US, too, I guess) and that’s why I think that a website that blindly positions PRT as something to COMPLETELY replace automobiles, including the roads they travel on (without a word of what roads emergency vehicles [that's not true, apparently] and other non-automobiles would use) is really dangerous (and naive). Anybody who really understands transit in America understands that you can’t take people’s cars away from them. You can give them more transit options so that those who don’t want to be tied to a car don’t have to be, but you just can’t remove the roads and expect people to take it. And implying that all versions of PRT (the website never stipulates that the idea presented is an extremely far-out version of PRT) involve taking away people’s cars, well, that’s just rude and extremely counter-productive to the cause of getting people to take Podcars seriously.

Badly done, PRTProject.com, BADLY DONE.

That is all.

-j

I was really excited to see the CNN headline “Obama unveils high-speed rail plan” this evening. Anybody who knows me or has read this blog can probably attest to my great interest in this topic, so I was very pleased to see that Obama would be coming through on his campaign promise to bring HSR to America.

Except that’s not at all what he’s suggesting. It is High Speed Rail in name only, and from what I can tell most of what he’s proposing would be slower than the “High Speed” Acela service that Amtrak currently runs between Washington D.C. and Boston.

Now I understand that definitions of what constitutes “high speed” rail differ from person to person and I know that my definition is up there, but CNN informs us that Obama “cited the success of high-speed rail in European countries such as France and Spain” while at the same time presenting a plan that would have “some trains traveling at top speeds of over 150 mph.”

Let me enlighten you, Mr. President: the trains you speak of in France and Spain cruise at speeds up to 186mph or even 199mph. And I believe even faster trains are in the works (can’t find the link right now, but I think France is planning a 220mph train to be launched sometime in the next few years).

And so, having gotten fairly familiar with the trains in Europe (the 186mph Eurostar is an amazing, fun and smooth ride from London to Paris) and the struggles to bring that type of train technology to American shores and seeing what went wrong I have this to say about your HSR plan, Mr. President: scrape it until you can go all out. The last thing we need is a “sort of” version HSR that nobody rides because it’s just not quite fast enough, but that cost enough to get every single taxpayer in America mad at the government, you AND (worst of all from my viewpoint) the idea of HSR. If we don’t do this correctly right out the gate, America might not give us another chance. Americans are going to be tough to sell on HSR already: we’re wary of it because it’s European, we’re wary of it because it’s really, really expensive.

But I’ve noticed something: America is not totally averse to the idea. California just passed the proposal to build a $40 billion+ 220mph High Speed Rail system from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and with gas prices creeping ever higher and Al Gore still on his global warming campaign Americans are seeming to slowly change our minds about HSR.

On the third hand I think that just means we have ONE chance now. Before we had no chance and quite a few HSR proposals have been killed in the past in various states and regions (Florida, Texas, etc.).

Mr. President, don’t be an idiot and dishonest. You promised us High Speed Rail last year, but your proposal of sub-150mph trains on outdated routes for $13 billion over 5 years is a joke and should be treated as such. Do you think we’re that stupid and gullible? If you and the Vice President are really so concerned about HSR for America you need to remember just two things:
1. lots and lots and lots of money. California is building a system that is currently budgeting in at $40-50 billion for 700 or so miles. That means that for national HSR we’re looking at an amount of money that can be measured in meaningful fractions of a trillion dollars. Sounds bad, but you’re giving Wall Street that much money unsupervised, can’t our nations failing transit infrastructure have some, too? (I mean, more than the laughable-in-comparison $13 billion you’ve proposed for HSR thus far?)
2. 200+ mph. Don’t try to pass off Acela-type trains on the whole country and call it HSR. It will fail. If done right, super-HSR (what France and Japan have crisscrossing their countries) won’t fail, but your brand of HSR-lite will fail. And it will bring billions of our dollars down with it. Don’t patronize us by pretending it will work.

Now I should really be working on my research paper, which is interestingly enough on this exact same topic.

Cheers.

-j

The BBC is reporting that researchers may have found a way to make lithium-ion batteries that are lighter and smaller than current li-ion batteries and that can change in a fraction of the time of current li-ions (perhaps as little as 5% the time).

This will not only make charging cell phones and other portable devices a lot simpler (no more having to remember to plug it in the night before, because you can just plug it in for 5 or 10 minutes in the morning) but it will remove the final huge technical problem that currently is impeding the large-scale development and deployment of electric vehicles: the problem of hours-long charging times. (The all-electric Tesla Roadster takes 3.5 hours to charge, but if this breakthrough is as big as it seems it is, a car like the Roadster could charge in possibly as little as 12 minutes. Not much longer than it takes to fill a gas tank today.)

The BBC article mentions that “because there are relatively few changes to the standard manufacturing process,” “the new battery material could make it to market within two to three years.”

That means that if these new li-ion batteries are found to be able to scale up to the size needed for vehicles and still be charged in mere minutes, within 5 years we could see mass-produced electric cars that can be charged in as little as 15-20 minutes anywhere there’s an electrical outlet. And if that happens it will only be a matter of months before gas stations, restaurants, and even possibly rest stops (although those will probably take several years) start installing outlet boxes fashioned after gas pumps with a meter and credit card reader for people to stop and recharge for 15 minutes on long road trips.

Gotta go to class.

Cheers.

-j

CNN.com today has a story about what stayed, what got cut and what actually got increased funding in the final stimulus bill (which still needs to be passed by the house and the senate, but the conference committee seems to have agreed on it which is good news), and the biggest winner in terms of percentage increase of funding from the original house or senate bills is High-Speed Rail funding which went from $0.3 Billion in the House version and $2.25 Billion in the Senate bill to $8 Billion in the final bill!

Given that that’s not even what California alone wants from the federal government to complete it’s $40+ billion HSR system this is not a terribly large amount of money, but it’s a huge start and wonderful that we’re finally addressing this issue on the federal level.

I am worried that the money won’t be spent wisely, however, since I think HSR has the huge potential to tank and take billions of public dollars with it if it’s not done exactly right. HSR needs to be part of a larger public transit system as it is in Europe and Asia (where it’s doing very well) but if we just kinda install some tracks randomly and generally do HSR like we’ve done Amtrak it’s not going to work. Many people have expressed concern about HSR proposals in the US because we’re far less densely populated than Europe and Aisa and I think those are valid fears. I don’t think HSR is impossible to make work in the US, but I do think it needs very careful planning, the type of planning I’ve never seen any transit planner in the USA display.

Eh. I could go on, but I have class in 10 minutes and haven’t completed the weekly homework. (I don’t think that’s gonna happen.)

Cheers.

-j

Last Wednesday on CNN:

The American Society of Civil Engineers issued an infrastructure report card Wednesday giving a bleak cumulative ranking of D.

So, we need to act on that issue, then?

This Wednesday on CNN:

The first attempt to make a change to the economic stimulus package failed Tuesday night, a sign that Republicans do have some power to change how the bill is structured.

The vote was on adding $24 billion in infrastructure spending on things like highways, mass transit and improvements to water and sewer systems. Had the amendment passed, the Senate’s version of the economic stimulus package would have topped $900 billion.

Oh well, it was a good idea, but I guess it wasn’t that big of an emergency, right? I mean, it could be worse, right? A “D” on the infrastructure is still better than an “F,” right?

Best to wait until we hit that magic “F”. Which stands for…Failure to Act Now Will Mean The Death Of Us All. I guess “D” for Doom isn’t bad enough?

-j

Last night I mentioned two things I was watching closely in this election: 1) if my home state of Indiana would turn blue for the first time in 44 years and if California voters would approve the High-Speed Rail bond measure on the ballot.

Well, I’m happy to report that both things happened! With 99% of precincts reporting in Indiana (don’t you love how those last 1% of precincts take days/weeks to trickle in? Or maybe the news outlets just stop updating the maps…?), Obama is ahead by 0.9% and the state’s been called for a democrat for the first time in 44 years! Yay!

And in California with 95.4% of precincts reporting Proposition 1A is ahead by 4.4% or 420,000 votes. While the LA Times (where I’m getting my info) hasn’t called it yet, other news outlets are reporting that it’s a win and it seems so to me, too. (Even though those last 4.6% of precincts probably represent 450,000 people it seems statistically improbable that 93.3% of those votes will be against HSR.)

I really can’t describe how happy I am that HSR passed in California. This will give a giant boost to HSR efforts all across the country, now and over the next decade as California builds their system.

Yay!

Cheers.

-j

Well, everyone’s declaring Obama the next president of the United States now that the polls in CA, OR, WA, ID and HI have closed. Can’t say I’m sorry, I did vote for him, but it’s still kinda depressing because I never quite understood until this year the “lesser of two evils” sentiment. Whatever. I know a lot of people would just chalk this up to residual primary resentment, but it’s not. (I think.) It’s just…I don’t know. I don’t feel like going into it right now.

More importantly in my mind are two things I’m watching:

First is Indiana’s presidential results: with 93.8% of precincts reporting, Obama is ahead by just over 7,000 votes. I don’t care about the state going for Obama per se, but I’m excited to see my state go for a democrat for the first time in 44 years. As the final results trickle in Obama’s lead has been slowly getting bigger, so I’m crossing my fingers to see the state go blue.

Second is Proposition 1a in California: the $9.95 billion bond measure to start funding the proposed high speed-rail service in the state. If voters approve the proposition it will green-light the first truly high-speed rail system in the United States, hopefully/likely increasing efforts throughout the rest of the country. (Policy wonks and/or CA citizens: I acknowledge that prop. 1a has some issues and is not perfect, but as someone who believes wholeheartedly in high-speed rail and who thinks it’s something we desperately need in this country I don’t believe those issues are big enough to warrant killing this effort, which would put back HSR efforts in America by decades.)

Anyway. Back to being glued to CNN.com.

-j

Here’s part 3 (local/urban transit by bike) of my TiA (Transportation in America) plan; finally we’re actually getting into the meat of it! *grin*
If you haven’t read the two “intro” posts and are wondering what this is about, I encourage you to read part 1: Introduction/The Problem and part 2: Overview of the 3 Part Network.
I work on each section whenever I have time between school work and family events, so the next section (local/urban transit by electric and hybrid vehicles) will probably be completely by mid-week sometime. Stay tuned.

————

The Local/Urban Transit Networks in my plan use three main types of transportation:

• Walking/Biking: in this post
• Electric and Hybrid Vehicles: in part 4
• Podcars: in part 5

I’ll treat each of these points separately before knitting them all together at the end. I’m going longer than I thought I would on each topic, so I’m posting walking/biking on it’s own and will post about Electric and Hybrid Vehicles, Podcars and the overall system later.

Walking/Biking
I should say right up front that I’m not the type of person who believes that we should all ditch our cars and walk/bike everywhere within 10 miles of home. I think that dreaming of creating a world in which 100% of people do that is a waste of brain cells that could be better used trying to come up with transit solutions that a majority of Americans will actually agree to participate in. With that said, I do know that there are people who enjoy walking/biking and would do more of it on longer trips if there were specific walking and biking paths separate from city streets (I am one of those people: I get to 60% of my college classes by biking the half mile to campus and would probably go more places in town by bike if there were paths made specifically for it).

So we come to the concept of bike paths (for the sake of brevity and the fact that I’m focusing more on biking than walking because it’s a more widely used mode of transportation I’m going to be referring to walking/biking paths simply as bike paths from here on out) and greenways (the two concepts are similar but different: greenways are basically bike paths with vegetation around them; bike paths are, as you would expect, any path that’s built for bike travel and includes bike lanes on city streets): corridors set aside for foot and bike traffic to flow freely without having to compete with the cars and trucks and buses on city streets. Light rail is [generally] given corridors separate from city streets (subways are a prime example of this), as well as Podcars (see later in this series). Biking and walking are good, healthy forms of transport for urban settings, but to fully maximize the number of people using this form of transit we need to give walkers and bikers there own paths and corridors.

I purpose that urban planners start making bike paths and greenways a normal part of the planned urban landscape (perhaps spaced a half mile to a mile apart) and bike lanes a normal part of every major city street. It’s probably unreasonable to assume that it’s possible to install bike paths or greenways to that density within already crowded urban centers, but I purpose that all new developments in the suburbs should make bike paths and/or greenways an integrated part of every new development no more than a half mile apart (insuring that nobody will only have to bike on a city street for more than a quarter mile to get into the bike path/greenway system). (Within already built neighborhoods the installation of bike lanes on existing streets will have to do in most places, but I imagine that if urban planners got creative enough they could find ways to squeeze new bike paths and greenways into the middle of urban settings, for example along rivers or old railroad corridors [I should give credit where it’s due to the many cities around the country that are already doing this]).

If urban planners started treating bikers and car drivers equally in terms of resources and respect I think we would seem many, many more people choosing the bike over the car for trips of 2, 5, 10 or even 15+ miles for some people (the local city government in Boulder, CO seems to be doing just this as they’ve spent 15% of their transit budget the last several years on increasing bike traffic and they strive to create a system that’s “equitable for all users,” a stance that’s increased the percentage of commuters that bike to 21%). More than just new paths and lanes, though, bikers specifically need places to park their bikes once they’ve reached their destinations and, for professional workers, a place to shower and change before work.

Cities in Europe are leading the world in terms of biker-friendliness and we could do to follow some of their examples. Paris, France, for example, has started a low-cost bike rental program that has been a huge success (I haven’t actually tried it, but I saw the bike stations when I was in Paris last December and the whole system looked easy and smooth to use). We all know that Americans are more attached to their cars than Europeans, but we do seem to like our bikes as well, and, if done right, I think a bike rental program like Paris’ could work in most US cities. Bike paths and greenways connecting every part of a city, bike rental programs, bike parking and showering facilities located around town for those that own their bikes would all help to make our cities cleaner, quieter and healthier.

(After I finished writing the section above my dad sent me a link to a N.Y. Times article about how bike use on college and university campuses is increasing nationwide [you may need a free NYTimes account to read the article]. This is an encouraging first step; now we need to get these students to continue to use their bikes after they graduate and, more importantly, we need to make it as easy to use the bikes around cities as it is on campuses.)

Stay tuned for part 4: local/urban transit by electric and hybrid vehicles sometime in the next few days.

Enjoy!

-jbh

Here’s part 2 of my series of posts on Transit in America. Sorry about the delay, I meant to post this several days ago, but life got in the way and it took me until now to finish writing it.

If you haven’t already read it, I encourage you to go and read the first post in this series that provides some background for this post. Otherwise read on to see the overview of my vision for Transportation in America called the Three Part Network (version 0.1 [a.k.a. ‘draft 1’], there will certainly be changes down the road).

In thinking about this post and what I wanted to say in it I was wondering if it was really necessary to overview the whole idea before just getting into the details. I was trying to figure out if it would be overkill to write an entire post summarizing something that I’m planning on explaining in more depth soon anyway. Then I remembered Rule 37: “There is no ‘overkill.’ There is only ‘open fire’ and ‘time to reload.’” So with that little issue cleared up, let’s “open fire” on this issue, shall we? (I apologize if my dark sense of humor offends some of you that were reading this post just to see some college student’s take on Transit in America without side topics interjected into it. It won’t happen again.)

The plan is organized into three parts as follows:

• Local/Urban Transit Systems. This covers forms of transit for getting around at the neighborhood level (less than a quarter mile), the urban area level (100+ miles) and every level in between. This will, of course, include current (in almost all locations) transit technologies like our street networks and sidewalks, etc, but also include new (to many places) forms of transit like Podcars, more light rail in certain places, more bike paths/lanes and replacing all gas-powered vehicles with gas-electric hybrids and all-electric vehicles. A change in urban planning strategies is also needed to put more emphasis on making room for walking and biking paths and Podcar guideways (e.g.: more emphasis on “alternative” forms of transit and less on roads).
• Regional Transit Systems. These systems would cover 20-500+ miles and are used for shuttling people and light cargo between local/urban transit systems in the region as well for quickly moving people and light cargo across large urban areas. Technologies used for this purpose include the state, US and interstate highway systems for the travel of hybrid and electric cars, trucks and buses; the current freight railroad system (with upgrades); and new systems like a high-speed version of the local Podcar system and express light rail systems.
• National Transit System. This system is used for transporting people, light cargo and freight distances greater than a few hundred miles, connecting regional systems in different parts of the country to each other. The backbone of the human and light cargo transport system is a new super high-speed rail system capable of average speeds over 200 miles an hour. Other transport technologies used for this system include the current interstate highway system, current airport system and current freight railroad system, all with moderate to substantial upgrades and improvements. I also purpose a system for light cargo and mail based on the Podcar system but with speeds much, much higher and no options of human transport.

So there we have it: the Three Part Network in a nutshell. The plan is to upgrade existing/current technologies to 21st Century standards while also introducing new uniquely 21st Century technologies to help handle the load put on the overall transportation system by a growing and active population while also addressing issues of sustainability and cost.

Next post: Part 3: Local/Urban Transit Networks.

Cheers.

-jimmy