Tag: Rapid Rail

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

crossposted from ProgressiveBlue

Transport For America (t4america.org) has a call to action out on the Climate Change Bill. “ACES” passed the House, and the corresponding (but of course not identical) legislation is presently up for consideration in the Senate.

The basis of the call for action is straightforward:

• 1% of the revenues raised by the Carbon Fee is permitted to be used for clean energy transport – not even mandated, but optionally may be used for that among a range of other options.
  
• Transport is responsible for 30% of the CO2 emitted
  
• thus, “You can’t solve 30% of the problem with 1% of the funds

Now, about 14% of carbon fee revenue is dedicated to emissions reduction, so that is 7.2% of the emissions reduction budget allocated that is the maximum allowed to be spent on installing existing clean energy transport. Based on CBO estimates of carbon fees, the maximum amount that states would be allowed to devote to clean energy transport is:

• $391m in 2011; rising to
• $1.3b ($1,323m) in 2019

By contrast, the bill authorizes utilities to tax customers by $1b-$1.1b a year over 10 years to finance the installation of Carbon Sequestration Technology, which is the excuse given for permitting continued construction of coal-fired generating plants. (source: 1Sky analysis, pdf)

This means:

• The most promising single opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in transport inside a decade, electrification of the STRACNET long haul rail freight network, is entirely out of bounds for any funding
• Funding for electric rail and trolley bus passenger transport requires first gaining approval through Federal programs that discriminate against energy-efficiency

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

crossposted to Agent Orange

The people’s choice award in the Re-Burbia “Rethinking Suburbia” design competition was the entry titled Urban Sprawl Repair Kit: Repairing The Urban Fabric.

But I want to adapt these ideas from the repair of the urban fabric to the original creation of a healthy suburban fabric. From further below:

After all, no matter how much one may love big cities – big cities have never been the be-all and end-all of settlement. Part of a healthy big city economy is a healthy network of relationships to a surrounding network of healthy smaller cities. And part of what makes them healthy is a healthy network of relationships to healthy small towns and villages.

And that is the foundation of the Suburban Town and Village design pattern, using the Rapid Streetcar as its transport infrastructure backbone: providing suburban Towns and Villages that work in their own right, replacing the two-dimensional movie-set facade of Town and Village life offered by most suburban sprawl communities.

crossposted from MyLeftWing

Having lost sight of our goals we redoubled our efforts
– Mark Twain

I have blogged on this topic before (links below the fold), and the concept is both powerful and simple. Electrify main rail corridors and provide the capacity to support 100mph Rapid Freight Rail. The points are direct:

• Electric rail freight needs under 10% the energy of diesel truck freight
• Even with short-haul trucking to origin railhead and from destination railhead, 100mph Rapid Freight Rail is faster door to door freight than long-haul trucking
• In underused Rights of Way, rail capacity is decreasing cost, with additional capacity cheaper than existing capacity
• As a side-effect benefit, any system that supports high reliability scheduled freight delivery automatically support substantially upgrade passenger rail services

With the focus on Long-Haul Freight, this proposed system has been dubbed the “Steel Interstate” (pdf).

Virginia is facing a Dinosaur Economy proposal to expand I-81 to  eight lanes to cope with the combination of truck and car traffic. RAIL Solutions has turned to the Steel Interstate that:

• is a lower cost alternative
• is not addicted to oil,
• and takes semi-truck traffic off I-81, rather than imposing more semi-truck traffic on the motorists using I-81.

Burning the Midnight Oil for a Brawny Recovery

This information from the Midwest High Speed Rail Blog, Ohio Proposed Budget Includes Developing Passenger Rail Between 4-5 Cities (who themselves give a h/t to Transportation for America):

As part of a two-year, $7.5 billion proposed budget, Ohio plans to continue developing passenger rail service connecting four cities Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati (DispatchPolitics) – and possibly including a link to Toledo. Rail advocacy group All Aboard Ohio supports the so-called “3-C” plan and describes it here.