Tag: energy efficient transport

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

{I’m still sick, so I am going back to a 24 July 2006 dKos post, slightly updated (additions/amendments in braces and italics like this paragraph) to recall why the Sunday Train goes out under the “Living Energy Independence” banner.}

All to often, the idea of Energy Independence has its priorities reversed. Scratch under the surface, and all too often the question lurking is, “How can we get as close as possible to Energy Independence without any real changes in the way we live and move?”

Stop and think about that … really think about it, with your heart instead of your habits of thought. People – good people – are fighting and dying right now in Iraq {and Afghanistan} in a failing occupation, following a successful invasion … in pursuit of a continued Energy Dependence policy.

In your heart, do you think that is a fair price to pay? If you do, do not read any further.

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

What is the CEI? It is the “Cost Effectiveness Index”, used to evaluate applications for capital improvements in transit. As described by Yonah Freemark at The Transport Politic:

In reviewing transit capital projects to fund with New Starts grant money, the Federal Transit Administration evaluates proposals from a variety of perspectives. Since 2005, it has placed an overwhelming focus on one criterion, requiring a medium “cost-effectiveness” rating, which values predicted overall travel time saved by commuters likely to use the new service.

… but there’s a problem with that.

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

A few weeks back, SubsidyScope, “launched by The Pew Charitable Trusts, aims to raise public awareness about the role of federal subsidies in the economy”, pursued its mandate into transport subsidies, coming out with a study with the headline figure of $32 subsidy per passenger for Amtrak.

Why Amtrak? Why not provide a headline figure on federal subsidy per motorist or airplane passenger? Critics of the report suggest that the answer is simple – consider, for instance, Charleston WV mayor Danny Jones:

Jones admits Amtrak relies heavily on subsidies, but so do other modes of transportation, he said.

“I think it’s just easier to see how much of it’s subsidized with Amtrak,” he said.

And there is a lot of merit in that. Further, SubsidyScope is not focusing on Government subsidy, but on Federal subsidy. Not only is it harder to analyze government subsidies to driving and flying, given how many direct and indirect subsidies there are to take into account – but many of the subsidies are at the state and local government level, so for SubsidyScope’s purposes they “don’t count”.

But its worse that that. Even accepting SubsidyScope’s twisted framing of the issue of government subsidies – the actual core part of the analysis that they themselves perform is hopelessly bad. The gory details, and then the numbers that pity forced me to rescue from the clutches of SubsidyScope, below the fold.

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

Crossposted from MyLeftWing, also in Orange

The big knock against high speed rail is, of course, that it does not run door to door. This is, of course, why the passenger air transport market is such a strategic target … it is an existing fuel-inefficient mode of transport where everyone travels as a pedestrian. And a well designed high speed rail system will deliver the target market among pedestrian travellers from as close or closer to their origin, and drop them off as close or closer to their destination.

But those are not the only passengers that HSR will be catering to. A term I have heard railfans use for this type of activity is “recruiting” patronage, so, after the fold, I step through some of the important current, and potential, recruiters.