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195 comments on DrumBeat: August 12, 2008
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195 comments on DrumBeat: August 12, 2008
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I think they know something we don't, AND have the money to do something about it. I live near Denver, and the mass transit program (FasTracks) is in shambles due to cost overruns. No one knows what to do about it at this point.
1) Divert money from road building and road maintenance.
2) Raise taxes.
3) Have the feds pay 90%, like they did to build the Interstate Highway system.
Alan
They spent billions on I-25 while at the same time expanding light rail, a rather contradictory course of action. I think it is mainly oil that is contributing to these cost overruns. Sales taxes were raised with public support to build Fas Traks. Not sure the public would go for a further increase in sales taxes to pay for this.
Diverting money from road building/maintenance would be a great idea. But that would probably be unpopular as well. Despite the growing transit system, Denverites still love their cars.
I am a big fan of mass transit, including buses. We just had a family reunion in my little mountain town and my brother asked to borrow my car to drop off his daughter in Colorado Springs, 130 miles from where I live. I told him to suggest to her to take the bus which is way cheaper than making a round trip to the Springs. He will now barely talk to me. Anyway, she will be taking the bus unless my bro can convince my other brother to lend him his car.
Point of this little anecdote? All sorts of people talk the talk but when it comes to actually taking mass transit they default to the car every time.
That's true to an extent, even in the UK. But in any kind of optimisation process the key is that you want to go after the element which has the highest "cost of activity" times "frequency of activity". It matters much less whether people change their vacation plans, potentially involving huge mileage for maybe fifteen days, than if they change their daily commute, which is generally much shorter but happens close to 250 days a year.
On the anecdote front, I'm all for taking buses, but family will insist on holding get togethers at some point over holiday weekends which is precisely when most buses change to their "one or two in the entire day" schedule. So I end up either taking a taxi or grabbing a ride from someone. But I use public transport when I do have to commute.
Or you don't go. Using a car less doesn't change the paradigm. Ditching the car does.
Linear programming tells us that the "solution" is never a compromise, but always an extreme. Switching paradigms is jumping to new maximum/minimum.
cfm in Gray, ME
Being pedantic, linear programming relies on the fact that there is always one global optimum that occurs at a corner of the constraint simplex; in some circumstances there can be equal global optima not at a corner. But that's a minor quibble.
I was more commenting on the irony that my family choose dates that makes getting to them by public transport difficult rather than easy. Commuting day in,day out without using a car is a bigger change than what happens four or five exceptional days a year.
"Using a car less doesn't change the paradigm. Ditching the car does."
If your talking about the paradigm of Peak Oil, and your talking only about American cars, no, it doesn't.
RC
Linear programming tells us that the "solution" is never a compromise, but always an extreme. Switching paradigms is jumping to new maximum/minimum.
Having used linear programming as a tool professionally, three comments:
Hmmm...was this before or after the bus beheading in Manitoba...?
Compare the number of bus beheadings to the number of people killed in boring old car accidents?
Yup. Boring is, well, boring. Under the radar. Way under the radar, buried somewhere down in Earth's core.
It's not a dry quantitative thing. It's a weighted comparison. Think for example of all the expensive creepy gear some parents buy to track their kids, and all the expensive amber-alert signs along major highways all across the country - even though said gear and said signs deal with only the rarest of hazards. And yet those same parents think nothing of driving the kids across the state and back for no real reason at all. Surely, then, it should be no great surprise if one's family reacts: take the bus? you must be off your meds!
One of the local news programs came up with some stats. Since 2000 on Greyhound buses in Canada there have been:
Travelling by bus never worries me - in January, I travelled by Greyhound on exactly the same route where the murder occurred and it was a totally uneventful trip.
Walking in the woods is a different story. Bears recently seem to be developing a taste for people around here... that's why I don't plan to "run for the hills" when PO hits :)
Bear attacks
Not necessarily contradictory. A million people added to the Front Range area in the last 20 years, the next million forecast to happen in less than 15 years. Rail goes to only a limited number of places, largely runs along areas that are already developed and unlikely to see large scale re-development, so some expansion of the road system is necessary. I-25 is the only meaningful north-south highway, and will always get a lot of attention.
40% of the state highways' lane-miles are rated poor or worse for condition, much of that in the rural parts of the state where mass transit isn't an option. Unless you're willing to abandon the rural counties, where are the diversions going to come from?
I'm also a big fan of mass transit; but realistically, am a bigger fan of wind, cleaner coal, and cars with a 40-mile electric range.
unlikely to see large scale re-development, so some expansion of the road system is necessary
In the next twenty years, perhaps only a dozen years;
Only if zoning prevents redevelopment. Almost every US city (and certainly Denver) could and should have pockets of significantly higher density. High rises next to most stations with multi-story (tapering down to 2 & 3 story) multi-family housing for a quarter mile around each rail station would be the stereotype. Lots of street level retail in walkable neighborhoods around each station. Not much "Park & Ride" at most stations, the space is better used for homes & commercial.
Almost all of the "rural" development around Denver is just Exurban sprawl and should be (and likely will be) abandoned. Rural living with urban jobs.
Many rural roads could go to one lane maintained and a "pull over" lane when another rancher came in the other direction. Others back to gravel. Asphalt can be, and is, upgraded to fuel oil and even diesel. Too valuable to use much on rural farm roads.
Raise that number of "poor" from 40% to 95% while streetcars are brought back to every town of 25,000. Once rail is established, shut I-25 down to 4 lanes near Denver and 2 lanes further out.
Take two lane streets and convert one lane into a 2 way bike lane (spend some precious asphalt improving that side as part of the conversion) and make the other side one way street.
Draconian yes, but it is the best option we have at this late date.
Look at the implications of ELM and consider that the USA may get less than it's proportionate share of imported oil.
Best Hopes for not holding too tight for too long onto high energy sprawl development,
Alan
So in the interest of transitioning to public transit shift funding from roads to rail we cut back on road maintenance. What happens to these roads in the meantime, a transition which will take years? They become even more unsafe and raise the cost of personal transit through damaged vehicles. Many roads are presently in bad condition, so now were going to throw gasoline on the fire. Uh, remember what happened in Minneapolis last year? The public and political opponents of rail transit, seeing one more catastrophe like that one, will cry out for the heads of the politicians and advocates who pushed the policy of taking money away from maintenance. Maybe this are just acceptable collateral damage?
Raise taxes? Are you serious? Many states and municipalities are in a budget crisis now. Were also in a recession regardless of what economists and government officials state. Talk about political suicide.
So where is this money going to come from? These are different times than the growing economy in the fifties and sixties that built the national highway system.
Sometimes the right thing to do is not the popular thing to do. Sadly, politicians no longer care about doing the right thing.
The way they used to.
1) The roads will have to be triaged sooner or later. VMT is heading down and we need fewer lane-miles.
2) Taxes are NEVER politically popular, but they are raised when they need to be. I dislike general sales taxes to support transit, but that is the most common source. Property taxes and income taxes seem to be better sources with excise taxes (gasoline, liquor, tobacco) the best for new construction. Special sales taxes (restaurant meals, rental cars, tickets for shows & games) etc.
Somehow billions have been raised locally for new NFL, NBA, MBL & NHL stadiums, often replacing perfectly functional existing stadiums. If people want it, it can happen !
An example for Denver (hypothetical), a nickel/gallon gas tax and a 10% ticket tax (sports, movies, live entertainment) added to the existing sales tax should get things built ahead of schedule, not behind. Taxes expire once FasTrack is finished.
3) The feds can finance Urban Rail the same way they did the interstates. A nickel a gallon gas tax in 1955 (from memory), adjusted for inflation would be ..
We found the money for Iraq, I think that we can find it for an essential national security goal, Non-Oil Transportation.
Best Hopes for a realistic look at our problems, and solutions,
Alan
With all due respect Alan, and I mean this sincerely as I greatly respect your engineering knowledge, I believe you are being very naïve and not being realistic about what is politically feasible. Everything you propose is based on a big IF and hopeful thinking. IF Americans can only think like the French. IF we throw off a policy of the military industrial complex and the drive toward empire. IF Americans suddenly and simultaneously accept light rail as THE solution and be willing to pay for it. IF states can forget their parochialism and work for the welfare of the country as a whole. IF the competition for funds between rural and urban could be overcome. I could go on, but there are a lot of ifs, and no guarantee they will reach the same conclusions as you, especially when power, influence, ideology, and money are involved. Moreover, your solutions as so urban centric that they have no hope of getting through Congress. No way Jose this will play in Montana. I hate to say this, but unless we get lucky enough to get a philosopher king, I don’t see any movement toward a viable solution until we hit bottom, and then it will be too late.
Every elected and unelected president presumes himself to be one. In fact, the US is very much like Plato's Republic, which was really an "enlightened" dictatorship.
However, if it can be shown how US/globalized corporations will benefit from building a rail-based transport net, then it has a good chance of becoming reality as sectional politicians will be bought. Remember the Corporate-Socialist US Empire exists to benefit corporations first and foremost, with people and the environment always last.
karlof-
Plato was a reactionary, and has been, along with Aristotle (the essence), wrong just about everything.
Plato and his "creation", Socrates, were members of Greeks "Reagan Revolution".
The last thing we need is "Philosopher Kings", the Straussian wet dream.
He hit his high point with the cave analogy.
I cannot go into details, but there is more support than you might think. Including specifically Montana (just got an eMail from the Gov. staff a few minutes ago).
Someone meeting with T Boone in a few days asked me for input (he has his own agenda, but will try and piggyback some of my ideas in as well).
Enough people are profoundly scared about this, that help is coming from unexpected places (a lobbyist for a military contractor is helping me greatly. I asked why, and he said it is not in the best interest of XYZ for the USA economy to crash).
I was tabulating the free help I have been given, and the "fair market value" to date is well over $1 million.
And the alternatives are ... ?
Best Hopes,
Alan
And that is the key point! All of Bruce from Chicago's points are valid but the status quo cannot persist. The pain is manifest regardless, but will it be pain towards a partial solution or pain and inaction leading to even greater pain.
Sadly, for some parts of the country it will be the latter.
"These are different times than the growing economy in the fifties and sixties that built the national highway system."
Sure the economic conditions are different, no doubt far worse. Hence this site and this conversation. The ounces of prevention are gone, we missed them.. it'll be pounds of prevention today, which WILL hurt, or a severe pounding further down the (heavily degraded, either way) road. Got something better? Please do say what else you think is a reasonable course to take.
Respectfully,
Bob
Bob, I don’t need to have a better solution to point out the problems of getting anything as radical as what Alan proposed above wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of being passed by Congress.
wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of being passed by Congress
Don't bet on that !
More Later.
Best Hopes :-)
Alan
Actually, I would put my money, actually a choice of some nice organic crops grown by myself, such as asparagus (I‘ll even put heavy straw over them to give you some white ones), where my mouth is, that a dramatic shift in national federal policy shifting highway funding to rail doesn’t occur within three years. No wiggle room with little meaningless bills that pronounce policy such as “no child left behind” with goals that are illusory, no baby steps that are passed off as King Kong’s footprints, but actual big time national projects being paid by money that was instead earmarked for highways. Actually I hope I'm wrong.
How big is "Big Time" ?
And remove the proviso that the $$ have to come from highway funding.
I would be interested in that bet :-)
Alan
It seems paradoxical but it's true: leadership sometimes requires standing for something with no evidence that your goal is attainable.
Then, gradually, the pieces fall into place until you succeed. People look back and ask you, "How did you do that?"
It doesn't work every time but reaching for goals in the face of no agreement is a hallmark of leadership.
This is what Alan is doing.
-André
AKA "stirring the pot...."
:)
Hmmm...would they pass something to make themselves 'look good'...and then simply let it slide into oblivion, as they do more often than not?
Yup, having been a political junkie since I can remember (I was the weird kid who watched the Nixon Kennedy debate with pleasure) from an old Irish political family from Chicago I've sure seen enough political posturing in my day. Everyone shakes hands, signs the bill, poses for the camera, and then nothing gets done. Jaded? You betcha.