Counterpoint: High-Speed Rail Can Be a Good Investment - Post 4: Density, Cost

Last Monday, Robert J. Samuelson published an op-ed in the Washington Post suggesting the high-speed rail is nothing but pork.  At one point he says:

"Only in places with greater population densities, such as Europe and Asia, is high-speed rail potentially attractive. Even there, most of the existing high-speed trains don't earn 'enough revenue to cover both their construction and operating costs,' the Congressional Research Service report said. The major exceptions seem to be the Tokyo-Osaka and Paris-Lyon lines."

(from Wikimedia Commons)

As I mentioned in a previous post, I traveled on the AVE trains in Spain this summer.  Spain has a population density of about 210 people per square mile.  There are 12 US states with greater densities than this, as follows:

• New Jersey            1,174
• Rhode Island          1,008
• Massacusetts             841
• Connecticut               726
• UK                 656
• Germany         593
• Maryland                  583
• Delaware                  453
• New York                414
• Florida                      344
• France            310
• Ohio                         282
• Pennsylvania             281
• E. Coast (MA-FL)   276
• California                  237
• Illinois                       232
• Spain              210
• Hawaii                      202

Even more to the point, the whole East Coast, from Massachusetts to Florida, is almost as densely populated as France, which is highly regarded for its excellent high-speed rail system.  So this oft-repeated canard that the US just isn't dense enough to accommodate high-speed rail is patently untrue.

Now the second point: "high-speed trains don't earn 'enough revenue to cover both their construction and operating costs."  Neither do highways.  In fact most highways earn no revenues at all.  Zero.  So what's his point?  Highways don't earn enough revenues to cover EITHER their construction or operating costs.  Virtually all transportation systems are subsidized.  So the decision is not whether a system can pay for itself--none do--but rather which systems make the most sense for long-term growth, environmental impact, competitiveness, value, flexibility, etc.  The very fact that some high-speed rail lines actually DO pay for themselves, as he points out, makes a strong argument for choosing them over highways, which never do.

Counterpoint: High-Speed Rail Can Be a Good Investment - Post 3: Greenhouse Gases

Last Monday, Robert J. Samuelson published an op-ed in the Washington Post suggesting the high-speed rail is nothing but pork.  At one point he says:

"What would we get for this huge investment? Not much. Here's what we wouldn't get: any meaningful reduction in traffic congestion, greenhouse gas emissions, air travel, oil consumption or imports."

I think he is wrong on all counts.  I addressed commuting and air travel.  Today I address greenhouse gas emissions.

Yesterday I made the point that intelligently designed and built high-speed rail can reduce air traffic.  And it has in countries with good networks, like France, Spain and Japan.  Every plane trip that is eliminated is going to save thousands of gallons of fuel.  Every gallon of fuel contributes about 25 pounds of CO2 to our atmosphere.  In yesterday's post I pointed out that the trains from Madrid to Barcelona had the capacity of as much as sixty flights per day between those two cities (in reality, since not every train is full, they are not currently offsetting that many flights--but they could).  That's theoretically over 2000 tons of CO2 per day that could be saved.  Less, of course, than whatever greenhouse gases are emitted from running the train.

As I pointed out yesterday, however, as our production of electricity gets cleaner, so will the emissions associated with running the train.  So let's say 1/2 of that for now: 1000 tons per day.  365,000 tons per year.  For one corridor.  I would disagree with Mr. Samuelson's contention of no "meaningful reduction in greenhouse gases."  Maybe that's not much to him, but I think it's meaningful.

Monday What's on the Web: Bracken Hendricks

Every Monday I highlight other bloggers or web contributors who are making important or interesting contributions to climate, sustainability, transportation or market transformation. Check back each week for another installment.

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Bracken Hendricks is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.  Mr. Hendricks has been a long-time promoter of policies and ideas to reduce the risk of climate change and is well versed in strategies that engage the private sector in this pursuit also.  You can read his contributions to the Climate Progress blog here.  And you can read his various contributions at CAP here.

 Just yesterday, the Washington Post ran a very cogent op-ed by Mr. Hendricks laying out the foundation for why addressing climate change is as much a conservative issue as a liberal/progressive issue.  In fact, for those of you who read this blog, you will know that I believe there is a strong confluence between business success and environmental protection, and so I am on the same page with Mr. Hendricks.

Keep an eye on Mr. Hendricks's contributions.  He is intelligent and practical and brings strong and pragmatic views in the ongoing challenges presented by climate change.

Counterpoint: High-Speed Rail Can Be a Good Investment - Post 2: Air Travel

Last Monday, Robert J. Samuelson published an op-ed in the Washington Post suggesting the high-speed rail is nothing but pork.  At one point he says:

"What would we get for this huge investment? Not much. Here's what we wouldn't get: any meaningful reduction in traffic congestion, greenhouse gas emissions, air travel, oil consumption or imports."

I think he is wrong on all counts.  Yesterday I addressed commuting.  Today I address air travel.

Here's his point:
"In a report on high-speed rail, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service examined the 12 corridors of 500 miles or fewer with the most daily air traffic in 2007. Los Angeles to San Francisco led the list with 13,838 passengers; altogether, daily air passengers in these 12 corridors totaled 52,934. If all of them switched to trains, the total number of daily airline passengers, about 2 million, would drop only 2.5 percent."


Hmm.  Amtrak's Northeast corridor by itself carried more than 50% of the passenger load he quotes above.  There's something wrong with that number.  I suspect that they did not include intermediate passengers. Since a train can make a few stops (not too many, or it degrades the service), a single corridor actually serves several markets.  Just like the Washington-New York trains serve Baltimore and Philadelphia as well as DC and New York.  I suspect that would increase that number substantially.

When I was in Spain this summer, I took the AVE train from Madrid to Barcelona--386 miles (2 hours, 38 minutes!) (see my post: High-Speed Rail in Spain).  Almost every single train on Friday afternoon was completely sold out, and they run 24 trains between 5:50 AM and 11:30 PM.  Each of those trains can carry 1.5-2 times the number of passengers on a plane, unless you're talking a widebody aircraft.  That's a lot of flights being replaced.

More importantly, however, is that our air traffic system is overburdened.  It will take billions and billions of dollars to upgrade air traffic control and increase capacity of that system.  Take a look at my blog post from last year describing how strategic use of effective rail might eliminate the need to build a $20 billion third Chicago airport.

This op-ed suffers from one of the most common logical errors.  It compares the costs of high-speed rail with, well, nothing.  It assumes that whatever would happen instead wouldn't cost anything at all.  But not only would the costs of trying to increase air capacity be enormous, but the environmental costs would be higher as well.  What kind of analysis is that?  And that doesn't even take into account that trains can be more flexibly fueled (electricity can come from renewables, nuclear or other sources).  For now, planes are pretty much reliant on petroleum, which is getting more and more precious.

More soon.

Counterpoint: High-Speed Rail Can Be a Good Investment - Post 1: Commuting (??!)

Last Monday, Robert J. Samuelson published an op-ed in the Washington Post suggesting the high-speed rail is nothing but pork.  At one point he says:

"What would we get for this huge investment? Not much. Here's what we wouldn't get: any meaningful reduction in traffic congestion, greenhouse gas emissions, air travel, oil consumption or imports."

I think he is wrong on all counts, and I'll deal with each one-at-a-time over the next few days.

First: traffic congestion.  Another quote: "Even assuming 250,000 high-speed rail passengers, there would be no visible effect on routine commuting."

 Well, duh!  High-speed rail has nothing whatsoever to do with commuting.  Setting up this irrelevant strawman that he can then knock over is a waste of ink and damages his credibility on the other points.  It's as stupid as saying, "Building a third Chicago airport will have no visible effect on routine commuting."

I'm certain Mr. Samuelson is smarter than this, so why does he spend two paragraphs trying to make a point that high-speed rail is going to have some sort of effect on traffic.  I don't know.  Some of the commenters to the article suggested it was a paid oil-company promotional op-ed.  I'm not quite that cynical.

Monday What's on the Web: Treehugger

Every Monday I highlight other bloggers or web contributors who are making important or interesting contributions to climate, sustainability, transportation or market transformation. Check back each week for another installment.

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This week's Internet resource is Treehugger.  Treehugger adds more than 30 posts a day on topics related to environment, health, and sustainability.  This is how they describe themselves:

"TreeHugger is the leading media outlet dedicated to driving sustainability mainstream. Partial to a modern aesthetic, we strive to be a one-stop shop for green news, solutions, and product information."

Note that Treehugger is a Discovery company, which gives it substantial resources to keep it going.  Also keep in mind that it is part of the Discovery conglomerate, which is essentially an entertainment company.

With as many posts as they put up, it can be overwhelming.  They offer a dozen subtopics to help screen for those posts that are most interesting to you, including "Cars + Transportation," "Travel + Nature," "Business + Politics," etc.

Beyond its postings, Treehugger also includes forums, polls, games, and a series of guides on how to "green" many aspects of life, such as weddings, cars, gift-giving, renovations, etc.

Much of the content is relatively short, without significant in-depth detail, but they occasionally point you to more complete resources.

It's definitely worth keeping an eye on Treehugger, mainly for its ability to find interesting stories from across the sustainability spectrum.

Bike O'Meter Gives Real-Time Snapshot of Bikesharing Worldwide

If you haven't already seen the interactive, animated map that shows station activity for Capital Bikeshare stations, be sure to check it out here.  Following on that, and using the same data, a new app created by Steven Gray, called Bike-o-Meter, is also providing useful real-time data on bikesharing systems from around the world.

Each of the dials shows the percentage of total bikes in use at that particular moment in time.  It is not able to differentiate between bikes that are actually being ridden and those that may be in transit for relocation or taken out for servicing.  However, it uses the maximum number of bikes in the system within the last 24 hours--not the advertised total number of bikes owned by the service--as the denominator in the calculation.  Here's a bigger screenshot showing 2.8% of Capital Bikeshare's bikes in use at 1:04 PM on Wednesday, October 27.

I noticed that Barcelona's usage rate at 7:00 PM was 22%.  There were about 4500 bikes in service in Barcelona at that time, so that's almost 1000 bikes in use.  Wow!  Click on either graphic for a larger view.

Monday What's on the Web: Deep Climate

Every Monday I highlight other bloggers or web contributors who are making important or interesting    contributions to climate, sustainability, transpotation or market transformation. Check back each week for another installment.

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Deep Climate is this week's "What's on the Web" blog.  Deep Climate's slogan is: "Exploring climate science disinformation in Canada."  The blog is run by an anonymous Canadian citizen who is clearly well versed in science.  His analysis of a number of papers and other postings can be very thorough and detailed.  For instance, in a post titled "McShane and Wyner 2010" he very thoroughly deconstructs the McShane and Wyner paper published in August that was cheered on sites like Watt's Up With That (a skeptic site).

This is a bit of a geek's site, getting into pretty deep statistics and other topics.  Posts can be very long.  However, it's an important resource (not just for Canadians) in the battle against climate disinformation.

Other recent posts include:

Wegman under investigation by George Mason University

Muir Russell report on CRU: “Their rigour and honesty as scientists is not in doubt"

The blog also includes an occasional open thread, which allows for an open discussion on topics of interest among the readers.

Michael MacCracken's letter in the Washington Post

The following letter to the editor appeared in today's Washington Post.  It was written by Michael MacCracken, who is the chief scientist for climate-change programs at the Climate Institute.  I am in total agreement with Mr. MacCracken.  In particular, to get maximum results, BOTH carbon taxes and market-based trading programs must be developed.

With so little being done politically on climate change, Dana Milbank ["Plan B on climate change," op-ed, Oct. 17] noted that scientists want to research additional measures, often called geoengineering or, better, climate engineering. Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will be essential, but it will have a significant effect only with sharp emissions reductions. Reducing warming by interfering with incoming solar radiation appears possible but is likely to have unintended side effects and involves difficult governance issues.
Climate engineering thus makes sense as a strategy only after making commitments to limit emissions. The United States needs to take the lead and demonstrate the technical ingenuity to show that a modern economy can prosper with low greenhouse gas emissions, and Congress needs to enact incentives for this to happen. 

Ending dithering requires both a well-designed cap-and-trade program to provide incentives for industry to move aggressively and cost-effectively, and a carbon tax with per capita rebates to provide incentives for families and individuals to adopt green technologies. Because mitigation and adaptation will require time and effort, climate engineering may well be needed to moderate the worst effects. 

Monday What's on the Web: Climate Crock of the Week

Every Monday I highlight other bloggers or web contributors who are making important or interesting contributions to climate, sustainability, transportation or market transformation. Check back each week for another installment.

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This week I debut my first "What's on the Web" YouTube personality: Greenman 3610, who puts out a series of videos entitled "Climate Change Crock of the Week."  Although not always weekly, the producer of these videos, Peter Sinclair, regularly posts extremely well produced  YouTube videos that primarily debunk various climate change skeptic arguments, like this one.















There are currently about 40 videos in Greenman3610's list.  Visit Climate Crock of the Week, and share with your skeptic and non-skeptic friends.  The videos are entertaining and informative.

Capital Bikeshare Works Again

Following up on last week's experience, I used the Capital Bikeshare system again today.  It was a very similar location.  I was on a discussion panel at 1875 Connecticut Avenue, NW, which is about 4-5 blocks north of DuPont Circle.  There's a CaBi station at 19th & Florida right behind the building.  I got a bike there and rode straight down 21st Street to 21st & I.  That took under 10 minutes.  Then I walked the two blocks to Foggy Bottom to catch the Orange Line home.

CaBi saved me a 10-minute walk to DuPont Circle plus the transfer from the Red Line to the Orange Line.  I also saved 40 cents on my Metro fare.  Woo-hoo!

Monday What's on the Web: Ricky Rood's blog on Wunderground

Every Monday I highlight other bloggers or web contributors who are making important or interesting contributions to climate, sustainability, transportation or market transformation. Check back each week for another installment.

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 I previously featured Dr. Jeff Masters in my Monday What's on the Web series.  This week I feature his colleague, Ricky Rood. Dr. Masters focuses quite a bit on severe weather: hurricanes and the like.  Ricky Rood, however, focuses his posts almost entirely on climate change, and he's been doing it quite effectively since 2007.  Dr. Rood is a professor at the University of Michigan, teaching about climate change and its interaction with all aspects of society (bio).

His posts are thoughtful and thorough and lend a lot to the discussion.  Recently he posted a 4-part series that included the question "What to do?" in each one.

• Politics and Knowledge: What to Do? 
• Who is the Audience? What to Do?
• The Messenger Matters: What to Do?
• Time for New Community: What to Do?

I highly recommend this series of articles along with Dr. Rood's blog in its entirety.

No More "Ridiculous" Car Trips

The city of Malmo, Sweden adopted a marketing campaign highlighting "ridiculous" car trips--those less than five kilometers (about 3 miles).  Here's a video highlighting their efforts:

No ridiculous car trips from Martin Lang on Vimeo.

Monday What's on the Web: The Progressive Fix

Every Monday I highlight other bloggers or web contributors who are making important or interesting contributions to climate, sustainability, transportation or market transformation. Check back each week for another installment.

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This week's profile is The Progressive Fix.   The Progressive Fix is a blog associated with the Progressive Policy Institute.  It covers a wide variety of topics that support progressive topics, including many that mirror closely the ideas and policies that this blog endorses.  It tends to be more political and policy oriented than market and business oriented, but covers a lot of good ground nonetheless.

This blog covers the whole range of topics, from Afghanistan to Urban Planning.  By going to their content-by-topic page you can find those topics of particular interest, such as Environment or Green Jobs

In particular, PPI has been a strong supporter of high-speed rail (two previous posts on this blog here and here) and investments in infrastructure that will support a growing economy. 

Recent posts that may be of interest to my readers include:

How the Military is Leading the Way on Energy Security

Congress and Climate: The Long View

How To Pay For High-Speed Rail

 

 

 

My First (mostly positive) Experience Using Capital Bikeshare

Today I had a great opportunity to try out my new membership to Capital Bikeshare.  I was attending a 1/2 day seminar at the Hilton Hotel on Connecticut Avenue, north of Dupont Circle.

Since I take the Orange Line from Arlington, I decided to disembark at Foggy Bottom and ride up to the conference, allowing me to skip the transfer at Metro Center.

The station at Foggy Bottom is not yet in place, so I had to walk two blocks east to the station at 21st & I Streets.  There were about 12-15 bikes at this station, ready to go.  It was pretty easy; I just inserted my fob in the slot, the light turned yellow, then green, and the bike unlocked.  I put my bag in the rack and secured it with the attached bungee and headed up 20th Street.

(View Steve Offutt's bikeshare map from October 1 2010 in a larger map)

At first I did not notice the station at 20th & Florida.  I had misremembered the location as being at 19th and Florida.  When I got there, I did not see a station.  I called the toll-free number on the bike and was directed to the station by a customer service agent.  The reason I had missed it was because it is a much smaller station and there was only a single bike in it.

About noon I left my event and went back to the station for the return trip.  Unfortunately, there were no bikes at 19th & Florida.  I walked to Dupont Circle to the station on Massachusetts avenue and got a bike there.  During the time I got that bike, two other people did as well.  I had a short conversation with a woman who was using one for the first time and was very excited about it.

I rode back to 21st & I, returned the bike, walked to Foggy Bottom and took the Metro home.  I saved 95 cents over the fares I would have paid had I taken the Metro to Dupont.

From this experience, it appears that the system is getting used:

• At least two others must have used the station near the hotel, since the two bikes that were there when I went in were gone when I came out.  
• The station at Dupont was used by two others just in the few minutes I was there
• The station at 21st & I Street had clearly been used numerous times over the 3 hours between my two visits, because the bikes were all moved around from their original locations.

Here's hoping they get the rest of the stations opened pronto--particularly downtown stations in advance of the Metro shutdown during Columbus day weekend.