• Personal Rapid Transit frees you of the burden of driving and gets remarkable fuel efficiency. But does it make any sense? In theory, it’s non-stop and on-demand, but it’s not really “mass” transit and it requires, you know, tracks. (NPR)
• High-speed rail isn’t as efficient as car or air travel, says a (questionable) study that compares emissions produced by 11 modes of transportation. The problems are supposedly pollution and the energy needed to build trains, stations, parking lots, etc. (Examiner)
• Only 51% of road funding comes from actual road users, says a study analyzing federal highway data. The likely culprits are a stagnant gas tax and the issue of bonds to pay for road projects. (StreetsBlogNY)
• Northern Canada faces an enormous threat from climate change, as much of its infrastructure is built on permafrost. A report recommends urgent action before roads and buildings collapse. (CBC)
• Ten years ago, a survey of truckers ranked California’s road the third-worst in the country. This year, a report placed it 49th in the U.S. for pavement quality, yet the state fails to adopt a “Fix-it-First” policy. (StreetsBlogLA)
• It’s about time for that deluge of year-end round-ups. An overview of 2009’s best transportation feuds includes Cash for Clunkers, which nearly everyone hated, and GM’s sale/non-sale of Opel. (Wired)
November 27th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
The Subsidy Scope study you mention doesn’t say 51% of road funding comes from gas taxes. It says 51% of road funding comes from gas taxes minus the portion taken for mass transit. The total gas tax receipts divided by road spending are 65%.
Mind you, those figures are higher than what I’ve seen elsewhere - for instance, Texas DOT claims that the best-performing roads in the state have a 50% recovery ratio, and gives an example of a road with a 16% ratio.
November 28th, 2009 at 1:47 am
The Examiner article is bad reporting on a rather straightforward scholarly report. The original report simply runs lifecycle numbers on various EXISTING modes of transportation, and notes that infrastructure contributes more heavily to lifecycle pollution for rail than for other means of transportation. This is not surprising. However, the authors do not address existing long distance rail (AMTRAK), nor do they address high-speed rail.
Describing this as discrediting high-speed rail’s ability to cut back on pollution is wishful editorializing on the part of the Examiner.
November 28th, 2009 at 1:53 am
everyone hated cash-for-clunkers? really? when? after the numbers came out?
sounds like a little bit of revisionist history.
it’s true that some bloggers were smart/honest enough to criticize it from top to bottom (guess which camp i was in), but most mainstream blogs, including and especially mainstream Dem blogs, were eating it up. “What a great way to produce jobs _and_ stop global warming!” they’d proclaim. It wasn’t as stupid as it was dishonest — big difference.
November 28th, 2009 at 10:26 am
I’m going to have to second Peter on this one. The cash for clunkers program wasn’t hated at all. Rather, I’ld say it has gotten very little criticism at all. Actually, if I remember right, it was so popular that congress extended the program and added more money to it. And on top of that, they are looking into a “Cash for Clunkers” type of rebate program for appliances as well.
Now we’ll see how hated it gets next year when all of those cars start getting repossessed because too many people bought a new car and couldn’t afford the loan -even after the rebate.
November 28th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
I second Michael Koehn on the crappiness of the Examiner post. Even if it were true, it focuses exclusively on emissions, neglecting the other environmental benefits of rail: efficiency and reducing carnage. If done right, rail can also facilitate more sustainable land use patterns that can encourage people to shift to transit or walking for other trips, leading to greater efficiency and lower emissions, less carnage, greater health and other societal benefits.
Your summary, which reported emissions reductions as efficiency gains, didn’t help matters.
November 29th, 2009 at 6:19 am
“• Can it be? High-speed rail isn’t as efficient as car or air travel, says a study that compares emissions produced by 11 modes of transportation. The problem is pollution and the energy needed to build trains, stations, parking lots, etc”
No, that’s not what the study says. There are serious problems with both the reading of it and the study; the critical aspect is doing proper lifecycle analysis. From rail, most of the pollution is due to construction, but the facilities last a *long* time; from air and cars, most of the pollution comes over the course of operation, and the facilities have to be rebuilt repeatedly. The breakeven point is at some number of years and some number of passengers (so yes, rail is worse on emissions if there are few passengers and you shut it down or rebuild it after five years, but nobody’s stupid enough to do that, right?)