Are we the only ones getting screwed ?????

[hallerb]

incidently my local home depot reports sales are dead, part timers hours cut. the place was empty.......

normally they are hiring at this time:(

[dadiOH]

Could we also go back to using freight trains? You know...by train from major place to major place, by truck from major to local.

I seem to remember that worked well.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Sure, but it took a little longer. In this day of instant gratification where things MUST go FedEx red we don't have the patience to wait a few more days. I have seen though, where 53' containers can go by rail and be more economical than straight truck routing. At $4+ for diesel, trains would make a lot of sense. Passenger trains too!

[HeyBub]

The "special interests" are a counter to the mob. Sort of a checks-and-balances, a division of power. The "mob" won't let the special interests get too far afield, and the "special interests" act as a brake on "gimme (oil, drugs, etc.) for free."

George Will proposed a simplified campaign finance law:

1. No cash,
2. No foreign contributions,
3. Instant disclosure.

That's it.

[HeyBub]

Exactly. Fuel use is virtually inelastic. Price goes up, people pay it or starve, lose their jobs, or suffer other dire consequences. Gone are the days when people "went for a drive." Virtually all travel is a necessity.

As for using increased tax revenues to fund, say, mass transit. It takes five years to lay track. So 100% of the drivers in my town would be charged extra amounts so that five years from now, 2% of the population will have the opportunity to use rail transit? Really bad trade-off. Really bad.

[Frank]

Not on subject, looks like investing in rail transportation maybe a good long term strategy. Trains are coming back.

[Kurt Ullman]

Five years to lay track, but 10 years to do the engineering studies, 5 to do the enviornmental impact statements, 5 years to get the right of way figured out. One of the first things I did in '76 when I was a freshly minted newspaper reporter was attend the first public hearing for a bypass around the city I worked in. The final section was opened up 3 years ago. Took 'em '76 to 95 to put the first shovel in the ground and '95 to '05 to get it done.

[aemeijers]

About the only 'mass transit' you can do in a hurry is buses, either conventional ones or privately run gypsy/jitney ones. Unlike Europe or the old dense urban areas of east coast, most of US is not mass-transit friendly. Too spread out, and peoples schedules vary too much. Around here, they cut the bus routes back to the old part of the city. The routes to the burbs and large apartment projects were money holes, even with a buttload of federal subsidies. At work, I suggested they get with the city bus folks, and try 4-trip a day (early and late to the office, then the same thing the other way at quitting time) shuttle service from where employee homes were concentrated to the office complex. The idea went nowhere, even though several apartment complexes probably account for a third of the junior-level employees.

-- aem sends...

[gfretwell]

The real problem is the places that need light rail the most, are least likely to have the real estate to put it and nobody wants a train running behind their house so the effective footprint of the track is close to a mile wide.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Schedules are not a problem. Years ago companies and workers adapted to available transportation or they walked because they lived near the mill That is probably the only easy part to overcome. The automobile allowed us to use many other options. Used to be, people did not complain about taking two busses and a trolley to get to work. Now we complain if our parking spot is more than 25' from the door. If a train dropped 100 people off at the entrance to an industrial park, chances are they'd still have to travel a quarter mile to a mile to their workplace along roads with no sidewalks.

The last time I took public transportation to work was in the 1960's and where I park at work is only 10' from the door.

[gas]

Oh yeah, that's a great idea, because short-sightedness is in such short supply already! Let's make sure to remove any financial incentive to actually get away from our dependence on foreign oil. We also get the lovely side benefits of more pollution and less safety. Fantastic.

Frankly, what's happening now is a reckoning that's been long in the coming. If we as a nation had maintained the focus on reducing oil consumption and dependence we had in the seventies, even in a toned down fashion, we wouldn't be in the straits we are now.

The solution now is to explore alternatives. I'm looking into building a zero-energy home right now and I'm amazed at how cheaply and practically it can be done, depending of course on what part of the country you're living in. Geothermal heat pumping (e.g.

) works pretty much anywhere in the U.S. and would greatly reduce our environmental footprint. With fuel oil as high as it is, this will greatly reduce our fuel costs as well.

Basically we've been lucky, spoiled and short-sighted for the last 30 years, and now we're paying for it. In order to solve the problem we need less short-sightedness, not more. Or we could use your solution, and leave the problem to our kids.

I agree with you in principle on that one.

[Frank]

Reminds me of years ago I was transfered downtown where I would have to pay parking. I investigated taking the bus and got all the brochures from the bus company. Of major interest to me was their giving their total passenger miles and fuel consumed. A simple calculation revealed that one gallon of gasoline transported one passenger nine miles - less than half the mileage I was getting on my car at the time ;)

[Kurt Ullman]

I agree, with the addition that I did not see any real focus to maintain. A short-lived talk about maybe doing something, but other than producing a few years of Vegas and Pintos, nothing of any real consequence.

>

[gas]

Buses aren't a bad solution in a places, but your opinion is poorly thought out. Huge amounts of fuel consumption could be saved by replacing the most heavily traveled air commute routes (e.g. L.A. to New York, L.A. to Las Vegas...) with high speed rail solutions. We wouldn't have to develop the tech ourselves either, we can look to Germany, France, Switzerland, China and Japan for examples, and attempt to improve on their designs. Significant fuel use (and human lives) can be saved by allowing people to place their cars on trains for transport (this is done is areas of Switzerland).

For commuting distances less than 50 miles, another solution is alternative modes of personal transportation. I personally want a Twike

In high sun states, e.g. Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California, you could commute entirely on solar energy (charging when parked, not solar cells on twike), _without any new tech_. If more money gets pumped into such vehicles, improvements will come rapidly. In high population density areas, improved Bike infrastructure will help. Better health of the populace, reduced traffic congestion, reduced noise and air pollution. It would be wonderful. For longer commutes, ride-sharing and car-pooling can make significant impacts.

In areas where traditional vehicles are needed (farming, development), bio- diesel is a practical solution, and stricter efficiency regulations are needed.

We're stuck in a rut, and we need to get out of it. Culturally, we seem to want a simple one-shot magic bullet that cures our woes without any change of behavior on our part. On the other hand, a few common sense tactics and a minor shift in our way of thinking, can make huge differences while we work on further improvements.

Removing our dependence on fossil fuels is an eventual necessity. We can already make huge dents in it now. The approaches needed will have both immediate and long term benefits. No one solution is going to work in every area of such a diverse land mass as the United-States, so regional approaches have to be taken. What's most important is to avoid knee jerk 'oh that can't work' reactions. Apply careful analysis, and use what works where it works.

Of course, there's a lot of propaganda out there to sabotage these efforts, and most of that propaganda comes from the energy and automobile industries, who are worried about shifting power structures and reduced profits. The worst nightmare for America's energy industry is more self reliant America, where the citizens produce a large portion of the energy they consume themselves. It would reduce their power and profits drastically.

[gas]

I agree here. In the long term I think it'll also be good for truckers.

I used to hitchhike a lot. B/c of regulations I only rarely got picked up by truckers, and when I did it was usually because they were just dying for someone to talk to and give them some company (sometimes to keep them awake).

On the average, most of them didn't seem to like doing long distance hauls. This was always the case for the married, divorced, and with children truckers. They only rarely got to spend time with their families.

On the other hand, shifting distribution to send freight by train to major population centers (or freight centers), and the serving local areas by truck from these freight centers would drastically improve energy consumption, mean more time at home for the truckers, reduce traffic on the highways, reduce pollution...

Okay, it might take a bit longer. Then the overnight delivery just gets significantly more expensive. I think this is a good trade-off. Also, with automazation technology, and improved routing and tracking, I think we can expect an improvement on the shipping times we used to see.

This could also be combined with high speed shipping of people along major flight-commute routes.

If we keep tacking on %1 - %5 percent reductions in fuel usage, eventually we could be an energy neutral company (produce what we consume). Wouldn't that be great!

[gfretwell]

Yeah people would be lining up to pay more for a 2 day train ride.

When air fare was 10 times the price of the train people still took the plane.

[hallerb]

mag lev can do it at 300 miles per hour, with flight delays etc speed would be a wash.

once terrorists shoot some commercial airliners out of the sky mag lev will surge.........

they could build a mag lev system with bus sized vehicles leaving hourly sharing a rail guideway running continiously. all coputer controlled for spacing

when you want to travel it would be like a bus just go and get on.....

if you want timed reservtions pay a bit more.

capital building costs high, operating costs low, very flexible.

no air pollution except for international flights.

[hallerb]

taxpayers pay for roads...........

railroads have to pay for rails........

made rail cost more for many years.

rail lines should be electrified

[aemeijers]

I'm not sure, but I think we are agreeing with each other. Until July

05, I lived in the apartments about a mile west of here, which was the turnaround point for the end of that particular bus route (before it was cancelled.) So, in theory, I could have ridden the bus to work, assuming I got my lazy ass out of bed in time. However, it was a 20 minute meandering ride from their to the central bus stop downtown, and then a 20 minute wait for a transfer for the bus that stopped in front of my office. Call it 50 minutes to an hour, minimum, twice a day.

I'm 51 years old. The insurance company tables say I have maybe 35 years left, if I'm lucky. I can DRIVE to work in 10-12 minutes. Am I going to use up 2 hours sitting on a bus every day? Would you? Would anyone rational, unless they were flat broke and had no other choice? If my employers and the city had come up with a express shuttle for the federal installation where I work, so no transfer was involved and it only took, say, 20 minutes twice a day, the bus would suddenly look a whole lot more interesting. The apartments where I lived could have filled half a bus with just the federal employees that lived there. Add in the other apartments up and down the main drag on this side of town, it could have worked out. The main drags in the other 3 compass directions would have similar numbers- hit the big apartment complexes, and maybe certain subdivisions where you know the employees live.

Hey, I LIKE buses. I rode them a lot in college. But they were cheap, and went directly from where I slept, to where I needed to be, and there was one every 15 minutes.

-- aem sends...

[dadiOH]

Another possibility too: ship the trailers by train (like ship containers), off load where needed, pick up a tractor and driver.