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trains, busses or automobiles
August 3, 2008 - 9:36am
Meanwhile, very few people are suggesting the need to subsidize trains and buses so that people can actually afford to take them. Or, since we're in a "free market" society how about taking away the right of bus and train companies to monopolize certain routes. There are some countries where you have a plethora of choice between different carriers offering different prices, this should be the same with our rail and bus lines.
When people say 'subsidy' they are in practice thinking operating subsidies. IE, topping up operations with social value that we do not expect to be able to break even financially.
Improving rail transport does not require [ongoing] operating subsidies. What is required is investment that 'the market' will not do.
Wholesale government investment in a company or an industry or an infrastructure can often be rightfully called a subsidy- as is definitely the case with the nuclear power industry.
But investment in infrastructure is not inherently a 'subsidy'. And it unwittingly plays to the neo-liberal agenda to call such investments subsidies.
One of the 5 points of the NDPs Green Agenda is Green Transportation Strategy and one of the points within that is improved support for rail transport [freight and passenger].
Its a pretty general and thin agenda. But good enough for the kind of exposure we can get now. A 20 point rail plan would not be appropriate at this juncture. Need first to get people on board with the basic principles.
And Jack has been touring around putting flesh on those general principles by calling for support of particular projects.
[ 03 August 2008: Message edited by: KenS ]
Various European countries started binges on high speed rail some years ago. I don't know enough about it to know how much of that was coordinated. But obviously a lot. For example, cutting central London to Paris down to 2 and 1/4 hours.
This would never have been undertaken by simply waiting until 'markets' 'wanted' to finance the ventures.
These new rail options have matured just when jet fuel price hikes are making untenable the RyanAir / Easy Jet model of cheap travel within Europe.
Build it and they will come, because it will be cost competitive.
For high speed rail here is no direct comparison for Canada. But the same principle applies to expanding/starting intra-urban light rail: by the time it is built, demand for it will be much higher than the assumptions on which it was built.
Same for the much less sexy expansions of bus systems. Be that more express buses in medium size cities like Halifax Metro that get more commuters riding, or expansion of routes in very low density systems such as Kings Transit [Kings and Annapolis Counties of NS].
[ 03 August 2008: Message edited by: KenS ]
Toronto currently has several hundred batter powered buses. The government should wire one or two routes and build the computer trolley for the buses and test the idea. This could be done now.
At current prices tractor trailers consume $1200 of diesel a day. The money to pay for electrifying the roads is there.
Also it helps truck transport. The whole economy requires all these trucks and shuffling of wares back and forth.
You were thinking that they were going to plough the suburban houses under and return the land to orchards or something? The houses will be there for over 100 years, that's how long buildings last.
[ 04 August 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]
[ 04 August 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]
Actually, a lot of suburbs are currently being densified and urbanised - there is an photo-article about Surrey BC in Geist.
I suspect you escaped that suburban wasteland to live in a city, no?
Electric cars are NO solution to sprawl, to an urbanism where people can access goods, services, culture and friends via public transport, walking and on bicycle (weather permitting).
I reallly don't understand your worship of one of the worst evils of capitalist society.
Though actually I think solutions must be found other than the car (or in conjunction with it) even for smaller centres, as first of all not everyone can drive, or drive safely. And even very small towns are ringed with sprawl nowadays.
Depends on the subsidy. This is the same as saying "production" is good. It depends on what is being produced.
Perhaps you mean there is no truly viable battery, There most certainly are batteries for electric cars.
The electric car as a solution to rural living is something I've often given some thought to. I would like nothing more than to eventually retire to a cabin far from civilization, but I do not want to support a fossil fuel addicted society in doing so.
I don't think that the electric car necessarily promotes sprawl, rather it can if we don't have a corresponding intensification policy. The electric car (and possibly the electrification of roads) is a necessary element of an environmentally progressive set of policies, as long as we simultaneously discourage sprawl through other policies. Rarely is there ever one solution to any of our problems.
[ 04 August 2008: Message edited by: dw_ptbo ]
If you look at historical tramlines, it is astonishing how far they
went beyond city cores!
But where population density does not make that feasible, perhaps "bornes" alongside highways where drivers could recharge their electric vehicles would be a good solution.
No, I don't think electric vehicles cause sprawl - it is merely annoying when it is seen as a way of keeping current driving and town planning patterns, which have never been sustainable, and will become increasingly less so.
Weather permitting, trams can also be twinned with bicycles (and electric bicycles for those who need them or for difficult terrain).
I don't think you know much about environmental issues, and the harm car-centred development causes. Oh well, you can learn.
There is a lot on the net about sustainable planning, carfree cities, etc.
[ 04 August 2008: Message edited by: lagatta ]
The cost of housing in major cities is one of the biggest causes of sprawl. Until we find a way for our tax systems to penalize fringe development and encourage brownfield and intensive development we are unlikely to get far in creating energy efficient, denser cities. Same thing goes for real estate values, although I'm hard pressed to answer how we might change that, nonetheless we need to find a way. It is not right that a house in Newmarket is three times cheaper than a house of a similar size in Rosedale.
This has always been a matter of social justice - now it is also a matter of life and death.
There are bigger flaws with bruce's technicist vision than this, but that will have to wait for later.
It is simply not true that there are no known batteries for EVs.
For one thing, a highway speed EV is already feasible using existing lead acid batteries. Auto companies did not want to build them until better batteries made longer ranges possible. But that was a choice on what they could and/or were willing to market.
The recent changes in fuel price consumer expectations would have changed that even without changes in storage battery capabilities.
But production of battery packs for EVs using nickel hydride and lithium ion are less than two years away. The manufacturing plants for them are being built in the next several months.
Battery packs using the next generation of technology are already past the drawing board stage. IE, small versions already exist- as has been the case with litium ion for several years- it is a matter of making EV size packs production viable.
Nor is expense or availability of the metals going to be a serious obstacle. In the first place, technology will change what minerals are used.
But 100% recycling [including the plastic cases] is already common with higher end lead acid batteries used by commercial fleets in golf carts and fork lifts. Leasing of battery packs- with the EV manufacturer taking lifetime responsibility for them- is probably going to be the norm. At the very least, the battery packs will have such a high core charge on them that they will not be simply discarded.
Theres so much that we could do now with the existing infrastructure and technology before we go jumping to futuristic visions like electrified roads. Not to mention saying "this could be done now" while saying "there is no known battery for the electric car" is seriously flawed.
Even if some roads were electrified, most would not be- even in the urban core let alone beyond. And battery packs are the large scale and longer term answer to that, not hybrids.
With the in-production technology available right now we could have mass produced pure electric EVs for the same price as a subcompact that have a range more than what a third of vehicles drive in a day. Way over half of households could use one such vehicle to do everything except commutes beyond the median range.
And thats with lead acid batteries. The pure full speed EVs with lithium ion batteries that will start hitting the market in less then 5 years will beging expanding on that range possibility, and within a few more years rapid recharging will spread in availability.
Another knock against electrifying roads, and in favour of electrifying with battery packs, is our need to use already existing capabilities to decentralize the production of electricity.
The technology and the economics of electrifying roads requires centralized power plant capacity. The economics and technology of photovalics and wind power is already good enough that with some pump priming we can get individuals and businesses to begin producing their own power, and the economic and technological incentives for that will improve.
The reason we have hybrids rather than pure electric vehicles is because the automakers assumed you could not sell a vehicle that will not drive to infinity without needing to be plugged in.
While I think they WERE more or less right, thats a marketing decision, not a technical [let alone social needs based] one.
There will soon be plug-in hybrids that will drive a fair distance on just the battery pack and electric motor. [The hyped up Chevy Volt is touted as the first electric car- but its just another hybrid.]
But hybrids are more expensive than [full speed] EVs. As well as more resources going into building them, they use a lot of energy lugging around that gas engine- whether it is in use or not.
Here is a still open thread on electric cars: Electric Cars- Sustainability of, Build Yourself, Etc. . I think hybrids and the Chevy Volt come up in the discussion.
Just gave it a bump up onto TAT- in the "babblers helping babblers" forum.
[ 04 August 2008: Message edited by: KenS ]
ETA: GM's behaviour in setting back the electric car by recalling and demolishing the finest example of electric cars ever produced is reason enough for that asshole company to be boycotted and die. [img]mad.gif" border="0[/img]
[ 04 August 2008: Message edited by: Boom Boom ]
I'm looking up the report - cycling and sustainable transport activist Robert Silverman here had a copy of it decades ago.
http://www.bilderberg.org/nclchoms.htm#Burden
Ah, yes, the Snell Report!
General Motors and the demise of streetcars
What I'm certain we could agree on is the fact that it is insane that the owners of the house in Rosedale pay 3 (or more) times as much tax on the property; when the environmental footprint of the house in Newmarket is much higher due to the increased cost of delivery of services, and commuting costs.
We have exurbs of our own now, "la deuxiиme couronne", beyond Montrйal island, Laval and Longueuil.... seventh circle of hell.