Peak Oil Matters

In a recent column discussing the inane transportation bill proposed by the House, Isaiah J. Poole noted this charming piece of legislative integrity—admittedly, no doubt used by both parties since forever: “A more bipartisan Senate bill, which is not nearly as ambitious as the White House would prefer but nonetheless has its blessing, was being hung up over Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul’s demand for an amendment denying aid to Egypt over the government’s detention of some America citizens and Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt’s amendment that would permit employers to deny coverage for health services that run counter to the employer’s ‘religious beliefs and moral convictions.’”

The relevance of these two stunts to transportation funding will—no doubt—be revealed to all of us at the appropriate time. Our tax dollars hard at work….

When does it start to get better?

As I noted in two prior posts about this legislation (here and here), the philosophy/ideology behind the bill’s intent to eliminate assured financing (insufficient though it is) for mass transit in favor of more money for roads is what’s most troubling. I keep hoping that at some point, some legislator from the GOP will have the balls to accept reality and propose legislation that will actually mean something long-term and for our collective well-being.

I’ve admitted before and will say again, I pretend no expertise in transportation legislation or its funding. I come to these discussions with concerns about the strategies employed in light of what I believe is an even more serious and long-lasting problem for all of us: inadequate energy resources to provide us all with business-as-usual lifestyles—current economic conditions aside. The failure to incorporate public transportation on a much broader scale than Congress seems capable of understanding creates a serious deficiency in our ability to adapt in the future to a society with less energy resources at our disposal—if continued growth is a goal.

Typical arguments include the following:

[T]ransit has firmly secured its place in the federal budget and has acquired a large and vocal constituency in Congress which can be counted upon to defend its interests….
Restoring the Highway Trust Fund to its original mission of being a source of funds solely for the federal-aid highway program would accomplish several things. First, the program would no longer need to rely on speculative royalties from future oil and gas leases, as currently proposed in the House bill. Second, the Trust Fund would not need to be periodically propped up with contributions from the General Fund. Third, the principle of the highway program paid for with user fees would be maintained. Lastly, the House bill would return the federal-aid highway program to its original roots. It would restore the program’s lost sense of purpose and focus Trust Fund resources on what they always were meant to do—preserve and renew the nation’s prized asset, its interstate highway system. [1]

A few comments are in order.

As to the first point about transit’s defenders in Congress, a wonderful sound bite which means absolutely nothing in this Congress with its Tea Party-dominated inability to think, plan, or legislate beyond next week. “Defend” transit all you want, but if no one is paying any attention, it loses some of its vigor and impact.

“[T]he program would no longer need to rely on speculative royalties…” It never had to! That’s like retirement planning via the lottery. It’s an idiotic proposal to begin with, duly lambasted by many with far more understanding than I possess, and merits exactly no discussion or consideration.

As for eliminating the “need to be periodically propped up with contributions from the General Fund,” the House could actually … you know, legislate intelligently and put together a plan, even if, GASP! it contained ideas from the left. What a concept!

“[T]he principle of the highway program [being] paid for with user fees would be maintained.” Really? “Principle” sounds good; reality tells a different story.

Long before this legislation was drafted, Tanya Snyder discussed the Republican Party’s expected antics when Congress would eventually get around to … you know … do what we pay them to do—legislate!

You’ve heard it a thousand times from the highway lobby: Roads pay for themselves through ‘user fees’ — a.k.a. gas taxes and tolls — whereas transit is a drain on the taxpayer. They use this argument to push for new roads, instead of transit, as fiscally prudent investments.
The myth of the self-financed road meets its match today in the form of a new report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group: Do Roads Pay For Themselves? (link) The answer is a resounding ‘no.’ All told, the authors calculate that road construction has sucked $600 billion out of America’s public purse since the dawn of the interstate system. [2]

Quoting Dan Smith of U.S. PIRG, Ms. Snyder noted that: “Road advocates use these myths about the gas tax being this user fee and that highways pay for themselves to get preferential treatment, and to get a larger chunk of the dedicated fund.”

Paying a toll is a user fee; paying the gas tax when you fill your tank is not a user fee. Not very complicated, but you’ll find almost no one on the Right who dares explain that simple fact. As the above-referenced report makes clear, highways do not pay for themselves—period! Great talking point offered to the uninformed, but not true … if that kind of stuff matters—which, for some of us, it does.

And Mr. Orski’s final point, that this legislation will “restore the program’s lost sense of purpose and focus Trust Fund resources on what they always were meant to do— preserve and renew the nation’s prized asset, its interstate highway system.” Hate to break the news to those on the Right so desperate to return to Mayberry RFD, but this is 2012. Times have changed.

More changes are in the offing, and the GOP’s determination to keep us locked into a fossil-fuel dependent transportation system at the expense of our future well-being may not be such a good thing, great sound bites notwithstanding. And as Ms. Snyder made clear in the article I cited above, the gas tax/Highway Trust Fund—created during the Hoover Administration—was not intended solely for highways. Only during the 17 year period during which the interstate state was being built were federal gas tax revenues directed exclusively to roads. “Since 1973, the gas tax has been used for a variety of transportation programs and has even been used, on occasion, to pay down the deficit.” Facts….

And of course, no GOP-inspired legislation these days can be marketed without a snarky, irrelevant, and misleading statement or two, Right?

The new infrastructure bill no longer obligates states to spend highway funding on non-highway activities, such as museums or landscaping. But spending for mass transit appears to continue, even though there are better uses for the funds. States now spend 20 percent of their Highway Trust Fund allocation on mass transit, yet only two percent of passenger miles are used by mass transit.…
Just as users of roads should pay all of their costs, such as construction and maintenance, so should users of mass transit. If individual states want to subsidize mass transit, they should do it out of their own revenues. With Uncle Sam broke, the Federal government should not be subsidizing expensive mass transit systems. [3]

Just wondering how much of the funding states are obligated to use on “museums or landscaping?” All of it? Half? A third? Ten percent? Five? Perhaps less? A wild guess on my part, but I’m betting that “museums or landscaping” aren’t a primary focus, but we wouldn’t want to clue in the uninformed about that, now would we? And the lame “passenger mile” standard used by the Right is addressed nicely by Eric Jaffe here as well as in the report cited above, but I’ll admit it is a popular sound bite: “20 percent … for two percent” usage sure does sound unfair! But why add context if that ruins the point?

“Uncle Sam” is not “broke”, but it is another Page One sound bite from the Right’s playbook,  which does induce an appropriate measure of fear in the electorate. Nice strategy, huh? [Kinda like “Cheerful” Newt Gingrich’s uplifting comment in Debate # 4367 held in Arizona two weeks ago: “But everybody needs to understand -- and by the way, we live in an age when we have to genuinely worry about nuclear weapons going off in our own cities. So everybody who serves in the fire department, in the police department, not just the first responders, but our National Guard, whoever is going to respond, all of us are more at risk today, men and women, boys and girls, than at any time in the history of this country.”]

Writing on the “we’re broke” theme, commenting on Speaker of the House John Boehner’s identical comment last year, E. J. Dionne offered this:

Bloomberg News looked at Boehner’s statement and declared simply: ‘It’s wrong.’ As Bloomberg’s David J. Lynch wrote: ‘The U.S. today is able to borrow at historically low interest rates, paying 0.68 percent on a two-year note that it had to offer at 5.1 percent before the financial crisis began in 2007. Financial products that pay off if Uncle Sam defaults aren’t attracting unusual investor demand. And tax revenue as a percentage of the economy is at a 60-year low, meaning if the government needs to raise cash and can summon the political will, it could do so.’
Precisely. A phony metaphor is being used to hijack the nation’s political conversation and skew public policies to benefit better-off Americans and hurt most others.

And this*:

America’s Tea Party has a simple fiscal message: The United States is broke. This is factually incorrect—U.S. government securities remain one of the safest investments in the world—but the claim serves the purpose of dramatizing the federal budget and creating a great deal of hysteria around America’s current debt levels. This then produces the fervent belief that government spending must be cut radically—and now. [4]

So I’ll ask the same question raised in the first post discussing this legislation: “How much money, time, effort, and resources can we be expected to waste by devoting all of those assets to highways and roadways used by gasoline-chugging vehicles … highways and roadways and vehicles whose usage and very existence will be challenged in decades to come when the availability of affordable, efficient, and plentiful fossil fuels is no longer routinely assured to the masses?”

Or this, from last week’s related post: “[W]hat transportation options will be available to us if we continue to allow shortsighted, narrow-minded ideologies dictate how we plan and prepare for our collective future?”

* as his Wikipedia bio notes, Simon Johnson, author of the quote, “is the ‘Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management[1] and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.[2] He has held a wide variety of academic and policy-related positions, including Professor of Economics at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.[3] From March 2007 through the end of August 2008, he was Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund” so really … what would he know about American being “broke”?

Sources:

[1] http://transportation.nationaljournal.com/2012/02/now-were-getting-political.php; Now We’re Getting Political by Fawn Johnson – 02.06.12; Response from Ken Orski: In Defense of the House Highway Bill
[2] http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/01/04/actually-highway-builders-roads-don%E2%80%99t-pay-for-themselves/; Actually, Highway Builders, Roads Don’t Pay For Themselves by Tanya Snyder – 01.04.11
[3] Now We’re Getting Political by Fawn Johnson – 02.06.12; Response from Diana Furchtgott-Roth: How to Improve the Highway Bill
[4] http://www.slate.com/articles/business/project_syndicate/2011/08/the_tea_partys_circular_logic.html; The Tea Party’s Circular Logic – Its revolt undermines the private sector more than it reins in “big government” by Simon Johnson – 08.16.11

The conservative approach of starving the nation’s transportation system is bound to prevent it from being an effective engine for economic growth and could potentially lead to the loss of more than a half-million jobs. (How’s that for a bill that calls itself an ‘infrastructure jobs act’?) But to add to the insult, conservatives are turning the legislation into a virtual pharmacy of poison pills. [1]

More and more, I’m tempted to set aside considerations about Peak Oil and wonder when we reach Peak Ignorant, Narrow-Minded, and Shortsighted—hoping it arrives this week!

The (we can only hope) soon-to-be-buried transportation bill winding its way through Congress shows all the wisdom, planning, and foresight of your typical three-year-old [“I don’t care about later; I want only what I want and I want it now ... and you can’t play, either”!] We have a legion of the Clueless and the Dumb legislating on behalf of the (mostly innocent) Uninformed … and all for the benefit of the Few. American exceptionalism on display? Yikes!

As have many others (most much more knowledgeable about transportation policy than me), I recently offered commentary on the hideous bill sponsored by the GOP in its “leaders’” latest demonstration that recognition of reality and the needed long-term planning for said reality is for them defined as about a week, give or take, because facts and reality don’t count for much if they conflict with their narrow-minded ideology of Bad, Bad Federal Government 24/7.

Eliminating the federal transit tax benefit for public transportation users [2] was one of several credits benefiting the mostly middle and lower class lopped off the books in the payroll tax negotiations, demonstrating that transportation policy is not the only arena where it’s possible to kick citizens when they’re down. I keep wondering when the great majority recognizes that most of the legislation coming from the GOP nowadays screws them royally! But as long as the wealthy are catered to, I guess we shouldn’t complain, isn’t that right, Right?

For all practical purposes, the GOP’s transportation bill* eliminates funding for anything other than highways and roads. Eliminating the Mass Transit Account from the federal Highway Trust Fund, as the GOP proposes, eliminates the established source of funds for public transportation. Just like that….In the GOP’s future-less world, funds long-committed to an intelligent vision for the future will have to fight for scraps in a Congress being run mostly by the delusional and short-sighted. Terrific!

* [As I write this before the weekend, rumors are circulating that this provision may be dropped due to strong opposition, including some from members of the GOP as well. Last night one report indicated it had been dropped. The question remains: why would such a provision have been entertained to begin with? What does that suggest about their priorities and the long-term interests of this nation?]

More congestion! More pollution! Screw urban dwellers! More oil and gas sales! Let the poor walk! We dance to the Tea Party tune, and since they don’t understand much, we don’t care! (Actually, that’s a great title for the legislation; wonder why they didn’t give the bill that name? Kinda long, so perhaps that’s the reason….)

The Tea Party is superb at disguising cultural battles as the pursuit of responsible thrift. And mass transit exists at the vortex of many of their No. 1 ideological targets. It’s brilliant, when you think about it.
Defunding transit is how you smack down urbanites, environmentalists, and people of color, all in one fell swoop. It’s how you telegraph a disdain for all things European. It’s how you show solidarity with swing-state suburbanites who don’t understand why their taxes are going toward subways they don’t even use. And it’s how you subtly reassure your base that you’re not concerned about the very poor. [3]

(Neil Pierce also wrote a very nice column in the wake of this ridiculous legislation, expounding on the Tea Party’s nonsense—and influence over—transportation and related policy, even in the face of considerable bipartisan opposition. Worth the read. The Agenda 21 paranoia-driven, fear-based cluelessness he writes about would be comical if it wasn’t so genuinely disturbing.)

As PeakOilMatters has been discussing since its inception, as have many others with even more knowledge than me, at some point in time much sooner than most of us realize, and long, long before we are even remotely prepared, the effects of declining fossil fuel availability are going to extend into every facet of our lives—personal, commercial, professional, and social.

Given how much our entire transportation system is dependent on those fossil fuels to function, when availability and quality are in decline as costs increase, severe disruptions not just in industrial transportation but in our own every-day travels are inevitable. If the gas you use all the time isn’t as plentiful, as “good”, as available, or as inexpensive as you’ve been accustomed to, change is going to happen. And for all the reasons and FACTS Peak Oil proponents share, that’s the reality we’re heading towards. When? Who knows? The date doesn’t matter.

It will be a process that begins quietly and barely noticed at first [already has], and will likely continue for an extended period of time. But all the while that snowball will be gathering momentum as the decline continues. Then, the “potential might possible’s” and half-truths about shale oil and tar sands which the deniers toss out to cloud the issue about fossil fuel production and supply will stop mattering at all.

And when all of this is still gathering strength and affecting pretty much everything we do (absent a lot of planning and adaptation well in advance), what transportation options will be available to us if we continue to allow shortsighted, narrow-minded ideologies dictate how we plan and prepare for our collective future? No option is pain-free, easy, or inexpensive. But cutting off the viable options which may ease much of the burden in blind fealty instead to a system of (non) governance which will do nothing but cause untold and avoidable harm to tens of millions of us is … idiotic! Our leaders may not be better than that, but we are, and we need to step up.

Crisis, or opportunity?

I’m planning to be back with some final thoughts on the transportation matter in an upcoming post, laying out some of the more popular arguments against federal funding of mass transit and why most of it is indeed shortsighted; but for now, I’ll leave you with an additional comment first from Isaiah J. Poole’s column referenced above, and then a final one from the Neil Pierce column also linked to above. Food for thought….

Through this transportation bill, conservatives are pushing the transmission into reverse on everything from environmental policy to workers rights to women’s health. Their efforts would cost the nation’s jobs, make the movement of goods and services less efficient, convert what should be public resources into private profit centers, and keep us mired deep in the 20th century when our global economic competitors are pressing toward the future.

[W]e need courageous leaders — national, state and local — to assert that the United States does need a world-class transportation system, combining road and rail and air, and based on sane low-carbon energy alternatives, not overwhelming but rather serving accessible, livable, walkable communities. And that we’re willing to pay for it.
Ideology aside, what’s wrong with that?

What kind of a future do we want?

Sources:

[1] http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2012020714/conservatives-transportation-throw-america-reverse; Conservatives On Transportation: Throw America Into Reverse by Isaiah J. Poole – 02.14.12
[2] http://transportationnation.org/2012/02/18/transit-tax-break-buried-in-partisan-debate/; Transit Tax Break Buried in Partisan Debate by Janet Babin – 02.18.12
[3] http://www.salon.com/2012/02/13/the_tea_partys_war_on_mass_transit/; The Tea Party’s war on mass transit by Will Doig – 02.13.12

The official mourning period is now over, and I’m once again able to discuss the Super Bowl in somewhat dispassionate terms (%^&$*$ Eli Manning! Sorry….)

What if there was no Super Bowl game?

In a January article entitled “Super Bowl 2012: Indianapolis Invites Visitors for Weeklong Celebration” by Mark Johanson, city officials were said to be expecting 150,000 visitors during Super Bowl weekend (nearly 70,000 of whom would attend the game itself). Another source suggested the number was more likely in excess of a million….

In Diana Lind’s piece (“The Economic Mixed Bag That is the Super Bowl“), she reported that while the National Football League claims that the host city for the Super Bowl receives revenues totaling anywhere from $300 to $500 million, Indianapolis was expecting less than half of that lofty amount ($150 million was the stated estimate, and the calculations for that were questioned as being too optimistic and inaccurate as well, as Lind noted).

Having been lucky enough to attend a Super Bowl several years ago (much happier memory—the Patriots won that one!), I can personally attest to the fact that it is indeed quite the spectacle.    The Colts home city appears to have left no stone unturned in its efforts to present itself in the best possible light while offering fans and visitors the full scope of Super Bowl pageantry.

The Johanson piece quoted a Convention & Visitors Association official as promising a complete transformation of the downtown area, filled with “food carts, vendors, three stages, warming stations, food and beverage” with the intent of re-making that part of Indianapolis into an Olympic Village. And for those not satisfied with that (?), Johanson reported that there would also be “interactive games, concert stages, bars and restaurants, and a so-called ‘Tailgate Town,’” together with “four zip lines” enabling users to “fly over the Super Bowl Village.” Not to be outdone, the “NFL Experience” located at the Convention Center serves as the sport’s interactive theme park with all the bells and whistles one might expect: “participatory games, displays, entertainment attractions, kid’s football clinics, free autograph sessions, and the largest football memorabilia show ever staged.”

I am not nearly versed enough in the intricacies of planning such an event, but it stands to reason that a lot of time, effort, equipment, personnel, machinery, and transportation is needed to turn an American city into the center of the pro football universe (and for that matter, the entertainment one as well, given that the game itself drew more than 117 million viewers—a new television-viewing record, topping the 2011 Super Bowl audience.)

Granted, the Super Bowl is not your average sporting event (not with secondary market ticket prices starting in excess of $2000 per, and “a field-level luxury suite with a capacity of 35 people can be yours for $650,000!” as noted in a Huffington Post article by Andrew Brandt). The “normal” ticket-purchasing fan is not the typical attendee at the Super Bowl, and the marketing aspects attending the event are far from routine, given that it is the biggest event of the year for most advertisers.

Brandt’s article went on to report that NBC received more than $250 million just from TV advertising, and (citing other sources, including this one) that “5 million people are projected to buy new televisions in preparation for the game, and fans are expected to spend $11 billion on Super Bowl-related purchases (including the consumption of 1.25 billion chicken wings).” That’s a lot of grocery stores, caterers, restaurants, sporting goods stores, electronics stores, party-favor suppliers, etc., etc., reaping tangential benefits. (Wikipedia reports it’s the second-largest day for food consumption in America; Thanksgiving is first.) Brandt also pointed out that the city’s 6000-plus hotel rooms were all sold out (at inflated rates, no doubt), leaving many visitors obliged to stay at facilities nearly an hour away (also at exorbitantly higher rates.)

That’s a lot of traveling (personal and commercial), together with a lot of supplying and delivering. (Johnson’s article reported that “Over 1,000 private planes are expected on the ground during the weekend ushering in countless celebrities.”)

John Russell and Jon Murray wrote a separate article at the indystar.com website that one national restaurant chain in particular drew more than 1200 people to its facility in Indianapolis over Super Bowl weekend, more than double its usual amount. Obviously merchants and retailers expect/hope to reap secondary benefits from consumers who leave with favorable impressions of the service or product and might thus frequent those same commercial establishments in other locations. Certainly the host city itself likewise expects/hopes to attract additional tourists and convention business from the favorable reviews.

However, the Russell/Murray piece also noted that when all relevant revenues (more than $7 million, including several million dollars from the NFL along with hotel and restaurant taxes, etc.) and expenses (labor, insurance, utilities, personnel, security, etc.) are tabulated, the city may be looking at shortfalls of anywhere from $450,000 to nearly $900,000. Not pocket change in this economy….

So I’ll ask again, what if there was no Super Bowl game?

Nearly two years ago, I wrote my first piece about the impact of declining oil/gas supply (i.e. Peak Oil) as it relates to sports and sports travel. In that post, I offered these observations:

How do teams (high school, college, the pros) deal with travel issues and schedules when gas is much too expensive to enable teams to transport their players even short distances, or when air travel is severely curtailed and wildly expensive because not enough jet fuel is being processed to meet demand (and airports are shuttered because air travel has diminished markedly), or when the fans cannot afford to put the gasoline in their vehicles that in the past allowed them to attend the games without a second thought?
What happens when half, or a third, or one-tenth the number of fans can afford to attend games because budgeting all that money to drive to an in- or out-of-state stadium no longer makes financial sense? Pure supply and demand: when demand continues and supply is reduced, prices go up. Decisions are then made about where to allocate funds. Does a trip across the state to attend a Red Sox game make more sense than paying for your children’s basic needs for the next few months?
Where will the revenue to pay players come from when the majority of fans are no longer traveling to see the games either because limited gas supplies are now being allocated or it’s simply become too expensive for “frivolous” trips? How do owners continue to fund their vast operations (office staff, marketing, scouting staffs, minor leagues, utility services for the stadiums and training facilities, and on and on it goes)? What happens to the vendors and other suppliers when the majority of fans just stop attending … permanently?

What happens when the mind-boggling efforts in planning, preparing, transporting, supplying, delivering, etc., etc. needed to stage this incredible event by countless thousands of individuals and merchants and organizations and government officials are simply no longer feasible because every single entity up and down the supply and service chain is faced with the reality of insufficient availability of “affordable”, quality, energy supply to make this extravaganza happen?

How many economic dominoes tumble as a result? How many businesses lose out? How many employees?

I’m not anticipating that the NFL will cease production of the Super Bowl anytime in the near future, but the reality of Peak Oil will affect this event and this organization just as it will every other commercial enterprise. It will take an incredible amount of planning and thought to figure out an appropriate Plan B just for this one event … how much more planning and thought will be needed for everything else?

Although it is likely that the President and his Secretary of Energy understand that a decline in world oil production is not far away, it is simply not a topic to be raised prior to an election as the political risk is simply too great. Someday, likely within the next decade, the US and the rest of world’s governments will have to acknowledge there is a problem here, and unless alternative sources of energy can be developed and brought     into general use quickly, major changes in economic activities and lifestyles are going to take place. [1]

So that’s sufficient reason to be allowing moronic decisions to serve as current policy instead? Do any of our “leaders” in Congress understand the concept of “long-term planning”? Foresight? How about just plain ‘ol basic “planning” … the kind that runs beyond Election Day? Are they all clueless … and self-serving beyond all bounds of basic decency?

The latest demonstration of short-sighted, narrow-minded “leadership” comes courtesy of the House Ways and Means Committee. Last week, the Committee’s majority, in their infinite wisdom, proposed a much-needed transportation bill which managed to all but eliminate currently-legislated funding for public transit, among other egregious, ignorant and decidedly ideological proposals having very little to do with national best interests.

This awesome display of brazen hypocrisy (and a giant “screw you” to millions of not-wealthy citizens who use and/or rely on public transit) calls for that funding to now take a number and wait in line for crumbs from the general fund—the same general fund which supplies the needed revenue for all other government spending. Now, the billions collected from the (wildly insufficient) gas tax will be directed exclusively to road programs, rather than allocating a percentage of those revenues to transit as has been customary and routine for decades.

But the good news is that the House wants $40 billion in spending cuts to offset this “transfer” of funding to the general fund. Another giant “screw the future” message….

With a House like this, what advances can American transportation policy make?
Actions by members of the U.S. House over the past week suggest that Republican opposition to the funding of alternative transportation has developed into an all-out ideological battle. Though their efforts are unlikely to advance much past the doors of their chamber, the policy recklessness they have displayed speaks truly poorly of the future of the nation’s mobility systems. [2]

Wouldn’t it be easier for them to just announce that they genuinely don’t give a shit about 99% of Americans? Think of how much time and energy they’d save by making it obvious to even the densest of right-wing, (non-wealthy only, of course) supporters that what’s in their best interests really does not matter any more than it does for those who support the Democrats.

Dan Smith of USPIRG put it like this:
The House Ways and Means Bill stops just short of defunding America’s public transit system. Instead it says that the real money with a funding source will all go to highways, while the tooth fairy will pay for transit. For Big Oil and the highway lobby, this is a dream, but it’s a nightmare for America’s transportation future. [3]

Here in Eastern Massachusetts, the state’s Department of Transportation recently rolled out a grim set of proposals designed to counter severe budget shortfalls. All indications are that an increase in the state’s gas tax as a viable source for funding is a dead issue before it’s even raised in the legislature, so cutbacks in Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority [MBTA] services—  coupled with fare hikes affecting commuter rail, bus, ferry, and subway riders—are Plan B. Parking fees at various transit stations would also be raised.

Under one scenario, fares overall would increase by 43 percent, while under the other, they would increase by 35 percent.
Under both scenarios, MBTA ferries would be eliminated, commuter rail weekend service would be eliminated and nighttime service would end at 10 p.m., and weekend service on [specified transit lines] would be eliminated.
But in the second scenario, a larger number of bus routes would be cut, generating savings that would enable the smaller fare increase. [4]

The MBTA also provides commuter rail service to the Massachusetts North Shore community where our summer home is located. We try to spend as many weekends there as we can during the late spring through mid-autumn period. But under what I labeled as the MBTA’s Plan B as noted above, elimination of weekend rail service there is also on the table.

… [O]fficials said there is no way to quantify exactly how many weekend visitors who come by commuter rail would stay away if they had to drive instead.
But during the summer, Rockport and Manchester fill with out-of-towners, many of whom take the commuter rail in order to save money or to avoid the difficultly of finding parking space. [5]

(That same article also notes this distressing fact: “According to the MBTA, 12 percent of commuter rail passengers would be affected by the cuts, and 6.7 million fewer people would ride the commuter rail each year than do currently.” That’s not an insignificant number of people obliged to now use autos instead….)

I’ll admit that to date this is not an issue affecting me personally. We drive to our summer home, as I’ve noted in other posts such as this one. I did, however, make use of public transportation on one notable occasion back in 2010, as I recounted (here):

As I noted way back when in my introduction to this blog, we are very fortunate. We own an exquisite (at least to us), spacious summer home a hundred yards or so from the Atlantic Ocean. We vacation here and enjoy every blessed minute of it! In normal driving conditions, it takes us fifty minutes or so to go door-to-door from our suburban Boston home to the ‘beach house’, which is where I am as I write this. What a treat for us!
Summer vacation usually means grabbing as much time as we can here—work and young adult schedules permitting. That means frequent travel along the Route 128/Interstate 95 corridor … most times with more than one vehicle; most times more than once or twice a week.
As a strong proponent of Peak Oil, I have decidedly mixed feelings about this, as I have mentioned before….I love this lifestyle, and I approach my task of disseminating information about our soon-to-be-curtailed availability of fossil fuel supply with more than my fair share of selfish trepidation. We do not yet own hybrid vehicles, and so we spend more than our fair share of time filling the gas tanks of my wife’s German import and my Japanese SUV in order to make many trips to and from our summer home from Memorial Day through mid-October. I balance that guilt with the acknowledgment (rationalization?) that I work from home, and that my wife’s office is about 6000 feet from our home, so we actually spend no more on gas than most other families.
Once gas prices begin their inevitable climb up, whether that’s later this year, next year, or a couple more years down the road, and with a simultaneous curtailment in how much fossil fuel will remain available to us to meet all of demands and expectations and needs, my rationalizations may not matter much.
With that in mind yesterday, for the first time in the 6 summers that we’ve owned this home, I used public transportation to make most of the journey from home to here at the beach house. My daughter drove me a couple of miles to a commuter rail stop which took me into Boston’s North Station, where I then—some fifteen minutes after my
arrival—boarded a different rail line to take me to the North Shore. I then hailed a cab to take me the three miles or so from the train station to our summer place. (I’ve already informed my wife that I will soon take public transportation door to door, just to see what that’s like. That will add two bus trips and a decent amount of walking at the beginning and end of my trip, along with two separate subway rides. I’m expecting at     least an additional hour of travel each way, but no more than a few more dollars in fares.)
The one way trip yesterday cost me about $20.00, and took me two hours and ten minutes door to door. Compare that to less than $10.00 of gas and less than 60 minutes of travel time when I drive. More expensive certainly, and clearly more time-consuming, but all in all it was a pleasant enough experience, and surprisingly scenic in several places along the way. It was nice to be able to read and engage in some computer work while traveling … not an option when I’m barreling along at 65 miles per hour on Route 128.

So when we all begin experiencing first-hand and on a regular basis the myriad consequences of reduced availability of the fossil fuel resources we’ve long taken for granted, how quickly can our local communities, regional administrations, states, and federal authorities reinstate and create new transportations modes? Has that thought occurred to any of our brilliant Congressional officials who now feel emboldened to all but eliminate these options right now because they are intellectually incapable of thinking beyond November, and morally opposed to anything that might smack of decency and national interest (except, of course, the national interests on the wealthy)?

How much money, time, effort, and resources can we be expected to waste by devoting all of those assets to highways and roadways used by gasoline-chugging vehicles … highways and roadways and vehicles whose usage and very existence will be challenged in decades to come when the availability of affordable, efficient, and plentiful fossil fuels is no longer routinely assured to the masses?

… A]s the consumer of a quarter of the world’s oil supply, we can have a significant effect on the world oil market by making sure that our economy can adjust quickly and easily to changes in the oil price….
Increased investment in alternative modes of transport, such as mass transit (both buses and rail), bike lanes, bike and car sharing, and walking improvements to allow many more workers the option of getting to their jobs without the use of a personal car.
Improvements in our nation’s rail system to allow more freight to be shifted from truck to rail.
Encouraging the electrification of transport (including the alternative transport options mentioned above) to provide transport options which are not dependent on oil.
In short, we need to make the market for transportation services more efficient by encouraging new entrants (mass transit, bikes, trains) and competition with the incumbent car/internal combustion engine infrastructure. [6]

Wouldn’t it be nice to have voted into office leaders who think about these fact-based possibilities on our behalf (even if these contrary-to-their-ideology issues are not 100%, absolutely guaranteed to occur in every moment and circumstance?)

Why should this be wishful thinking?

Sources:

[1] http://www.fcnp.com/commentary/national/11048-the-peak-oil-crisis-election-2012.html; The Peak Oil Crisis: Election 2012 by Tom Whipple – 02.01.12
[2] http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2012/02/06/time-to-fight/; Time to Fight by Yonah Freemark – 02.06.12
[3] http://dc.streetsblog.org/2012/02/02/house-gop-takes-transit-funding-hostage/; House GOP Moves to Decimate Dedicated Transit Funding by Ben Goldman – 02.02.12

[4] http://www.boston.com/Boston/metrodesk/2012/01/state-unveils-two-mbta-fare-increase-service-cut-scenarios/DoUG26YM6frTKPtULQkOUK/index.html; MBTA fares could rise as much as 43 percent; ferry, bus, commuter rail cuts also eyed by Martin Finucane – 01.03.12

[5] http://www.gloucestertimes.com/local/x1666061106/MBTA-service-cuts-seen-hurting-Cape-Ann; MBTA service cuts seen hurting Cape Ann by Stephanie Bergman – 01.05.12

[6] http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomkonrad/2012/01/26/the-end-of-elastic-oil/; The End of Elastic Oil by Tom Konrad – 01.26.12

Although here in the Boston area we couldn’t offer definitive proof that it’s winter (a few single digit wind chill days aside)—given that after a surprise few inches of snow here on Halloween weekend, our next accumulation of snow (all of two inches or so) didn’t occur until mid-January …  with just a couple of trivial “storms” since then along with some very nice, mild temperatures such as yesterday’s near-60 degrees—‘tis the season for winter getaways.

Family and business obligations serve as our excuses for upcoming travel. The first trip is to DC, but at the end of February we’ll spend 5 days in Orlando.

That prospect, like most other plans these days, got me thinking about what happens a few years down the road when travel requirements might still be part of at least some portion of the population—business or pleasure.

Both of our trips entail a seven or eight mile drive to and from Boston’s Logan Airport (not a big deal if you avoid the rush-hour-parking-lot-on-the-highway experience) and then round trip (nonstop) flights to both of our destinations. A rental car awaits us on our DC trip, corporate transportation in Orlando.

We figure the fares total about $1500.00 for my wife and I. It’s possible that two of our children will join us on the DC trip, so there’s the potential for added costs.

The nice thing is that we have a number of flight options available at the moment. Both trips afford us multiple nonstop options to and from our destinations, along with a number of other options via connecting flights.

The airline industry, battered though it may be, nonetheless generates tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue. That means a lot of employees, suppliers, suppliers’ employees, airports, airport employees and countless others up and down the supply and service chain depend on daily flights to feed their families and pay their bills. Warmer winter weather down South is usually sufficient incentive all by itself!

As will be the case for us, air travel usually includes hotel stays and some other transportation needs. Travel is indeed a big business. Aside from the airline and airline-related personnel and suppliers mentioned above, restaurants and retailers likewise depend on airline-delivered tourists and business travelers to help pad their bottom lines.

One issue that seems fairly obvious to me is that since no one has yet figured out how to fly planes on anything other than jet fuel—at least commercially and on a mass scale—what happens when refineries decrease the supplies of jet fuel because Peak Oil necessitates basic changes in the allocation and supply of crude oil and its by-products? [Tom Whipple wrote a piece on that very subject just last week.]

Supply and demand operates in the airline industry just as it does most other places in our increasingly global economy. So when demand remains as is, but supplies are harder to come by or much more expensive, what happens then?

How much business planning has even been considered to date, let alone implemented to any degree?

When we start brushing up against the limits of oil production (and I believe we already have) and are left scrounging around for less than ideal substitutes as the years go by, what happens to all of the winter tourist travels to warmer locales? What’s our Plan B?

What gets prioritized and why? Which business industries will insist upon travel priorities and actually get what they need? Who will be making those determinations? How will they and their travel planners deal with fewer flights, fewer hotels, fewer transportation, and fewer dining options?

What happens to business conferences [see my 2011 post on that topic here]. What adaptations and transitions will be required of and from businesses from the small local to the mega-giant internationals when travel and transportation needs are restricted? How quickly does all this planning fall into place if we’re not already starting now?

What happens when even more smaller airports shut down when diminished supply cuts into current demand?

And given the incredible shortsightedness our Congressional leaders routinely display, what transportation alternatives will be in place that won’t prove to be infinitely more inconvenient at best?

What happens when your children now living on an opposite coast are no longer afforded the same reasonable and reasonably-priced options to visit you? Now, booking flights is as simple a process as logging on and ordering up a flight. What happens when there aren’t as many flights, or the remaining ones aren’t as affordable, or conveniently located and scheduled because jet fuel prices have shot the through as a result of basic supply and demand constraints? My oldest friend’s daughter (my godchild) now lives in Colorado. How often will she be able to visit with her siblings and parents here on the East Coast when that travel shoe drops?

Of course, we could just come to a conclusion that jet fuel must remain a refinery priority, and the countless other industries relying on their piece of the refined oil product pie will have to take a number and wait their turn? Volunteers? Doubtful.

And what of all the related transportation services dependent on all these flights: rental cars, limos, taxis, hotels, restaurants, airport gift shops and the like? What happens to them, and their employees, and their suppliers? What kind of plans have been discussed in the boardrooms?

How many employees in each of those industries, each individual business establishment, and each spouse or partner or child dependent on each one of those countless employees might be adversely impacted when those businesses start to feel the serious pinch of declining energy supplies? We’ve already gotten a good taste of how our economy gets hammered by poor business environments … what happens when a failure to plan for alternatives leaves with us poor business and economic environments as the norm?

And what of the ripple effect?

What happens when this air travel decline is extended to hotels and rental cars and all the rest; when rental cars are either much more costly and/or there are less of them to begin with? What happens when the preferred hotels have downsized because business and tourist travel has declined?

Nothing escapes the reach of declining fossil fuel availability, and there is nothing on the horizon which suggests that any substitutes currently in place are anywhere near as plentiful, affordable, or energy efficient as good ‘ol crude oil.

The resource agenda for business leaders
To thrive in an era of higher and more volatile resource prices, companies will need to pay greater attention to resource-related issues in their business strategies. The goal must be to improve a company’s understanding of how resources will affect profits, produce new opportunities for growth and disruptive innovation, create new risks, generate competitive asymmetries, and change the regulatory context. [1]

It won’t happen all at once. Slow leaks are the more likely scenarios played out across countless industries. But if we’re not thinking about these possibilities now, or getting better ideas about what changes will be sure to occur and what options might be available to us as this years-long process unfolds, we’re not giving ourselves much of a chance.

I believe the top three challenges to making progress on solutions are: 1) a lack of public and policy maker knowledge on these issues, and strong resistance to understanding and believing that such a profound threat to everything that many of us hold so dear–our big houses, automobile-centered lifestyles, frequent air travel, access to consumer goods from around the world– is close at hand; 2) very strong vested interests that will oppose changes in their industries and how they do business; and 3) our amazing lack of preparation for what we are facing, after investing in a built environment, food production system, transportation system, and overall economy that is so heavily reliant on cheap and plentiful oil. [2]

Thinking about and planning for these likelihoods before they become monumental problems might not be a bad idea….

Sources:

[1] https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/ghost.aspx?ID=/Energy_Resources_Materials/Strategy_Analysis/Mobilizing_for_a_resource_revolution_2908; Mobilizing for a resource revolution by Richard Dobbs, Jeremy Oppenheim, and Fraser Thompson – January 2012
[2] http://countercurrents.org/cardoni230110.htm; Dealing With Peak Oil by Salvatore Cardoni & Dr. Brian Schwartz – 01.23.10

[NOTE: This post is part of an ongoing series (which started here) through the next few months whose purpose is to provide tangible examples of what our future might be like in a world where we will no longer have available to us the quality and quantity of fossil fuel energy sources as we have long been accustomed to possessing and using. Some examples will describe significant impacts beyond the most obvious one: less but more expensive gas to power our vehicles.
Other posts will describe routine aspects of daily living that will likely change when producers of goods and services no longer have inexpensive and adequate supplies of the fossil fuel resources they need. I’m certain that the questions I raise will in turn raise other concerns as well. It is only by acknowledging the consequences affecting each of us that we can begin an intelligent national process of planning and implementing new methods of providing the goods and services we’ll need or desire.]

~~~

I am now the very proud father of a college graduate (a wonderful young woman who completed her four-year curriculum in only three years—impressive!—and has now returned to the Boston area). I could not be more delighted or happier for her!

Last week, I flew to New Orleans to attend her graduation, and stayed there for five nights (had to help pack the van in which she and her friend were traveling back home). My wife, her son and a friend of his flew down separately, and stayed in New Orleans for three nights.

No great surprise, but my daughter was not the only graduate. While I do not have the exact statistics, I believe the overwhelming majority of the approximately 2300 graduates came from someplace other than the immediate New Orleans area. That’s lot of graduates now driving/flying someplace else, and a lot of family members who attended the graduation after having flown in/driven from some other location. In what may be a stunning revelation, this is not the only year a graduation was held at Tulane University … shocking I know!

Even more shocking, this happened several times recently not just in New Orleans. Rumors abound that graduations were also held in Boston, New York, and possibly someplace in California, with more expected soon.

Putting aside the affordability of college for many if our economic path does not change soon, how are families going to deal with the impact of Peak Oil on just the most basic travel options for significant family events such as this?

What kind of choices will families and students be forced to make in the years to come when travel expenses to and from colleges become prohibitively expensive for many if not most of them? The college visits most engage in during senior year of high school has become an industry unto itself, and travel expenses for that aspect of college planning are not insignificant. Our trip to New Orleans was the only college visit we made via airplane, but there was also no small amount of driving involved as my daughter and I checked out a number of colleges here in the New England area.

When gas was $2 and change it was a barely noticeable expense. But at the current $4.29 per gallon (which was $3.99 six weeks ago), families are going to start taking note. Restaurants and hotels and assorted other merchants and service providers who derive no small amount of revenue from these travels by countless hundreds of thousands of prospective college students and their families will suffer in the process.

I’ve been to New Orleans nearly a dozen times in the three years that my daughter attended Tulane. My wife has joined me on three of those trips, and my daughter traveled home on multiple occasions as well.

Each of those trips required some combination of air fare and hotels and rental cars and cab fare and parking fees and gas expenditures and/or use of our own vehicles getting to and from airports….We’re fortunate in that our other daughter attends school in New York City, making Amtrak an enjoyable option, but how many families can or will be able to rely on mass transit for these types of travels? The complete failure of too many of our leaders to recognize the need for more investment in mass transit will prove a damning regret in years to come.

My daughter attended Tulane in part because it was one of the few that offered the major she sought (and a substantial scholarship to boot). What if traveling that far had not been an option? Or if it had been, what kind of dynamics would have been involved if she had moved down there, and we didn’t see each other for nearly 3 years because travel expenses had become prohibitively expensive for us (not that it wasn’t a drain on my finances to begin with)?

What kind of lifestyle changes would this young college student have had to make, knowing that she was essentially on her own for three or four years without the intangibles of family contact? (As it is, a week after she moved to New Orleans for the first time, hurricane warnings forced an evacuation of all area colleges, and she was on a plane back home about 8 days after she and I had said good-bye!) What happens in these or similar conditions when plane fare is out of the question for most? Buying airline tickets last minute is not exactly an inexpensive proposition! And what kind of options have to be put into place when vehicular travel is not feasible, and there is no mass transit available?

“Our friend of past online debates, Randall O’Toole, is a champion of both the auto-based transportation system and mobility in general. His argument is essential that there is a correlation between mobility and prosperity, that the more mobile a society is, the more at liberty people are to follow endeavors that enhance life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Greater mobility increases job opportunities, shopping selection, service competitiveness, school choices and even the gene pool people have a chance to select from when seeking a mate. There is no question that, in a broad sense, he is correct.” [1]

Greater mobility has been a wonderful option for many years for countless millions of us. What happens in the years to come when it’s not?

Sources:

[1] http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/4/4/mobilitys-diminishing-returns.html; Mobility’s Diminishing Returns by Charles Marohn – April 4, 2011

[NOTE: This post is part of an ongoing series (which started here) through the next few months whose purpose is to provide tangible examples of what our future might be like in a world where we will no longer have available to us the quality and quantity of fossil fuel energy sources as we have long been accustomed to possessing and using. Some examples will describe significant impacts beyond the most obvious one: less but more expensive gas to power our vehicles.
Other posts will describe routine aspects of daily living that will likely change when producers of goods and services no longer have inexpensive and adequate supplies of the fossil fuel resources they need. I’m certain that the questions I raise will in turn raise other concerns as well. It is only by acknowledging the consequences affecting each of us that we can begin an intelligent national process of planning and implementing new methods of providing the goods and services we’ll need or desire.]

~~~

I recently had the good fortune to visit my daughter at the university she attends in New Orleans. Scheduled many months ago, the trip was designed to coincide with the spectacular Mardi Gras festival which serves as a grand and delightful marker for a city too often associated instead with the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. Although the weather was not as cooperative as we would have liked during the four days of my trip (tornado warnings on the night of Mardi Gras dampened at least my enthusiasm to wander around the French Quarter), I nonetheless caught my fair share of beads during one of the amazing parades that wind their way down St. Charles Avenue, while taking in many other sights and sounds of the celebrations.

It’s an incredible event, wildly entertaining and just plain wilder than one can imagine. Reports indicated that it drew upwards of a million revelers to this unique city—the most since Katrina struck in 2005.

Being as involved with the subject of Peak Oil as I am these days, I soon enough found myself wondering what happens to this spectacle once we are fully engulfed by the effects of ever-declining oil production.

Last summer, I took an initial look at air travel. Among others, I posed the following question: “What decisions are the various transportation industries—freight and aviation in particular—going to be faced with when the worldwide supply of oil cannot ever match demand again? Who decides which of those two will have priority? It’s unlikely that only one industry will have all of its demand met, so that means both industries will suffer reductions in what is available to them. Then what?”

What does happen a few short years down the road when we have nowhere near the same amounts of fossil fuels at our disposal (and/or at prices even remotely affordable) to travel to New Orleans, and when those who design and operate the hundreds of floats and tractors and emergency vehicles that are part and parcel of the Mardi Gras festivities are now at the mercy of fuel prices that have doubled? Tripled? Quadrupled? Hundreds of gas-sucking vehicles crawling along a 5 or 7 mile parade route run up a serious gas/diesel tab in today’s economy.

Then what indeed? A reasonable several hundred dollar round trip air fare from Boston to New Orleans during this celebration is likely going to be a lot more expensive in years to come, and most likely prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of visitors. Granted, many thousands may still find ways to get there, but you can be certain that if air fares have spiked through the roof in a few years, gas prices for our automobiles won’t be far behind. Are citizens who live even just a few hundred miles away going to want to pay $6.00, $8.00, $11.00 for a gallon of gas to go to a festival? Is something like Mardi Gras going to be any kind of priority for most?

Given the dazzling levels of shortsightedness on display by those who balk at investing in mass transit and/or high-speed rail, what options might be available in a half-dozen or so years from now (not that mass transit will be in place in so short a period of time)? Anyone thinking that we’ll just rev’ up design, production, and construction in a week or two is even more delusional than imaginable. Those are investments (among others) which must begin now.

A determined segment of leaders are hell-bent on cutting funding for alternative energy research and transportation—among many other categories vital to our future well-being—and are doing so contrary to what most polls state that Americans want. What’s going on? If they succeed in their efforts, what then? Can we all just rely on whatever magical technology these officials seem to believe will come flying to the rescue in years ahead? Are there some special alternatives that are going to be envisioned, designed, produced, and implemented successfully, commercially, and nationally overnight? Is that the plan for those so determined to cut spending so as to preserve tax benefits for the oil companies and multi-millionaires among us? Is that what we’re about?

The Mardi Gras pumps hundreds of millions of dollars into the New Orleans economy. Not too difficult to imagine that city more so than most, and its industry leaders, count on that revenue more than just a little. What’s the ripple effect to New Orleans and its businesses when hundreds of millions of dollars are not-so-suddenly reduced by half, or more, simply because most attendees can no longer (or choose to no longer) afford the travel and lodging costs? What city services will be placed on the chopping block? How many more will suffer?

What of the restaurants and hotels that likewise depend on Mardi Gras? It was almost impossible to find lodging in the few months leading up to Mardi Gras unless you were willing to pay some seriously jacked-up prices and travel a long way into New Orleans each day. Many, many fewer patrons represent a tremendous hit to the bottom lines of those in the lodging and food service industries.

Many if not most of those retailers depend on tractor-trailers to deliver or transport supplies. Can you say diesel fuel price hikes? It’s hard to imagine that either the transportation industry or the lodging and restaurant industries are each going to absorb on their own the increased fuel prices (another domino effect which comes into play when supply no longer satisfies demand). As freight delivery charges increase and are passed on to end-users such as hotels and restaurants, and food costs themselves increase because the fossil fuels needed to provide fertilizers and a host of other “ingredients” of food production have likewise climbed into new territory (while the quantity of the fossil fuels themselves are on the decline), the unpleasant outcome is fairly obvious.

What happens to the taxi drivers who escort all these new patrons who descend on their city? (Based on my conversations with several of them however, the drivers have decidedly mixed feelings about Mardi Gras, given the logistical nightmares they must deal with every time a parade route or street-cleaning crew cuts off their travel options.)

I usually rent a car when I travel to New Orleans to visit my daughter. She cautioned me against doing so during Mardi Gras. Heeding her advice, I made do with buses, the partially-available street car lines, or a good pair of sneakers to get me around during my stay. I had the choice of taking a cab or the airport shuttle to get me to/from the city. I opted for the latter. The 55-minute or so trip from pick-up on campus to a half-dozen or so hotel stops en route to the airport when I left was by contrast a two and a half hour “adventure” when I first arrived.

Getting dropped off at my daughter’s school was the last of 8 stops the shuttle made in New Orleans after we left the airport. It seemed that almost every street was closed off that Saturday afternoon either by police barricades, an actual parade, or the random hoards of street cleaning crews which materialized seemingly out of thin air on multiple occasions as we wound our way through the city proper. At one point, although we were only four cars from a Canal Street intersection, those crews held up the shuttle van through four consecutive light cycles! That is a lot of wasted fuel….No doubt the very reasonable $40.00 or so round trip shuttle fare is going to also be a lot more expensive in years to come—assuming they (and the taxi drivers) have access to the fuel they need as and when needed. No guarantees….

Hundreds if not thousands of merchants, from street vendors on up to retail stores in and around the French Quarter, also no doubt depend on Mardi Gras revenue to bolster their bottom line. Whatever merchandise they offer is also most likely trucked in from somewhere else. Those suppliers won’t be immune to increased fuel prices and/or limitations on availability, and that means at least one entity somewhere along the supply chain is going to wind up paying, and then passing the costs along.

And the employees of the countless industries who depend on events like the Mardi Gras for a substantial portion of their annual income (keeping in mind that Peak Oil is not limited to impacting just the Mardi Gras festival while other lesser events and conventions escape unscathed)? When all of these increased prices are absorbed and then passed on to the ultimate end-users, more than a substantial percentage of those businesses are not going to be able to endure the increases or supply restrictions or lack of buyers because consumers no longer want to pay the higher prices. And that then means that more than a fair amount of employees and business owners are going to find themselves looking for work elsewhere. A lot of dominoes tumble when people are out of work … no need to elaborate.

“Just do something to lower fuel prices and none of this will be a problem” is a wonderful strategy and solution … if you don’t mind living in some alternate reality. Here on earth, however, these declining oil production consequences all inevitable, logical, and unavoidable—despite heavy doses of political grandstanding.

We can either duck for cover, or start appreciating the tasks at hand and get busy adding our voices and offering productive input into the almost-inconceivably complex planning and implementing Peak Oil will mandate—regardless of political ideology.

It is, as mentioned repeatedly, time to get busy.

More to come….

“We are trapped in a very complex civilization that is rapidly losing the sources of energy and numerous other raw materials that built and maintained it….
“If current trends continue, somewhere in the next five years a critical mass of us will realize that new foundations for civilization, and new ways of life must be found and implemented if we are going to survive with a modicum of comfort, economic, and political stability. Until then there will be many false prophets calling for a return to a civilization which is no longer possible.” [1]

A stubborn insistence that we’re just going to ignore the facts about global warming and the arrival of a peak in worldwide oil production—paying no attention to a rather large body of quite convincing evidence in the process—and instead plow ahead with public investments and plans that will in due course prove to be nothing more than monumental wastes of time (and incredibly short-sighted to boot), ought to be revisited.

We cannot afford to continue to design and then implement plans based only on what seems feasible now, or much worse, because it’s what we’ve always done, or it’s what an uninformed electorate would prefer. The first task, as I’ve mentioned in my recent posts, is that we all need to make a commitment to learning more and understanding the facts. In doing so, we need to find and rely upon the resources where the truth is the only option.

Allowing current business and political leaders to decide what will need to be done based on what has been done before is not the solution. There is no clearer indication of that than the continued resistance to spending money and investing in alternative forms of transportation.

“[N]ewly elected Republicans soon to enter gubernatorial offices have promised to shut down their local federally funded intercity rail corridors that they fear will overwhelm them with future operating expenses. Of course, those complaints are patently absurd when put in context of each state’s respective overall transportation budget. Wisconsin, for instance, spends more than a billion dollars on roadway construction annually and would have been asked to contribute a mere $7.5 million to train operations. Is such a small contribution really such a huge price to pay for a transportation alternative?” [2]

A worthwhile question that demands a much better response than what we’re seeing.

To be fair, there’s no question that making these kinds of investment decisions and committing even more funds from a limited supply is under no one’s definition an easy, simple or—at first—an obvious solution. There are indeed many legitimate arguments against such a commitment. I’m firmly in the camp that believes high speed rail is a necessity, but I’m just as clear that we need to think through the strategies more than we have to date. High-speed rail aside, I’m more convinced by the day that a great deal more reliance on public transportation will be mandatory.

A fear of deficits and increased public spending are going to have to give way to a longer term vision for the kind of nation we choose to be and the levels of growth and prosperity we at least hope to attain in a world no longer able to rely on fossil fuels. That vision and the corresponding plans of necessity must include a greater commitment to public transit. The choice to devote our limited transportation capital funds on the more familiar roadwork projects makes perfectly good sense in a vacuum where growth is expected to return to “normal” soon enough. The harsh truth is that it will not because it cannot. There will be new definitions of “normal” in the years to come.

I don’t like it any more than anyone else, but we create only more difficulties for ourselves by denying the facts and delaying our efforts to create an industrial economy that no longer depends on fossil fuels. It’s a monumental undertaking to be sure, and is not one we should expect to complete for at least a couple of decades. But oil supplies have reached their peak and it is soon enough all downhill from there, so we’re confronted with the dual challenge of re-creating the way our economy functions while utilizing declining supplies of oil in the process, and simultaneously trying to keep our heads above water under current conditions, dependent on that exact same declining supply. All the creativity and spin in the world cannot make that math come out in our favor. Change is a-comin’.

The bottom line is that for all the arguments favoring more expenditures on road construction at the expense of public transportation, the same end result would be arrived at with far less effort if we simply burn piles of money on the steps of Capitol Hill. Appreciating the challenges and implications of having now arrived at the peak of oil production does lead to the obvious conclusion (political ideologies in opposition notwithstanding) that we are going to have to move away from an automobile-centric society.

In the years to come, we simply will not have enough oil/gasoline to power the number of automobiles we own in this country under similar or growing levels of usage when we add to that astounding number the many millions more new automobiles that will be added to the roadways of other nations. We could meet that demand, of course. We’d simply have to do away with a great many other necessities and products (see my last post for a brief list) dependent on oil, since there won’t be enough fossil fuels to go around to meet all the demand everywhere all the time for everyone. That’s Peak Oil!

As I’ve taken great pains to emphasize, we’re not running out of oil any time soon. But depletion and an inexorable decline in production which no alternative or unconventional resources can make up for means there’s going to be less available for everyone and everything. Those dominoes will continue to tumble until one day, likely several decades into the future, it will no longer be feasible to continue extracting oil or using. Too much effort and too much expense for too little reward is what we face. Start planning now is the smart choice, because once we’ve solicited all the input available—no easy or quick task in itself—we’re going to have a lot of work ahead of us putting those plans into action, with the myriad modifications and adaptations that will surely be needed.

We’ll need to be smarter about the new choices we make, too. Reliance on (or hope that) the electric vehicle is the answer to the transportation aspect of Peak Oil’s impact is all fine and well in the abstract. But as has been pointed out by others (here and here), if we’re just expecting that fancy new electric Mercedes and BMWs and Ford pick-up trucks and Honda SUVs and Chevy Volts will just simply replace the ones we drive now, we’re in for another rude awakening. An enormous conversion of infrastructure will be required, for one thing. And for another (topics for upcoming posts here), if the strategies we design to cope with fossil fuel depletion do not also include plans for where and how we live, we’re just digging another deep hole for ourselves.

As objectionable as this will be to many, “smart growth” and “sustainable living” practices are going to warrant much greater levels of attention than they have to date. If ideological principles cause one to blanche at the thought of our federal government “dictating” how and where people live by controlling urban sprawl, the message is a simple one: Get used to it. This is not about a desire of the government to impose its will or make choices for others. It will instead be another courageous recognition that great changes will and must take place, and that there must be a national mechanism for guiding the choices and actions of local governments and private industry to address those looming realities.

Given that certain segments of the media (and the political and social groups that align themselves with that media’s particular ideology) seem convinced that President Obama does not believe we’re an “exceptional” nation (the convenient omission of facts and context debunking that meme are neatly summed up here and here), here’s our chance to prove him “wrong.” Let’s do so by leading the charge into the 21st century with a new vision about how prosperous and successful nations adjust to the new realities about energy supply and usage. It will take one hell of a village to make this happen in any event.

Why not us?

Sources:

[1] http://www.fcnp.com/commentary/national/7980-the-peak-oil-crisis-the-future-of-government.html; The Peak Oil Crisis: The Future of Government By Tom Whipple
[2] http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2010/12/01/growing-conservative-strength-puts-transit-improvements-in-doubt/; Growing Conservative Strength Puts Transit Improvements in Doubt by Yonah Freemark

“[B]y 2050 another 130 million people are projected to be living in the United States; by 2100 the Census Bureau’s high estimate is more than 1 billion. Providing infrastructure and transportation for this expanding population will generate a long list of required equipment and materials….”[1]

That’s a lot of energy demand and usage under the best of supply conditions! When many other nations are dealing with similar population growths, how on earth (literally) are we going to provide?

That question is troubling enough. How do we provide when the supply of oil that has so far supported our rising populations and ever-increasing demand is no longer as plentiful, inexpensive, or easily obtainable?

World oil production has been flat at best since the middle part of this decade. Even when oil was zooming up to nearly $150.00 per barrel just a few short years ago, oil production didn’t increase. As yourself: why? Why wouldn’t nations allegedly up to their eyeballs in plentiful reserves not ramp up production so as to generate untold billions and billions in additional income? Hello! Just having those plentiful reserves isn’t enough. If they are too difficult or too costly to extract, or if the quality is poor, we could have a gazillion barrels of oil in reserves and not a drop of it would help. Those are the present-day facts about a good deal of our oil supplies. It’s not going to get any better.

“[C]onventional oil reserves are being depleted throughout the world at twice the rate of their replacement, historically slow annual capacity declines from major oil fields are being replaced by rapid declines from significantly smaller new developments, and finally marginal new reserves such as arctic and deep water oil accumulations require inordinate new technology advancements and massive funding in order to be brought on-stream in adequate volumes as affordable costs.” [2]

It’s true that the possibility exists that the tipping point when oil production begins its unavoidable decline may yet be many years away, [see this for a good summary of the current state of oil production] but are we really willing to wager that something will come along to save the day when it’s time to deal with those challenges on a day-to-day basis? Are we willing to even place bets on exactly when that might be? Doing nothing seems like a monumental—and monumentally foolish—strategy.

“’We are confronted with a society built on high-quality energy, dense forms of energy, fossil fuels especially,’” says [Boston University] ecological economist Cutler Cleveland. ‘Could you have the same standard of living with renewables? I don’t think we really know. Things might have to change very fundamentally….’
“[R]enewables’ handicaps do not bode well for speeding up the next energy transition. Fossil fuels ‘were phenomenally attractive,’ yet it still took 50 to 70 years to bring them into widespread use, says [systems analyst Arnulf Grübler of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)]. That’s because, no matter how attractive a fuel might be, it takes time to create the infrastructure for extracting and transporting the resource, converting it into a usable form, and conveying it to the end user. It also takes time for inventors to develop enduse technologies—such as steam engines, internal combustion engines, and gas turbines—and for consumers to adopt them and create demand. Renewables ‘will be slower because they’re less attractive,” says Grübler. “They don’t offer new services; they just cost more.’” [3]

Not exactly an ideal solution, especially when we consider how little research funding we currently provide (which will likely become less as a shortsighted Congress is already suggesting). It’s estimated that fossil fuels (oil in particular) plays a role in the production of more than 90% of all industrial goods, and a similar percentage in supplying fuel for all forms of transportation. There is no denying that our economic way of life is supported by what has long been a ready supply of oil. That’s going to change. Pretending it won’t is just dumb.

Doing nothing, or waiting for some “better” time to deal with that problem will result in one certain outcome: we’ll have fewer options available to actually deal with the problems of decreasing supply.

“Until we get out of the gravitational pull of the Great Recession, government is the only remaining booster rocket. If anything, we need more government spending and lower taxes on the middle class. This means bigger deficits, at least for the time being. Even worse, budget-deficit mania will slow future growth if it forces government to cut the things that fuel growth  – education,  basic R&D, child health, improved infrastructure.
“No smart family would choose to balance the family budget over borrowing money to send the kids to college. The same logic holds for the nation as a whole. If certain government spending generates higher future productivity, we’d be nuts not to make the investment just to avoid a larger deficit.” [4]

With so much of our individual and commercial livelihood dependent on a vital and finite resource on the verge of an irreversible decline (at least in terms of affordable prices and in sufficient quantities to meet ever-increasing demand), we’ve got a big problem ahead of us. Global warming won’t help (despite the Right’s intentional unwillingness to recognize that problem—a purely political calculation that is destined to lead to unimaginable difficulties), and an economy already straining to remain upright both serve to create a convergence of challenges about which we are at present woefully uninformed and ill-prepared for. Toss declining supplies of affordable oil into that pot and we’re brewing some kind of nasty future for ourselves.

Exactly how quickly does our leadership think it’s going to take to transition away from fossil fuels? How long do most of us think that will take?

For those narrow-minded and shortsighted public personalities denouncing Big Government in all its facets, they’re creating an environment in which government will be the only entity left standing and capable of managing what will surely be an upheaval of historic proportions … with no guarantees that it will succeed. (When media personalities on the Right are denouncing Republicans for not being conservative enough because they supported legislation eliminating incandescent light bulbs as one means to conserve energy [5], it’s a demonstration of narrow-minded ignorance about our energy future that’s difficult to fathom. Are these people incapable of understanding anything about the future? Is there some genetic defect that prevents them from considering consequences beyond the end of the month?}

Acting on an oddly-based belief that all of this evidence (facts are so damned annoying at times!) leads to some happy outcome completely divorced from reality is a mind-numbingly dangerous strategy to follow at the expense of hundreds of millions of people.

We need to be better.

That admonition applies not just to the media and political personalities too many of us depend on for guidance. If we don’t step up and start recognizing how much of our everyday lives depend in small or large part on having oil and gas at the ready 24/7, and then considering how much of that 24/7 is going to be altered when those same supplies either become exorbitantly more expensive and/or (likely both) not as readily available any longer, then we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves. Is that a roll of the dice we should be considering?

Take a moment to reflect on how many products you own in your own home that were produced either directly from fossil fuels or were transported or otherwise supplied using fossil fuels in the distribution process. Is there anything not attributable to oil? How long and how much effort and how many changes and how much of our production facilities and how much of our infrastructure and how much of our transportation services are going to have to be adapted to a world where oil is no longer at the ready as it has been for more than 100 years? How do implement the new facilities, which will themselves no doubt demand a considerable amount of energy in their creation and distribution, when there’s even less efficient, inexpensive, and available fossil fuels to power all of that?

Even in the midst of the hardships and burdens the vast majority of us are being obliged to endure daily as our economy stumbles along—which surely cloud our abilities to take on even more burdens—we need to become better educated about the challenges that loom in the much-too-soon future, and we need to become at least a bit smarter about the contributions we make to solving the problems. The evidence from recent polling seems quite clear that a too-large percentage of Americans have their facts completely wrong about President Obama’s legislative accomplishments (here, here, and here), and that lack of understanding will be of no help to any of us as we undertake the massive challenge of revising … well, just about everything!

If we either remain uninformed or mislead by the facts and the options we’ll have to rely on, or if we make decisions based not on reason and consideration of the realities confronting us (daunting as they will be), then we should expect very little in the way of solutions or success.

“Is America ready for the 21st century? The answer is no.” [6]

We need to find a better answer, and we should start working on that right about now.

Sources:

[1] http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100301/alperowitz_et_al/single; The Cleveland Model By Gar Alperovitz, Ted Howard & Thad Williamson – TIM ROBINSON

[2] http://www.emirates247.com/news/region/saudi-oil-analyst-disputes-high-supply-theory-2010-11-10-1.315931; Saudi oil analyst disputes high supply theory

[3] http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/329/5993/780; Do We Have the Energy for the Next Transition? Richard A. Kerr

[4] http://robertreich.org/post/1549020696; Why We Should Beware Budget-Deficit Mania by Robert Reich

[5] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45059.html; Right burns over Upton light bulb law By: Robin Bravender

[6] http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2627; America’s Aging Infrastructure: What to Fix, and Who Will Pay? Erwann Michel-Kerjan, managing director of Wharton’s Risk Management and Decision Processes Center.

“I don’t think people quite understand how fundamental transportation is to the economy and their standard of living.” [1]

“Some might also wonder why a shortage of oil should automatically trigger a collapse. It turns out that, in an industrialized economy, a drop in oil consumption precipitates a proportional drop in overall economic activity. Oil is the feedstock used to make the vast majority of transportation fuels—which are used to move products and deliver services throughout the economy. In the US in particular, there is a very strong correlation between GDP and motor vehicle miles traveled. Thus, the US economy can be said to run on oil, in a rather direct and immediate way: less oil implies a smaller economy. At what point does the economy shrink so much that it can no longer meet its own maintenance requirements? In order to continue functioning, all sorts of infrastructure, plant and equipment must be maintained and replaced in a timely manner, or it stops functioning. Once that point is reached, economic activity becomes constrained not just by the availability of transportation fuels, but also by the availability of serviceable equipment.” [2]

“The United States is saddled with a rapidly decaying and woefully underfunded transportation system that will undermine its status in the global economy unless Congress and the public embrace innovative reforms, a bipartisan panel of experts concludes in a report released [several weeks ago].
“U.S. investment in preservation and development of transportation infrastructure lags so far behind that of China, Russia and European nations that it will lead to ‘a steady erosion of the social and economic foundations for American prosperity in the long run.” [3]

This is real life; this is what happens when you put on blinders and decide that a political ideology already proven not to work will nonetheless work magic this time. If they do what they’ve always done, we’ll get more of what we’ve already gotten … hello!

Spending the kinds of money being tossed about for transportation infrastructure modernization is mind-boggling. As one recent report suggests, an additional $134 billion to $262 billion must be spent per year through 2035 to rebuild and improve roads, rail and air transportation systems. [4] Coupled with even larger investments needed to modernize our entire infrastructure, and it becomes terrifying. Talk about bad options or bad options! There are few short-term upsides to the choices we’re confronted with, but that’s the key issue: this is not about what’s best for us only right now. Difficult decisions or difficult decisions are the choices on the table.

But what is the option? Where do we wind up ten, twenty, fifty years down the road? Do we leave our children and grandchildren with potentially burdensome debt but in an economic environment that meets their needs and gives them hope and chance for an even better future, or do we send them into the world relatively debt-free but confronted with decay and decline and little hope as far as the eye can see?

“The United States can’t compete successfully in the 21st century with a 20th century transportation infrastructure—especially when its chief trading partners, including not only the advanced economies of Western Europe and Southeast Asia but also rapidly developing countries like China, are making significant investments in cutting-edge transportation technologies and systems. Transportation efficiency has a direct impact on Americans’ standard of living and on the cost of goods and services delivered by U.S. firms and businesses.” [5]

The knee-jerk reaction to raising any fees, notably the 18.4 cent (per gallon) federal gas tax, which has not been raised since 1993, hamstrings any efforts to legitimately address these challenges. A sense of entitlement—that we shouldn’t have to pay for public services—is rapidly becoming not just an enormous impediment to resolving our difficulties. We also run the risk that our fears of national decline will become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and with no one to blame but ourselves.

“We would also note that while other nations are effectively rebuilding and improving transportation infrastructure (think China, France, India and other competitors), we are consumed with debates about the proper role of our national government, all the while avoiding the tough decisions that would give us the resources to do the same. [6]

You don’t have to be a math whiz to understand that inflation and increased fuel mileage over the years (and thus less spending at the pump) have dramatically reduced the sufficiency of the gas tax as a source for highway construction and maintenance funds. The sad truth is that Americans don’t want to pay for much, and that’s a sure recipe for all kinds of disasters, but our attention span is short and our memories about other consequences are just as short.

One proposal repeatedly floated about only to be instantly shot down is a one or two cent (cent, as in penny!) increase in that per gallon gas tax. Two or three cents would be fabulous, but we can’t get Congressional leaders to even consider a one freaking penny increase to help pay for road maintenance and repair … one penny per gallon! Let’s take a look at how this breaks down in the real world of facts:

Estimated miles traveled per year by the average driver is 15,000

Average miles per gallon is 15 – 20 miles per gallon. Let’s lowball and say it’s only 15 mpg

15,000 miles per year divided by 52 weeks = 290 miles; let’s say 300 miles per week

300 miles per week divided by 15 miles per gallon = 20 gallons of gas used per week, or about $60.00 per week at current prices, or about $3000.00 per year

20 gallons of gas per week with a one freaking cent gas tax increase = 20 cents per week, times 52 weeks means that the average driver paying $10.40 more per year to help alleviate an urgent need … ten freaking dollars per year!

And we have leaders and organizations and media personalities telling us that raising this tax is as calamitous as anything we’ve ever seen. This begs the obvious and unfortunate question:

How irresponsible, clueless, and short-sighted is this?

“The fact is that failure to adequately maintain and invest in our transportation systems means not only gridlocked roads and deteriorating bridges in the near term, but a steady erosion of the social and economic foundations for American prosperity in the long run. Avoiding this outcome means government, and ultimately taxpayers, need to be willing to invest more in transportation, not just for one year or a few, but on a sustained basis over time….Policymakers and the public will need to understand that investments in transportation infrastructure—provided these investments are wisely chosen and effectively implemented—will have long-term benefits that more than justify their near-term costs.” [7]

“[O]ur transportation infrastructure also is the foundation upon which virtually every major industry sector depends. Many industries could not exist without the wise infrastructure investments our nation has made in the past. These industries include tourism, manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, agriculture and forestry, mining, retailing, wholesaling and many others that are essential to our economic vitality and quality of life. Dependent industries provide more than 78.6 million American jobs with a total payroll in excess of $2.8 trillion, illustrating just how much we have at stake when we underfund our transportation efforts.” [8]

As my favorite political blogger, Steve Benen, so dryly noted: “We are, by the way, talking about projects that create jobs, spur economic development, relieve traffic congestion, and help the environment, all while offering the promise of transforming American transportation in the 21st century.” [9]

Not that that matters….

Whether or not we manage to restore some semblance of prosperity in the near (or even not-so-near) future will depend in no small part on the courage and wisdom we ask our leaders to demonstrate—with our support—in making wise investment decisions with an eye to the future, difficult as those choices may be. Not making those decisions has the potential to be catastrophic.

We have to encourage and even insist on a vision for our future that takes into account legitimate concerns on both sides of these investment issues but also moves beyond them in recognition of the fact that in a near-future powered by less fossil fuel resources, changes will have to be made in how we address these challenges. Throwing more money at public roads is not the sole option, nor can it be.

“Name one attribute America’s most successful cities have in common. The ‘it’ factor often overlooked – but necessary for success – is transit. Successful cities all across the nation have made the choice to make public transit a priority – and that decision pays off.
“According to the American Public Transit Association, for every $1 cities invest in public transportation, they generate $4 in economic returns. Economically viable cities make funding transit a priority because they can generate multiple, positive economic outcomes with a single investment:
“Developers are attracted to transit areas. If a city wants to revitalize a blighted area or dictate where high-density growth and expansion occur, one of the smartest things it can do is invest in transit.” [10]

For all the (many of which are legitimate) arguments against investing in high speed rail, the reality that almost none of those opponents bother to consider is that in a world with ever-declining oil production, increasing world-wide demand, and more complex geopolitical and geological challenges, our insistence on remaining an automobile-based nation evidencing our greatness and independence is at best extremely foolish. We are simply not going to have same level of fossil fuels we now depend on for transportation. That’s just the reality, and we ignore it or stubbornly insist otherwise at our peril. Alternative forms of transit—expensive or not—are going to play a critical role for us in the future, both personally and commercially. Stomping our feet and demanding otherwise is nice, but not going to get you much.

“In the United States, high-speed rail remains roadkill for Republicans who, in playing to anti-big-government voters, reflexively say states cannot afford it rather than reflect on how mass transit and speedy corridor trains will wean us off oil and improve quality of life for generations to come.” [11]

We, and our leaders, need to be wiser and far less shortsighted than we tend to be.

Sources:

[1] http://www.infrastructurist.com/2010/10/22/new-report-shows-states-want-to-cut-infrastructure-spending/; New Report Shows States Want to Cut Infrastructure Spending by Eric Jaffe (quoting Byron Schlomach, director of the Center for Economic Prosperity at the Goldwater Institute in Arizona)

[2] http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2010/11/peak-oil-is-history.html; Peak Oil is History

[3]http://millercenter.org/policy/transportation [link to PDF]; Report from the Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virgina: Well Within Reach – America’s New Transportation Agenda – David R. Goode National Transportation Policy Conference (Norman Y. Mineta and Samuel K. Skinner, Conference Co-Chairs, Jeffrey N. Shane, Conference Director) issued October, 2010

[4] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/04/AR2010100402269.html; Failing U.S. transportation system will imperil prosperity, report finds By Ashley Halsey III

[5] Miller Center Report (above) p.26

[6] http://www.amconmag.com/cpt/2010/10/19/how-to-finance-the-next-six-year-transportation-authorization-a-taxing-issue/; How to Finance the Next Six-Year Transportation Authorization: A Taxing Issue – October 19, 2010 by Glen Bottoms

[7] Miller Center Report (above) p. 27

[8] http://www.hntb.com/point-of-view/think5-investing-in-our-economic-future; Investing in our economic future

[9] http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_11/026518.php; SO MUCH FOR HIGH-SPEED RAIL…..

[10] http://transportation.nationaljournal.com/2010/10/talkin-about-a-railvolution.php; Talkin’ About A Rail-Volution? By Fawn Johnson; (Response by Tom Madigan: The ‘It’ Factor Of Successful Cities)

[11] http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/10/30/us_needs_to_get_on_track_for_high_speed_rail/; US needs to get on track for high-speed rail By Derrick Z. Jackson