Planes, Trains or Automobiles: It’s Time to Pick a Poison
When was the last time you took a train somewhere. Well unless you live in a major city like Washington D.C, New York, London or Paris the chances are that you haven’t been on a train in quite sometime if it all. Ask a child born after 1990 if they have ever traveled by train and the answer is almost always a resounding “nope”, unless they’ve traveled to Europe where High Speed Railways have paved the future of mass transit and significantly cut down the number of people relying on cars and planes to take them to their destination.
So with Europe’s work in high-speed rail and now the United States promise to expand and improve their own rail system what are the advantages of rail travel and transport? Are trains the solution to ecofriendly travel and trade or is this just another dead end in the search for a truly green way to get from A to B.
Trains were first introduced in a large scale to the United States by some very progressive and all be it aggressive businessmen around the turn of the century. While previously the rail systems had been seen as a way to facilitate and sustain westward expansion it soon became clear that this system was a for profit industry and would soon carry products to and from the costs to consumers faster than ever before. One of these products was oil (drilled in Pennsylvania) that was quickly becoming the preferred and powerful fuel of then modern America.
Entrepreneur John. D. Rockefeller ushered in a business practice of receiving secret railroad rebates from the rail companies that transported his oil from Northwest Pennsylvania to consumers nation wide. Rockefeller had a vision of “continuing to hold out with the best illuminator in the world at the lowest price” (The Freeman Online, John. D Rockefeller and the Oil Industry) regardless of the practices it would take to achieve this dream.
This practice not only meant that oil and rail would be tied together for a mutual benefit but also meant that anyone hoping to compete in either the oil or rail road industries had to create their own railroads (Rockefellers deal included exclusive oil transport rights with the railroad he dealt with) to carry their oil to consumers in hopes of competing with Rockefeller. This helped the placement of rail and the expansion of the industry to move very rapidly. But this system would soon be forgotten as highways and cars became the nationwide network for travel and transit.
With railroad largely forgotten with exceptions on the East coast of the U.S it seemed the heyday of rail transport had come and gone. Now as we look for green alternatives to city congestion and highway traffic it seems the railroad may be the solution we always had but couldn’t remember.
Oil seems to be behind just about every environmental problem facing transit and transport. Whether it be trains, planes or cars large amounts of oil are needed. One article by Mark Tutton in CNN online quoted train and climate expert Dr. Anthony Perl on the topic of transit in the U.S who believes that in order for any significant progress in the sector to be made oil “addiction” needs to be broken. While it is easy to see that oil is a major problem this sector will face in the future suggesting that Oil is an addiction would allude that we as consumers have a choice and don’t need to but want to use oil, which is grossly inaccurate.
In fact its startling just how little could be accomplished without oil and other petroleum based fuel sources. The fact is we don’t have a choice currently, no green fuel (ethanol, electric, hydro, solar or wind power) is proficient or abundant enough while being cost effective to replace oil. The sad truth is were stuck with oil for the foreseeable future if we as a society want to continue to function as we do now.
Often we need to cause harm to do good. No great undertaking has ever been accomplished without some sacrifice and I think this is no less true for the problem of green energy and climate change. Every news article seems to paint a picture of the next great world saving technology or fuel and the fact remains that no such silver bullet exists and most of all there is no one solution.
The realistic approach would be to accept that we must first research and build infrastructure to support this new field of green energy and transit while understanding that its going to take work across the board from wind, solar, hydro and ethanol as well as new possibly undiscovered energy sources to meet current demands. Oil was a universal operator in that we could use it to power just about anything but those days are gone and now more than ever we will need to learn to lean of a variety of sources.
Step one especially with high-speed rail isn’t as pretty as one would hope. In fact its one of those situations where harm necessitates healing, and by that I mean its going to get worse before it gets any better. In order for trains to become a viable solution for travelers and distributors it needs to make sense economically. A commute or a company isn’t going to put faith into a system that makes its consumer wait longer or its traveler wait longer.
For high-speed rail this means drastic build up in the number of stations, trains, support facilities and functioning tracks. All of this takes heavy investment as well as a heavy toll on the environment. In order to build these sites and lay new track massive amounts of land will need to be cleared causing further vegetation loss and decreased oxygen levels, additionally large amounts of steel and concrete will be needed in construction which both in their production and implementation (from creating to transport to utilization) cause large amounts of carbon dioxide and other green house gas emission. China has already taken the lead building line and support facilities in excess of 400 billion dollars and over 8,000 new kilometers of track.
Step two is even more of a problem. Once the necessary work and harm has been put in by creating this new industry and new locations we are faced with the fact that most high speed trains are powered by electricity and large amounts to boot. As we know from my previous posts the two largest fuel sources for electricity are coal and natural gas.
While Hydroelectric power, wind and solar only make up 16% of all electric energy produced in the United States. This means that unless major advances in electric production technology and renewable electricity sources are made trains are just as dead in the water as cars and planes.
The next problem is occupancy. We have all heard the lines about car-pooling to save gas and minimize the number of vehicles on the road. Well trains and planes are the ultimate form of car-pooling. Well not exactly, planes are still the worst form of travel from an ecofriendly point of view due mostly to the large distances they travel and heavy fuel usage of take off and landing. So you would expect trains have to be better than both right?
Well they would be if the U.S could get enough people to use this form of travel and transit. High-speed rail in Japan has an average of 75% occupancy on all of their high-speed train routes, which still isn’t enough to offset operating costs and maintenance.
So what are we left with? Well until we invest enough to care about rail it wont ever be a realistic alternative. Additionally electric production needs to become fossil fuel free before powering this transit system is a good environmental option (considering over two thirds of global electricity is produced from coal alone). Well I suppose this is the silver lining. President Obama has already pledge over 50 billion dollars over the next 25 years to bring high-speed rail to over 80% of the U.S populace.
So the hope becomes that should enough research and infrastructure be produced in the next 25 years coupled with better electrical energy sources trains could eventually become a viable option for the future of transit and travel. For now the best thing to do is work to change the populations opinion on train travel by supporting local rail, subway and regional lines so that when large cross country high-speed rail is a reality we as a nation will not only accept it but utilize it on a large scale. Its time to take the hint from Japan and Europe and jump on the high speed rail bandwagon.
Here is a video of Obama talking about High Speed Rail
NEWS SOURCES:
1: CNN Online: How green is high-speed rail by Mark Tutton
2: The Huffington Post Online: U.S unveils 53 Billion dollar high speed rail plan by John Lowy and Alan Fram
3: News wise online: U.S High Speed rail initiative is not realistic says transportation expert by Cornell University Contributors
4: The New York Times Online: How Green is High Speed Rail by Green a New York Times Blog
5: The Berkley Transport Letter: Tracking High Speed Rails energy use and emissions by Christine Cosgrove
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This blog was very exciting. I always hear about the bullet trains in Japan and I wonder why we can't have similar transportation here. I suppose that its a bit easier in Japan due to the much smaller size of the country, but none the less, since it is such a great thing for the Japanese, I can only imagine that it'd also be a positive thing for us. I liked that you listed all of the disadvantages and problems associated with implementing such a plan. I think that once these issues are dealt with and resolved bullet trains can be the next greatest thing for the American public and their environment.
ReplyDeleteYour blog is very informative and bring to light a great potential solution.