Posts Tagged ‘railroad’
Why do Kool Aid Party Republicans hate trains?
Michelle Bachman’s last train ride from Duluth
“Stop the Train” was, literally, a rallying cry for post-Tea Party Republicans this past November.
Newly elected GOP governors in Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida have canceled already-funded high speed rail projects.
Much of the opposition to rail projects appears to stem not from economic arguments, but from fundamental cultural values on what “American” transportation should be. A perusal of online commentaries about passenger rail stories reveals a curious linkage by writers between passenger rail and “European socialism.”
Never mind that the majority of European passenger rail operates on a commercial basis. Many critics of passenger rail emotionally identify it as an enabler of cultural values they fear.
For example, passenger rail inherently requires central administration. After all, trains cannot depart from a station without authority from a central dispatcher. This very need for central authority is unique to rail and frightening to those who yearn for an individual freedom from authority…
Second, a passenger rail project labels a route as an “urban” corridor, and provides the infrastructure and incentive for even more urban development. This contradicts a vision of America, held by many, as a small town society centered on the automobile. In reality, rural towns continue to decline. The 2000 U.S. census classifies 79% of the U.S. population as “urban…”
It is difficult for many to accept the impact of these population trends. Many legislators who are otherwise hostile to passenger rail accept that Amtrak’s operations in Boston-New York-Washington are “profitable,” or commercially viable, but characterize the East Coast as a region not representative of the United States. It’s full of Yankees…
Third, most opponents to high speed rail simply have no experience on which to base their opposition. Those wishing to “Take America back” frequently glorify America between the Eisenhower and Reagan administrations, the peak of automobile enthusiasm in the United States…
Take a look at China. China was still operating steam locomotives 10 years ago. China has invested $292 billion in its railways in the last five years. By 2014, China will have twice as many miles of high speed railway as all the rest of the world combined.
For some, the Chinese investment in passenger rail signifies a forward-thinking investment in the future, and something to be envied. For others, it is further evidence that passenger rail is only appropriate for a planned economy, and incompatible with the American way.
But, then, what would you expect from dimwits who would rather drive a new version of their father’s Buick instead of something that reflects real family size, how and where you travel – and costs less to run?
Russia-China oil pipeline opens for business
The first oil pipeline linking the world’s biggest oil producer, Russia, and the world’s biggest consumer of energy, China, has begun operating.
The pipeline, running between Siberia and the northeastern Chinese city of Daqing, will allow a rapid increase in oil exports between the two countries.
Concentrated in western Siberia, Russia’s network of pipelines for oil exports has so far run towards Europe.
Until now, Russian oil has been transported to China by rail. Russia is expected to export 15m tonnes of oil through the new pipeline each year – about 300,000 barrels a day.
The project cost $25bn and was partly financed by Chinese loans.
The core of China’s stimulus programs was infrastructure. Not only energy-based facilities like this pipeline; but, four transcontinental high-speed railways systems. The Great Recessaion served as an opportunity to build commerce for the long haul.
So, what infrastructure was added – not rebuilt – in your neck of the prairie?
The only rail project we had in the hopper was completed, especially helping state and private employees commuting to Santa Fe from Albuquerque, tourists flying into the Sunport and coming to northern New Mexico.
Our new Republican governor will probably shut it down.
A man who traded American football for a life
Former New York Jets player Keith Fitzhugh… turned down an offer to join the New York Jets to remain a conductor with Norfolk Southern Railroad…
On Tuesday, the New York Jets, after losing two safeties to injury in four days, called the former Lovejoy High School and Mississippi State standout and told him they needed him.
Contemplating the offer, Fitzhugh, 24, thought about the steady job he had landed three months ago, as a Norfolk Southern railroad conductor, a position he loves.
He thought about his family, about leaving behind his disabled father and hard-working mother.
He thought about the three times that NFL teams previously released him.
And Fitzhugh said no…
Fitzugh’s mother, Meltonia, an office supervisor for a freight forwarder, supported whatever decision he made.
“Everybody’s been like, ‘You’ve got the greatest son,’” she said. “But he’s always been that kind of kid. … He just thinks it’s his responsibility.”
Fitzhugh lives in Lovejoy in the house he was raised.
Bravo!
Chinese passenger train sets new record = 302 mph
A Chinese passenger train hit a record speed of 302 miles per hour on Friday during a test run of a recently completed high speed link between Beijing and Shanghai.
It was the fastest speed recorded by an unmodified conventional commercial train. Other types of trains in other countries have travelled faster.
State television footage showed the sleek white train whipping past green farm fields in eastern China. The 824-mile-long line is set to open next year, 12 months ahead of schedule. It will cut journey times between Beijing and Shanghai from the current 10 hours to under five hours. The line is expected to carry 80 million passengers a year.
The project costs £21 billion and is part of a government effort to link many of China’s cities by high-speed rail and reduce overcrowding on heavily used lines…
The drive to develop high-speed rail technology rivals China’s space programme in terms of national pride and importance. Railway officials say they want to reach speeds of over 500kph.
Here in New Mexico, we finally have the beginnings of useful local rail, bringing tourists as well as commuters through the north-central part of the state. It’s only a start – albeit one that utilizes modern roadbed and rail technology. And the critters run on biodiesel.
But, don’t worry about advancing too far, too fast. We have a shiny new Republican governor and she wants to halt the railroad, rip out the rails and sell them for scrap iron. The Beancounter Religion never really looks more than a couple of quarters out into the future.
Swiss celebrate breakthrough in world’s longest tunnel
A giant rock drill has broken through a last section of Alpine rock to open the world’s longest tunnel after 15 years of digging through 13 million cubic metres of rock…
It will house a high-speed rail link due to open in 2017 between Zurich and Milan, a key part of a network joining northern and south-eastern Europe.
The breakthrough, attended by 200 dignitaries 30 kilometres inside the tunnel, was broadcast live on Swiss television and watched by European transport ministers at a meeting in Brussels…
The tunnel will have economic benefits, with about 300 trains travelling through it at up to 250 kilometres per hour, cutting the Zurich-Milan journey by an hour and linking to lines going into Germany.
But it was also the fruit of campaigns by environmentalists, who demanded a cut in trans-Alpine road traffic, winning a referendum in 1994 to stop heavy goods vehicles crossing the mountains.
In recent years, Austria, France and Italy have set in motion two similar rail tunnel projects through the eastern and western Alps. They are both planned to exceed 50 kilometres in length in the 2020s.
The sort of political and technological victory we are decades away from in the United States.
After World War 2, Europeans had to decide on the most best way to rebuild their infrastructure. They chose rail as the most efficient means of commercial transport. Passenger transport expansion was part of an ongoing process; but, the serious decisions about the cost of moving goods had to be based on a long range appreciation of the cost of fuel to move those goods. They looked further ahead than the next election cycle.
Here in the United States, with an automobile lobby and the Oil Patch Boys already in charge of Washington, DC – we went the route of our Interstate Highway System. Eisenhower made the appropriate pitch for Homeland Security which is almost as sacred as “Think of the Children”.
Railroads were dismantled, gasoline and diesel was cheap, all was right with the world. Till we began to reach the end of the working life of that highway infrastructure and fuel costs crept towards equity with the rest of the industrial world.
Poisonally, I think even if Obama wanders into a 2nd term, Democrats will stick to Jello battle armor and fail to fight for significant changes in transport policy. Republicans are wedged securely in the back pockets of Big Oil and hardly likely to start caring about the cost of goods for the American middle class. They never have.
Still, take faint pleasure from knowing what modern design and technology is capable of constructing. Even though we’re not likely to see much of it on our safe and secure continent.
Mexican rail managers stole 360 miles worth of railroad
Mexican TSA
Several midlevel managers with Mexico’s state railroad company have been accused of stealing more than 360 miles of railroad and selling the materials to help pay off a company debt.
The railroad scrap, much of it high-grade steel, weighed roughly 52,000 tons, about seven times the steel used in the Eiffel Tower, said Mexico’s secretary of public administration, Salvador Vega Casillas. He said the sale of such material is prohibited and that the managers never sought permission for their actions.
The employees targeted abandoned railroads in five states, including the northern border state of Chihuahua, where 239 miles worth of rails, nails, bolts and other materials were stolen, he said.
To meet a nearly $800,000 debt, the five employees ordered that railroads built in the 19th and 20th centuries be dismantled, Mr Vega said.
The secretary said the material was worth $140 million – far more than the debt – and yet no money was exchanged and it remains unclear what the receiving companies did with the scrap material or whether they recognized its value.
He said the attorney general’s office is pursuing a criminal case against the four companies and the five suspects, which the administration has barred from serving in public positions for up to 15 years.
Well, there’s a terrific penalty, right off the bat. Banned from corruption and kickbacks for 15 years? Way too strict.
Though, if experience is any guide, someone’s other cousin will be filling the job openings, real soon now.
China’s bullet train project shoots past schedule
The world’s largest human migration — the annual crush of Chinese traveling home to celebrate the Lunar New Year, which is this Sunday — is going a little faster this time thanks to a new high-speed rail line.
The Chinese bullet train, which has the world’s fastest average speed, connects Guangzhou, the southern coastal manufacturing center, to Wuhan, deep in the interior. In a little more than three hours, it travels 664 miles, comparable to the distance from Boston to southern Virginia. That is less time than Amtrak’s fastest train, the Acela, takes to go from Boston just to New York.
Even more impressive, the Guangzhou-to-Wuhan train is just one of 42 high-speed lines recently opened or set to open by 2012 in China. By comparison, the United States hopes to build its first high-speed rail line by 2014, an 84-mile route linking Tampa and Orlando, Fla.
Speaking at that site last month, President Obama warned that the United States was falling behind Asia and Europe in high-speed rail construction and other clean energy industries. “Other countries aren’t waiting,” he said. “They want those jobs. China wants those jobs. Germany wants those jobs. They are going after them hard, making the investments required.”
Indeed, the web of superfast trains promises to make China even more economically competitive, connecting this vast country — roughly the same size as the United States — as never before, much as the building of the Interstate highway system increased productivity and reduced costs in America a half-century ago…
On a recent Wednesday, the 2:50 p.m. bullet train glided smoothly out of Guangzhou’s station and within four minutes was traveling more than 200 miles an hour. Practically every seat on the 14-car train was full of migrants heading home for Chinese New Year…
China’s response to the Great Recession was to invest federal funds in infrastructure capable of moving people as well as commodities. The Bullet Train project was targeted at 2020 in the original plan. When the recession hit, the emergency decision was made to accelerate construction.
Hundreds of thousands of workers got instant jobs. Manufacturers of components – global and domestic – benefitted from the new pace of production. And we’re told by conservative beancounters we should worry more about deficits than jobs or results.
Obama delivers on $8 billion in high-speed rail grants
President Obama mentioned an $8 billion investment in high-speed train systems across the country in his State of the Union speech on Wednesday.
Details released Thursday said the investment would be grants from the government’s $862 billion economic stimulus package to begin the planning and initial work on creating the first nationwide program of high-speed intercity passenger rail service.
Overall, projects and planning involving the rail corridors will take place in 31 states, according to a White House statement.
RTFA for key cities on the network
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were scheduled to travel to Tampa, Florida…to formally announce the program. Other Cabinet members and administration officials also were visiting sites of the program in other states…
The statement described the program as “a long-term venture in which states will need to plan projects, purchase and lay track, build and assemble equipment, and construct or upgrade train stations, tunnels and bridges.”
Here in New Mexico we just finished construction, opening up rail service from south of Albuquerque to Santa Fe, the state capitol. The road bed looks good enough to me to serve high-speed trains; but, realistically, we haven’t the population and traffic [yet] to justify such a service.
Some of Japan’s hotels advertising their RR view
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission
Japanese hotels near stations are trying to attract train spotters with rooms marketed as having a “rail view”.
Most people would prefer a room away from the tracks, fearful the double glazing would not block the rattle of a passing early morning express. But some hotels near stations in Tokyo are turning a potential disadvantage into a business opportunity.
They are trying to broaden their appeal beyond tourists and business travellers by marketing rooms to train spotters…
The Hotel Mets Akabane in the Japanese capital has a scheme guaranteeing rooms with a view of the tracks on the fourth floor or above…
The rival Odakyu Hotel Century Southern Tower overlooks Shinjuku station, one of the busiest in the world. Its “Just like the N-gauge Model, Train View Stay Plan” is named after Japan’s standard size of model railway sets.
The offer includes a gift of a paperweight made of a piece of track, as well as a copy of the latest railway timetable.
Hobbyists run the gamut from antique and old to modern and visionary – regardless of subject.
I recall sitting with mates in the Highlands – properly lubricated by an old single malt – listening to recordings of steam trains leaving station and climbing some famous grade.
I’d probably enjoy the approach of a Japanese bullet train as much – though in different fashion.
Weekend users and tourists make light rail a hit in Phoenix
The light rail here, which opened in December, has been a greater success than its proponents thought it would be, but not quite the way they envisioned. Unlike the rest of the country’s public transportation systems, which are used principally by commuters, the 20 miles of light rail here stretching from central Phoenix to Mesa and Tempe is used largely by people going to restaurants, bars, ball games and cultural events downtown.
The rail was projected to attract 26,000 riders per day, but the number is closer to 33,000, boosted in large part by weekend riders. Only 27 percent use the train for work, according to its operator, compared with 60 percent of other public transit users on average nationwide.
In some part thanks to the new system, downtown Phoenix appears to be one of the few bright spots in an otherwise economically pummeled city, which like the rest of Arizona has suffered under the crushing slide of the state’s economy. The state, for years almost totally dependent on growth, has one of the deepest budget deficits in the country.
