Amtrak shut down imminent

[jtr1962]

I started this topic on SR but consider it important enough to post here also since some of you no longer visit SR's B&G. Here is a link to the thread at SR:

http://forums.storagereview.net/viewtopic.php?t=3953

:x :x :x < This doesn't even begin to describe how mad I am that Congress continues to subsidize autos and airlines to the tune of billions each year, but expects trains to be self-sufficient.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

Although not my country's affair, I strongly agree with jtr and find this more than negative. Trains car carry enormous quantities of stuff, are safe, and much more economical than trucks and airplanes.

You Americans were already lagging on your railway system behind EU/Japan; now this is a further decadence IMO. I thought the 9/11 incidents made you think of alternative ways. I guess not.

Invest in AmTrak now!!

 

[Stereodude]

...are safe...

Not too familiar with Amtrak are you? They seem to have a fairly serious crash every few weeks.

Stereodude

 

[Tannin]

What is the average number of passenger deaths per million miles travelled? If you intend to show that Amtrack trains are unsafe, please provide comprable figures for air and road transport.

 

[GMac]

Obviously it's not just our (i.e. the UK's) rail system that's in a mess then I found travelling on Amtrak to be a pleasant experience when I was last in the US and hope it doesn't go under. Meanwhile those double standards you speak of don't just apply in the States either - succesive governments have followed similar policies here for decades and the results are all too plain to see (an overloaded network with major safety concerns needing major investment - bah!).

GM

 

[Mercutio]

One of Amtrak's main problems is that the per-passenger cost for a lot of rail lines they offer is on the order of five times the ticket price. Sure, that shortfall is made up eastern-corridor travel between the largest cities in the US (Boston to Washington DC), but FIVE TIMES?!?

Much as I love travel by train that's just unthinkable.

 

[Tannin]

Ahh, now there you have the rub of it. The moment we start to talk about per-passenger costs and shortfalls, we stumble straight into the maze of difficulties that is erected for us by those commentators that either have a barrow to push, or else a non-understanding of economics that beggars belief in an ostensibly educated nation. (Not having a go at the US here, at least not the US in particular, my comment applies in almost equal measure to most of the capitalist world.)

The thing is, the cost of road transport is typically about double that of rail. That's if we use (or mis-use, I should say) the term "cost' in the sense in which it is commonly used - i.e., the ticket price vs the cost of petrol. It is slightly more usefull to define 'cost' as the ticket price plus subsidy vs the cost of petrol plus amortised direct road costs like maintenence, tyres, cost of vechicle, and so on. This may be where the "five times" figure comes from.

But the real cost of anything - and this is Economics 101, really basic stuff - is the sum of the internal costs and the external costs. And this is where we start to see the absolute lunacy of any attempt to claim that road transport is more cost effective than rail. (Yes, yes, there are certain circumstances where it actually is more cost effective, but they do not include transit of city commuters.)

So to get the actual costs, we have to consider:

Direct operating costs:

For road, fuel, tolls, and the like. For rail, fuel, wages, and similar daily expenses.

Indirect operating costs:

For rail, maintence, safety work, training, and replacement of rolling stock. For road, purchase costs, insurance, and the like.

External costs:

For rail: practically nothing. A small amount of land is occupied which could otherwise be used for another purpose (this is an 'opportunity cost'), and it might be claimed that accidents to road users at level crossings is another - though in reality the risk that trains pose to road users is probably far lower than the risk posed by the extra road traffic required to carry that same number of passengers.

For road, the external costs - i.e., the costs directly associated with an enterprise that are not paid for by the users of the service but fall onto the community at large - are enormous. JTR is the expert on this stuff, so I'll leave it to him to give chapter and verse on this, but let me take just one small and oft overlooked example: space.

Have you ever stopped to wonder just how much land in an average city is devoted to pavement? It's reasonable to guess that somewhere upwards of 90% of that pavement is there purely and solely for road traffic. Take that area of prime city land - at a wild guess around 10 to 20% of a typical city - and rent it out. That alone will pay for our "expensive" public transport many times over.

But note well - this cost is never added on to the "cost" of road transport. There are maybe another half dozen major external costs which are not usually calculated, but this one will do to start with.

 

[jtr1962]

But the real cost of anything - and this is Economics 101, really basic stuff - is the sum of the internal costs and the external costs. And this is where we start to see the absolute lunacy of any attempt to claim that road transport is more cost effective than rail. (Yes, yes, there are certain circumstances where it actually is more cost effective, but they do not include transit of city commuters.)

When you start to compare the real costs of any form of transport to rail, rail generally wins hands down. I'll do such a comparison here, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of each transportation mode:

ROAD

Direct operating costs:
1. fuel
2. vehicle maintainance
3. insurance
4. tolls(pays for right-of-way)
5. parking fees
6. parking and traffic tickets
7. vehicle purchase

Indirect operating costs:
1. medical costs of injuries and deaths caused by uninsured motorists
2. worker productivity lost due to injuries and deaths
3. health costs of pollution on the general population
4. extra cleaning costs associated with pollution
5. structural damage caused by acid rain
6. mental health effects on the general population due to the congestion and noise caused by autos
7. land use for roads that could otherwise be used for housing(~30% of the land in an average city is used for either roads or auto parking)
8. destruction of neighborhoods caused by highways

Advantages:
1. relatively inexpensive to set up, especially in rural areas
2. reasonably high average speed in rural areas
3. door-to-door service with no waiting time

Disadvantages:
1. user must pay for vehicle purchase, maintainance, and insurance
2. large land use for right-of-way
3. greatly decreased speeds with increasing volume(not suited for general high population density use)
4. pollution and it's associated effects
5. time spent driving can't be used for other purposes
6. constant and sometimes severe accelerations induce motion sickness in many people, limit the types of activities that can be performed by passengers
7. very high injury and death rate per passenger mile traveled
8. highest fuel use per passenger mile traveled
9. currently able to use only fossil fuels except for a few specialized vehicles

AIRLINE

Direct operating costs:
1. fuel
2. vehicle maintainance
3. insurance
4. landing fees
5. wages
6. vehicle purchase
7. purchase of land and construction of airports on that land

Indirect operating costs:
1. health costs of pollution on the general population
2. extra cleaning costs associated with pollution
3. structural damage caused by acid rain and vibrations from planes taking off and landing(the area affected by these are huge)
4. damage to the ozone layer
5. land use for airports that could otherwise be used for housing(this is usually prime waterfront real estate)
6. mental health effects on the general population due to the noise made by airplanes
7. worker productivity lost due to injuries and deaths in airline accidents

Advantages:
1. high speed, especially over long distances(>1000 miles)
2. aircraft are relatively spacious, and you can leave your seat once in the air

Disadvantages:
1. large land use for airports
2. aircraft can be hijacked and used as guided missiles, usually with very costly results in terms of property damage and loss of life
3. while more comfortable than autos, the environment on board aircraft is not really conducive to many types of activities
4. pollution and it's associated effects
5. airports are located far from city centers, requiring additional transportation that is usually costly in both time and money
6. constant and sometimes severe accelerations induce motion sickness in many people
7. lower injury and death rate per passenger mile traveled than autos, but most accidents result in near 100% fatalities(low probability, high impact event)
8. high fuel use per passenger mile traveled
9. currently able to use only fossil fuels, and the high energy requirements of aircraft mean that they can likely never be made zero emissions(at least until fusion is invented)
10. wasted time spent at airports due to increased but needed security measures
11. general time spent waiting for next scheduled aircraft
12. high cost of vehicles and airports, and therefore only suitable for medium and high density populations

RAIL

Direct operating costs:
1. fuel(or electricity from power company)
2. vehicle maintainance
3. insurance
4. purchase and construction of right-of-way
5. wages
6. vehicle purchase

Indirect operating costs:
1. pollution costs only if operating diesel trains, electric trains do not pollute
2. land for right-of-way could be used for housing, but note that rail uses the smallest amount of land per passenger per hour, and railways can and are built completely underground in congested areas, thus using zero land.
3. worker productivity lost due to injuries and deaths in train accidents
4. noise made by trains-this is only a factor within a few hundred feet of the line, and generally only for diesel locomotives. The noise is intermittant, unlike the constant car noise near a highway.
5. structural damage caused by vibrations from passing trains(generally only applicable to heavy freight trains, and only relevant near right-of-way)

Advantages:
1. can operate city center to city center, giving the quickest total travel times of any mode for distances of up to 500 miles for state-of-the-art lines
2. lowest fuel use per passenger mile
3. lowest accident rate per passenger mile of any mode(high-speed trains operating on high-speed right-of-ways have not experienced one passenger fatality caused by operational error in over 30 years of operation, although a few from terrorist activity)
4. relatively immune to terrorist activities and trains can't be used to cause collateral damage since a dispatcher can stop an errant train at will(therefore highly invasive security procedures are not needed)
5. lowest land use of any mode of transport, and railways are far less intrusive than roads or airports
6. trains have the smoothest ride of any form of transport and are thus conducive to any activity that one wishes to engage in
7. trains can use electricity from the power grid directly, and can therefore be made zero emission(the total system is zero emission if nuclear, wind, solar, or hydroelectric is used to generate the power)

Disadvantages:
1. sometimes require supplementary transportation at either end of the journey, but often this is only needed for a few miles or less
2. general time spent waiting for next scheduled train
3. high cost of vehicles and rights-of-way, and therefore only suitable for medium and high density populations
4. noise from railways, especially diesel trains(this is generally localized and only of an intermittant nature)


As you can see, I was hard pressed to come up many disadvantages for railways, although I found many for both air and auto. Since most of the disadvantages are associated with diesel trains, I feel that all new lines should be electric only, and most of the existing network should be electrified as well. In Europe and Japan nearly 100% of the railways are electrified for this reason. It is obvious from this analysis that drivers and airline passengers do not pay for many of the costs associated with these modes of transport, and this is, in effect, an indirect subsidy. There are also intangibles. For example, I feel NYC is being taken over by cars, and pedestrians and cyclists are relegated to second class status. Since this is occurring in a city with a wonderful subway system where nobody should even need to own a car, I can only imagine the effects on smaller cities with no subways. Cars as they currently exist are really best suited to rural areas(in fact, they are really the only mode suited to rural areas). In suburban and urban areas, auto use should be restricted to very small battery-powered vehicles used for running errands or traveling to the train stations to go to work. Employers should have transportation available from the local railway station if their place of business is not within walking distance and no public transit alternatives exist. I'll end here for now, but I can literally write a book on this subject.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

For example, I feel NYC is being taken over by cars, and pedestrians and cyclists are relegated to second class status. Since this is occurring in a city with a wonderful subway system where nobody should even need to own a car, I can only imagine the effects on smaller cities with no subways. Cars as they currently exist are really best suited to rural areas(in fact, they are really the only mode suited to rural areas). In suburban and urban areas, auto use should be restricted to very small battery-powered vehicles used for running errands or traveling to the train stations to go to work. Employers should have transportation available from the local railway station if their place of business is not within walking distance and no public transit alternatives exist. I'll end here for now, but I can literally write a book on this subject.

I agree with every aspect of your post. Nice stated.

PS. NY is hell with all that traffic!!

 

[Tannin]

Thankyou JTR. That was an excellent post. Interesting to see that my wild guess of 10 to 20% urban land use for roads and parking was about 50% too low. And I thought I could get you to give us a neat, carefully researched summary if I just pushed the right buttons. Always nice to know that we can rely on someone.

 

[jtr1962]

Thankyou JTR. That was an excellent post. Interesting to see that my wild guess of 10 to 20% urban land use for roads and parking was about 50% too low.

I based my estimate on the block where I live. The physical size of the block itself is about 50,000 ft², and the streets associated with it about 18,000 ft², so the percentage here is ~25%, and this is a residential block with relatively narrow streets. You would be hard pressed to find any modern city with only 10 or 20% of the land devoted to roads. I think my estimate may even be on the low side, and there are cities like LA and Dallas where I think upwards of 50% is devoted to roads and parking lots. You should see Queens Blvd(6 lanes in each direction). A waste of space in my book since the 4-track subway line that runs under it can carry about 10 times the number of people per hour, and it produces no pollution and no noise(at least above ground). I recently wrote a letter to the mayor complaining about this, and suggesting that when the highways are scheduled for rebuilding, they should be put underground, with the financing to come from future real estate taxes on the new land. Also, this will eliminate the neighborhoods cut in two by the highways. He hasn't gotten back to me on it yet.

 

[Pradeep]

Only thing I would have to disagree with is that nuclear energy is "zero-emmision". There is still the nuclear waste to dispose of afterwards, with the associated NIMBY problems, unlike the other sources you mentioned (I won't include flooding a velley for a dam as an emission )

 

[jtr1962]

Only thing I would have to disagree with is that nuclear energy is "zero-emmision". There is still the nuclear waste to dispose of afterwards, with the associated NIMBY problems, unlike the other sources you mentioned (I won't include flooding a velley for a dam as an emission )

Unfortunately, that is true. However, until fusion becomes commercially viable, nuclear power is the next best thing in areas that aren't suited for hydroelectric, wind, or solar. I think new plants should be built to store at least 100 years of waste on site, and hopefully by then it will be cheap enough to launch it into space and send it into the sun for disposal. Every form of energy production is destructive in one way or another. Dams for hydroelectricity cause massive environmental destruction. Just look at what the Three Gorges Dam project is doing in China(relocation of 2 million people and flooding of a few hundred square miles).

I like the potential of geothermal power, but it requires drilling deep holes in the ground, and it's not ready for prime time yet. Methods of harnessing ocean currents, or the temperature differential in oceans are also being talked about. And of course, fusion is always on the horizon, although many people have a standing joke about fusion:"Fusion is the power of the future, and always will be" :lol:

 

[Prof.Wizard]

Unfortunately, that is true. However, until fusion becomes commercially viable, nuclear power is the next best thing in areas that aren't suited for hydroelectric, wind, or solar.

Exactly. Most people don't know this unfortunately and are constantly whining of the potential problems of nuclear power. Yeah, it might be dangerous, but modern controls and nuclear power plants don't share the 60s legacy.
I've read a great article about it on Scientific American issue of January 2002:

Next-Generation Nuclear Power
BY JAMES A. LAKE, RALPH G. BENNETT AND JOHN F. KOTEK
Advanced nuclear power plants might be the best way to meet future energy needs without worsening global warming.

 

[NRG = mc²]

The reason so many are against use of nuclear stations is because of the Chernobyl crap. To be honest, as long as stations such as these continue to operate in East Europe theres nothing to be afraid of when building new ones in wealthy countries who give a damn about safety - if anything is going to blow, its those Russian/Yugoslavian/Czech/Bulgarian cheapskate reactors which are time bombs ready to explode at any time.

 

[Pradeep]

But would you live next to a nuclear power plant yourself?

 

[Prof.Wizard]

Near a 21st generation American one?
Sure. Why not?! (this is an honest reply)

 

[Tea]

Nuclear power is, essentially, a huge gamble. What you are doing when you fire up a nuclear power plant is saying "I'm going to take the risk of having a truly huge problem for an extremely long time if something goes wrong, in exchange for the knowledge that I'll not have the much smaller but nevertheless serious problem that I will get absolutely and for certain if I fire up a fossil fuel plant".

It's exactly like saying "I'm not going to pay this insurance bill: chances are that I won't have a fire, therefore I'm better off not wasting money in insuring against it." That what nuclear power does: it save the small amount of money (the annual premium, or the carbon produced by a fossil plant) and hopes for the best. Hopes that there is no disaster with the waste products. And just as in my example we risk a total loss from fire with nothing left with which to rebuild, in the case of a nuclear disaster, we risk a truly horrendous problem to which there is no known cure. And in the case of nuclear wastes, we must be confident of not having a "fire" for a quarter of a million years.

That is what is normally described as "a very bad bet".

And yet, because of (a) our absurdly high population and (b) our gross overconsumption of energy, it is a bet we are now forced to make, pretty much whether we like it or not. The increase in fossil fuel consumption has to stop right now, while we still have some kind of remnant of a healthy planet. It's allright for those of you who happen to live in areas which are not afflicted with the results of global warming just yet, but believe me, you are building up some serious resentments in those parts of the world that are bearing the brunt of your incredibly shortsighted and foolish behaviour.

Come back in 30 years, and it won't be the mad arabs and their bombs you mostly have to worry about: it will be people from places like Australia who have had their countries destroyed and no longer have anything to loose. And if you think I'm exaggerating, just take a look at rainfall patterns here over the last 150 years and note the unmistakable evidence of the damage. This is just the start of it. It will get a lot worse before it gets better.

It is a measure of the seriousness of the situation that even the horrors of nuclear contamination are worth risking if in doing so we can buy ourselves a little extra time in which to start reigning in population growth and profligate energy usage.

 

[Bartender]

But would you live next to a nuclear power plant yourself?

I do. I am within a 10 mile radius of this plant and will thus be provided with an emergency kit in case terrorists decide to attack the plant. We will be provided with radiation pills that the plant workers have had for decades.

 

[Cliptin]

I have been aware of the high incidence of skin cancer in Oz for nearly ten years but it was only recently that I hvae learned that the ozone layer hole has increased it's size to include Oz. This is a serious problem.

Thanks for elaborating on the global problem. You have enlightened me.

BTW, do you see any advantage to the type of rail jtr suggests for your area.

 

[NRG = mc²]

But would you live next to a nuclear power plant yourself?

No more than I'd live near a coal-powered plant :mrgrn:

But seriously, does it make much difference? Unless you're tens of thousands of miles away you're pretty much in deep s**t if something happens, right? Or am I talking rubbish?

 

[Tea]

I had forgotten about the ozone layer thing, Cliptin. I guess I've become so used to it that it just seems normal now - which is in itself a sort of comment I suppose.

I don't really see high-speed rail as a particularly important factor here in Oz. Oh, you could link the big three cities (Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane) and save a bit of road traffic and a bit of air traffic, but the economics are not very attractive as the cities are a long way apart from one another. Even on the busiest air route of all (Melbourne-Sydney) if you average it out we are looking at a frequency of one 767 every hour or so. (More in the peaks, less off peak, but on average that would be about right.)

Australia has an odd population density profile: two huge cities about the size of LA or Chicago (but both spread out like LA) and three moderately large cities the size of San Diego or Detroit or Phoenix, and little else. Roughly two-thirds of all Australians live in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth or Adelaide. Contrast this with the USA, where the five biggest cities account for a mere 10% of the population. (New York, LA, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia.) Or to look at it another way, we have about the same land mass as the USA and one tenth of the population, but our third-biggest city, if it were in the US, would rank #4 or #5. (Depending on which has grown fastest since my figures were done - Brisbane or Houston. Probably Brisbane.)

The upshot of this is that we have little need for high-speed city to city rail: to link up the five major cities we would have to lay somewhere around 5000 miles of track. Even Sydney and Melbourne are 400 miles apart. There is often talk of a Sydney-Melbourne link, and from time to time companies form to build one, but they always get as far as the feasibility study and then decide that it's going to cost too much. It will need a major government contribution. And frankly, all respect to JTR, but aircraft pollution is a tiny drop in the bucket. We have much, much worse problems to deal with first.

No, here in Oz, the vast bulk of our energy consumption goes on your ordinary everyday commute to the office and back. We had excellent public transport systems in the 1920 and as late as the 1950s, but they have been allowed to decay and construction has not kept up with population growth. If we are looking at transportation and energy use, this is our #1 problem.

 

[Mercutio]

I've worked in both coal and (older) nuclear plants. I felt far, far safer in the nuclear plants, and they weren't even plants with very good safety records (lots of shutdowns, *not* lots of, um, oopses), so far as those things go.

Honestly, other than the matter of waste disposal, I don't have a particular problem with nuclear power in the short to medium term. I understand the science. I understand the safety measures, and I've seen the folks working there, doing everything possible to make things safer.

There's a real sanity in choosing nuclear power. I wish more people could see that.

 

[time]

I have been aware of the high incidence of skin cancer in Oz for nearly ten years but it was only recently that I hvae learned that the ozone layer hole has increased it's size to include Oz.

Hmmm, it's not quite that bad yet, as explained by the Bureau of Meterology

Ozone depletion: 2000 and beyond has some additional info, including the fact that ozone levels have fallen over the US and Europe as well.

 

[time]

Warning: the following comments tend to be pedantic. :eekers:

Even on the busiest air route of all (Melbourne-Sydney) if you average it out we are looking at a frequency of one 767 every hour or so. (More in the peaks, less off peak, but on average that would be about right.)

I count at least 38 daily flights from Sydney to Melbourne just with the two domestic carriers, over about a 14 hour period. On top of this, international flights often include local segments such as Sydney to Melbourne. That's conservatively an average of three flights an hour (each way of course).

On top of this, there's the freight planes (post, couriers, etc), although my impression is they mostly fly overnight when the passenger flights have stopped.

Australia has an odd population density profile: two huge cities about the size of LA or Chicago ... Or to look at it another way, we have about the same land mass as the USA and one tenth of the population, but our third-biggest city, if it were in the US, would rank #4 or #5.

Sydney's population passed LA's a while ago, and now stands at a little over 4 million. Melbourne seems hell bent on catching it. Brisbane is still slightly smaller than Houston.

No, here in Oz, the vast bulk of our energy consumption goes on your ordinary everyday commute to the office and back.

I guess you mean the bulk of transport energy consumption? Still not quite right though, I'm afraid. But it's certainly a major contributor to pollution, not to mention other problems.

Here's a rather useful summary of the advantages of rail in Australia. Everyone should read it.

 

[time]

It's worth reading this comparitively calm cautionary note about re-embracing nuclear electricity generation: http://www.culturechange.org/n_power.htm

The problems with fission reactors are surely their inherent instability, and the waste products that need to be stored for far longer than modern civilization has been stumbling along.

By instability, I mean that they require active regulation at all times. Aside from the core itself, a sustained loss of power would create a disaster just with the spent rods stored onsite. Post 9-11, I'm surprised people are so ready to overlook the security issues.

Then there's the hassle of transporting the waste. I'm going to assume jtr1962 was being flippant about shooting it into the sun.

 

[jtr1962]

Nuclear power is, essentially, a huge gamble. What you are doing when you fire up a nuclear power plant is saying "I'm going to take the risk of having a truly huge problem for an extremely long time if something goes wrong, in exchange for the knowledge that I'll not have the much smaller but nevertheless serious problem that I will get absolutely and for certain if I fire up a fossil fuel plant".

You can minimize the risk of a nuclear disaster by putting the plants in remote areas. The biggest difference between a fossil fuel plant and a nuclear plant is that a nuclear plant might potentially cause a problem(the risk is astronomically low for a modern plant) whereas a fossil fuel does cause problems, including deaths from cancer and the like. The primary problem with a nuclear plant as I see it is of course the waste disposal.

Come back in 30 years, and it won't be the mad arabs and their bombs you mostly have to worry about: it will be people from places like Australia who have had their countries destroyed and no longer have anything to loose. And if you think I'm exaggerating, just take a look at rainfall patterns here over the last 150 years and note the unmistakable evidence of the damage. This is just the start of it. It will get a lot worse before it gets better.

The climate change you mention is not just occurring in Australia. The weather in NYC the last 10 or 15 years has been bizarre, to say the least. Heavy rains or no rain for weeks, colder than usual temperatures followed immediately by hotter than usual(we went from 45° F one day to 96° F the next this spring). Summers with many 100° F or hotter days(when I was young these occurred maybe once every few years), and highs of 90°+ for weeks on end. This year we had no winter to speak up. Global warming annoys me all the more since I can't stand any temperatures over about 55° F for any length of time. And I've been seeing species of weeds and insects in my yard that I've never seen before. It's all these little things that tell me global warming is not a myth.

It is a measure of the seriousness of the situation that even the horrors of nuclear contamination are worth risking if in doing so we can buy ourselves a little extra time in which to start reigning in population growth and profligate energy usage.

Maybe commercial fusion will become viable within this decade and we won't have to. Of course that's wishful thinking but governments should be pouring alot more money into it. Let the oil companies complain all they want, we've seen the results of doing it their way for the last 100 years, and they aren't pretty. I also agree that we must stop population growth and excessive energy usage. Maybe institute a world-wide policy similar to China's one child per family. And more people should telecommute. There is no reason to physically travel to a job where you're sitting at a computer terminal all day, and this includes upwards of 50% of all jobs.

 

[jtr1962]

And frankly, all respect to JTR, but aircraft pollution is a tiny drop in the bucket. We have much, much worse problems to deal with first.

I wish we had the amount of air traffic here that you have over there. I think Americans travel as many miles by plane as they drive. Even though the energy use per passenger mile for airliners is somewhat less than for autos, this would make airliners the second worst source of pollution in the states. And of course there is that damned noise factor. They come as often as every 90 seconds here, and the vibrations have been causing small cracks in some of our ceilings. Since many of the flights in the US are less than 500 miles, this is a market ripe to be replaced by high-speed rail offering the same or smaller door-to-door journey times, and vastly lower energy consumption. Additionally, the trains themselves don't pollute(you can only reach 200 mph with electric traction, not diesel traction), and the electric they use can and should come from non-fossil fuel power plants.

No, here in Oz, the vast bulk of our energy consumption goes on your ordinary everyday commute to the office and back. We had excellent public transport systems in the 1920 and as late as the 1950s, but they have been allowed to decay and construction has not kept up with population growth. If we are looking at transportation and energy use, this is our #1 problem.

We have the same problem here as well. Our cities had many perfectly good trolley lines that were ripped up in the 1950's due to lobbying by the big three auto makers that buses were better. There was also the movement to the suburbs at the same time, and a general change to a lifestyle centered around the auto. Too many of our cities are spread out rather than up, thus making local public transportation unfeasible, as well as destroying yet more of the natural world. We now have miles of suburban sprawl, a situation that you mentioned someplace that you are all too familiar with in Oz as well. What exactly were wrong with the cities in the 1940's that couldn't have been fixed fairly easily anyway? I've never understood why so many Americans like to live in sterile, boring sururban communities(this is unlike living in a true rural wilderness, which is something I think I might actually enjoy, at least for a while).

 

[jtr1962]

Then there's the hassle of transporting the waste. I'm going to assume jtr1962 was being flippant about shooting it into the sun.

Actually, I was serious. Once the cost of launching things into space becomes very cheap(within a century), it will be cheaper to just send the waste into space on an orbit that will spiral into the sun, thus disposing of it permanently. This stuff is too dangerous to keep around, and there is the security needed to make sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. I'm sure OBL would love to get his hands on even one spent fuel rod and make a dirty bomb out of it. And how will we protect our distant descendants of 10,000 years hence from this waste? I doubt they will speak any known language at that time. The best solution is the one I mentioned-use nuclear plants as an interim solution until fusion is viable, then shoot the waste off into space when it becomes cheap enough.

As I mentioned a few posts back, if we could only just make fusion viable now...

 

[time]

The biggest difference between a fossil fuel plant and a nuclear plant is that a nuclear plant might potentially cause a problem(the risk is astronomically low for a modern plant) whereas a fossil fuel does cause problems, including deaths from cancer and the like.

That's not even remotely true. Bluntly, I think you've been reading too much propaganda. Check out http://pubs.usgs.gov/factsheet/fs94-00/

Once the cost of launching things into space becomes very cheap(within a century), it will be cheaper to just send the waste into space on an orbit that will spiral into the sun, thus disposing of it permanently.

I can't believe you've thought about this. There is an extremely high cost (in terms of energy as well as dollars), in launching anything into space. And the payload doesn't get much heavier than uranium or its isotopes!

Don't bother saying it will all be okay when someone invents a magic drive that doesn't use fossil fuels or pollute the earth or cost zillions. There's still this little thing called gravity, and it's not expected to go away anytime soon. So the energy expenditure is still there.

Your only hope would be that some sort of elevator as envisioned by Arthur C Clarke et al could be built, but even that needs to lift against gravity, and the materials required to build it are several generations away (if ever).

And then you have to stick it in an expensive vessel and apply still more energy (proportionate to mass) to ensure it actually makes it to the sun (which last time I looked was about 150 million kilometers away).

 

[Tea]

it will be cheaper to just send the waste into space on an orbit that will spiral into the sun.

There's still this little thing called gravity, and it's not expected to go away anytime soon. And then you have to stick it in an expensive vessel and apply still more energy ... to ensure it actually makes it to the sun.

There's this little thing called gravity ....

(Sorry. Couldn't resist that cheap shot.)

 

[jtr1962]

That's not even remotely true. Bluntly, I think you've been reading too much propaganda. Check out http://pubs.usgs.gov/factsheet/fs94-00/

For the record, I don't think nuclear power is an ideal solution. Honestly, I would rather see more use of solar, geothermal, wind, hydroelectric, etc. However, there will be certain instances where none of those are applicable, and I would prefer nuclear over the other options. Whether we should build more nuclear plants or not is open to debate(there is an energy cost there), but we should not shut down existing plants. Regardless of how clean coal can be from a toxic emissions standpoint, it still emits copious amounts of CO2, and I didn't see any mention of a CO2 scrubber in that link. I don't know what the energy costs of separating CO2 into it's components would be(or at least keeping it out of the atmosphere), but if that can't be done, then I certainly don't want any coal-fired plants built. And one thing we're both overlooking is that all of this can be rendered moot by simple energy conservation, so that maybe all of our energy needs can be fulfilled by using only existing nuclear and other non-fossil fuel plants. The simple fact is that most Americans travel too much, waste far too much energy in their homes, and in general don't give a damn about the environment.

One option entirely overlooked is making power for homes locally through solar panels combined with a battery storage system for nights and cloudy days. This can supply the bulk if not all of the power used by the average home, as well as freeing you from the dependancy on the power grid. Were solar panels to be produced in bulk, the price would be cost effective, perhaps even less than the cost of conventional roofing materials. The total system payback cost might be only a few years. Something similar can be done with vehicles(solar panels recharge batteries while the vehicle is parked, providing some or all of the vehicle's needs). Perhaps if these and other options were explored, we wouldn't need to even talk about nuclear power.

I can't believe you've thought about this. There is an extremely high cost (in terms of energy as well as dollars), in launching anything into space. And the payload doesn't get much heavier than uranium or its isotopes!

We're not talking about the gravity well of a black hole here. Earth's gravity well is fairly puny on the cosmic scale.

There is something called a mass driver(similar to a maglev in concept) that will be able to send payloads into space very cheaply. The energy cost for a pound of material to reach escape velocity is about 28 million joules, or 7.8 KW-hr. You only need a little push past escape velocity to send the material into a long slow orbit that will gradually take it into the sun in a few thousand years(or a slightly greater push to get there in a decade). At current(relatively high) NYC rates, this is about $1.15 per pound. Assuming that such a system would have only 25% efficiency(due to heat losses in the mass driver and atmospheric friction), the energy cost of launching materials to escape velocity is only about $5 per pound, or $10,000 per ton, at current rates. I think the latest estimates for transporting and storing nuclear waste are a few orders of magnitude above that, so my idea is not as off the wall as it sounds. Mass drivers will be used in the future to send vast amounts of raw materials into space to construct huge(miles wide) orbiting space habitats. They can't be used to send people into space due to the huge accelerations needed to reach orbital velocities in a reasonable distance(you can't have a 1,000 mile long mass driver ), but for materials they are ideal. At 100g acceleration, you need just 40 miles to reach escape velocity(or 20 miles for orbital velocity).

 

[Tea]

Using aircraft for short journeys is just lunacy. Even if we ignore the environmental and cost aspects, consider this example - and here I am using a relatively long journey, one that it is sensible to use an aircraft for.

Let's say I want to go visit James. Now I'm not sure whereabouts in Sydney James lives, but let's assume he's up near Parramatta somewhere, which is probably within cooee of the geographical centre of town. Here is what I do:

Drive to Melbourne airport: 1 hour 20. (Probably more than this for most Melbournians - I live 120k out of town, but I'm on the same side as the airport and, if you know the shortcuts you can sit on the speed limit (or a little over) all the way.)

Park and walk to terminal: 20 mins. (Or wait for the courtesy bus - still takes 20mins on average.)

Check in, hand over baggage, board: 30 mins.

Push out, taxi, wait for take-off clearance: 10 mins.

Fly 400 miles to Sydney: 1 hour

Fly around in circles waiting for a landing slot: varies, maybe 10 mins, maybe longer, maybe nothing at all.

Land, taxi, disembark: 10 mins.

Wait for baggage: 10 mins.

Taxi to James' house: 30 to 120 mins depending on traffic and where exactly he lives. Say 60 mins.

TOTAL: 4 hours 50 mins


Now, let's do it by road:

Leave home, drive to James' house: ~12 hours.

TOTAL: 12 hours


Now, let's assume a decent rail network. Both of the links I am assuming are planned, though not actually certain yet,

Drive to station: 5 mins.

Wait for train to Melbourne: 10 mins.

Change trains. 30 mins.

Train to Sydney: 3 hours

Get off at outer suburban interchange station, take taxi to James's house: 60 mins. (Probably less, as train stations tend to be more central, and you have a choice of stations.)

TOTAL: 4 hours 45 mins.

Sort of speaks for itself, doesn't it.

 

[time]

We're not talking about the gravity well of a black hole here. Earth's gravity well is fairly puny on the cosmic scale.

So are we. It's 33 years since Apollo 11, but we struggle to land a (working) probe on Mars, and can't begin to understand how to cope with the conditions of Venus or the gravity of Jupiter.

There is something called a mass driver(similar to a maglev in concept) that will be able to send payloads into space very cheaply.

The shot-out-of-a-cannon school of space travel dates back to Jules Verne at least. The origins of the electomagnetic slingshot variant are a little more unclear, but I recall the 1960s puppetry production 'Fireball XL5' employed a long launch ramp. Their 'Thunderbirds' production had a small launch ramp for Tbird 2 as well.

This site separates some fact from the science fiction:
Unfortunately, the Mass Driver is feasible to operate only on the Moon, because it needs vacuum. A Mass Driver operating on Earth would cause meteoric friction heat to such hypervelocity, Mach 40 (!) payloads, at the dense bottom of Earth's atmosphere (ocean of air) as they left the catapult tunnel.

Secondly, the air would aerodynamically deflect such objects in unpredictable ways thereby making them miss the collector up in geostationary orbit.

Thirdly, an operable Mass Driver on Earth would require a long vacuum tunnel (much longer than on the Moon, since the escape velocity is higher).

Fourth, the air would create hypersonic sonic boom shockwaves that would be loud for a long distance. Individual payloads would have to be massive enough to punch thru the atmosphere in an acceptable way; such massive payloads demand alot of the catapulter as well as the orbital based catcher/collector.

It also helps that the escape velocity for the moon is a fifth what it is for Earth.

 

[DrunkenBastard]

Of course to take a current train from Melbourne to Sydney takes around 20 hours if I'm not mistaken"

 

[Tea]

From memory, DB, it's about 12 to 14 hours. I took the Southern Auroa up about five years ago and I think it was about that long. It was nice to be delivered right in the centre of town though: we actually walked to our hotel, no need for a taxi.

 

[jtr1962]

It's 33 years since Apollo 11, but we struggle to land a (working) probe on Mars, and can't begin to understand how to cope with the conditions of Venus or the gravity of Jupiter.

This is more due to lack of funding than lack of technical know how. The American public lost interest in the space program after the moon landings, which frankly were more expensive oneupmanship with the USSR than of much real scientific value. If we had followed a logical space program, we would have had a space station before we went to the moon(probably in the mid-70s), a lunar landing a few years later, a moon base by the mid-1980s, a Mars landing in the 1990s, and we would be in the process of planning a Mars base now. Unfortunately, Congress and the American people didn't see much value in space exploration and pretty much killed off manned space exploration. The money spent between the late 1960s and now on social welfare programs(~$4 trillion), which incidentally didn't make a dent in the poverty rate, would have easily provided the funding for such a program, and probably enough jobs for all those who received handouts. And then of course there's the spinoffs, such as the ICs that are in the computer you're now using.

Unfortunately, the Mass Driver is feasible to operate only on the Moon, because it needs vacuum. A Mass Driver operating on Earth would cause meteoric friction heat to such hypervelocity, Mach 40 (!) payloads, at the dense bottom of Earth's atmosphere (ocean of air) as they left the catapult tunnel.

Remember that they had heat shields that protected the Apollo space capsules reentering the atmosphere at 25,000 mph over 30 years ago? The problem that exists with the mass driver is actually easier to solve since the heat shield does not need to dissipate much energy. The purpose of the blunt heat shield on the Apollo capsule was to slow the craft down to ~300 mph, so it had to be able to dissipate alot of energy. Since we are not interested at all in slowing the mass driver payload(in fact quite the opposite), it can be placed into a highly aerodynamic, fairly inexpensive container coated with enough ablative material to protect it on it's short ride through the atmosphere at Mach 40. This is an easily solvable problem, to say the least.

Secondly, the air would aerodynamically deflect such objects in unpredictable ways thereby making them miss the collector up in geostationary orbit.

In this case, it doesn't matter. We're merely inserting it into a low energy solar orbit so we have a much larger margin of error.

Thirdly, an operable Mass Driver on Earth would require a long vacuum tunnel (much longer than on the Moon, since the escape velocity is higher).

Since the payload bucket is one use only, there is no need to operate in a vacuum, although it wouldn't hurt. How on earth would we make an airlock for an object passing through at Mach 40 anyway? Now that's something even I can't imagine a solution to.

Fourth, the air would create hypersonic sonic boom shockwaves that would be loud for a long distance. Individual payloads would have to be massive enough to punch thru the atmosphere in an acceptable way; such massive payloads demand alot of the catapulter as well as the orbital based catcher/collector.

I think we can both agree that depleted uranium would be massive enough. As for the shockwaves, a transoceanic trajectory is called for, both to avoid shockwaves over inhabited areas, and to provide an acceptable place for the payload to fall should something go wrong(if it falls in a fairly shallow area it can be recovered, if not it will do no harm under a few miles of water).


BTW, I'm not suggesting that we go about doing this today but the simple fact is that we will have an enormous nuclear waste disposal problem whether or not any new plants are built. My best guess is that within 100 years disposing of the waste in space will be cheaper than any other method, so we'll just have to figure out what to do with it until then. The truth is that today we really have no method at all for dealing with it. Burying it anywhere is totally unacceptable in my view. Putting aside the chances of it falling into the wrong hands and the cost of guarding it forever, exactly how can we warn people in 10,000 years who might stumble upon it? We can't even decipher many ancient languages nowadays, so exactly what warnings would we place? This is a legacy I would rather not leave to my descendents.

Here are a couple of interesting links I came upon researching the subject:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.01/reality_check.html
http://www.engin.umich.edu/class/ners211/project2002/con/completeoutline.doc
http://www.ideas2000.org/Issues/Foreign/NuclearMaterials.pdf
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1964000/1964202.stm

Given the cost estimates in some of these, my previous estimate of $10,000 per ton for energy costs(plus maybe the same for the mass driver and payload bucket) sounds like a bargain.

 

[James]

Even on the busiest air route of all (Melbourne-Sydney) if you average it out we are looking at a frequency of one 767 every hour or so. (More in the peaks, less off peak, but on average that would be about right.)

Sorry, but that's absolute twaddle. Before Ansett went south Sydney - Melbourne was the third busiest air route in the world, according to ICAO (and widely quoted in the press when Virgin Blue launched).

For the record, I live close to the centre of Sydney in Redfern. It's the first station from Central by rail, and about 14 minutes from the airport by taxi, less on a good day.

 

[jtr1962]

Using aircraft for short journeys is just lunacy. Even if we ignore the environmental and cost aspects, consider this example - and here I am using a relatively long journey, one that it is sensible to use an aircraft for.
...
[snip]
...
Sort of speaks for itself, doesn't it.

Thanks for saving me the trouble of providing a similar example, and you even did it for a fairly long journey(~500 miles by my reckoning). Furthermore, your time estimates seem very realistic. Frequently I've seen studies done by those with an axe to grind(i.e. the airline industry) that give 15 minutes journey time to and from the airport, and also don't account for the time moving around the airport, time spent moving from the gate to the runway, etc.

I'll also add that the train journey is a good deal more pleasant than the plane journey. Less vehicle changes and dragging your baggage about, a nice block of time of about 3 hours straight where you can stretch out and relax(try doing that on a one-hour flight), no dealing with the stress of takeoff and landing, and no security checks where you're treated like a criminal. You also spend way less of your journey in an auto, which is the most inefficient means of transport going.

As it is, I heard Amtrak's Acela and the Boston-NY(240 miles) and Washington-NY(225 miles) shuttles are neck and neck. Acela has journey times of 3:00 and 2:40 and those routes, respectively. It's not high-speed rail by any stretch of the imagination yet it is taking a good deal of business away from the airlines. If Amtrak could build a new line and get the times between each city down to 1:30 the shuttle will go out of business. And at 3 hours Boston to Washington(465 miles), that shuttle will likely fold as well.

The lesson here is that planes are best suited to long journeys(~1000 miles or more). Anything less can be done as fast or faster by high-speed rail. A plane might save you an hour or two on a 1000 mile journey(5:50 total by air versus 7:45 by rail extrapolating your figures), but many people might still opt for rail if the cost was the same or less just to avoid the hassle of the airport. They might even pay a bit more for it since they can often avoid taxi fare at the ends of their journey because many train stations are smack in the city center(sometimes within walking distance of where you're going).

Check in, hand over baggage, board: 30 mins.

Is this pre or post 9/11? I would say in the states a realistic figure for this is closer to two hours. Yet another nail in the airlines' coffin as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Tea]

I haven't travelled post 911, JTR, so that was going on what I used to allow, The airlines tell you to roll up at least one hour before departure, but that's just for bunnies who get lost walking around the terminal and wind up at the wrong gate or something. In reality, I used to aim at 15 mins prior and was usually a few minutes later than I planned. But that was (a) pre-911 and (b) being careful to always choose off-peak flights so that I could get a window seat. I love flying. Just don't like airlines much.

James, "twaddle", eh? Well, the numbers were off the top of my head (that 1 x 767 per hour, averaged out) but I know that some years ago Anset used to have a DC-9 or 737 leave Melbourne for Sydney once an hour from early morning till about 8pm, while Australian had about half as many flights of the (much bigger) A300. Multiply that out and it's about half the frequency I said. Allow for traffic growth and it's about right.

Just for the hell of it, I'm going to flip over to www.qantas.com and take a look at their schedule. I will return shortly. Possibly with egg on my face, but let's see.

I suspect that you are getting mixed up with the frequency of Sydney airport as a whole, which indeed among the busier ones worldwide. (Though nothing like Heathrow or one of the major US hubs, of course.) There is a simple reason for this: there is far, far too much international traffic routed through Sydney. Somewhere around 60 or 70% of international travellers are actually headed for another destination (Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Gold Coast, and so on) and shouldn't be going through Sydney at all. Take away that needless pressure and Sydney's current airport would do just fine for many, many years to come. This idea of building another airport for Sydney when there is massive unused capacity at Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and nearly anywhere else you like to name is ludicrous. The only reason it gets any attention at all is because of the traditional NSW-centric government of this crazy country.