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You get a +10 for style points. However, missing was the odd misspelling.
Agreed....Our lack of urbanization is a huge issue for this country. At other times, it was a strength. We, as a country, failed miserably to plan accordingly.
*edit*
Thoughtful edit, Manny. One can argue the American Dream was born well before the advent of real estate developers tho... it was practically codified by "Go West, Young Man."
You get a +10 for style points. However, missing was the odd misspelling.
"failed miserably to plan accordingly"
so now you're FOR a federal govt central demographic planner?
230M "urban" and 70M "rural"
How is this a failure? USA urbanization continues at about 1.3%/year, which is probably asymptotic, ie, what we have in urban/rural split is probably what we'll always have.
Electric transmission grid is sparse because urban centers are sparse. The USA is comparatively, effectively EMPTY, SPARSE vs, eg, Europe.
Rural electric and telephone cooperatives are of course socialism, redistributing/confiscating urban tax dollars to rural areas, but, shhh, don't tell all those gun-totin, socialist-hatin red-state hicks living out in the sticks.
Thank you. You're one of few who sincerely appreciate my enlightening contributions.*sigh* Yes, boutons. Thank you so much for your enlightened post.
For rest, it's Pearls Before Swine.
What are you babbling about now? Just trying to figure out a way to work another, tired, "red-state/bubba-gun/hick" statement in again? It's uber effective when you do it every... ing...post.
Infrastructure is one of the absolute legitimate duties of the Fed.
Oh sure. I think its unrealistic and stupid to expect all of America to remain empty. I just think the decentralization of cities is what really hurts. Unlike places in New England and the Mid Atlantic that developed prior to automobiles, cities such as San Antonio and Los Angeles are complete urban sprawl nightmares that require much more energy (per capita).
I'm biased when I look at this because even for non practical reasons I hate suburbia, I hate the generic shopping centers, and I basically hate the complete lack of original personality you see in almost all modern cookie cutter development.
so, bubba, why is Texas running its own electric grid, and multi-state regions run their own grids?
and why is the grid so terribly run down and creaky?
Because nobody wants to pay. It's free lunch time, all the time.
We know from dubys's FERC, that it's toothless, politicized lap dog to the energy industry. Enron and El Paso, anyone?
Last edited by boutons_deux; 12-06-2010 at 05:16 PM.
So bubba, who are you arguing with now? Oh, I see. Another dubya shot. What ever gets you through the night, bubba.
I maintain that infrastructure is a legitimate function of the Federal Govt. I didn't say they are doing or have done a bang up job of it re: electrical transmission.
My favorite comic strip.
I dunno, when I was looking around on transportation topics for something I ran across an interesting article that says mass transit isn't all that more efficient than individual cars, simply due to the fact that they don't always run at full capacity. It made me think. Probably a topic worth reading a bit more, to be sure. I would like to see a solid study on it before really committing a lot of $$$.
I'd like to see the context but I can bet the study was done in American cities. I'd be shocked if that was the case in places such as Mexico City, Asian cities, or European cities.
I was kind of taken aback, as they did talk about the heavy subsidies that European countries give rail transit.
It was good to read something that contradicted my own established thinking.
One could argue, quite validly, that we heavily subsidize car traffic through the building and maintenance of roads capable of handling large numbers of vehicles.
It is a much more complex problem than it might seem on the surface. One of the reasons I like studying it.
(goes off to see if he can find the paper/website)
We absolutely subsidize automobile traffic here. Big roads my make money in the long run, but there is no way in the network of smaller roads can be dubbed anything but subsidized.
There are other examples as well (ie military protection of our oil supply).
However, that argument is completely forgotten in the mass transit debate. In any event, I'd like to see the study if you can find it. Mass Transit in the US always requires subsidy except in places like New York but I'd like to see the context of their conclusion.
Probably the best, most straightforward is one of my favs, The Straight Dope
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/...aste-of-energy
http://www.templetons.com/brad/transit-myth.htmlOn the face of it, then, transit currently offers no energy advantage over cars except in the handful of cities with heavy rail — and not all of those. (Chicago's an outlier.) Estimates of auto efficiency vary depending on how many passengers you assume they're carrying, so I won't say transit is an energy loser. Instead I'll agree with O'Toole: from an energy perspective, transit vs. cars is pretty much a wash.
So what's the basis for the claim in the 2007 APTA study that transit use saves gasoline? The key word is gasoline — or more broadly, petroleum. Rail transit commonly runs on electricity; relatively little electricity is generated using oil. If all passengers in electric transit vehicles had to ride in cars, we'd use a lot more gasoline. No claim is made about energy use overall.
Is this a silly distinction? No, and it's here we get to the heart of the matter. The real issue isn't energy efficiency or foreign oil dependence. The fundamental problem is that petroleum is sure to be scarcer in coming decades and alternative energy sources will have to be developed. Many of the obvious ones (wind, solar, nuclear) are best suited to producing electricity. Transit electrification is well understood. Electric cars, not so much. Will we all be scooting around town in high-tech golf carts in 20 years? Maybe. But don't count on cruising at 80 miles per hour in your battery-powered SUV.
http://www.smartplanet.com/business/...medium=twitter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_ef...transportation
Personally, I think the average US city just doesn't have the density currently to make mass transit a runaway winner.
That will change as oil gets more and more expsensive, relative to alternatives. Again, I point back to Mr. Adam's quote at the beginning of this post.
We will be forced to change our habits/methods of transit by sheer economic reality.
Note:
To expand a bit on Cecil Adam's point about "Transit electrification" many trolley systems use electrical power. Distributed photovoltaic would be an excellent way to provide this, and the energy recovery from braking is also a big plus in my book.
so a regional/light rail electric train/underground with 2000 passengers uses same energy that 2000 people in 2000 cars?
No the point is that due to lack of uptake, a regional/light rail electric train/underground with the capacity for 2000 uses about the same amount of energy per passenger as 2000 cars.
My business is downtown and I have virtually empty VIA buses driving by at least every five minutes. THATS ing efficient.
RG I've pretty much been arguing that the population density we have in this country's cities makes us use more energy. I think what you linked backs that up.
Wow...great post, RG. The conclusion is as counter-intuitive as can be! The distinction between petroleum and electric is telling. Thanks for the post, amigo.
Why not the use the witricity effect instead? Give the world free power.Yeah, plus it's a uva way to make microwave popcorn!
Win/win!
As energy gets more expensive, it will cost more to commute. This will put pressure on people to collectively live closer to work. The upshot is that roads will not get more crowded, but also that city cores will become more "built up" and dense.
Some cities, Austin especially, have put a lot of effort into building dense within existing urban areas over building out ala Houston, this trend will increase due to the economics of energy, since, as you point out Manny, we are fairly inefficient in moving people around.
As CC noted, buses lose a lot of effeciency due to having to run nearly empty. This will change with the increases in density.
If I had money to invest in real estate speculation, I would buy land in run-down areas near urban centers. We are already seeing the beginning of the process of build out in East Austin that I know of, with poorer people being bought out by people wanting to live closer to work. I think that is indicative of a wider and continuing trend we will see increasingly over the next 20 years.
Money in real estate used to be made by anticipating where a city will grow outward first and buying up farmland. That, like everything, will change.
As density increases, places for children decline, and we end up with more troubled children, gangs, crime, etc.
We need more cities perhaps. Not more density.
One other striking thing I noted during my reading was how efficient small motorcycles or bicycles are.
Encourage density and usage of those two modes of transportation, and you can spend money on things other than replacing cars every few years. THAT process uses up massive amounts of energy.
Moving away from importing a lot of cars would also have the twofold effect of making our trade imbalance much smaller. Less imported oil and less imported cars.
The Chinese used to have this model, but have moved to cars with no real emission controls. Every day they add tens of thousands of new drivers.
(that is not fog, folks)
Cameras see what the human eye doesn't. Without the right filters, you capture images and effects not seen by the naked eye.
I'll bet that it is a humid day, and the camera is capturing the greenhouse effect, or there is enough ultraviolet scattering in the humidity to look that way.
Ever take the same photo, minutes apart, with and without UV filters?
Where was that picture taken anyway? If it really is what the eye sees, it must be someplace like Asia. I have talked about them burning coal without adequate pollution controls.
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