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INTELLIGENCE in TRANSPORT * USA & Canada - Rail system no Mickey Mouse project
WHY SHOULD YOU CARE
Miami,FL,USA -Daily Commercial -October 11, 2009: -- In a move that may finally push even the stubborn Florida state legislature to hop on board, Disney announced last week that it has decided to join the state of Florida in reaching for $2.5 billion in federal aid to build a 90-mile, high-speed rail project linking Orlando and Tampa... Because the advantages to such a system far outweigh the disadvantages... The fuel savings alone for rail versus trucking are astronomical... Tracks don't retain water or require drainage. They don't need extensive rights-of-way purchases in order to be built... Building the required infrastructure would create thousands of new, permanent, skilled jobs at a time when they've never been more sorely needed... HISTORY: The monumental project linking America's East and West coasts in the 1870's would not have been possible without guaranteed government contracts to carry the mail. Between that time and the 1930's, America moved by rail... But after World War II, the nation moved away from rail transport with the development of the interstate highway system. President Eisenhower had been mightily impressed with the German autobahn's ability to move troops quickly across the country during the war, and was determined to bring such a system to the United States. The trucking industry, therefore, was the immediate beneficiary of advance military planning. The interstate system indirectly subsidizes truckers by first building, then maintaining the transportation grid. Imagine, if you will, the transportation costs involved if truckers had to pay the true costs of moving the nations' products to market. And as the trucking industry sucked the life out of the railroads' freight business, so did the emerging airline industry cut deeply into rail's passenger base... As profits fell, rail systems fell into disrepair and the companies that owned them struggled against bankruptcy...
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?: The construction lobbies in Washington continue to fight hard for the trucking interests, but no one, especially here in Florida, has emerged to take up the cause of rail. Gov. Crist and a few legislators mouth support, but none has become a true champion of what is undoubtedly a wave of the future... They seem not to understand that surface transportation has reached a point of diminishing returns. We can't keep adding lanes to existing highways without running out of room, and construction costs are skyrocketing as the price of critical ingredients - cement, for example - goes through the roof. And all this is happening at precisely the same time that frustrated commuters want a faster, more humane way to travel - one that doesn't involve being stranded for hours in never-ending traffic jams... High-speed rail also is opposed by the trial lawyers' lobby because owners of the track upon which the feeder lines would run want to keep riders from suing the railroads in cases of serious accident. Why, they wonder, should track built to handle freight cars traveling at 25 mph be forced to absorb damages sustained by passenger trains traveling at three times that speed?... It's a serious question that needs to be addressed, but a mere legal disputation shouldn't deprive Floridians of a transportation system built to accommodate the future, rather than one doomed to wallow in the mistakes of the past... Let's move forward with high-speed rail now... (Image from wikipedia: High Speed Rail)
ANOTHER OPINION
* Response To Transportation (Trucking) Industry Publication Communicating Gary Locke’s (Obama’s Secretary of Commerce) Downplaying of “Climate Change”
Eugene,OR,USA -Peoples Equity Union -October 12, 2009: -- I tend to believe that the greenhouse effect and global/warming climate change is real. We have had evidence for more than 40 years and the overwhelming geophysical evidence presented by scientists almost seems to be at consensus these days ... There will always be a need for long-range transport, as few if any regions could realize total self-sufficiency and comparative advantages do exist. However, the transportation industry can do their part for the youth and children, the survival of the species, by considering their role and the adjustments that will need to be made (in shifting to a more regional and inter-community/within regions economy)... Please consider the policies, programs, strategies, and actions that you can take to cooperate...
* Canada - North American railways and truckers face near-term pressure ahead of recovery
Montreal,QBC,CAN -The Canadian Press/The Telegraph Journal, by Ross Marowits -October 14, 2009: -- North American railways and truckers continue to feel the negative effects of the economic recession ahead of a recovery that isn't expected to be in place until 2011, industry analysts say... Significant drops in carload and freight volumes should result in lower revenues and earnings when the companies report their quarterly results starting next week... (Photo: A Canadian National Railway Co. freight train passes over the Salmon River rail trestle near New Denmark. CN will continue to face near-term pressure because of the slow pace of the economic recovery, analysts say)
Labels: transport intelligence
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