TransportPage

As any of you who know me are aware, I have an abiding interest in energy issues, which I see as being at the heart of the environmental and political challenges facing humanity. The average person needs to educate him or herself with regard to energy and environment to know what changes are likely in the not too distant future. As energy demands around the world soar (read China and India for starters), and petroleum production peaks (most petroleum engineers predict a peak within this decade, if it has not happened already - we'll only know in hindsight) our entire industrialized way of life will be forced to change.The situation is compounded by the fact that we have already burned up the easy to get to reserves, and what is left will take MORE energy to get out of the ground, meaning a lower net return on energy invested (known as EROEI). In the 1930's the US EROEI was 100:1. Today the number has fallen to somewhere between 2:1 and 10:1 depending on who you want to believe. Some economists argue that EROEI does not matter as long as someone is willing to pay market rate for the end product. This argument ignores the basic laws of thermodynamics. The quality of the particular resource and what that resource can be used for is actually of more import. It may be more important to keep furnaces on in the winter than to use natural gas to fuel SUVs, for example. Thermodynamically, heating is the more efficient.use of the resource in this case.

And the longer we wait to address the issues the more wrenching the changes will be. We need a call for action to rethink man's place and role on planet Earth and to make changes to reduce the pain and prepare for the economic and social problems that will certainly occur to a degree we would rather not think about when the peak occurs. As a society we constantly invest in preparations in case something happens. We buy homeowners insurance, auto insurance, life insurance -yet, in the case of hydocarbons, we know the supply is limited, yet we behave as though our industrial and economic systems are immune from these limitations, or, if we recognize that they exist, we fully believe that some energy knight in shining armor will ride out of nowhere and save the day in the nick of time, in spite of what the oil geologists and physicists seem to be saying.

Transportation systems will be particularly impacted due to their almost total dependence on liquid hydrocarbon based energy sources. There are few options available to substitute for petroleum in autos, planes, trucks, buses and to a lesser degree, trains. Since our society has grown up and spread out across the landscape based on the easy availability of cheap liquid fuels that allow us the freedom to live, work and play in somtimes quite distant places, any disruption in fuel supplies will wreak havoc on life as we know it.

And then there is our dependence on countries whose desire is to destroy us ; and, of course, the tremendous drain that exporting all our dollars to pay for oil places on the American economy. As an example, the February 2008 trade defecit (with oil at a paultry $90 a barrel) was $62 billion - and oil imports accounted for $30.4 billion of that total. Persian Gulf nations (who positively hate us and wish for our destruction) now comprise about 20% of our oil imports and about 13% of total US consumption. OPEC nations as a whole (including some now not so friendly nations to our south and unstable despotic African nations) make up 45% and 28% in those respective categories. It's time to wake up!

With that in mind, I have tried to reduce my dependence on carbon based fuels as much as possible, and believe me, it has HARD to do. We take public transporation whenever possible, avoid air travel and take the train instead (rail transport, according to the Argonne National Laboratories is 17% more energy efficient than air and 18% more effcient than auto on a passenger mile basis). When we do drive, we own a Prius, capable of 60 miles per gallon. For over a year most of my local commuting was done on a modified Lashout 600 electric scooter - a very viable option if your commute is less than 12 miles each way.

I recently had a knee problem which forced me temporarily back to my old sport, cycling and I purchased a RANS Stratus recumbent bicycle as my commute "vehicle" and it's been a lot of fun.to ride - and its power source is only as limited as my training! Recumbents are INCREDIBLY comfortable (I call it my SUV), and while not as sleek or sexy as the traditional road bike, their reclined riding position offers a relaxed ride, no pressure on the palms of the hand or the rear end and no neck pressure! Gone are the days of numbness in the groin and hands, back pain and neck pain. Since you are sitting upright and looking ahead and not at the front wheel, you get to take in the scenery and it's safer to be looking around rather than down at the ground! While a few bike shops here in LA offer a couple of recumbents, there is only one that I know of that is recumbents only, Bent Up Cycles on Balboa Blvd here in the Valley. Check them out at www.bentupcycles.com. In fact, go by and visit to see some really amazing transportation equipment! The owner, Dana Lieberman, is friendly, helpful, knowledgeable and LOVES what he does.

My latest addition to my two wheeled transporation is my new Dahon Mu P24 foldable. It has 20 inch wheels,, rides great and folds up into a tote bag in 15 seconds. Dahon makes a wide range of foldables, but the P24 is probably the best combination of performance and value in the Dahon line. It is perfect for long commutes, fast weekend rides, or short touring. It rides like a much bigger bike, but it's quick and nimble and a hoot to ride! Fold it up, take it on the bus, or put it in your car then unfold it at destination and RIDE! Dahon's company goal is to get more people onto bicycles and other forms of sustainable transportation. They want you to have the option to ride instead of drive. Check them out at www.dahon.com. and help support efforts to make bike transit easier everywhere.

I encourage you to explore the details of my transportation experiments. Just click on the links below.

Charlie

Things We Should Know

Americans spend an average of 1.5 hours per day in their car (23 days per year)

33% of CO2 released into the atmosphere is from automobiles

Burning a gallon of gasoline produces 20.5 lbs of CO2. A car with a 20 gallon gas tank thus produces 410 lbs of CO2 per tank. For details click here for the USDOE facts.

Gasoline is a fuel with very high energy quality:

1 Gallon of Gas = 500 hours of human work output

(37 KWH in 1 gallon of gas divided by human work output in agriculture of .074 KW = 500)

42,000 Americans are killed each year in auto accidents

40% of all auto trips are less than 5 miles

You burn 200 calories for every hour of moderate cycling

More than one out of every nine barrels of oil produced worldwide ends up in the gas tanks of cars in the United States. The amount of petroleum burned by U.S. motorists exceeds the entire crude oil output of Saudi Arabia, the world's largest single producer at about 15% of world production and the owner of the world's largest reserves. This huge US appetite for oil has propped up demand -- and prices-- and regimes that use that money to fund terrorism around the world.

We can drill all we want to, but typical oil well production declines between 4 and 10% per year once production begins. So, in the domestic US where production is currently about 6.1 million barrels per day, we need to bring an additional 300,000 bbl per day on line each year just to keep our domestic production at 6 million bbl per day - and that only supplies about 25% of our current daily consumption. To put it bluntly, drilling our way to energy "independence" is a complete myth.

In 1956 the US government passed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 which provided $25 BILLION dollars from the GENERAL fund to construct the INITIAL components of the Interstate Highway System. By comparision the entire Marshall plan which rebuilt Europe after WWII (1948-1951) was only $13 billion dollars, and the entire Federal budget for 1956 was only $71 billion. This massive taxpayer subsidy to auto transport was a fatal blow to the American passenger rail system and was subsidized entirely by the taxpayer for the benefit of the auto and oil industry. To date, the US has spent about $3.2 TRILLION on the Interstate Highway Sytem with about $1.2 TRILLION coming from the general fund. $1.2 trillion is the equivalent of 100 years of current subsidies to Amtrak. The American passenger rail system never recovered from the massive subsidies to the highway system. In the current environment the General Fund subsidizes about 40% of all highway transportation projects to the current tune of about $30-40 BILLION per year. Europe, on the other hand, realized quite some time ago that continued dependence on imported oil would damage their economy, destroy the balance of payments accounts and make their nations totally dependent on foreign powers that in fact wished them harm.They invested and continue to invest heavily in long distance normal and high speed rail and to tax fuel at a rate that discourages personal auto use rather than subsidizing it as we continue to do in this country. Spain, for example, will by 2015 have a high speed rail system that provides high speed rail connections within 30 minutes driving time of every Spaniard. Their rail lines are electrified, which is incredibly more efficient than US diesel powered rail lines. By comparision, AMTRAK has not purchased a single long distance railcar or passenger engine since the late 80's, and there are now NO US based manufacturers of passenger railcars. The US, in fact, is now buying ALL of its commute and semi-fast rail train sets from Spain and France. Let's see... do we need jobs here, or are we all content to be Starbucks baristas?

If we really want to revitalize our industrial base, move toward a more energy efficient transport mode, make ourselves more energy secure and depend less on Arab nations that wish us ill, we would be building high speed rail everywhere as fast as we could, as Europe and China are doing. China built 36,000 miles of Class I rail in calendar 2008, while the US abandonded thousands of miles of Class I rail in the same period.

Amtrak receives less than 1% of all transportation funding. In contrast, Germany and France spend about 20% of their transportation budgets on passenger rail. Do they know something we don't know or are we simply too much in the thrall of GM, Ford and the oil companies?