Sunday Train: Doctor Dan prescribes High Speed Rail for Kentucky

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

Doctor Dan Mongiardo, Kentucky's Lieutenant Governor, has announced that he is running for the Democratic nomination for the Kentucky Senate race, to take on whoever wins the Republican nomination to challenge for the seat that Senator Bunning (R-Big$$$) has announced he is giving up.

Lots of politics to unwrap in that paragraph, which I'll leave to the political wise-guys. The Sunday Train today is about Dr. Dan's Rail Plan.

As far as I can tell, Dr. Dan's Rail Plan has four main parts, and regular readers of the Sunday Train will recognize much from each of the four parts:

• Support for expanding Kentucky's existing and potential Amtrak routes into 110mph Emerging Higher Speed Rail corridors
  
• Support for regional rail services to complete the above state rail map
  
• "Hybrid Light Rail" to provide cross-metropolitan local rail services, principally to Louisville
  
• Heavy investment in complementary local transit, including bus rapid transit and a high frequency driverless monotrain system for Kentucky.
  

Dr. Dan's Prescription

The YouTube plays the powerpoint slideshow that accompanied the speech where Dr. Dan announced his Rail Plan.

Dr. Dan lays heavy weight (speech) on the fact that Kentucky gets under 30% of its gas taxes to the Transit Fund back, while getting over 90% of its Highway Fund gas taxes back, so his proposal to fund the bulk of the local transit is basically, "get our Transit Money back".

What makes this encouraging for those of us outside Kentucky is that he lays part of the blame on the Bush-era Dept. of Transport practice of underfunding the 80:20 Federal match, which he claims discriminates against cities without an established system. And its likely to do, but there was a political shell game in getting there.

The political shell game was to persuade rural and suburban Congressmen that there was little in transit funding "for them". That discouraged them from voting to fund at reasonable levels. That made competition among applications was brutal, so matches dropped from 80:20 to sometime 40% or less Federal, 60% local. And that was a game that few rural and suburban counties could play at, without substantial help from their state government.

Dr. Dan also looks at the economic benefits of rail and transit, lays out his plan with lots of maps (which pass by too quickly on the YouTube, so its necessary to hit pause frequently, which interrupts the jazz ensemble backing track). And on this point, I believe he has a very handy frame to put around the dry policy wonk arguments on economic benefits:

Per capita income for counties served by Interstate highways is nearly THREE times that of counties that do not have access to good four-lane highways.

It is obvious that continuing to maintain, improve and expand our existing highway and bridge infrastructure in Kentucky is critical. What may not be obvious to some, however, is my belief that if Kentucky is left out of a federal high speed rail network - a network that is - as I said earlier -- in the infancy of its planning stages - I fear the economic consequences to our Commonwealth will be like those communities left out of the Federal Interstate Highway system 53 years ago. We will only fall farther behind in our efforts to expand economic opportunities and increase personal incomes.

The next Senator from Kentucky must be a fierce advocate for Kentucky when it comes to not only highways, bridges, locks and dams but also a fierce advocate for mass public transportation.

Have I Seen This Somewhere Before

For three of the treatments prescribed by Dr. Dan's Rail Plan, all I can say is, "I resemble that remark!". I would, however, extend his plan in one important area.

In his speech, he says regarding the Higher Speed Rail component:

The high speed rail grid that I envision would connect northern cities like Minneapolis, Chicago, Indianapolis, Columbus and Cleveland to cities in the south like Memphis, Nashville, Birmingham, New Orleans and Miami, we would connect not only Louisville and Cincinnati into a national high speed rail system ... we would connect Lexington and potentially Bowling Green, Elizabethtown and London.

By connecting Washington D.C. to the West Coast in a transcontinental high speed rail line that bisects our nation and a passenger rail connecting our smaller cities in Kentucky with our urban centers - something that I will address in a moment -- we could potentially enable the majority of Kentuckians to easily access most major cities around the country.

If by "transcontinental HSR", we are to understand passenger High Speed Rail corridor, it does not make much sense - since "Higher" Speed Rail is primarily for trips of 100miles to 300miles, and very "High" Speed Rail for trips of 200miles to 500miles.

But if "transcontinental HSR" refers to electrifying one of the main east/west STRACNET corridors and upgrading it to allow 100mph single stack container freight - well, that is a vital national priority, and as a side-benefit that corridor would also effectively permit 110mph tilt-train passenger rail services. So under the definitions the DoT uses, that's a "transcontinental HSR".

And with one bridging section added to the existing STRACNET, there really could be a transcontinental corridor that passes through Kentucky:

• From the Shenandoah Valley through Charleston WV, Cincinnati, and Louisville;
• Upgrading the corridor through southern Indiana to Vincennes IN, where it connects to the existing STRACNET again
• West to St. Louis and Kansas City, and from there either:
  • West to Colorado, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City, Reno via the northern route, Sacramento and the Bay; or
  • Southwest to Amarillo, Albuquerque, Tuscon and the LA Basin

Of course, as previously discussed in the Appalachian Hub series on the Sunday Train, the Steel Interstate approach also supports Louisville / Nashville. And Dr. Dan proposes (as would I) a link from Lexington to Knoxville which would then connect through Chattanooga to either Atlanta or Birmingham and the existing proposed Gulf and Southeast HSR corridors.

The Steel Interstate provides a second solid answer to the question, "what does a Senator have to do with transit?", since the Steel Interstate is chock full of National Government responsibilities, including Defense, International Trade and, of course, Employment and Economic Stability.


Did You Say Monorail?

I will not go into the full plan - you can get an overview from either the speech or the youtube or both - but I will not the Monorail Question.

There are certain circumstances wherea 55mph Monorail offers a compelling case. If distances are too long for 35mph to be fast enough, short enough so 55mph is fast enough, there are too many obstacles to get a right of way on the ground, and there are places to put the large number of pylons required by the monorail, it could be the answer to that question.

Dr. Dan seems to undermine that case for Monorail in Louisville when he stresses how many rail corridors run through Louisville and how he hopes to be able to gain the cooperation of the Right of Way owners in most or all of them for Hybrid Light Rail. If a Hybrid Light Rail system criss-crosses the city, then either a Bus Rapid Transit, Aerobus, or Rapid Streetcar or mix of two or three might be a better match.

On the other hand - Dr. Dan is running for the Senate. So what is important is how he proposes to go about supporting the monorail. If the support consists of technology neutral preferences for systems that can offer high frequency and can be operated effectively in service of late night shifts, then its up to the city putting together the application to find the approach that is the right fit.

So there is that caveat: as long as the discussion of the driverless Monorail is pointing to the need to support those kind of features in a city like Louisville, where there needs to be support for all shifts, and not just a 9am-5pm office commute ... I'd hope that Louisville would do a wide canvass of all technologies to place that role in the integrated system.


Conclusions

Writing on Dr. Dan's Rail Plan at TheTransportPolitic, Yonah Freemark says:

The candidate’s proposals reflect that he is a novice in matters of transportation, but there’s a larger point here.

What’s most interesting about Mr. Mongiardo’s proposed transit links is that a senator in the U.S. Congress has very little direct influence on the decision-making of local authorities when it comes to transit, nor on the choices made by the state government on intercity rail. Nevertheless, he seems to have concluded that a specific vision of where new transit might go is more palpable to voters than a simple promise of more federal money. Unfortunately, the latter is the one thing a senator actually can produce.

In fact, Mr. Mongiardo makes the very good point that his state contributes around four times as much to the mass transit trust fund as it gets back — the federal government should fund more non-automobile transportation there.

I would disagree on one specific point. U.S. Senators have an unfortunately large amount of influence on the decision-making of local authorities when it comes to transit and the decision-making of state government on intercity rail. Indeed, Yonah Freemark himself made the point about Minneapolis likely choosing a second-best light rail alignment because that's what "scored well" on the Department of Transport formula.

Getting those formulas so that they deliver better outcomes is a problem local transport planners areas know about, but can't do anything about. Senators, on the other hand, can do something about it - the enabling legislation that the formula rests on passes through the Senate - but generally see a lot other areas as more exciting things to grandstand on.

Which is one of the biggest reasons that, in this month of bad news for progressives, I find Dr. Dan's Rail Plan something to get a little bit excited about.

Sunday Train: Hey, Joe, I still want sustainable electric HSRail for Christmas

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

Left Orange Station a little after 7pm Eastern

Last year, I told VP Joe Biden about the Sustainable Electric High(er) Speed Rail I wanted for Christmas (cf. links below). It involved electrifying the 30,000+ miles of STRACNET, and establishing 100mph Rapid Freight Rail paths, including support for running 110mph or 125mph long haul electric passenger services on the Rapid Freight paths.

In short, I wanted Joe Biden to take Alan Drake's plan and just fracking DO it.

I didn't get it for Christmas last year - but then, I guess he was only VP-elect last 25DEC08. The post today is to look at the progress toward the goal. The answer, surprisingly, is that we have made substantial progress. Certainly we are not halfway there, yet, but we are much further along than I expected to see.


Regional Passenger HSRail Corridors

The biggest steps forward have been in the area of Regional Passenger HSRail Corridors. The first step happened way back in February. As reported at The Transport Politic, Final Stimulus Bill Rewards HSR Massively; Falls Somewhere Between House and Senate on Transit:

The U.S. Congress Conference Committee has agreed to the final provisions of the economic stimulus bill, which now moves back to the two chambers of Congress for final passage. The most important news is the massive amount of money proposed for high-speed rail – $8 billion – and the large increase in Amtrak funding, up to $1.3 billion from $800 and $850 million in the respective House and Senate bills. This represents the largest single expenditure on rail in United States history and promises a new day for train travel. The U.S. Department of Transportation will lead the distribution of these funds; most of the money is likely to go to existing programs such as California High-Speed Rail, Midwest High-Speed Rail, and Southeast High-Speed Rail. States will get no supplementary money for rail programs. The legislation says that some of the money can be used for standard-speed rail corridors, but that the Secretary of Transportation is to give priority “to projects that support the development of intercity high speed rail service.”

According to the AP, President Obama and Senator Reid pushed for the increase personally. This fits in directly with Mr. Obama’s statement yesterday about the benefits of high-speed rail and his repeated insistence during the campaign that he would push for better train service, especially in his native Midwest. It also may be a response to Mr. Obama’s seeming ignorance about the lack of money for infrastructure that Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) described at the beginning of the month.

The applications went in last October, with California, Florida, Indiana, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Virginia applying for over $1b each, and Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio (Go Bucks!), Washington and Wisconsin each applying for between $400m and $1b.

Then in the annual appropriation, the White House asked for $1b for next year, the House appropriated $4b, a 300% increase, the Senate $1.2b, a 20% increase, and after much dithering the Senate and House recently agreed to $2.5b, a 150% increase.

Now, because HSRail and Energy Efficient Transport advocates were making a major public push for the Senate to fall in line with the House $4b, there were those who saw this as a defeat, but in reality, anytime what comes out of Congress is 150% better than what the Administration proposes, that's called a "win". Imagine where we would have been on so many fronts if the Stimulus Bill was 150% better than what the Administration proposed!

Now, admittedly, $2.5b annually is not enough if we are going to be building one or two serious Express HSR systems to prove the concept. However, for the 110mph and 125mph systems, this level of funding is enough to get systems started that will serve over half the states in the nation.

Indeed, for Express HSR advocates, that fact alone is tremendous good news. Since the Emerging (110mph) Higher Speed Rail is time-competitive with driving, and the Regional (125mph) Higher Speed Rail is perceptibly faster than driving, operation of these systems will revolutionize common public perception of "ordinary" rail service. This will ensure that those with systems will want them expanded, while many states that presently lag in developing Higher Speed Rail plans will be facing pressure to get off the stick ... and that is a strongly favorable political environment for an HSRail development bank that can provide the Express (220mph) High Speed Rail systems the funding security they need.


But What About Long Distance Rapid Freight and Passenger Rail?

The focus for Emerging (110mph) and Regional (125mph) Higher Speed Rail is providing 100mile to 300mile trips between medium-large to large metropolitan areas. The focus for Express (220mph) High Speed Rail is providing 200mile to 500mile trips between major metropolitan areas, together with tips to those areas from smaller metropolitan areas along the way.

As became clear as I mapped out why America Was Made for HSRail, those trips can be provided along some longer corridors stringing overlapping trips together. For example, at the 110mph level, Pittsburgh / Cleveland / Toledo / Chicago / Milwaukee / Madison ... and then connecting (likely via Rochester and the Mayo Clinic, but other local areas are making their own case) to Minneapolis.

Generally, however, the corridors supporting those kinds of trips do not make for a nationwide grid. However, they often do lie along the existing strategic national heavy freight grid, STRACNET, and when the do, their improvements will help pave the way for the national sustainable electric HSRail system.

There is also a second way that they help. That is, for those corridors where passenger HSRail alone will not make the case for the system, there will still be constituents thinking it would be a good thing to have the service. So, in addition to the direct investment with multiple benefits is the demonstration effect.

And if the Rapid Electric Freight rail is the basic justification for the improvement, that means that a two per day or three per day Amtrak style service could well be established with 110mph or 125mph electric tilt-trains, and the incremental capital cost is the station and its approaches and the rolling stock itself - which can provide more passenger miles per set than conventional Amtrak, simply due to the higher speed, and yet more due to being able to operate on the tighter schedules made possible by Rapid Freight Paths.

However, just recently, I saw even more encouraging news. As I discussed in Sunday Train: Supporting Rail Electrification with the Climate Bill, there are a variety of ways to help support rail electrification that can be and, in terms of addressing climate change, ought to be, included in any overall bill addressing climate change.

Of course, the overall details of the Climate Change bill were not encouraging, with too little handed back as a social dividend, too much opportunity for Wall Street monkey business, and the permits being located far to close to the final use, which is just asking for an ongoing fight against it ending up riddled with industry specific loopholes. Indeed, a permit system set too far "downstream" would seem every bit as likely to get riddled with loopholes and exceptions as any real world carbon tax.

Add on top the specter of the same thing happening to the Climate Bill as is presently happening with Health Insurance Reform, and I feared it was an idea that would get dragged down by the rest of the package. So it was with great interest that I read of Senators Cantwell and Collins propose a "bi-partisan" Climate Bill (I am presuming that the 'bi' refers to Democratic and Independent, since the vast majority of the Republican caucuses in both houses will of course do the bidding of the Oil and Coal Companies). From CQ Politics:

The Cantwell-Collins alternative would instead create what has been called a “cap and dividend” structure. The government would still cap emissions and sell carbon permits, but the polluters — such as coal producers and oil companies — could trade the credits only among themselves. There would be no outside market for trading the emissions credits.

Under the Cantwell-Collins plan, 75 percent of the revenue raised by selling emissions permits would go straight back to U.S. taxpayers in the form of monthly electronic payments made directly to their bank accounts. Cantwell’s office is expected to release a report Friday finding that under the plan, a typical family of four would receive tax-free monthly checks from the government averaging $1,100 per year, or $21,000 between 2012 and 2030.

The remaining 25 percent would be spent on projects such as clean energy technology research and development.

In the previous Sunday Train discussion of using Carbon Fees to subsidize interest costs while user and access fees covered the original capital costs of establishing Rapid Freight Electric Rail - that was based up to 20% of the 10% State Share in the current bill, which is to say up to 2% of the carbon fee revenue. So 25% devoted to clean energy technology development remains ample to getting started on the actual coast to coast rapid electric freight rail system that we need.

There is no doubting the need. We import roughly 2/3 of our petroleum products, and even the increase in rail freight caused by $4/gallon diesel pushed many trunk rail lines close to capacity. In the face of a $6/gallon diesel or, still worse, a physical interruption of supply, we will simply not be able to rely on the present road plus air freight system to keep our national industrial economy going. Indeed, this is something even the war-monger rabble ought to support, since the way that things presently stand, once the crude oil supply line from overseas is cut, the logistics supporting military deployments will come under tremendous strain as well.

So, combine, first, an alternate climate bill has been floated which addresses the three most glaring weaknesses of the Kerry bill - inadequate social dividend, permits too far downstream, and the risk of setting Derivatives Traders loose on the trading system - and the fact that is has "bipartisan" support, and that is quite promising.

The task ahead is to ensure that Transport Electrification and ActiveTransport (walking and cycling) are as well represented in the new bill as they are in the present climate bill, and the future is so bright, I'll have to wear shades (I can't actually afford sunglasses, so they'll be borrowed).

But if we do can do that in the months ahead, we will get one more step closer to getting our Sustainable Electric High Speed Rail for Christmas.

BTW, I am not sure if Joe is getting these ... someone sees him on the Acela sometime, be sure to give him the link.


All of Which is a Follow-up to last year's ...

Dear Joe, I want an Electric Train for Christmas (Pt. I)

Dear Joe, I want a High Speed Electric Train for Christmas (Pt. II).

Dear Joe, I want a Sustainable High Speed Electric Train for Christmas (Part 3)

Part 1 and Part III have the clip of Joe Biden at the National Governor's Association last year which originally inspired the title.

Celebrating the Fall of the American Empire

Burning the Midnight Oil for the Next American Revolution
crossposted at Docudharma, ProgressiveBlue, MyLeftWing, and Agent Orange

As people look back to the decade just past, and as we look ahead to the long, hard job ahead of us, many people describe the decade in many different ways - tumultuous, chaotics, catastrophic, liberating, tragic, joyous - but it seems that nothing recycles so easily as a phrase, and so the punditry online seem to have settled on The Roaring Teens.

But consider how it could have all gone so badly wrong, had the American Empire not collapsed. Whether you were thrilled or dismayed by the Roar in the Roaring Teens, consider what might have happened to our revived Republic had history taken a different turn in the aftermath of the Currency Collapse of 2011.

It is this perspective I wish to offer, since I can recall the New Year of 2010 arriving, and I feared much of what did in fact happen in 2011 - and yet because I did not see the possibility of the liberation of our nation from our self-imposed shackles of Empire, I did not for a minute imagine what the decade would bring.
______________________

The Currency Crisis

I recall people at the time writing about the risk that China would "unload" US Savings Bonds, as if China had bought the Savings Bonds as an investment. The reality was, of course, that they bought the bonds to keep the US$ expensive and the yuan cheap (well, to keep the renminbi cheap, in those days before full convertability).

The other reality, which was tracked by a different set of people with a different set of interests, was domestic Peak Coal for China. Late in the Do-Nothing Noughties, people heard promises from China that they would reduce carbon emissions and invest in carbon neutral technologies, but did not put two and two together: the speculation regarding peak domestic coal for China was very real, and was coming much faster than outsiders were allowed to understand.

And so, silently, stealthily, China shifted its "currency basket peg" away from the US$ and to the Euro and Yen and Pound Stirling and Swiss Franc and Australian Dollar. It was not entirely off the radar, but since they moved the peg itself to keep the yuan/US$ rate from moving very far, very fast, it was lost in the noise of the countless phony emergencies generated by the typical "news" infotainment of the Do-Nothing Noughties.

And it maybe that they would not have acted quite as they did, but the Federal Reserve controversy of the summer of 2011 broke out, starting as a gambit aiming for some advantage in some long forgotten policy fight over whether to do too little, too late, both, or nothing at all. And they were faced with the choice of whether to keep sliding their peg - and what they knew that would mean for domestic inflation, given their need for dramatically larger coal imports from the United States to tide them over as they kept ramping up their New Energy power sources.

And of course, with the limp US recovery from the recession barely over, compared to the strong European and Japanese recoveries, as far as maintaining their export surge, the Euro and the Yen were where it was at ... the US market didn't seem nearly as important as the possibility of buying cheap coal from Americans desperate to earn foreign exchange. It seemed very much as if the growth opportunities in the American market were behind China, not ahead.

And so, they stopped shifting their peg.

They, of course, had not been so short-sighted that they forgot their southern flank. Indeed, the currency basket peg had been developed by Singapore, and its spreading use across ASEAN in 2010 had seemed to be a technical issue, when it was not described as a "response to US pressure".

And while India was not "in on it", there were Indian officials who were watching their rival and sometime adversary more closely than many others, and had already started arguing the case for the switch. In the face of the dramatic fall of the US$ in the summer of 2011, India adopted a currency basket peg with an unspecified but clearly only token US$ component.

Five years before, the world had been roughly half floating and half pegged, and the pegs were mostly to the US$. By the fall of 2011, the world was half floating and half pegged to hidden baskets that very clearly had very few US$ in them.

As Jon Stewart asked, "Why do they call it floating when all we are doing is sinking?" - leading, lest we forget, to calls for his resignation and return to the Comedy Channel from the ever more strident and ever less relevant conservative movement.


What happened was not inevitable

This is not to refresh anyone's memory - all of this is quite familiar. It is to bring the events to the forefront and ask, what if we had clung to Empire in the face of this crisis?

It seems so obvious today. Our ability to afford what turned out to be over a thousand foreign bases had been eroding for decades. And now, with a dollar trading at €0.34, ¥46, £0.32, 0.40 Swiss Franc, A$0.57 - the costs were exploding.

(Actually, take a moment and reflect on that - ten years ago, most of those would have been quoted as how expansive or cheap they were in US$, not how expensive or cheap the US$ is in the hard currencies of the world.)

And so the wise heads of the two establishment parties put together an austerity budget that would allow the US to continue paying the exploding costs of these establishments - and the consensus cracked.

It started with a filibuster in the Senate by some faction pursuing some narrow partisan advantage, as was normal for the decades just past. And so it was bounced over to the House.

But Congressmen are skittish, and the new Congressmen on both sides of the aisle from the "kick the bums out" wave of 2010 were in no mood for a grim austerity budget. The radicalized right wing of 2010 entered another of their rages on "wasting our money protecting German wealth from the damn Russkies". A bloc of Democrats who had held on by the fingernails in 2010 based on an uptick in "Green Jobs" were not about to cut back on their lifeline.

The so-called "Progressives" of the day, a motley mix of progressives, social liberals, and moderate Wall Street Democrats, fractured in the Great Defense Budget fight (wasn't it LIVE-FREE? In those days, if the name sounded good, that was supposed to replace actual sound legislation). So did the smaller Populists. But the balance from both took up the war cry of the radical right wing fringe.

They hit on covering the budget black hole - under the arcane rules of the day - by withdrawing from Europe by May 8, 2015, the 70th Anniversary of Victory in Europe day. Some clever soul called it the "Seventy Year Itch for a Real Victory Parade", quickly shortened to "The Victory Parade Strategy", and by then the dam had broken.

The administration fought it, the Pentagon Establishment fought it, but first a wave of primaries were won on promises paid for by retreating from this or that piece of foreign soil, and then a wave of general election victories won, on both the right and the left, and there was nothing to do but to accommodate it. The new House would not fund the foreign bases, and there was no way to make them.


Why Did We Ever Fear a Currency Collapse?

What is important to recall, as we look back at this glorious throwing aside of the shackles of Empire, is that it could have all come undone. A disaster, another Lyon Bombing, except in LA, and it might have all come apart.

Instead, the second impact of the great Current Collapse was felt. Fewer foreign students came to the US hoping to win a US green card - but when foreign students compared US Universities to the cost of foreign study at British or German or French or even Australian Universities, they kept coming, and then started coming in larger numbers.

Most of the rest of the world was not seriously affected by the Currency Collapse - it was, indeed, a US Dollar Collapse. The Canadian Dollar and Mexican Peso suffered collateral damage, but most countries were largely unaffected.

And so US machine tool exports boomed - often to unexpected locales and in competition with Chinese rather than European or Japanese producers. Foreign film-makers came to California to film movies set in Berlin and Paris and London and Sydney - to save on production costs. Japanese and German industrial software firms set up offshore branches in Silicon Valley in California and the Information Corridor in Massachusetts.

The US slipped toward into a recession in 2011, but was pulled out again in 2012 by the export surge.

A critical part of the Victory Parade coalition had been from Great Lakes and Midwestern states battered by two decades of import-for-profits "globalization", clinging desperately to the slender reed of hope offered by so-called "Green Jobs". Those policies seemed like more too little, too late on their own. But they met the rising tide of US$ oil prices, the wave of Chinese take-overs of US coal companies aiming at shifting US coal to export markets, the export boom, and US production capacity started growing at headlong rates.

And that relentless growth in investment, of course, was a big part of the Roar in the Roaring Teens.


But It All Might Never Have Happened

But count the number of ways it could have failed to happen. Suppose that the Federal Reserve controversy was successfully hushed up and papered over, as the Great Bank Robbery of the Noughties was first papered over with a flood of liquidity, then turned into an economic crisis, then finally lost sight of in the relentless generation of new mini-emergencies from the adrenaline addicted infotainment media of the era.

Suppose that the Currency Collapse had not happened in the aftermath of a "kick the bums out" election, or suppose that the "kick the bums out" sentiment had not spilled out the way it did to hit Congressmen in both parties.

Suppose that the Progressives or Populists in the House had held together, and held together on the basis of support for the Austerity Budget, which would have thrown the US into a deep recession and, so close to the previous one, quite possibly a "Not Nearly So Great" Depression.

Suppose that the Lyon Bombing had happened in LA, or St. Louis.

And its not like the new media in 2011 played the positive role that it now remembers. The heady days of 2013 and 2014 cast a rosy glow back to 2011 - but in 2011 itself, the new media were "going ballistic", as we used to say. The sky was falling, it was the administrations fault, the Republicans fault, the Democrats fault, an evil plot by the Chinese, an evil plot by the Illuminati using the Chinese as their cover story.

Once the breakthrough was made, the new media played a useful role in the wave election of 2012, and once that election was won, an even more useful role in winning more useful than useless "peace dividends".

Indeed, I have encountered peace activists who blame the early flailing around of the New Media for the "lost opportunity of 2011".

The "Victory Parade", after all, primarily involved Eurasia. We left Japan, but not Australia. We left Europe, but our presence in southern Africa grew. Most Caribbean states would be hard pressed to pin point the fall of the American Empire, since it feels like no such thing in Jamaica or Trinidad. Even today, the Department of the Navy oversees the largest navy on the face of the globe,dominating the Caribbean, west and south Atlantic, the east and south Pacific. The Department of War oversees bases on four continents.

And of course, Climate Chaos presses us ever harder. Certainly, we seem better placed to address it than it ever seemed we would, especially following the nationalization of US coal mines, and the "Two Centuries of Coal" conservation strategy that followed.

But all but the most incurable optimist will now admit that "better placed than before" may well end up being barely good enough for many and simply not good enough at all for many as well.

Still, nearing retirement, I am above all things a Pragmatist with a Capital P. Compared to the total mess that we could have made of things - and the total mess we would have made of things, if we had continued down the course set in the Kamikaze Nineties and the Do-Nothing Noughties - we are in far better shape than we had any right to expect.

And so, reflect on what damage could have been done if, instead of bringing down the Empire - the Empire we could not call be name while it lasted - we had wasted the Teens on a hopeless effort to save it. If not in Depression we would be teetering toward it. If not at war, we would have been lurching toward it. If not in climate hell, we would have been slipping inexorably toward it.

So tonight, let us raise a glass of near-export quality sparkling wine, and give a rousing toast for the Fall of the American Empire.

Midnight Oil: Forgotten Years

Few of the sins of the father,
are visited upon the son
Hearts have been hard,
our hands have been clenched in a fist too long
Our sons will never be soldiers,
our daughters will never need guns
These are the years between
These are the years that were hard fought and won

Contracts torn at the edges,
old signatures stained with tears
Seasons of war and peace,
these should not be forgotten years
Still it aches like tetanus,
it reeks of politics
How many dreams remain?
this is a feeling too strong to contain

The hardest years, the darkest years,
the roarin years, the fallen years
These should not be forgotten years
The hardest years, the wildest years,
the desperate and divided years
We will remember, these should not be forgotten years

Our shoreline was never invaded,
our country was never in flames
This is the calm we breathe,
this is a feeling too strong to contain
Still it aches like tetanus, it reeks of politics
Signatures stained with tears,
who can remember
We've got to remember

The hardest...
Forsaking aching breaking years,
the time and tested heartbreak years
These should not be forgotten years
The blinded years, the binded years,
the desperate and divided years
These should not be forgotten years,
remember

Sunday Train: Growing Green Transport

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence
crossposted to ProgressiveBlue, Docudharma, The Hillbilly Report and Daily Kos

On Thursday, djrekluse at the Daily Kos said:

Despite considerable tension and even aversion in green communities to the subject, we cannot talk about "going green" without making it a discussion about growth through various hierarchies of human development. Really, the subject of growth should come as second nature to "green" thinkers and communities—after all, a blade of grass must grow to two inches before it can grow to six; a tree must grow from acorn to sapling before it can someday become a mighty oak. In much the same way, our consciousness, our values, and our cultures must also move through several distinct stages of growth before we can even begin to even see the problem, let alone care enough to do anything about it.

In other words, "going green" really means "growing green," and represents the crux of almost all the global issues we presently face: it’s not a problem of human imagination, technological innovation, or even political will—it’s a problem of human growth

Consciousness, Culture, and Climate: Growing Green

This provides a frame for thinking about growing an energy independent transport system, and about the multiple ways that local, regional, and inter-regional rail systems can help in that growth.
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djrekluse talks about the development of consciousness. Development, here, means the same as in genuine development economics - gaining new capacities - and not the same as in "property development", where as long as the market value of the property increases after interest, material costs and, often last and least, wages and salaries, its called "development" ... and whether capacities are created or destroyed in the process is of no real concern.


And I neither would, nor likely could, recapitulate djrekluse's discussion in terms of human consciousness. I am just going to steal their levels (the colors are taken from the colors of the rainbow):

• Magic ("Magenta")
• Power ("Red")
• Mythic ("Amber")
• Rational ("Orange")
• Pluralistic ("Green")
• Integral ("Teal/Turquoise")

And according to djrekluse, "... by recent estimates, nearly 70% of the world is at an "amber" mythic stage or lower." So if we want to get something done, we have to build a coalition across these levels.


But, what is it that we want to do?

A quintessentially rationalist question is, of course, what is the goal of all this. But if we climb up a level of consciousness, the question is, what is the range of goals we wish to serve - since above the capacity to find an answer to a question is the capacity to establish a setting within which a number of people can find the different answers to their different questions.

And if we climb up another level of consciousness, the question is, what system to we wish to live within? I would say a system where people have the opportunity to:

• meet their Basic Needs of breathable air, drinkable water, edible food, functional clothing and shelter, and effective care when they are sick;
• engage in productive work to contribute to the community;
• have a voice in the governance of their community;
• see their children have the same or better; and
• grow as persons.

This is my vision of the "good economy". "The economy" is, of course, just a shorthand for the material support for social activity, and so it cannot be sensibly treated as an entirely independent black box inside society. So this is necessarily a particular vision of broader social goals - what support the economy ought to be providing. If your vision of the good economy is different, you'll have to make your own adjustments of this discussion to fit that vision.

Climate chaos, of course, threatens all of this. It will deny drinkable water and edible food to millions, disrupt economies to deny clothing, shelter and health care to millions, destroy the jobs and careers of millions, threatens to provide the conditions for a rise in authoritarian regimes, and it will continue to get worse for multiple generations.

But its not the only thing that threatens much of this. Peak Oil will have much the same effects, especially in today's high income nations that are so dependent on an energy-intensive technology, and especially in the United States which is the most resource intensive large economy in the world on a per-person basis.

Reactions to the coming Climate Chaos and to the coming slide down from Peak Oil can be in conflict or in coalition. In an energy dependent nation - and especially in an Energy Dependent nation that built its founding myths at a time when it was Energy Independent - they come into coalition in a strategy of pursuing Sustainable Energy Independence. Developing toward Sustainable Energy Independence - as people, as a technological society - is what I am calling Living Energy Independence.

And of course, we aren't all the way to a good economy now, and are mostly falling backwards. Opportunities to meet Basic Needs are available to most, but not all, and the opportunities have been shrinking rather than rising. Fewer have the opportunities to engage in productive work, have a voice in the community, or see our children have as good or better as we ourselves. Even if there was a magic wand that would make some of that CO2 go away and create new supplies of petroleum in the ground to replace what has been burnt, we would be heading the wrong way.

And those who have been gaining from the push away from a Good Economy are very effective at the tactics at preventing coalitions from being formed to pursue a Good Economy. They have the resources to find out the magic incantations to use for those engaged in Magical Thinking, they have their hands on many of the levers of Power, they have skilled professionals at both exploiting existing Myths and creating new Myths, they have skilled professionals for both working out the rational way to pursue their own interests as well as for working out how to disrupt the process of finding rational ways of pursuing rival Community interests. They are very effective coalition builders among the select few, and effective coalition busters in the wider Community.

And they are effective system builders, provided "effective" is defined in terms of the interests of the Corporate Elite rather than the interests of the Broader Community. When we see a system decaying - a school system, a regulatory system, a transport system - and privately elected Corporate Governments have a hand in it, the working assumption is that they are not interested in seeing the system thrive. Of course, from not having an interest in seeing Community Systems thrive, they may well lack the capacity to build Thriving Community Systems.


Good Transport

Passenger and Freight Transport systems are one part of the Good Economy that touches on all levels. It is not unique in this - information systems are a similar example. So, no, I am not focusing on Good Transport because it is sufficient for a Good Economy, but because it is necessary for a Good Economy. We have a wide range of things we have to do to have a Good Economy - but we cannot build the systems we have to have in abstract sweeping terms. To get into the nitty gritty, its necessary to talk about something in particular.

So we have to have Good Transport to have a Good Economy.

Good Transport should:

• Bring things to people and bring people to places needed to meet Basic Needs;
• provide opportunities to perform useful work for the Community;
• allow people Choice in means of transport and Voice in the options available; and
• be sustainable to allow as good or better to be provided to our children.

I do not include a dot point on opportunities for personal growth, since in my view, if it does the above, then it will be supporting opportunities for personal growth.

In light of Climate Chaos and Peak Oil, Good Transport must be built as Sustainably Energy Independent transport. If it is unsustainable, it will conflict with meeting Basic Needs, and it will put opportunities to work for the community now in conflict with providing as good or better to our children.

And of course, if it is not Energy Independent, it is not genuinely sustainable. Climate Chaos is a global problem. If our "green" transport requires us to import energy from elsewhere, when we are blessed with roughly twice the world average biocapacity per person, then it is not really "green". Our standard of living and the technology that it rests upon must be compatible with large numbers of other nations joining us, or else it is not a platform for global cooperation.

Energy Independence also reaches out beyond those pursuing a sustainable society. It also points to core national myths in the United States, many of them forged in the aftermath of bloody conflict - the fight for Independence, the Civil War, the rise of US to the wealthiest nation in the world and the rise of the Great American Middle Class to the center of US Society and Economy in the Great Depression and World War II.

Corporate Elites tap into these myths when their interests dictate opposition to a Sustainable Economy. But we cannot be distracted by guilt by association: they tap into these myths because these are the myths that are there. On the ground of Energy Independence, they may have material advantages, but we have the inside track. A United States dependent on outside resources and raising and maintaining a professional imperial military to try to guarantee our access to those resources - that simply does not fit the myth. The myth is personal independence, and that is in turn rooted in national independence.

Now, it is quite obviously a myth that American dependence on Automobiles provides personal independence. The automobile is, of course, a long enough chain of shackles for an entire chain gang. People are tied to the job to pay for it, the insurance and title and the gas that ties them to the world market for crude oil. They are tied up in traffic and limited to going where there is place to park. They live in residential communities that are tied to access roads to both earn and then fetch their daily bread.

But its a powerful myth, which establishes an important target for designing Good Transport: sustainable energy independent transport shouldn't be crappy. People must be able to believe they made an independent choice to take 21st century transport instead of 20th century transport. And people must believe others will believe it.

The ride itself should offer amenities, the trip must be from where some people wish to start to where they wish to go, the schedule must offer sufficient frequency so that some people are saying, "this is how I go where I want to go when I want to go there", rather than, "how in the hell do I go where I want to go when I want to go there?"

At the same time, we are looking to grow a Good Transport system. This is why there are "some people" rather than "all people" above. First, today's transport system does not offer all of that to all people - whenever we are providing material support to social activity, we run into the fact that resources used for one purpose are not available to another. So a Good Transport system will be one that is good enough, often enough, that people see the shortfalls as problems to be fixed within the system, rather than the transport system itself being the problem.

Second, we will have to grow our society around the sustainable transport that is possible. We simply cannot impose legal restrictions forcing people to live in suburbs that can only be traversed by cars, if we can afford neither the gas into the cars nor the CO2 coming out the other side. So as we make sustainable energy independent transport available to more people, Peak Oil combined with whatever policies we might adopt to reduce the severity of climate chaos will be pushing more and more people to put themselves into a position to use that transport.


So, Why Trains?

Why trains? First is the simple facts of energy efficiency. According to Strickland's computations (NB. I currently have trouble with this link), describing fuel efficiency in terms of gallons per hundred passenger miles (gphpm), and converting electricity to gallon-equivalents, typical fuel efficiencies are:

• 0.17 gphpm, Rail
• 0.43 gphpm, Trolleybus
• 1.28 gphpm, Diesel bus
• 1.33 gphpm, scooter / light motorcycle
• 1.39 gphpm, Toyota Prius
• 4.76 gphpm, Ford Explorer

So we score a massive win if we get someone out of a Ford Explorer and into a hybrid sedan, light motorcycle or scooter, or diesel bus. But for Energy Independence, cutting fuel consumption by 2/3 is the average we have to hit today, while at the same time cutting all other uses of petroleum by 2/3 as well.

In local transport, it is the electric trolley bus and local rail that saves much more than 2/3, meaning that getting some share of trips into that transport gets us a larger share of the way to Energy Independence.

And that is just the direct energy savings. Rail also provides far more transport capacity per "lane mile". The more people depend on car transport, the harder it is to build Living Energy Independent shelter, because the roads and parking lots push buildings apart. The more people rely on rail transport, the easier it is to build Living Energy Independent shelter.

Third, as noted in Sunday Train: 21st Century Steel Interstate, the energy efficiencies apply to freight as well as passenger transport. Combining the energy efficiency savings of rail with the energy efficiency savings of electric transport, an electric long haul Rapid Freight system can easily save over nine tenths of the energy presently used for long-haul freight transport.

And remember that we are trying to grow good transport. For many types of rail systems, its entirely possible to improve an existing rail corridor now, and launch services now, using diesel locomotives, and then upgrade the system to use electric locomotives after the overhead catenary has been installed. Both steps represent progress toward Good Transport, so at the same time that corridor is being electrified, a new corridor can be improved to take the existing diesel trains. Each time the strategy is repeated, the share of electric rail trips rises.

Many high frequency corridors will be upgraded to EMU trains with the electric engines distributed throughout the trains. Still, all we need to convert the locomotive hauled trains to electricity is an electric locomotive. So no matter where we reach the limit of that strategy, we never end up "throwing away" perfectly good passenger cars.


But Only Using Trains Is Impossible

None of the above implies or suggests a rail-only transport system. "One size fits all" can never be truly energy efficient, so Living Energy Independence requires abandoning "one size fits all".

So we must abandon Auto-Dependent transport, but that does not mean abandoning the automobile. There will still be large numbers of transport tasks that to move one or a few people along infrequently used routes or for unscheduled trips. So while a Good Transport system will have no need for the Interstate Expressway Highway system, we will still need small vehicles for city streets and country highways. The cars might be electric rather than gas powered. Some might be specialized for "last mile", home to station and station to home trips rather than going everywhere. And a larger share of cars might be shared among a much larger group of people in a neighborhood or town center rather than sitting parked 95% of the time waiting on a single person.

But there will still be something we recognize as a car. We had carriages serving a similar role before the age of fossil fuels, and the initial rise of rail in the Age of Coal led to a growth in their use, not a decline. And while there may be an increased reliance in horse drawn transport in some rural areas, we cannot build our urban transport systems on the miserable conditions that so many horses suffered under in 19th century cities. So electric or internal combustion or some mix of the two, we will continue to use horseless carriages.

And one of the common tasks for cars in a Good Transport system will be to get to the train and get from the train to where someone needs to go. Indeed, with a sufficient number of shared cars at the major destination stations, for many people, the private automobile will only really need to be able to get to the local station or stop. But just as the Oak Tree must first become an Oak Sapling, first we reach the point where substantial numbers of people are independent of cars for substantial numbers of trips. When double digit percentages of people can do most of their regular trips to work, grocery store, school and social gatherings without requiring a horseless carriage, the niche has been established within which broad shared use can grow. Witness New York and Cabs.

The most energy efficient vehicle in the world is of course the bicycle. It is the only form of transport more energy efficient than walking. And a train service is one of the transport cyclists best friends. Once our bike is equipped for quick trips to the grocery store (if you have a family, an Xtracycle extension or bike trailer might be needed) and we can either commute by bike or pedal-and-ride, we are set for local trips. What we need is a way to turn a trip longer than we can make on our bike into a couple of local trips. And the train is perfect for that.

Indeed, even if there is no place to store the bike on the train for the trip, we can get a folding bike and bolsa bag to sling it over our shoulder and bring it along anyway. And when going to walkable destinations, all that is required is secure bike parking at the origin station.

Regular city buses, as noted above, are on their own not much more energy efficient than current auto technology. However, when they leverage existing rail services, they can provide the first and last few miles of substantially longer trips, so when they make it possible or more convenient for larger numbers of people to use a train service, that is a substantial benefit.

And buses do not sit parked 95% of the time. We can far better afford the material cost of investing in more energy efficient battery-supported internal combustion and internal combustion-supported electric vehicles when that material is providing transport for 75% of each day rather than 5%.

Finally, the most successful bus routes can be provided with overhead catenary and upgraded to trolley buses, providing the investment in a specific route that supports development based upon the availability of that route.

So there is no notion here that cars and bikes and buses are all going to be replaced by trains. Trains will provide the backbone of the system because they can move large numbers of people with high energy, space, and material efficiency. But that system will create a wide range of transport niches, into which will grow a wide range of transport choices.


Wait A Minute: Isn't the Sunday Train about High Speed Rail?

Just as "one size fits all" does not work for mode of transport, it does not work for transport task. Local transport, regional transport, and inter-regional transport all have their distinctive requirements, and efficiency requires designing to meet those requirements.

When we get to specific routes and specific train technology, there are various local light rail and heavy rail options for local transport, various light rail and heavy rail options for regional transport, and various classes of conventional and higher speed rail services for inter-regional transport. There are various ways to share or segregate passenger and freight rail infrastructure.

Each type of rail system can act as the backbone of a transport system with a wide range of complementary services of other types. They each share similar advantages in energy, space and material efficiency when moving relatively larger numbers of people (and goods) from point A to point B. They each share similar advantages in reduced time lost for a stop so better ability to connect points A and B, B and C, and C and D while also connecting points A and D.

But there are also distinctive challenges for each type of task, distinctive problems to solve, distinctive institutional barriers to overcome. So it would be silly to try to design a rail service that provides trunk service between major metropolitan areas, transport connecting local areas within major metropolitan areas, transport within local areas within major metropolitan areas, transport into and out of smaller regional cities, transport connecting smaller regional cities with their hinterlands and each other and and local transport within smaller cities and in the countryside.

Yet there are some people who have built their myths of rail (both positive and negative) around some specific type of train serving some specific type of transport task, either well or poorly, and so when someone says "train", they pigeonhole it into some specific transport task.

Higher Speed Rail can be a useful tool in developing people's consciousness, because of the occasional need for a specific inter-regional journey by a relatively large number of people contained in that area.

But if we take the steps to reduce the severity of the economic crises we face in the next two generations, the majority of passenger miles by train will be on a wide variety of type of conventional rail, not on Higher Speed Rail.

Indeed, if it was necessary to choose between local transport efficiency with rail and complementary transport services, and Higher Speed Rail, its hard to see why Higher Speed Rail would win. Indeed, the propaganda against Higher Speed Rail, financed in part by the Petroleum Industry, includes precisely this false choice.

However, there is no such need. Well chosen Higher Speed Rail routes can generate operating surpluses. So there is no reason for Higher Speed Rail to fight with local public transport or with conventional inter-urban rail for operating subsidies.

On the side of the farebox, filling a seat for thirty miles to leave it empty for three hundred is not appealing to a Higher Speed Rail operator, so the fare structure will always be focused on inter-regional transport. And since a cross-platform transfer is the most convenient of all train transfer, a well designed Higher Speed Rail system will generate more new local rail trips than it diverts with express service between neighboring stations.

And most critically, the passenger capacity of a pair of express urban tracks is substantially greater than the capacity of an eight lane lane Expressway. So where an Expressway destroys a Boulevard, the rail versions can fit comfortably together in less space than either. Passing into and out of the station shared with the Higher Speed Rail, Higher Speed Rail, regional rail, and local rail can all share common infrastructure. And that material efficiency means that well designed improvements for Higher Speed Rail can also improve regional and local rail services.

So, yes, the above all applies to Higher Speed Rail, and also to Regional Rail, and also to Local Rail. They all have their own parts to play in the pursuit of a Good Transport system for a Good Economy.

Plus, when talking addressing people at the Magic, Power and Myth levels of consciousness for transport (and of course, each of us are at different stages for different areas of discourse), the Higher Speed Trains are real cool, seem very powerful, and America-By-God really ought to be able to get our trains to run that fast if we try. That's why, no matter how much sense it makes to roll out 110mph and 125mph as rapidly as possible, it really does make sense to set out to build two or three Express HSR corridors as soon as practicable.

Midnight Oil: My Country video

The Robust Public Choice Made Simple

Burning the Midnight Oil for the Next American Revolution
crossposted from The Hillbilly Report

\From some online dictionary somewhere:

Robustness is the quality of being able to withstand stresses, pressures, or changes in procedure or circumstance

So: (1) Public Choice

"No Taxation without Representation". Every single person facing an individual mandate must be provided with the choice of a publicly administered plan. Otherwise the government is forcing the citizen to pay without the elected representatives of the citizen controlling the spending.

You want to put a trigger on the public option. Fine, except the exact same trigger applies to the individual mandate.

You want to restrict access to the public option to some smaller group? Fine, except the same restriction applies to the individual mandate.

The system is not politically legitimate if it requires payment to for-profit commercial corporations.

(2) Robust

It cannot be lumbered down with any restrictions not faced by private insurers.

State by state public options? Really? You are really prepared to restrict the corporations to firms with no commercial activity across state lines? If they are free standing state by state public options, it has to be state by state for profit corporations. Oh, not allowing UHC into the exchanges defeats the purpose of lining private pockets at the public expense? Yeah, kind of thought so.
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The hard question is how to accomplish it. It would seem that it is necessary for the House Bill to include language that specifically states that the public choice does not face any restrictions not faced by commercial corporations with plans in the exchange, and explicit language that nobody can be subject to a mandate unless they have access to the public choice.

With that language in there, a conference report stripping it out would require a provision doing the dirty work. That provision could be struck by the House when the conferees report.

That is, a conference report included the laundry list of amendments to each sides bill to make them the same bill, and while no new amendments can be offered, AFAIU, a chamber has the right to strike a provision.

That might result in a second conference, but so be it: it seems highly likely that the Senate conferees will not believe that the House progressive caucus will really, truly stand up for what were, after all, the very first "progressive" principles in our history as a nation-state - until they, in fact, do so.

Midnight Oil "Dreamworld" video

An HSR Station Grows at Transbay (SF), Grand Finale (pt 3)

Crossposted to: ProgressiveBlue, Docudharma, THE European Tribune, and Daily Kos.

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

In Part 1, the testimony representing the Transbay Joint Power Authority, managing the Transbay project, resulted in such a pile of red herring left behind that it seemed that there was something fishy going on.

What that something fishy seemed to be was whether the Transbay Terminal "train box" was suited for serving as the main northern terminus for both California High Speed Rail (HSR) services and for Caltrain services.

An effort was made in part 1 to squeeze the California High Speed Rail Authority's requested turn-around time into the confines of the TBT "train box". As a design exercise, it seemed that it might be remotely possible, but doing so would put Caltrain onto short platforms that would limit its opportunity for future growth in patronage.

In Part 2, I looked more closely at the CHSRA request, and argued that if four HSR platform tracks, plus two Caltrain platform tracks, is not enough ... then six HSR platform tracks, plus two Caltrain platform tracks, ought to be. I looked at two alternatives for the train box.

But ... what if the Transbay Terminal is not the terminus of the HSR services?


Terminal Versus Terminus: A Critical Distinction

Thanks to Richard Mlynarik commenting at the Focus on: SF Transbay Transit Center post (Caltrain HSR Compatibility Blog), real world European performance at busy terminal stations can be compared to the CHSRA request. Here's a snapshot of individual trains "that pass though the stub-end Frankfurt (am Main) main station (Hauptbahnhof)" ... "ICE" is the German HSR service, the number after that is the specific service number, then the platform number, then the arriving time, then the departing time:

ICE 824 10 06:56 07:02
ICE 874 8 07:08 07:13
ICE 2273 13 07:33 07:38
ICE 2028 7 07:36 07:42
ICE 591 9 07:44 07:50
ICE 525 6 07:48 07:54
ICE 670 8 07:52 07:58

In practice, they use five different platforms, but that's because they have common platform heights for their commuter services and their HSR services, so they can do things like bring make a connection between a regional rail service and an HSR service across the same platform island.

Still, looking at the schedule, even if the required separation inside the TBT is nine minutes ... three minutes separation, six minutes spare to avoid delays at one service from cascading across the schedule ... then the above schedule could still run on three platforms:

ICE 874 A 07:08 07:13 ... A will be available at 7:22
ICE 2273 B 07:33 07:38 ... B will be available at 7:47
ICE 2028 C 07:36 07:42 ... C will be available at 7:51
ICE 591 A 07:44 07:50 ... A will be available at 7:59
ICE 525 B 07:48 07:54 ... B will be available at 8:03
ICE 670 C 07:52 07:58 ... C will be available at 8:07

How do they do in Germany what the CHSRA thinks is impossible? By not ending the service at the busy platform. Instead, the busy platform has people waiting to get on as soon as arriving passengers has debarked ... just like at a through platform. Sure, all the people arriving will be debarking, and all the leaving on the train will be getting on at that station ...

... but this is not clearing out the train, restocking the food and drinks, doing end of service safety checks, then letting passengers onto the platform to board the train. Instead, its just passengers debark, passengers embark, and the train goes.

The services, in other words, terminate or originate somewhere else. A train coming into service in the early morning can be brought in ready to go from the service center. When a train goes out of service late in the evening, it can head off to the service center. But in the busy period, the trains come from somewhere else, and then head off again.

In short, economize on the expensive underground platform space, and do the more time consuming service terminus operations somewhere else.


Problem solved ... yes? Maybe Not? WHAT'S THE PROBLEM NOW?

Now, does that fix the problem? Well, yes and no.

Yes, it fixes the problem of the number of platforms. Ten minutes to embark and debark, and even with nine minutes slack to avoid a "domino effect" from delays, and four terminal platforms is enough platform capacity to serve twelve non-terminating services.

And if, as argued in Part 2, demand for a capacity to serve 8 HSR services is reasonable, an ability to serve 12 HSR services is room to spare.

But ... close one problem, and another problem opens up.

If the TBT is no longer the terminus of the services ... then that means it is in the middle of HSR service schedules. It might be the physical end of the line, but the solution to the platform problem means that services past through it. So it is within the HSR network of services. And that means it cannot duck out on the requirements for parts of the HSR network.

And in November of 2008, California Voters passed 2008-Prop1A (pdf), which says, in part:

The high-speed train system to be constructed pursuant to this chapter shall be designed to achieve the following characteristics:
...
(c) Achievable operating headway (time between successive trains) shall be five minutes or less."

What is a "headway". When the front ("head") of a train passes a point, how much time has to pass until the head of the next train is allowed to pass the same point? That's the headway.

Safe operating headways are mainly made up of two parts ... the time it takes for the train to pass, and the safe stopping distance for the following train. The faster the trains are running, the more its safe stopping distance that matters ... the slower the trains are running, the more its the time required to physically get the tail of the train past the point that matters.

At 220mph, even a full length, quarter of a mile long train is there and gone in a flash, and headways are mostly a matter of safe stopping distance. But when a full length HSR train is creeping along, getting that quarter of a mile of train past a point can take a noticeable period of time.

One thing had to be stressed. Headways are not averages, they are minimum time separations. The Transbay project people are getting making a lot of noise and getting a lot of political allies to make fun of the idea of twelve HSR trains per hour. And, indeed, I think it was probably a serious public relations blunder of the CHSRA to make their demand in terms of "you need to give us the facilities to terminate twelve trains per hour".

However, 2008-Prop1A Says that even if there are only three trains per hour, the network has to be designed to allow the second train five minutes after the first, and the third train five minutes after the second. If the Transbay Joint Power Authority wants to ask for HSR money to help build their train box ... they better be able to show they can support 5 minute headways for HSR.

Even more than the funding, there was a local San Francisco proposition passed in 1999, Proposition H, which specifies the TBT as the San Francisco terminal for High Speed Rail. So, arguably, if the TBT train box design does not meet the Prop 1A headway requirement, which rules it out of being a part of the HSR network, that is violating local statute, in addition to the risk to its chances of HSR stimulus funding.

Now, I'm not a rail engineer, so I cannot say for sure that they cannot show 5 minute headways ... but they sure as hell have made their job hard by putting together such a poor design for their train box.


Transbay: how not to design an underground train station

Most of the rest of this I draw from Clem's post on the Caltrain HSR Compatibility Blog, Focus on: SF Transbay Transit Center, and I highly recommend anyone interested in the issue read the post. Clem notes three things that a rail operator wants from a train station:

We can draw up a simple list of three key requirements for a good terminal station design:

1. High train throughput. By definition, all trains arriving at a terminus must reverse direction. The station must be able to turn back trains at the highest possible rate; otherwise, the station itself becomes a worse bottleneck than the tracks leading to it.

2. High passenger throughput. The flows of passengers into and out of trains must be made as simple and direct as possible. This involves an optimization of street access, ticketing facilities, and vertical access to station platforms. Limited and circuitous passenger throughput can become a bottleneck at peak hours.

3. Operational flexibility. The station must provide flexibility to adjust service patterns in response to real-time conditions. It must degrade gracefully in the event of a service disruption, minimizing the possibility of cascading delays.

... and then notes that the TBT train box design falls down on all three points. The focus of the Among those, here are a few of the most critical points in terms of throughput, which is the focus of the headway question:

Throat Cancer. The TJPA station throat design is a bottleneck that promises low speeds, long traversals and frequent conflicts (when a key piece of track is occupied by one train, preventing other trains from passing.) The train throughput of a station throat, which sets a limit on the throughput of the station itself, is related to its overall length (shorter is better), train speeds (higher is better) and most importantly, topology (track switches thoughtfully laid out to allow conflict-free parallel moves.) The station throat begins a full 3/4 mile (1150 m) from the end bumpers, causing trains to occupy the throat for far longer than necessary and increasing the delay required for a platform to be re-occupied by the next arriving train, thus limiting train throughput. The station throat does not allow simultaneous arrivals and departures from most platforms (such conflict-free parallel moves are the holy grail of throat design because they minimize the re-occupancy delay), severely limiting train throughput and operational flexibility.
...
Extremely Tight Curves. While curve radii at the location of the TTC itself are dictated by the street grid and surrounding building foundations, the two curves in the DTX tunnel approach (to turn from 7th onto Townsend and from Townsend onto 2nd) are much sharper than they need to be, and beyond the capability of some off-the-shelf high speed trains. High speed trains aren't MUNI street cars and won't turn on a dime; they are longitudinally stiff to provide good stability at high speeds. At these two curves on the 1.5-mile approach to the station, the radius could be easily increased from 150 m to at least 200 m, saving 30 to 40 valuable seconds in the long, slow crawl into the TTC, and increasing the train throughput of the station throat. If the throat can be straightened as well, a 200 m minimum radius would allow off-the-shelf procurement of trains without the need for expensive modifications to fit the extreme curves of the DTX, which threaten to set a standard for the entire California high speed rail system.
...
Inefficient 4th & Townsend Layout. The new underground station at 4th & Townsend should have four tracks to allow overtaking stopped trains in both directions (to improve train throughput) and its platforms should be lengthened to 400 m to allow HSR trains to use them in the event of a disruption at the TTC, thus improving operational flexibility to HSR and Caltrain's benefit.

To get a better handle on these problems, consider the following diagram of the "switching" system of the Downtown Tunnel Extension (click on picture for a full sized version):


Now, because Caltrain services and HSR services will have different platform heights, the side platforms at the "4th and Townsend" station (right hand of picture) will be only for the Caltrain services, up to six per hour, and one of the three islands at the end of the line (left hand side of picture) ... with a pair of platform tracks ... will be dedicated to Caltrain. Two terminal islands, with a total of four platform tracks, will be dedicated to HSR.

Quoting myself:

In the diagram, a Caltrain service departing either T-21 or T-22 will either crossover MT-2 at around +1050m or use the next switch to occupy MT-2 from there to +1720m, to allow an outbound HSR (not stopping at the local platform) to pass. In that case, an inbound HSR express can bypass a Caltrain inbound at the inbound platform on MT-2, then use the next switch to MT-5.

That is setting up that HSR to occupy MT-5 until the only switch back to the HSR platforms at about +900m. And of course the Caltrain local has to stay on MT-5 until the end.

I guess that means that MT-5 with a Caltrain inbound is a critical path. After the passing HSR uses the 2/5 switch at +1800m, how many minutes until the Caltrain local at the platform gets its green light and then passes by that switch, how many minutes until a following HSR can use / pass by that switch, and then how many minutes until an HSR passing the next local at the platform.

On the strictest reading of Prop 1A, the passing HSR and a following HSR can be five minutes apart and the Caltrain local has to fit in between ... on a more flexible reading, if two HSR are through and its clear for a third to pass inside of ten minutes, that would be close enough.

Now, an HSR outbound passing a Caltrain local outbound so the Caltrain local can use the outbound platform ... I got that. But an HSR outbound five minutes later would want to be on MT-2 all the way to pass. That's going to occupy MT-2 either all the way or from +700m to the 2/4 switch at +2450.

So that pins down the inbound pattern on MT-5. An inbound HSR uses MT-2 to pass a Caltrain local at the 4th and King platform on MT-5. Then the local pulls out of the platform. Then the following HSR uses the 2/5 switch at 2450 so that MT-2 is open for an outbound HSR passing a Caltrain local on the outbound platform, and chases the Caltrain Local up MT-5.

And ten minutes or less after the first passing HSR switched onto MT-5, another passing HSR must be clear to switch onto MT-5.

On a strict reading of the Prop 1A headway requirement, the headways inside the tunnel have to be two and a half minutes, to allow a Caltrain service to slot in between two HSR services that are running five minutes apart. And because of the design at 4th and Townsend of only one express track, alternating between inbound and outbound use, they have a very rigid operating schedule to maintain both ways through 4th and Townsend if they hope to be able to accommodate two or three HSR in a row at five minute intervals ... as required to be part of the HSR network.

The TJPA staff claim that trains can run 30mph through their tunnel design, but they have very tight curves, and its not clear that they can maintain 30mph all the way through. And there is a lot of inflexibility in getting a service from a particular tunnel track to a particular platform track and then out again.

And that's where my ability to squeeze information out of that diagram runs out. But the point is, the TJPA has to be able to prove that they can. They need to put together the timing of the system with trains coming in, trains going out, and meet two and a half minute headways.


Mind You, a Good Design Could Probably Do It

Can it be done? Well, it seems like it can, just not with the design they are working with. The layout proposed by Richard Mlynarik (pdf) looks like it probably can meet the requirement. Since navigating a pdf composed of so many design layers is tricky, let me take snapshots of particular points of interest.



First, at 4th and Townsend, there are three through platforms, one passing track, and one terminating platform. When Caltrain locals are mixing with HSR services, Caltrain services would normally use two of the platforms, and the inbound HSR could pass by on the track by the island at the bottom of the platform. So when two platforms are in use, there are two platforms and two passing tracks.

So Richard's design seems to eliminate the 4th and Townsend bottleneck, allowing any HSR in either direction to pass any Caltrain local, at any point in time.



The next point is easy to overlook if you are just scanning the diagram, but its a critical point. High Speed Rail trains are not streetcars ... they need to be relatively stiff to have lateral stability when running at high speeds ... including when there is another HSR service on the next track over, running over 200mph the opposite direction. And those numbers are "turn radius" ... they describe the tightness of the curve in terms of the radius of a circle it would lie on.

The dotted black lines are the proposed TJPA design at the time Richard put together this layout, with a turn radius of 169.2m, or 555ft ... which is too tight for at least one of the HSR trains presently in operation, and tight enough to force many of them run relatively slowly in order to cope. In Richard's layout, those particular curves are loosened to 250m (820ft), and the tightest curve in his layout is 190m (623ft). Looser curves allow faster train operations, getting trains over switches more quickly.



This complicated part is the station throat. The TJPA design simply extends the platform tracks around the curve, and does not start connecting them until it enters the tunnel. Richard's design allows more trains to be leaving platforms and arriving at platforms at the same time.



For the HSR platforms themselves, the platforms are all long enough for full length HSR trains, and the platforms are either straight or have a curve radius of 1000m (3,280ft), which allows the platforms to be built without a "gap" between the platform and the train. So if in the future, Caltrain services are upgraded to allow level wheelchair roll-on, roll-off boarding, the Caltrain platform can be upgraded to HSR heights, and the bottleneck of inflexible platform assignments can be eliminated as well.


Plus, it'd be cheaper too

This is the weird thing about design. With two equally good designs, "you get what you pay for". But one "feature" of a bad design is ... a lot of what you are paying for is coping with the bad design.

For the final point, don't focus on the switches ... count the tracks. These are the switches at opposite ends of the track underneath 2nd street:


I count two. Is that what you got?

The thing is, all that the extra track the length of the tunnel provides is a way for HSR trains to pass local trains at 4th and Townsend. That's the only purpose it really serves if the system is being stretched to capacity ... and that, of course, is when it matters the most.

Since Richard's design makes the allowance for HSR trains to pass local trains at 4th and Townsend ... it doesn't need that extra tunnel track.

And tunneling costs money. Lots of money. So the TJPA design is an inflexible design that might not even qualify to be part of the HSR network in the first place. If it does, it imposes a very rigid schedule of operations during peak demand, so that any delay or problem is likely to affect the whole system.

Plus, it seems certain to cost more than a better design would do.


Back to the Coalition Building

Progressive politics is about coalition building. Richard's design costs less and would appear to meet the needs of both HSR services and of Caltrain services more effectively. So, there could well be a coalition of interests there.

Now, sure, the CHSRA could do the same analysis, come to the same conclusion, comes out counter-attacking hard on the "costs too much, does too little" line, and come from behind to win a propaganda war, where at the moment they are getting absolutely clobbered.

The prospects for that do not appear to be too strong, however. It seems very much as if the CHSRA is going to try to play hardball. Why, I am not sure ... perhaps it is an effort to make sure that none of the cost of the downtown extension tunnel and the TBT train-box is penciled in as "Federal money handed to California HSR". Perhaps they are long on civil engineering experience and short on train operating experience, and trying to throw concrete at the problems with the TJPA design under the "better safe than sorry" philosophy.

Ah, but Caltrain ... Caltrain has a lot riding on this project as well. Right now they are facing the headaches of expanding the Caltrain corridor through the towns of the Peninsula to accommodate HSR while electrifying and grade separating the whole corridor, to support their upgrade to electric passenger trains.

One third of their board is from the transit authority for the Peninsula, and a target for Peninsula NIMBY's roped in by HSR deniers ... they will want to see the TBT problem resolved as soon as possible with as little deep seated grudges as possible, if only to encourage a similar approach in the towns on the Peninsula along the Caltrain corridor.

One third of their board is from San Francisco, which is heavily invested in getting the TBT established as the main downtown intermodal transit center.

One third of their board is from the transit authority for San Jose and area, which wants to see the HSR service operating through downtown San Jose, wants to see effective Caltrain services, and are not likely to be heavily invested in the specifics of the San Francisco terminal.

It would seem to be a good thing for Caltrain all around if there is a solution to the TBT puzzle that:

• meets the legitimate needs of the CHSRA and respects the statutory requirements they are working under (even if it might not meet the full list of demands of the CHSRA);
  
• meets the needs of Caltrain better than the existing design;
  
• allows San Francisco to make a legitimate claim to fund part of the TBT train-box with HSR funds; and
  
• reduces the amount of money that San Francisco has to scrape together to build the Downtown Extension Tunnel.
  

And, in the end, while the TJPA certainly seems to be more into playing political games than seeking out quality design ... a solution that can recruit a broader coalition support is better for them as well.

So, unlike the Procrustrean Bed of the Part 1 Train Box design, and the trade-off in the Part 2 Train Box designs between tight fit and extra expense of different eight track, two-tier train boxes ... I'm happy enough with Richard Mlynarik to close the series here.

In other words, enough investigating the problem ... time to start rabble rousing.

And lest we forget why getting inter-regional transportation that can be powered by sustainable energy sources is so urgent ...

So we came and we conquered and found
Riches of commons and kings
Who strangled and wrestled the ground
But they never put back anything
Now I'm trapped like a dog in a cage
Wherever the truth is pursued
It must be the curse of the age
Whats taken is never renewed

For lack of a better term, call it Capitalism

also at Progressive Blue and Docudharma

Burning the Midnight Oil for the Beauty Platform

Johnny Venom, in an extended comment on a Robert Oak post at The Economic Populist, says (note ... much good stuff snipped, so click through):

My take on all this madness

What's happening here is the collision of several realities:

1. You had institutions, who years if not decades, believing the hype they built themselves to sell to their clients. ...

2. That you can't simply create your own damn financial instrument to meet a client's needs. ...

3. Derivatives products work when they are designed well and implemented on a regulated environment. ...

4. Many of these items will never be liquid. This brings us to today. The reality of the situation is that we now have to be discriminating between those derivatives that are somewhat liquid and those that aren't. The former can have mark to market, but there needs to be a proper exchange for these things. Both the CME and ICE are going to have such a thing, and these banks should be made to trade them on it to get these things off their books. As for the iliquid ones, well unless our goal is to bankrupt these banks in some attempt to punish them, we will have to facilitate either a suspension of FASB 157 for these or some hybrid. ...

5. Banks holding on to these illiquid derivative step children, that must be re-engineered, will have to realize they won't get all their money back. ...

6. Lastly, new accounting rules and financial regulations must be in place to keep in check the establishment of new positions. ...

Regarding the highlighted section, I had this response:

The goal is to have a functioning banking system ...
... composed of banking operations each of which have a balance sheet that enables it to raise funds if a credit-worth borrower walks through its doors.

Regarding bankruptcy:

As for the iliquid ones, well unless our goal is to bankrupt these banks in some attempt to punish them, we will have to facilitate either a suspension of FASB 157 for these or some hybrid.

... having those banking operations is of far more important to the economy than the identify of those operations. If given money center banks are in reality insolvent, and need a fiction to avoid bankruptcy, then what we need rather than a fiction is a process for reconstituting a functioning, soundly financed banking operation from out of that mess.

Given those sound banking operations, we can leave the original shareholders and bondholders to sort out the mess under normal bankruptcy proceedings.

What this will mean, of course, is that those holding shares in bank who were playing these games ... the beneficiaries of dividend payments that should have been retained as contingency reserves and paper capital gains that they did not realize by selling the shares because they hoped for the magic roller coaster ride that always ends up at a higher point than it starts at ... they'll most likely get wiped out. Most bondholders will become equity owners of the shell of the former banking operation. If the assets regain some value they will get some return, even if they end up taking some losses on those bonds (depending on when they bought in).

And, of course, the first step toward maximizing the prospect that those dubious assets will regain some liquid value is to provide the economy with a functioning banking system, composed of banking operations with sound balance sheets.

What would we call such a process of risk-takers who made bad judgements experiencing financial losses, with the owners of insolvent firms losing all that they put into the firms and the lenders to insolvent firms receiving some but not all of their money back?

What would we call the process of bringing insolvent banks into receivership, reconstituting a sound banking operation from the morass, and leaving the original owners carrying the bag?

Now, it may not be Capitalism in fact, where the government uses the power to issue money to insure financial firms from loss ... and which may just as easily be called Wall Street Socialism.

But for the myths told about "risk taking entrepreneurs" ... there is no drama in the tales unless the risks are real risks with real consequences for failure.

So, this alternative, in deference to the myth, and for lack of a better term, I'm going to call it "Capitalism".

Forgotten Years (Blue Sky Mining, 1990)

Few of the sins of the father,
   are visited upon the son
Hearts have been hard,
   our hands have been clenched in a fist too long
Our sons will never be soldiers,
   our daughters will never need guns
These are the years between
These are the years that were hard fought and won
Contracts torn at the edges,
   old signatures stained with tears
Seasons of war and peace,
   these should not be forgotten years
Still it aches like tetanus,
   it reeks of politics
How many dreams remain?
   this is a feeling too strong to contain