Sunday Train: zOMG these aint REAL HSR trains!

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

crossposted from Voices on the Square

This is more or less the three year anniversary of the first Sunday Train ~ a bit less than more, since this is the 12th of August 2012 and I think that the first Sunday Train was 16th of August, 2009. It emerged from a variety of blogging I had been doing over the previous couple of years, with a notion that if I set down a target of blogging on Sunday, it would make it easier for people to track the Sunday Train down. It was originally posted at my midnight-populist blogspot, Burning the Midnight Oil, crossposted to Agent Orange, My Left Wing, Progressive Blue and Docudharma, but I was never really enthusiastic about building up my own blog, and nor about the constraints of blogspot, so over time I settled on writing the Sunday Train at a community blog, cross-posting it to other community blogs, and posting the summary to Burning the Midnight Oil, with cross-links to the blogs containing that week's full post.

The crosspost list also varied from time to time: of those original community blogs, I rarely visit My Left Wing or Docudharma much anymore, and the best of Progressive Blue has been folded into the broader coalition at Voices on the Square, which since its launch last month has been the new home base for Sunday Train. The Sunday Train still rolls into Agent Orange (aka "daily kos"), and has for some time also stopped at Hillbilly Report and the Stars Hollow Gazette, and occasionally at the European Tribune.

In celebration of the three year anniversary, more or less, I am reprinting the diary from the 16th August, 2009, "zOMG, these aint REAL HSR trains!"

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posted at Voices on the Square

crossposted at Stars Hollow Gazette

crossposted at HillbillyReport.org

crossposted at Agent Orange

Sunday Train: West Virginia River Runner Rail and the Steel Interstates

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

The flashy rail projects are the very HSR projects to build bullet trains serving urban areas with millions of people.

But the role of rail in supporting sustainable extends beyond the bullet train system alone. It may not be critical to the financial success of these bullet trains to provide service to people living in urban areas of 50,000 to 200,000 ~ but its critical to these people to have access to some form of sustainable intercity transport.

Indeed, if we are going to be harvesting wind power, solar power, sustainably coppiced biocoal, geothermal, run of river hydro, and other sustainable resources ... we are going to be creating incomes in areas away from the 1m+ cities. We best look after the needs of the people who come to those areas looking for work.
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More:

• Progressive Blue


• HillbillyReport.org


• Docudharma


• Agent Orange

Sunday Train: Conventional Rail and the Steel Interstates ~ Best Friends Forever

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

I've written several times about the direct potential of the Steel Interstate project to cut our oil imports by 10% by getting long haul freight trucking off the road. It would at the same time relieve the crushing burden imposed by long haul trucking on our over-worked, under-maintained Interstate, National and State highways, help get renewable energy resources from places that they are to places people need electricity, and of course support long distance Rapid Passenger Rail offering dramatically improved reliability and transit speed, supporting operating surpluses with multiple services per day.

I don't recollect that I have written very much about the benefit that the Steel Interstates offer to passenger rail elsewhere. So that's what I aim to do. Today I will look at one rail transport ideas I have talked about previously ~ Northeast Ohio Regional Rail ~ and what help it would receive from the Steel Interstates. Then sometime in the next week or two, I will look at the Columbus / WV / Atlantic Coast "RidgeRunner", and the benefit it would receive from the Steel Interstates.
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More:

• Progressive Blue


• HillbillyReport.org


• Docudharma


• Agent Orange

Night Train: Losing HSR Battles while Winning the Transport War

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

Last week I raised the certainty that Kasich will return $375m of Ohio's $400m grant for laying the 110mph 3C corridor track and running 79mph trains on them ... and the likelihood that Wisconsin's Governor-elect Jobs Walkabout will return all or most of Wisconsin's $810m for the Milwaukee to Madison Emerging HSR corridor.

Just today, I read that Governor Jobs Walkabout was a big recipient of road lobby money during the campaign, so after conning them into thinking that the $810m could be shifted into Wisconsin roads, the fact that its not possible, that another state gets the money, that Talgo may leave the state after its current contracts are finished ... that is being used to try to reverse his decision.

I do not have high hopes that he will reverse himself, but the stronger the fight against him, the greater the prospect of getting the connection between Rapid Rail HSR corridors and jobs implanted into people's minds. And it might result in a push to get some of the funds spent on the Hiawatha line to Chicago.

And the status of the Express High Speed Rail project in Florida ~ the Express HSR system that would have been completed before a prospective second Obama term could finish ~ seems to be up in the air: Despite "Cloud of Uncertainty," FDOT, Contractors Prepare to Move Ahead on HSR.

Thing is, even if the opponents of HSR killed three: they had to kill them all. Every HSR line that gets finished will undermine their case, and raise intra-regional and inter-regional jealousies as a force ensuring that HSR funding is provided at the Federal level and matching funds are raised at the state level.

Of course, RepubliCorp has control of the House of Representatives, and with it the purse strings, for the next two years, and even if there is a HSR authorization in a lame duck transportation bill ... that money is not going to get appropriated for two years. But as long as some corridors get finished, and the demonstration effect starts to take hold, the tide will turn back.


Where Should the Republican Rejection Money Be Recycled?

For my part, as a Buckeye, where I want the $375m 3C Quickstart Design Money to go is to the Wolverine Line in Michigan. Michigan applied for $830m in the round of funding that saw Ohio awarded $400m, while Michigan only got $40m. Then when $2.5b of money requiring at least a 20% state match was available, Michigan applied for $385m in projects, with a Federal contribution of $308m.

Well, give them Ohio's money. Nothing will do more to ensure that there is not "missing link" between the Eastern Seaboard HSR systems and the Midwestern HSR systems than the former Ohio money ending up in Michigan. Heck, since its ARRA money, which is allowed to be no-match, give them the $308m they asked for, and as much of the matching cost as the Ohio decision allows.

As for the Wisconsin $810m (it might only be $740m, if the Governor is clever enough to figure out a way to hold onto the $70m to be spent on the Hiawatha corridor), I'd say start by putting it at the other end of the Empire Builder line, in the Pacific Northwest. Washington applied for $850m for the Portland/Seattle/Vancouver line, and got $590m, so $260m could go to the Cascade Corridor.

That leaves $550m. First, ask Georgia if they still want the full $472m capital cost of their Atlanta to Macon line, and if the State Legislature is willing to guarantee operating costs, give it to them. That spreads the projects east to west and north to south across the country.

Now, if the Tea Baggers scare them from taking the money, then it'll have to go somewhere else. Someone is sure to want it, of course, but a southern project would be a fine thing to have as part of it.

If anything is left over, there are lots of individual projects included in the applications for the $8b ... there shouldn't be any trouble sorting out the smaller individual grant request, selecting the most shovel, and then awarding the balance to the best bang for the buck individual projects (excluding, of course, states that say they don't want the money after all).


What about the California HSR System?

I figure that the Express HSR corridor money was split between Florida and California, both in the $8b in ARRA funding and in the $2.5b of annual transport funding. So if Florida gives its money back, I think it ought to all go to California. Indeed, Florida should be told that up front: they got the largest chunk of Express HSR funds, and if they don't want it, the other Express HSR applicant, which promised 50:50 matching funds to boot, they get it.


Anyway, that's my re-allocation ...

... but the key thing is, there still are rail projects going ahead, and as long as some get finished, the demonstration effect is going to take hold. Even if it is a dry two years for further HSR funding ... as long as that two years is spent building systems, it will not be an unproductive two years.

So, what's your re-allocation?


Midnight Oil ~ Truganini

Sunday Train: King of the Mountain, Part 1

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

I noted near the beginning of the Appalachian Hub series about the special advantages offered by rail electrification for this project.

Now that I have sketched out a process by which a national Steel Interstate network of corridors can, in fact, be built in this coming decade, this is probably a good time to come back and take a look at the challenges that are faced when putting the Steel Interstates through hilly and mountainous terrain.

Of course, if rail electrification was a particular benefit in mountainous terrain, one would expect to see it in places like, say, Switzerland.

Picture of a Swiss electric freight west of the Albula tunnel
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Trans-Alpine Freight and Swiss Rail

When tuning in to news from Switzerland, the big story are so-called "base tunnels". These are tunnels that cut through "the base of a mountain". The Lotschberg Base Tunnel, featured in World's Most Spectacular Tunnels, cuts through the mountain a 1,312 feet lower than the tunnel that it replaces ... that is about a quarter of a mile lower.

Just as the original investments in Japan and France in capital-intensive HSR passenger lines, what is driving this investment in base tunnels is the capacity limits of the present rail routes. As AlpTransit's description (pdf) of the Gothard Base Tunnel Project puts it:

Construction of base tunnels under the Gotthard and Ceneri creates an ultramodern flat rail link whose highest point at 550 metres above sea level is no higher than the city of Berne. This is much lower than the highest point of the existing route through the mountains at 1150 metres. Gradients will be no steeper than where the railway crosses the Jura mountains through the Hauenstein tunnel (Basel – Olten) or the Bözberg tunnel (Basel – Brugg). The route through Switzerland becomes flatter and 40 km shorter. Italy and Germany come much closer together.

Freight trains travelling on the flat route can be longer and pull up to twice today's weight – 4000 tonnes instead of 2000 tonnes. They will be up to twice as fast, too: the fastest freight trains will have a top speed of 160 km/h. Trains like this cannot be used on existing Alpine routes because of the steep gradients and tight curves. When the flat route is complete, it will be possible to transport an equal volume of freight with fewer locomotives and personnel, and less energy.

Just as with the Japanese and French investment in Passenger HSR, it is important to put this investment in context. This is not a result of the failures of the existing Swiss electric freight rail system - it is a result of its success. That is, the growth in interstate freight transport is pushing up against the capacity limits of the Swiss system because the Swiss rail system was effective in capturing a substantial share of freight.

This figure from sheet 5 of the Gothard Tunnel pdf makes the point in no uncertain terms. The original Swiss electric freight system has carried a majority of the Trans-alpine freight that passes through Switzerland, while in France and Austria, the majority of freight has been passing by road.

And when digging further into the description of the Base Tunnel makes it clear the benefit that the Swiss have obtained from electric rail.


Why Electrification in Mountain Rail Corridors?

Bear in mind that a normal maximum gradient in many US mainline rail corridors is 1%, or "10 per thousand", when considering the following description of the route being replaced:

The ramps of the present-day railways through the Gotthard and Ceneri have gradients of up to 26 per thousand. The flatness and straightness of the base route – maximum gradient 12.5 per thousand overground and 8.0 per thousand in the base tunnels – allow productive deployment of long, heavy trains through elimination of time-consuming shunting operations. Today, a heavy freight train travelling north-south over the Gotthard and Ceneri mountain routes requires a pushing locomotive because of the steep gradients. The goal of freight trains hauling more than 2000 tonnes travelling through Switzerland without stopping at Erstfeld or Bellinzona, and without midtrain or pushing locomotives, can only be accomplished when both the Gotthard and Ceneri base tunnels are completed.

Consider that: a gradient of 2.5% and "only" being able to move 2,200tons of freight at 50mph.

As the Wikipedia machine notes, the secret to this success in the mountains lies in the higher power-weight ratio of electric locomotives:

The high power of electric locomotives gives them the ability to pull freight at higher speed over gradients, in mixed traffic conditions this increases capacity when the time between trains can be decreased. The higher power of electric locomotives and a electrification can also be a cheaper alternative to a new and less steep railway if trains weights are to be increased on a system.

Putting the Advantages to Work

Of course, one way to cope with mountainous terrain is to avoid it. In the proposed Steel Interstate system, line one, the Liberty Line from New England to California, runs along the Shenandoah River Valley, the original "highway to the west", mostly avoiding the type of terrain that the Swiss would consider to be Mountains. To the west, it runs through the lower land of southern New Mexico and Arizona, a similarly easy route through the western cordillera, and then runs up the Central Valley to bring most of California within its catchment.

The roughest terrain that this corridor needs to tackle is the alignment west and north of Chattanooga, where the existing STRACNET corridor does a sweeping S-curve to avoid the rougher terrain where the Interstate has simply been blasted through. This is a key point where the Line Development Bank will have to carefully analyze the alternative alignments, and could well opt for taking the Rapid Freight Rail corridor out of the conventional freight rail corridor, where the Rapid Freight Rail path gains time by operating at a steeper gradient than the conventional rail corridor. That is, operating at 60mph over half the distance may well be a faster path than operating at 100mph along the heavy freight alignment.

Unlike the Swiss freight system, the electrified heavy freight paths will not have to contend with constantly shuttling aside to make way for passenger trains, since the passenger trains will be on the Rapid Rail Paths, whether those are provided by dividing up the time of day that different trains run on a track, by providing separated track in the same right of way, or by providing a Rapid Freight bypass on its own Right of Way.

Once the Chattanooga to Nashville, alignment is determined, that also solves the only stretch of rough terrain that the Heartland Alignment faces, while the Gulf and Atlantic Line only ever runs to, but never through, rough terrain.

In other words, other than the Chattanooga/Nashville alignment, all of the challenging terrain has been focused on the National Line:

• Harrisburg to Pittsburgh, within the territory tof the Appalachian Hub;
• east of Salt Lake City and east of Sacramento, on the line to Oakland;
• the northeastern and northwestern Oregon corridors on the line to Portland; and
• the Southern Oregon / Northern Californian corridor between the Pacific Northwest and the California Central Valley

Indeed, it has been suggested to me that this is a line that should not exist at all. So in a couple of weeks, in King of the Mountain Part II, I'll take up the focus on the need for a genuinely national network, and the flexibility that the institution of the Line Development Bank gives us in pursuing a genuinely national network, focusing on the proposed Steel Interstate system both with and without the National Line.


The Headliners: Midnight Oil / King of the Mountain

Walking through the high dry grass,
   pushing my way through slow
Yellow belly black snake,
   sleeping on a red rock
Waiting for the stranger to go
Sugar train stops at the crossing,
   cane cockies cursing below
Bad storm coming, better run
   to the top of the mountain
Mountain in the shadow of light,
   rain in the valley below

Sunday Train: Taking the Train to the Airport

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

Disclaimer: Nothing said here should be taken to imply that airport/train connections are the primary transport task for either light rail, mass transit, conventional intercity rail, or high speed intercity rail. In other words, the focus of an essay in a regular weekly series on one particular topic does not imply anything along the lines of "most important thing".

However, recently, I keep running into the issue of taking the train to the airport. I read an recent article in an air travel industry publication that focused on the airport connections associated with the projects funded in the $8b HSR funding. I read an older piece about the proposed intermodal station in Chicago that would allow our Ohio trains to get to O'Hare. And the proposal to terminate the California HSR at the redesigned Lindbergh Field came up as part of the discussion at the California HSR blog.

So with the Super Bowl coming up to distract things, I succumbed to what was clearly fate, and am going to discuss taking the train to the airport.


The Green Dimension

It is, I hope, widely understood that the carbon footprint of flying is very high. What might not be as widely understood is that the shorter routes tend to be the least efficient routes. On a short flight, the extra fuel-consumption of take-off and landing is shared out among fewer route miles.

And further, aircraft are less efficient flying through the denser air closer to the surface, and more efficient when they reach "cruising altitude". And of course, when flying from, say, Atlanta to Charlotte NC, or Columbus OH to Chicago, you spend the bulk of the flight either climbing to cruising altitude or descending from it.

And under present conditions, HSR demand focuses on trips of one to three hours, which are all short-haul flights in terms of flying. So not only can HSR be powered by sustainably generated electricity (either from the outset for 220mph Express HSR, or as part of ongoing upgrades, for 110mph Emerging HSR) ... but the flights they will replace are those that have a higher carbon footprint per route mile than the average for flying.

Now, whether we will still be flying in 2050, to what extent, and for what types of journeys ... we have to take whatever steps we can to cut our carbon footprint as soon as we can in order to get to 2050 more or less intact. And the above suggests that one early strategy is to make it possible to take a longer flight to an airport and then complete the journey by HSR.


Airports Aint Just Airports

Of course, for this strategy, it makes a difference what kind of airport it is. This is critical to the discussion of the Lindbergh Field Intermodal Transit Center (pdf) option in San Diego, which arises in some of the commentary on the California HSR blog post, How Will HSR Get to Downtown San Diego?.

While the ITC is a very interesting proposal in terms of providing direct Trolley, Coaster and Amtrak Pacific Surfliner stops at the airport - Lindbergh Field is between one and two miles from downtown, and the existing Amtrak Pacific Surfliner terminus at Santa Fe is a much stronger location for the downtown San Diego HSR station. It is located on one Trolley line that runs to the border, adjcent to the trolley line to Petco field as well as one of the main downtown bus transfer centers. It is much more convenient to the Convention center and two blocks from the Coronado ferry.

And with respect to the plane/train transfer scenario, San Diego airport is not a main hub airport, nor is its location promising for development into a main hub airport. So for plane/train transfers involving both San Diego and California HSR, the majority of transfers will be somewhere else in the state, with the trip either starting or ending at the San Diego HSR station.

So, while the Intermodal Transit Center is interesting as one transitional design for reducing vehicle miles traveled to the San Diego Airport - its the local rail connections that are critical for that impact. For the High Speed Rail, where San Diego is likely to have one suburban and one downtown station, Lindbergh Field seems to be too close to downtown to be the suburban station and seems to be too far from the key intra-state and interstate transport destinations in San Diego to be the downtown station.


OK, so what about O'Hare

O'Hare airport in Chicago is a clear contrasting example. This is a major western Great Lakes / eastern Midest transport hub. Any HSR network in this region would receive a benefit from connecting to O'Hare.

For existing Michigan and Indiana trains, and proposed Ohio Hub trains, the obstacle to getting to the airport is not the existence of an airport station - but rather that fact that O'Hare is on the western side of the Great Chicago Divide.

Most people are aware of the importance of Chicago status as a central rail hub in Chicago's emergence as a major American city. Perhaps fewer are aware of the way that Chicago developed as a rail hub. This was in the late 1800's, when large numbers of ofttimes shady characters were trying to make their fortune by building a railroad. The end result of the chaotic process was a system of lines running from Chicago to the east, and a system of lines running from Chicago to the west, with very little interconnection between the two systems.

And of course, the reason that the Midwest Hub and Ohio Hub systems can be built out so much more quickly with so many more miles per dollar than the California HSR system is because they are starting out as 110mph Emerging HSR systems, built in existing rail corridors. So they stand to inherit the east/west divide.

However, it is no secret that this is a problem, and so there are efforts underway to address these problems. One of these efforts is the West Loop Transportation Center

An appealing aspect of this proposal is that it means the downtown Chicago HSR station will be connected directly to Chicago Union Station and the Olgivie Transportation Center.

The Chicago / Michigan corridor would be a primary beneficiary among those receiving funding from the $8b appropriated in Stimulus II, but later stages of the Midwest Hub to both Indianapolis and northern Indiana would also benefit from this through access ... and of course the Ohio Hub, which was funded for its core seed corridor at conventional Amtrak speed, plans to connect to Chicago, first via the Michigan corridor, and then via the Indiana corridors.


And a whole collection of potential airport connections ...

Some airport HSR connections are stations directly integrated into an airport terminal complex ... others are HSR connections with local rail that has an airport station ... others are connected to airports by less direct means.

For those choosing between an air/air transfer and an air/train transfer, the HSR station integrated into the airport terminal is obviously the ideal. However, for many people living in rural and outer suburban areas that the HSR passes through, the greater ease of access and quality of service at the regional HSR station will offset an additional transfer to connect to a hub airport.

On the other hand, we are talking about fewer than half of the passengers on a High Speed Rail service - so while an airport station is always an option to consider, going too far out of the way in order to stop at the airport is not automatically the correct choice.

And of course, while in some cases the die has been cast, either by the legacy of airport location choices and availability of transport corridors, in other cases, the decision has not been finalized yet.


Defending Aviation's Market Share

How do we fund airport stations? You might think that since there is an Aviation Trust Fund that we regularly dip into for capital improvements, and since an airport HSR station is an obvious improvement in terms of offering transport alternatives to air passengers, that one way to fund the airport station itself, and in particular the extra capital cost of integrating into the passenger terminal rather than having a station "in the vicinity of" the airport, could apply for funding as a capital improvement to the airport.

Except the ideal is an intermodal through station, the HSR accesses the airport terminal, and where local transport accesses both the airport terminal and the HSR station. Which runs smack dab into the FAA regulations (pdf):

To be AIP and PFC eligible, the airport ground access transportation project must meet the following conditions: (1) The road or facility may only extend to the nearest public highway or facility of sufficient capacity to accommodate airport traffic; (2) the access road or facility must be located on the airport or within a right-of-way acquired by the public agency; and (3) the access road or facility must exclusively serve airport traffic.

There's nothing in the first two that interferes with applying for these funds to cover the incremental capital cost of integrating the HSR station with an airport terminal: the problem is, of course, the third section. This is why so many light rail and other rail projects that go to airports terminate at the airport, since that is the easiest way to guarantee that the infrastructure on the airport property never, ever commits the unpardonable efficiency of serving multiple transport needs at the same time.

Indeed, if you press the point - and as far as I understand it, the FAA does indeed press the point - any through rail corridor must be automatically ineligible, since the passengers that are taking the train through and not using the airport station are automatically receiving service from the road that is not "exclusively for the airport".

This is a national policy that could well be changed. Whether it could be changed by executive order, or requires new Congressional language, I do not know - I am not, after all, a lawyer, not even in the sense of playing on on the Internet - but whichever it is, that is a change that ought to be pursued.

The thing about this regulation is that it doesn't matter how much of the use of the facility is to serve the airport, nor what the cost efficiency of the system is in terms of serving passengers to and from the airport ... the simple fact that another use may be made of the facility is used to rule the project ineligible, so the usefulness and cost-effectiveness of the service to air passengers is never assessed.

A preferable limit for through rail services would be to the incremental capital cost of providing service to a passenger station directly integrated with an airport passenger terminal, restricted to infrastructure located on the airport property itself.

As argued above regarding Lindbergh Field in San Diego, an airport station is not automatically the preferred location for an HSR station. However, with the opportunities to engage in air/train transfers, and the existing ground transport connections to the airport, it is often an option worth considering.

However, because of the space hunger of airport runways, there is often an incremental capital cost in connecting an HSR corridor directly with an airport via an airport terminal station. Where the airport station turns out to be a cost effective way of providing improved transport connections to the airport, the decision should be made in terms of how effectively it serves to provide transport to and from the airports, and the efficiency of also providing additional service to others should not automatically rule it out.

Sunday Train: Going to Disneyland, Disneyworld, and Other Adventures

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

Huh, seems me that whatever the state of my various concerns, the agenda of the Sunday Train has been taken over by the White House ... funny how announcing the recipients of a total of $8b will do that.

The Transport Politic (aka Yonah Freeman and the TTP commentariat) has a very complete rundown. The allotments over $200m are:

• California, $2,344m
• Florida: $1,250m
• Illinois: $1,236m
• Wisconsin: $822m
• Washington: $590m
• North Carolina: $545m
• Ohio: $400m

So, what's the money for?


So, what's the money for?

I'll start with the big ticket items.

California, $2,344m. This includes $1,850m for the California HSR Stage 1 from San Francisco to Anaheim via San Jose, Fresno, Bakersfield, and the LA Basin. This is, in essence, enough to prime the pump for the California project.

California has the advantage of $9b in bonding authority already passed in November 2008, but that bonding authority has strings attached. One of those string is that for any given segment, all funding has to be in place before bonds can be sold, bonds cannot fund more than half the cost of a given segment, and to avoid monkey business in the definition of "segment", it has to have a vetted plan for running services without state operating subsidies.

This ARRA funding will allow the California HSR authority to work through 2010 and its projected start of the segment design and build process in 2011 without having to sell bonds up front. Then if an application for additional Federal funds requires matching funds, it will be possible to bring one or more of the defined segments in line for receiving state bond support, which will provide the matching funds.

Obviously, how fast those funds flow will determine how close the CAHSRA can stay to its project timeline ... but with the ARRA funding to prime the pump, California is well placed to proceed with the project at whatever pace that funding flows permit.

And the flip side of the ARRA announcement is a substantial group of states with a stake in having enough HSR funding so that they are not forced to go toe-to-toe with California's substantial application advantages. Any "transparent process", which are codewords for cost-benefit analysis based decisions, will give heavy weight to California for Express HSR. Just as the Northeast Corridor has a close to ideal population distribution for conventional rail, and the Great Lakes / Eastern Midwest a close to an ideal population distribution for 110mph/125mph Emerging/Regional HSR, California has close to an ideal population distribution for Express HSR.

In addition to the Stage 1 corridor funding, the ARRA funding includes $400m for building the shell of a bus terminal into the foundations of the Transbay Terminal bus station in San Francisco. This is a project that is reputedly "ready to go", although of course the actual design of the TBT train box leaves quite a bit to be desired. Never one to quit working before the whistle, I am hoping that the availability of $400m can be used to persuade the Transbay Joint Power Authority to build a less heavily bottlenecked design for trains entering and leaving this undergound train station.

Finally, while Stage 1 does not go to Vegas (despite what the Replicants were saying this time last year) ... it does go to Disneyland. Which sets the stage for the next allocation.

Florida: $1,250m. This is entirely for Express HSR track from Tampa to Orlando. This is a line that has been criticized for not connecting the two downtowns of the two cities. On the other hand, it does go to Disneyworld, and as an on-again, off-again project that kept getting squashed by lack of local funding, the Florida State Legislature was led to believe that their hopes of HSR funding required a commitment to support complementary local rail service. Support for SunRail passed, and so Florida got their Disneyworld train.

If there is ongoing federal funding available, I expect that sooner or later Florida will bite the bullet and sort out an extension of the service - even if not an extension of the corridor - to allow downtown to downtown service. After all, in France, one of the early pioneers in High Speed Rail, its common for the Express HSR services to only run on Express HSR corridors between major metropolitan areas, and to run into and through major metro areas on express electric urban lines.

Illinois: $1,236m. The main project here is $1,102m to upgrade parts of the Chicago / St. Louis corridor to 110mph service, cutting end-to-end travel time to four hours, and bringing substantial new populations along the corridor within three hours or less of either Chicago or St. Louis or both. Further improvement of this corridor on the same basis can bring the end-to-end time down to three hours.

The second main project is $133m for line and station improvements between Chicago and Michigan, including two suburban and one downtown station for Detroit. This is a line that, like the Chicago / St. Louis, has already has a series of smaller incremental improvements.

Wisconsin: $822m. The bulk of this is $810m to establish a Milwaukee-Madison corridor service. This will extend the already well patronized successful Chicago / Milwaukee corridor, and indeed further build patronage on that corridor, since Madison / Chicago is a substantial transport market in its own right along this corridor.

Washington: $590m. This is mostly for bypass tracks for the Cascade Corridor between Oregon and Washington, with some services continuing to Vancouver. I believe there is also some provision for new rolling stock to support additional Vancouver services.

North Carolina: $545m. The bulk of this is $520m to bring the Raleigh/Charlotte corridor up to 90mph, as a first step to eventually bringing it up to 110mph as part of the Southeast HSR Corridor.

Ohio: $400m. This is all dedicated to establishing the conventional rail starter service for the Triple C route from Cleveland to Columbus and Cincinnati to Columbus. This was a route abandoned in 1971 when Penn Central went bust, and when Columbus was well under half a million in population. However, with the growth of Columbus in the decades since, Columbus is now the second most populous metro area and the corridor the most densely populated corridor in the country without regular rail service.

In terms of HSR, establishing this service is a starter on establishing the 110mph version of the Triple C, which with two hour services to Columbus from either end is when the corridor is projected to be capable of generating a substantial operating surplus. It may take a series of upgrades, to get there, but each upgrade will cut trip speeds and improve patronage on the corridor, trimming the required subsidy until it finally goes away.


Oh, and clever politics too

I've already noted the political intelligence of giving California enough to prime their pump. California Senators and Congressmen will, of course, be pushing for enough further HSR funding to assure that California's HSR system can be constructed more or less on scheduled. And of course, rivals can either try to fight that big House caucus ... or work out a way to ensure there is enough to go around. The politics leans toward the "enough to go around" outcome.

For Florida, people from all over the country go to Disneyworld. In not too long a time from now, many of them will be catching the train from an airport station to Disneyworld, and some of them using the HSR train again for one or another daytrip. This addresses the "if only you had ever been to Europe/Japan and experienced this thing ..." problem.

And of course, Florida is a famous Presidential swing state. Work on the corridor will be progressing before election day in 2012.

Illinois is not a famous Presidential swing state, but after California is one of the prime examples of states that have invested both capital and operating subsidies into improving Amtrak corridor services in its state, and even if the President and Secretary of Transport were not a Democrat and Republican, respectively, from Illinois, it would be wise politics to reward that behavior with the flagship Emerging HSR corridor. Of course, on the SubsidyScope numbers, even at conventional rail speed, its also the leading Great Lakes / Midwestern regional corridor in operating cost ratio, so its also the safest bet in terms of generating a comfortable operating surplus once raised to 110mph.

Washington (and Oregon, but the bulk of the corridor is in Washington, and that's where the highest priority bottlenecks lie) may not lean as strongly Democratic in Presidential politics as Illinois, but is also an example of rewarding those states that have invested into corridor improvements, as in inducement to additional states to follow the same course.

North Carolina is an example of a state that we didn't expect to be a swing state in Presidential politics, but then in 2008, it swung. And North Carolina is right on the boundary line between states that have been making genuine investments in improved rail service, and the states to its immediate south and west that have been paying lip service at most.

And of course, Ohio is a Presidential swing state in the Florida league. Further, the Ohio Triple-C will be in operation before election day, 2012.

In terms of the politics of rewarding states for supporting rail, Ohio is like Florida in the first half of "new friends are silver, old friends are gold" ... after a very tight fight in the Ohio state legislature, the operating subsidies required by the conventional speed Triple-C service were passed by the Republican State Senate. That was when before Strickland's approval rating was battered by the recession, and unless that subsidy offer was taken up by the DoT, there was every chance that it would not be repeated.

On the other hand, once the service is up and running, the call to apply for federal funds to speed segments of the corridor up to 110mph will be much harder to resist than it was to fight against the idea of starting the service up in the first place. So there is every reason to hope for 110mph service to be in place in Ohio sometime before election day, 2016.


And now, the headliners ...
Midnight Oil: The Power and the Passion

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.

Sunday Train: The Pay-To-Grow Financial Model for Regional HSR

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

Let construction or upgrade of a rail corridor be proposed, and almost immediately the cry goes up, "but we can't afford it! It costs too much!".

Confusing the response to this cry is that there are two quite different types of "cost too much" - real, and financial.

There first "cost of rail" question is the real cost question: what is the full economic benefit, including all material and energy impacts saved versus other alternative, versus the full economic cost.

Note: This is the kind of "cost versus benefit" question that Ed Gleaser fumbled so badly when he assumed Zero Population Growth in east Texas, no congestion today between Houston and Dallas on the intercity road network, either deliberately or through negligence bypassed important intercity transport demands along the route of his corridor, and presumed that the only available option was the most capital-intensive type of rail corridor, the all-new, all-grade separated, Express High Speed Rail corridor.

The second "cost of rail" question is the financial cost - given the complex, sometimes ad hoc, and often inconsistent sets of rules we have established for allocating resources for both investment in transport infrastructure and paying for transport operations, how do we "pay for" construction or upgrade of those rail corridors that our best analysis of cost and benefit indicate are wise investments.

Even narrowing down to the financial "cost of rail" question, it is a very broad question.

• The balance between direct benefit and third party benefit is substantially different for local rail and intercity rail, so the share of the benefit that can support ticket receipts varies widely.
  
• The cost per mile varies substantially between urban, suburban and rural areas, and between available space in an existing right of way and a new alignment.
  
• The cost of alternative modes of transport will vary widely based on the prices that are seen in future international oil markets
  
• And, critically, the finance constraint faced by state and local governments is quite different to the financial constraint faced by the Federal government, which is the monopoly issuer of currency and cannot ever be forced to default on debt issues in its own currency
  

Since the whole problem is too big for a single post, I will be attacking the attacking this problem by starting with the Emerging/Regional High Speed Rail intercity systems. The good lord willing and the creek don't rise, I'll be looking to conventional intercity systems, local rail, and Express High Speed Rail over some future Sundays.


Financing Intercity Transport

A substantial share of the transport benefit of intercity transport is received by the travelers themselves - it is direct benefit. That means that if you have an intercity transport option with good benefits relative to costs in real terms, there should be substantial revenues available to that operation in the form of ticket revenue.

However, there are still a wide range of other benefits. Effective intercity transport is widely seen as an factor in promoting economic development. Freight transport in particular has often been critical in generating regional exports that have been central to regional growth.

There is also the question of property values in the vicinity of the intercity route: access to intercity transport makes a location a magnet for local transport to engage in those trips.

As a result, the US government has long provided capital subsidies of one form or another to intercity transport. The Erie and Eire & Ohio canals received substantial government support. Before the Civil War, state and local governments offered a variety of inducements to gain railroad service, and during and after the Civil War, the Federal Government was heavily involved in promoting the development of transcontinental railroads to "open up the west", including massive land subsidies to support the capital spending required.

In the 20th century, government support for railroads was largely abandoned as attention turned to roads and air travel. Indeed, from 1942 to 1962, a rail ticket tax was in effect which, in some cases, helped to finance the construction of roads and airports.

For intercity air travel, from 1946 to 1971, Federal airport spending came out of the general fund. Since user fees were first instituted in 1971, capital spending has been made out of user fees, and when, as is normally the case, this does not leave enough to cover operating costs, a direct subsidy for operations comes out of the General Fund (cf. GAO report, page 7). The average general fund contribution is around 20% of the FAA budget, and so with operations accounting for about 60% of the FAA budget (cf. 2010 FAA budget), normally about 1/3 of FAA operations are subsidized from the general fund.

For Interstate Highways, we have a system where a Federal gas tax paid by all drivers, no matter what road they are driving on, funds a Federal Highway Trust Fund which is used to subsidize capital spending on a wide range of Interstate, US, State, Country and Township Highways, used primarily by suburban and rural motorists. So the core of capital funding for intercity road transport in the US is based on a cross-subsidy from local urban to local suburban and intercity motorists, with local city streets largely funded from property, and local income and sales taxes.

The Federal gas tax is also an excise tax without inflation indexing, so it has been falling behind explicit commitments and has recently been requiring "top-ups" from the General Fund. At the same time, as the American Society of Civil Engineers points out, the work that is performed is not keeping pace with the demands that have been placed on the roads.

Of course, car operations are also widely subsidized. For example, driving requires a place to park the car, and while most parking occurs at "free" parking, "free" parking is by no means free. It is normally provided either as streetside parking out of local funds or private parking required to be constructed by zoning laws, with the cost included in rents, prices for shopping and dining, and housing prices.


Operating Finance for Emerging & Regional High Speed Rail

"Emerging" High Speed Rail is the Department of Transport lingo for 110mph maximum speed routes in existing rail Right of Way. At this speed its possible for the passenger rail services to share some track with conventional freight rail, and possible to share all infrastructure with 100mph Rapid Freight Rail.

"Regional" HSR is the lingo for 125mph maximum speed routes, primarily in existing Rights of Way. While modernized regulations would allow these services to share infrastructure with 100mph Rapid Freight Rail, they will operate on track isolated from conventional Freight trains.

These speeds are not extreme for trains - for example, the NYC No. 999 is reputed to have run over 100mph in 1983 (even if the story may be in doubt), and between WWI and WWII, trains such as the Pioneer Zephyr regularly ran faster than 100mph.

The modern technology that is to be used by the 110mph and 125 mph Emerging/Regional HSR corridors is tilt-train technology. This is not focused on hitting the fastest maximum speed, but at keeping the train near the maximum speed.

The problem is that existing rights of way are designed with curves that are too tight for trains to take at 110mph unless the track is banked - the passengers would be thrown from side to side. But if the track is banked for 110mph trains, it will be banked too steeply for 20mph and 60mph trains. So what tilt-trains do is add the extra banking required themselves, so that they can run at 110mph through a curve banked for a train to pass at 60mph.

The result is a substantial improvement in effective trip speeds. For example, the line of sight distance between Columbus and Cleveland is 124 miles. Google gives the driving distance as 142 miles and the driving time as 2:15 (2 hours, 15 minutes). The proposed 110mph Ohio Hub has a sample schedule (pdf) (including scheduling leeway to permit reliable on-time service) of 1:38 for the Express running from Cleveland to Columbus, 27 minutes faster than the Google estimate driving distance and an effective line-of-sight speed of 75mph.

This is something of a best case example for Emerging HSR: two cities less than 2 hours apart by 110mph rail, and a 112mile (LOS) stretch between Berea and Columbus where the train can maintain an average 80mph, including stops and leeway for service reliability.

The projected operating ratio - operating revenues divided by operating costs - is 199%, reflecting the strength of the corridor for 110mph HSR.

Now, this projection refers to 2025, which means it includes assumptions of ongoing population growth, in Central Ohio in particular, and it also includes the assumption of Emerging HSR connections to Chicago available at both Cincinnati and Cleveland. And while it is based on a detailed regression model informed by existing travel, two hour and under rail trips available between Columbus and either Cleveland or Cincinnati, supplemented by one hour train trips between Dayton and either Cincinnati and Columbus is a substantial expansion of existing transport choices, so a cautious use of this projection would require including some substantial margin for error.

On the other hand, the projected operating surplus is 99% of operating costs, so even with a very substantial margin for error, the corridor would still be offering an operating surplus. And this projection is based on travel conditions circa 2005 - a rail service that acts primarily to provide a supplementary alternative to Interstate Highway traffic can be expected to provide surges in patronage during each of the oil price shocks that we can expect to experience in the decades ahead.

The take-away conclusion is that the strongest of corridors for 110mph and 125mph Emerging/Regional HSR ought to be able to cover their own operating costs, unlike road and air transport ... and yield a surplus. And that potential for operating surplus is key to the specific question of how to finance these rail corridors.


Capital Finance for Emerging & Regional High Speed Rail

Substantial capital subsidies and cross-subsidies since the end of World War II account for the intercity transport system we have today, with its heavy emphasis road and air transport. I have seen an estimate that the airport and air traffic control infrastructure we built up before starting to charge users for a portion of the costs amounted to over $1 Trillion in 1980 dollars.

And the Federal Government is proposing to subsidize Capital spending on High Speed Rail systems, with an original $1b annual request by the White House expanded to $1.2b in the Senate and $4b in the House. Indeed, Transport for America among others are, as I write, engaged in an advocacy campaign to push for adopting of the $4b House figure in conference.

While $4b itself may seem relatively small set against the $61b the Department of Transport budgeted for highways, Emerging and Regional HSR is quite capital efficient.

For example, the Cleveland to Cincinnati section of the Ohio Hub is projected to cost $1.104b in 2002 dollars, or about $1.4b in current dollars. Adding in a +/- 30% margin of error for feasibility study precision of estimation, and the cost is comfortably under $2b, for capital works on 260miles of corridor with a life of 30 years and up. That is a capital cost of under $8m/mile (possibly under $6m/mile), similar to project portion of the capital cost of adding a lane each way to an Interstate Highway.

But of course, Ohio is just one state, and the Triple-C is just the strongest segment of one longer corridor in a system of three long corridors and a cross-connector, connecting to additional planned corridors to its east and west.

And should the infrastructure be entirely Federally funded? States pay 10% of the costs of constructing new Federal Highways, and even in the days before User-fees starting contributing to FAA capital spending, local tax-exempt bonds provided some of the finance for our nationwide system of airports.

Of course, the state matching portion of Federally funded infrastructure projects are not in place because the Federal government cannot "afford" to invest in a project. If an infrastructure project is economically justified in terms of providing more economic benefits than costs, and if the country can afford the impact on the external accounts, the Federal government can always "afford" 100% funding of these projects.

The purpose of state matching funds is to act as a check on states requesting investment in projects simply for the short-term benefit to economic activity due to the project, even though there is no substantially need to be met by the project. And based on the evidence of how states act with respect to highway funds, it would seem that a 90% Federal, 10% State match is not an adequate check.

So I will suppose that the Federal formula for capital grants to intercity Emerging and Regional HSR is 80% Federal, 20% State. This means that the $1.4b-$1.8b for the Ohio Hub would be a Federal Share of about $1.1b to $1.5b - or, in other words, the proposed Senate funding for HSR would fund the equivalent of one "Triple-C" Cleveland to Cincinnati line, including stations and trains, every year to year and a half. The $4b proposed by the House would fund the equivalent to two and a half to three and a half.

Or, in other words, maintained over five years, and assuming its adjusted for inflation, the Senate proposal would fund four to five corridors equivalent to the Triple-C corridor, while the House proposal would fund 13 to 17.

Now, the HSR funding is not restricted to Emerging and Regional HSR, but it seems clear that at least the House funding levels are adequate for providing an 80% Federal share of the capital costs of a substantial assortment of Emerging and Regional HSR corridors.

But, no matter what the theory of the state match may be, the question must be asked, where are states to find the matching funds? One possible answer looks back to the issue of operating funds.


Foundation Corridors as Seeds of Growth

Suppose that the 110mph version of the Triple C was established, and the patronage it attracted put it on track to meet the projected 199% operating ration. What kind of money are we talking about here? Well, from the same Financial Viability study, that is revenues of $100m against operating costs of $50m.

Now, assume a cautious real discount rate of 5%, 20 years of revenue bonds funded by a revenue stream of $10m is about $150m, which in a 20:80 match can help fund a project of about $760m. So for a corridor with operating costs of $50m, operating ratios above 100% translate into potential funding for system expansion:

• 120% ==> $10m/yr ==> $760m
  
• 150% ==> $25m/yr ==> $1.9b
  
• $50m ==> $50m/yr ==> $3.8b
  

In other words, once an effective keystone corridor has been established, it can yield a revenue stream that can provide the state matching funds for ongoing expansion of the system.

An objection may be made that if the state provides its matching funds using revenue bonds funded from operating surpluses, that the check on "reckless expansion" has been lost. However, the reality is that if states pursue this approach, the check is even more effective.

The reason is straightforward. Any ambitious "empire builder" operating under this approach must continue building corridors that can grow the patronage to deliver operating surpluses. At the point that a corridor is built that continues to generate an operating loss, it reduces the revenue bonding capacity of the system as a whole, and so slows the growth of the system as a whole.


Rail Electrification

An important area where the potential for an operating ratio over 100% is very useful is rail electrification. Electrification will reduce operating costs of an operation and, because of the greater traction available when electric motors are distributed along the length of the train, increase acceleration and deceleration, further reducing trip speeds. Indeed, in a 110mph corridor, electrification may be one of the improvements supporting upgrade to 125mph operation.

Further, electrification allows the Emerging/Regional HSR network to be more easily powered by sustainable, renewable power sources, since direct electric power sources such as wind turbines offer far more energy capacity and higher rates of Net Energy Return on Investment than biofuels such as biodiesel.

However, while electrification improves operating costs, it is capital intensive, and when capital costs are limiting the speed of roll-out of the system, there would seem to be a risk of delaying electrification until after a regional system is entirely built out.

However, if the capital expenditure is provided for separately, there is no need to wait. Provided that finance is made available, it is possible to build the electric infrastructure and charge the rail operator a user fee for the use of the electricity - with the user fee refunding the capital costs.

Indeed, as proposed last week, it is possible to accelerate electrification even faster. The proposal is to allow states to use a portion of the state share of Carbon Fees to provide an interest subsidy on the infrastructure to support Rapid Electric Freight Rail.

Under this proposal, electrification of Emerging/Regional HSR can be integrated into electrification of a longer Interstate Freight Corridor along the STRACNET system, allowing the earlier roll-out of electric trains along that segment of the system, with diesel trains freed up in the process free to be used in more recently established corridors.


Overview

So, this is the general framework. First, establishing a sufficient Federal HSR funding stream to support the establishment of "multiple Triple-C corridor equivalents" each year. Second, going to states for bond funding for the establishment of the strongest Emerging HSR corridors in the various systems under development. Third, building up patronage in the keystone corridors to the point of financing revenue bonds for system expansion. And fourth, establishing a separate system with its own stream of Carbon Fee funding for Rapid Freight Rail electrification which can also be leveraged to the benefit of Emerging and Regional HSR corridors.

Of course, the reason that I started with Emerging/Regional HSR corridors is that it is, in a certain sense, the easiest place to start.

Heading off in one direction, once we reach the point of conventional rail corridors, where such a dominant share of the benefit is external benefit, we need to work what conditions will generate an operating surplus and, under those that do not, how we can sustainably finance an operating deficits.

Heading off in the other direction, while well-chosen Express HSR corridors can certainly generate operating surpluses, they are also dramatically more capital intensive than Emerging/Express HSR corridors, and that generates its own set of problems.

So while this is a pause point - in reality, its just the tip of the iceberg.

Sunday Train: Supporting Rail Electrification with the Climate Bill

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence
posted at ProgressiveBlue, crossposted at The Hillbilly Report, Docudharma, and Agent Orange.

Transport For America (t4america.org) has a call to action out on the Climate Change Bill. "ACES" passed the House, and the corresponding (but of course not identical) legislation is presently up for consideration in the Senate.

The basis of the call for action is straightforward:

• 1% of the revenues raised by the Carbon Fee is permitted to be used for clean energy transport - not even mandated, but optionally may be used for that among a range of other options.
  
• Transport is responsible for 30% of the CO2 emitted
  
• thus, "You can't solve 30% of the problem with 1% of the funds

Now, about 14% of carbon fee revenue is dedicated to emissions reduction, so that is 7.2% of the emissions reduction budget allocated that is the maximum allowed to be spent on installing existing clean energy transport. Based on CBO estimates of carbon fees, the maximum amount that states would be allowed to devote to clean energy transport is:

• $391m in 2011; rising to
• $1.3b ($1,323m) in 2019

By contrast, the bill authorizes utilities to tax customers by $1b-$1.1b a year over 10 years to finance the installation of Carbon Sequestration Technology, which is the excuse given for permitting continued construction of coal-fired generating plants. (source: 1Sky analysis, pdf)

There is plenty of funding in the bill for vehicle electrification. Plug-in cars, plug-in trucks, plug-in buses, all get funding. However, vehicle electrification funds read as if they were written by a battery manufacturer: existing electrified rail and trolley bus technologies are restricted to a public transit ghetto. It seems that the motto for vehicle electrification funding is, "Lord, make me virtuous, but please, not quite right now."

Even worse, the 1% funding that is permitted is provided by allowing states to use up to 10% of their funds to provide the state match to "greenhouse gas saving" transport such as bicycles and transit.

This means:

• The most promising single opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in transport inside a decade, electrification of the STRACNET long haul rail freight network, is entirely out of bounds for any funding
• Funding for electric rail and trolley bus passenger transport requires first gaining approval through Federal programs that discriminate against energy-efficiency

Those are two massive flaws for any bill that is serious about greenhouse gas emissions reduction in the next decade, as opposed to hoping for greenhouse gas emissions a generation or more in the future.

They can, however, be fixed, if the Senate can be made aware that there is a loud and demanding constituency for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in this coming decade, and not just in some indefinite future ... and that this loud and demanding constituency is capable of both rewarding its political friends and punishing its political enemies.

First the Steel Interstate ... jump here for fixing the local transit project funding bias and here for the Local Community Funds for Energy-Efficient Transport, LC-FEET.


Financing Steel Interstates

In a previous Sunday Train, I discussed the Steel Interstate. The focus there was on the transport benefits provided, and the spill-over benefits to the opportunities for improving the range and quality of transport opportunities available in Appalachia.

It's been much longer since I've discussed the financing of a Steel Interstate.

The financial challenge is straightforward. While we have been massively subsidizing diesel truck freight infrastructure, we have placed rail freight on the YOYO principle: Your On Your Own. And while the infrastructure used by diesel trucks is in part funded by property taxes, the infrastructure used by rail pays property taxes - so rail in effect subsidizes their competition with each investment that they make in infrastructure.

Not surprisingly, the response by US railroads has been to focus on cutting capital costs and associated cost while maximizing the tonnage of freight they can haul on that infrastructure. Heavy freight is, after all, where their energy efficiencies give them a competitive advantage even competing against subsidized truck freight in a low-energy-cost environment.

Now, electric freight rail requires overhead electric infrastructure. Fully taking advantage of of the market opportunities requires 100mph Rapid Freight Paths, which themselves require investment in track and signal infrastructure, since 100mph single stacked container freight will not be able to meet schedules if they share the existing pare-down bi-directional single track networks with slow coal trains and double stack slow container freight.

Further, private railroads remain capital intensive industries, facing substantial risks of fluctuations in market demand, so that investment in Rapid Electric Freight Rail could easily drive a private railroad into bankruptcy in a recession even if it is offers a massive long term financial benefit to the company.

So, that is the challenge. And that challenge points the way to a direct solution.

• First, a public authority, organized like a regional economic development corporation, is established to finance, build and operate electrical rail infrastructure and Rapid Rail track and signaling.
• Second, those authorities receive a dedicated flow of funding from Carbon Feeds to cover the interest on the debt that they issue to fulfill their responsibility
• Those corporations charge user fee for electric rail that uses the electric rail infrastructure, and access fees for use of the Rapid Rail track and signal infrastructure
• The Federal Rail Authority establishes equipment and operational safety regulations for the operation of Rapid Light and Medium Freight Rail and Rapid Passenger Rail on the Rapid Rail infrastructure

Providing the funding stream for these corporations is straightforward. Allow States to dedicate an amount of up to 20% of their current Carbon Fee share to the establishment and interest subsidy for these Public Electric Freight Infrastructure Corporations.

Now, 20% of 10% is projected by the CBO to be $782m in 2011. At 5% interest for Public Regional Development bonds, that would finance up to $15.6b in infrastructure, rising to $50b by 2018. After meeting debt finance requirements, each non-profit corporation would have be allowed to use surpluses from user and access fees to finance further improvements.

In the event of oil price shocks which would substantially increase the competitive advantage of Steel Interstate freight, we could expanded investment in infrastructure, and accelerated payback of bonds.


Solving a Problem by Financing More Problem

The second glaring weakness of the transport-oriented spending by ACES is the way that money is made available to existing electric transport technology - electric rail and trolley buses.

Their entire stake in the program is inside the 10% state allocation for energy efficiency programs. Up to 10% of that - or a maximum of 1% of carbon fees - can be spent on cycle or public transit as part of the state matching fund to attract a federal grant.

That means, of course, that the present biases of federal grant funding are built into the funding. And those biases are a big part of the problem.

Take the example of the Minneapolis light rail project, as reported at Yonah Freemark at Transport Politic in Southwest Minneapolis’ Transit Route Selection Process May Rule Out Light Rail to Uptown.

The problem is this:

After years of study, Minneapolis is almost ready to submit its locally preferred alternative (LPA) corridor to the Federal Transit Administration, which will distribute up to 60% of total funds to the project through the New Starts major capital grant program. In order to receive money from Washington, Metro will have to show that the proposed route meets national cost-effectiveness guidelines, which are stringent enough to sieve out a large percentage of proposed new transit lines.

This requirement puts elected officials in a quandary: should they work to build the most effective transit network possible, or should they limit their ambitions for fear that the federal government will rule out any funding at all?

And why is it that the route that would provide the most attractive service to a larger number of people (as well as serving neighborhoods with a larger percentage of people living in poverty) is disadvantaged in the chase for Federal funds? What gives? Its in the formula for estimating transport benefits provided by a transit system:

One, the cost-benefit analysis is heavily biased towards the number of annual hours commuters will save by using the new transit system. This means that people who already have longer commutes are seen as more valuable for the FTA than those who choose to live in in-town locations with shorter distances between their residences and workplaces. ...
Two, similarly, the FTA likes speed. As a result, the slightly shorter 3A route is better for commuters in the far-out suburbs hoping to get to jobs downtown. The tunnel planned for route 3C, which ramps up costs exponentially, is only necessary because a surface route would be too slow and make the commutes of people from Eden Prairie slightly longer. Note that a 3C route without the tunnel would have a significantly lower construction cost, but it still wouldn’t meet FTA cost-effectiveness criteria because fewer outer-suburban people would ride it because their trip would be longer.
Three, the formula used by the FTA prefers new riders to old ones. In other words, a person moving from a car to a train is considered more important than a person moving from a bus to a train. ...

So an area is discriminated against if transit will encourage more short trips, more car-free living, and provide transport improvements to people already forced to rely on lower quality transit.

When an electric vs diesel choice is included, there is a further bias, since the funding formula does not count energy saving as a distinct benefit (Daily Kos: 14Apr2007).

Add on top of that the fact that a conservative ridership estimate is required when handing out Federal funds ... especially in light of the massive underfunding compared to the need for transit systems. However, conservative ridership estimates means that the project must be proposed with a conservative operating frequency. That means that the major financial benefit of the electric traction, in reduced operating costs, is persistently underestimated, while the financial benefit of the diesel traction, in lower up-front capital costs, is always given full weight.

What I propose here are two fixes to this problem. The first fix is to make the allocation proposed by the House both more selective and more effective.

Increasing selectivity: The purpose of this funding is reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, but even a modern high-efficiency diesel bus in an effective transit system with reasonable load factors will only be competitive with a Prius in terms of gallons consumed per hundred passenger-miles.

Therefore, this allocation is restricted to personal transport infrastructure - that pedestrian and cycle infrastructure - and electric mass transit. And for electric mass transit, the funding is for the electrification: the cost of electric vehicles (including both overhead and pluggable battery-electric), and the cost of electric support infrastructure.

Increasing effectiveness: The purpose of this portion of the funding is reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, the portion of the cost that is funded by this allotment is not considered as part of the base cost when computing cost-benefit ratios.

Longer term, I would hope that the next transport authorization will fix some or all of the bias in the current funding formulas against energy efficient transport. Improving the funding formula to eliminate the bias against Transit-Oriented-Development in Federal transit funding will be a win-win-win in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving energy independence, and promoting economic equity.

However, whatever the funding formula, the investment of Carbon Fees to reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of transport should still be excluded from the transport cost/benefit index.


Local-Community-FEET

The second fix is to allow funding for existing energy efficient transport that is entirely outside of the Federal funding framework. This is provided for with a new institution that allows for local community-based project selection, provided that the project qualifies as providing clean energy transport. I call this institution the "Local Community Funds for Energy-Efficient Transport", or "Local-Community-FEET".

These funds are structured on an account basis, with an account for each incorporated municipality, county (for population outside an incorporated area) and tribal area.

The funds can either be used to fund projects - paying up-front for their capital expense, or to finance projects - paying the interest expense on projects whose original capital cost can be funded over time by either cost-savings or user-fees.

The administrator of the project does not do a cost-benefit assessment - it is the responsibility of the local community to decide how to best allocate the funds in the account. Instead, what the administrator judges is whether a project qualifies as an Energy Efficiency Transport project that also reduces greenhouse gas emissions.^{note1}

The legislation will therefore establish qualifying types of projects, with the administrator of the account evaluating whether a specific application will promote energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If transit agencies, transport authorities, or state governments wish to gain pre-qualification for a project that will be seeking support from LC-FEET accounts, they may do so, provided they pay an application fee that covers processing costs.^{note2}

Once a local area has qualified projects registered against its account, it can either allocate capital funding for a qualified project from the account or, for projects that will generate cost-savings or user-fees to recover the initial capital cost over time, interest finance for capital project bonds.

The following types of projects should qualify for LC-FEET funding, if they pass the energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions tests:

• Dedicated pedestrian infrastructure - sidewalks, plazas, pedestrian bridges and subways;
  
• Dedicated cycle infrastructure - cyclways, traffic calming infrastructure for shared use bicycle boulevards, cycle parking, secure transport cyclist showers in public buildings
  
• Electric vehicles and electric support infrastructure for local transit - pluggable electric shared cars, pluggable electric buses, trolley buses, electric light rail, electric mass transit
  
• Electric vehicles and electric support infrastructure for inter-urban transport - capped at the pro-rata local share based on proportion of population served
  

The proposal is to allocate 10% of State Funding to LC-FEET accounts, with 2.5% from the existing 12.5% share directed to local communities. The allocation to local communities is therefore increased to one-fifth of the state allocation, 10% under the existing heading, and 10% to the LC-FEET account system.


All This, and a Set of Steak Knives

I would like to add a note that all of this qualifies as Brawny Recovery Economic Stimulus. If you have made it this far, you will have seen that there is a heavy reliance on providing finance for projects that are partly self-funding - that is, that can cover up-front capital costs over time, provided an interest subsidy.

This is simply bringing our current economic system in line with the economic accounting required for strongly sustainable economic development. Strong sustainability is we should leave the same or better material wealth to the following generation that we inherited. That implies that a dollar of cost experienced by the next generation is not compensated for by $0.10 in benefit today - and therefore, among many other implications, requires us to evaluate project impacts at a 0% discount rate for strong sustainability even as we evaluate it at whatever liquidity preference we determine to decide on the financial present value of the project.

This is only a first step toward adopting strong sustainability principles, but it says that if a project can be self-funded at a 0% rate, and it reduces greenhouse gas emissions, why in the hell wouldn't we at least do that?

The second part of the Brawny Recovery is that the focus on interest subsidies means that the Carbon Fees collected today can finance more total economic activity today. And since that is investment in economically useful infrastructure, once the infrastructure is in place our economic experience further benefits from the improved energy efficiency and reduced reliance on imported petroleum.

With so much of the emissions reduction funding devoted to projects that will take over a decade to bear fruit, it is important to front-load investment where existing clean energy technology makes it possible.


Summary

So this is the proposal. In the funding share allocated to states, 10% to 30% is available to existing Energy Efficient Transport technology, up from 0% to 10%:

• Up to 10% for funding Steel Interstates for promoting Long Haul Rapid Electric Freight Transport in the light and medium freight markets currently hauled cross-county by energy-wasting diesel motor freight
  
• Up to 10% for providing the state match for funding personal transport and electric public transport, with capital costs that are funded for greenhouse gas emissions reduction excluded from transport cost/benefit formulas.
  
• Exactly 10% for funding local community selected projects for personal transport and electric local and intercity transport

Further, the funding is designed to take advantage of opportunities to finance partly-self-funded projects, to amplify the economic benefit of the construction of the infrastructure, and accelerate the delivery of multiple economic and ecological benefits.


Notes

{Note 1: For sufficiently strong energy efficiency improvements, greenhouse gas emission improvements are automatic. For example, long-haul electric rail freight requires less than 10% the energy cost of diesel truck freight. At this efficiency level, coal-fired electricity provides substantially fewer tons of CO2 emissions per ton-mile than diesel fuel would do. However, a pluggable all-battery-electric large city bus that offered a 20% energy efficiency gain compared to a pluggable hybrid diesel-electric bus would require a substantially larger share of carbon-free electricity supply before it could also ensure a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.}

{Note 2: I would suggest placing the administration of the accounts within the EPA.}