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Game changer (review of Alan Drake’s work)
Gar Lipow, Gristmill
Upgrade freight rail: Save 12 percent of oil, 4 percent of emissions, and jumpstart renewable grid
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On the theory that many people who encounter Alan Drake’s own words on greening freight end up overwhelmed by the details, I have presented a very simplified version of Drake’s proposal with my own opinions. This is a deliberate attempt to focus on the most important points, and then steer people to read the whole thing. [Update: The Washington Monthly has a long article on this as well.] Obviously the disagreement with Drake, as well as the political analysis at the end, is my own judgment. In addition Drake does not know me, though we’ve corresponded briefly, and he has no responsibility for anything I wrote.
Grist has discussed Alan Drake’s proposal for greening freight before, but somehow it’s always mentioned in passing and without real recognition that it’s such a game changer. By switching 85 percent of long-haul trucking to rail, we could reduce U.S. oil use by about 12 percent and total U.S. emissions by about 4 percent.
In addition, it would add long-distance power transmission across the lines of regional grids, creating a true U.S. national grid to share power from coast to coast and from north to south, and it would add-high speed passenger travel. Since it would depend almost entirely on existing rail rights-of-way, the environmental impact is small compared to transmission projects and transit projects that use new rights-of-way.
Drake starts with the fact that long-distance freight trucking consumes about half as much oil as passenger transport, and that unlike passenger transport, we have an existing heavy rail system that can move goods with about eight times the energy efficiency of trucking. That system already reaches most destinations where we want to move goods. If we switched to rail, we would still need to use trucks to move goods to and from freight yards, but containerization makes that simple.
That is the good news. The bad news is that our existing rail system won’t let us make this switch on a large scale.
(14 January 2009)
Ray LaHood and Changing our Thinking About Transportation
Alex Steffen, WorldChanging
Today, the U.S. Senate will hold a confirmation hearing on the president-elect’s choice of Ray LaHood for Secretary of Transportation. No one expects that hearing to be anything but easy for LaHood. That’s too bad, because it shows that when it comes to greening the stimulus, we’re not only missing the forest for the trees, we’re not even seeing the trees right.
In case you haven’t been following the news, LaHood is a conservative Illinois Republican with little transportation expertise and almost no administrative experience, who has earned a LCV lifetime voting score on critical environmental issues of 27 percent, and who maintains deep financial connections to the very industries he’s now supposed to regulate. He may be no worse than most of those who’ve lead the Department of Transportation, but his appointment is a profoundly uninspiring vote for business as usual at a time when we need change, and an strong indication that the administration doesn’t get that energy policy, technological innovation, urban planning, environmental sustainability and transportation are all bound up together, and no solution to our problems can be had without tackling them all together.
LaHood’s appointment is so disappointing to transportation advocates who’ve been waiting eight years for change, that they’re boiling with indignant disbelief, branding him “an unbelievably disastrous pick,” …
(12 January 2009)
Shipping rates hit zero as trade sinks
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph (UK)
Freight rates for containers shipped from Asia to Europe have fallen to zero for the first time since records began, underscoring the dramatic collapse in trade since the world economy buckled in October.
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“They have already hit zero,” said Charles de Trenck, a broker at Transport Trackers in Hong Kong. “We have seen trade activity fall off a cliff. Asia-Europe is an unmitigated disaster.”
Shipping journal Lloyd’s List said brokers in Singapore are now waiving fees for containers travelling from South China, charging only for the minimal “bunker” costs. Container fees from North Asia have dropped $200, taking them below operating cost.
Industry sources said they have never seen rates fall so low. “This is a whole new ball game,” said one trader.
(14 January 2009)
