Source (TreeHugger)
That’s a Lot of Tailpipes
It wasn’t so long ago that we wrote about China’s 168 million motor vehicles (if you count everything), or about how taxes went up on big vehicles (though fuel is heavily subsidized, encouraging waste). Well, China’s not a country to stand still, even in this economy. The latest numbers for “private cars” are out and 2008 saw a 28% increase.
Click here to read more.
(Source: TreeHugger)
The New N-700 Series Bullet Trains
While the U.S. is finally planning to spend some $8 billion to start thinking about high-speed rail services, Treehugger has noted that other countries are way ahead. Case in point: Japan is now extending its widely popular Shinkansen super-fast train network to the island of Kyushu, with new N700 Series trains from Hitachi and Kawasaki Heavy Industries. If you like fast trains, the N700 has a maximum speed of 300 km/h (185 mph). The video notes that these new trains are “ecology” and the N700 reduces power consumption by 19%.
Photo: Comparing the Shinkansen 500 and 700 series, from wikipedia Photo: N700 Shinkansen from The Mainichi
The TGV and the Eurostar also clock in at around the same speeds. Tilting of up to one degree allows trains to maintain 270 km/h even on 2,500 m radius curves that usually has a maximum speed of 255 km/h.
Another feature of the N700 is that it accelerates quicker than other Shinkansen trains, with an acceration rate of 2.6 km/h/s. This enables it to reach 270 km/h in only three minutes.
Click here to read the entire article and to see the video of the new N-700 series trains.
Named the 1/X (pronounced 1-x’th) after the fraction of its carbon footprint compared to other vehicles, the hybrid is greener than others not only because of it gas mileage: Compared to standard petroleum-based plastic, bioplastic allegedly produces up to 60 percent less carbon dioxide and uses about 30 percent less energy as well.
Click here to read the entire article.
A breakdown of provisions and funding requirements for mass transit in The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
The Dig ~ Infrastructure of the stimulus plan: $8.4 billion in Mass Transit | Blueprint America.
(Source – The Number Thirteen Line blog, hosted by PBS’ Blue Print for America)
Welcome to the inaugural issue of The Number Thirteen Line, a monthly blog about transportation in New York and around the world. This month’s topic: The Stimulus Package and its impact on transportation.
Seven hundred and ninety billion dollars, as designated in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, is a lot of money. Frankly, we had hoped that most of it would go toward public works projects; after all, good infrastructure projects have been shown to produce five times the GDP impact of broad-based tax cuts. Nonetheless, we understand reality doesn’t always play out the way we’d like. So we are reasonably pleased to see that $130-billion, of the $790-billion bill (16%), is intended for construction projects.
The really good news from a transport perspective is that high-speed and existing long-haul rail will receive more than $9 billion. Urban transit gets a nice sized boost as well. So what can we, as New Yorkers, expect and what should we demand?
Approximately $1.3-billion of the funds are being directed to on-going capital transit programs in the New York City metropolitan area. This means that projects such as the Fulton Street Transit Center and the No. 7 Subway Extension will finally be built. There’s little left for much else, so we must be thrifty in advancing other new projects. We are also limited in our imagination by the requirement that projects be “shovel-ready.” In an upcoming blog we will let our imaginations go wild.
Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) has been lauded worldwide as the one of the cheapest, most easily-implementable forms of mass transit (read “shovel-ready”), widely popular among riders and similar to light rail transit in its ability to carry people. And it fits perfectly into the objectives of the stimulus package as it can be planned, designed, and constructed in just one year. We recently planned and designed a BRT line on Fordham Road in the Bronx (disclosure: we are consultants to the New York City Department of Transportation and Metropolitan Transportation Authority on BRT) which was quickly implemented and has been enjoying wide success. We should demand a network of BRT solutions city-wide
(Source: Greenwire via New York Times)
A blue-ribbon federal transportation panel called today for a temporary gas-tax hike followed by a move toward charging drivers directly for every mile they travel — two ideas that have been soundly rejected by the White House in the past week.
The controversial road-pricing scheme would become the dominant funding mechanism for road construction and maintenance by 2020, with drivers being charged an average of 2 cents per mile, according to the report released by the 15-member panel created by Congress in the last highway bill authorization.
The National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission says the shift is necessary because the current funding mechanism — federal fuel taxes — has failed to raise the necessary revenue for needed roadwork and runs counterintuitive to national environmental and energy goals.
“The more successful U.S. transportation policy is at increasing fuel efficiency and reducing both foreign oil dependency and carbon emissions, the faster its primary funding source, the gas tax, becomes obsolete,” said Texas state Rep. Mike Krusee, a commission member.
Increases in fuel economy, coupled with the fact that the current federal tax on gasoline has remained stagnant at 18.4 cents a gallon since 1993, have already taken their toll on federal revenues to fund road construction and maintenance. The Highway Trust Fund, which receives the bulk of its money from federal fuel taxes, would have run empty late last year if it were not for an eleventh-hour transfer of $8 billion by Congress to keep it solvent.
“With the expected shift to more fuel-efficient vehicles, it will be increasingly difficult to rely on the gas tax to raise the funds needed to improve, let alone maintain, our nation’s surface transportation infrastructure,” said commission Chairman Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank.
Click here to read the entire article.
(Source : Thanks to Robert Puentes @ The Brookings Institution for sharing this article)
Already, we have had not one—but two—national commissions on the topic, and the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently added transportation financing to its annual list of high-risk areas suggested for oversight by the current Congress.
Why the high anxiety?
Put simply: the money flowing out of the federal transportation trust fund (often referred to as the “highway” trust fund) is greater than the money flowing into it. This past September Washington was forced to shift $8 billion from the general fund to cover a shortfall in the transportation account. Estimates for how short the fund will be this summer hover around $9 billion.
Despite the sharp, and perhaps simplistic, rhetoric of late, the origins of the shortfall are the result of multiple trends converging.
For one, the federal gas tax—generating nearly 90 percent of the federal transportation revenue—has not been raised in nearly 20 years, not even to keep pace with inflation. So, as the rate effectively declines, so does the purchasing power of the trust fund. The current 18.4 cent per gallon tax in the U.S. is far less than in European competitor nations.
Click here to read the antire article.
(Source: Planetizen)
This announcement was posted by: Rail~Volution
Rail~Volution 2009: Boston October 30-November 1, 2009
Rail~Volution is a conference for passionate practitioners – people from all perspectives who believe in the role of land use and transit as equal partners in the quest for greater livability and greater communities. The success of the conference depends on the quality and diversity of presentations. Rail~Volution solicits your story-sharing expertise, experience, success and challenges.
THEME: This country is being reshaped by the economic crisis, suburban foreclosures, volatile gas prices, and concern about the carbon footprint of development—creating enormous momentum for change. The new administration is committed to change, and Congress is deliberating the bill that sets transportation policy and funding for the next six years. Livable communities near transit are more economically and environmentally sustainable and we need more of them now. Let’s rise to the challenge. The window of opportunity is opening wide.
Help us enliven the discussion! Give us your ideas now!
http://www.railvolution.com/CallForProposals_2009.asp
For more information contact:
Mary Simon
Rail~Volution
1120 SW 5th Avenue Suite 800
Portland, Oregon 97204
USA
Phone: 503-823-6870
Email: mary.simon@pdxtrans.org
Web: www.railvolution.com
photo: Richard via flickr
Indian Railways has already been running some of its trains on biodiesel. NowCalcutta Tramways Corporation has announced that it will be running its buses partly on biodiesel: A memorandum of understanding with Emami Biotech was signed last week for the supply of 250 kiloliters per month of biodiesel.
Click here to read th entire article.
(Source: ClimateWire via NYTimes)
LaHood told a group of state transportation officials that while he has already taken part in a number of meetings to discuss climate change legislation with Obama, DOT would likely take a back seat in the climate debate.
“We’ve really taken all of our cues from Carol Browner,” he said, referring to the White House coordinator for energy and climate issues.
LaHood said Browner and U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson would most likely do the heavy lifting when it comes to meeting Obama’s climate goals. DOT is “in the room, we’re at the table, but we probably have less of a role than perhaps some of these other agencies do,” he said at the Washington forum.
DOT instead will focus on finalizing new corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, standards for the auto industry.
LaHood said his agency was working to finish the rulemaking for model year 2011 by this April’s deadline. “We’re going to move that out the door,” he said. “We’re going with what the president asked us to do with respect to CAFE standards.”
Under the proposed rulemaking issued by DOT last year, carmakers would have to raise their fuel economy by 25 percent by 2015. The proposal would push automakers more than halfway to the minimum goal set by Congress of an average of 35 mpg by 2020.
Click here to read the entire article.
