Eigth and State

There are three tracks coming down the Mill Creek Valley to get to Union Terminall. A good place to see them is from the sidewalk on the Ludlow Viaduct. I challenge anyone to stand on the sidewalk for as long as you want and record the freight trains that come through. There are very many, they are very long, and they often run very slow because they need to reduce speed to enter the yards. Often all three tracks are occupied at the same time. Now, consider that a passenger train is going to be running fast. Just say that they would operate at 30 mph - far from high speed. At a ten minute safety headway - that is, the train must be able to travel for 10 minutes at 30 miles per hour - the train needs 2 1/2 miles of open track ahead of it. That will just about reach from Ludlow Viaduct to Cincinnati Union Terminal passenger station. These are slow, very conservative numbers - and the congestion is so bad that it's just about unimaginable. Can it be done? Sure - but at a cost. How much money do you have? In order to clear the track of freight trains, what you have to do is PAY them to clear the track. That means that to pay it's way, the passenger train has to pay the railroad more than all of those freight trains do in order to use the track. A freight car charges on the order of $500 per trip. A freight train has as many as 100 cars. That's $50,000 per train. A passenger train is going to displace more than one freight train. Let's just say that it costs $100,000 to clear the rails for passenger trains. With just 6 passenger trains per day, that's $600,000 a day or $219 million per year - over half of the $400 million we are talking about for construction, not to mention operating costs! I'm working with round numbers. I think it's clear that CUT is not a viable option for passenger rail at this point, due to congestion, unless you don't mind you passengers sitting on the train in traffic for hours, like Amtrak does.

I'm amazed that this discussion has come this far and we are still talking about routes. That just shows how complicated this thing is. Route selection is the most important decision to be made. So, can a "modern streetcar" such as the Skoda vehicles negotiate the Vine Street hill or not? The manufacturers say it can, but John Schneider thinks it will have operation problems. If the vehicle can't negotiate the hill, then there is no point about talking about a Vine Street Hill route unless we decide to look at a different vehicle.

Vine street used to have a cable car route. In fact, when they reconfigured Vine Street in the 1920's, they found some of the original cable car conduits. Cable Cars were extremely wasteful of energy. They were basicly made obsolete with the introduction of electric streetcars. Cable cars have an advantage that they can handle the steepest hills. That is why they survived long enough in San Francisco to become tourist attractions. The City of San Francisco has tried to end cable car service several times due to high operations and maintenance costs, but they decided to keep them based on the ability to attract tourists. The technological drawback of cable cars is that they do not do well on curves. The OTR loop is pretty much out of the question for cable cars. A straighter alignment that does not have as many turns might be feasible. A cable car line will invariably be more expensive both to build and operate than an electric line. The Cincinnati airport train is technically a cable car. It has no curves.

The FHA has reported that miles driven per year by Americans is dropping for the first time since records have been kept. Clearly, this is due to to cost of driving increasing. There is also some evidence that the number of cars on the road is declining. This comes from an analysis of the number of new cars made per year versus the number of cars that are scrapped. If electric cars are going to replace conventional cars, it is certainly not evident YET. "The government will find another source of revenue" Maybe, but will they be able to find a source of revenue large enough to replace the gas tax? A tax in dollars is essentially a tax on economic activity. If the economic activity, measured in GNP, BTU'S, gallons of gasoline, or any other method declines, then the tax revenue potential declines. The corollary to Peak Oil is that all economic activity is going to decline with oil consumption. I don't know to what extent this will be true; some of the shortfall might be made up with coal or nuclear power. Still, 40% of our total industrial energy today comes from petroleum. That's a very large percentage of the budget to make up. How many governments will be able to function with 60% of today's resources?

^---- Which would put the decisions on pricing in the hands of politicians. Besides the comparitive technology advantages between various modes of transportation, automobiles have a significant POLITICAL advantage: they are generally free of price controls.

I look forward to seeing more electric cars, but I doubt that electric cars wil ever replace conventional gasoline powered cars. For one, our highways are primarily funded by the gasoline tax. Our highway departments from the federal to local level are all in budget trouble, and they are facing declining revenues. Electric cars are going to do nothing to enhance our highway budgets. If our highway system declines, utility of automobiles is going to decline with it, and it doesn't matter how the vehicle is powered.

^---- None of this changes the fact that passengers will have to stand on a grade somewhere in the 8% range, and that's what John's concern was. Modern Streetcars are larger and heavier than historic streetcars. It's really a different vehicle. Vine Street was reconstructed for streetcars, by the way. The Vine Street that we know was specifically graded to accomodate streetcars in the 1920's. It replaced an earlier street that was even steeper.

John Schneider says that a route up Vine Street Hill is too steep for modern streetcars. The vehicle manufacturers say it's possible, but it is not comfortable for standing passengers and John thinks that it will be plagued by operational difficulties. Yet we are still talking about a route up Vine Street Hill. I don't get it.

Tesla Roadsters at $100,000+ are not going to get us out of Peak Oil. Tesla Roadsters are for the rich. On top of that, California people are buying hybrids because they can drive in the HOV lanes. We don't know what the market would do without the HOV lane rule.

Miami Conservancy District - Flood protection for Dayton and other Great Miami River cities after the 1913 flood. Miami Conservancy District was the model for the TVA and Army Corps of Engineers Flood Control Works. Glendale - first platted curved streets in America (also claimed by a neighborhood in Boston) Rectangular Land Survey System - conceived in Ireland and other places, perfected in Ohio, used for the rest of the United States west of Ohio, also Canada, Australia, and South Africa

^---"Birthrates were actually up above the longer average right through last fall." Maybe true, but I was thinking of the long-term decline in birthrates. Pioneer families in Ohio often had ten kids. I know of a few families with 5 kids, and those are considered large today. In 1955 the average was a little under 4. Through the last 20 years it's been hovering around 2.0. 2.1 is considered the replacement rate. Anything significantly over that in the long run will increase the population. Anything less will decrease. (Not accounting for immigration and emigration of course.) Increasing population means more people, which also means more housing provided that the average number of people per house is constant.

^---"it may not be accurate to suggest that the growth rate of 1.1% will be constant for the next 500 years." Well, there's one thing we agree on.

Just for fun, a trillion people in 500 years would take a doubling period of about 62 years. The yearly growth rate would be about 1.1% per year. The following sequence illustrates the growth. 2010 6 billion 2072 12 billion 2134 24 billion 2196 48 billion 2258 96 billion 2320 192 billion 2382 384 billion 2444 768 billion 2506 1536 billion = 1.5 trillion 1.1% is about what some economists think our current growth rate is, and that's in this depressed economy. With these assumptions, in 2506, there will be 250 people for every one person today. To keep the same average standard of living, we need to come up with 250 times today's resources. Proportionally, Ohio's population would be 2.7 billion, a little less than half of the world population today. Could you cram half of the world's population today into Ohio?

Have you ever heard anyone say "I can't afford another kid" or something to that effect? Birth rates are dropping across the board. More women working, couples waiting longer to get married, fewer children per family, etc. are cited as the reasons, but those are all effects of a declining economy. People are having fewer kids because they can't afford to have m

Do modern streetcars have sand? Just wondering.

As I understand it, the biggest problem with cold weather operation is ice fouling the switches, forcing operators to clean them out. This problem can be mitigated by designing the system with as few switches as possible. A well designed system might have only one switch between a single loop and the maintenance facility, with more switches possible in the maintenance facility. This is another good reason not to have the complicated connection between the OTR loop and uptown. Another problem is slipping on ice on steep grades. The CH&D nearby had trouble with this, and even had a runaway train due to ice on the rails; the grade was 4 percent.

"It's feasible that the changes will only be slight if we all go alternative." There are no true alternatives to petroleum. There are alternatives that can be built in the lab, but not at the scale needed to replace the world's automobile fleet. For example, battery-powered electric cars might be competitive in certain applications in terms of energy use, but they are more expensive to build. Replacing a fleet of 150 million conventional gasoline-powered cars that cost $25,000 each with a fleet of 150 million electric cars that cost $50,000 each is not a viable option. We might be able to replace a fleet of 150 million conventional gasoline-powered cars with 75 million electric cars, but then 50% of Americans that currently have a car will have to go without one. That's what peak oil is all about.

Umm, the average car in 1970 got 10 or so miles per gallon. Now the average is 20 or more. Using that logic, we should be using half as much oil as we did in 1970. However, we are using MORE oil than we did in 1970, despite the improvement in technology. The reason is clear: we have more cars, and we drive them more miles.

Infrastructure has a certain useful lifespan. American built a lot of infrastructure in the last century that is wearing out. Quite frankly, we do not have the resources to maintain all of it.

"You guys aren't stating the obvious -- that highway use is doomed to decrease." I know that and you know that, but O.D.O.T. doesn't know that. Maybe someday we will be replacing our interstates with rail, but I think it's safe to assume that we will NOT be adding rail to the interstates within the next 10 years. For that matter, it takes 10 years for O.D.O.T. to do anything at all!

Also, the new bridge is supposed to be a double decker. It will not look as graceful as the 471 bridge. We have already discussed the fact that the proposed bridge, no matter what structural shap it takes, is going to be ugly because it will be disproportionally wide. All beautiful bridges have a high length to width ratio.

In any case, railroad tracks cost about $1 million per mile just for the track itself, including rails, ties and ballast. That gets us to $250 million for a new 3-C line before you even think about new right of way, bridges, underpasses, grading, and everything else. I think it's fair to say that we cannot build a 3-C line over interstate right-of-way for less than $400 million, no matter what the speed of the trains.

Oh, rail parallel to an existing highway on existing right-of-way can be done. My point is that it might be harder than it first seems. Plus, the highway departments are eyeing that space for additional lanes.

Also, that "free" space in the medians and on the outside edge of highways isn't necessarily unused. Interstates are designed with space for cars to leave the road in case of an accident. Pay attention to the guardrails next time you are on the interstate. Adding rail in that "free" space would require a lot of new barriers. Besides, we don't want any interference with high speed rail whatsoever, no matter how low the probability. An automobile on the tracks could be catastrophic. Accidents at high speed are unforgiving.

The Falls of the Ohio is a major geographical point of interest, or at least it should be. It is the only part of the Ohio / Mississippi River System that was not navigatable between Pittsburgh and New Orleans; all of the early commerce on the river including military movements had to deal with this fact. It is somewhat analagous to Niagara Falls, although not as dramatic. Yet in these days of interstates hardly anyone seems to know about the Falls of the Ohio. Looking forward to your next one!