Eigth and State

I just read an 800+ page book written in 1913 about the oil extraction in Ohio at that time. Certainly their methods were primitive by today's standards. Of course extraction technology has improved. We WILL come up with better ways to extract oil. However, there will be less oil left to extract! Before oil can be extracted, it has to be discovered. We have all kinds of technology to search for oil that we didn't have just 20 years ago. Yet oil DISCOVERY peaked around 1960! That is, we discovered more oil in 1960 than we did in 2000. A lot more. Chances are that the oil in your car was discovered before you were born. (Unless you are Rob) :laugh:

Very nice. Thanks for posting.

"Seriously though, what do you think is going to happen when we run out of oil? You are probably one of those who think the world economy will collapse and powerful oil hungry countries like the US will become third world countries. That could happen, but I choose to be optimistic." I have actually given a lot of thought to this, and have done a bit of research. The short answer is that no one knows what will happen. But since you asked... First, please don't use the words "Run out of oil" because they are ambiguous. They imply that there is a big tank, and oil is produced at a steady rate, until it suddenly dries up. In reality, the rate at which any individual oil field yeilds oil is a function of pressure and all kinds of other factors. Once the pressure drops, the extraction rate drops, in a slow, prolonged decline. The sum of all the oil fields in the world is likely to follow the same general trend. We will not suddenly "run out," but follow a slow decline over perhaps 100 years. For example, maybe in 2010 we will extract 80 million barrels per day globally; in 2030, 50 million barrels; in 2060, 30 million barrels; in 2070, 10 million barrels. There is still A LOT of oil left. Besides petroleum, we have natural gas, coal, hydropower, and nuclear power as industrial power sources. Of these, petroleum is projected to peak any time now, if it has not already; natural gas is projected to peak in 2015; coal is projected to peak in 2100 plus or minus 50 years. I haven't found any good projections for nuclear; no new nuclear plants have been built in the United States in 30 years, but that is mainly due to political nervousness about nuclear accidents. In the short term, say 20 years, I expect petroleum use to decline, but coal use to increase. This suggests that electric cars or electric powered rail might be popular. This does NOT imply that electric cars will replace conventional cars. Electric cars have been available for 100 years, but they have never caught on due to various drawbacks. It has been said that when oil prices rise, electric cars will be more affordable. Maybe they will be more affordable than conventional cars at that time, but I don't think they will be more affordable than they are now. Just about everything will be LESS AFFORDABLE. For that matter, there is a lot of discussion about how to replace conventional cars. I don't think they will ever be replaced. I think that people will just stop driving. (Remember, this is likely to happen over the next 100 years.) Already, all the driving trends are down, for the first time in history! I think that both the average number of miles per person will drop as well as the number of drivers. In the longer term, say 500 years, not only will most of the petroleum be consumed, but also the natural gas and coal. So, if you want to have fun devising ways of converting one form of energy to another, have fun with that, but remember that in the long term natural gas and coal are going to follow the same trend as petroleum. The wild card is nuclear energy. If we manage to make some technological breakthrough, then everything changes. I do not say that it won't happen, but I am not counting on it. People have lived for thousands of years without cars. It's very difficult to even imagine it, but it can be done. There might even be some benefits, such as the ability to walk around in neighborhoods coming back. I don't expect some catastrophe when oil prices spike. I don't expect some modern, green utopia, either. I DO expect the majority of modern industrial civilization to eventually collapse. Notice that I said INDUSTRIAL. Without a source of power, our industrial economy is doomed eventually. In the meantime, we have solar energy. Not the photovoltaic cells that convert sunlight into electricity, but the ability to grow things under the light. In other words, agriculture. Growing plants is the most useful way to turn solar energy into useful things. Our biggest source of energy is solar energy. It isn't mentioned much, because it is taken for granted. All of our industrial might is just a fraction of our ability to grow things. A thousand years ago, before the industrial revolution, political power belonged to those who controlled land and the ability to grow things. Since it's hard to control all of the land, political power was dispersed among millions of people around the globe. Since the industrial revolution, more and more of the political power has been controlled by those in control of sources of industrial energy. Since these sources were concentrated at mines and well heads, a relatively small number of people became very wealthy compared to everyone else. By far, the people of the United States found themselves in control of the lion's share of industrial energy sources. It has been said that Americans have 4% of the world's population but control 20% of the world's resources. Indeed, as recently as WWII there were comparatively few automobiles outside of the United States. We in the United States had a head start in developing natural resources, which has led to increased consumption in this country. Will we exhaust ours first because we started first? Or will resources continue to flow our way for some other reason? I don't know. I don't think the United States will suddenly collapse into a third world country. We were not a third world country before petroleum was produced. We are also blessed with other natural resources besides hydrocarbons. A lot of folks on this site like to observe old photographs and note the things that have changed. Imagine a tree growing. The pace of change is so imperceptively slow that no one notices. Yet, if you look at old photographs, you can see that a large tree was once just a little seedling. We tend not to notice slow changes. The industrial revolution has been with us, say, 300 years now, of which only in the last 100 years have we had automobiles. The number of automobiles on the road doubled from about 1950 to 1960. Yet, no one seemed to notice a catastrophic change as our old cities disappeared and the suburban landscape came to dominate. Indeed, I expect such a gradual change to continue. I can't say for sure what it will be. I have my guesses: Car ownership will drop as cars become unaffordable. The poor of course will do without them first, and the rich will hold on to them as long as possible. With car ownership dropping, parking lots will gradually disappear. My guess is that the land will be used for agriculture, or maybe it will revert to forest. Americans will hold on to their cars as long as possible. The automobile industry will last longer than the airline industry. Every flight that is cancelled frees up that much more petroleum for automobiles. As natural gas declines, the single family suburban home will decline, at least in the Midwest where natural gas is used for heat. This may be just as much as a factor in suburbia as the automobile. All kinds of products will become more energy-efficient, some by technological improvement and some by downsizing. This will aleviate energy declines. The southern half of the United States will increase in population. By world standards, the United States is presently underpopulated. The northern half, especially the great lakes region, will decline as the hydrocarbons on which so much of the economy is based are depleted. Economists will write about the loss of manufacturing jobs. Saudi Arabia will continue to sell oil as long as they can. They will not suddenly cut off production. They need the cash to trade for food, which they do not have. Birth rates in developed countries will continue to drop. This will ease pressure due to declining industrial energy production. Developed countries will still have the highest standard of living, even without hydrocarbons. Third World countries will continue to suffer as they do now. A lot of people will die, as they do now. Some folks will manage to migrate from the third world countries to the first world countries and improve their lives, as they do now. Sources of political power will change along with sources of industrial power. Somehow, somewhere, someone will find a way to continue to drive cars, but the automobile age will have been recognized to be over. The world will seem very different than it does now, as different as the year 1900 seems to us. Some people will conserve energy, as they do now. Some people will waste energy, as they do now. Some people will berate other people for wasting energy, as they do now. Some people will dream of future utopias, as they do now. And finally, my guess is that someone will write a book about what America used to be like and why this happened. Again, I don't pretend to know what is going to happen. These are only my humble guesses. That was a long post, but you asked for it. :-) Cheers.

"I have faith that we will be able to find and utilize alternatives..." Have fun with that. "A child born in 1970 will see two thirds of the world's oil supply consumed in his lifetime." M King Hubbert

^---"Auto industry research firm R.L. Polk is forecasting a drop in total auto registrations for the first time since car plants were busy turning out tanks for World War II." One year doesn't make a long term trend, but still, could this be the peak automobile traffic year? This is big news, and it seems to be coming without all of the rail transit that folks on this forum wish for. It is very possible that travel in general will decline, and automobile travel will never be replaced by anything. Scary?

The old Eden Park reservior was originally divided into two reservoirs. The upper one was upgraded to an underground structure with a shallow pond on top. The lower one was converted to a playfield. The legend is that a contractor bid to remove the lower old reservior wall but didn't know that it was solid stone! He thought it was two walls filled with earth. He ran out of money, and part of the lower old reservior wall remains. Notice the climber on the wall. This is where Cincinnati climbers hang out. (Hang out - he he he)

In general, traffic signals are times for cars first and pedestrians second. However, some intersections with heavy pedestrian traffic are timed appropriately for pedestrians. The downtown intersections are generous with pedestrian time compared to most intersections, and since there are so many pedestrians, drivers actually watch out for them. Downtown Cincinnati is special in that all of the traffic signals are coordinated and controlled by a single controller. The timing is designed for corridor flow to keep vehicles moving. If you drive across Sixth Street, for example, and make it through the first light, you should be able to make it through all of them at a steady 25 mph. I've tried it, and it works reasonably well. The blocks in Cincinnati are mostly square, and this geometry lends itself to corridor timing in both the north-south and east-west directions. The drawback is that if you try to drive around the block, you get all red lights. Changing the traffic signal system is no small task. It will be much more difficult than simply painting lines. That said, I find it frustrating to walk downtown and be delayed by so many traffic signals. The Skywalk concept was supposed to separate pedestrian traffic from the street, but the skywalk has fallen out of fashion.

^---"The average mile of light-rail line costs two to five times as much as an urban freeway lane-mile." I'd like to see his source for this one.

"The city centers have to come down!" --- Le Corbusier, "City of Tomorrow"

Washington D.C. had at least two cable car lines.

The original Cincinnati Streetcar system was built up incrementally over the course of about 80 years, starting with some humble horse cars on single track line. Those people who put in the first lines had no idea what the city would look like in 80 years. If this Cincinnati Streetcar gets built in Over-the-Rhine, we are likely to have some surprises, either good or bad. We will certainly learn a lot, and be more prepared for the next one. You can only plan so far ahead. The best we can do is to allow for as much flexibility in the future as possible. Just build it and see what happens.

Here are some recent past proposals that I can think of at the moment: 1. Commuter train from Downtown to Milford. 2. Exclusive right of way from Downtown on three lines to Western Hills, Norwood, and Covington. (1975 Exclusive guidway proposal.) 3. Light rail from CVG to Kings Island. 4. Exclusive busway from downtown to Kings Island. 5. Metro Moves. 6. Eastern Corridor including a light rail line over the Little Miami River. 7. Cincinnati Streetcar 8. Riverfront Transit Center (this one was actually built) 9. Fort Washington Way overpasses built to accomodate Light Rail. (This was actually built.) 10. Sorta purchasing of abandoned railroad rights of way including the Oasis line along the Ohio River and portions of the CL&N line. 11. The 3-C Corridor passenger rail to serve Cincinnati. Because of the large number of proposals, I have to agree that Cincinnati does NOT have a clear vision regarding expansion of the streetcar, commuter rail, or LRV. The Cincinnati Streetcar feasibility study is not as broad in scope as some of these, but it represents a reasonable, buildable project.

The streetcar feasiblity didn't look into those issues. The streetcar feasibility study had only a cursory look at potential expansion. What I like about the streecar feasibility study was that it proposed a reasonable project. I am somewhat discouraged that the uptown extension has gotten so much attention when the first phase isn't even designed, much less built. Assuming that the streetcar is built, it may not even be prudent to try to extend it. It may be better to add a separate system, either streetcar or light rail, that does not interchange vehicles.

Peak oil is not really about the price of gasoline, nor about the short term fluctuations. Peak oil is about the long term trend in oil consumption. We don't know all the answers, but we think we see the broader picture: A person born in 1970 and living 80 years will see two thirds of the world's petroleum consumed in his lifetime. Around 2040 there will be about half of the daily oil consumption available compared to what is available today. There are no substitutes for petroleum.

If the streetcar were built on Walnut Street, it would make a proposed tunnel that much more difficult to build under a street with operating streetcars. No one is seriously proposing a Walnut Street subway that I am aware of.

Another advantage of electric vehicles is that they can employ regenerative braking. This technology uses electric motors to stop a moving vehicle and generates electricty to send over the wires. A beneficial side effect is that it also reduces brake wear. Non-electric vehicles cannot recover any power, and must dispose of it with friction brakes. This is particularly an advantage in hilly areas. A Cincinnati Streetcar would use a lot of power to climb a hill, but would recover some of that power coming down. A non electric vehicle would use a lot of power to climb a hill and wear out a lot of brakes coming down. I haven't done any analysis, but I would guess that an electric streetcar would consume less power than a diesel or gasoline one. This technology is over 100 years old.

Don't get me wrong! I'm not trying to make the sewers into an insurmountable problem. I'm just saying that it's an issue that it is better to identify earlier rather than later. 600 credits is good news. If I'm not mistaken, that means we can start with 600 units before we have to modify the sewer system. Thanks for the info.

On sewers: Yes, MSD has provisions for connecting storm water runoff into combined sewers. But this would be different. Development of 90 acres would add a lot of toilets to the combined sewer system, which would connect to the Mill Creek in wet weather. The EPA frowns on this. The environmental benefits of high density are unquestionalbe, but the EPA doesn't see it that way. They see that more toilets are connected to the Mill Creek, which flows into the Ohio River. MSD is under a consent order that says that the combined sewer overflows need to be addressed, at a cost of $2 billion. However, nothing has been done so far except some very preliminary planning. Why doesn't someone call up MSD and say that we want to build 10,000 units or whatever the number is in Over-the-Rhine and ask if they will allow it?

^ A two year test doesn't really prove anything. If you were a developer, would you build based on a two year trial project? Chances are, your development won't even be ready in two years!

Now that the board has settled down a bit, I would like to bring up a new point. In my opinion, there is only one legitimate argument against the streetcar, and that is that it will be underutilized. The study shows that if Over-the-Rhine is redeveloped, then the ridership will support the cost. But what if Over-the-Rhine is not developed? How confindent are we that it will work? There are 90 acres of parking lots in the area to be served by the streetcar. I would love to see those sites redeveloped as much as anyone. But there is a problem that hasn't been mentioned yet. Those 90 acres are served by combined sewers. The combined sewers lead to the Mill Creek, which flows into the Ohio River. Combined sewers are now considered an old-fashioned design, built before wastewater was treated, but they are still in service. The combined sewers are intercepted and treated only on dry weather days. If it is raining, the rainwater mixed with wastewater overflows into the Mill Creek. The Ohio EPA is reluctant to allow development served by combined sewers. It can be done, but with difficulty. They usually want the developer to compensate, by making improvements to the sewer system. Sometimes the developer will walk away before the project really gets going. Every single one of those 90 acres is going to face this issue. Politically, the Metro Moves plan failed in Hamilton County, but did OK in the city. It seems that the streetcar plan may do OK in the city. But, the Metropolitan Sewer District is controlled by Hamilton County. I would not expect the county to be willing to make improvements in Over-the-Rhine. Construction of new sewers is going to be difficult in that area. One reason is that the new sewer will have to cross I-75. Another reason is that there are a lot of existing utilities to work around, including, ironically, old streetcar rails. The worse case is that the streetcar may be built, but the 90 acres will never be developed due to sewer issues. Existing buildings could still be rehabbed, though. Believe me, I want to see the streetcar. However, I'm skeptical. Anyone else know more about this issue?

What is the roof material?

"We need the revitalization of Peebles Corner," said Chris Smitherman. Peebles Corner might be the all time best example of an area that declined when the old streetcars stopped operating. Peebles Corner is a product of the streetcar. Peebles Corner used to be the second biggest shopping district after downtown. A traffic count in 1924 found that 68 streetcars per hour passed through Peebles corner - more than one per minute - and that only counts the southbound cars on Gilbert Avenue! Of course, we know what happened in the end. The streetcars were discontinued, there was little parking, and the shopping district became empty storefronts. Swifton Commons opened with acres of parking and people with money drove their cars there to shop.

Here's where some of Cincinnati's electricity is generated from coal, just to help visualize it.

Professional atheletes may have their own baggage trucks and equipment managers, but the hordes of amateur hockey players and youth players are going to have to haul their truckloads of sweaty hockey gear from their cars to the rink, and they need a place to store the gear until game time. (That lobby looks pretty small.)

I would only do it if I was otherwise unemployed and had plenty of cash on hand.