patrick.net

So we can agree then that it is more important to place passengers on trains than it is to place freight on trains.

I hope it is clear that I'm not at all against placing freight on trains. What I am saying is that using trains instead trucks for freight is not a complete solution nor the most significant solution to the overall problem of oil consumption in transportation.

Listen, the reason I'm nagging you about this is that your original post was saying that trucking was the "real problem".

The implication being that if only trucks would cease to exist, the problem of transportation oil consumption would be gone, or at least that nothing else would be worth doing until trucking was gone.

This is clearly false, and what the claim does is to push the problem onto some other group (the trucking industry), rather than taking personal responsibility for the problem and reduce personal automobile use.

It is always easier to solve problems by demanding that some other group changes their behavior than by changing what we do ourselves. But is is not right. And in this particular case, it does not even come close to solving the problem.

Bubble Bobble says

Unfortunately, passenger trains require a certain population to make sense, and limit the freedom of the passengers who would otherwise use a car… It just doesn’t work everywhere.

Neither does rail Cargo. You may need trucks for the last few miles in many cases, and for the last hundreds of miles in some cases.

I wonder how many people are still driving vehicles getting under 18MPG, especially alone most/all of the time.

American in Japan says

I wonder how many people are still driving vehicles getting under 18MPG, especially alone most/all of the time.

I know someone who just replaced an 18 MPG SUV for which she was paying $600/month in gas with a new Prius for which she's paying $250/month. Oh, and $500/month in car payments.

If Toyota can just get the cost of that car down. Perhaps a 3-4 year old Prius?
Vicente where are you?

If Toyota can just get the cost of that car down. Perhaps a 3-4 year old Prius?
Vicente where are you?

National Rail Shame!

We spent trillions in the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System because we followed Hitler's example. Because we wanted to be able to easily roll tanks from Detroit to Florida if Castro invaded.

Our society was forever changed by this DEFENSE decision which has distorted our society, and other transport has atrophied.

Here, look at the Confederate railroad:

Now?

I can't get by train from Atlanta to Savannah unless I go through Washington DC.

The "company town" is one solution to requiring less daily brownian motion of people. Another would be go back to single-earner economy. Mom or Dad being paid a decent wage so they can live on one salary. But I guess the billionaires wouldn't like that so forget it.

We spent trillions (inflation adjusted) on railroads wiping out a perfectly good canal system. We spent trillions on a canal system wiping out a perfectly good wagon road system. If the price of oil goes high enough trains might make a big comeback. The technology that makes the most sense at the time wins. Life moves on.

The interstate highway system made most of the wealth of the second half of the 20th century possible. It also caused a myriad of problems like drugs and suburban sprawl leading to destruction of most major cities. Why drugs? Because drugs were limited to a few urban areas prior to wwII. You just couldn't transport and distribute them all around the country before the interstate made it possible.

The big problem with trains is the sheer number of destinations we have freight going to. In Canada, freight trains work wonders, but it's possible to draw a single line through Canada and hit every major city, or essentially 90+% of the population in one route.

Trains could reduce the trucking needs, but it would be nearly impossible to get to all of the small destination points very easily. Europe has a nice train system, but in reality, the sheer number of railroads that would need building would make it impossible to do here, at this point.

Public transit would be nice, even if it was just done in major cities, but everyone ends up going in a different direction. None of the cities here are populated in a way to allow easy commuting.

bob2356 says

It also caused a myriad of problems like drugs and suburban sprawl leading to destruction of most major cities. Why drugs? Because drugs were limited to a few urban areas prior to wwII. You just couldn’t transport and distribute them all around the country before the interstate made it possible.

There was a huge anti-drug mania in this country prior to WW1, cumulating in the Harrison act. The problem was characterized as widespread and pervasive. People could even buy cocaine though the mail.

A few years later, alcohol was widely transported in the US, despite the Prohibition laws and the lack of an interstate highway system.

Bubble Bobble says

Cook County resident says

There was a huge anti-drug mania in this country

WAS??????

Sure. Manias are cyclical. That mania had pretty much run it's course by the 60s.

I really hate to jump in here, but I think the culmination was not in the Harrison Act (1914), but in the 18th amendment (1919). The Harrison Act was primarily about taxation and control* of opium and cocaine but they continued to be prescribed and sold. It requires a constitutional amendment for the federal government to ban something from sale (i.e. "intoxicating liquors") in the U.S., or at least it did until the 1970 Controlled Substances Act. On June 17th we celebrate 40 years of Nixon's War on Drugs.

(*) Well, taxation, control, ... and to prevent blacks from raping white women and white women from sleeping with chinamen (see statements by Hamilton Wright).

Vicente says

The “company town” is one solution to requiring less daily brownian motion of people.

Maybe, someday, in some enlightened society, the government will people live in the back room.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/5845600-418/city-may-let-people-live-where-they-work.html

"The zoning code currently allows only artists to live in their work space as well as those with home offices. The new ordinance would pave the way for attorneys, accountants, retailers, chefs and hairdressers to do the same."

I was surprised that the building code forces people to live elsewhere from their work. Surprised, but not shocked. Just about everything around here is illegal, but enforcement is optional.

cc0 says

I really hate to jump in here, but I think the culmination was not in the Harrison Act (1914), but in the 18th amendment (1919).

Although the logic of the anti-drug mania and Prohibition is pretty much the same, one important distinction is that alcohol Prohibition is politically dead, dead, dead and dead.

Users of intoxicants more exotic than alcohol will always risk finding themselves at the painful end of some sort of political mania, just as any other weirdos.

Cook County resident says

There was a huge anti-drug mania in this country prior to WW1, cumulating in the Harrison act. The problem was characterized as widespread and pervasive. People could even buy cocaine though the mail.

A few years later, alcohol was widely transported in the US, despite the Prohibition laws and the lack of an interstate highway system.

The key word is characterized. Most of the anti-drug mania was tied to the temperance mania. Again, most of the drug use was in big cities with easy access to shipping coming in. Being a drug addict in a rural area was pretty hard to do. Most people lived on farms and only visited towns occasionally.

Alcohol was much more commonly produced locally. Most of the smuggling by trucks was in a very limited area within a day's drive (200-300 miles in those days) of the Canadian border. Most came in by ship.

Look at the population distribution in the early 1900's. Most people lived on the land in rural area's. Something like 60% rural if I remember correctly. Most of the roads were terrible prior to WWI. Read about early motoring in any number of sources. The urban area's were almost all ports, which is why prohibition era alcohol moved by ship for the most part. Drugs, at least narcotics which was the main object of anti drug mania, of course had to move by ship ending up in the urban ports.

My point, which you seemed to have missed entirely, is without the interstate highway system (or at least on the roads that existed prior to WWII) the effortless distribution of drugs that started in the 1960's to every corner of America would have simply been impossible.

bob2356 says

My point, which you seemed to have missed entirely, is without the interstate highway system (or at least on the roads that existed prior to WWII) the effortless distribution of drugs that started in the 1960’s to every corner of America would have simply been impossible.

That's simply untrue. The Sears catalog distributed goods far and wide across the nation, especially to many rural homes for whom its arrival was warmly received. From it you could buy a pound of cocaine for under $2, "horrible" roads and all. The transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869.

bob2356 says

My point, which you seemed to have missed entirely, is without the interstate highway system (or at least on the roads that existed prior to WWII) the effortless distribution of drugs that started in the 1960’s to every corner of America would have simply been impossible.

Just about any non perishable item was available to any one who could afford it by 1900. The easiest example comes from mail order operations such as Sears and Wards. Not only were such drugs as opium and cocaine distributed through the mail but patent medicines were available in stores and sold by town to town peddlers.

Let me clarify. The current effortless ILLICIT distribution of ILLEGAL drugs would not have been possible. Everybody happy now? I know all about sears roebuck (FYI the first house I owned was a 1912 sears kit home in Castleton on Hudson, NY) and the transcontinental railroad thank you very much.

bob2356 says

Let me clarify. The current effortless ILLICIT distribution of ILLEGAL drugs would not have been possible.

Oh, I see. Distributing legal drugs was effortless and distributing illegal drugs became tough until they built Route 666.

Maybe, if gasoline gets expensive enough, Podunkville will again get the protection it deserves.

Lol

bob2356 says

Let me clarify. The current effortless ILLICIT distribution of ILLEGAL drugs would not have been possible. Everybody happy now? I know all about sears roebuck (FYI the first house I owned was a 1912 sears kit home in Castleton on Hudson, NY) and the transcontinental railroad thank you very much.

Tons of illegal drugs are now moved across the border via USPS parcels.