 | Australia Pumping Empty: the Looming Peak Oil Crisis | TOD: Australia/New Zealand | The Bullroarer - Friday, 18th April |  |
45 comments on Policies to Develop a Low Emissions Transport Sector in Australia
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
User login
Contact
- anz at theoildrum dot com
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Archives
GAIA Host Collective
I pretty much agree with you on planning. The reason we are in the mess we are is that infrastructure for power generation and transportation are centrally "planned". The result is that these regulated industries are 69% and 80% inefficient.
If we allowed free markets, there would be a swam of small businesses carving profits by preempting small bites of that inefficiency.
On electrical generation I also agree. One of the key benefits of striving for 400 mpg (actually, we are only striving for 200 mpg because of air conditioning and other creature comforts) is that it allows natural power sources to be harnessed in new ways.
Installing solar collectors 2 meters wide over these 200 mpg rails, it is practical to capture 12,500 vehicle-miles of power (2.5 million watt-hours in a typical day) per mile of rail. Transportation need for distributed power can be harvested from the sun's delivery of distributed power.
Solar power, when used where it is gathered is very potent.
I like your vision of collecting distributed solar power, but there are many other types of electrical infrastructure possible--still not on the map of the 'planners' such as they are. I suspect we have a different opinion about what constitutes planning, or even centralized planning. Corporations (small and large), in my view, are a form of centralized planning and the example of what happened to electric rail in Los Angeles is a case worth pondering. On the local level, 'central planning' decisions were made to install electric rail but that initial investment never gained momentum with the rise of the automobile. It is a complex story not easily summarized.
cf., http://www.scsra.org/library/rapid-transit-history/
I would argue that costs have generally been calculated on a short-term basis and without any consideration for entropy, energy, and thermodynamics which are topics generally beyond the purview of planners--whether corporate, municipal, or federal. That is essentially the historical problem before us.
We are beginning to see the emergence of new ways at looking at these matters and I remain optimistic that lower-energy throughput systems of transportation can be created--in theory. The practical implementation and design of such systems must follow a much-larger public awareness of the seriousness of fast-approaching limitations.
Best wishes!
The reason we are in the mess we are is that infrastructure for power generation and transportation are centrally "planned".
I do not wish to be overly simple-minded but there are some simple truths:
If more of what we have is what we need, then the current bureaucracies are seem capable of producing repetition. If there are fundamental changes to the our assumptions then adapting to those changes faster than they kill us off seems required.
How many city planners do you know who have filed patents? How many bureaucrats have mortgage their homes to push for an innovation?
If you need innovation, you need to allow the messy nature of innovation. If you need luck, you need to increase the number of attempts to find it.
Messy does not preclude having standards. It does not preclude planning. But unlike current policies, attempts must be allowed without having to be planned.
The discovery of penicillin was luck intersecting a prepared mind. The vulcanization of rubber was luck intersecting a prepared mind. If Fleming or Goodyear had to submit their plans to a city council and receive permission to be struck by serendipity we would be without the benefits of their discovery.
Planning is important only in as a support for increasing the nimbleness of our thinking. Current planning has made our infrastructure brittle with rules that applied only when oil was cheap and did not pollute.
All public infrastructure is the output of somebody's plan. It is true that the scientifc and technological inovations which made that infrastructure possible were not planned. I am not suggesting that scientific and technological innovation should come to an end. But if we want to build real world infrastructure with a long useful lifetime then planning is required. Furthermore, some technologies do have long term advantages. Railroads have been around for more than two centuries, but I see nothing on the horizon which has superior efficiency for overland heavy freight transportation. Of course innovations in engine efficiency or in sophisticated management techniqes to minimize empty freight car miles may still be possible.
Our current infrastructure is the result of an economic system which emphasizes the accumulation of short term private fortunes over the creation and maintenance of stable long term community wealth. That is to say that our current infrastructure is a result of piss poor planning which has resulted from incredibly stupid assumptions about long term resource costs. I agree that continued technological innovation is important, but the idea that pursuing such innovation in the context of an economic system in which every individual is striving to get richer as rapidly as possible will result in the emergence of a sustainable economic system is completely insane.
French planning is fairly derigiste.
They now have an electricity system which should survive peak oil nicely, with it's high input from nuclear power, and assured exports as other countries turn in this direction.
They are also implementing extensive renewables production.
Their transport infrastructure both within cities and nationally with their road and rail network is also exemplary.
There doesn't seem to be much wrong with planning, you just have to have the right plans and implement them well.
80% of trips in Europe (not sure about France individually) are still by car.
Trains have never been the primary provider of personal mobility. Before cars, there were horses. But then we had smaller populations and plenty of biofuel that had to be scraped off the streets.
Central planners have not, anywhere, adjusted to post oil needs for:
Actions based on faulty assumptions are high risk.
I do agree that France is far better off than the US. But I think it is mostly because of bicycles and nukes. They are at nearly equal risk in food distribution and farming.
I think you need to read some of Alan from Big Easy's posts regarding French plans.
They are planning a lot of urban rail, and are putting in electric cars in many cities which you can hire by the hour or day.
When you say that 80% of trips are by car, that does not take account of the fact that walking is entirely practical and popular in many European cities, not to mention scooters and such which would be early targets for electrification.
Water transport is also fairly extensively used in Europe, and they have very wide canals capable of taking large freight vessels - an early one, the Canal du Midi, was ordered to be constructed by the entirely derigiste Louis IVX.
Here is a link to some information on the different effects of European planning versus British laissez-faire on water transport.
http://www.waterways.org.uk/Waterways/WaterwaysFreight-1
France is also the premier food producer in Europe, and transport distances are modest.
I will leave the rail and public transport to the much more knowledgeable Alan, but would remark that there is a lot more to France's energy policy than nuclear power.
They are installing 50,000 air heat pumps a year, and plan to install around 5 million residential solar thermal panels in the next few years, and are gearing themselves up to build one of the largest wind power systems in Europe.
I would therefore argue that your comments are not based on sufficient information about facts on the ground in France.
I know people who have lived comfortably in France for 30 years without a car. The metro in Paris suffices for those who live there and a car is an inconvenience.
But I agree that the facts show France is still consuming a large part of its total energy supply as FF. And as far as I'm concerned, nuclear power is a short-term fix and a long-term disaster that is an example of poor planning. But the French are well-positioned, of the oil-importing countries, to be less savaged than the US which seems to suffer from a sort of idiotic leadership, corrupt through and through, constipated and increasingly beset with the debts of an occupying empire in decline...
Trains have never been the primary provider of personal mobility
Factually wrong.
For over a century, the dominant means of inter-city transportation in both the USA and Europe (and I assume Australia as well) was trains. Armies planned around them in their campaigns.
And within New Orleans (and we were not unique) streetcars were the primary means of public transportation (shoe leather #2) for over 3 decades.
We had 222 miles of tracks in a dense urban network. Where I live, there was a choice of three streetcar lines within 3 blocks.
Horses were rare for personal use, even by gold and silver dollar millionaires, and used mainly for commercial hauling.
And even today, public transportation in Warsaw still has about 60% modal share (relayed to me by friend that talked with administration there).
Best Hopes for Understanding Historical Truths,
Alan
Yep, Australia, too. Well - Melbourne, at least. Our rail network in 1929, with frequencies of trains in minutes, peak/non-peak period.
These frequencies were achieved with manual signalling and track changes - a guy with a stick changed the sign, and another guy with a crowbar moved the tracks. They're twice the frequency achieved today. Yes, they ran twice as many trains 79 years ago.
In 1950 - still with the manual signalling and track changes - Melbourne had 1.3 million people, and carried 204 million passengers; that is, there 157 train trips annually per Melburnian. Nowadays we have 3.85 million people with 180 million trips, or 47 train trips per Melburnian annually. That is, trains were taken more than three times as often in 1950 as today, and again that was with "inefficient" manual signalling and track changes.
In Amsterdam and Copenhagen today, of all trips taken, about one-third are by private car, one-third by bike or foot, and one-third by public transport - buses, trains and trams.
So really the mixture of use of modes of transport you have in a city have not much to do with anything inherent in those modes, and all to do with the way you choose to run the things.
If you have a frequent, reliable, quick and pleasant service, people will use it. This is a basic principle understood by any businessperson who didn't go broke in the first six months, but is apparently a great puzzle and surprise to many public transport operators in the West.
Ships are the most efficient carriers, but they cannot deliver goods where there are no water ways.
Heavy rail is efficient at long haul freight movement, but they cannot go where there are not rails. They are not efficient if they have to start-stop for congested transport.
The point is there are niches. If confined to their niche, many things, including cars can provide great value at a reasonable cost.
My contempt for regulatory monopolies is the same as my contempt for political monopolies, they do not allow niche ideas and solutions. In the niche of highly repetitive transport ultra-light rail can provide the convenience of a chauffeured car with the energy use of an elevator. This systems are limited in carrying capacity and length of trips. But in the niche of urban transport, only bicycles are competitive.
Neither bicycles or automated guideways are aggressively supported by the current flock of "urban planners."
Then they need to be educated. I do not see how we can move away from an automobile dominated urban infrastructure unless the public and their elected representives agree that we need to do so and plan accordingly. I can buy a bicycle or invent new and better bicycles on my own, but I cannot create a bicycle friendly infrastructure without community planing and consent.
I absolutely agree with you. If we made every 10th street in a city into an automated guideway/bike safe corridor, we can make the corner.
Here is an illustration of green space recovery:
Well, it seems like progress was made on this thread insofar as I understood positions better after their elaboration.
As an aside, I have a friend who is an urban planner and although largely informed by the dogma of economics, his opinions have shifted greatly on the topic of peak oil as I'm sure has been the case with many others in bureaucracies around the world.
Can changes be made quickly enough? I don't know, but that's the struggle and the push no matter the innovations. Planning & bureaucracies are slow, but we've never seen the pressures mounting so quickly for dramatic change that quite probably will affect the processes of planning and bureaucracies themselves!
There is an extraordinary book Black Swans.
Survivors will be the ones that adapted. Graveyard, which we largely ignore, will bare silent testimony for those who do not.
Which ones we will be is being determined now.
Here are two questions for your urban planner:
1. Do they have a 2020 plan?
2. Is their 2020 plan based on oil at $50 or $300 a barrel?
Plans built on uncertain forecasts (note all forecasts) are grave exposures to Black Swans, like Peak Oil.
They are not efficient if they have to start-stop for congested transport
Factually incorrect, as I have pointed out to you before.
Regenerative braking recycles the electricity from braking back into the system with quite good efficiency.
OTOH, your jpods that you are promoting are quite inefficient aerodynamically. One pod for every 1 or 2 people verses *MUCH* more aerodynamically efficient/person trains.
You are trying to create a philosophy (with several errors) to support your commercial enterprise, instead of deriving a solution from an underlying philosophy.
Alan
Oddly enough Alan, our first paying customer is a commuter railroad that wants to provide feeder networks.
I thought that your first line was going to be open at the Mall of America by now.
I question promoter claims.
And only VERY poor management at a commuter rail line would waste money on unproven gadgetbahn. Many better ways to spend money at EVERY commuter rail system in te USA.
What you are promoting, and spending so much effort on, is simply wrong. You cannot debug and prove your technology in time to make a difference, but you will confuse and delude people away from proven, GOOD solutions.
I wish that you had chosen a constructive, rather than destructive, path for your energy and efforts.
Alan
BTW: just HOW are you going to provide ADA access to wheelchair passengers stranded in mid-air ?