The Best Days Of Passenger Rail Lie Ahead

[dlagrua]

On a discussion forum of rail travelers, it is hoped that this subject will prove interesting and provoke thought. Of course the title of this post is all speculation and there will be different opinions but we are here to share these. Here are mine.

If we look at Amtrak's long term plans, there are many different ideas on expanding service and routes. There are often talked about here. It is also common knowledge that the organization is always short of funds to implement these plans. Despite some opposition in congress to passenger rail subsidies, the obvious shortfalls of the system and the lack of funds; Amtrak ridership continues to rise and will keep rising. I predict that a larger and improved national passenger rail system is inevitable. The price of oil continues to rise at record levels. This will have a dramatic effect on air, and auto travel. It should also bring about a new focus on passenger rail transportation.

Rail transportation is the most energy efficient form of transportation and if you've seen a CSX ad recently, that is clearly pointed out. Rail travel provides about 450 passenger miles/ per gallon (or there about) so in theory Amtrak can move 450 passenger, one mile on one gallon of fuel. That relates to less than 2,93 BTU of energy used per passenger mile. No other form of transportation comes close.

According to studies that I have researched on an energy per mile cost:

Amtrak consumes 16.1% and 31.1% less energy per passenger-mile than airlines and cars, respectively.

Here is a comparison on BTU's (energy) used per passenger mile. (Lower numbers are better)

Amtrak: 2,435 (#1 most efficient)

Rail Transit Systems 2,516

Commuter rail: 2,812

Domestic Airlines: 2,901

Automobiles: 3,538

If we complain about the current minimalist Amtrak routes and service this will need to change and the escalating price of fuel will force it to change. We also have the TSA to thank in driving away former airline travelers like myself. The point that I am making is that the growth of rail travel will continue unabated. Perhaps the best days of passenger rail in our time are about to come.

Is your opinion as optimistic as mine?

 

[Ziv]

This is a great idea to bring up, the responses will be interesting to see. I am not sure that commuter rail will be that much more efficient than a Volt with 2 or 3 people in it, but any type of rail will definitely have an advantage over most transportation modes on the energy cost equation. And I agree with you that it would take incredibly poor planning for rail not to see significant growth in the next 10-20 years. As the passenger miles continue to rise, so will the popularity of rail, as long as Amtrak and regional rail can continue to improve their on-time performance. I have seen comparisons of transportation modes efficiency that make the Volt look like the most efficient performer out there, and another that made the A380 look the best. The study below is a pretty good one, it might not be right on everything, but it seems to be in the ballpark.

http://truecostblog.com/2010/05/27/fuel-efficiency-modes-of-transportation-ranked-by-mpg/

 

[Tumbleweed]

You just made my day!

 

[Bob Dylan]

:hi: Interesting Topic! My take: As they say in Chicago, Vote Early and Vote Often!!! :help: :help: :help:

 

[dlagrua]

:hi: Interesting Topic! My take: As they say in Chicago, Vote Early and Vote Often!!! :help: :help: :help:

Whether we get screwed by liberals or conservatives makes little difference. The Washington establishment is composed of members of the big club and Jim, you and I are not in it. The politicians work for the world bankers, globalists, wall street financiers, and monopoly corporatists. They will wage war at the slightest threat to their financial interests like the trillions of dollars of yet to be mined minerals in Afghanistan. Forget the guy in the Whitehouse. He's irrelevant, a puppet and a slave to the forces with all the money.

We will only get a much improved Amtrak when the American people finally come to realize; does government control us or do we the people control the government? Meanwhile, Amtrak will survive no matter who is elected. The cost of energy will be the guiding factor and the incentive for more people to take to the rails.

 

[Ziv]

dl, it looks like Wiki agrees pretty closely with your numbers on BTU per passenger mile, though they don't have my favorites, the Volt and the PiP, in their calculations yet. But regardless of my personal car favorites, there is no doubt that trains will be grabbing a bigger portion of both commuting miles and travel miles. If we can slowly ramp up the frequency of service and the average speed of that service, all the while expanding the amount of stations served by rail, by 2025 we will probably be talking about the Renaissance of Rail! Or, more probably, be communicating subvocally with our sub-dermal Cray Computing, ultra high speed cloudbased communication/networking device with our fellow netizens from all over the Amtrak virtual domain. ;-)

Per Wiki:

US Passenger transportation

The US Transportation Energy Data Book states the following figures for Passenger transportation in 2006:[43]

Trnsprt mode - Average passengers per vehicle - BTU per passenger/mile - MJ per passenger-kilometre

Vanpool - 6.1 - 1,322 - 0.867

Efficient Hybrid - 1.57 - 1,659 - 1.088

Motorcycles - 1.2 - 1,855 - 1.216

Rail (Intercity Amtrak) - 20.5 - 2,650 - 1.737

Rail (Transit Light & Heavy) - 22.5 - 2,784 - 1.825

Rail (Commuter) - 31.3 - 2,996 - 1.964

Air - 96.2 - 3,261 - 2.138

Cars - 1.59 - 3,512 - 2.302

Personal Trucks - 1.72 - 3,944 - 2.586

Buses (Transit) - 8.8 - 4,235 - 2.776

 

[jis]

The interesting thing to observe is that Amtrak doesn't even try to be energy efficient particularly. It is not a metric on which their performance is measured by anyone. And yet, almost in spite of themselves they come out as good as they do.

Statistics is a such a wonderful thing, specially mindlessly rolled up statistics. Try running a vanpool with the legroom that you get on Amtrak and see what happens to their energy efficiency for example. Similarly, try running an Amtrak service with carefully scheduled service so as to minimize deadhead moves and using seat spacing same as in van pools and see what happens. The 20.7 per vehicle on Amtrak seems low. Perhaps corridor figures for Amtrak ought to be computed separately to get a more realistic number.

 

[TexRail]

I find the charm of a train is mostly removed when you get into the electric and high speed area. We all have the little things about trains that we like and for me it is the large, loud and slow heavy equipment mostly in the West. It is inevitable that we will lose all of my favorite aspects of passengers trains. Someone may manage to keep a Rocky Mountain excursion here and there but most of the old fashioned horn wailing, crossing bells fading in and out and the clickety clack will be gone. I am surprised the equipment I used to ride as a young kid is the same that I ride today.

It might not be anytime soon, but eventually all passenger trains will be higher speed electric. I hate to see the diesels go but I'm sure the old timers felt similar when the diesels took over when they phased out steam engines. Superliners have been around 30 years. They could be around another 30 years or they could be condemned much sooner. It really is anybody's guess. Whether it is in my lifetime or not, the death of the big, loud and slow diesels will come to an end. I am in my 30s so I may be lucky enough to see diesels until the end.

Here is my idea. I view some of the bailouts as a waste of money. Why not use the billions for something tangible? A sort of 'New Deal' for the 21st century. Let's do a transcontinental railroad part deux. Maybe a NYC to LA (for starters) high speed train with new lines and cutting edge technology for the highest speeds possible. This would spark the economy, employ thousands but most importantly, you would be adding real value to America just like adding a pool adds to the value of a house. The price would be extreme, but worth it in my opinion. Keep in mind, I am arguing for this as a non-railfan since I have no more attachment to an electric train than I do an airport shuttle. America needs a big project. It's been far too long. Unfortunately, Congress is corrupt and the status quo (airlines, oil, you name it) will not stand for any transcontinental bullet train. There have been plans to build a triangle high speed line from DFW to Houston to San Antonio. Everytime it comes up, the airlines (yeah I'm talking about you Southwest) greases the politicians just enough to kill the silly idea. The line would be finished by now had it gone ahead in the 80's. We may see this eventually but almost certainly not in my lifetime.

 

[PRR 60]

It is alway interesting to me that everyone, including Amtrak, ignores this warning prominently posted by DOE at the top of the table:

Great care should be taken when comparing modal energy intensity data among modes. Because of the inherent differences among the transportation modes in the nature of services, routes available, and many additional factors, it is not possible to obtain truly comparable national energy intensities among modes. These values are averages, and there is a great deal of variability even within a mode.

What this is saying is that differences in the 10% or even 20% range are statistically insignificant.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Amtrak will survive no matter who is elected.

If that's true then what, exactly, would prevent Amtrak from going the way of Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México?

 

[George Harris]

It would be very interesting to see what the vehicle weight per passenger is. The excessive obsession with crashworthiness that applies to rail far more than any other mode results in a lot of steel being carried around per person. While at a steady speed that does not really make that much difference it definitely does in energy consumed in acceleration. Also, the numbers really looked bad during the Warrington era because the energy per passenger was calculated without considering the huge proportion of the energy that was consumed in hauling around his freight.

It is also worthy of ocnsideration that, excluding short haul vehicles like the "Volt", only rail can reasonably be expected to run on fuel sources other than oil and coal.

I am saying this to say that the rail component looks much worse than it could be. Jis said it right. In fact, the constant slow down speed up required on the Northeast Corridor to get decent run times results in very high energy consumption for the average speed achieved.

 

[City of Miami]

I'm surprised that transit buses rate so low relative to rail transit especially. I guess it is because they run so regularly and so often regardless of load and in most cities they are not packed except at rush hours. The service here in San Antonio is quite good - mostly because they have a schedule and run on it 99% of the time.

 

[Grandpa D]

The 20.7 per vehicle on Amtrak seems low. Perhaps corridor figures for Amtrak ought to be computed separately to get a more realistic number.

Maybe not. Depends on what is counted as a "vehicle". Looking at the TE (mainly because I remeber the consist) you might say it has 3 coaches, 1 SSL, 1 CCC, 1 sleeper, 1 transdorm and 1 engine. That's 8 "vehicles". 8 x 20.7 = 165. Pretty close to the usual occupancy.

 

[Texan Eagle]

It might not be anytime soon, but eventually all passenger trains will be higher speed electric. I hate to see the diesels go but I'm sure the old timers felt similar when the diesels took over when they phased out steam engines. Superliners have been around 30 years. They could be around another 30 years or they could be condemned much sooner. It really is anybody's guess. Whether it is in my lifetime or not, the death of the big, loud and slow diesels will come to an end. I am in my 30s so I may be lucky enough to see diesels until the end.

I don't see diesels going anywhere anytime soon. Mindless electrification of an entire nations's railway network is never a good idea. (This debate is currently very hot among rail fans in India, jis can fill in with his expertise). Rail routes with low to moderate traffic are best served by diesel locomotives. The whole infrastructure of setting up electric wires and letting electricity run through them 24x7 is very expensive and not justified for low traffic routes. A good mix of electric and diesel hauled routes can work fine for a country as large as united States.

Here is my idea. I view some of the bailouts as a waste of money. Why not use the billions for something tangible? A sort of 'New Deal' for the 21st century. Let's do a transcontinental railroad part deux. Maybe a NYC to LA (for starters) high speed train with new lines and cutting edge technology for the highest speeds possible. This would spark the economy, employ thousands but most importantly, you would be adding real value to America just like adding a pool adds to the value of a house. The price would be extreme, but worth it in my opinion. Keep in mind, I am arguing for this as a non-railfan since I have no more attachment to an electric train than I do an airport shuttle. America needs a big project. It's been far too long. Unfortunately, Congress is corrupt and the status quo (airlines, oil, you name it) will not stand for any transcontinental bullet train.

Yes, America needs more passenger rail. No doubt about it. However, I don't think the idea of transcontinental rail travel will cut favor among anyone except hardcore railfans. Instead, what is required, to generate large scale employment and economy revival like the Eisenhower Interstates project did, is constructing lots and lots of corridor services across the country. Any route between major cities that is 1-2 hours by flight time (takeoff to landing) and 2 to 8 hours of driving time should get intercity moderate to high speed rail link. No need of insane talks like 200mph lines and bullet trains. NE Regional and Acela type service with 125-150 mph on improved existing (or new) right of way can work well, and if there are sufficient such "corridors", it can also help run a few high speed transcontinental trains for those who might be interested. For example, if there are 100-125mph passenger corridors Philadelphia-Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh-Columbus-Indianapolis, Indianapolis-St. Louis-Kansas City, Kansas City-Oklahoma City-Dallas-San Antonio, then you can have intercity trains running between individual city pairs, and then maybe one long distance train cutting across corridors and running, say, Boston-San Antonio! Of course, as one goes further west, the distance between cities increases and it may not be feasible to run corridor services between say, Denver and Salt Lake City or Las Vegas, but say more or less east of the Rockies there can be a mesh of intercity passenger corridors and then another set of corridors in the West in SD-LA-SF-Seattle region. The connection between the two sets of corridors can be through few long distance trains.

Ok, end of daydreams. I know this is not gonna happen anytime in my life (and I am in my twenties), but no harm dreaming, ain't it?

 

[Devil's Advocate]

I'm surprised that transit buses rate so low relative to rail transit especially. I guess it is because they run so regularly and so often regardless of load and in most cities they are not packed except at rush hours. The service here in San Antonio is quite good - mostly because they have a schedule and run on it 99% of the time.

I haven't taken the bus in years, but back when I did it took two hours or more to run a thirty minute errand by car. San Antonio doesn't seem to have much in the way of forward thinking traffic planning.

[rant]

Just look at all our after-the-fact convoluted spaghetti interchanges like those of 410 & 281 or I10 & 410 or 1604 & 281. Each one of those interchanges ran through a ten-year construction phase. Ten years of near constant interruptions. 1604 & 281 is still ongoing to this day. Several of these interchanges didn't come much better than when they started. A few were even worse than before they started.

Don't forget "new" roads like like the endlessly perplexing Wurzbach Parkway. How many decades has that thing been in the making? Or look at the 281 "Super Road" area where all three lanes of every cross street must first turn right in order to eventually turn left in order to eventually turn right again in order to go straight! What on earth did that accomplish?

At one time you could actually live downtown and have most of what you needed close by. But now that our downtown area has been completely re-purposed as a chain choked tourist playground there are very few jobs that pay well enough to live there on their own. The people who can afford to live downtown probably need to commute to someplace else, like the Medical Center. Which would be a great location for a light rail station, if we had even a single light rail line. Maybe we'll get one of those after we get our first carpool lane? I suppose we do have several "bus trains" to look forward to though. Yep. That's right. Bus trains. :wacko:

[/rant]

 

[reefgeek]

If one's mind wanders occassionally in apocalyptic directions, as mine sometimes does, one eventually must examine the possibility that we have, for the last century or so, been using millions of years worth of "stored solar energy" in the form of fossil fuels. If this resource runs out, and is not replaced with a similarly concentrated alternative (nothing is close at hand that will really do) then we are bound for a period of energy scarcity lasting a long time, maybe decades, maybe forever. We have been spending energy like drunken sailors on payday, and now China and India are here to help us spend what's left.

When (and if, I can't really decide) the US enters this period, our rail infrastructure, what remains of it, will be critical to human transport once again, because it can operate at that higher efficiency than cars and especially planes. That will be the future "golden age" of rail! I shudder a little bit (I like to scare myself) to think of life in that possible future world, but people are adaptable and we will get past it.

This book is already a little outdated (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Emergency) but the author sees a future where the entire national rail network would be electrified, perhaps even by nuclear power, as an alternative to a Chrysler minivan pulled by donkeys!

 

[Montanan]

I definitely agree that the best days of passenger rail lie ahead ... but the question is, how far ahead?

There will be a point when our planet's increasing population, increased environmental threats, and increased energy scarcity all combine to make rail transit a deal that our political leaders simply can't refuse ... if only because eventually there will be no other viable options left. If we had even a halfway-sane political system, we'd be able to accept those realities now, and begin working towards dealing with the inevitable eventuality. But we don't, and so we'll continue thinking for the short term because it's the easy way out ... and because of that, we're in for some extremely rough times before those "best days" ever show up. :/

 

[Devil's Advocate]

The author sees a future where the entire national rail network would be electrified, perhaps even by nuclear power, as an alternative to a Chrysler minivan pulled by donkeys!

There isn't enough radioactive ore of sufficient grade to feed the world with nuclear power for very long. Nor is it renewable. Mining minerals like uranium requires massive oil-burning vehicles feeding processing plants that consume even more energy. After that it's shipped around the world from places like Australia and Canada, generally handled by ships and trucks burning fossil fuels. Then it goes through additional refining that adds to the energy outlay before a single watt has been generated. Even when the nuclear fuel is finally in the power plant creating the world's most expensive hot water pot, fossil fuels are still being consumed by the control machinery, backup systems, and monitoring equipment. For every decade of nuclear power use we're creating another decade's worth of waste transportation to wherever we finally put all this stuff. Probably not Yucca Mountain however, as even if that site was approved tomorrow it's not nearly big enough to hold all the nuclear waste we've already created up until this point.

It's faster, cheaper, and easier to go with virtually any other power source. The only way nuclear comes out ahead is with major government backed subsidies and waivers. The insurance industry has estimated that a single Fukushima level event in the US could cost them as much as a trillion dollars if it was near a major population center. Guess how many of our nuclear power plants are near major population centers. Which is why they won't insure anything over the first 300 million of liability. The other $999.7 billion in payouts would mostly come from a government bailout like Japan's Tepco got and our own Wall Street screwballs received. Not to mention that the nuclear waste problem is likely to outlast virtually any other controllable calamity (including global warming) by about a million years. Just isn't worth the trouble for a few decades of non-renewable power.

 

[The Davy Crockett]

Looking into the future is always pretty hard to do. While attending elementary school in the 1960s I remember watching infomovies created by the auto and oil industries about the future. By now we were to be driving in cars that drove themselves and highways that were built with one machine from start to finish. I was skeptical then, and I'm still waiting! Yeah, I know it was a sales job, but...

And then during one of the energy crises of the 1970s my family went to a transportation expo out in the countryside. It was at Dulles Airport, which certainly is not out in the country anymore. At the expo there were exhibits by - you guessed it - the auto industry about how by the year 2000 everyone would be driving cars that got at least 70 MPG.

I also recall an article claiming that by the year 2030(?) I-95 in southern Florida will need to be something like 25 lanes wide to handle the volume of projected traffic.

As a country, will we ever get over our love affair with the auto? Hard to say, but as sprawl has spread far and wide, and people commute ever greater distances from low density suburbs, it is hard to see how transport that is geared towards the 'lone' commuter is going to go away, in any meaningful way, anytime soon.

I guess I've grown a tad cynical over the years, so: "Beam me up, Scotty!" :unsure:

 

[jis]

The 20.7 per vehicle on Amtrak seems low. Perhaps corridor figures for Amtrak ought to be computed separately to get a more realistic number.

Maybe not. Depends on what is counted as a "vehicle". Looking at the TE (mainly because I remeber the consist) you might say it has 3 coaches, 1 SSL, 1 CCC, 1 sleeper, 1 transdorm and 1 engine. That's 8 "vehicles". 8 x 20.7 = 165. Pretty close to the usual occupancy.

As I said, it is close to usual occupancy of LD trains possibly, but certainly not of NEC trains. That is why I suggested that perhaps two figures ought to be computed, one for LD and one for corridor trains. The figure for corridor trains will turn out to be way more favorable for rail.

It is kind of odd to compare the energy efficiency of relatively low occupancy vehicles by design against jam packed high occupancy vehicles and try to claim something based on that. That was my main point.

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

dl, it looks like Wiki agrees pretty closely with your numbers on BTU per passenger mile, though they don't have my favorites, the Volt and the PiP, in their calculations yet. But regardless of my personal car favorites, there is no doubt that trains will be grabbing a bigger portion of both commuting miles and travel miles. If we can slowly ramp up the frequency of service and the average speed of that service, all the while expanding the amount of stations served by rail, by 2025 we will probably be talking about the Renaissance of Rail! Or, more probably, be communicating subvocally with our sub-dermal Cray Computing, ultra high speed cloudbased communication/networking device with our fellow netizens from all over the Amtrak virtual domain. ;-)

Per Wiki:

US Passenger transportation

The US Transportation Energy Data Book states the following figures for Passenger transportation in 2006:[43]

Trnsprt mode - Average passengers per vehicle - BTU per passenger/mile - MJ per passenger-kilometre

Vanpool - 6.1 - 1,322 - 0.867

Efficient Hybrid - 1.57 - 1,659 - 1.088

Motorcycles - 1.2 - 1,855 - 1.216

Rail (Intercity Amtrak) - 20.5 - 2,650 - 1.737

Rail (Transit Light & Heavy) - 22.5 - 2,784 - 1.825

Rail (Commuter) - 31.3 - 2,996 - 1.964

Air - 96.2 - 3,261 - 2.138

Cars - 1.59 - 3,512 - 2.302

Personal Trucks - 1.72 - 3,944 - 2.586

Buses (Transit) - 8.8 - 4,235 - 2.776

What about intericty buses? Why are they not included? I would think that they are quite efficient.

 

[George Harris]

I'm surprised that transit buses rate so low relative to rail transit especially. I guess it is because they run so regularly and so often regardless of load and in most cities they are not packed except at rush hours. The service here in San Antonio is quite good - mostly because they have a schedule and run on it 99% of the time.

Teh item missing from teh equation is, as you noted, passengers per vehicle. That information has been made available in the past, but I do not know about currently.

Here it is for 2009 calculated from USDOT's Bureau of Transportation Statistics: www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_transit_profile.html

It gives a column for million vehicle miles and a column for million passenger, but it does not do the simple division that it takes to get passenger miles per vehicle mile. When it comes to trains, there is a footnote that states that this number "Includes locomotives which make up roughly 10 percent of commuter rail vehicles."

Doing the arithmetic, we get:

9.23 Motor bus

24.53 Heavy rail

24.40 Light rail

12.92 Trolley bus

33.02 Commuter rail

there was no number there for Amtrak. I leave it someone with more time on their hand to find average vehicle weights and then take these numbers and calculate the weight of vehicle per passenger for the various modes.

 

[reefgeek]

The author sees a future where the entire national rail network would be electrified, perhaps even by nuclear power, as an alternative to a Chrysler minivan pulled by donkeys!

There isn't enough radioactive ore of sufficient grade to feed the world with nuclear power for very long. Nor is it renewable. Mining minerals like uranium requires massive oil-burning vehicles feeding processing plants that consume even more energy. After that it's shipped around the world from places like Australia and Canada, generally handled by ships and trucks burning fossil fuels.

Check this out:

http://en.wikipedia....Breeder_reactor

For every decade of nuclear power use we're creating another decade's worth of waste transportation to wherever we finally put all this stuff. Probably not Yucca Mountain however, as even if that site was approved tomorrow it's not nearly big enough to hold all the nuclear waste we've already created up until this point.

Yucca Mountain is a tiny facility. You could put 1000 of those on just the land the government owns in Nevada.

Will is everything. If you or I spend a few winters shivering in the dark, we would welcome nuclear plants, tar sand oils, anything.

You know what solar energy can't do?

Provide enough electricity to run a plant to make solar panels.

Ditto wind, ditto everything alternative except hydroelectric, and there isn't that much of that.

And hey, trains are swell!

/rant :lol:

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Check this out: http://en.wikipedia....Breeder_reactor

Most breeder reactors built so far cannot create commercial scale power generation. Mostly they've been relegated to research projects. Their enormous market-leading cost is one reason. Potential for misuse or abuse of their products is another. And then there's the continued difficulty turning theoretical capability into actual performance.

Yucca Mountain is a tiny facility. You could put 1000 of those on just the land the government owns in Nevada. Will is everything. If you or I spend a few winters shivering in the dark, we would welcome nuclear plants, tar sand oils, anything.

Perhaps. Then again, I would never presume that a few cold and dark winters would be enough to turn you away from staunchly supporting tar sands and nuclear power.

You know what solar energy can't do? Provide enough electricity to run a plant to make solar panels.

Solar panels (photovoltaic cells) rarely compete with nuclear power plants. Solar-thermal installations, however, can be built to commercial generation scale and compete favorably to other power sources. They can continue running on cloudy days and even well into the night. They can also be combined with co-generation fuels such as natural gas to supply electricity during the low-load cycle at night.

Ditto wind, ditto everything alternative except hydroelectric, and there isn't that much of that. And hey, trains are swell!

There is no one fuel that can handle every situation. Luckily in the case of the US we are blessed with areas appropriate for solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, bio-fuels and natural gas. We're also so inefficient with our energy usage that we could probably cut our current energy consumption by anywhere from a quarter to a half just by using our energy more efficiently and using it less often. That's where real will power comes in, and that's why we'll probably never be weaned off our currently wasteful ways for as long as I shall live. So long as their is a drop of oil to extract or an ounce of uranium to be mined America will not hesitate to consume it.

 

[reefgeek]

1329957479[/url]' post='349111']

1329952446[/url]' post='349079']Check this out: http://en.wikipedia....Breeder_reactor

Most breeder reactors built so far cannot create commercial scale power generation. Mostly they've been relegated to research projects. Their enormous market-leading cost is one reason. Potential for misuse or abuse of their products is another. And then there's the continued difficulty turning theoretical capability into actual performance.

1329952446[/url]' post='349079']Yucca Mountain is a tiny facility. You could put 1000 of those on just the land the government owns in Nevada. Will is everything. If you or I spend a few winters shivering in the dark, we would welcome nuclear plants, tar sand oils, anything.

Perhaps. Then again, I would never presume that a few cold and dark winters would be enough to turn you away from staunchly supporting tar sands and nuclear power.

1329952446[/url]' post='349079']You know what solar energy can't do? Provide enough electricity to run a plant to make solar panels.

Solar panels (photovoltaic cells) rarely compete with nuclear power plants. Solar-thermal installations, however, can be built to commercial generation scale and compete favorably to other power sources. They can continue running on cloudy days and even well into the night. They can also be combined with co-generation fuels such as natural gas to supply electricity during the low-load cycle at night.

1329952446[/url]' post='349079']Ditto wind, ditto everything alternative except hydroelectric, and there isn't that much of that. And hey, trains are swell!

There is no one fuel that can handle every situation. Luckily in the case of the US we are blessed with areas appropriate for solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, bio-fuels and natural gas. We're also so inefficient with our energy usage that we could probably cut our current energy consumption by anywhere from a quarter to a half just by using our energy more efficiently and using it less often. That's where real will power comes in, and that's why we'll probably never be weaned off our currently wasteful ways for as long as I shall live. So long as their is a drop of oil to extract or an ounce of uranium to be mined America will not hesitate to consume it.

Dang, you're right, how could I have been so stupid?

Back to trains, I'm done with this stuff.