Sunday Train: Guaranteeing Rural Transport in the face of Peak Oil | 11 comments (11 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Sunday Train: Guaranteeing Rural Transport (4.00 / 2)

There's another point, quite aside from the advantages that rail transport provides to rural areas:

Even if rail transport only took urban and suburban areas off gasoline, it would still mean that there would be more gasoline to go around in the rural areas for a longer time. Simple point, really, but sort of important when those urban areas account for maybe a fifth of the total global consumption...

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Aug 24th, 2010 at 03:45:17 AM EST

Re: Sunday Train: Guaranteeing Rural Transport (4.00 / 2)

I add a half-point, though it is applicable to only a smaller part of the US rural land: urban networks using existing rail lines can expand outward quite some distance into rural country. So, just like wayside stations on high-speed lines for smaller cities, towns (and villages - if there are any called so in the USA) on the right place can piggyback on systems socio-economically justified with urban demand.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Tue Aug 24th, 2010 at 09:57:16 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Sunday Train: Guaranteeing Rural Transport (4.00 / 2)

Given US sprawl development, this is almost entirely relevant to suburban rather than rural populations. A majority of the population is suburban, so its not a minor point (!), but my focus here was on serving rural populations in the face of Peak Oil, so I did not look at that.

Intercity networks, though, intrinsically serve rural counties, because the optimal spacing of stations and normal population distribution in the majority of the US (that is, outside the Northeast Corridor) dictates that, eg, a small city like Coshocton should get a station on a Regional HSR corridor between Pittsburgh and Columbus, which means far superior accessibility to rural areas in that and the neighboring counties than airports can ever provide.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue Aug 24th, 2010 at 02:07:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Sunday Train: Guaranteeing Rural Transport (4.00 / 3)

In Ohio, there are cities and villages, but no towns ~ a "town" is either officially a city or a village.

Mind, the Village of Granville, that was the closest town when I was growing up, and the City of Ravenna, where now live, are roughly the same size, but Granville is probably bigger and certainly more prosperous ... the ambitions of a place when it was established and how things turned out are not always lined up.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue Aug 24th, 2010 at 02:09:17 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Sunday Train: Guaranteeing Rural Transport (4.00 / 3)

The idealized target here is to get off of gasoline entirely for transport, preserving US oil production for things like chemical feedstocks.

But the point translates directly: while biofuels will not be available sustainably at volumes that will allow a plug and play replacement for current oil consumption in transport, shifting those urban and suburban transport tasks that can be entirely electrified on a mix of electric mass transit, regional trains, light rail, trolleybuses, and neighborhood electric vehicles implies that the actual intrinsic need in many rural areas for ranges best provided by high concentration combustion fuels can indeed by provided by things like liquid biofuels, biogas, or sustainable generated ammonia.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue Aug 24th, 2010 at 02:14:48 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Sunday Train: Guaranteeing Rural Transport in the face of Peak Oil | 11 comments (11 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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