The largest ground transport system in the country

. . . sits idle most of the day and much of the year, while absorbing huge chunks of capital that could have been invested in providing cleaner, smarter transport for all. Isn't it odd that money supposedly targeted for schools is actually being spent to deal with the blunders in our land-use planning and in our hostile-to-everyone-but-motorists transportation system?

How about we make ODOT and city and county planning departments pay the costs of getting kids to schools? Wouldn't that lead to more sensible decisions?

The problem isn't just the cost of school bus fuel--it's the model of mega-schools that are so large that they have to draw students from such a large area that motorized transport is required.

Outside rural areas where relatively few students live, most kids should never see a school bus, period.

Climate Change: The Opportunity of a Lifetime

From the folks at Onward Oregon:

Are the twin challenges of climate change and disappearing fossil fuel reserves a huge threat to America or do they provide the greatest opportunity of our time?

How we answer this question will help determine how we respond. Cylvia Hayes, executive director of 3E Strategies, believes now is our big chance to face up to these challenges. Here is a summary of her thinking:

Chances are pretty good that if we were to sit down and create an ideal energy system from scratch it wouldn’t look like the one we have now! Our current fossil fuel-based energy system is threatening our environmental life support systems. At the same time, our nation is now importing over 60 percent of our oil, much of it from politically unstable regions in the Middle East and Africa.

However, a fossil-based system did make sense when it was created. In 1859, the discovery of oil in the U.S. solved many problems. It allowed us to grow more food and move into the industrial age. Petroleum-based plastics brought great advancements in medicine, transportation and communications technologies.

These innovations enabled our numbers to grow from approximately 25 million people in 1859 to 300 million today. Average life expectancy has nearly doubled to 80 years. These are phenomenal successes. Unfortunately, along the way we developed an economic system that results in the emission of staggering amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Global climate change is the unforeseen and unintended consequence of America’s economic success.

As Americans, we shouldn’t beat ourselves up for this success. The people who tapped the first wells couldn’t have imagined a globally connected economy. They couldn’t have imagined our world population would go from one billion to 6.5 billion in just 15 decades. They also couldn’t have imagined the unintended new problems that would come along with our fossil fuel consumption. Problems like climate change.

Fossil fuels made sense at the time. They no longer do. It is time to rekindle those best of American traits--innovation, idealism and hard work--in order to make the rapid transition to a post fossil fuel, low-carbon economy.

We have the necessary resources to do it:

Solar: Every hour the Earth receives enough energy from the sun to supply more than ten times the electricity needs of all of humanity.
Geothermal: The heat in the upper six miles of Earth’s crust has 50,000 times more energy than all the world’s oil and gas reserves combined.
Wind: The winds in Oregon, North Dakota and Texas alone are enough to satisfy our national electricity needs.
Transportation: Plug-in hybrid cars are capable of going about 50 miles using no gasoline at all and overall get around 100 miles per gallon. Big breakthroughs are happening in passenger and freight rail efficiency.
Already, some of the early stepping stones are being laid on the road to a post fossil fuel economy. The wind, solar, hydrogen and biofuels sectors reached $55.4 billion in 2006. Investment in these four energy sources are projected to be $226 billion by 2016. Economists expect that energy efficiency products will likely generate even larger revenues. Current estimates in the U.S. are that renewable energy and energy efficiency generate $970 billion and could be as high as $4.5 trillion by 2030.

Yet, despite the specter of climate change and the obvious economic opportunities in the clean energy industry, as a nation we are not moving nearly fast enough. Each American produces many times more carbon than people anywhere else on the planet. Our demand for oil continues to grow. Renewable energy accounts for only about six percent of America’s energy consumption.

Why? Why are we stuck here, moving so slowly toward a lucrative solution?
It comes down to three reasons: First, we only recently reached the point where we can see that the damage caused by fossil fuels outweighs their very real benefits. Second, only in the past couple of decades have renewable energy technologies become advanced enough to replace fossil fuels. And third, there are now a lot of stakeholders invested in the status quo.

These stakeholders include the automobile industry, oil and gas production companies, utilities, not to mention consumers who have a big appetite for fossil fuel and are deeply ingrained in a driving culture--like you and me.

When any proposal to change the system is put forward, these stakeholders become advocates for or against it based on how they think it will impact them economically in the short term. So far, these competing economic interests have effectively blocked any serious consideration of a solution to a problem that poses a clear and present danger to our nation and our planet.

How then can we accelerate the transition to a sustainable future? First we need to acknowledge that today there are millions of people whose jobs depend on the current fossil fuel-based economy and nobody wants to lose their job.

Similarly, millions of people drive inefficient cars and heat and cool their homes with fossil fuels. People will not give them up without affordable alternatives.

The challenge is to acknowledge the very real economic interests involved and find ways to make this transition while keeping everyone’s livelihoods intact. And this is doable!

The skills required to drill for geothermal resources are similar to those used by oil well drillers. The expertise needed to run a clean bio-energy turbine is the same as that of a coal turbine operator. The skills needed to manufacture solar panels are very similar to those required to manufacture inefficient SUVs.

Our grandparents and great grandparents built the infrastructure we currently enjoy--the highway system, the transmission grid, the oil wells and coal plants. Now, we need to lay down the infrastructure of the future.

This is our watch. It is our time to create a post fossil fuel, low-carbon economy. If we decide to suck it up and get it done, we could make the transition to a post-fossil fuel economy in twenty years.

What we need is a unified commitment similar to what we had during World War II. When the US entered the war, we literally re-wired our economy to meet the challenge. Automakers became airplane and tank makers. Housewives became machinists. A carousel manufacturer converted to making spark plugs. Everybody had jobs. And in three years time we ended the war.

We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity before us. To seize it, we must once again think of ourselves as citizens rather than just consumers. It is easy to feel powerless as individuals in America right now. Mega corporations are turning record profits while they pollute our skies, rivers and oceans and as it gets harder and harder for regular people to pay their bills and dig out of debt. But we must recognize corporations and governments are made up of individuals, and individuals can reshape them to reflect the values that once made America great-- responsibility, innovation and willingness to take risks for bold dreams.

We have a responsibility to solve this problem and seize this opportunity--to act boldly and use our imaginations and drive. We can restore our environment and create prosperous 21st century economies in the United States and Europe, even in the Middle East and Africa.

I believe it is genuinely amazing to be alive during such an important and transformative time.

We have a chance to lend our creativity and will to the groundswell that is rising up to simultaneously solve the climate crisis and create enormous economic opportunity. This is our time to protect and restore this beautiful blue planet that sustains us and to give our kids and grandkids a shot at a healthy, peaceful life, full of opportunity. This is our chance to achieve something truly great.

And we CAN do it.

Thank you,
The Team at Onward Oregon

Salem River Crossing - September 3 - next joint Task Force and Oversight Team meeting

Hello Everyone,
 
Please mark your calendars. The next joint Task Force and Oversight Team meeting will be on Wednesday, September 3 from 5:30 to 8:30 pm in the Anderson Auditorium at the Salem Public Library (585 Liberty St SE).
 
More information will be emailed to you as we get closer to the meeting.
 
Thank you,
Brandy Steffen
CH2M HILL

Oddly enough, if you follow the links to the calendar page for the project (http://www.salemrivercrossing.org/calendar.aspx) you are told that "Meeting materials will be available at the link above."  Nothing there in the way of materials.

Be careful about citing the voice of the people ...

Can we please have a rest from people chanting that we have to drill for oil offshore the US because some percentage of people (usually an inflated number, the result of a biased poll question along the lines of "Would you rather freeze in the dark on the way to the bank to withdraw your last dime because of energy costs or would you rather drill offshore using a magical new process that never spills a single drop and leaves teeth whiter and breath fresher") demand drilling?

There is probably nothing that a greater percentage of Americans would like to see more than the heads of oil executives on poles outside gas stations, but ideas like that show that vox populi isn't always to be trusted, is it?

Can we learn from the experience of others

The comment below was posted to The Oil Drum (see link in the column to
the right).

When thinking about the proposal to dump nearly $5 million into
expanding Salem's airport (including making the runway longer), you have
to wonder whether Salem's leadership able to learn from the experience
of others — or are we condemned to repeat others' mistakes, even after
explicit warning?

==========
A brief note on demand destruction and infrastructure....

Our family flew from Tokyo/Narita Airport for summer vacation on July
27. The airport has always been PACKED at this time, peak travel season
(schools get out around July 21 here).

This summer there were no long lines, no crowds, no waiting to get into
restaurants. Lots of room to move, actually pleasant in a way.

Then I started thinking about the huge amounts of cement poured, now
investments with no or low returns, what happens when the thing gets
really empty, then abandoned? It is huge and it is not the only one.

I read that airline ticket sales to Europe and N. America from Japan
were down 40% this summer because of the fuel prices making tickets too
expensive. At the airport, that 40% quote felt like it was on target.

Two Birds with One Stone

Man, it just doesn't get any better than this---if Salem sticks to its guns and refuses to allow a for-profit helicopter school to make life miserable for the airport neighbors, we also stand to win out over the insane desire to throw away millions of dollars in a futile attempt to turn a small, close in, airport into a destination for scheduled airliners.

This is like being told that, if you refuse to allow a motorcycle gang to rev their Harleys outside your window all day and night, you can also save a bundle on your taxes.

Was there ever a way to kill two uglier birds with one well-aimed stone?

Quick, let's finance some big unnecessary projects before the banks disappear!

As the road and sprawl lobby salivates over the big pie up in Portland ($4.2B, yes, that's a B, as in "beeeelions and beeeeelions"), there's a tidy little piece of sprawl pie being floated here down here in Salem too -- The Willamette River Crossing, estimated at a juicy $660M ... not bad. The construction and consulting firms hoping this gem will pay for a few BMWs are probably getting a little nervous about how closely this thing is being sliced, what with banks about to drop like flies, having only started to unravel from the real estate fiasco (which this bridge is partly about propping up--helping sprawl developers who keep pushing houses further and further out). If they can't get this thing funded soon, it will probably never, ever happen.

Oregon fighting climate change (someone tell ODOT!)

The more Oregon takes positions like this, the harder it is going to be to justify letting ODOT pretend that it's still 1960 and that the solution to all problems is more of the same (more pavement, more lanes, and more bridges).

"Mobility Standards" -- the genetic code of the traffic planner determined to destroy livable places

One of the smartest things said yet in the discussion of the idea for a third Willamette River Bridge comes from Doug Parrow, a local bicycle activist and member of the "Willamette River Crossing Task Force."

The Oregon Transportation (read Highway) Plan was showing its age on the day it was adopted. While the plan lays out a number of sound-good, multi-modal concepts, implementation of the plan has fundamentally been limited to widening roads. The state Highway Department (I deliberately decline to refer to them as Transportation oriented) has employed the one tool that they consider legitimate--the construction of more lanes and new roads--in pursuit of the mobility standard described in the plan. When these "improvements" are plopped down in an urban environment, all other modes of transportation inevitably suffer. In particular, pedestrians must deal with wider streets and the impossibility of safely crossing at unsignalized intersections. Bicyclists must cross multiple turn lanes if they intend to continue straight through an intersection.

The Willamette River Crossing study serves as a sterling example. I serve on the task force that is providing advice to the effort. During the two years since the inception of the study, the task force has been fed a variety of big bridge configurations that are designed to achieve the mobility standard based on 20-year projections of motor vehicle traffic. According to the planning team, the only way to accomplish this is through the construction of a huge bridge at an enormous cost that would connect to city streets using a maze of freeway style ramps. Only recently, with preparation of a draft-EIS already underway, has the project team begun to develop a low-build, multi-modal alternative. It is hard to imagine that, at this point in the process, the alternative will be anything more than a straw man. Further, even the "no-build" alternative that is in play contemplates that significant "improvements" will be made under the Salem TSP. These "improvements" involve widening roads and the construction of dedicated turn lanes that will inevitably damage walking and bicycling.

The public subsidy that is provided to motor vehicles is enormous. The gas tax would have to be increased to more than $3.50 per gallon to cover the full costs to the highway system of the use of motor vehicles. Local governments have tried to make up the difference using property taxes and system develop charges, neither of which recognize the transportation mode choices that the people paying these taxes make, or send the appropriate price signal to those people. Given the subsidy, some form of rationing is necessary to compensate for the imbalance of supply and demand. A bsent the political willingness to adopt appropriate transportation pricing strategies, we have effectively defaulted to using congestion as the rationing mechanism.

It will be interesting to see how congestion pricing and tolls play at the legislature. To what extent will the public, in particular the trucking industry, be able and willing to substantially increase the amount they pay to use the road system? The percentage of household income spent on transportation has been historically been increasing. It can't continue to do so indefinitely. We are already seeing significant changes in the transportation choices that people are making as a result of the increases in fuel costs to date. We haven't really experienced the effects of peak oil and global warming on prices yet. Given recent legislative history, I suspect that the current path of shifting transportation funding away from a mileage/use based approach toward general taxation will prevail, to the detriment of the planning and delivery of an efficient transportation system.

Certainly the Governor's announced plans are encouraging. However, the way in which the plans are implemented by the agencies is what really matters and the state Highway Department is continuing to redraw 4-lane lines using 6-lane pens in a fruitless and doomed effort to achieve the elusive mobility standard.

Doug Parrow

The waiting calamity

(h/t to Jerry Schneider for pointing this out)

Clip from EV World, written by editor Bill Moore, who attended.
---------------------------

Meeting of the Minds

The 2008 Meeting of the Minds conference wrapped up today here in Portland, Oregon with a sobering assessment of the road head by Toyota's self-proclaimed "grumpy old man," Bill Reinert.

Bill and his colleagues at Toyota -- and their contracted consultants -- have been crunching the numbers on oil depletion, unconventional liquid fuels and water availability and reached a consensus that the planet is going to hit "liquid peak" by around 2018.

What is "liquid peak," you ask?

That's when every conceivable form of liquid fuel -- from petroleum to coal-to-liquid to biofuels -- when produced flat-out without any concern or regard for their environmental impact simply can't keep up with growing global demand. In effect, the planet will have run into an energy wall where current technology and policy simply won't cut it any longer. We either turn to other energy sources or we stop growing.

Reinert's graph-laden, lunch-time talk -- "warming" might be a more appropriate term -- put in starker terms what other expert panelists and presenters were saying during the two-day conclave at the Portland Art Museum: that time is of the essence, dramatic changes are needed, requiring enormous political courage, and the world ahead is going to be radically different from the one in which we presently find ourselves.

For example, <http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/Releases/?releaseID=876>Tim Barnett from the Scripts Institute forecast during the opening day's luncheon keynote speech a 50% chance that Lake Mead will be dry by as early as 2021. As a consequence, much of the American Southwest is going to see a migration towards water, meaning north -- or vast projects to move water from the north. Life in cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix could well be untenable, certainly growth will be brought to a standstill. Without the water behind Lake Mead, there will be no electric power generation, effecting millions of homes and businesses in the Southwest.

Attendees heard numerous references to "peak oil", as well as climate change and the impact these and population growth are having our communities. Increasingly, policy makers, architects, planners and developers are starting to awaken to reality of what has been for many of them just so much theory.

This year, the question of logistics began to be raised. While most of us tend to think in terms of the challenge of switching over to better, cleaner, more efficient cars, they will, in fact, be moot points if there is no sustainable system in place to move the goods that feed the people, much less build the cars. If we can't quickly evolve a more energy efficient logistics system, cities themselves will become unsustainable.

The upside of this is that the people who can make a difference at the grassroots level are starting to recognize the challenges ahead -- hopefully in time. While the federal government seems hopelessly mired in a past that no longer can be maintained, local, county and state/provincial governments are starting to openly discuss these critical issues. Granted, not all of them are and at times, it seems most still haven't a clue there's a tsunami headed our way.

Planning and tax policy are calcified and risk averse at a time when what we need is unparalleled agility and nimbleness that can take risks, quickly learn from mistakes, and adapt.

If there is a model city for that approach, it is Portland. It's far from perfect and nowhere near sustainable, but it's the best model we have, and I am glad my wife and I got to spend a few days exploring it before, during and after the conference.

Watch for future MP3 and video from the Meeting of the Minds conference, especially Bill Reinert's remarkably candid talk.

Volt Death Watch

Anyone who knows Bill, realizes he's not shy about expressing his opinion, be it good or ill. Apparently, his mother never taught him the axion, "If you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all."

But I like that quality in Bill. We need guys like him to keep us all honest.

So, here are four of his juicer, off-the-cuff remarks to me during the conference.

* Forget trying to get people to charge their cars only during night-time off-peak hours. It isn't going to work; not being able to charge during the day limits the usefulness of the vehicle. In Reinert's pragmatic -- law of thermodynamics world -- utilities are going to have to realize this and adapt, which in my mind means solar and lots of it.

* Even more controversially, he told me there's a "death watch" taking place within Toyota on the Telsa Whitestar, Fisker Karma and... here it comes... Chevy Volt. He -- and apparently his colleagues -- don't think any of them will be built in any significant numbers. The batteries are just too costly. The Whitestar is particularly vulnerable, he explained to me, because Tesla is seeking to double the duty demands on the battery while halving the price of the car. That's a "company killer" in his view.

* He informed me that "you're on the right track" on the lithium supply question, adding that Toyota is working air battery chemistries, including zinc-air -- which William Tahil has been touting for sometime now.

* Finally, he smiled when I talked about the alleged spy photos of the new Prius that are emerging. He said they look a lot like the current Prius because they are the current Prius. They are test mules for the new Prius, nothing more.