The Energy Trap is a project of the New America foundation, a non-partisan think tank funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, which recently conducted a survey on just how the American public is holding up under the high cost of energy. The idea of the trap is that an increasing number of Americans are caught between the cost of gasoline and a systemic inability to stop driving their cars. In the last 60 years America has become a “motorized society” in which most of our citizens have become totally dependent on daily travel by car for their existence. Take away our cars and most of us would be hard pressed to reorganize our lives to provide for the essentials of life - earn an income, and provide food, shelter, and education for ourselves and our families.
The current recession has compounded the troubles, forcing many to travel further afield to find employment - often in more than one underpaying job.
The Energy Trap study found cases in which more than 50 percent of a family’s income was going into paying for and fueling the car. What is most alarming is that 30 years ago the spike in gasoline led to a 12 percent reduction in the demand for gasoline as consumers drove less, switched to smaller cars, and sort of adhered to the 55 mph speed limit that had been put in place to save gasoline. It is now more than three years since the $4+ price spike of 2008 and demand has only fallen some 3 percent.The problem starts with the nation’s collective gasoline bill which is on track to reach a new high of nearly $500 billion this year. This, of course, is only for gasoline; if we add in the other oil products we burn here in America each year - diesel for trucks and trains, jet fuel for planes, propane for heating, and numerous other uses the total is in the vicinity of $1 trillion.
It is looking as if this year’s fuel bill will be on the order of $100 billion higher than last for gasoline and another $100 billion for other oil consumption. If we have to spend an additional $200 billion just to keep even, it is not hard to understand that the $200 billion increase in the cost of energy is coming out of other family expenditures.
There are geographic and income level differences in the impact the energy trap is having on families with rural and lower income families bearing more of the burden.
When gasoline was over $4 a gallon three years ago the average family in NY and Connecticut was spending 8 percent of its incomes on transportation, while in Montana it was over 19 percent. Drivers in Mississippi go twice as far each year as those in NY where many have easy access to buses, commuter trains and subways. As could be expected, families earning under $25,000 a year are spending around 9 percent of their incomes on transportation vs. 3.6 percent for those earning $75-85,000 per year.
The Foundation notes that most government policies aimed at helping with energy costs - tax rebates on efficient vehicles, subsidized public transit and telecommuting, benefit mainly those with higher incomes while the lower paid jobs such as those in the retail and service industries require lengthy and costly commutes just to earn a living.
If there is a way out of the energy trap, it is going to be hard to find.
2019: A Future Imagined
Visual Futurist Syd Mead (“Blade Runner,” “Aliens,” “Tron”) reflects upon the nature of creativity and how it drives the future. This featurette provides insight into the fascinating mind of one of the most influential artists of modern cinema and transportation design. Mead discusses how design, mobility and creative innovation will shape future cities. [via Tribeca Film Institute]
Laura Cohen, Cyclists Rejoice: PumpTire Is the World’s First Self-Inflating Bicycle Tire
The PumpTire product consists of a tube, a bicycle tire, and a valve. The inner tube clips into the tire and allows for an exchange of air between itself and the tire. Once the desired pressure is reached, the pump stops and the valve closes so that no more air is pumped into the tire. Check out the video above to see the advanced prototype in action. PumpTire hasn’t yet built any of these devices, but they are seeking funding to get started.
It’s a good feeling to see small innovations despite the major disasters that seem to be mounting. Maybe there is hope when entrepreneurs can still invent useful things.
I wonder if this could be applied to car tires?
The Geography of How We Get to Work - Richard Florida
America overwhelmingly remains a nation of drivers. Across the board, nearly nine in 10 (86 percent) of Americans commute to work by car and more than three-quarters (76.1 percent) drive to work alone, according to the most recent estimates from the American Community Survey. Only five percent use public transit to get to work.
But does where we live make a difference in how we commute?
- It’s no surprise that 82 percent of Manhattan workers get to their places of employment via public transit, bicycle, or on foot. But more than four in ten (43 percent) of all commuters in the Greater New York metro don’t use cars either. Neither do 25 to 30 percent of workers in San Francisco, Boston, and Greater Washington, DC.
- Less than three percent (2.9) of Americans walk to work, but more than five percent of New Yorkers do. And in the college town of Ithaca, New York, 14 percent do.
- Only a little more than half of one percent (0.6) of Americans ride their bikes to work. But more than five percent do in Eugene, Oregon and Fort Collins, Colorado. In the Portland, Oregon metro, more than two percent of commuters cycle to work, and in San Francisco and San Jose (Silicon Valley) roughly 1.5 percent do.
- Walking and biking to work are especially prevalent in compact college towns, including Boulder, Colorado; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Madison, Wisconsin; Iowa City, Iowa; Corvallis, Oregon; Gainesville, Florida; Burlington, Vermont; State College, Pennsylvania; and Lafayette, Indiana, among others.
[…]
my colleague Todd Gabe, an economics professor at the University of Maine and an MPI Affiliate, ran a series of statistical analyses to gauge the determinants of public transportation use and walking and biking in US metropolitan areas. He looked at factors like population density, rainfall, temperature levels, housing development, and the kinds of work people do. The upshot is this:
- Population density increases public transportation usage, but has no effect on walking and biking.
- Weather and climate do play a role, but not necessarily what you’d think. People are more likely to drive to work where the weather is warm and/or wet. Public transit use as well as walking and biking are more common in drier climes but also in places with colder January temperatures.
- The longer the commute (based on the average commute time), the more likely people are to use public transit, but—not surprisingly—the less likely they are to bike or walk.
- The type of housing development matters. The share of housing units built between 2000 and 2006 is negatively associated with the percentage of people who bike, walk or take public transit to work. Rapidly growing cities of sprawl - those which built the most houses during the height of the bubble - remain much more car-dependent than other places.
- Finally, and perhaps most interesting, the way we get to work is associated with the kinds of work we do. The share of workers in the creative class—scientists, engineers, techies, innovators, and researchers, as well as artists, designers, writers, musicians and professionals in healthcare, business and finance, the legal sector, and education—is positively associated with the percentages of people who take public transit or walk or bike to work. In fact this creative class variable was the largest of all.
Greater New York is the region where Americans use cars the least, it turns out.
I am hoping to use some stats from this piece to try out Visual.ly, but that new infographics service seems to be done.
![The future of mass transit may be a whole lot cooler than you think.
Japanese researchers rolled into the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Shanghai with a scale model of a robotic plane-train that levitates on a cushion of air. It’s essentially a plane — complete with stubby wings, a handful of propellers and a tail — that flies perilously close to the ground.
The plane-train rides within a concrete channel. And because it has to deal with pitch, roll and yaw as well as the throttle, the research team, led by Tohoku University assistant professor Yusuke Sugahara, built a prototype that autonomously stabilizes its three axes.
So far, the team has a scale model that wobbles down a runway. Once the researchers perfect the idea, they plan to build a larger, manned prototype and a concrete channel to see how it does at 200 km/h [124 mph].
(via Levitating Plane-Train Gives Mass Transit a Lift | Autopia | Wired.com)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ll5x3agcOC1qz4w5do1_500.jpg)
The future of mass transit may be a whole lot cooler than you think.
Japanese researchers rolled into the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Shanghai with a scale model of a robotic plane-train that levitates on a cushion of air. It’s essentially a plane — complete with stubby wings, a handful of propellers and a tail — that flies perilously close to the ground.
The plane-train rides within a concrete channel. And because it has to deal with pitch, roll and yaw as well as the throttle, the research team, led by Tohoku University assistant professor Yusuke Sugahara, built a prototype that autonomously stabilizes its three axes.
So far, the team has a scale model that wobbles down a runway. Once the researchers perfect the idea, they plan to build a larger, manned prototype and a concrete channel to see how it does at 200 km/h [124 mph].
(via Levitating Plane-Train Gives Mass Transit a Lift | Autopia | Wired.com)
Harvard economist Robert Stavins says a major disaster is needed for the U.S. to act on climate change
If the name looks familiar, it’s because Nobelist Stavins was lead author of the IPCC’s 2nd and 3rd reports. He’s is current lead author on the section covering international negotiations for the IPCC’s forthcoming 5th assessment. (emphasis below are not mine).
“It’s unlikely that the U.S. is going to take serious action on climate change until there are observable, dramatic events, almost catastrophic in nature, that drive public opinion and drive the political process in that direction,” Stavins, director of Harvard’s Environmental Economics Program in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said today in an interview in Bloomberg’s Boston office.
President Barack Obama failed to get legislation through Congress that would have established a cap-and-trade system of pollution allowances to control greenhouse-gas emissions blamed for global warming. Instead, the administration is pushing regulations for carbon pollution through the Environmental Protection Agency, a far inferior approach, according to Stavins.
Source: Bloomberg
This is what I have been saying for some time: in general our political system is so broken that we won’t deal with problems until they are disasters. For example, we won’t transition to 21st century transportation until it is too expensive to fix the existing 20th century system and bridges collapse.
How Not to Plan for a Future With High-Speed Rail - NYTimes.com
The agreement between Congress and the White House to virtually eliminate money for high-speed rail is harebrained. France, China, Brazil, even Russia, understand that high-speed rail is central to future development. Not Washington.
There is no moral impetus to radically change transportation in the US. The transition will not happen until the price tag for updating the existing road infrastructure mounts, because so much maintenance is being deferred. At some future date it will be cheaper to build high speed rail than to increase highways. Until then, forget it.
New Mobility Agenda
Well, when it comes to our present arrangements for transport in cities, that which we are calling the “old mobility,” the answer to this is a quite long one. Just to hit the high spots …
1. The present (car-based) system is dangerous, injurious and menaces our health as one of the most debilitating public health menaces of our era.
2. It provides poor value for money - for individual car owners as well as others. And for the taxpayer in terms of bang per public buck.
3. It is socially unjust and discriminatory to the poor, racial minorities, women, children, the unemployed, and people with physical disadvantages. To all those who cannot or should not be driving a car (a very large number, in fact). And to those who choose not to drive a car.
4. It consumes and wastes resources on an intolerable scale.
5. It pollutes to the extent that it is endangering the planet’s ecosystem
6. It puts the national economy, the international economy and your and my economy at risk by total systemic dependence on a cartel of oil suppliers. (And pours money into the coffers of non-democratic societies and cliques.)
7. Despite the fact that it costs an arm and a leg, both toindividual citizens and tothe community as a whole, the system is steadily degrading in environmental, performance and economic terms year after year.
8. It implicitly accepts assurances advanced by the principal industrial and energy suppliers, as well as many transportation specialists, specialist administrators, etc., that technological progress will take care of the problems in the long run. And that we not therefore need concern ourselves with the problems today.
9. Worse yet — and this is the final nail in the coffin — there are as things stand today no grounds for hopefulness… unless there is a major underlying paradigm change (which is not in sight).
Moreover, when we take the measures that are being discussed in most places under the cover of would-be solutions, we can see that in most all cases they are indeed either
1. not going to offer the needed relief in the critical target period (which we define somewhat arbitrarily as the 24/36 months directly ahead) and …
2. worse yet, in almost all cases are actually going to contribute to increasing the scale of the problem, in the longer run, that they are purportedly targeting (i.e., by creating more new infrastructure, bringing more vehicles on the road, etc. etc.).
Furthermore, and with only few exceptions, when measured in terms of spending and measures with teeth, it all but ignores anything that might actually provide an alternative to present arrangements: whether in terms of demand management, non-motorized transport, new services and innovative private providers, and transport substitution though better planning, clustering of activities, or new technologies.
Automobiles are often conveniently tagged as the villains responsible for the ills of cities and the disappointments and futilities of city planning. But the destructive effects of automobiles are much less a cause than a symptom of our incompetence at city building. The simple needs of automobiles are more easily understood and satisfied than the complex needs of cities, and a growing number of planners and designers have come to believe that if they can only solve the problems of traffic, they will thereby have solved the major problems of cities. Cities have much more intricate economic and social concerns than automobile traffic. How can you know what to try with traffic until you know how the city itself works, and what else it needs to do with its streets? You can’t.
Crash Puts Focus on Aging Rail Fleets
[via Many Cities Have Outdated Rail Systems - NYTimes.com by Michael Cooper]
“More than a third of the equipment in the nation’s seven largest rail transit agencies was rated in marginal or poor condition by the Federal Transit Administration this spring. Replacing all the equipment that has exceeded its useful life and finishing all outstanding station rehabilitations for just those seven large systems would cost roughly $50 billion, the agency estimated, and keeping the systems in a state of good repair after that would cost an estimated $5.9 billion a year.
By contrast, the $787 billion stimulus law contains only $8.4 billion for transit capital improvements across the nation.
[…]
When a northbound train on the Chicago Transit Authority’s Blue Line derailed in July 2006, injuring more than 150 people, the National Transportation Safety Board noted that the line had been placed into service 55 years earlier, and that many components of the track had never been replaced. The board’s report described corroded rails and fasteners, and rotten wood on the ties, and questioned why the problems had not been identified and repaired before the derailment.”
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That’s why we need to spend a whole lot of money on infrastructure. Imagine the benefit to the country if working class and middle class people didn’t have to own two cars per family just to get to work everyday. But instead, the administration is more interested in keeping GM and Chrysler afloat.
Even stranger, though is the financial privatization of railcars, that leads to agencies being unable to take cars off track even when they are know to be dangerous:
“When Washington was warned in 2006 that the cars involved in Monday’s crash should be replaced or at least strengthened to better resist crashes, the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority’s hands were tied. Not only would replacing the cars right away have been prohibitively expensive, but the agency noted that it was constrained by a deal that it, along with many other transit agencies, had entered into to raise much-needed money. The deals essentially involved selling assets like train cars to private entities, which could then get tax breaks by writing off the depreciation, and then lease them back. There were penalties for breaking the deal.”
Smells like the mortgage crisis, only here the transit agency bundled up the depreciation of the cars as a financial instrument and sold it off. Now, they will have to pay the folks that bought those instruments if the agency takes the cars out of service, and they used the cash they got already. Let’s make that illegal, please?
