One part of Jerome a Paris's diary on Saturday about oil stood out as a succinct analysis of much US policy on both sides of the aisle.
McCain's proposals are stuck in the very same mindset he criticizes - the one that drove Hillary Clinton to push for lower gas taxes, Bush to call for renewed offshore drilling, or Obama to support coal production in the Appalachians: the fundamentally American notion that there is no limit to what one can do, and that solutions will be found by going for more, or bigger, rather than doing less or smaller.
What I'd like to do in this diary is focus on an area where that mindset is predominant on here, namely public transport. Make no mistake, a modern high speed rail network linking major cities coast to coast is a laudable aim. Whether it is achievable or even a sensible response to the problems that have to be addressed is more debatable.
As the steady rise in the price of crude oil goes on, the effect has been for more and more Americans to look to alternatives to using their own car to get into work by themselves. I would suggest promoting this through various strategies would be far more effective in reducing the US output of greenhouse gases than attempting to build a long distance rail network.
Americans often look to the high speed rail lines in Europe and elsewhere with envy and rightly so. They offer city center to city center travel between capitals or major destinations at travel times to rival using a plane, once the travel to and from airports and check-ins have been taken into account. That's the point. They are an alternative to short haul air travel, not cars and almost certainly not for everyday commuting. The exceptions to this are where the lines are used to provide extra capacity for commuter trains. An example of this is the newish Channel Tunnel link between St Pancreas station in London and Ebbsfleet in Kent (and on to Paris and Brussels) There a new commuter town is being built. From there commuters will be able to stop at either Stratford (for the Docklands area) or St Pancreas for central London. The line is also going to be used for Olympic shuttle services in 2012. These high speed commuter trains are able to use the times between the hourly or so long distance services.
That pattern of development - building a transport link and attracting new development around the stations - has happened in the past. In early part of the last century the Metropolitan Railway (now part of the tube network) extended to the north west of London. The new suburbs springing up became known as "Metroland". Some US cities experienced similar early patterns of development (indeed many cities were established in the 19th century because they were railroad stops) however most developments since WWII at least have been built round a pattern of road transport.
Railroad tracks, especially high speed lines, require far more gentle curves and changes of elevation than roads. Retrofitting a rail network into the existing city layout is therefore difficult, as the construction of that line into St Pancreas showed with much of the route from Stratford in newly bored tunnels. The time needed to build such lines rules out rail as a short term solution for those US commuters trying to find alternatives to their car today.
If we are perfectly honest, new major rail lines would not be available until the end of a second Obama presidency. It can be argued that US politics are not suited to French style "grand projects" to solve everyday problems. Flying a man to the moon and returning him safely with a decade (or inventing a better battery to win a multi million dollar prize) on the other hand is the sort of gesture that does. What's needed are a series of smaller projects that will provide a public transport system quickly.
Here we have to return to a much ignored part of any transport system, the bus. At the moment these services are even being reduced as the, usually city authorities, that run them struggle to budget for the cost of fuel. Again experience in Europe and other parts of the world show that longish distance travel is possible in relative comfort with modern buses (I will use the English "coach" for these) In many countries these are the mainstay for long distance travel for the majority. Today these are relatively luxurious with airline style seats and onboard toilets, refreshments and "cabin crew". Slightly less well equipped coaches are used by companies providing a road transport alternative to routes in the UK. In fact, one company, National Express, runs a network of coach routes and has rail franchises. For commuter routes, these can be non-stop, in contrast to many Greyhound routes for example. Giving buses priority on suitable roads also speeds them up so that rather being stuck in a line of traffic, they cruise past congestion. Again this works very well in UK cities and can be adapted to freeways as well.
All of this will need a critical examination of the existing structures. Is it logical, for example, for a city authority to run bus services? Could the federal gas tax be increased to pay for or subsidize bus transport? It would have an advantage that the large plants now being closed down to stop building SUVs could be adapted to build, under license if necessary, the sorts of buses Americans would feel both safe and comfortable traveling in. Hybrid and full electric chassis are already in service and these can have coachwork appropriate for US conditions added.