Global oil production peaked in May of 2005 and while there is now a book cooking happening in terms of reported numbers such that there is a claim that December of 2007 equaled the previous amount, counting ethanol amongst all liquids seems more than a little ... funny, at least to me. If oil didn’t peak 5/2005 it will any day now and debating it is akin to pondering the weight of the ice that ended up on the deck of the Titanic after it became known that five compartments had been breeched; the direction the ship will tip as it slides beneath the waves is hardly relevant.
Our world is changing dramatically on three different planes – economy, energy, and environment. I’ve been covering energy, specifically concerns regarding fossil fuel produced nitrogen fertilizers, and recently the impending bank mess has drawn my eye, but I’m content to turn away from it now that many people are beginning to call it for what it is.
I haven’t said much about it yet, but how we get ourselves and our goods from one place to another has greatly occupied my mind these last few months ...
First, a survey of current capabilities. When I’m in Massachusetts I have my sturdy Nissan Versa, my equally sturdy Cannondale 400 mountain bike, and my newfound female friend has, wonder of wonders, a 2003 Prius. The bike has seen a few store runs in Milford but when I’m at her place near Springfield it just sits. Getting on this road from her place to the nearest store is rather like entering the Road America track from the #11 turn; I wouldn’t want to do this with less than 250ccs at my disposal and pedals are out of the question. Fleet wise we average forty two miles to the gallon – thirty for the Versa, fifty four for the Prius.
She has never owned a motorcycle while I’ve had two wheelers, both on and off road, from 50cc to 750cc. I think the Honda Ruckus is right in terms of the layout and tires for a world with roads getting a bit worse with each freeze, but the 50cc engine just isn’t enough for the 45mph roads around here right now. Perhaps the 125cc Yamaha Vino is a better choice - $800 more than the roughly $2,000 Ruckus but it’s plenty zippy and the first such machine to sport a proper disk brake in front rather than a squishy drum. I’m personally lusting after a Yamaha TW 200 but until I get some bills paid that is just an idle fantasy.
When I’m in Iowa I have the service of a lovely 1980 Ford Ranger, which is quite suitable for the messy duty of kayak moving. If I’m going more than a few miles I do break out the trailer for the Versa due to mileage concerns, but the truck will happily go places the Versa won’t even consider. I’ve stacked that trailer with all of my possessions, gone sixty miles an hour down Iowa back roads, and still got twenty six miles to the gallon.
I’ve explored three of the public rail access points available from here.
First and most distant is the Massachusetts Bay Transport Authority Riverside subway station, about seventy five miles from here by car, mostly on the Massachusetts turnpike. $9 gets you an all day pass, $15 gets you a whole week, and you’re free to wander the Boston area.
If Amtrak is desired there are two stations within about twenty minutes of her apartment, a little one in Amherst that sees the Vermonter passing by on occasion, and a very busy, urban station in gritty, downtown Springfield. I can’t tell if the graffiti at the left on the Amherst station is Jerry Garcia or Albert Einstein; the tags in the vicinity of the Springfield station are obviously gang related.
I am told that prostitution is a common problem around the station and the area has bouts of much more serious trouble but this is the one to pick if you want to go north, south, east, or west. Trains flow on a continuous basis through this crossroad. The parking is free and unmetered at the Amherst station but you’ll need a paid parking service or a ride to the Springfield location.
I have some development work that is going to take me to Buffalo, New York over the next month and I’ve been eyeing the Amtrak Passes. $299 would get me a fifteen day free ride all over the northeast. I’d need to spend five of those days in Buffalo working and not moving, but I’d have ten days of free roaming for little more than the round trip to Buffalo would cost me.
Sounds great, eh? You want to come along, don’t you? Well there is one small problem ... here are two Amtrak passenger cars ... and they’ve only got 630 more for the whole United States. Does anyone know how many these things seat? I think we’ve got room for at most .01% of the population to be on a long distance train at any given time. This does not sound to me like a happy situation for replacing automobiles.
Come to think of it, this station has seen better days. The massive freight shipping area opposite the passenger station is a tired, empty place ...
And the permanent fencing off of the loading docks to the rear confirms this assessment.
This matters ... because if you don’t already own a Prius you may never have a hybrid. Our economy has been slowly coming off the rails since last August and it’s come down to the point where the common folk have started to notice that major banks are failing and things are not right. Unemployed individuals will drive what is paid for sparingly or they’ll not be driving at all. Those suffering under tremendous cost of living increases won’t be purchasing new automobiles ... and where our banks are there probably won’t be a lot of credit for such things anyway.
She loves her little Prius and I’m much impressed with the fifty four miles per gallon we get going places around Massachusetts, but I do not think this will be a particularly high utility vehicle as the roads start to go. Road maintenance is one of the first things a municipality cuts when they’re under stress and they’re all going to be under stress very shortly. California is a very good example of what that might look like in its early phases.
OK, serendipity strikes! As I was writing this Stoneleigh was busy writing up another Debt Rattle and it happens to contain some hard and fast numbers about increasing road building costs and declining miles traveled.
A report to be released Monday by the Transportation Department shows that over the past seven months, Americans have reduced their driving by more than 40 billion miles. Because of high gasoline prices, they drove 3.7% fewer miles in May than they did a year earlier, the report says, more than double the 1.8% drop-off seen in April.
Just a tiny drop, eh? Read a bit further in that one.
In many areas, the ragged edges are already showing. About 25% of bridges in the U.S. are either "functionally obsolete" or "structurally deficient," like the Mississippi River bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis last August, killing 13 people.
Moreover, the pavement is rated "not acceptable" on one of every seven miles of the nation's roads, according to the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, whose job is to assess infrastructure problems and recommend fixes.
Overall, the commission estimated, $225 billion a year is needed to meet the country's transportation infrastructure needs. Current spending is about 40% of that level.
That is the situation before finances get really ugly. I’ll put a finer point on this – the asphalt in our roads is nearly as good a source of oil as the tar sands in Canada and it’s a lot more accessible. The roads will decay for a while until the only hybrid that can navigate them safely would be something like the Ford Escape Hybrid, they’ll be mined for their hydrocarbons, and then we’re back to gravel or dirt depending on the volume of traffic.
So, these are my starting assumptions: Oil going up now not in linear but rather in geometric progression, just like they say over at The Oil Drum, so $4 gas will give way to $8 gas and then $16. Economic activity going down down down as the credit contraction continues. A strong need for economic growth or more specifically for job creation and this has to be done in a mode of relocalization.
This isn’t going to happen without useable transport and that won’t be cars and trucks riding on cement and asphalt. I think Alan Drake might just have a good plan ... but it’ll be a shocking economic and cultural change to rebuild our rail and trolley system from a century ago.