Urban and suburban design thread (taxes, budget, gas)

[NewToCA]

Originally Posted by Majin

Must of missed that, where would that be?

You missed it Majin??? Heck, you even participated in the discussion!

RANCHO CORDOVA, CA | Point East Towers 2 | 424 FT / 129 M | 36 FLOORS | PRO [Archive] - SkyscraperPage Forum

[NewToCA]

Along the lines of the discussion in this thread, Sacramento County recently released a large area for future development. I think that some of you would agree with their views here:

Sacramento County plans to open 20,000 acres of agricultural and mining land to development under a long-awaited general plan update designed to guide growth for the next two decades...The proposed general plan follows the region’s blueprint for smart growth that values infill and eschews leapfrog development. Principal planner Leighann Moffitt said it does not ask officials to expand the county’s urban services boundary, which is a near-sacrosanct border established in 1993 between urban and rural land.


County opens 20,000 acres to growth - Sacramento Business Journal:

[Majin]

Originally Posted by NewToCA

You missed it Majin??? Heck, you even participated in the discussion!

RANCHO CORDOVA, CA | Point East Towers 2 | 424 FT / 129 M | 36 FLOORS | PRO [Archive] - SkyscraperPage Forum

I see a skyscraper proposal, not a downtown.

[jetgraphics]

Point: The USA is no longer "Queen of Oil". Peak production was in 1970s, and has declined ever since.
Point: Imported oil accounts for 70% of consumption.
Point: If imported oil was suddenly interrupted / cut off, can we survive on 30% of present consumption?
Point: USA oil reserves, at current consumption rates, would be exhausted within 11 years. (Drilling every known reserve)

Point: Since steel wheel on steel rail has 1/7th the coefficient of rolling resistance of rubber tire on asphalt, trains are more energy efficient.
Point: Electric powered trains are 2.5 to 3 times more efficient than diesel-electric trains.
Point: Railroads (mainline, interurban, urban streetcars, etc) require less surface area per passenger or cargo load.

As the century progresses, it is self evident that we have to transition from energy wasting forms of transportation as well as forms dependent upon cheap and plentiful petroleum.

Based on current technology and physics, the overall winner is the electric railway.

It's time to get "Back on Track".

[x15]

Now you are recycling poor 1970's arguments of Paul Ehrlich. Oil reserves are measured as the amount of oil that is currrently recoverable at current prices under current technology. Where both you and Ehrlich are going wrong in your doomsday arguments is that oil reserves don't actually measure the amount of oil that is left on the planet. If the price of oil is higher or companies come up with cheaper ways of recovering oil, suddenly there is a lot more oil to recover economically and oil reserves expand. This is why we still have 11 years of oil reserves today more than a decade after the date Ehrlich had argued that we should have exhausted all our oil.

With transportation the measure of efficiency isn't merely fuel useage but the cost of logistics by the entire system.

Trains are most efficent when they are fully loaded going between two points. If you want to move coal from the mine to the power plant, trains are a great idea. When shipping goods further than about 600 miles trains do offer cost advantages.

But the reason most freight isn't shipped by rail is because it takes a while to gather up enough goods to fill a train. That means you have to store your goods in huge warehouses and then you have to load them onto the train. Also you have to get goods to and from the train station itself. That generally means shipping them by truck to get to the train station and then unloading them into a warehouse and then loading them into the train when it closer to being full. When you get to the other end of your destination again you have to do it all over again. Its expensive to repeatedly load and unload frieght. Its expensive to store things in warehouse. It also takes much longer to ship things.

One of the big reasons the Japanese automakers in the US could sell cars for less than the American automakers was just in time manufacturing. Because the Japanese weren't spending all of this money on inventory, on warehouses and on loading things in and off trains, trucks and warehouses, they had a much better cost structure.

Electric freight trains may or may not be cost effective in the US. A lot depends on the local cost differential between electricity and diesel, especially if the train companies can manage to sell electricity to end users who normally would be off the grid. But electric trains may or may not be any greener than the diesel trains they are replacing. What matters is the local source of electricity.

In California where a lot of the electricity is from nukes and hydro, electricity is pretty green, but more expensive. Back east the electricity is often cheaper but it comes from coal. If your goal is miminize carbon usage, shifting from diesel to coal fired electric is probably a bad thing.

Based on current technology, physics, and labor costs it is far from clear that the overall winner is the electric railway.

Its probably going to involve a lot trucks.

[Phil Minor]

Wburg
Taxpayers don't pay for the cost of building streets and roads, developers do. We make developers pay for this as a condition of development. In addition we assess impact fees on developers to cover the cost of expanding existing arterials. If taxpayer did pay this cost then we could probably avoid some of the problems with building too many cul de sacs. But right now the cost of building streets and roads is an unfunded mandate on developers.

Austin Contrarian: Why developers prefer cul-de-sacs

What drivers pay in gas taxs and vehicle license fees more than covers the cost of building freeways. A portion of the federal gas tax goes to the general fun, another portion goes to funding freeways and another goes back to the cities to help cover the cost of road maintence and capital improvements. Lastly a portion of the gas taxes are used to cover the cost of mass transit.

When someone makes the argument that transit users getting much bigger subsidies per capita then freeway users they are making a valid point. Transit does get much bigger subsidies. People who drive cars pay not just for the cost of freeways but also a portion of the cost of transit.

For most of the day, most of the transit in this region and nationally is running mostly empty. It loses a lot of money. Even when its full most of the people riding transit aren't even paying full fares. They are doing it because they have reduced price passes because they are elderly, students, disabled or get there transit subsidized by there employer and generally even then its the government who is subsidizing the cost of its employees using transit. There are some places that do better than others like Manhattan. But if it was profitable to run a transit system we would have long ago turned the operation over to the private sector in any place where that was the case.

The government's own studies acknowledge that freeway users are getting much smaller subsidies than transit users.

http://www.bts.gov/programs/federal_...pdf/entire.pdf

Now I think there are valid reasons for subsidizing transit. The poor, the disabled, the elderly really do need to get around. I see the primary core mission of the mass transit system as providing service to this group of people. I acknowledge that reduce this subsidy by having transit system provide service to commuters as well. If we did a better job of configuring the system we can possibly reduce the per capita subsidies even further.

But I also acknowledge that there is potential for abuse. The rich, the powerful and the well connected are going to try to highjack the system to enrich themsevles. Proximity to rail is something that increases property values so developers are going to do what developers do try to push the poor out of the system and use the subsidies to benefit the themselves and the powerful. The only way to stop that is just mandate that the best service be provided to the most transit dependent. This is why the social housing needs to go near the rail system. The wealthy if they want can much easier drive to the park and ride lots. Why should we let the population that is most transit dependent get pushed furtherst from the parts of the transit system that work the best. If and when the transit system is widely built out, then the transist dependent will be widely spread throughout our society. But if that never occurs then at least the people most likely to use transit will have the best access to it. I can live with that.

[mattinsac]

NewToCa,

The biggest dispute going forward is going to be in deciding when is something infill and when is it sprawl. Whether something is sprawl or infill is something that you recognize when you see it.

Already this happening in the bay area regarding development of a salt pond near Redwood City.

'Saltworks' plan - that's smart growth
New plan for housing on S.F. Bay is reckless

[jetgraphics]

Originally Posted by x15

Now you are recycling poor 1970's arguments of Paul Ehrlich. Oil reserves are measured as the amount of oil that is currrently recoverable at current prices under current technology.

Oil reserves in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Proven oil reserves in the United States are 21 billion barrels (3.3×10^9 m3), excluding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The U.S. Department of the Interior estimates the total volume of undiscovered, technically recoverable prospective resources in all areas of the United States, including the Federal Outer Continental Shelf, the 1002 area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska, and the Bakken Formation, total 134 billion barrels (21.3×10^9 m3) of crude oil. This excludes oil shale reserves, as there is no significant commercial production of oil from oil shale in the United States.

0.6 billion barrels of oil = one month U.S. consumption
TOTAL OIL RESERVES (guess) = 223 months (18 years)
PROVEN RESERVES = 35 months (3 years)

So is oil that is NOT recoverable by current technology still considered "cheap and plentiful"? Of course not. So we can't go on burning oil at current consumption rates.

Alternative? By observation, nations that did not have cheap and plentiful oil retained and expanded their electric rail networks.

Where both you and Ehrlich are going wrong in your doomsday arguments is that oil reserves don't actually measure the amount of oil that is left on the planet. If the price of oil is higher or companies come up with cheaper ways of recovering oil, suddenly there is a lot more oil to recover economically and oil reserves expand. This is why we still have 11 years of oil reserves today more than a decade after the date Ehrlich had argued that we should have exhausted all our oil.

You forget that we're importing roughly 70% of our consumption. By reducing consumption of domestic oil, the reserves were not depleted as quickly.
However, if / when those imports are not available (too expensive, interruption, etc), do you still believe the USA can maintain its rate of consumption for another 20 years? 10 years? 5 years?

Petroleum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
USA: 20,687,420 barrels / day (2006 data)
629,242,358 barrels / month
7,550,908,300 barrels / year

STEO Table Browser : U.S. Crude Oil and Liquid Fuels Supply, Consumption, and Inventories

And we've dropped to only 19.2 million barrels / day, due to the economic contraction in 2008.

Domestic production is 4.96 million barrels / day. (2008)

100 x (19.2 - 4.96/19.2 ) = 74% is imported
That's roughly 14.24 million barrels / day.
At $50 barrel = $712 million / day, or $260 billion / year.
At $75 barrel = $1068 million / day, or $390 billion / year.

With transportation the measure of efficiency isn't merely fuel useage but the cost of logistics by the entire system.

Trains are most efficent when they are fully loaded going between two points. If you want to move coal from the mine to the power plant, trains are a great idea. When shipping goods further than about 600 miles trains do offer cost advantages.

The same can be said for the automobile / highway paradigm. Without good roads, funded by the taxpayers, commercial truckers and common carriers would not have been "cost effective".

But the reason most freight isn't shipped by rail is because it takes a while to gather up enough goods to fill a train. That means you have to store your goods in huge warehouses and then you have to load them onto the train. Also you have to get goods to and from the train station itself. That generally means shipping them by truck to get to the train station and then unloading them into a warehouse and then loading them into the train when it closer to being full. When you get to the other end of your destination again you have to do it all over again. Its expensive to repeatedly load and unload frieght. Its expensive to store things in warehouse. It also takes much longer to ship things.

The same might be said for air freight, and sea freight. But they operate, just the same. Multimode container cargoes mitigate some of that expense.

One of the big reasons the Japanese automakers in the US could sell cars for less than the American automakers was just in time manufacturing. Because the Japanese weren't spending all of this money on inventory, on warehouses and on loading things in and off trains, trucks and warehouses, they had a much better cost structure.

In the 1970s, that was true. Today, not so much. Foreign auto makers can make a profit assembling cars in the USA, with USA labor and logistical systems. And as we all know, the union overhead expense has plagued the retail price for the Big Three automakers.

Electric freight trains may or may not be cost effective in the US. A lot depends on the local cost differential between electricity and diesel, especially if the train companies can manage to sell electricity to end users who normally would be off the grid. But electric trains may or may not be any greener than the diesel trains they are replacing. What matters is the local source of electricity.

Electric freight IS cost effective. The fact that "cheap and plentiful" oil skewed America's rail toward diesel-electric locomotives must be corrected.

The Oil Drum | Multiple Birds – One Silver BB: A synergistic set of solutions to multiple issues focused on Electrified Railroads

Oil can be saved from the diesel that railroads use today (231,000 barrels/day in 2006) and from truck freight (2,552,000 barrels/day in 2006) by switching to electrified rail. Trucks carry about a quarter fewer ton-miles than rail, but with 11 times the oil.

In California where a lot of the electricity is from nukes and hydro, electricity is pretty green, but more expensive. Back east the electricity is often cheaper but it comes from coal. If your goal is miminize carbon usage, shifting from diesel to coal fired electric is probably a bad thing.

The Oil Drum | Multiple Birds – One Silver BB: A synergistic set of solutions to multiple issues focused on Electrified Railroads

Transferring freight from truck to electrified rail trades 17 to 21 BTUs of diesel for one BTU of electricity. Simply electrifying existing rail freight would trade 2.6 to 3 BTUs of diesel for one BTU of electricity.

It is estimated that electrifying all mainline railroads would add 1.5 to 3% to the national grid. Add another 1% for an extensive streetcar and interurban network.

So electrification will significantly reduce petroleum consumption, and thus the byproducts of combustion.

Based on current technology, physics, and labor costs it is far from clear that the overall winner is the electric railway.
Its probably going to involve a lot trucks.

I disagree.
In terms of rolling resistance, rail beats rubber tire.
In terms of surface area, rail beats automobile.
In terms of energy efficiency, electric rail beats diesel electric rail.
In terms of infrastructure, rail durability beats pavement durability.
In terms of longevity, rail cars last far longer than cars, buses, and trucks.

One 100 passenger streetcar (crush load - worst / best case) versus 100 1 occupant commuter cars, the train is the obvious winner. It is still the winner when 60 passengers (seat capacity) in a streetcar are contrasted with 12 cars with 5 passengers.

The initial cost for rail is higher, but over the long run, it is far cheaper.

I suspect that long haul shipping will gradually shift entirely to rail. And short haul hybrid trucking will handle the local distribution. Which makes sense, since hybrids fare better with stop and go traffic.

To boost efficiency of urban rail mass transit, population consolidation will follow. Once a rail line is in place, development will gravitate to it.

--------------
NARP: National Association of Railroad Passengers
Rails - New Mexico's Passenger Rail Action Group
Rail-Videos.Net - Online Railroad Video Database
THE TROLLEY STOP :: Great introduction to the history of electric streetcars / trolleys / trams
Welcome to world.nycsubway.org :: Though NYC is emphasized, there is a great collection of photos from all around
http://www.apta.com
RailroadForums.com - Railroad discussion forum and photo gallery
LRTA - The Light Rail Transit Association site

strickland.ca - transportation energy efficiency (fuel consumption) :: Cogent energy efficiency comparisons of current transportation

[x15]

The world will not run out of gasoline in my lifetime. The world won't run out of gasoline in the lifetime of my grandchildren.

At current prices using current production techniques, there may only be 21 billion barrels. But that isn't how much petroleum is left in the ground. For that number we should consult the U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY WORLD PETROLEUM ASSESSMENT 2000, which says there are 75.6 billion barrels in the US and 725.2 billion barrels worldwide. If we include the amount of oil in shale that we can add another 1.2 to 1.8 TRILLION barrels in just the US alone. Canada has larger oil shale reserves than the US.

USGS Digital Data Series - DDS-60 (Region7)
About Oil Shale

In short the world can rely on gasoline as long as it chooses to. We might switch to other alternatives if they become cheaper or if as a result of policies like Cap and Trade, we can make gasoline more expensive than other alternatives. But the world isn't going to run of gasoline.

The biggest reason that railroads are exploring switching back to electricity is they assume that diesel prices will go up under cap and trade. But the reason they haven't committed to it is that electricity prices may go up even more in a lot of places.

In California, we get a lot of our electricity from low carbon sources like hydro, nukes, wind and geothermal. But there are large parts of the country that get most of their power from coal (the south, large parts of the mid-west, many of the intermountain states). In terms of carbon intensity, a train powered by electricity from coal uses more C02 than a train powered by a diesel engine. Because of transmission losses, the further you are from a power station, the worse the effect is. So while cap and trade may make diesel more expensive, in large parts of the country it may have the effect of causing electricity to increase in price even faster. This is why the freight train companies are looking but so far haven't committed themselves.

The second issue is stranded costs. Power companies buy power plants under the assumption that they will operate them over the expected useful life of the powerplant. If a power company builds a coal plant and expects its to have a useful life of 50 years, it will amortize the cost of the construction of that cost over 50 years. If the power plant costs 500 million dollars to build, they will amortize 10 million dollars of this cost a year.

Now if because of cap and trade requirements, its no longer economical to operate the coal plant and it needs to be abandoned after 25 years, then the power company has to absorb the unamortized cost of the remaining useful life of the coal plant. It has to eat the 250 million dollars of expense Thus even if the power company could operate a nuke or wind plant for the same price as the coal plant, the price of electricity will be higher because the power company needs to recover the stranded costs of the abandoned coal plant generally by raising its rates to make up for that missing 250 million in expense that it can no longer pass on to coal consumers.

Now the details of the energy bill are poorly known. If the feds absorb the stranded costs as part of the energy bill, electric rates won't rise as much as they would if the feds don't absorb the stranded costs. But right now we don't know if they are going to do that.

But right now there is a great deal of uncertainty of how strict the cap and trade deal will be and how it will deal with stuff like stranded costs. The energy bill has yet to be considered by the Senate.

But even if freight trains switch to electric, they still probably won't pick up much share from truckers. First for a lot of freight applications, rail just isn't a good alternative. If you are Walgreens and you need to get goods from your Northern California distribution warehouse out to your stores, rail isn't alternative because there aren't rail spurs connecting your store with the distribution warehouse. Second there are a lot of goods that are time sensitive, like food where what lose in spoilage is greater than what you might save in fuel costs.

Third fuel is only a minor portion of total transportation costs. Labor is a bigger cost, but so too is insurance, capital costs and interest expense.

Transportation costs are really cheap. According to Ed Glaeser, over the past century the real cost of transporting goods has fallen 90%. Falling transportation costs were a big reason people move to the burbs and people moved to the sunbelt.

http://americandreamcoalition.org/la...sportcosts.pdf

Cap and trade will increase the cost of carbon based fuels. But the cost of carbon offset is still pretty cheap. You can offset driving 20,000 miles a year in a 2000 4wd Cadillac Esclade for $127. That is about 8 cents a gallon.

Assuming a tractor- trailer gets half the mileage and drives 10 times the distance of the Escalade, that is still less than $2500 year.

Carbon Calculators | Offset Your Carbon Footprint Now

If I was a truck driver its probably an expense I would like to avoid if I could, but its not going to make or break me. If lower US gasoline demand lowers world gas prices, the effective cost to the truck driver might be even less.

I think a big reason people have been freaking out about the costs of Cap and Trade is the extremists on both sides have been completely overstating its effects. The Republican right wants to scare everyone into thinking, that if this legislation passes, no one will be able to afford to drive personal automobiles. The lunatic left, hopes the congressional Republicans are right because it doesn't want anyone driving personal automobiles. But this legislation is looking to be extremely watered down.

Which is why I am betting when all is said and done, things really won't have changed all that much.

[wburg]

Originally Posted by Phil Minor

Wburg
Taxpayers don't pay for the cost of building streets and roads, developers do. We make developers pay for this as a condition of development. In addition we assess impact fees on developers to cover the cost of expanding existing arterials. If taxpayer did pay this cost then we could probably avoid some of the problems with building too many cul de sacs. But right now the cost of building streets and roads is an unfunded mandate on developers.

Once the roads are built, they require regular maintenance--and that is a burden borne by cities. The same thing goes for water, sewer and other infrastructure--they are built (or paid for) by the developer but maintained (and replaced, and expanded, etc) by the city. Sometimes they aren't even paid for by developers--the cost of expanding city services to new developments used to be a set rate, even for greenfield that required expensive runs paid for by the city, not the developer.