Gil Carmichael is FAR from a railroad expert. He is a down home Mississippi politician. He unsuccessfully ran for a number of state and local offices before finally finagling an appointment to the FRA. His pre-FRA career was as a Volkswagen Dealer in Meridian, Mississippi. He is little more than a railfan who has pursued railroads as an avocation. He has little, if any, knowledge of how the internal workings of railroads really operate.
LC
Perhaps you could start the “Global Warming Thread for Everyone!”
I’d prefer a “Global Warming Where Is It” thread.
It is heartening to hear another voice faintly heard in the wilderness, to add to the small chorus of nagging but well intentioned individuals who believe railroads, like any other industry, have not tapped their full potential. The point of the exercise is not to wait until another ride down the traffic bell curve due to enviromental, geopolitical or economic factors that are steadily approaching in import as inevitably as months fall off a calendar…
http://www.cts.umn.edu/Events/OberstarForum/2003/Speech.html
I think Mr. Carmichael should be a little more specific. He seems to be preaching to government agencies and not railroad management. He definitely does sound like he is on the compact flourescent light bulb bandwagon.
But the guy does have a point doesn’t he? In the event of a major and seemingly permanent disruption in our oil supply – of a sort we have yet to experience, that is, not the blip of the late 1970s – railroads do have a trump card that trucks and aviation lack and that is, whatever the cost and impracticality of eletricification (or re-eletrification) might be, railroading does have some kind of option. They have none.
And if that is the case, then seemingly he does have an additional point and that is the whole notion of railroad right of way as potentially precious in the event of major disruptions to trucks and aviation is something that the public, the local politicians, the national politicians, and most clearly the national news media, do not seem to be focusing on or be aware of.
As to the railroaders themselves the entire issue of open access does typically raise the response “OK, just whose stockholders are going to pay for the upkeep of the right of way – and who pays for the dispatching of trains?” Good questions both of them. Especially when part of the “cost” of upkeep of right of way is paying to keep politicians from grabbing so they can sell it to whichever developer has lined their pockets most recently.
The right of way may be “paid for” but in a larger sense the railroads are never done paying for it.
Dave Nelson
He does have a point, but it strikes me as unrealistic. To justify electrifying the railroads would require a permanent, severe, if not complete, cessation of the oil supply. If that were to happen, we would probably have to revert back to a hunter/gatherer society with little need for railroad transportation. Moreover, such an interruption is likely to be rather abrupt, thus requiring an immediate solution, which would be completely out of phase with the response of electrifying the railroads. Reverting back to coal fired steam motive power may be far quicker. I suppose we could begin to electrify the railroads now as an insurance policy against a disruption in the oil supply, but it seems like a drastic step to take, considering all the other things that would fall apart with such a disruption
So his premise seems unrealistic, very similar to many of the fashionable unrealistic solutions being proposed by the alternate and renewable energy advocates. I only mention the light bulbs because it reminds me of the unrealistic disconnect between the threat of global warming as defined by its proponents and the simplistic remedies they prescribe.
Flourescent lighting vs incandescent are a standard in most corporate hotel SOP’s. Bottom line…long term, even with a higher cost…they still save money…global swarming…er…warming or not…I bought them for my house and have seen savings…not all conservation ideas are unrealistic…
Want real savings?
Equipt every and I mean EVERY home, business and store (Malls etc) with solar roofs and feed excess power back into the grid.
Quit using oil for motive power and find something else to move that choo choo.
Only then we will see real savings or independance from the oil.
I am tired of the whole subject so I am going to lay my cards on the table and you guys can carry on. During the invasion of Iraq, I sent a Letter to The Editor of The Charlotte Observer…I predicted 3 things in that published letter while the invasion was ongoing which were not popular. 1. The invasion will create a quagmire that makes Vietnam look like a rehearsal dinner. 2. Donald Rumsfield will become the Robert McNamara of this generation. 3. The Presidents popularity will sink to historic lows.
Now I’ll make the second and thumbtack this once next to the first in my home office. 1. We will pull out of Iraq and as a result the Shite Kingdoms will go up against the Sunni Kingdoms. 2. Terrorists who dont care about mutual destruction and are not as calculated…they will target each others oil facilities and pipelines. 3.Once Israel feels threatened, everyone else will join in. The fleet is not in the Straits for a dog and pony show…it’s “the” tanker route out of the Mideast.
Result: A LACK OF OIL. PERIOD.
[quote user=“wallyworld”]
Flourescent lighting vs incandescent are a standard in most corporate hotel SOP’s. Bottom line…long term, even with a higher cost…they still save money…global swarming…er…warming or not…I bought them for my house and have seen savings…not all conservatio
“Flourescent lighting vs incandescent are a standard in most corporate hotel SOP’s. Bottom line…long term, even with a higher cost…they still save money…global swarming…er…warming or not…I bought them for my house and have seen savings…not all conservation ideas are unrealistic…this one is practical in of itself.”
G’day, Y’all,
I, too, use some CFLs in my house although my wife takes them out about as fast as I can buy them b ecause she doesn’t like to wait a second for them to power up. I recently asked a Sierra Club member what kind of power plant they liked since they were against nuclear and were fighting a Texas utility’s plan to build 11 coal-fired plants. he replied that they were for conservation instead of new power plants. Great! The machine shop where I work has about 100 milling machines using 480 volt, 30 amp motors with controllers using, sometimes, even more wattage. basing the savings on what my house had when some of the highly used incandescent bulbs were replaced with CFLs, I determined that it would take 240 similar homes putting in CFLs in highly used lights to equal one milling machine. So if another machine shop like ours opened it would take 24,000 homes screwing in CFLs to keep from requiring additional power from the suppliers, Georgia Power and Walton EMC. Basically, that means that without additional power supplies, all growth is dead. We go back to the hunter/gatherer society.
Not happy to just hijack a thread, Futurmodal has now gotten into hijacking anybody’s public comments. If you take the time to read the following-Carmichael’s prepared remarks-you will see that the subject of electrification was just an aside, perhaps an afterthought. He is in fact making the point that while everybody in the shipping business knows about intermodal transportation and its development is the result of the actions of the private sector, our political leaders are essentially clueless of the benefits and efficiencies that come from such a system.
A Republican appointee, he is not taking a shot at any political party. The US Department of Transportation has existed since the 1960’s in both Republican and Democratic Party Administrations. Yet after 40 years, the only interaction between the airway, highway and railway people in the Department is that the use the same entrance to the building. (Maybe) And of course, the waterway people aren’t even in the same building.
Our forum friend and his constant cry for the need for more intramodelism seems to be stuck somehwere in the last century. Perhaps a change of screen name is in order.
GIL CARMICHAEL
SPEECH TO THE
“TRANSPORTATION TABLE”
WASHINGTON, D.C.
MARCH 23, 2007
**----------------------------**On most occasions when I speak about intermodal transportation, I devote an extensive portion of my remarks simply to provide a basic orientation. This audience does not require such coddling. You all grasp the fundamentals. Many of you are experts.
You understand that freight transportation has undergone a revolution during the past quarter-century and that intermodal is now the global standard for moving freight. You also understand how it succeeds—interconnections…containerization…speed…safety…reliable scheduling…economic and fuel efficien
Does every post you make these days have to start with a typically completely gratuitous personal attack on Futuremodal? Is this some kind of obsession?
If you go back to the point (circa 2000) when China was granted normal trade status w/ the U.S., was anyone in Washington talking about, thinking about or even aware of the strain that would be created when, in a few short years, all of the widgets (large and small) that used to be manufactured locally, in the U.S., were now manufactured in China, about 8,000 miles away from the central U.S. ? Fully 1/3 of the way around the planet.
Did anyone consider the incremental fuel consumption to move all of that product from Chinese factories to the Chinese port; from the Chinese port to the U.S. port, from the U.S. port to the U.S. consumer?
Did anybody consider the demand on the U.S highway system? … or the rail infrastructure?
Does anybody in Washington really care? … and is anybody “really” going to do anything other than make grand-stand speeches about it?
It was a matter of U.S policy to allow the flood of trade from China to U.S. (primarily) Pacific ports and it “could” be a matter of policy to meter this flow to a point that makes sense for the infrastructure.
Unfortunately there may be too many large U.S. and/or foreign corporate interests who enjoy cheap Chinese labor and the accompanying subterfuge to U.S. employment regulations (unions, work comp, unemployment comp, etc) who have sufficiently invested directly (or indirectly) in campaign funding, such that the matter is entirely moot and the only question to be answered is how we further enable the trend - i.e. through public funding of greater intermodalism or more highways.
This has been a most illuminating thread.
Okay, let’s recap:
This seems to imply that FM is in favor of transportation re-reg.
No, it states rather clearly the need to bring railroads under the umbrella of current antitrust law (if indeed that’s what it takes to get those Staggers Act competition caveats activated). Then and only then can we have optimal dereg of the railroad industry.
And you know full well that I have explicitly rejected a return to rate regulation. I have always maintained the best thing for railroad transporter services is the introduction of intramodal competition in all regions of the country.
I think Jeaton and Carmicheal make sense. Note there is no recommendation for electrification, now, only an if… Similarly he is not recommending fuel cells, just saying if they become practical and economical, again if… I don’t think they will. I do think electrification will be practical in the future IF legislation is passed that vetoes tax increases for an electrified right of way and especially one that is also an electric power transmission line corridor. Again, an IF.