Posted on 07/25/2007 1:16:59 PM PDT by sionnsar
Rail mass transit is supposed to be good for the environment. But a leading critic of Sound Transit's Link light rail project offers metrics that suggest the environmental costs are much higher than those of more vanpools, more carpools, more buses, and, particularly, more bicycling.Excavating a six-mile, twin-bore tunnel and hauling away the rocks and muck is like digging a huge hole and pouring money in it. The lesson has been confirmed by the Beacon Hill tunnel, an experience so sobering that it prompted Sound Transit, which is building light rail from downtown to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, to bail out of a First Hill station, to save $350 million and reduce risk exposure. Sound Transit pegs the cost to tunnel north from downtown Seattle at $500 million per mile.
Worrying financial costs aside, what about the environmental costs and benefits of rail transit? Surprisingly, rail’s environmental costs are quite adverse.
Start with the tunneling, which turns out to entail a prodigious outpouring of energy and release of greenhouse gases. To extend light rail service north from downtown, the next phase, Sound Transit will have to dig through and remove more than 600,000 cubic yards of rock and muck — equivalent to a pile of debris 350 miles long, three feet wide, and three feet high. Sound Transit plans to expend lots of energy digging and excavating that stuff: 17.4 trillion British Thermal Units, according to its environmental-impact statement, equivalent to the energy in 140 million gallons of gasoline. That much gas, or diesel, would fill 8,000-gallon tanker trucks lined up from Seattle to Canada. If all the energy consumed by tunnel-excavating and hauling is generated by gasoline or diesel, it will emit nearly 1.3 million tons of greenhouse gases, CO2, into the environment.
As an offset, Sound Transit claims it will save 14,000 tons of CO2 annually by running light rail trains on electricity, sparing the region emissions that otherwise would be generated by automotive traffic. Even if granted, it would take 90 years from completion of the line to break even on the energy transaction. If Sound Transit should manage to cut tunnel-related greenhouse emissions in half, by aggressive use of hydro electricity and human labor, an implausible proposition, it still would take 45 years to break even.
Moreover, the agency's calculations assume no improvements in automotive fuel efficiency. Yet Congress in this session might enact a measure to raise average mileage from 25 to 35 miles per gallon by 2018. That one conservation measure, a 40 percent per mile improvement even before the tunnel will be complete, would extend Sound Transit's greenhouse gas pay-back period to the year 2088.
Further, public transit's contribution to fuel efficiency is exaggerated. According to the U.S. Department of Energy's 2006 Data Book, per-passenger energy consumed by rail transit is only 19 percent more fuel efficient than today's automobiles (2,784 vs. 3,445 BTUs per passenger mile). If the improvements before Congress are enacted, shortly cars will be more energy-efficient. Bus transit already is 25 percent less fuel-efficient than cars (3,445 vs. 4,323 BTUs).
And the data make the energy performance of rail transit appear better than it really is. The reason is urban rail in the U.S. primarily is used in New York City, where it's more fuel-efficient than elsewhere, due to the packed subways. Here, the local rail energy consumption average is inferior to New York's.
The most cost-effective and energy-efficient transportation option, it turns out, would be making more productive use of existing capabilities. ...
LOL! And they want to do the same here in Seattle, along the ignored & decayed waterfront. (To be restored with federal monies — money the rest of you non-Seattle saps will pay.)
Busses are diesel. Diesels produces visible particulates but little else. Gasoline produces little visible particulates but lots of other bad stuff that’s invisible. In otherwords, buses are not as dirty polluters as your eyes are telling you and gasoline engines are not as clean as your eyes are telling you.
I guess replacing useless concrete ceiling panels couldn't be considered "rebuilt" either.
I pointed out in their inaugural meeting that Link was a real estate development project, not a transportation project. And I introduced them to the Law of (Robert) Moses, which says, "Once you put in the first stakes, they'll never make you pull them up."
I won't be able to speak for Link's ability to function as a successful transportation project until it opens for business in July 2009. But I can testify to its efficacy as a real estate development project.
I took a tour of the right of way where it runs down the middle of MLK Way in South Seattle. MLK Way was a 4 and 5 lane highway. It is now about the width of a 10 lane highway. Outside the rail right of way, there are two lanes on each side. The large median, with the light rail tracks, takes up about the same width as a 6 lane highway in itself.
All the rundown businesses and apartments on MLK have been torn down. On intersecting streets, a lot of homes in poor condition have been torn down some distance from MLK. The new single family homes and apartments are subsidized housing aimed at a multiracial neighborhood. In other words, whites have been invited to return to what was once an Italian neighborhood that went black. Several years before the line opens, transit-oriented development has already begun to line MLK Way -- which is exactly what former Seattle mayor Norm Rice had in mind when he pushed to run the line down MLK in the first place.
So it's fulfilling the main function set by its designers.
The problem with light rail is that its backers have turned it into a religion. There are places where light rail works well (San Diego, Denver, Salt Lake City, Portland, St. Louis, the Los Angeles Blue Line), where it works adequately (San Jose, the LA Gold Line), and where it has failed ignominiously (Buffalo, the LA Green Line, the River Line in New Jersey). Light rail is not a panacea.
But I have long since stopped listening to Emory Bundy. When I saw Maggie Fimia at a chamber music event last week, she greeted me and tried to convert me to her BRT religion, but I explained the economics of gasoline, diesel -- and electricity. For Emory, Maggie and their group, BRT has become just as much a religion as light rail. Both modes have their uses in the Seattle area. But I no longer take such a dim view of Link. It may just work after all.
The Big Dig is a new highway tunnel. It replaced an elevated highway approximately 50 years old.
That would be maintenance, which is necessary on all infrastructure. You know, like patching potholes or restripping a highway or replacing a guardrail damaged in a wreck.
Rebuilding is the complete replacement of the sunk investment at the end of its useful life.
Seattle is a very dense and populated area. If the Link fails, it will be because it does not have the service characterisitics and speed of modern subway and elevated rapid transit like the Washington Metro, MARTA in Atlanta, or BART in San Francisco. The key of the link succeeding is speed.
The economic way to implement light rail is to go find a few square miles of empty land, construct an elaborate underground rail tunnel network, then build a new city on top of it. ;)
And the trains are dirty (largely because they let bums ride for free) and the system still can't turn a profit, despite very heavy usage.
The Airport extension was 7.5 miles for $1.5 billion.
Yeah, but the airport extension was completed a while back, and construction costs have skyrocketed lately. They’ve estimated four billion to extend four miles from Pittsburg/Bay Point to Antioch, for example, probably killing that idea. It’s going to cost 13 to 16 billion to extend from Fremont to San Jose, and it isn’t that many miles. Further BART expansion isn’t economically justifiable any more.
If it's not too expensive, conveniently timed and connects directly to the Sea-Tac airport, I intend to use it to bypass the traffic jams there.
I would just feel sorry for the poor saps who have to sit next to the person who rode their bike to work.
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