Lex Anteinternet: Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less locally, Part XI. The Waiting for a Train Edition

Lex Anteinternet: Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less loc...:  

December 2, 2022

The bill without the sick leave was signed into law.

Lex Anteinternet: Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less loc...

Lex Anteinternet: Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less loc...:December 1, cont:

Statement from President Joe Biden on Congressional Action to Avert a Rail Shutdown

On Tuesday, I met with Congressional leaders from both parties and told them that Congress needed to move quickly to avert a rail shutdown and economic catastrophe for our nation. Now, I want to thank Congressional leadership who supported the bill and the overwhelming majority of Senators and Representatives in both parties who voted to avert a rail shutdown. Congress’ decisive action ensures that we will avoid the impending, devastating economic consequences for workers, families, and communities across the country. Communities will maintain access to clean drinking water. Farmers and ranchers will continue to be able to bring food to market and feed their livestock. And hundreds of thousands of Americans in a number of industries will keep their jobs. I will sign the bill into law as soon as Congress sends it to my desk.

Working together, we have spared this country a Christmas catastrophe in our grocery stores, in our workplaces, and in our communities.

I know that many in Congress shared my reluctance to override the union ratification procedures. But in this case, the consequences of a shutdown were just too great for working families all across the country. And, the agreement will raise workers’ wages by 24%, increase health care benefits, and preserve two person crews.

I have long been a supporter of paid sick leave for workers in all industries – not just the rail industry – and my fight for that critical benefit continues.

This week’s bipartisan action pulls our economy back from the brink of a devastating shutdown that would have hurt millions of families and union workers in countless industries. Our economy is growing and inflation is moderating, and this rail agreement will continue our progress to build an economy from the bottom up and middle out.

Lex Anteinternet: Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less locally, Part XI. The Waiting for a Train Edition

Lex Anteinternet: Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less loc...: 

Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less locally, Part XI. The Waiting for a Train Edition

December 1, 2022

The House of Representatives voted to impose the results of negotiations between railroad companies and unions that were reached last September, but rejected subsequently by the four of the twelve unions that were involved.

An agreement had been reached which featured a 24% pay increase, but it omitted an increase in paid sick leave.  Existing sick leave is apparently very limited, one or two days, and the railroads did not budge on this.

For this reason, the House passed a separate bill that also increased the paid sick leave to seven days.  So two bills go on to the Senate.  It's clear at least one will pass, it'll be interesting to see if they both do.

Last Prior Edition:

Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less locally, Part X. The Camp Stove Edition.

Billings Montana Railyard

These photos depict, from a distance, the Billings Montana Railyard.  The vintage station is visible in the photo above, on the far left, and the following photo goes from that point, to the right.

Billings is served by the Burlington Northern Santa Fe.

Closer photograph of the station.

 

Kingston's Hanley Spur: Modelling Tannery Effluent

Kingston's Hanley Spur: Modelling Tannery Effluent:   Throughout the 1960's, there were persistent complaints and calls for action to alleviate the smells and effluent emerging from the Da...

Impressive. 

New pedestrian overpass, North Denver, Colorado.

 

Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part XXX. The Russo Uk...

Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part XXX. The Russo Uk...: 

Speaking of using petroleum

Speaking of cluelessness, what on earth is the American trucker's convoy about?

Whatever it was supposed to be over, that moment passed. This for all the world has the feel of people who arrived at an event about a week late. "What, this isn't the Johansen wedding. . .where's the food?"

This was, of course, inspired by the Canadian Freedom Convoy.  I had a post on that, but that was really distinctly different in the way it spilled over into other complaints.  I'm not sympathetic with the event, but it came to be the focus of a lot of conservative Canadian discontent with a nation's politics that has become extremely liberal.

It really was a Canadian thing, none of which prevented confused right wing Americans from voicing their support on something that they don't really know anything about.  Most Americans, I fear, couldn't pinpoint Edmonton on a map if their life depended on it.

Anyhow, the spectacle inspired a pretty pointless American truckers convoy, which is protesting. . . well who knows what it's protesting.  In a column by a liberal columnist, one of the protesters, for example, noted that they didn't want to be "digitalized", which means this protest just seems to be, well, a protest without a point.

Or maybe it does have one, but not the one that they're voicing or that they even realize.

Long haul trucking in the United States doesn't really have a long history.  Prior to the Second World War most long distance hauling of anything was by rail, not by truck.  Rail itself dated only back to the second quarter of the 19th Century.  Before that, for millennia, anything of substance moved by boat, and less bulky things moved by land at the speed of a draft animal.  Indeed, for that reason, early in the nation's history projects to extend aquatic transportation, like the Erie Canal, were a big deal.

Rail was a radical alteration of the transportation system with a massive impact on the nation in all sorts of forgotten ways, including the pattern of settlement.  Cities like Denver, Colorado became viable due to rail, without it, they'd be towns.

But through Federal subsidization of roads in the 20th Century, and particularly after World War Two, combined with advancements in automotive technology, long haul semi tractors with large trailers became a viable option in the mid 20th Century.  By the 1950s, but not before then, they began to supplant rail.  By the 1960s the process was well under way, while at the same time air travel and improved roads cut into rail passenger service as well, with railroads seeking to abandon that the latter.

Trucking as a profession was in fact glamorized.  Even early on, Hollywood portrayed it that way, with such movies as They Drive By Night.  Convoy, the Country & Western ballad, was one of only a collection of trucking songs that were on the airwaves in the 70s.  At least two movies, once based on the Convoy song, portrayed trucking as glamorous in the same era.

Well, that's all largely passed. We're told now that there's a nationwide shortage of truck drivers, with the country being 80,000 drivers short. 

All of the major automobile manufacturers are working on electric automobiles.  That transformation will come much more rapidly there than in trucking. Automated trucks, without drivers, are being explored and exist on an experimental level now.  But lurking in the back is the ultimate competition to the semi truck, the electric train.

Locomotives are already much, much, more efficient than trucks, and accordingly far, far more "green". The Burlington Northern in fact advertised that fact a few years back.

Predicting the future is always difficult, but I suspect that on a fairly significant level, the future of long distance transportation looks backwards.  It's rail.

Lex Anteinternet: Lincoln Highway Redux?

Lex Anteinternet: Lincoln Highway Redux?: 

Lincoln Highway Redux?

Gen. Luke Reiner^[1] head of the Wyoming Department of Transportation, has stated that WYDOT is proposing to reroute Interstate 80 along the path of Wyoming Highway 30.

Eh?

Okay, this is the stretch between Laramie and Rawlins, which is notoriously bad during bad weather.  For those not familiar with I80 in that area, or Highway 30 between Laramie and Rawlins, observe below:

WYDOT Public use map.

For those who are historically minded, you may be thinking that Highway 30, in that area, looks a bit familiar.

That's because that is where the "interstate", or protointerstate if you will, was prior to Interstate 80 being build.

Witness:

Gen. Reiner notes, in his statements to the Cowboy State Daily, that 

“If you look at a map, you’ll see that the old highway, Highway 30, goes further to the north, and then sort of comes down from the north into I-80.  Rumor has it that when they went to build I-80, that the initial route followed the route of Highway 30. And somebody made the decision, ‘No, we’re going to move closer to these very beautiful mountains,’ to which the locals said, ‘Bad idea,’ based on weather. And it has proved to be true.”

I don't know if its a rumor, and I don't know if they had beauty in mind.  I've heard the same thing about locals warning those building the highway not to get to close to the mountains, only to be disregarded.

Highway 30 followed the route of the Union Pacific, and except in this stretch still largey does.  The Interstate, however, followed a cutoff route of the Overland Trail.  Taht's signficantin that the portion of the Overland Trail that it followed turned out to be an unpopular one, and the Army, which garrisoned a post at the base of Elk Mountain, eventually abaonded it.

We've writtein about that location here:

Sunday, August 2, 2020

Ft. Halleck, sort of. Near Elk Mountain Wyoming

Where Ft. Halleck was, from a great distance.

This set of photographs attempts to record something from a very great distance, and with the improper lenses.   I really should have known better, quite frankly, and forgot to bring the lense that would have been ideal.  None the less, looking straight up the center of this photograph, you'll see where Ft. Halleck once was.

The post was located at the base of Elk Mountain on the Overland Trail, that "shortcut" alternative to the Oregon Trail that shaved miles, at the expense of convenience and risk.  Ft. Halleck was built in 1862 to reduce the risk.  Whomever located the post must have done so in the summer, as placing a post on this location would seem, almost by definition, to express a degree of ignorance as to what the winters here are like.

 The area to the northeast of where Ft. Halleck once was.

The fort was only occupied until 1866, although it was a major post during that time.  Ft. Sanders, outside the present city of Laramie, made the unnecessary and to add to that, Sanders was in a more livable 

Of course, by that time the Union Pacific was also progressing through the area, and that would soon render the Overland Trail obsolete.  While not on an identical path the Overland Trail and the Union Pacific approximated each others routes and, very shortly, troops would be able to travel by rail.

As that occured, it would also be the case that guarding the railroad would become a more important function for the Army, and forts soon came to be placed on it.

Elk Mountain

And, therefore, Ft. Halleck was abandoned.

Whatever the reason for locating Interstate 80 there, and I suspect it had more to do with bypassing a bunch of country, making the road shorter, and the like, it was a poor choice indeed. The weather in that area is horrific during the winter.  Perhaps the irony of that is that this stretch of the National Defense Highway system would have had to end up being avoided, quite frequently, if we'd really needed it if the Soviets had attacked us in the winter.  

Gen. Reiner, who really doesn't expect this to occur, has noted in favor of it:

Our suggestion to the federal government is to say, ‘If you want to do something for the nation’s commerce along I-80, reroute it. Follow Highway 30 — it’s about 100 miles of new interstate, the estimated cost would be about $6 billion. So, it’s not cheap, but our estimate is that it would dramatically reduce the number of days the interstate’s closed, because that’s the section that that kills us.

It doesn't just "kill" us in a budgetary fashion. It kills a lot of people too.  Anyone who has litigated in Wyoming has dealt with I80 highway fatalities in this section.  That makes the $6,000,000,000 investment worthwhile in my mind.

And of course taking the more southerly route doesn't just kill people, as crass as that is to say, it helped kill the towns of Rock River and Medicine Bow, two of the five towns on that stretch of Highway 30 that were once pretty bustling Lincoln Highway towns.^[1]   Highway 30 runs rough through them.  

And of note, FWIW, Highway 30 between Bosler and Rock River

Now, I know that a new Interstate 80 wouldn't go right through Rock River and Medicine Bow, but past them, like Highway 30 does to Hanna, but some people would in fact pull off.  It's inevitable.  

It's a good idea.

Not as good of idea as electrifying the railroad and restoring train travel, but still a good idea.

It won't happen, however.  Not even though there's still relatively little between Laramie and Rawlins, and it won't cause any real towns to dry up and blow away.  Not even though it would save lives and ultimately thousands of lost travel dollars.  And not even though the current administration is spending infrastructure money like crazy.

Footnotes:

1.  Before he was head of WYDOT, Reiner was the commanding officer of the Wyoming Army National Guard.

When I was a National Guardsmen he was a lieutenant, and his first assignment was to my Liaison section.  I knew him at that time.  He's an accountant by training, and he was in fact an accountant at the time.  His parents were Lutheran missionaries in Namibia, where he had partially grown up.

2.  The towns are Bosler, Rock River, Medicine Bow,  and Hanna.

Thieves are robbing Union Pacific trains in Los Angeles to such an extent that . . .

 the railroad is considering ceasing to serve the city.

News footage shows the rail line littered with the packages of thousands of stolen items.

Mutzerbahn - "Cat-aclysm" in Such station, waiting for a model train to ...

Somethings you just can't resist.

2021 Reflections: The Transportation Edition.

We don't tend to post original commentary on this blog, but on our others, but given the topics, it's appropriate here.

And this will be a dual post, appearing on both Railhead and The Aerodrome simultaneously.

Like some, as in all, of our reflection posts that have gone up on our companion blogs, this entry is impacted by COVID 19, as everything is. 

It's also heavily impacted by politics.

And of course, COVID 19 itself has become strangely political.

The onset of the terrible pandemic shut down nearly every economy in the world, save for those in areas with economies so underdeveloped that they couldn't shut down.  That impacted the world's transportation networks in a major way, and it still is.  COVID 19 also became a factor in the last election, with a large section of the American public becoming extremely unhappy with the Trump Administration's response to the pandemic.  Added to the mix, heightened concerns over global warming have finally started to accelerate an American response to the threat.

All of which gets us to transportation, the topic of these blogs in some ways.

For at least a decade, it's been obvious that electric automobile are going to replace fossil fuel powered ones. There are, of course, deniers, but the die is cast and that's where things will go.  

It's also become obvious that technology is going to take truck driver out of their seats, and put a few, albeit a very few, in automated offices elsewhere where they'll monitor remote fleets of trucks.  Or at least that's the thought.

The Biden Administration, moreover, included money for railroads in is large infrastructure bill.  This has developed in various ways, but the big emphasis has been on expanding Amtrak.

Amtrak Expansion. Cheyenne to Denver, and beyond!?

I have real problems, I'll admit, with the scope of the proposed infrastructure spending proposals that President Biden is looking at, but if they go forward, I really hope we do see rail service restored (and that's what it would be) between Cheyenne and Denver.

The plan proposes to invest $80B in Amtrak.  Yes, $80B.  Most of that will go to repairs, believe it or not, as the Amtrak has never been a favorite of the Republican Party, which in its heard of hearts feels that the quasi public rail line is simply a way of preserving an obsolete mode of transportation at the Government's expense.  But rail has been receiving a lot of attention recently for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that in a now carbon conscious era, it's the greenest mode of transportation taht we have, something the commercial rail lines have been emphasizing.

Indeed, if the American public wasn't afraid of a nuclear power the same way that four year olds are afraid of monsters that live under their beds, it could be greener yet, and there's some talk of now supporting nuclear power among serious informed environmentalists.  A campaign to push that, called the Solutionary Rail, is now active.  We'll deal with that some other time.

Here we're noting that we're hopeful that if this does go through, and as noted we have real reservations about this level of expenditure, that Amtrak does put in a passenger line from Cheyenne to Pueblo.  

A line connecting Ft. Collins to Denver has been a proposal in Colorado for quite a while and has some backing there.  The same line of thought has already included Cheyenne.  This has a lot to do with trying to ease the burgeoning traffic problem this area experiences due to the massive population growth in Colorado.  Wyomingites, I suppose, should therefore approach this with some caution as it would tie us into the Front Range communities in a way that we might not want to be.  Still, it's an interesting idea.

It's one that for some reason I think will fall through, and I also suspect it'll receive no support in Wyoming. Still, it's interesting.

During  the past year, locally, flights to Casper were put in jeopardy. This was a byproduct of COVID 19, as air travel dropped off to nearly nothing, nationwide, and that made short flights economically iffy.

Before the pandemic, Delta had cut back its flight schedule to Salt Lake, which is a major Delta hub. This caused its bookings to drop down anyway.  I used to fly to Salt Lake in the morning, pre COVID, do business, and then fly back that evening.  Once Delta cuts its flights back, however, that became impossible.

That meant that Delta, at that point, had aced itself out of the day trip business market, which it seemingly remains unaware of for some reason.  COVID hurt things further.  At that point it threatened to abandon its service unless it could receive some assistance.  The county and the local municipalities rose to the occasion.

Delta receives a subsidty to continue serving the Natrona County International Airport

 I'm really not too certain what my view on this is.  Overall, I suppose it's a good thing.

Delta is one of the two carriers, relying on regional contractors, serving the Natrona County International Airport, and hence all of Central Wyoming.  It flies to and from Salt Lake, while United flies to and from Denver.  

It used to have great connections.  A businessman in Casper could take the red eye to Salt Lake and then catch the late flight back. That's no longer possible  Frankly, depending upon what you're doing, it's nearly as easy to drive to Salt Lake now.

And perhaps that's cutting into their passenger list, along with COVID 19, although I'm told that flights have been full recently.

Anyhow, losing Delta would be a disaster. We'd be down to just United.  Not only would that mean that there was no competition, it'd place us in a shaky position, maybe, as the overall viability of air travel starts to reduce once a carrier pulls out.

A couple of legislatures ago there was an effort to subsidize intrastate air travel, and I think it passed.  While Wyomingites howl about "socialism", as we loosely and fairly inaccurately describe it, we're hugely okay with transportation being subsidized.  We likely need to be, or it'll cut us off from the rest of everything more than we already are, and that has a certain domino effect.

I don't know what the overall solution to this problem is, assuming there is one, but whatever it is, subsidies appear likely to be part of it for the immediate future . . . and maybe there are some avenues open there we aren't pursuing and should be.

At the same time, infrastructure money became available for the state's airports as well.

Wyoming's Airports to receive $15.1M in Infrastructure Money

The Federal funds can be used for terminals, runways and parking lots and the like.

Of Wyoming airports, Jackson's will get the most, receiving $3.38M.  Natrona County International Airport gets the second-largest amount at $1.34M.  Natrona  County's airport will use the funds for electrical work.

So flights were kept and improvements will be made.

Recently, pilot pay has been tripled, albeit only for one month.

United Airlines Triples Pilot Pay for January.

This due to an ongoing pilot shortage, which has been heightened by the Omicron variant of COVID 19.

I.e, United is trying to fill the pilot seats this month.

So, that's what happened.

Now, what might we hope will happen?

1.  Electric Avenue

Everything always seem really difficult until its done, and then not so much.

Which doesn't discount difficulty. 

The Transcontinental Railraod was created in the US through the American System, something that's been largely forgotten.  Private railroads didn't leap at the chance to put in thousands of miles of rail line across uninhabited territory.  No, the Federal Government caused the rail line to come about by providing thousands of acres of valuable land to two start up companies and then guarding the workers with the Army, at taxpayer expense.

We note that as, right now, railroad are already the "greenest" means of transportation in the US.  They could be made more so by electrifying them, just as the Trans Siberian Railway is.  At the same time, if a program to rapidly convert energy production in the US to nuclear was engaged in, the US transportation system could be made basically "green" in very little time.  Probably five years or less.

If we intend to "build back better", we ought to do that.

This would, I'd note, largely shift long transportation back to its pre 1960s state.  Mostly by rail.  Trucking came in because the US decided, particularly during the Eisenhower Administration, to subsidize massive coast to coast highways.  

For the most part, we no longer really need them.

Oh, we need highways, but with advances in technology of all sorts, we need them a lot less than we once did.  And frankly, we never really needed them way that the Federal Government maintained we did.  It's been a huge financial burden on the taxpayers, and its subsidized one industry over another.

Yes, this is radical, but we should do it.

Now, before a person either get too romantic, or too weepy, over this, a couple of things.

One is that we already have an 80,000 teamster shortage for trucking.  I.e., yes, this plan would put a lot of drivers out of work, but its a dying occupation anyway.  Indeed, in recent years its become on that is oddly increasingly filled with Eastern Europeans who seemingly take it up as its a job they can occupy with little training.  The age of the old burly American double shifting teamster is long over.  

And to the extent it isn't, automated trucks are about to make it that way for everyone.

The trains, we'd note, will be automated too.  It's inevitable. They'll be operated like giant train sets from a central location. Something that's frankly easier, and safer, to do, than it would be for semi tractors.

2.  Subsidized local air travel

It's going to take longer to electrify aircraft, particularly those that haul people, but electrification of light aircraft is already being worked on.  The Air Force has, moreover, been working on alternative jet fuels.

Anyhow, if we must subsidize something in long distance transportation, that should be local air travel.  Its safe, effective and vital for local economies.  I don't care if that is quasi socialist.  It should be done.

3. The abandoned runways.

Locally, I'd like to see some of that infrastructure money go to the extra runway or runways at the NatCo airport being repaired.  I know that they were little used, but they're there.