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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A need for an Interstate Highway System, by which is meant a good one, was also noted.
This is one of those things where I'd disagree. It's often stated that Eisenhower was really impressed with the German Autobahn, which was really a massive German public works project during the pre war Nazi years there, and he may have really been. But I think it was the ongoing evolution of the automobile that made the Interstate Highway System come in. It was billed a defense program but that was, quite frankly, a funding charade.
What that does bring up, however, is the massive expansion of government that started with the Great Depression and which kept on keeping on during World War Two and which never went away thereafter. It wasn't until the Reagan administration of the 1980s that contraction of any kind started, and its never contracted to its pre 1932 level. Prior to the Great Depression the nation would never have undertaken a highway construction project on a national level, and not until World War Two would the country thought of trying to pass it off as a defense measure.
That act, of course, lead to the demise of passenger rail in US, so its another thing that had a mixed result.
Of our various blogs, this one has been, by far, the least likely to see a commentary post. Indeed, this appears to be the very first one. But as this one involves rail transportation, I'm going to post it here.
Readers of the blog where I typically post commentary, Lex Anteinternet, know that I've posted a lot of comments on the hard times in the petroleum and coal industries, particularly in Wyoming. As part of those, I've categorically rejected the popular thesis in Wyoming that the Federal government is engaged in a "war" on the energy industry, or that there's some gigantic conspiracy to do the energy industries in. In this post, however, I will comment on a type of "not in my backyard" effort that's really shortsighted, and which give credence to those who feel ignored and oppressed in this area.
Recently there was a big derailment in Mosier, Oregon. That occurrence has lead to an effort, centered in the Pacific Northwest but focused nationally, to ban the transportation of petroleum oil by rail.
I guess its obvious that I'm a railroad fan, why else, after all, would a person have a blog dedicated to railroad features, so perhaps I'm partisan. But campaigns of this type strike me as very ill informed in some ways. The concept seems to be that, because all of the cars are on a single train, a train purposes a unique danger that other means of transportation do not. That's simply not correct. The other means are truck and pipeline. The hundreds of trucks that replace a single train pose a danger as well, and arguably a much greater one as the risk would have be assessed for each single truck, not just one as if it were a train. Pipelines are probably safer, although pipeline spills do occur, and the are basically permanent. Rail lines have other uses for other types of trains.
I suspect that much of this movement doesn't even directly relate to safety, but rather is part of an environmental movement on the Pacific Coast that has been pretty successful in shutting down the loading of coal by sea. Given the current economics of coal, I'm not nearly as convinced, however, that this has been that detrimental to coal. It's the low price and declining use that has been. But I suspect there's a poorly thought out concept that if the shipping of oil by rail is stopped, people quit using it.
Not hardly.
This view, I'd note, is supported by some comments from a Pacific Coast environmental activists, who is quoted as saying in a newspaper as follows:
On the evening of June 6, more than a hundred climate activists met
at the First Unitarian Church in downtown Portland to discuss their
response to the oil train derailment in the Columbia River Gorge three
days earlier, said 350PDX director Adriana Voss-Andreae.
“The call for a temporary moratorium on oil trains is a call for a
shred of decency for the Mosier community, but it does nothing to meet
the magnitude of the problem,” she said. “If the government won’t stop
the bomb trains, then we must do so ourselves. There will be a mass
direct action in the coming two weeks. We encourage all to join.”
Climate activists claiming its a "bomb train"? Well, I'm skeptical. Either they simply oppose the shipping of all fossil fuels by any means, or their activism is unfocused.
Well, whatever a person might think about climate change, pretending that preventing shipping by rail is going to have some impact on the use of fossil fuels is just fooling yourself. And, ironically, trains are by far the most efficient, and hence the most "green", of any means of transportation we have. Putting the same oil on the road in trucks is at least as dangerous and a lot dirtier. And that's probably what would happen if the oil wasn't shipped by rail.
