Relieving urban traffic congestion and reducing fossil fuel dependence

Every major city and large urban center shares a common problem, traffic congestion, particularly during rush hours. And in virtually every instance a major, if not the dominant, contributor to that congestion is commercial delivery traffic. Primary traffic corridors and the primary concentration of retail and commercial businesses to which deliveries are being made are on the same routes, the same streets.

In an era of dwindling fossil fuel reserves, resulting in punishing increases in fuel costs, and stressed budgets at all levels of government resulting in curtailment of funds for infrastructure development and maintenance, some serious thinking outside the box is needed to deal with this combined problem.

I believe there is a simple, efficient, and cost effective solution available in most large cities.

The other thing large cities share in common is that they have a major investment in a public transit infrastructure. In most large cities this includes subways, streetcars and trolleys. These are all powered by electricity, not fossil fuels, though the electricity they use may, today, be generated using fossil fuels. But that is a situation that will undergo dramatic changes over the next couple of decades as existing power generation plants age and are pulled offline.

That electricity driven public transit system and infrastructure can serve as the foundation for solving both urban fossil fuel dependence and urban traffic congestion. All three system infrastructures (subway, streetcar and trolley) can double as effective and efficient urban freight distribution networks. The chassis on which these three vehicles are built can be used as the chassis for freight vehicles that will run on the same infrastructure as the current passenger vehicles.

Subway cars are ideally suited as urban freight carriers. They have four sets of extra-wide, double entry/loading doors, car to car connection, driver compartment built in, and the ability to be run individually or linked together as a train. Use the same chassis, strip out the seating and hand-holds, eliminate the climate control system, eliminate the windows, build in the necessary racks/shelves and partitions and you have an ideal urban freight carrier. They use an existing track infrastructure that also carries people. They can be run 24-hours a day, in any weather because the infrastructure is underground. With retail and commercial concentrated along the same corridors served by the subways it is the most efficient system for delivery to those businesses or strategically located depots. Freight sidings could be relatively easily added where needed so as not to impede passenger traffic while loading/unloading. And it could be undertaken now to great advantage for the city in easing the traffic congestion of delivery trucks on city streets.

A simple, effective dispatch control system could easily be developed, probably using some form of bar-code system. The whole freight system could be privatized, bringing revenue to the city and eliminating the bureaucracy needed from city payroll and expense.

In the same way, streetcar infrastructure could be used for surface freight cars, freight vehicles built on a streetcar chassis. Sidings could be easily added where needed, running down alleys for example. These could serve secondary commercial concentrations not on the subway lines.

Freight trolleys, likewise, could be built on the same chassis as passenger trolleys, use the same power line infrastructure and routes, have additional sidings built so as not to impede passenger traffic on the same lines. These would service those secondary commercial concentrations similar to but not served by streetcars.

All of this is akin to the way in which freight planes have become so ubiquitous at our airports. Freight has piggybacked on an infrastructure that was already in place for passenger traffic, with the addition of extra terminals at airports to divert freight away from passenger terminals. The air traffic control, runways, route management and tracking systems, and route protocols were all already in place.

The decline in reserves of all fossil fuels (oil, natural gas and coal) is a certainty over the next couple of decades and well beyond. They are not replenishable, at least not in human time-scales. One way or another all facets of our society dependent on these fossil fuels are going to have to find ways to adapt as reserves diminish.

Although electricity has its own problems, such as aging infrastructure and a reliance on massive power generation facilities and long-distance transmission lines, one certainty is that electricity generation has many renewable options such as solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, tidal, and more. We are not forever tied to fossil fuels for electricity generation. And there is the clear additional benefit that these options can be at a smaller scale and distributed. Any city, for example, has within it's boundaries sufficient rooftop space that, with solar power, most of it's electricity for the transportation and freight infrastructure could be generated within city boundaries. Add wind power to that and possible other options like power generated from burning trash, and much of the power needs can be readily satisfied internally. Local options can reduce, or eliminate, the dependence on long distance power grids. With privatization of the urban freight system, the city could also expect those companies using that infrastructure to share in the cost of building and maintaining the local power generation facilities.

Those corporations that currently supply the passenger vehicles for the public transit system could be commissioned to use their chassis and develop the freight options on that chassis. Similarly, however, third party corporations could be allowed, on a competitive bid basis, to develop the freight vehicles, in the same way that third party companies produce specialized truck bodies for truck freight.

Any city that prides itself on being forward looking cannot afford to ignore the elephant in the room of dwindling fossil fuel supplies over the coming decades. Any city willing to take such an innovative, pro-active approach to pre-avoiding the problems that fossil fuel depletion will inflict on them will have a clear leg up on the fossil fuel downslope.

The Myth of Permanence: Post-Peak Infrastructure Maintenance

As we pass peak oil and then peak energy what will happen to the massive infrastructure and engineering marvels of our global society when we no longer have the energy, resources and technology to maintain them? All we need do is look to the past for answers. What happened to the infrastructure of past civilizations; Egypt, Greece, Rome, Mesopotamia, the Mayan, Incan, Aztec empires? Nature reclaimed them, and was not particularly kind in the process. The wonders of Egypt had to be dug out of an ever-expanding desert. The massive temples and creations of the past empires of the Americas had to be resurrected from the overgrowth of encroaching jungle. The remains of the Roman Empire and ancient Greece had to be exumed from beneath the natural landscape of Europe.

Nature does not lovingly or dutifully maintain our creations for us. She doesn't give a damn how much effort we put into them, how important they were to us. Nature is dynamic, constantly changing. Permanence is a human myth totally at odds with nature's reality.

Infrastructure is the hard wiring of our society. Much of it is invisible. To those living within the embrace of that infrastructure it is taken for granted, is seen as permanent, the foundation of that society and of their individual lives. But it seems so because there is an army of people and a kalaidescope of technology that is constantly working to keep it maintained. While past empires were alive and vibrant similar efforts and energies and armies of people, many of them slaves, were maintaining their infrastructure, maintaining the impression of permanence by keeping it clean and safe and polished and in working order. When those empires fell and all of that constant maintenance ceased that impression and myth of permanence fell apart and the inevitable reality of deterioration set in.

There was a major difference in those past empires, a serious contrast to our current global society. They were built to last, designed for permanence, strong, durable, bold. They were built of stone. And that intent of durability and the materials they used are the only reason there was anything left of those empires for our modern day archeologists to dig up, uncover, retrieve, resurrect. But even this was but an abstract impression of what that civilization was. What was left to recover was bits and pieces of the puzzle that had enormous holes from the missing pieces. They were haunting images of what was that gave little clues as to how those past great civilizations functioned on a day to day basis.

With these clues from history should we expect anything different of our own dangerously impermanent infrastructure when our desire, commitment and ability to maintain it begin to falter? Even without catastrophes like New Orleans, Banda Ache, floods, hurricanes, landslides, earthquakes, et al, that infrastructure will continue to deteriorate long after the maintenance has ceased. Much of that infrastructure will be increasingly dangerous as it deteriorates.

Think about the impact of deterioration on the components of our infrastructure;
bridges, overpasses, underpasses, tunnels, elevated highways, canals, water diversions, levees, dykes, dams, aquaducts, reservoirs, sewer systems, water systems, cable systems, underground power lines, airports, supertankers, weapons silos, reservoirs, nuclear power plants, zoos, river channels, steel and glass skyscrapers, apartment towers, prisoners, passenger jets, munitions depots, the chunnel, flood control systems, arenas, stadiums, coliseums,race tracks, elevator, underground service corridors, subways, elevated transit systems, race tracks, amusement parks, communication towers, space junk, theaters and concert halls, wharves, marinas, parking lots, rail yards, dry docks, storm barriers, irrigation channels, transmission lines, highway service centers, warehouses, agricultural terraces, walls and barriers, grain silos, multi-level car parks, pressurized storage tanks, toxic waste depots, settling ponds, etc., etc., ad infinitum.

It is not just an issue of deterioration. It is an issue of increasing threats to safety and security as that infrastructure deteriorates. One of the sad lessons of the past century is that one of the first cost-saving measures that is turned to when things get tough is infrastructure maintenance. Maintenance does not make money. Too often it is done at all only because there is legislation and laws that demand it.

Look around you. Look at your community. Make a mental note of all of the infrastructure on which your community depends for its smooth functioning. Think about the maintenance that keeps that infrastructure functioning. Think about where the funds for that maintenance comes from. Think about what will happen to that source of funds when we pass peak oil or the economy falls apart or any of the other serious scenarios that may befall us in the near term future. Ask yourself if you are comfortable with that.

Peak Oil and Overpasses

I know it is a dangerous game to link every piece of news to peak oil. You will have to forgive me for stepping into this one. Over this past weekend there was a collapse of an overpass in Laval Quebec, a suburb north of Montreal. Two cars were flattened by the collapse killing five people. I was not surprised, have been expecting this sort of event to start occuring on a regular basis. And I expect it to be more so as we pass peak oil and start on the downslope on the other side of Hubbert's Peak.

People often point to the economic collapse of the Great Depression and say we got through that one and we'll get through the next one. Society didn't fall apart. The ubiquitous overpass is one very major difference between now and then. In this past half century the overpass has become as common as overflowing refuse containers on city streets. They are everywhere. I will be journeying to London Ontario in a week and a half and I will be driving under at least a hundred overpasses on that trip.

Canadian highway infrastructure, especially those bridges and overpasses, will be severely tested on the other side of peak oil. And the reasons are fairly simple.

* It is probable that highway maintenance will decline for lack of funds, or privatized off to the lowest bidder.
* Our weather extremes take a tremendous toll on highway infrastructure, that being one of the major reasons for our high maintenance costs. Extremes of temperature constantly expand and contract the bridge structure causing stress fractures in the concrete and even in the rebar.
* Our obsessive overuse of corroding salt on our highways takes a heavy toll, especially on bridges, overpasses, and elevated sections of highways.

If one looks at the chain of events in the Laval overpass collapse you can see these future problems dramatically. Over an hour before the collapse the roads department was called by citizens reporting chunks of concrete falling from the overpass on to the roadway. A roads crew showed up at the site, picked up the chunks of fallen concrete and left (they have since claimed that they were going to request an inspection later). An hour after the picked up those fallen pieces the whole one side of the overpass collapsed. That overpass was only 36 years old and was designed to last for sixty. And this was the second overpass collapse in the same area.

Welcome to peak oil highways.