Category Archives: environment

Interesting emissions data from UPRR

According to this: 1 double stack train equals 280 trucks trains are 2-4x more fuel efficient than trucks on a ton-mile basis trains are 2-3 cleaner than trucks w.r.t NOx emissions on a ton-mile basis

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how come only Californians think that Americans love their cars

So this from the east…. notice not a word about how Americans love their cars so much that they would never get out to take a train… especially a train that easily beats the car! Published Tuesday, September 12, 2006, … Continue reading

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if we are at the brink of climate failure

I read BBC regularily. The amount of climate news provided by this service is excellent. This is positively scary: Carbon dioxide levels are substantially higher now than at anytime in the last 800,000 years, the latest study of ice drilled … Continue reading

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rail vs. car (aka people will never give up their cars)

I ran across this interesting article today. This article from a very unlikely source goes to demonstrate what we in the transit community have known for a long time, Americans can and do want an alternative to their cars. This … Continue reading

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should the Sierra Club support freight railroads?

The Sierra Club was recently approached by Growth Options for the 21th Century, a group that wants to increase federal funding to expand freight railroad capacity. My general feeling is that we should be very wary. The law of unintended … Continue reading

Posted in environment, sierraclub, transportation | 7 Comments

about SB1291

Lets look at SB1291, the Silicon Valley Leadership group claims that it is just to avoid a competitive disadvantage: John Ambroseo, chief executive of Santa Clara-based Coherent, speaking on behalf of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, argues that the state … Continue reading

Posted in 2006-06-06-measure-a, environment, political | 2 Comments

why San Jose continues to make sure the environmental community does not support the CA HSR project

Once again provincial San Jose (Ca) interests are trying to convince people that up is down and right is left. The latest example As usual, the Mercury News takes their San Jose-is-the-center-of-the-universe-approach in their editorial published on January 5, 2006. … Continue reading

Posted in environment, political, transportation | 1 Comment

living standards closer to average…

A friend of mine posted recently about how concerned he was about living standards in the US approaching that of a Pakastani bricklayer because we are not investing in education to stay a technological leader. Guess what? The standards are … Continue reading

Posted in environment, political | 3 Comments

hurricanes…

You know for all the people who don’t believe in global climate change, it’s o.k. it sure believes in you … 13 tropical storms, 13 hurricanes, and only 3 depressions that failed to live up to their potential. It is … Continue reading

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