Kunstler Continues to Push Peak Oil Issues
James Howard Kunstler, author of now-classic books, The Geography of Nowhere and Home from Nowhere is pushing the peak oil issue on his blog which is known as Clusterfuck Nation.
Kunstler’s entry from today addresses the foolish thinking that hybrids will allow us to continue our auto-dominated society:
“The truth is that it does not really matter whether the freeways are crammed full of SUVs or nimble hybrid cars. The problem is car-dependency and the infrastructure for daily living predicated on it, not the kind of vehicles we run. I have yet to hear one US senator of either party propose that part of the recent $300 billion highway bill ought to be redirected to rebuilding America’s passenger rail system — even after the bitter lesson of Katrina, which demonstrated that people who don’t own cars can’t get out of harm’s way in this country.”
Kunstler’s latest book, The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century, is on my reading list. From what I’ve read from the blog so far Kunstler is highly pessimistic about the future. Although maybe he is simply being realistic?
First up is home heating costs for this winter. It will be a serious issue and tragically we’ll have stories here in St. Louis of people dying because they couldn’t afford to heat their homes. But high natural gas prices will lead to higher electricity costs. Both will mean higher costs of goods and services. Can you say recession?
As a region we simply cannot continue subsidizing sprawl. All the experts predict the number of cars and auto congestion will continue to increase. I disagree. Within 20 years our auto ownership and traffic congestion will be less than, or equal, to today.
Yet our political leadership is moving ahead on massive auto subsidizing projects while more sustainable transportation projects take a back seat. The rebuilding of I-64 (highway farty to natives) and a new Mississippi River Bridge are just two examples.
Based on cost estimates to build two miles of street car lines connecting the Loop to Forest Park you can get about fives times as much coverage with street cars over light rail. For a cool billion dollars we can get a new bridge, the proposed Northside & Southside MetroLink extensions or 4-5 times as many street car lines covering much of the city. Currently the bridge is the highest priority. It should be the last priority.
The claim is we need the bridge and auto capacity to grow our economy. This, of course, assumes the cheap gas auto economy we’ve been used to. My feeling is we need to shift away from subsidizing the dead-end auto “experiment” and build a first-class mass transit system. Reactionaries will attempt to read into my views that I want to ban all cars from St. Louis but that is not the case. I want to shift the balance back to a sustainable means of moving people from place to place. That is walking, biking, and street cars.
Twenty years from now large McMansions in Chesterfield will be vacated like homes of Lafayette Square were thirty years ago. The difference will be that the vinyl clad boxes in suburbia will not be worth saving. Transit will be the key and the wealthier will move closer to mass transit and the poor will be left on the fringes struggling to get to jobs. Bedroom communities will be the hardest hit and will become the new ghettos. At least the poor can now get on a bus (or several buses) and get to the jobs. In the future we’ll finally have mass transit for the wealthier in the core and the poor will be on the edge with substandard service as they try to get back into the core for work. The new Mississippi River Bridge will be little comfort.
Man, I’m as pessimistic as Kunstler!
So what do we do? Again, I think we need to move now to connect as much of the city to mass transit as possible. But if my prediction of the wealthier moving to the core you are correct to wonder won’t this just serve the wealthy in the future? Well, yes and no. My thought is if we plan a network of streetcars to connect the city and inner-ring suburbs we can build denser neighborhoods around transit that accommodate all income levels. Waiting until the crisis point and we’ll see the affluent get transit and the poor get the shaft. If you don’t believe this can happen just turn on CNN for continuing coverage on Katrina.
Unfortunately we will probably ignore the warning signs and come into this crisis as unprepared as we were for the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Major sprawl projects like the bridge and rebuilding of I-64 will be started or at least “funded” when the experts finally realize we need to support dense neighborhoods and mass transit rather than continue to subsidize private autos. Despite all logic against continuing these massive and misguided projects they will go forth simply to create needed jobs.
Enough of my rant because the Daily Show with Jon Stewart is about to start…
– Steve
No change in this arena will happen until we have no choice but to change — as much as I agree with your arguments — we will be reactionary in regards an oil based society, not proactive and a lot of folks will suffer in the long run — just like with Katrina.
I’m not entirely convinced of the efficiency of the streetcars proposed for the Loop and vicinity. How fast will they go? 10-15 MPH is fine for a tourist attraction, which seems to be the main purpose of the Loop Trolley Company. And, for that function, it’s cool.
But transit commuters need reliably faster service than that. They need to get to work on time. Some bus routes are faster than others obviously; but MetroLink is always a much faster option. It almost competes with the automobile, in my view.
Consider my commute, from South St. Louis to Washington University Hilltop campus. It takes about one hour (including transfer time and walking time), sometimes a little less. Typically, I catch the #10 Gravois at Gravois and Arsenal; or if I can get out the door early enough, the #11x Shrewsbury Express or #10x South Grand Express. The express buses are marginally faster, since they only stop at about every third or fourth bus stop along Gravois/Tucker. It’s about a 12 minute ride to 14th and Spruce downtown.
Then I transfer to the MetroLink, which is of course pretty fast, for the longest distance portion of the trip, from Civic Center to Forest Park stations. The average speed is probably close to 40 MPH; travel time is about 12 minutes on this leg, too, but it’s about twice the distance.
After that, I can choose to take the #93 Lindell, the #58 Clayton-Ballas, or the Wash U Gold Line, depending what comes first. This leg is quite a short distance, but still takes about 10 minutes. The #58 is the fastest way to go, since it cuts through Forest Park. The Gold Line and the Lindell tend to make a lot more stops in the Skinker-DeBaliviere neighborhood, on a longer, twistier routing via the relatively narrow Waterman.
In any event, I think fixed rail on-street trolleys could have a great deal of utility as tourism promotion devices, not just in the Loop but through Forest Park, and in downtown, Lafayette Square, and Soulard. However, sub-surface or grade-level on dedicated right-of-way MetroLink is a much better deal for commuting. Ideally, we could build both. But, realistically, the funds are not available.
[REPLY – Great points but for me it comes down to value. Why should some get MetroLink and the associated benefits at stops and leave the rest of us with buses? Dollar for dollar streetcars provide a better value to citizens than either private car highways or light rail. Sure it isn’t as fast but if we can provide uniform service to more of the citizens isn’t that a good trade off?
To discount streetcars as only appealing to tourists is unfair. In San Francisco I’ve seen plenty of natives using the streetcars to get from point to point. Same is true with pre-Katrina New Orleans. Tourists simply don’t use buses but they will use street cars. If you rely on public transportation with buses you feel like a second class citizen but replace the bus line with street cars and ad some tourists and additional local residents and all of a sudden you are part of the community. – Steve]
Streetcars work for short lines, but not for those needing to cover great distances. Maybe akin to the Loop trolley, we could build short trolley lines intersecting MetroLink stations to Soulard, South Grand, and Euclid with connections at the Busch, Grand and CWE Metrolink stations. This would be similar to how the Loop trolley will have connections to Metrolink at Forest Park and Delmar stations.
But ultimately, a northside-southside faster-traveling light-rail line is needed to improve transit travel times for much of the City. With improved bus connections and new development about stations, added MetroLink lines will provide much improved transit accessibility to those living and working in the urban core of our region.
[REPLY – I guess it depends upon how you define “short” distances. Most people are willing to walk about a 1/4 mile but beyond that they are looking for help. San Francisco’s F-line streetcar line is six miles in each direction and transports 20,000 people per day. Seems like it does a good job.
I’m not anti-MetroLink. I’m very much pro-mass transit and happen to think street cars to a better job of serving a city of our size. Light rail is great for longer distances. I’m five miles from downtonw – a Broadway streetcar to replace that one that used to be there would be ideal in my view. – SLP]
The preliminary draft for LEED-ND is out. Worth taking a look at.
http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=148&
SF Muny’s F-line streetcar follows Market Street from the Embarcadero/Bay through the CBD to the Mission District. Still, the regional rapid transit system, BART also has stops on Market Street, as well as multiple MUNY light-rail lines (J,K,L,M,N) serving Market Street.
Thus, Muny’s F-line is the perfect example of the “short” distances and more localized service of streetcars. The light-rail lines serving the same street are more so express commuter service and BART regional rapid service.
This is not very different than from how the Lindell and Forest Park buses serve as more localized service in the same corridor as MetroLink in the City. Streetcars are great then for places where such localized service that would be otherwise served by buses is dense enough to warrant a streetcar.
As San Francisco’s MUNY (their Metro) shows, however, you still need light-rail as quicker service for broader coverage, even if following the similar corridors as their F-streetcar and light-rail lines do, as our MetroLink and Loop Trolley are planned to overlap as well.
Kunster said we are caught in the “previous investment trap” and now Katrina clean up will prove him right.