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New-Car Fuel Economy Up 30% in 7 Years

By | | Transportation
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The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute has kept track of the EPA mileage ratings of all new cars and light trucks (pick ups, SUVs, full-sized vans) sold in the United States since October, 2007. Between that month and February, 2014, the average fuel economy of autos sold grew from 20.1 mpg to 25.2 mpg. While your mileage may vary, this is an incredible record of improvement in fuel economy.

Though we are accustomed to measure fuel economy in miles per gallon, a more appropriate way to compare vehicles is the other way around: gallons (or some other unit of energy) per mile. As Green Car Reports observes, when asked, “Which saves more gasoline, going from 10 to 20 mpg, or going from 33 to 50 mpg?” most people answer the latter but in fact the former is true. In any case, when measured in gallons per mile, new-car fuel economy improved by 30 percent between October 2007 and February 2014.

The Department of Energy hasn’t posted data for 2012 or 2013, but its Transportation Energy Data Book, table 2.13, say that over the seven years from 2005 through 2011, the average BTUs per vehicle mile of all autos on the road declined by 7 percent, from 5,600 to 5,200. Since new cars replace the old fleet at the rate of around 6 percent per year, the 30 percent increase in new-car fuel economy is not immediately seen in the entire fleet, but it will be eventually.

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We Have the Technology

By | | Fish & wildlife
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A recent issue of the New York Times Magazine suggests that the technology for recreating species that have gone extinct in the last few thousand years will soon be available if it is not already. Scientists have already attempted to clone an extinct European wild goat known as a bucardo, and while the results were not successful they were clearly moving in the right direction.


Passenger pigeons in their native habitat, an Iowa woodland, from a diorama in the Denver Museum of Science and Nature. The background to this diorama was painted by Charles Waldo Love. The Flickr photo is by Jessica Lamirand; click image for a larger view.

Species that have been extinct for millions of years, such as dinosaurs, are beyond our reach. But the Times argues that recovery of such species as the passenger pigeon, which once numbered in the billions, and the woolly mammoth should both be possible in the very near future.

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Obama’s Transportation Plan

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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President Obama’s latest transportation “vision” is as unrealistic as Governor Brown’s plan to pay for high-speed rail with cap-and-trade revenues. Obama proposes that Congress spend $302 billion on surface transportation over the next four years, or $75.5 billion a year. This is nearly $25 billion more per year than Congress is spending today, which is already $10 billion more per year than federal surface transportation revenues.

In the 2012 round of transportation reauthorization, the debate was whether to limit spending to actual revenues of about $40 billion a year or continue spending at historic rates of about $50 billion a year. Senate Democrats prevailed at the $50 billion rate, but only by agreeing to limit the bill to just two years instead of the usual six. That compromise expires this year just before the Highway Trust Fund runs out of money due to overspending.

In 2012, revenues (mainly from fuel taxes but also excise taxes on truck tires, trucks, buses, and trailers) in 2012 were $40.2 billion. By law, $5.0 billion of this was dedicated to transit. Congress actually spent $8.2 billion on transit while $41.1 billion nominally went to highways (but in fact some of this also went for transit and other non-highway programs). Spending increased by more than revenues in 2013 and 2014.

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Do the Math, Governor

By | | Transportation
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Jerry Brown proposes to use cap-and-trade revenues to help pay for the state’s high-speed rail boondoggle. It’s questionable whether this is legal, and even more questionable whether high-speed trains will actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions after their entire lifecycle emissions are considered.

What everyone seems to be missing, however, is that the cap-and-trade revenues won’t come close to covering the cost of a high-speed rail line. Brown proposes to dedicate $250 million of annual cap-and-trade revenues to the rail line, but even at an unrealistically low 2 percent rate of interest, that won’t even repay $6 billion worth of bonds, much less the $9 billion in bonds that voters approved in 2008 or the far greater amount it will actually take to complete the line.

The media keeps reporting the cost of the high-speed train as $68 billion, when everyone knows that’s only for a moderate-speed train. The most recent estimate of the true high-speed train envisioned by the 2008 ballot measure is $98 billion to $117 billion–and there’s no reason to think that estimate is any more realistic than the previous estimates which started at less than $10 billion.
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No Obesity Epidemic After All

By | | News commentary
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“There is no childhood obesity epidemic,” writes Paul Campos in an article in the New Republic. Campos bases this on a recently published study that found that obesity rates have not increased in the last decade, and in some age classes they’ve actually declined.

This is vindication for Campos, whose 2004 book, The Obesity Myth, argued that claims of an obesity epidemic were not only overblown but could lead to policies that were hazardous to people’s health. Campos points to a more recent book, End of the Obesity Epidemic, by Michael Gard, that uses worldwide data to show that obesity rates are leveling off.

This doesn’t mean obesity isn’t a problem. But, Campos states, “No one knows why the average weight of Americans was relatively stable in the 1960s and 1970s, or why it went up significantly in the 1980s and 1990s.” If no one knows why these things happened, then any policies aimed at reducing obesity are no more than shots in the dark. Unfortunately, the collateral damage from the shots is likely to be far greater than any possible benefits.
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Why Doesn’t Amtrak Have Metal Detectors?

By | | Transportation
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After bomb threats twice forced the evacuation of Amtrak trains in Eugene, Oregon, a local television station asks, “If the airport has screeners and metal detectors, why don’t train stations?” The answer they got from Amtrak? Such measures “would slow down the entire system and reduce the travel flow for passengers” (listen to the video starting at 4:00).

Needless to say, worries about slowing down the air travel system certainly haven’t prevented the government from forcing an onerous screening system on airline travelers. The television reporter points out that trains have been bombed in London and Madrid and a train station has been bombed in Russia, so perhaps Amtrak needs to do more than just rely on passengers reporting suspicious activities.

The truth is that Amtrak is protected by what might be called the “Macintosh effect.” A few years ago, computer viruses attacked mainly Windows machines and Macintoshes seemed to be immune. But they weren’t; in fact, there were just too few Macintoshes around for hackers to bother with. In the same way, the fact that American airlines carry almost a hundred times as many passenger miles a year as Amtrak makes them a much more tempting target.
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Shutting Down Businesses

By | | News commentary, Regional planning
28 Comments

When Oregon land-use laws and rules were written back in the 1970s, timber companies cut down trees, hauled them to the mill, cut them into boards, and sold them to homebuilders. Now, some homebuilders go into the forest, cut down trees, piece together a home on site, then carefully dismantle it to take to the homebuyer’s lot for final assembly.

The problem is that piecing together the home is considered secondary forest processing, which is illegal under Oregon land-use rules for land zoned “timber resource.” As a result, some log homebuilders are being regulated out of business.

The reasons for these rules are nonsensical. Oregon is not going to run out of forest land. According to the Department of Agriculture’s 2007 National Resources Inventory, all of the developed land in Oregon, including both urban and rural developments, amounts to just 2.2 percent of the state. The density of Oregon urban areas is only about 20 percent greater than the national average, so if those rules didn’t exist, the amount of developed land would probably only be about 2.6 percent of the state. Half the land is federal and most of it is never going to be developed.
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Sign Me Up

By | | Transportation
15 Comments

Amtrak has so many empty seats on its trains that it is creating a writers-in-residence program offering free long-distance train rides to writers provided that they tweet their journeys. Despite my skepticism for government subsidies to trains, I love trains and have always dreamed of living on one. So I’m ready to take up my residency.

For Amtrak, the rationale for this program might be that the marginal cost of carrying someone a train that is already going somewhere with empty seats is not a whole lot more than zero. (It’s much more than zero if they ride in a sleeping car, but presumably all Amtrak is offering is coach.) The potential downside is if the train is significantly late or has other problems, which are all-too-frequent on certain Amtrak routes, the negative publicity would outweigh the positive.

On the other hand, where does this end? Should Amtrak offer residencies to photographers? Painters? Model railroaders? On average, Amtrak trains only fill half their seats, so there is plenty of room for this program’s expansion.

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Killing High-Speed Rail Even Deader

By | | News commentary, Transportation
11 Comments

Even as the prospects of stopping Honolulu’s $5 billion low-capacity rail project grow dim, the prospects for ever building the California high-speed rail system grow even dimmer. This week, California’s Lieutenant Governor, Gavin Newsom–once a strong rail supporter–has come out against the project. As theSan Diego Union-Tribune says, this is “another nail in the coffin of high-speed rail.”


At the 2010 groundbreaking ceremony for what was supposed to be San Francisco’s high-speed rail station, then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom (left) tells then-Secretary of Immobility Ray LaHood that he is “extraordinarily excited” about the future of the train. Flickr photo from Mayor Gavin Newson‘s photostream.

Asked about his former support for the project, he said it was “a $32 billion project then, and we were going to get roughly one-third [each] from the federal government and the private sector.” Now, “We’re not even close to the timeline, we’re not close to the total cost estimates, and the private sector money and the federal dollars are questionable.”

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Faith, Love, and Family

By | | News commentary, Public lands
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On Saturday morning, February 8, we awoke to find three feet of snow outside. Our delight ended the next day, when newspapers reported that 61-year-old Tim Lillebo had collapsed and died shoveling his driveway Saturday evening.

Tim helped lead an incredible group of people dedicated to saving Oregon wilderness in the late 1970s and 1980s and centered on an organization then known as the Oregon Wilderness Coalition (OWC). We were more like family than co-workers, putting in long hours for nearly no pay, sharing rooms, cars, meals, and just about everything else. In mourning Tim, I find myself mourning someone who was nearly a brother but also the loss of the family itself.

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