July
2010
"STORIES"

Ray LaHood & Barak Obama are talking a lot lately about "Transportation for a New Generation" as if it were something wonderful. I beg to differ. 

It is DOT's draft plan for the next five years, how and where they will spend federal monies, who will benefit and who will be left out.  One of my favorite quotes is "the nation needs a transportation strategy that bolsters economic competitiveness and balances that need with safety, livability and environmental sustainability."

They believe that encouraging use of "multimodal" freight transportation will help to improve safety, increase efficiency & reduce energy consumption. They seem to believe that moving freight by water and rail will somehow meet the requirements of the American people when it comes to shipping their goods.

Excuse me, hasn't that been done? Haven't we progressed beyond the snail's pace that these "multimodal" forms of freight movement provide? Honestly, how much freight do these people really believe can be 'efficiently' moved using these methods? Water? We still do use some of our waterways in this country, but those in use are operating at pretty close to capacity.

Freight movement in America is not generally done by the shipload; it is done by truckload, or shipment as in LTL. Railroads are being used all over this country, but they are slow, and how much more 'efficient' are they? They still need trucks to pick up and deliver the freight to the rail yards and customers, at least one on each end. They need strad trucks to load and unload them as well, so where is the 'efficiency?'

Trains require many engines to pull their loads and spew out way more exhaust than the 100 or so trucks they are replacing. The railroads have been, and continue to be subsidized by the federal government, the land given to them to lay track. Where are their emission standards? Where is the legislation requiring them to replace older, less energy efficient equipment? Where are the EPA and CARB rules governing them?

Think about it, many consumers today are buying goods online instead of getting in their personal vehicles to go shopping, saving untold gazillions of gallons of fuel every week. The goods they buy are shipped, usually with arrival within days to their homes or offices, and are delivered by TRUCK. One truck may deliver a hundred shipments a week, thousands if delivered by a package carrier in ONE vehicle, by ONE driver.

Overnight service is also common, requiring airplanes to deliver, but we live in a just-in-time world these days. We need instant gratification and I don't personally believe we need to be moving back in time to modes of transportation used to build this country 200 plus years ago.

I believe we should invest our money into the existing infrastructure, repair and replace roads and bridges so we can operate safely and 'efficiently' on them. We should spend the dollars we pay into highway use taxes and fuel taxes on these necessities, not build underpasses for some lizards who need to cross highways. We are the reason the interstate highway system was built, to move freight quickly and 'efficiently' from one side of the country to the other. By truck, by drivers.

Sure, you can move a LOT more freight by ship than train at one time, more by train than truck, more by truck than plane, but who has that much time to wait? Volume like that takes myriad more energy, and it moves ever so much slower, how is that more 'efficient?'

'Til next month, y'all stay safe out there, and God Bless!