Love Trains

Dating In Prague

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 ~ Officials in charge of the Prague subway are creating a novel kind of singles scene:

Starting later this year, select carriages on each of the city's three underground train lines will be designated as singles-friendly. The idea was hatched as a way to increase ridership on public transportation, according to Filip Drapal, a spokesman for Ropid, the city's public transport authority. "This idea is just part of a new long-term campaign whose aim is to show what activities can you do in public transport that you cannot do inside your car (like reading, studying, listening to music, playing e-games and checking emails)."
Of course, there are many things one can "do in public transport which you cannot do inside your car." Why stop at dating?

Why indeed? Perhaps because the typical ride is only 5 minutes? Speed daters will need to perfect their "elevator" pitches... and here's the soundtrack.

National Train Day

Go Take a Train

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 ~ I've posted many times about trains. It's a pleasing form of travel, usually rapid because of its own right-of-way, and very energy efficient.

They can be very fast.

Or maybe too fast.

Believe It...

Soothing Sights

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 ~ These places looks so astonishing it's hard to believe they exist? Guess I'll have to go see for myself. If I ever get done assembling this investor due diligence package.

I want to take this train...

Coal Trains

We Don't Want All That Jazz

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 ~ I plucked this map from an unrelated story, but my eye was caught by the fattest red swath.

It shows the largest rail traffic in tons moved per year. So what are all those trains doing in eastern Wyoming? What are all those tons?

Olympic Transport

Tubing in London

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 ~ Olympians can be role models for more than their athletic prowess. Check out the gold medal means of getting around:

The US men's gold medal-winning basketball team weren't the only Olympians skipping the limo and the various other chauffeured options, either. Also seen on the Tube were medalists from Venezuela, the UK (of course) and Rwanda, as well as other Americans.

Public transit, offering "cachet as well as convenience" is, as Chris Paul tweeted, a #fasterwaybacktothehotel.

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Cross-posted to Fare Free Northwest blog.

Turbine Transport

Wind by Rail

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 ~ As wind turbines get larger so do the blades. Because they are fabricated as single pieces, their transport has become quite difficult. Rail can minimize the distance they must travel by truck, a significant challenge on most roads, which generally lack the long, sweeping curves of railbeds. So it's great to see this:

A much better use of rail capacity than the environmentally atrocious idea of transporting coal for export to China.

Visions of Transportation

Walking, Biking, Riding

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 ~ Sound Transit is extending light rail to Northgate. There's a vigorous debate about whether to build park-and-ride spaces or infrastructure for bikes and pedestrians, especially a foot/bike bridge over I-5.

Which to build?

Park-and-ride use is popular in King County, where most major lots are filled or overflowing. The 1,500 spots at Northgate are generally full, sending people to park on surrounding streets.

"We could fill more, I could assure you of that," says Ron Posthuma, a Metro Transit assistant director for planning.

The Job Creators—IV

By Industry

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 ~ Public transit just makes sense in so many ways.

Oh, and where is Big Oil which the API keeps telling us is such a wonderful job creator? The original study suggests combined oil and gas is 5.18 jobs per $1M investment, but that is, well, all gas. If oil were broken out in this chart, their number would be negative. The oil industry has been shedding jobs for years and pales as a job creator to the renewable energy industry.

Others of interest: roads and bridges repair (20), conservation (20), water infrastructure (20), school buildings (19), financial industry (7), nuclear industry (4). Study details here.

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Cross-posted to the Fare-Free Northwest blog.

Hear My Train A-Comin'

For Our High Speed Lifestyle

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 ~ Would you take a high-speed train that doesn't stop?

The video shows the "non-stop MRT system" of its Taiwanese inventor Peng Yu-lun and is in Mandarin, but you can get a pretty good idea nonetheless of how passengers use ingenious reusable shuttles to get on and off a high speed train without it stopping or even (much?) slowing down:



English explanation here.

Possible problems:

Where's It Wednesday—XXXVI

OK, the picture last time (2 weeks ago) was way too easy for Chad, so this week is especially for you awesome battery dude! Where in Seattle is this?

Answer next week.

Details on the weekly Where's It Wednesday puzzle here.
Other weeks' puzzles here.
Answer to the last puzzle, two weeks ago, after the jump.

Coming Home

Why I Like Travel by Train

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~ Apart from all the reasons I've said before, there are things like this:

What a pleasant way to end a good trip to Bellingham and Vancouver. When else do you travel (and on what) where you can listen to live music?

National Train Day

Nostalgia for the Past, or Hope for the Future?

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~ May 7 is National Train Day. Here in Portland the day was marked by festivities at Union Station, including the display of a famous steam locomotive.

The use of a vintage engine of yesteryear is appropriate, and instructive. How much better it would be to feature new technology that represented the future of rail travel, such as modern, energy-efficient trains, or even high-speed rail cars. Alas, high-speed rail in the United States, while envisioned and nominally funded, remains a distant prospect. While China and others continue to invest heavily in new rail, many in our Congressional leadership remain hostile to infrastructure, especially trains.

Our passenger rail network has shrunk over the past 40+ years:

Bolshevik George

Traveling by Train Takes Will

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~ Apparently the siren of train travel is more bewitching than anyone thought.

I know the half-life of political memory* is getting ever-shorter. But surely more people remember how George Bush savaged John Kerry in the 2004 campaign as a "flip-flopper" on the Iraq war? Compare that to what has been said about Libya and supporting the President in a time of war? Or how the Republicans in the US House love hate love the budget reconciliation process? Don't even get me going again on climate change.

The world would be a much better place if hypocrisy were a fatal disease.

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*The time in which half the population utterly forgets a political event, or, alternatively, the time it takes for the population as a whole to turn into half-wits about it.

Wireless Electric Vehicles

The Power of the Open Road

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~ What will power our transportation future? The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has built a prototype magnetic train that runs on an electrical road:

On Tuesday researchers launched an environmentally friendly public transport system using a "recharging road"-- with a vehicle sucking power magnetically from buried electric strips.

The Online Electric Vehicle (OLEV), towing three buses, went into service at an amusement park in southern Seoul. If the prototype proves successful, there are plans to try it out on a bus route in the capital.

Zeppelin on Rails

1930's Schienenzeppelin

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~ This German 20 tonne aluminum body "rail zeppelin" used a wooden (ash) propeller and a 46 liter BMW V-12 engine to reach 140 mph in 1931. This only model was dismantled by the Nazis to build Messerschmitt fighter planes.

Originally good for 120 mph—comparable to the fastest streamlined steam locomotives—the Schienenzeppelin topped out at a magnificent 140 mph in the summer of 1931, a speed record which stood for 23 years and which has never been surpassed by a gasoline-powered locomotive. Unfortunately, the train never made it into production. Problems with propeller safety and reliability prevented it from attaining mass production and the speed record prototype was dismantled in 1939, on the eve of World War II.

Mad Men on Trains

Not So Mad Really

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I don't watch much TV, but I make a few exceptions. One is Mad Men, a frequently hilarious period piece about Madison Avenue advertising firm and its people in the early 1960's. In the vein of the show, actors Vincent Kartheiser and Rich Sommer discuss trains:

Mad Men On Trains from Rich Sommer

So why trains? "No parking, no mechanics, no traffic jams... Save time, save money, save aggravation."

The best line (other than "We are paid to sell cars, floor wax and brassieres") would have to be: "I read a piece that in 40 years gas will cost almost a dollar a gallon." It has been my experience that the future has always been much more than predicted: more chaotic, more fast-paced, more expensive. Predictions of future gas prices have invariably been low. The future of liquid fuels will likely be much more expensive than we imagine, perhaps horrifyingly so.

The GOP Hates Trains

They Hate Them Even When Uncle Sam Pays

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The GOP hates a lot of things, but their inchoate rage against public transit is uniform, unthinking and unwavering. GOP governors are apparently making it the latest litmus of lock-step ideological intransigence. First it was New Jersey Governor Christie and Wisconsin's new wingnut darling Scott Walker. Then Ohio's John Kasich.

Now Rick Scott of Florida has joined the nincompoopery.

Amtrak Cascades gets WiFi

Another Reason to Go Rail

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I really enjoy taking Amtrak from Seattle, both to Portland and also to Vancouver. Now, at long last, they've added WiFi throughout all the trains, and best of all, it's free. I actually used the WiFi on the train to Portland some months back; apparently it was turned on by accident. It's unclear why it's taken so long to formally roll it out, especially since it's been on the Acela in the Northeast corridor for almost a year.

Taking the train is great, and I'm not the only one who seems to think so. The Amtrak Cascades set a 16-year high for ridership last year. Now that they're wired up, expect a new record this year.

Some people whine about Amtrak being government-subsidized or about its losing money, which is a curiously selective complaint. How many billions do we dump into our road system every year? Does the Interstate Highway system make money?

(h/t TechFlash)

Restate of the Union

The Challenge: Do Big Things

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Yesterday I wrote that there were three reasons to take a look at Obama's second State of the Union speech. Now the speech is spoken; how did those three things turn out?

Moving Quickly on Trains

Critical and Appropriate Infrastructure

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Even as the Eurostar has "fluffy" moisture problems, stranding people in the Chunnel for up to 16 hours, over in China people Saturday started taking trips on the fastest high-speed train in the world.

The new line is 664 miles long, connecting Guangzhou to Wuhan, and will eventually extend all the way to Beijing. Trains average 217 mph, faster even than France's TGV and Japan's Shinkansen.

Here in the United States high-speed rail remains a distant hope. It was 50 years ago that Japan started work on the original Tokaido Shinkansen high-speed train, at 130 mph slow by modern standards, but still faster then than anything built in the US since. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, the "Stimulus Bill") allocated starting funding, but it won't get much built. Washington, New York, California and other states are fighting over scraps of it and asking for funding well beyond the $8B specifically allocated by ARRA. California voters approved a visionary project with a currently estimated cost of $45B.