Boeing has been doing some test flights for the 787.
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Mechanical Power Transmission
Fascinating post at The Oil Drum exploring the mechanical transmission of power throughout history.
Internal Combusion Engine Efficiency
This article is almost (but not quite) saying that increased fuel efficiency in internal combustion engines is a bad thing because it reduces the appeal of alternative fuels and electric cars.
In the view of Mr. Lyons, the former E.P.A. official, the government can promote fledgling alternatives but not make them popular if the underlying technology is too expensive or inadequate to consumers’ needs. And among the technologies making strides are gasoline engines that are getting smaller, lighter and much more fuel efficient, he said.
I don’t see increased efficiency, for any mode of transportation, as a bad thing. Don’t get so hung up on the type of powerplant (gas engine vs. hybrid vs. hydrogen vs. all electric) that you miss the point… increased efficiency, that is ALWAYS a good thing.
LA’s Synchronized Traffic Lights
Los Angeles has synchronized every traffic light in the city:
Without synchronization, it takes an average of 20 minutes to drive five miles on Los Angeles streets; with synchronization, it has fallen to 17.2 minutes, the city says. And the average speed on the city’s streets is now 17.3 miles per hour, up from 15 m.p.h. without synchronized lights.
It doesn’t seem like much gain but these are just the average numbers. I imagine there are parts of the city that have significantly improved.
EPA Sulfur Cutting
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The EPA wants to restrict the sulfur content of gasoline by two-thirds. According to refiners this cut, from 30 to 10 parts per million, will cost $10 billion in capital improvements… a cost that will be passed down to the consumer possibly raising the cost of gasoline by 6-8 cents.
The sulfur content cut will increase the effectiveness of catalytic converters on cars.
What bothers me about this change is that it has been tabled for 15 months in order to avoid the presidential campaign and election. If they feared that the regulation couldn’t survive the scrutiny of an election then perhaps it’s not worth the economic toll it may impose. I wish there was some concrete way to means-test all the regulations that come from the EPA.
Congestion and the Economy
Analyzing freight rail shipments is frequently used to ascertain the trajectory of the economy overall. The New York Times has an article on a company that tracks GPS data from various connected devices and formulates a traffic congestion index.
“People hit the road as they return to work, and businesses ship more freight as their orders increase.” The rise in the index, he said on Friday, “shows the pulse of the economy is starting to beat faster.”
Very interesting use of shared location data.
Emirates and Qantas Partnership
This is a big deal:
…both airlines embarking on a 10-year route-sharing deal in the highly competitive market between Australia and Europe. Qantas will move the hub for its European flights to Dubai under the partnership.
and
Under the agreement, Qantas is to close its Singapore hub for European flights from next month and end its existing 17-year revenue-sharing agreement with British Airways on the services between Australia and Britain.
The UAE’s geography favor’s it strongly for agreements like this. Combine it’s natural geographic advantage with the significant level of government support and I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of these partnerships.
Oil Shale
Springing off my last post on oil and the link to EnerGeo, I had an older post regarding oil shale bookmarked for sharing. I found the associated chart surprising:
Fuel
So much of our transportation infrastructure relies heavily on fossil fuels. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It is the second-most energy dense chemical (not counting nuclear) on the earth… topped only by Hydrogen. Given it’s availability, it only makes sense that we would harness that energy in as many ways as possible. The obvious downsides are it’s polluting byproducts and finite availability (it has to run our eventually).
I thought I’d share some great sites I’ve found recently exploring matters of fossil fuel energy.
The Oil Drum is curated by some seriously well-credentialed folks from the oil-and-gas industry. They discuss everything from peak-oil to means of exploration and extraction.
EnerGeo Politics is a site that explores the geopolitics of the oil-and-gas industry.
Living in the UAE for the last 4-and-a-half years has made me keenly aware of just how much of the world’s economic production hinges on the oil-and-gas industry. The continued availability of crude oil literally makes the world go round.
CAHSR Links…
A slew of older links that have been sitting in my queue on the California High Speed Rail initiative:
- Daniel Mitchell gives his take on the California High Speed Rail project with some quotes from the Wall Street Journal.
- Daniel Michell also highlights the general boondoggle nature of high speed rail on the whole.
- Although Californians initially gave the Los Angeles to San Francisco high speed rail plan a go in a 2008 state ballot measure, the majority were against it by 2012.
- In spite of significant budget problems in the state of California, the initial 130 mile section (at a cost of $5.8 billion) was signed into law in the middle of 2012.
I’m extremely pro-train. I’m a hopeless railfan. However, California is going about this all wrong. I’d love to see a successful commuter rail line between LA and San Francisco, but I doubt we’ll see that outcome under this current plan.