Author Archives: admin

Not-So-Green Cars

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The Wall Street Journal has a great article on the environmental impacts of green cars.

A 2012 comprehensive life-cycle analysis in Journal of Industrial Ecology shows that almost half the lifetime carbon-dioxide emissions from an electric car come from the energy used to produce the car, especially the battery. The mining of lithium, for instance, is a less than green activity. By contrast, the manufacture of a gas-powered car accounts for 17% of its lifetime carbon-dioxide emissions.

Read the whole piece.

Remember the whole “Cash for Clunkers” fiasco a few years back… where the government gave people money to get their old cars off the road. Couple that policy with the government subsidies for electric cars and you’ve actually got a situation where the government is funding an overall bigger carbon footprint. The government is notorious for missing these kinds of unintended consequences.

In 2006, as gas prices were rising, the daily drive to work in my 4×4 Toyota was hurting the pocketbook with each fill up. I started looking around for an old Honda Civic to make my daily commute in. I bought a 1987 Honda Civic that consistently got around 38 miles-per-gallon. I paid $900. I was very cognizant of the fact that I was reducing my fuel consumption, keeping an older car on the road, and being far less wasteful. That was a far better stewardship of resources than anyone buying a brand-new Tesla.

We’ve got to start looking at the whole picture.

Positive Train Control

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One of the major undertakings for the railroads in the USA right now is Positive Train Control, or PTC. This is a requirement of the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 and is a fairly sizable unfunded mandate. The railroads are largely picking up the dime for this work and they have a deadline of 2015 to get all the nation’s Class I railroads operating on PTC.

International Railway Journal is reporting that both AAR, the FRA, and major commuter railroads have all expressed doubts about meeting the deadline.

Sounds like NTSB chairwoman Deborah Hershman is pushing back for now though:

“What is hard is when our recommendations go unheeded and we see the same accident over and over again and more lives needlessly cut short,” she said. “The technology and the tools to implement PTC are available. Perhaps what we need to hear about is not what can’t be done, but what can be done.”

It isn’t exactly a recommendation, it’s a Congressional mandate, so the railroads have to comply. The railroads aren’t exactly a source of numerous, frequently-repeated accidents. Ultimately, these are easy words for a government bureaucrat, but it’s the railroads footing the bill.

From the IRJ article it is clear that the railroads are definitely making an effort at this. A system like this takes time and has to be commissioned carefully so that it, in and of itself, doesn’t cause more safety issues than it fixes. Give them a break Ms. Chairwoman, and give them some credit where due.

Air Tower Closures

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So the FAA is pushing forward with tower closures and it looks like Lubbock, Texas may be losing it’s night shift.. The reporter for this story, Adam Young, did some follow-up with UPS and Southwest Airlines about their use of the local airport. Both operators don’t seem overly concerned about the lack of a night shift controller.

What if these tower closings and reduced hours end up having no real affect on operations? Budget cuts well executed I’d say then… wouldn’t you? I’d also like to know where we could save even more money.

Li-ion NTSB Forums

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The NTSB has called for two forums to discuss and review Li-ion battery technology. These forums have arisen out of the ongoing 787 battery investigation. From USAToday:

The board will have the first forum in mid-April to discuss battery technology with transportation safety experts. The investigative hearing later in the month will focus on the design and certification of the Dreamliner’s battery system.