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Working on the railroad
John Anastasi, Bucks County Courier Times
At a time when ethanol-fueled hybrid vehicles are all the rage, a more traditional mode of transportation is experiencing a quiet resurgence.
Railroad operators say increased business and a graying workforce are about to create a shortage of locomotive engineers and conductors in the United States. Seeing a field that needs workers, Bucks County Community College is trying to launch a basic training program in locomotive engineering and conducting.
… The need for engineers, who drive locomotives, and conductors, who are in charge of the trains, is very real, according to regional and national railroad officials.
“We need to do more recruiting than we have in many years,” said Tom White, spokesman for the Washington D.C.-based Association of American Railroads.
Over the last few decades, railroads slowed their hiring as the industry declined and technological advances automated many jobs.
“The railroad industry went through a period of time in the 1980s and 1990s where they weren’t hiring,” White said. “The technology made [operations] more efficient and they didn’t need as many people. So the railroad industry is an aging industry. A lot of people are reaching retirement at the same time.”
(9 March 2008)
No brakes, no gears: the latest bike craze
Stripped-back cycles popular with couriers are taking London by storm
Alice Fisher, The Observer
Riding a bicycle without brakes sounds like a rash move, but a wave of cyclists are eschewing traditional bikes for a stripped-down machine known as a fixed-gear.
It is one of the most basic machines you can build with two wheels. A fixed-gear bike – or fixie – has no derailleur as it has only one gear, so as long as the wheels turn, so do the pedals. Its rider can’t freewheel and the only way to brake is to stand on the pedals.
The fixed-gear’s renaissance supposedly stems from West Indian immigrants in New York working as cycle couriers in the Eighties. They had used them at home because they were cheap and easy to maintain, and continued using them in the US. Their light frames and speed made them perfect for work. It’s popularity spread throughout the courier community, finally crossing to the UK and other countries.
(9 March 2008)
Mass transit use hits 50-year high on pump prices
Rebekah Kebede, Reuters
The number of Americans hopping buses and grabbing subway straps has climbed to the highest level in half a century as soaring gasoline costs push more commuters to take mass transit.
U.S. mass transit ridership began to surge when gasoline hit the $3 a gallon level in 2005 and has continued to rise steadily ever since as pump prices top record after record, according to a report released on Monday by the American Public Transit Association.
(10 March 2008)
It’s not just fossil fuels
Michael O’Hare, The Reality-Based Community
… No-one decides to smoke for the rest of his life, just to smoke the next cigarette and then stop; similarly, no-one decides to drive everywhere forever, just to drive down to the 7-11 for a quart of milk this time (it’s raining, or it might rain, or my bicycle tires aren’t inflated, or it’s uphill coming home, or I’m really tired tonight, etc. etc.). After all, the insurance is paid for, the gas is in the tank, parking is free at the store, there won’t be noticably any more global warming or even local pollution if you drive your car this once, etc. Because you usually drive, you’re increasingly overweight and out of shape, so the walk is a real effort. And because all the streets are lined with garages to house everyone’s cars, the walk will be really boring. So the marginal immediate cost of a car trip, to you, once you have the car (which psychologically “needs driving” as much as a TV “needs watching”) is very low.
Social institutions and infrastructure used to make it very easy to get and use cigarettes, for people of any age. As Tom Schelling once remarked, they used to empty the ashtrays at a conference into a wastebasket. In the movie Ghost, one scene features something that used be an unremarkable presence: a cigarette vending machine on a subway platform! Cigarettes were easier to find at any hour of the day than food. I used to go down to the corner store at the age of eight to buy cigarettes (for my father, but what did they know?).
Social institutions and infrastructure make it very easy to get and use cars, though kids generally need to conscript parents to chauffeur them. Outside a very few dense cities, like New York, the competition for driving is bicycling through car traffic; public transportation that’s crummy, expensive immediately, far away, and doesn’t run at night; and walking down streets that are boring, and scary because no-one else is walking. The walk is long, because all those cars, both in use and parked, take up lots of space and push everything far from everything else, and because zoning laws exclude commerce from almost anywhere people live.
… Petroleum-fueled cars are toxic to the climate; but any cars are as toxic to the social climate as cigarettes are to the people around smokers, because they are the agents of ethnic, social, and economic cleansing.
We need to make it rude to drive, especially rude to drive a big car.
(7 March 2008)
Contributor John Gear writes:
Great piece on carhead thinking
