cherish

You all know I'm a bit of a car nut and I LOVE this video of driving in 1963.

Within 20 years, probably less, few if any of us will still be driving. The car will simply vanish, a victim of its inability to be flexible with fuel. A few will no doubt survive in museums, but that is all.

I've been photographing cars for years, and hope more of you will do the same. We need to all do our part to record this so brief form of transport. Not just the cars, but the lorries, buses etc that also will use the roads for a few more years. And also of course all the associated infrastructure - garages, motorway services etc, because once they're gone they'll be gone for good.

And again I urge you all to get out and take photos of diesel trains - they may not even survive as long as cars and buses.

It's so good that somebody had the foresight  to capture the roads way back in 1963, but how many other people did it? Our kids and their kids will look in wonder back to the days when almost everyone had their own funny little metal box on wheels. Eventually cars and roads may even gain a certain nostalgic glamour ... and who knows, there may even be one or two preserved roads with the odd car or bus shuttling along it.

the beginning of the end?

This is an interesting intro to a radio programme as it actually brings up some fresh ideas on why car use is falling. It's not just cost, but also environmental awareness and a creeping feeling that cars are simply no longer cool. They are now seen as safe and fuddy-duddy, quite a contrast to the big American cars of the 50s or the classic British cars of the 60s (which I still love). I think you can extrapolate from this that the doomed electric, hybrid and other exotic fuel cars which may or not appear will be equally - or even more - uncool and safe.

Yet at the same time trams and trains are seen as increasingly cool, everybody wants them and everyone wants to use them. Even the old hobby of trainspotting's current manifestation as railway enthusiasm is cool. I wonder why?

Thanks to David Robins for the link!

The car was once the symbol of youthful cool. From James Dean through Steve McQueen to Ayrton Senna the car was a symbol of freedom, daring and sexual allure. Today the young of the western world have turned their back on the car. Half of American 17-year-olds have a driver's licence today compared with three-quarters in 1998 and in Europe car sales are down whilst public transport use is up.
Is it simply that insurance costs have rocketed for young drivers? Is it because the young remain in education for longer? Are our youth becoming more environmentally aware or is it because cars have become safe, reliable and downright dull?
In 'Costing the Earth' Tom Heap takes to the road from the Streets of San Francisco to the inner ring roads of the West Midlands to find out if the age of the car is coming to an end. He meets the marketing men, the manufacturers and the innovators struggling to retain a place in our affections for the motor car.
Producer: Martin Poyntz-Roberts.

Broadcasts

1. Tue 6 Mar 2012
   15:30
   BBC Radio 4
2. Wed 7 Mar 2012
   21:00
   BBC Radio 4

here we go ...

This is a gem from Mick Knox. Unbelievably people are STILL complaining about the so-called 'high' cost of fuel!! Are they living in a complete fantasy world or are they so stupid that they can't see what is happening around them?

We need to accept that the car is dying - there is no way it can survive the coming oil shock, and the 'replacement' technology of electric cars will be even more expensive, and will be in such short supply that they simply won't be an option for most of us.

 

We need to move on from this posturing and decadence, trying to hold on to something that is already lost for ever. We need to forget trying to prolong the agony and start planning for the future. Nostalgia is NOT an option.

 

We need to start running our road network down before it happens anyway. All infrastructure projects should be abandoned immediately and the bare minimum for safety needs to become the norm. Speed limits need to be reduced to take this into account.

 

We need to immediately start reopening closed lines, starting with important cross country routes such as the S&D, Great Central, Woodhead, Waverley, Plymouth-Exeter via Tavsistock, Dumfries-Stranraer etc, then begin to put the branch lines back in. Then new interurban light railways and tramways need to be built to fill in the gaps, so that nobody is more than a mile or so from a station. Freight facilities need to be built at all points. Urban tramways need to be built in all larger towns and, of course, cities. Standard equipment needs to be built - locos, coaches, freight wagons, track panels, catenary etc, so that the cost of rebuilding and operating are reduced. Energy generating methods, from solar and wind through to wood burning need to be optimised. ALL infrastructure expenditure over the next three or four decades needs to be thrown at rail development at all levels.

 

I know the following is really an exercise in nostalgia and will not be to most reader's tastes, but try to read it!

MPs urge ministers to scrap a planned rise in fuel duty

Comments (1087)

Ministers say they have acted to alleviate the burden on motorists

Continue reading the main story

Business of Energy

• The cost of petrol and oil: How it breaks down
• Competition drives up energy cost
• Gulf drilling returns with limits

The government should scrap a planned increase in fuel duty to help "hard-working, vulnerable Britons", a Conservative MP has said.

Robert Halfon said the government must show it is one "that cuts taxes for millions of British people and not just for millionaires".

He tabled a Commons motion urging action on fuel prices in response to an e-petition signed by 110,000 people.

It was approved by MPs without a vote but it is not binding on ministers.

Treasury minister Chloe Smith said the government was listening to people's concerns but "now was not the time" to change duty rates as such decisions must wait for the Budget.

The government plans to increase fuel duty by 3p a litre in January - meaning an extra £1.50 to fill an average car - and Chancellor George Osborne is under pressure to scrap that as part of his autum statement on the economy later this month.

Petrol prices have tripled in the past two decades, but ministers say prices would be even higher had they not scrapped automatic fuel-tax increases imposed by Labour.

Mr Osborne scrapped the annual fuel tax escalator - a mechanism under which duty rose by 1p above inflation every year - and cut fuel duty by 1p in March's Budget.

However, he has only postponed the planned inflation-linked part of the duty rise from April 2011 to January 2012, and from April 2012 to August 2012.

Opening the debate, Mr Halfon said: "Fuel duty is not just about economics, it's an issue of social justice and this is especially true in rural communities which are being destroyed by fuel prices."

He said the government had to be "realistic and truthful about who pays the lion's share of fuel duty".

"It's ordinary families driving to work, it's mums taking their children to school, it's small businesses who can't afford to drive a van or their lorry, it's non-motorists who depend on buses who are also being crushed by rocketing food prices as the cost of road haulage goes through the roof."
'Inelastic'
In his motion, Mr Halfon urges ministers to consider whether current fuel tax rates are economically competitive; what impact they are having on economic growth and unemployment levels; and to examine the case for a price stabilisation mechanism to even out fluctuations in pump prices.

The Treasury has already said it will introduce a "fair fuel stabiliser" to ensure price rises are capped to inflation when oil prices are high.

Lib Dem party president Tim Farron agreed that people in rural areas were hardest hit because "demand is so inelastic for petrol because people have only one way of getting to work".

AA president Edmund King: "High fuel prices are already bringing in record amounts of tax"

Labour have welcomed the chance for a debate on the issue, but said there must be "concrete action" to help business and families rather than "warm words".

The party's leadership had backed an amendment by backbench MP Dave Watts urging the government to reverse January's rise in VAT to 20% - which they say would cut 3p off the price of a litre of petrol.

Russell Brown, MP for Dumfries and Galloway, said: "I have some people in remote areas who have discovered that to get to work has become far too costly and some of these people are considering giving up working all together."

Conservative Caroline Nokes, MP for Romsey and Southampton North, highlighted the struggles of haulage companies.

"Profit margins for hauliers are very tight. This makes it a very vulnerable business and in particular fuel companies are not willing to extend credit terms, leaving payments in some cases to as little as three days.

"Now when haulage firms may not be paid for work for up to 60 days, this proves to be a very hand-to-mouth industry and companies can only afford to think ahead to January."

Motorist: "Petrol prices are appalling at the moment"

The AA said the latest fuel price rises were already impacting on drivers, and that for the average motorist the planned increase would equate to an additional £38 a year at the pumps.

AA president Edmund King told BBC Radio 5Live the AA's latest survey showed that some 70% of motorists were already cutting back on journeys - or other expenditure, like food shopping, to pay for petrol.

He said price increases were "socially divisive", saying the nation was being divided into "drives" - people who can afford to drive - and "drive nots".

'Strangling the economy'

Motoring journalist Quentin Wilson, who speaks for FairFuel UK, a pressure group behind the e-petition, said he and others "want the whole fuel pricing issue to become open and transparent", adding that high fuel duty is "strangling the economy".

"There are desperate, desperate people who cannot afford to use the roads. The effect on society at the moment has been absolutely desperate. Fuel duty is strangling us," he said.

Meanwhile, Richard Hebditch, of Campaign for Better Transport, said the "big problem" is that Britons are reliant on their cars and dependant on foreign oil supplies, which are "quite risky oil supplies".

He said: "What we need to do is take the money from fuel duty and invest it in giving people real alternatives and modernising our transport systems so we aren't so dependant on foreign and risking oil supplies."

Tuesday's debate, which lasted three hours, was approved by the Backbench Business Committee.

predicting modal change ...

The third and final part of this article will inevitably be a prediction, so is almost certain to be wrong, at least in degree! But there are some things that we do know!

Oil is a finite resource. We have almost certainly reached the point of Peak Oil, when half of the oil that will EVER be found (at least for another 150 million years!) has been used. But that is of course the easy oil! The remaining half will be much harder to find and extract, and will clearly be much more expensive!

The climate is in a state of change. The last few climate sceptics seem to have now come round and there is now no doubt the the earth is warming up fast, and that at least part of this is due to our activities. Whilst it's hard to say exactly what the effects of a rapidly warming Earth will be, it is easier to say what needs to be done to bring this under control. The most important thing is that we stop using fossil fuels - ie coal, gas and oil - and switch to an economy that uses renewables. This can include solar power, wind power, hydro electric, wave, wood, biofuels and nuclear (although the last two have inherent problems and nuclear is only semi-renewable). Another side of the energy equation requires that we reduce energy use.

Moving to transport the road network has inherent and fatal flaws. The first is that its vehicles rely on fossil fuels almost exclusively. And all road vehicles apart from trolleybuses require vehicles to carry their own fuel, reducing their efficiency even further. Roads themselves need huge amounts of oil for their surfaces. Few people would argue that the car culture has been beneficial for the environment, health or for our towns, cities and villages. Basically it was a cheap fix that could only last whilst cheap energy was available. No one will mourn its passing.

All of this brings us to the absolute essential aspects of the inevitable transport modal shift that is almost upon us. Our future transport needs to be energy efficient - trains and trams are VASTLY more efficient than any transport mode that uses rubber tyres on hard surfaces. There is simply too much friction to make energy use optimal, whereas steel wheels on steel rails have very low friction. The need to carry fuel, whether it's diesel, petrol or batteries reduces the efficiency even further. Cars and lorries really don't have any other option - the road/car culture ONLY arose because of extremely cheap finite fuel. Forget arguments about flexibility - this is a red herring. Public transport would be totally flexible if it were universal, cheap and ran 24 hours a day.

Think about the way the British railway network was all but destroyed in little over ten years - and this was NOTHING to do with fuel efficiency or availability. The roads will simply not have anything to fall back on. The whole thing could collapse in a matter of months! Forget electric cars - our generating capacity is already in decline, and there certainly won't be cheap electricity to charge up cars! We can expect rolling power cuts within ten years, just to keep our current infrastructure going. In the last quarter less than 200 electric cars were sold in the UK, despite a grant of £5000 and free charging points! They are just a rather sad attempt to keep the car culture going and are doomed to failure.

A million people have given up driving in the last year due to apparent 'high petrol costs'. This is laughable as fuel is still amazingly cheap, and will probably remain that way for another five years or so. But if this keeps up soon the tax take from motoring will inevitably reduce the budget for road repairs, resulting in poorer road surfaces and a virtuous circle where people give up driving due to cost and the poor state of the roads, road use falls further, tax takes decline and fuel duty and road tax etc skyrocket, forcing more and more off the roads ...

And this is of course where we come in. There is a perfect transport system for the future. It can reach every town and village, every factory and farm and market, can have numerous different fuel delivery systems, can use many different fuel sources, can exactly match the needs of its users, can be fast (where required), convenient, flexible and profitable.

It doesn't need some new exotic fuel source, technology that hasn't been invented yet, and most of the infrastructure is already in place (or its remains are!) It is a safe and secure system, it can carry freight, passengers, animals, raw materials, parcels and a host of other things. There is in fact NOTHING railways and tramways can't do. So why are we waiting?

The days of misallocation of economic resources should be over. We need a modern and energy efficient and flexible transport system for the future, now all we need is the community and political will to get things moving. Dumping nostagia for the car is the first step, the second is to get things moving on your doorstep. The future is right here.

worth it

The usual suspects are already whinging about rising rail fares, yet they are only being set at 3% above PRI over the next three years. This is a genuine rise of around 10%. Is it such a big deal?

So what will we be getting? 2300 new carriages for a start. Completion of Cross Rail. Electrification from Bristol to London. And an awful lot more. The railways are absolutely buzzing at the moment with ridership at almost an historical high. Success tends to come at a cost. Does anyone seriously believe that motoring costs will only rise 10% over the next three years? And air fares? I'd be surprised if they keep under 50%! It's all relative. Simply giving up and selling your car releases huge amounts of cash, buy a bike and generally travel less (by train of course) and you'll save thousands every year. You could even afford to go first class - we do most of the time!

Apparently a million people have given up driving over the last year, citing the 'high' cost of fuel!! The roads certainly seem quieter. The reduced number of drivers will lead to inevitabe tax and duty rises to cover the income shortfall (only slightly offset by reduced wear and tear), setting up a virtuous circle of less car and lorry use and more use of rail. And 19% less youngsters are taking driving lessons, a brilliant fact!

Forget the 1970s attitudes. Rail, like gold and the Swiss Franc, are on a high. And success costs that little bit more. It's a price well worth paying!

endangered transport

Railways have been documented in such depth that there's hardly a corner that hasn't been recorded for posterity through pictures and words.

But will our roads leave ANY trace once the last car is garaged for good? Will a stretch of road be preserved and open for the public to experience an otherwise extinct transport mode? I hope so.

I did have the foresight even back in the 80s to record this doomed transport mode and have a good collection of pictures. But I doubt there are 1% of the number of railway shots out there. I'd urge all of you to go out and try to capture this form of transport in its dying years.

But there are a few books on cars, and even a few on the road culture (an oxymoron if ever there was one!) New member Derek Lunn has an excellent range on his website, and an even bigger range of railway titles. Take a look at his site and grab some of those rare titles. He will be sending out the New S&D brochure with every relevant book sold.

my love affair with the car

The south of France, 1987.


South Downs 1983, but the national plates on the front give you an idea of how well travelled this Austin Morris JU250 was!



Yesterday, Plymouth, almost giving me second thoughts!

I had an annoying number of anti-car rants submitted as comments a couple of days ago, none of which I allowed through.

No matter what agenda some of you may want to push, this site will NEVER be anti car. Go to some environmentalist or cycling sites if you want to sound off. YOU ARE TOTALLY MISSING THE POINT.

Like most transport enthusiasts I actually love the car. I've owned many, including more than a couple of sports convertibles! Within a few months of passing my test in 1980 I drove all over Europe and loved every second of it. Just a few years ago I took a D reg Escort convertible all the way down to southern Hungary, via Poland and Slovakia. I spent four years as a lorry driver. We still use a car, when absolutely essential!

We've no agenda to 'kill off' the car. The car is dying through the soon to be obvious end of cheap oil. There's nothing we can do to stop it, but hopefully we can make the conversion process as comfortable as possible. The New S&D is very much part of this process, replacing the congested and seriously inefficient road system that has never adequately replaced the old S&D with a modern, community owned, fast and clean railway, taking passengers and freight off the roads and ensuring that once the oil does finally go (probably somewhere between 2025 and 2035, although I'm very optimistic - it could be a lot sooner!) we can not only still get around but do so in a manner that only the railways can manage - quick, clean, sustainable, relaxed.

I think for a few years, as the freight moves rapidly to rail and fewer and fewer people can afford to run a car, there will be a second golden age of the car, with empty (if decaying) roads. I think that those of us that can afford to still be personally mobile should make the most of it - we'll never see the likes again.

disclaimer

Nice car shots for our pro-car anti-rail infiltrators (you know who you are!)

DISCLAIMER : We have no links with the New Somerset and Dorset Railway, and never have done.
We are NOT involved with them in ANY way.

We are also NOT involved with the
Midsomer Norton group, Gartell Railway, Washford or any other groups or
individuals, living, dead or undead.

But what we ARE involved with is our beloved SOMERSET AND DORSET RAILWAY. This blog has, does and always will support each and every venture, big or small, that exists to bring back this important transport link. It is true that I am Chairman of the New S&D; I have been Finance Director of the SDRHT, I am a life member of the SDRHT and a member of the NDRT. I also love animals, skiing, swimming and visiting other countries.

This is a BLOG, not a mission statement. It exists to inform and entertain. If you love the S&D then please read it, if you don't love the S&D why are you even bothering - you will NOT understand what we are about!

The New S&D (in my view) is NOT an 'environmental' group - if the idiots that have tarred us with that brush actually knew what they were talking about they would know that Peak Oil types and environmentalists DETEST each other! The New S&D (in my view) does not exist to bring people's dreams to life. It exists to bring back the S&D as a freight and passenger line that makes a profit. That time is not now, but it is probably a LOT closer than most of us think. We will proceed (in my view) in a cold and unsentimental manner and acquire land and property to make this easier. We will also pester national, regional and local politicians to make sure that OUR line is the top of the queue when rail reinstatement starts in earnest. We will also (in my view) do all we can to retain the atmosphere, infrastructure and culture of the OLD S&D, where it does not conflict with wider economic requirements. And we will (in ALL our views) do everything we can to accomodate current and future heritage groups that already have a toehold on the route, and continue to recommend joining those groups to anyone who wants to get their hands dirty rebuilding railways and driving steam and diesel locomotives.

Now, can I make it any clearer????

congestion

We've had a comment to an earlier post which I'd like to bring to the main board.

I do think the writer has a valid point about congestion TODAY, but I personally feel that to push the congestion angle too much could well leave us with egg on our faces as traffic FALLS due to the steadily rising cost of energy (which will apply to petrol/diesel AND electrically operated cars).

By setting our argument and lobbying within the long term problem - ie Peak Oil and its consequences - I think we're positioning ourselves well ahead of the crowd and I feel we'll reap benefits from it from now and in the future. I worry that arguing the congestion case too loudly we'll look stupid in the face of the facts, but as I said above I do think that congestion is an issue now, and may even be for a few more years. But what do you all think? Feel free to support or challenge any of the views quoted above and below, and please post all comments to the comments section under this post.

I already have an electric car, powered by water according to Southern Electric. We still need to talk about congestion as that is the issue now. Petrol cars will be on the roads for at least the next two decades and we will wait for an eternity to rely on the public's acceptance of peak oil to switch. As I have said on here before, the car will be the last thing to go. Air travel, foreign holidays, new consumer goods and all other discretionary spending will decline before people give up their cars. if we are going to regenerate the railways today we need to sell them to the public in a language it understands.

jurassic park

The past.



The future.

This extraordinary load of old tosh appeared today on AOL.

Road congestion 'could rise by 37%'

Britain's roads need more investment, the Road Users' Alliance has said.

Traffic congestion will rise by 37% if the current "minimal levels of investment" in roads continues for the next 15 years, a report has said.

By 2025, drivers could be wasting 656 million hours a year - the equivalent of 75,000 years - sitting in traffic jams, the Road Users' Alliance (RUA) added.

"Under-investment in the strategic road network has left the UK with a transport system which is uncompetitive, congested, vulnerable to incident and inadequate to meet the future needs of the economy," the report concluded.

The RUA said that the UK's investment in new motorway capacity was among the lowest in Europe, with no new motorway miles being created in 2007 and 2008.

It added that while £47 billion a year was collected in road user taxes, only £4 billion was invested in new road capacity.
The survey also revealed that the major road network grew by 1% between 1998 and 2008, but had to cope with traffic growth of almost 10%.

Travel by car remained the most popular form of transport, with 92% of Britain's passenger transport taking place by road and 70% of commuting and business journeys made by car.

RUA director Tim Green said: "Road users have for too long been regarded as wallets on wheels, providing an endless stream of revenue for the Government to spend on anything except the road network.

"Hard choices face whichever party leader finds himself in Downing Street after the election. Will limited funds be spent on rail, which moves fewer than 10% of UK passengers, or invested in the transport mode which makes the biggest contribution to the UK's prosperity and quality of life - the road network?"

Well, I know dinosaurs had tiny brains but this goes beyond that! Why do people so desperately want to hang on to the twentieth century? Was it really that good?

All through this piece the clues are there. If any government seriously believed roads DID have a future then obviously this investment would be made - it would be madness NOT to invest in the road network. But we know that roads don't have a future - no amount of scrabbling about trying to replace oil is ever going to produce the levels of traffic we have today. There's no possibility of road transport being used for freight in the future -except for very short runs where private sidings, goods lines or goods tramways haven't yet been built. All long distance travel will quickly switch from road (and air) to rail. Private cars will become really scarce and the roads themselves will begin to physically vanish from the landscape, apart from those adopted by Sustrans, horse riders and walkers. This is the reality and these mugs at the anachronistic Road Users' Alliance have found themselves on the wrong side of history.

I almost feel sorry for them!

ten days of profound silence

Everything done and packed - we're away to Majorca for ten days from tomorrow! It's been a very busy year what with setting up the New S&D and business being busier than ever!

Hopefully I'll get to see some modern transport when I'm out there - there are loads of rail and tram developments happening over there, the local government of the Balearics are well aware that cars and roads aren't the answer to transport problems and new lines are springing up all over the place!

I may be online over there but can never be sure. SWT Slave - I will answer your comment (and have a couple of blog posts lined up inspired by what you've said) but please be patient!

roads and cars - musings!

Hmmmm - this was the scene from our Geneva hotel window when a Ukrainian coach driver tried to negotiate an impossible corner. It took around 20 minutes and a few squashed bikes to get him out ...


We flew easyJet then hired a car to get around in Switzerland. Normally we'd use the train as it's so easy but because there were four of us this time it actually worked out cheaper to use a hire car.


But we still took the train down to Aigle on the Saturday rather than drive. You can just make out the Leysin to Aigle road below the train here. It takes about four times the distance by road than rail. Imagine attempting this in winter!


A typical road in the UK. This is not efficient. Yesterday some people had to sit for up to six hours on the M5 because some fool had decided the Avonmouth Bridge was a good place to commit suicide. So everything ground to a halt, just as people wanted to get away for the last bank holiday of the year. Traffic was diverted through Bristol causing chaos all over. Today a similar thing has happened because of an accident.

Look at most drivers. They are not capable of driving properly. This country gives away driving licenses too easily. This is doubtless a political decision so there's not too much clamour for new railways - yet.

But as the cost of fuel does what the goverment should have done years ago - drive millions of useless drivers off the road - the clamour will become unbearable. Who will the government turn to first to rebuild Britain's transport infrastructure? Groups like ours that will, by then, have a ten or twenty year track record in the rail reinstatement industry.

To keep on my toes I always read stuff from the other, cornucopian, view on oil. That there is still plenty to go round, and if anything it will get cheaper. (This is a bit like saying air temperatures are falling and glaciers are advancing!)

There was a piece in Moneyweek this week that declared that Peak Oil just doesn't hold up. It goes on to state that there are ten trillion barrels of oil left in the earth, 35% of which should be recoverable. Three and a half trillion sounds a lot, but not when we are using 86 million barrels a day. I did the maths - this cornucopian view gives us 111 years of oil left. But, consider this. I have assumed NO increase in demand, and accepted that this highly contentious estimate is correct. In reality there is probably far less recoverable oil in the ground and demand will continue to rise, especially from China and India, relentlessly. Assuming these more realistic estimates I would suspect that the figure is closer to 50 years. But that doesn't mean cheap oil will be available for 50 years, then disappear overnight. It still means that the crunch will come within 10 to 20 years, pretty much the same timeframe that restoration of the S&D is working on. If anything these oddballs who aren't educated or scientific enough to 'get' Peak Oil can only make things worse by lulling the gullible into a false sense of security.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that rail, for many reasons, is far superior to road!

the future - I don't think so!

This is the Nissan Leaf. It's being marketed as 'zero-emission'. This is what our leaders seriously think will be the future of transport, along with biofuels, fuel cells, hydrogen and no doubt magic spells.

Let's get this straight. This vehicle is NOT zero-emission. Even a tram or train is not zero-emission. Even a bicycle isn't as it has embedded energy in its construction and maintenance. Nothing, short of walking barefoot, is zero-emission.

Our 'leaders' think we are stupid. We've been sold the semi-myth of global warming as the reason for all this faffing about looking for new 'clean' energy sources. They are TERRIFIED of Peak Oil, the only consolation being that they will not have to worry about the consequences. Even airhead George Bush lives off the grid.

We will almost certainly NEVER find a zero-emission energy source. Anything that helps produce energy or uses energy will have required energy to build it. How much embedded energy went into building this wonderful 'zero-emission' car for example?

And, more to the point, how is it going to run? Well it's 100% electric. So it will need batteries. Batteries need metals to work. Are they mined and transported with NO energy use? And will these batteries never need recharging? No, they'll need recharging very often as the range is just 100 miles! And the electricity needed to recharge them - that's going to be zero-emission is it? No, even if it's fuelled 100% by renewables including nuclear there is still loads of embedded energy in the construction and maintenance process. But of course they will just be topped up via the grid. That means burning coal and oil which produce tons of emissions.

The point is that energy in the future will be constrained. The easy energy has now all been used up. Every decision - economic, political and personal - in the future will have to take into account energy use and availability. Personal transport is unlikely to be anything more than bike, foot or, if you're lucky, horse. To keep freight moving, and people moving further than the range of a bike or horse, we'll need railways. To move perishables quickly we'll need railways. To get people to work or on holiday we'll need railways. To get people around towns and cities we'll need trams. Everything we currently move on our congested and crumbling roads will need to be moved by rail or horse. As cheap energy runs out it'll become harder and harder to seek out alternatives.

The main point is that we can do all we need to do in the future using pre-oil technology. That doesn't mean it has to be dowdy, utilitarian or boring. It can still be ultra-modern. But the principles behind it will be mainly pre-oil. Rail uses a quarter of the fuel to move equivalent loads compared to road transport. It's all to do with friction. It can also have energy delivered by many different modes, from using wires, third rails, conduits, stubs or batteries for electricity, to burning wood or waste for a new generation of steam locomotives. The linear nature of railways will allow plenty of methods of collecting and distributing renewable energy, from solar panels on telegraph poles to windmills at station and loco shed sites. Woodland can be planted alongside railways for future fuel sources.

Roads will die sooner than most of us think. As fuel becomes more and more expensive less and less of us will have the option of personal transport use. We'll be clamouring for public transport. Sustainable public transport. More and more freight will switch to rail, particularly as new lines are opened, taking pressure off the current network. The roads themselves will crumble as oil, a principal component of asphalt, becomes almost impossible to find. Roads may survive in towns, carrying a few underpowered and expensive electric delivery vehicles, but roads between towns will fall into disuse as we all take the train and tram. Their maintenance costs will rocket just as the tax take from a smaller and smaller number of functioning vehicles plummet.

This is the future. Rail will be cool, roads will become like our savaged rail network in the 1960s. For those who doubt that what we are proposing will come about, give this article some serious thought. If we all work towards building a sustainable transport network for the future - cycleways, canals, tramways and railways - then the apocalypse predicted by many (using the old scapegoat 'climate change' as the catalyst) will not happen. The future is, in reality, much brighter than that. The future is a New Somerset and Dorset Railway!

deadly serious

Swanage Railway.


Welsh Highland Railway.


Gartell Railway. (John Penny).


Jinty at Midsomer Norton 2005.

One of the oddest things about all this New S&D thing is that I still occasionally get asked 'Is this a serious scheme?' It's deadly serious. I have studied the economics of Peak Oil, of transport and of railways and I still can't see any way - short of apocalypse - that this can't happen.

Consider two futures. One in which - somehow - economic expansion continues and some sort of alternative/s to oil is found. Roads would become increasingly congested, towns would continue to expand. Already our railways are bursting at the seams - new lines are not just desirable but inevitable. And in this (extremely unlikely) scenario economic expansion could lead to increased carbon output. How long before every government finally 'gets' what the rest of us have for years - that fuel efficiency is one way of reducing atmospheric carbon? Railways are at least FOUR times as efficient as road transport, much more than four times as efficient as air travel (which even in this scenario is doomed). Light and ultra-light rail are even more efficient.

The other future, the far more realistic one, will see economic expansion halt and even contract, and the road system grind to a halt due to a mix of sky-high oil prices, deteriorating maintenance of roads and ever greater limits on carbon output. This could happen over decades, years or even weeks. In this scenario rail expansion won't only be desirable but a matter of life or death, for communities if not for individuals. New railways will be opening everywhere, not just totally reversing the Beeching cuts but reaching places that never got a railway first time round, because in this scenario no railway = no way of continuing as an economic community.

The New S&D has never been about dreams, but more about stopping a nightmare. A New S&D is already needed, many feel that the original line should never have closed, in twenty years time only a few rocking lunatics won't see the need for it.

What we need - HAVE - to do is get organised NOW, develop our networks and contacts, within the rail industry, among local people, at local, regional and national political levels. It will be a struggle to get resources, human and financial. We will be competing with hundreds or even thousands of other routes desperate to reopen before the oil runs out. Serious? You could say that!

nostalgia for the present

This week's helping of Kunstler ...

Revolving Debt Cheap Energy Economy on Its Knees

Through the tangle of green shoots and sprouting mustard seeds, a certain nervous view persists that the arc of events is taking us to places unimaginable. The collapse of General Motors and Chrysler signifies more than the collapse of US car manufacturing. It spells the end of the motoring era in America per se and the puerile fantasy of personal liberation that allowed it to become such a curse to us.
Of course, many Nobel prize-winning economists would argue that it has only been a blessing for us, but that only shows how the newspapers are committing suicide-by-irrelevance. And if other societies, such as China’s late-entry industrial start-up, want to adopt a similar fantasy, they will only find themselves all the sooner in history’s garage with a tailpipe in their mouths.

Here in the USA, we will mount the most strenuous campaign to keep the motoring system going — in fact, we’re already doing it — but it will fail just as surely as two (so far) of the “big three” automakers have failed. It will fail because car-making is only one facet of a larger network of systems that is coming undone, namely a revolving debt cheap energy economy.

Americans will never again buy as many new cars as they were able to do before 2008 on the terms that were normal until then: installment loans. Our credit system is completely broken. It choked to death on securitized debt engineered by computer magic and business school hubris. That complex of frauds and swindles coincided with the background force of peak oil, which meant, among other things, that economic growth based on ever-increasing energy resources was over, and along with it ever-increasing credit. What it boils down to now is that we can’t service our debt at any level, personal, corporate, or government — and that translates into comprehensive societal bankruptcy.

The efforts of our federal government to work around this now, to cover up the “non-performing” debt and to generate the new lending necessary to keep the old system going, is a tragic exercise in futility. I’m not saying this to be “pessimistic” grandstanding doomer pain-in-the-ass, but because I would like to see my country make more intelligent choices that would permit us to continue being civilized, to move into the next phase of our history without a horrible self-destructive convulsion.

Another consequence of the debt problem is that we won’t be able to maintain the network of gold-plated highways and lesser roads that was as necessary as the cars themselves to make the motoring system work. The trouble is you have to keep gold-plating it, year after year. Traffic engineers refer to this as “level-of-service.” They’ve learned that if the level-of-service is less than immaculate, the highways quickly enter a spiral of disintegration. In fact, the American Society of Civil Engineers reported several years ago that the condition of many highway bridges and tunnels was at the “D-minus” level, so we had already fallen far behind on a highway system that had simply grown too large to fix even when we thought we were wealthy enough to keep up. Right now, we’re pretending that the “stimulus” program will carry us over long enough to resume the old method of state-and-federal spending based largely on bonding (that is, debt).

The political dimension of the collapse of motoring is the least discussed part of problem: as fewer and fewer citizens find themselves able to buy and run cars, they will feel increasingly aggrieved at the system set up to make motoring virtually mandatory for all the chores of everyday life, and their resentments will rise against the elite that can still manage to enjoy it. Because our car-dependency is so extreme, the reaction of the dis-entitled classes is liable to be extreme and probably delusional to an extreme, too.

You can already see it being baked in the cake. Happy Motoring is so entangled in our national identity that the loss of it is bound to cause a national identity crisis. In places like the American south, the old Dixie states, motoring lifted more than half the population out of the dust, and became the basis of the New South economy. The sons and grandsons of starving sharecroppers became Chevy dealers and developers of suburban housing tracts, malls, and strip malls. They don’t have any nostalgia for the historical reality of hookworm and 14-hour-days of serf labor in hundred-degree heat. Theirs is a nostalgia for the present, for air-conditioned comfort and convenience and the groaning all-you-can-eat Shoney’s breakfast buffet off the freeway ramp. When it is withdrawn from them by the mandate of events, they will be furious.

Given the history of the region and the predilections of its dominant ethnic group, one might imagine that they will want to take out their gall and grievance on the half-African politician who presides over the situation. Among the ever-expanding classes dis-entitled from the so-called American Dream, the crisis is only marginally different in other regions of the nation. Mr. Obama faces a range of awful dilemmas, and it is painful to see them go unrecognized and unacknowledged by his White House. It’s hard to imagine that the president and his elite advisors are blind to these equations, but as the weeks tick by they seem stuck in a box of limited perception.

We’re in a strange hiatus for now. “Hope” levitates the legitimacy of the dollar, the stock markets, and the authority of leadership. In the background, implosion continues, debt goes unpaid, banks ignore bad loans to keep them off their books, jobs and incomes vanish, cars and other things go unsold, and a tragic wishfulness strains to sustain the unsustainable. Our expectations are inconsistent with what is happening to us.

It will be very painful for us to walk away from the car-centered life. Half the population faces the ugly obstacle of being hopelessly over-invested in a suburban house and all the life-ways associated with it. There will be no easy way out for them, whatever they chose to do politically, whatever noise they make, whomever they scapegoat, whatever fantasies they cultivate about what the world owes them, or who they think they are.

Mr. Obama should not waste another week pretending that we can keep this old system going. The public needs to know that we will be making our livings differently, inhabiting the landscape differently, and spending our days and nights differently — even while we suffer our losses. The public needs to hear this from more figures than Mr. Obama, too, from leaders in the state capitals, and the agencies, and business and education and what remains of the clergy. But somebody has to set in motion the chain of recognition, or events will soon do it for us.