The Green Mien a Knowledge Mosaic® blog

Photo by Vmenkov. Some rights reserved.

In college, it was a petty dream of mine to travel across the country by train: writing by day in the cabins while America passed by in an amber blur outside my window, spending nights in the lounge car drinking scotch with mysterious strangers. Then I started to look into how much time and financial capital such an adventure would take and, well, the idea sort of fell by the wayside, and every summer I ended up traveling by car or plane, and never by train.

Recent reports on the depressing state of train travel in the U.S. only seem to confirm my fears about this outdated yet perennially romantic form of transportation. But oh, what the future may hold! Earlier this year, Grist posted a tantalizing fantasy of what a high speed, cross country rail system could look like, and boy does it look appealing. Seattle to San Francisco in four hours? Yes please! With Obama moving forward with plans to develop a high speed rail project, it does seem like there is a place for optimism regarding the future of our beloved trains.

Which leads us to Amtrak, the titan of American train travel. Earlier this year, Amtrak issued a Request for Information with the California High-Speed Rail Authority seeking to purchase high-speed trains that are currently in production, which report safe operating speeds of up to 220 mph (exactly the speed used to create the map linked to above!). While we’re still a long way from actually using said trains, it was an exciting development.

This week, Amtrak announced that they’d be replacing trains in the Northeast Corridor (by far their most popular region) for the first time in decades, with new Amtrak Cities Sprinter models that are, according to Wired, capable of speeds up to 125 mph (not quite up to 220, but getting warmer!) while pulling as many as 18 rail cars. Additionally (finally, we’re getting to the environmental stuff), these new models feature hi-tech braking systems that can return electricity back into energy, therefore saving up to $300 million in energy costs over the next two decades, according to Amtrak themselves.

These high-speed, high-efficiency trains offer exciting possibilities for the future of travel in America, especially to those young Americans with time and energy constraints who dream of a Sal Paradisian romp across this wild country.

Photo by Hugo90. Some rights reserved.

Bad news, commuters: According to new data from AAA, the cost of owning a car in America has officially snowballed to over $9,100 a year! Considering the median income for a U.S. citizen above the age of 25 is roughly $40,000 (and that’s only if they’re working full time), this figure is far from insignificant. By way of comparison, that figure rested somewhere around $7,8000 five years ago, and according to AAA it’s up two whole percent from last year. This, for perspective, is assuming a  yearly average of about 15,000 miles driven, and factoring in all cost parameters, such as fuel, maintenance, insurance, new parts/tires, etc.

Since we’re living in an age with eco-friendly, wallet-friendly car rental and DIY taxi services such as Car2Go (the former) and Lyft (the latter), and that bike lanes are being added and improved at light speed seemingly across the country (at least in most metropolitan areas), there’s never been a better time in American history (well, except maybe the early 1900′s) to ditch the car and find some alternate means of travel. In many parts of the country, summer is basically here: get your bike out of the garage and get some exercise on the way to work, then use the money you’ll save on fancy cocktails or plane tickets – because at least as of now, there’s no such thing as Plane2Go, nor are there sky bikes.

photo by James D. Schwartz. Some rights reserved.

NECESSARY DISCLAIMER, right at the top of the post. Unlike some Green Mien posts which are by necessity what some might label “huge downers,” this post is going to start off with some heavy pessimism, but stick around, because its going to take a pretty huge U-turn towards relentless optimism at about the halfway point. But so, let’s begin: gas prices aren’t looking so great right now. This is not news to, well, anyone. Despite a valiant effort this week by Senate Democrats to strip big oil companies of unnecessary tax breaks and use these funds to try and mitigate oil prices (an effort that will almost surely fail when it reaches the Republican House of Representatives anyways), gas prices have peaked over the $4.00/gal threshold nationally, with the per/barrel price at $103.

A well-researched article by Derek Thompson in the Atlantic last month offered a breakdown of factors in rising gas prices, citing Supply and Demand as responsible for more than 50% of oil prices, with the Middle East, the Weak Dollar, and Summer Travel trailing behind. Well, demand for oil is at an all time high, our relationship with the Middle East is as shaky as its ever been, the dollar continues to fall, and we are just around the corner from another summer of gas-guzzling vacations. Sounds a bit like a perfect storm. So where do we go from here?

Two new, unrelated videos surfaced online this week that each examine or dream up alternatives to the auto-centric path (four-lane mega-freeway) we’ve found ourselves on, by focusing on the two biggest cities in America: Los Angeles and New York. The first, an extremely well-produced and animated short film by Sarah Fleming, Tam Thien Tran, and Toon Virochpoka, takes a bold look at how to transform Los Angeles from a notoriously car-centric city into a commuter haven by 2030:

As the video explains in a series of spiffy infographics, a whopping 79% of current Los Angeles residents drive a car to work, with parking lots and structures taking up 36% of all land in L.A. This video imagines a utopia in which all parking lots would be eliminated or moved to the edges of the city, freeing up land to build sturdier, more vibrant communities, and in which only zero emission cars would be allowed on the streets. This shift in transportation priorities would have positive effects both culturally and financially: the video proposes revitalizing the Alameda Corridor, a 20 mile train expressway that runs from Los Angeles to Long Beach, and building up local agriculture in the area, creating a stronger synergistic bond between local growers and local consumers. If all that doesn’t sound positively serene enough, the video also explores the possibility of above ground urban walkways and new forms of sky transportation, such as cross-city gondolas. The future!

The second video, shot and edited by Clarence Eckerson Jr., takes a more grounded approach, examining the progress that has already been made in New York City by adding bike lanes and more space for pedestrians to certain dangerous arterials in downtown Manhattan:

By popular consensus, New York seems to have a much better reputation than L.A. as a commuter city. However, as a recent article in New York Magazine highlights, there is still some obvious discord between bike commuters and motorists. This video makes a point to highlight the fact that less than 50% of New Yorkers own cars, and that transportation priorities in the city have to shift in order to better accommodate bikers and pedestrians. The video showcases ongoing traffic revision projects on major New York streets like Colombus Ave., or 1st and 2nd avenues in Manhattan. Rather than eliminating any lanes, the existing traffic lanes were simply narrowed, adding room for two-way bike lanes and larger crosswalks and islands for pedestrians. This seems like a best case scenario for all involved: cyclists and pedestrians have more room, and cars are forced to lower their speeds enough to greatly reduce auto-related injuries. There are even plans to plant more trees and flowers in the pedestrian islands that the bike lanes have afforded.

I can’t begin to explain how pleased I was to stumble across both of these videos on the same sunny, Seattle afternoon. Both offer optimistic-yet-feasible plans that re-envision the future of urban planning and city culture, with work in New York already largely underway. If this kind of large-scale commuter project can work in New York, who’s to say it can’t work everywhere else? For as Sinatra once sang about the Big Apple: “if I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere…”