Between December 2006 and April 2007, I was sent to the UK three times by my Big Evil Company employer. The first trip was a stop over on my way to Algeria, while the latter two trips were made to backfill for my counterpart while he took time off for knee surgery and for paternity leave. I spent a total of nine weeks over in the Sceptered Isles.
While I was on the other side of the pond, it was impossible not to notice the amount of environmental hysteria that was being broadcast in the news, whether watching the BBC or reading the newspapers. Hardly a day went by where it seemed that there wasn't some reference to the Kyoto Treaty or that the Labour government was working towards some commitment to cutting greenhouse gases and telling the public that it must have shared sacrifices and belt tightening, all in the name of the Greater Good.
Well, lo and behold, here were are in July 2008 and we now hear of the news that in a recent by-election, the Labour Party lost a stronghold Parliamentary seat in Glascow. For those of you who are not quite up to snuff on your British politics, the world - very broadly - breaks down like this. The Labour Party has long held a very strong grip on Scotland and the north, while the Conservatives do better in southern England. To reiterate, this is a generalization, but as a broad picture statement, it does hold true. Hence, the fact that the Labour Party lost a long time seat to the Scottish National Party is quite a shocker.
As things stand now, the Labour Party majority in Westminster is now down to about 60. When Tony Blair first ascended to power in 1997, Labour had 418 seats. Now Labour has under 350 out of some 646 seats. It is in this context that the loss of a seat in Labour stronghold does not bode well for the Party come 2010, which is when the next general election must be contested. However, it may well be that there may need to be a coalition government formed in order to maintain a majority in the next general election.
But circling back to Labour's woes, much of the political commentary has been centering on the idea that people are starting to get fed up with paying high taxes on fossil fuels, all in the name of environmentalism. One adviser to the Labour government, Richard Parry Jones, warns that if Labour does not ditch its heavy taxes on automobiles, then UK voters are going to throw them out at the next election.
This is a fate that has happened to the Socialists in France and in Germany, where Sarkozy's rightists outright defeated the Socialists and Angela Merkel came to power via a grand coalition. As as this article points out:
In recent years, almost all of Europe's social democratic parties have lost in national elections. The collapse of support for Gordon Brown and his policies reveals a general decline of Europe's social democracy as a whole.
There are many good reasons for the deterioration of the centre-left's political influence and power. But perhaps one of the most crucial is the abandonment of their traditional core value of progressive optimism. After all, the left used to derive large amounts of its popular appeal from a firm belief in social and technological advancement, a political philosophy of societal optimism and hope. During the last couple of decades, however, it has eagerly adopted a green ideology that has replaced its confidence in future progress with the ever more intimidating prediction of climate catastrophe and environmental disaster, culminating in calls for economic sacrifices and collective belt-tightening.
In short, Britain's Labour Party has discarded its "progressive" principles for environmental fear-mongering and salvationist rhetoric in the expectation that voters would accept that only government control, central planning and higher taxes could prevent global disaster.
...
Eighteen months ago, Labour's David Miliband proposed the introduction of carbon "credit cards" that would be issued as part of a nationwide carbon rationing scheme. He suggested the allocation of an annual allowance for basic needs such as travel, energy or food. Two days after Labour's disastrous defeat in the local elections, the whole scheme was hastily abandoned.
Motorists in the UK are paying the highest fuel taxes in Europe, an average of almost £900 annually. In the name of climate change mitigation, the government has progressively increased fuel, road and car taxes. It has burdened companies with a so-called Climate Change Levy and introduced an emissions trading scheme -- costly policies that have had damaging effects on British competitiveness, energy prices and living standards. As a direct result, a record number of people, particularly Britain's poorest, oldest and most vulnerable, are increasingly falling on hard times. As many as five million households, more than 20% of the UK's population, are today living in "fuel poverty."
Progressives in America have, in many ways, followed a similar pattern. It used to be in the early years of the 20th century that progressivism meant that there was a belief in scientific and technological progress that would make our world a better place. This belief would be coupled with some kind of redistributive and social safety type measures to uplift the poor and catch those who had fallen through the cracks. Instead, it seems that Progressivism now substantially means that technological advancements are not to be pursued because of fears or objections to science and technology. Instead, we are told that we have to cut back, all in the name of saving the planet from some imagined environmental catastrophies, damned the cost.
All the Wizard has to say is that Progressives had better take a look at what has happened across the water and pause, lest they find that voters decide eventually to drive them off of political agenda.
Wizard
The year 2007 saw a number of weather incidents which startled the world, including snow in Baghdad, winter storms which stranded millions of Chinese during the Chinese New Year, record snow falls in the North America, China, and Siberia, and a recent thickening of the ice packs.
And now the data is in for 2007 from all four of the world's major sources of climate tracking (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS). The worldwide temperature drop from 2006 to 2007 was 0.65 - 0.75 centigrade. Apparently, that is the largest single year drop since record keeping began and enough to wipe out all of the global warming that has occurred since the late 19th century.
For my .02 worth, I've long had a gut feeling that solar activity, or perhaps changes in heat coming from the core of the earth, would overwhelm any climate change effects from human activity. All one has to do is think of what the atmospheric conditions are like on other planets to see how huge of a role the Sun plays in our fragile and pathetic existence.
One person I know wrote me back:
Interesting year-to-year change, which will, depending upon the point of view of the specific advocate, will be:
1. Shouted from the highest hilltops, or
2. Ignored; critiqued as improper, unreliable, and the product of puppets of the oil cartels; belittled as meaningless and unimportant; and rebutted with countless stories of the "local" impacts of global warming.
In truth, this is interesting, but it is kinda like charting the times posted by the competitors in the Olympic Marathon between for the third 100 meters of the race and using that to attempt to predict the winner.
Let's face it, we simply do not know a whole lot about short-term, by which I mean periods of hundreds of years) climate change on Earth, despite the
large number of people who appear to be saying that they do.
Another wrote to me saying:
I've seen quite a few folks agree with you on that - ie. that the human effect on climate change is small.
Another wrote:
No. They have already changed the banner from "Global Warming" to "Climate Change."
It's the same way with pollution. No matter what we do to improve air quality, "Experts" will continue to claim pollution is worsening. It's called Political Science.
Sigh... I can only see the arguments getting fiercer if the world actually does enter an era where the earth starts cooling.
Wizard
I received the following email today. I will share it in its entirety, the only comment being that the Los Angeles MTA has spent $11 billion (inflation adjusted) on rail transit since 1985, only to achieve the same number of boardings it achieved 22 years ago.
Wizard.
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Riding the Silver Line bus rapid transit from Boston Logan Airport into downtown Boston last weekend via a Big Dig tunnel -- a quick ride, on a bus with luggage racks -- got me looking at the transportation performance of the Big Dig project.
Answer, from recent professional presentations: enormous reductions in traffic congestion. Apparently, the traffic engineering in the new tunnels eliminates weaving and bottlenecks. T-Ops is working 24 X 7 with cameras and other sensors. b> The bottom line number is 62% improvement in traffic flow.
See recent illustrated document attached in pdf, an end-of-year edition of Peter Samuels' Toll Roads News - found here.
There is a Powerpoint presentation in PDF showing performance graphics by ITS engineer Dan Baxter from last October here.
Dan Baxter and Peter Samuels describe the financial mismanagement
as well.
For those who want more, there is lots of detail in this screen scrape of an article by the same Dan Baxter in Roads & Bridges magazine from June 2007.
Big believer
Despite setbacks, "Big Dig" potential benefits are stratospheric
- By Dan Baxter
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Boston's Central Artery/ Tunnel project, nicknamed the "Big Dig." Records of project planning activity date all the way back to 1982, and as of 2007 all sections of the project are now open to traffic.
More than $14.6 billion has been expended, and recent projections put completion closer to $15 billion. As with all highway projects, the Big Dig journey passed through planning to design, then on to construction and finally into operations and maintenance. The similarities with other highway projects stop there. The Big Dig has been unique in many ways, not all positive, including unparalleled cost escalations and highly publicized construction problems. Prior to completion, the only positive news has been a few construction achievements well known in the industry and the management of traffic during construction. New measurements and projections of project benefits are now available and an assessment of the true value of the project is possible. Even if the project does eventually achieve its original goals, will the highway construction industry ever see another mega project like the Big Dig? If there is another mega project with the scope and cost of the Big Dig, will it be managed differently based upon lessons learned? Looking back at the Big Dig, what really went wrong and what really went right?
True to traffic
With the final cosmetic touches now being put on the largest mega project in U.S. history, it is now possible for the first time to speculate how history will judge the project. As with every human endeavor, nothing is in reality a total success or a total failure. A Big Dig scorecard needs to consider costs, schedule, quality of construction and tangible benefits to the public. At a staggering $14.6 billion for 7.5 centerline miles of highway, the cost of the project is over $300,000 per inch. At that rate, achieving a positive benefit-to-cost ratio for the project will require unprecedented benefits. However, the facts emerging show the numbers may be closer than you might think.
The Big Dig has had more ups and downs than the numerous ramps that drop from the surface into the labyrinth of new subterranean highways. The most recent blow to the project came in August 2006 when a fatal accident resulting from a ceiling failure became the latest in a series of project problems to make national headlines.
Although it has been consistently maligned in its hometown newspaper, the news from the Big Dig is not all bad. Some monumental construction challenges have been met and mastered, including the soil freezing and tunnel jacking required to complete the I-90 extension to the new Ted Williams Tunnel. Now that the facilities are fully open to traffic, it is clear that the excessive daily traffic congestion and related air pollution that once gripped downtown Boston has been substantially reduced. A large portion of the vehicle delay disappeared with the giant concrete and steel elevated freeway that for two score years blackened the fourth-story windows of adjacent Boston buildings.
When it comes to traffic, the promise of the project planners to vastly improve traffic flow was kept, and even exceeded. A popular sound bite used by project critics during the design phase was "it will be obsolete the day it opens." Traffic data collected and compared with "before" conditions have proven the critics who voiced that position wrong. Dramatic reductions in travel time and increases in traffic flow have now been documented in a new study recently published by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority (MTA). The study was conducted independently of the Big Dig construction management consultants. The study, titled Economic Impacts of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority and the Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel Project, performed by the Boston-based international transportation and economics consulting group EDR, stated that "the original 1990 environmental projection was that the `Big Dig' would improve traffic flow by 40% by 2010. Today, the project exceeds that with a 62% improvement in traffic flow. This was accomplished while overall traffic volume grew by 23.5% since 1995."
Improved traffic flow is only one part of the picture. New public parks, reconnected neighborhoods, revitalized commercial activity and an aesthetic face-lift unparalleled in American municipal history have prepared Bostonians for a brighter socioeconomic future.The Rose Kennedy Greenway and the Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge will transform the path of the old Central Artery into an extraordinarily beautiful stretch of parkland crisscrossed by sidewalks and streets that reconnect the city to its waterfront. The bustling crowd of locals and tourists that can be seen every day walking about at the Faneuil Hall Marketplace will soon be able to stroll farther east through the R.K. Greenway to parks like Christopher Columbus Park that sit at the bay's edge. Dramatic increases in the value of downtown, South Boston and Seaport District real estate have been realized and are projected to soar with the completion of the greenway. As spectacular as the traffic improvements and urban area transformations may be, they are not sensational enough to capture national headlines. The Big Dig's unexposed benefits are every bit as real as the costs and problems so readily exposed by the broadcast media.
Sign from above
In spite of the realization of the key kept promises, the Big Dig is as beleaguered as ever, and new fears about structural integrity have eroded the public's perception of the project into a mired mess of mixed reviews.
After enduring more than a decade of political firestorms and media bashings, the past two years has seen a series of successful and meaningful ribbon cuttings. The opening of new tunnel sections and connector ramps, the world's widest cable-stayed bridge and numerous public parks only temporarily lifted the spirits of the remaining project partisans. Those spirits must certainly have fallen again with the concrete ceiling panel that killed a motorist last year. The tragedy started a new series of searing public commentary and politically charged lawsuits.
In the days following the disaster, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney "knee-jerked," went on the offensive and publicly questioned the safety of the tunnels. As the top elected state official, his lack of confidence prematurely trumped lesser bureaucrats who were responsible for determining the actual cause of failure and dealing with the problems. The reaction was predictable if not understandable as the Big Dig has always been an easy target for criticism. Defending the Big Dig project in the light of this catastrophe might appear to be political suicide in the short term. However, joining the ranks of critics may erode long-term credibility when it is time to take credit for the benefits.
The accident that killed Milena Delvalle of Boston's Jamaica Plain was caused by the failure of an epoxy-based anchoring system that held a large concrete ceiling panel in place. Reports from the scene indicated that there was no evidence of epoxy on some of the anchors that were lying in the debris on the road. A cursory search of public project records reveals that ceiling panel installation methods have been the subject of claims and changes and formed the basis of a value-engineering effort managed by the management consultant, a joint venture of Bechtel and Parsons Brinckerhoff. The causes of the failure have been reported to be a deadly mix of poor workmanship, flawed inspection and questionable decisions by project management that ultimately reduced the factor of safety to save time and money.
The investigation found that the failed anchors were among the first to be installed using the epoxy method, with the implication not that the oldest anchors failed first, but that the first anchors were installed by crews inexperienced with the method. Although there is no way to prevent motorists from having accidents due to human error, there is no excuse for a purely structural failure due to nothing more than the weight of an element under normal stress conditions.
As each month goes by absent of more failures, the August 2006 tragedy looks more and more like an isolated problem. People in the construction industry know that history is peppered with tunnel collapses. Less than a month after the Boston accident, a highway tunnel linking the cities of Guangnan and Yanshan collapsed in southwestern China, trapping 25 workers. Unfortunately, like so many other "firsts," the Big Dig is the site of the only highway tunnel collapse in memory to occur shortly after the tunnel was opened to traffic.
Structural failures over the past two years provide a roadmap to the No. 1 thing that has gone wrong with the Big Dig. Since project inception, the highly privatized program management of the project has had amazingly minimal public-agency oversight, placing the true power of the purse strings and key day-to-day decision making in the hands of the management consultant.
Highway construction projects a fraction of the size of the Big Dig have had twice as many public-sector managers. Privatization itself is not the problem, because without privatization mega projects are not possible. The problem ensues when the privatized management is forced to operate outside their realm and role in order to fill a vacuum. When construction problems occurred, Boston political adversaries and the media have had the upper hand over the Big Dig management consultant, which is constrained both by its position as a private firm and its responsibility to deal in technical accuracy rather than shooting from the hip.
In the case of the tunnel leaks in 2004, the strong condemnation by the Boston Globe essentially went unanswered for six months. Six days is too long, much less six months. The Big Dig has needed both a political and a public-agency advocate empowered and motivated to respond quickly to quell the rush to judgment. Future mega projects need more than engineering and construction leadership. Advocacy in the ranks of the politically elected leaders and appointed agency heads must be cultivated and maintained to establish ongoing public confidence and accountability.
Money to move
The second thing that went wrong was the magnitude of the cost escalation. Some cost increases would be expected, but quadrupling costs point to either incompetence in estimating or intentional lowballing.
The reality of the Big Dig is that from the start, schedule compliance was favored over budget adherence. Management spent money to keep the project moving, knowing that failure to overcome obstacles in individual contracts would have a ripple effect throughout the project. In the mega project environment, the whole is split into many smaller parts that must fit together in both space and time. If one contractor's schedule slipped, several other contractors could claim a delay. Public-sector and political accountability also would have gone a long way to address the continuing issue of cost escalation. The decision to blame the management consultant for underestimating true project costs during project planning may have provided a convenient scapegoat to deflect political accountability. However, it also had the long-term detrimental effect of exposing the management consultant to media pressure to which it could not respond and eroding the public confidence in the privatized program management of the Big Dig.
When a technical problem occurs that rightly requires the management consultant's action, even their best efforts are met with skepticism. The lesson learned is that you can't have it both ways. If you use your program manager as a scapegoat in the media, you can't expect the public to accept your total reliance on him when problems arise.
Still glossy
The advocates of this project in the 1980s produced glossy brochures that focused primarily on elimination of the habitually congested elevated portion of I-93 in downtown Boston. One particularly powerful brochure was the "Now you see it, now you don't" piece that included a photo of the jammed Central Artery on the cover and an artist's rendering of a new park-like setting in the same location. The primary benefits described in detail were transportation related, and the secondary benefits described much more vaguely had to do with reconnecting neighborhoods" and creating new green space for Bostonians to enjoy. It is now possible to compare the promises of the project's visionaries with the realities of the as-built project.
A justification for the project was certainly that operation of the existing highway had become unacceptable by any standard. The 14-hour-long peak hour average speeds on the elevated Central Artery had dipped into single digits, reflecting one of the worst operational conditions in the world. Due to the extremely poor existing conditions, the contrast between the before and after conditions is truly dramatic and helps to justify the cost of the project.
The astounding results of the EDR study show dramatic improvements in average speeds and delays. As an example, the daily average travel speed for the old Central Artery northbound was 10 mph; the Big Dig quadrupled it to 43 mph. The average speed for all harbor tunnels (the new Ted Williams Tunnel plus the existing Sumner and Callahan tunnels) nearly tripled from 13 mph to 36 mph. These unprecedented improvements in traffic flow have the combined effect of reducing the daily hours of vehicle delay on these facilities a whopping 66% from 38,088 daily hours of vehicle delay in 1995 to 12,834 in 2005 after the Big Dig opened. The delay reductions for some individual minor movements were mind-boggling, such as the notorious bottleneck between Storrow Drive eastbound and I-93 northbound that improved by 81%. This was the site of an apartment building with a sign that read "IF YOU LIVED HERE YOU'D BE HOME BY NOW." The Big Dig decreased the average travel time through this segment from 16 minutes to less than four minutes. This perpetual traffic jam was as much a Boston landmark as the Old North Church, and now it is essentially gone. All of these numbers were achieved in spite of a growth in overall traffic demand reflected in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) of 13% in the same period.
Where did the traffic go? The traffic volume is still there. It has even increased. It is the delay that was eliminated, and this was the vision of the project. The true genius of this mega project has always been not just the replacement of decaying infrastructure, but the amazingly efficient transportation connections that the new viaducts, bridges and tunnels create that speed traffic flow throughout the metropolitan Boston region.
The Big Dig is essentially America's largest interchange. With these connections, the whole metropolitan highway system operated by the MTA finally functions as a system, and reductions of demand on formerly bottlenecked facilities abound. Traffic is better throughout Boston, not just in the project limits.
The EDR study projects that "these improvements are now providing approximately $167 million annually in time and cost savings for travelers. This includes $24 million of savings in vehicle operating cost plus a value of $143 million of time savings. Slightly over half of that time-savings value ($73 million) is for work-related trips and can be viewed as a reduction in the costs of doing business in Boston." The study points out that the promise of the original 1990 project documents used for the environmental assessment projected that the Big Dig would improve traffic flow by 40% by 2010.
In light of these improvements, is it possible to consider the Big Dig a failure? Unfortunately, if traffic were the only benefit, the astronomical project cost would make the Big Dig investment questionable in comparison with a more traditional reconstruction. The traffic analysis portion of the EDR report claimed that the completed project provides annual savings of $177 million (2005
dollars) in operating costs and delay reductions for roadway users. Although these numbers are impressive, based on traffic benefits alone it would take 80 years to break even (not considering the cost of a traditional alternative). In order to evaluate the true benefits of the Big Dig, the economic effects on real estate also must be considered.
Positive square feet
The historically volatile economy of the greater metro Boston region now sits at the near side of a new economic boom that will be fueled by nothing more than the subterranean superhighway brought by the Big Dig. In real estate, location is everything, and the Big Dig is transforming industrial wasteland choked by congestion into easily accessible high-end real estate.
The Big Dig will create an estimated 16 to 21 million sq ft of new commercial and residential development in the South Boston Seaport District alone. The EDR study stated that real estate projects already developed or in construction and planning total 10 million sq ft of office and retail space, including nearly 8,000 new housing units, reflecting $7 billion in private investment made possible by the Big Dig. The increase in property value is estimated to bring in as much as $120,000 million per year of much-needed property tax revenue. Combined with the prospect of future increases to toll revenue, this boost should help the commonwealth maintain its investment provided the dollars are properly appropriated to maintaining the roadways.
Given the history of Boston and the value of the adjacent Back Bay area, a man-made residential and commercial gold mine created from the swampy marsh south of the Charles River, there is no doubt that the market forces needed to capitalize on the Big Dig investment are converging and will drive the project's true value into the stratosphere within the next 20 years. With the concrete and steel canyon of the Central Artery being replaced by the Rose Kennedy Greenway, a remarkably beautiful property value engine that will provide a 180° swing in the aesthetics of downtown Boston, the project planner's commitment to keeping the air rights publicly owned will pay off 10-fold.
Another clear winner from the Big Dig is Boston's Logan International Airport. After years of steadily losing passengers to expanding airports in New Hampshire and Rhode Island due to the untenable travel time in the existing access highways and tunnels, Logan will solidify its position as king of the New England airports. The EDR study reported that access to Logan "is now easier for an added 800,000 Massachusetts residents who with the full opening of the I-90 connector to the Ted Williams Tunnel, now live within 40 minutes of the airport. Today, 2.5 million residents live within 40 minutes of Logan International Airport."
The Big Dig also delivered a massive shot in the arm for the New England economy. The cost of the cubic yards of excavation, new concrete and steel do not add up to $14.6 billion. The difference was corporate profits and job income. The Big Dig created nearly 50,000 jobs in Boston. Over 50 engineering teams and over 125 contractors received valuable contracts. Although some Boston
families paid dearly for the privilege to work on the Big Dig, the worker safety record was good. The Hegarty family in Dorchester lost their father, John, the first worker killed on the project after six years of construction without a fatality. Given the complexity and size of the project, the overall safety record of the project was far above average and provided unusually safe and high-paying jobs.
Touching the nerve
Recently, I sat in the $200 million Operations Control Center talking with Jim Murphy of the MTA, the man who is responsible for day-to-day operation of the world's most expensive labyrinth of tunnels, freeways, viaducts and tollways. Murphy spoke with sincerity in a serious tone about his job managing the facilities. He dodged no questions, admitting a few shortcomings of the project, but at the same time described the complexities and realities of this underground superhighway in a matter of fact way.
It may be hard for some to admit it, but the project worked. The Big Dig did what it was supposed to do, what it was promised to do. All the critics who lined up to say it would fail were wrong. The criticism of project cost escalations was justified, but the total value of the project to Boston will continue to exceed expectations. In an era when spending on a foreign war can be $2 billion per week, the cost of the Big Dig could be expended in eight weeks.
Baxter is North American ITS Director for Stantec.
Source: Roads & Bridges June 2007 Volume: 45 Number: 6
Copyright © 2008 Scranton Gillette Communications
Final notes:
Speaking as one who often experienced Central Artery congestion in the 1970s as a part-time Boston resident, it's an impressive, albeit expensive human achievement. There was a 2006 journalistic celebration of the achievement as a reversal of urban renewal destruction in the Washington Post at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/04/
AR2006080401755.html
http://www.masspike.com/traffic_cameras/trafficcams.html
provides streaming live video of traffic in central Boston.
Yesterday afternoon found the Wizard rearranging portions of his vast personal library of books when I stumbled across a book which I have not read in some 10 years: Marguerite Johnston's Houston the Unknown City, 1836 - 1946. In the Wizard's view, Ms. Johnston's history book is really more of a collection of journalistic accounts of Houston's early history, but all authors have their individual writing styles so you take what you can and go with the flow.
Today's epistle is a brief encapsulation of chapter 28 of Ms. Johnston's tome, which she entitled Automobiles, an Unnoticed Revolution. Packed in those six and one half pages are early accounts of what the world was like when automobiles were entirely new.
Ms. Johnston repeats an observation which Robert Bruegmann wrote in Sprawl, namely that motorized automobiles and trucks did not replace rail. What automobiles replaced were horse drawn transport. To quote Ms. Johnston:
In 1900, horse-drawn carriages, mule-drawn wagons, and electric streetcars were all anyone could need for transportation. Automobiles came into Houston as a sport, and an athletic and adventurous one at that. Nobody predicted that within twenty years, automobiles and horses would have traded places - the car to be driven for daily transportation and the horse to be ridden on fine mornings as exercise for Houston ladies and gentlemen. Very few foresaw that these would swell in number to provide a new use for the oil gushing up out of the ground at Spindletop.
Ms. Johnston wrote that the automobile age began quietly, a vehicle acquired here and there. She writes that by December 21, 1901, the Houston Chronicle was able to write that :
Automobiles have come to Houston... For more than a months now these agile, swift-moving steam machines have been dashing back and forth over the downtown streets.
Our socialite author then goes on to tell her readers that horse livery stables and blacksmith shops all over Houston stood ready to rescue horse drawn vehicles with broken axles or horses who had lost their shoes, but that nothing of the sort existed for these new fangled vehicles. Indeed part of what made all of this so amazing was that in the beginning there was no supporting infrastructure for motorized transportation.
Ms. Johnston tells of how C.L.Bering made a cross country trip in a car in 1903 and was cheered in every town he passed through. April 1, 1903 (appropriately) saw the first record of a Houstonian getting ticketed and fined $10 for "fast driving down Main Street." By 1906, Houston had 80 automobiles. On June 21, 1909, the Houston Chronicle reported that:
The first local party of automobilists to successfully make a trip from Houston to Galveston and return in a single day made the run on Sunday, leaving here at 6 o'clock in the morning... returning ... about 9 o'clock in the evening."
She then goes on to describe how such country trips were no mean feat, due to the fact that the roads were usually dirt ones, with wheel ruts, no maps, and no signposts. The trip to Austin involved trips opening gates through private property! Ms. Johnston writes of Julian Huxley (yes, that Julian Huxley!), who at the time was teaching at the Rice Institute. Mr. Huxley bought a Model T for 100 pounds ($5,400 - $10,700 in 2006 dollars) when he was in Texas and later wrote of it:
It was a gallant little machine which I could drive across the prairies. In the winter vacation, I drove with a colleague in my new car to see Stark Young, professor of comparative literature at the State University at Austin...
This important route from Houston to Austin soon turned into a dirt road, so bad that at one swampy place I had to turn off into a field.
Ms. Johnston' goes on to write that Dr. Huxley got stuck in the mud on that hapless trip.
From 1906 to 1910, the number of licensed automobile owners in Houston increased 10 times. From 1910 to 1913, the number increased another 5 times on top of that. There were 4,143 autos in Houston by 1913. Ms. Johnston wrote that cars were starting to replace carriage horses in the stable at the back of the property. She wrote that saddle horses held out for another two decades.
Modes of death changed. Deaths incurred from runaway horses, animal bites, and diseases were replaced by automobile accidents. Amongst Houston's early fatalities was nine year old LaRue Sachs, who was killed by a motorist. La Rue Street, located off of West Dallas near Waugh Drive, is named after her.
Ms. Johnston goes on to describe what it was like to actually operate and ride in early automobiles, saying that glass windows and the hard top and not yet come. Dusters and goggles were part of the driver's uniform. The ladies wore scarves over their hats to counter the stiff breeze from traveling 30-40 miles per hour. Lap robes were common. Other perils awaiting those intrepid new car buyers included flat tires which were commonplace. Patching holes in inner tubes was a skill that many young men of the era learned fairly quickly.
The crankshafts were located in front under the radiators. Turning them often required an adult male's physical strength and it was harder to turn them over in winter time. Some covered the hoods of their cars with blankets or lap robes to keep the lubricants from congealing. On some really cold mornings, motorists would light up charcoal heaters under radiators.
Electric cars were out and about, competing with the gasoline powered ones. Some well known figures in Houston like Mrs. Albert Bath and Mrs. Will Clayton drove electric cars, where Ms. Johnston notes that these vehicles needed to be plugged in and recharged after daily runs.
Running boards were another frequent feature of cars of the era, noting that children and young people would sometimes hang on to them for short trips. Running boards were done away with as newer cars were designed with more streamlining.
Then one day, a fellow named George Hawkins decided to build a garage attached directly to his house. He persuaded developers to push 10 1/2 Street through to his driveway. More of that was to follow.
Ms. Johnston's chapter is a great read. She does not, however, discuss observations such as that motorized transportation use is strongly positively correlated with incomes, and that accordingly the adoption of automobiles had much to do with rising incomes and living standards. However her writings do give insight as to how much trouble people were willing to put up with in those early days towards operating an automobile. In fact one could make the observation that the hassles our ancestors faced in operating motorized transportation were merely a tradeoff and may have been less than the hassles they faced in the upkeep of horses and wagons. Her work also shows that the people of that era created an entire operating infrastructure for automobiles within a manner of a few decades, something that should put to sleep any worries about the future of having to arrange a new infrastructure to support ethanol fuels from cellulose (ethanol absorbs water), or having to produce electricity from hundreds or thousands of square miles of solar panels or wind turbines. When it makes economic sense to do so, then those innovations will come.
Wizard
As anyone who has been following the news in America over the past year, two of the biggest news stories have been turbulence in housing markets across the land, and what is the the story with petroleum prices. Tory wrote a blog entry back in August 2007 which raised questions on housing and commuting costs in American cities. In turn, his blog post linked to a story carried in Forbes about housing and commuting costs throughout the land. Naturally, much was made about commuting in Houston eating up a substantial part of our household budgets around here.
The Wizard has never put too much stock in such debates, indeed your learned commentator did not even bother to reply to Tory's post. Nor does yours truly think very highly of those who rage about transportation costs incurred from automobile use. And why, pray tell, is that? Let's just pay a visit to a very helpful and insightful website which reveals much: The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics web page which describes household consumer spending over the past 100 years.
Before going any further, we should remind ourselves that the figures from 100 years ago on household consumption are - well - just that. They are 100 years old. Governments of course have been collecting information on their respective populaces for a very long time. Still, there are as always the quality of that information, but the BLS does state that their statistical information on household expenditures for residents in Boston and New York City are amongst the oldest pieces of information that they have been continuously collecting and are of considerable interest when thinking of such issues.
So what does the Wizard believe are the observations of greatest import when it comes to household expenditures since 1900?
1) Rising incomes. American household incomes have gone up 10 fold or more since 1900. Budget constraints have been pushed outwards to astronomical levels. One very famous economist strongly believed - even during the depths of the Depression - that this massive accumulation of human wealth would continue. Regardless of what else you may think of him, on this issue he was absolutely correct.
2) Reduction in family size. The mean size of an American household was 5 people in 1900, whereas it was 2.6 people in 2000. The ramifications of the drop in the size of households cannot be underestimated. In 1901, the BLS says that American households spent some 42 percent of their household budgets on food, but 22 percent on housing (29 percent in Boston).
But reduction in household size also rolls over into housing markets. In the short run, the social demand curve for housing is very inelastic. And why is that? The reason is that very few people are willing to sleep outdoors or in their cars at night. In Houston, there are an estimated 10,000 homeless people out of an urban area of some 4 million people. When I read urban economics with Barton Smith, we discussed the issue of budget constraints one day and he said that poor people are often willing to part with 50 percent (or even more) of their incomes on making sure there is a roof over their heads. They are willing to double up if necessary, to move back in with family, or give up other consumer goods in order to make sure they do not have to face the elements.
Thus, reduction in household size allows for much greater monies for other goods, resulting in some very interesting changes in individual and household indifference curves. One thing I am very confident I can say is that housing is a normal good, as is spending on transportation.
My observations find confirmation if one studies BLS data on household spending for housing and transportation over time. The 1934-1936 data is the first time the BLS displays data for transportation expenditures. The U.S. household percentage was 8.3 percent, while the Boston and New York figures were 5.1 and 5.7 percent. The 1960-1961 data show that U.S. household expenditures for transportation were 14.7 percent, while New York households spent 10.7 percent and Bostonians spent 13.5 percent. The 1984-1985 data show that transportation spending was 19.6 percent, 15.8 percent for New York and 19.3 percent for Boston. The 2002-2003 transportation figures were 19.1 percent for the U.S., 15.4 percent for New York and 17.3 percent for Boston.
The food budget fell from 42 percent in 1901 to 33-36 percent in 1936, then to 24-28 percent in 1960-61, 12-16 percent by 1984-85. Food budgets have stayed at 13 percent since then.
Housing expenditures rose from 23 percent in 1901 (29 percent in Boston) to 32-35 percent by 1934-1936. They stayed at 30 percent in the 1960-61 and 1984-85 periods. They rose however by 2002-03 32 percent across the U.S, and 36-37 percent in Boston and New York.
So what can we say about all of this, besides the fact that housing and transportation are normal goods? It can be pointed out that food production has increased dramatically with modern agricultural methods. Some have pointed out that fossil fuels have much to do with this in terms of providing fertilizer, pesticides, and farm machinery fuel, but one has to wonder whether there are substitutes for these? Can genetic manipulation of crops provide even greater crop yields? The Wizard is watching the work of one man in particular to see what holds in store for the future, not only for agriculture production, but for future liquid fuel production and a lot of other items as well.
But I digress. Clearly household budgeting for food would fall with the decline of family size regardless of any other factors. Also, it does help to remember that not only was food a bigger part of family budgets 100 years ago, but to reiterate that family incomes themselves were lower! Even if our children were to see an era of rising food prices due to an alleged decline in the amount of fossil fuels or phosphorus available (and an implied decline in agricultural productivity), is that not to mean that we cannot put land back into agricultural use?
I ask questions like this because what all of this shows is that there are a number of issues that those who see nothing but doom and gloom for man's future seem to not consider. We do not know what future incomes (and hence household budget constraints) will be; we do not know what technological improvements will happen, nor do we know exactly how fast they will happen (and they may happen very quickly!); we do not know what percentages of household budgets people in the future will be willing to allocate towards various desires.
Are you just dying to see the world's stock of petroleum to run low so that people will stop driving gasoline powered cars, knowing that electric cars are more expensive? Did you ever think that the automobile manufacturers might consider allowing people to carry an 8 year car note instead of 5 years? Did you ever think that Americans might consider downsizing their average house sizes from 2,300 square feet to 1,700 square feet, and perhaps cutting down the size of their house notes 25 percent in the process? If doing so results in a drop in the amount they are carrying on their mortgage by $50,000, that would result in a drop of $300 per month every month for 30 years, if a mortgage is carried at six percent interest. And what will people do with that extra $300 per month? They just might spend it carrying a note on a $35,000 flex fuel car which might be powered up during their work day by an electrical outlet that is provided by their employer's parking lot, but we don't know that do we?
And that is the reason why the Wizard did not put much effort to get worked up about the Forbes article, nor do I worry about such things as how much of American household budgets go towards transportation costs, food costs, or any of the other things that work other people who really have nothing else to worry about into a lather. I am concerned about whether people try to make certain household expenditures more expensive than they need be because of political or aesthetic preferences. People will make adjustments as they want or need to do so, but why force them to make tradeoff decisions that they otherwise might not need to? I would have much more to be concerned about had suffered the genuine misfortune, like 80 percent of humanity, of having been born in a really poor country.
Wizard.
The Wizard has been an avid paying subscriber of The Economist, for nearly 15 years. In the previous week's edition, the world's greatest news magazine featured a story on how advances in power electronics are enabling ships in the 21st century to handle massive flows of current. They are also being complemented by improvements in electrical motors which are smaller, more powerful, and more versatile. Amazing changes on how our ocean vessels move about are taking place far from the minds of your average everday John and Jane Doe.
Amongst the story's exerpts:
Galley slaves pulled on oars; river-boat steam engines turned paddles; and nuclear reactors boiled water to drive turbines connected to propellers on aircraft carriers and submarines. What makes the experimental engine room in Leicestershire so special is that it leaves out the bit that usually links the engine and propeller. Instead of a propulsion shaft connecting the two, the all-electric drive being tested uses the ship's engines (turbine or diesel) to burn fossil fuels to generate electricity, which is then routed down thick cables to an electric motor that drives its propellers.
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Almost a century ago, around the time of the emergence of modern ship propulsion, electric drives were seen as viable contenders to compete with the then-rising mechanical drives.
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But these early examples were large and unwieldy, and the idea was abandoned.
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Its recent rebirth has been almost as rapid as its fall, helped by two related developments: power electronics capable of handling huge flows of current, and smaller, more powerful electric motors. These advances have allowed shipbuilders to reduce the size and weight penalties associated with electric drives. They have also made possible the development of totally integrated power systems, which make energy fungible: instead of having one engine dedicated to driving the ship and another one devoted to generating shipboard power, electricity from multiple sources can simply be routed to wherever it is needed at the time.
And that is why advanced navies such as Britain's and America's are now among the most enthusiastic and earliest adopters of electric-drive ships. As warfare has become more digital, the demand for electricity on board warships has increased. Radar, computers and combat systems now account for as much as 30% of the fuel burned on modern warships. And the demand for power could be about to jump dramatically. Some navies are already testing rail guns, which use huge amounts of electricity to produce a magnetic field which then accelerates projectiles to many times the speed of sound.
Even more futuristic and power-hungry applications are within sight, such as “direct energy” weapons that zap enemy ships and “electric armour” that vaporises incoming missiles. With such demands for power, some of it only for a fraction of a second, warship designers are keen to have a single system doing all manner of things. Think of the Enterprise in “Star Trek”, where power is diverted to the shields, weapons or warp drive as needed. “We're going with electric drive because of warfighting need,” says Rear-Admiral Kevin McCoy of the American navy. “We are almost at the limits of technology and affordability in making improvements in mechanical drives.”
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Although they are more expensive, bigger, heavier and in theory less efficient than mechanical drives, they use much less fuel. This is because the diesel engines and gas turbines commonly used to power ships are most efficient when buzzing away constantly at close to their maximum output. Throttle them back even a little, and the amount of energy obtained for each barrel of fuel burned falls sharply.
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By some estimates, American navy ships spend 80% of their time travelling at half speed, which requires barely one-eighth of the power needed to propel a ship at top speed. But this requires them to burn almost as much fuel as they would when going much faster.
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The savings can be huge. America's Congressional Research Service reckons that installing electric drives on naval ships can cut fuel use by 10-25%. The American navy, which already has a handful of electric-drive support ships, expects savings of close to 20% for future warships using the technology.
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Perhaps surprisingly, many of these advantages also apply to cruise liners, which present designers with many of the same problems as warships.
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Much of this power is used to keep passengers happy, running air conditioners during hot Caribbean days, for instance, and powering discos and cinemas in the evenings. Then, once all the passengers have gone to bed, the power can be routed down to the propellers for a high-speed dash to the next port.
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Electrical propulsion is much more difficult. But some small experimental aircraft are already flying with electric motors driving their propellers. They are generally powered by high-discharge lithium-polymer batteries, which are also being used in some electric cars. Fuel cells are another option. Boeing is testing an electrically powered light aircraft which uses both batteries and a fuel cell as power sources.
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Yet all these electrical aircraft are small and have limited range. What of larger aircraft? Retrofitting a large airliner with electric motors instead of engines would not be feasible because the power-to-weight ratio of an electric motor cannot compete with that of a jet engine, and storing and generating the energy needed for a long-haul flight would not be possible given the shape and size constraints of existing aircraft. But a “blended wing”—an aircraft in which the fuselage is a flat, tail-less structure resembling a giant wing—could provide huge efficiency gains and may form the basis of future airliners.
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These propellers could be driven by superconducting motors, which can generate three times the torque of a conventional motor of the same weight and power input, according to a paper published in August in the journal Superconductor Science and Technology by Philippe Masson and his colleagues at Florida State University. American researchers are working on superconducting technology for maritime propulsion, which would leapfrog the British electric-drive system.
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The World turns.
Wizard