Spain’s sleek new high-speed trains have stolen hundreds of thousands of passengers from airlines over the last year, slashing carbon emissions and marking a radical change in the way Spaniards travel.
Passenger numbers on fuel-guzzling domestic flights fell 20% in the year to November as commuters and tourists swapped cramped airline seats for the space and convenience of the train, according to figures released yesterday.
High-speed rail travel - boosted by the opening of a line that slashed the journey time from Madrid to Barcelona to 2 hours 35 minutes in February - grew 28% over the same period. About 400,000 travellers shunned airports and opted for the 220mph AVE trains.
Last year’s drop in air travel, which was also helped by new high-speed lines from Madrid to Valladolid, Segovia and Malaga, marks the beginning of what experts say is a revolution in Spanish travel habits.
By Timothy B. Hurst •
January 15, 2009
Although Amtrak may be a greener choice for travel, some questions still remain about the company’s overall environmental policies. Trains are not money-makers and Amtrak is no exception. From the sounds of it, they are cutting some of their greener practices to shave a little off their expenses, but at what cost to the environment?
By Gavin Hudson •
December 29, 2008
Shibuya Station is one of Japan’s busiest transit hubs. Its futuristic “spaceship” design, by environmentalist and architect Tadao Ando, boasts a number of green features.
Shibuya Station is a vital hub in Tokyo’s transit network, linking trains and subways with bicycles (the station provides a
bicycle parking space), buses and the always heavy Tokyo pedestrian traffic. On the average weekday, the station sees over two million passengers, making it one of the busiest rail stations in Japan.
By Nick Chambers •
November 11, 2008
The new transportation investments would be paid for with a myriad of tax and fee hikes, including:
- a 2-cent per gallon gas tax increase
- doubling the vehicle titling fee to $110
- raising the vehicle registration fee from $27 per year to $81 per year
- creating a first-time fee of $100 for titling cars new to the state
- raising the tobacco tax by 2½ cents
The plan also calls for borrowing $600 million and using and additional $16 million in lottery money.
By Nick Chambers •
November 5, 2008
John Podesta is no stranger to politics. He was the Chief of Staff to Bill Clinton from 1998 to 2001 and he’s held countless positions as advisers to various other politicians. He’s also currently the President and CEO of the D.C. think tank, the Center for American Progress, which, just over a month ago, published the report “Green Recovery: A New Program to Create Good Jobs and Start Building a Low-Carbon Economy.“
It’s no coincidence, then, that Barack Obama has already tapped Podesta as the leader of his transition team to get a head start on getting this country back on track. And with Podesta’s appointment, it should be blaringly apparent that a Green Recovery — a Green Deal, if you will — is going to be the keystone of Obama’s plan.
In fact, Obama has already stated this in countless speeches, but his appointment of Podesta backs up his words with substance.
By Timothy B. Hurst •
October 1, 2008
The Senate is poised to clear legislation to reauthorize Amtrak for the first time since 1997 and renew rail safety programs.
By Nick Chambers •
September 19, 2008
According to a sweeping report released by the Center for American Progress and authored by researchers from the UMass Department of Economics, if the US government were to invest $100 billion dollars over two years in six key areas of green and sustainable development — including advanced biofuels — the result would be the creation of 2 million high-paying jobs across nearly all sectors of employment.
This represents four times the amount of jobs that would be created if that same $100 billion were invested in the oil industry for things like more offshore drilling. It also represents significantly more jobs of much higher diversity, pay, and longevity than were created by the $100 billion spent last April so that all us ‘mericans could all get our $600 tax rebates.
By Kelli Best-Oliver •
September 17, 2008
Gas costs have skyrocketed, and with them, the cost of flying. This greenie isn’t 100% upset: with the cost of fuel increasing exponentially in the past few years, people are examining their transportation patterns and needs and trying to find cost- and fuel-effective methods of getting from Point A to Point B. Smaller, more fuel-efficient cars are selling well, and ridership on public transit is up. But for many Americans, particularly those in smaller cities and towns, public transit is non-existent. For those living anywhere but the East Coast, Amtrak is slow, unreliable, or non-existent. We’re a country for whom the cost of cheap fuel has promoted individual car use to the detriment of other forms of transportation.
By Alexis Madrigal •
September 3, 2008
Editor’s note: Part three of Alexis Madrigal’s series on California’s ethanol mandate focuses on the challenges of transporting the fuel.
III. How to Move A Billion Gallons of Fuel from Iowa to California
Back in the 1980s, with smog choking American cities, the government decided to tinker with the gasoline hydrocarbon formula to create cleaner burning fuels. The easiest way to do that is to add a little oxygen to the gas. Adding O2 is a little like blowing on a flame: the controlled fire inside your car’s engine burns a little more efficiently and thus a little cleaner, reducing toxic air pollutants, carbon monoxide, and ozone.
Spurred by state and Federal regulations but committed to selling the most petroleum they could, oil companies found the cheapest oxygenate they could, a crude-derived chemical called MTBE. Subsequent environmental impact studies determined that MTBE was a groundwater pollutant, and in 1999, then-Governor Gray Davis ruled that all MTBE had to be removed from California’s gasoline by the end of 2002 (though the phase out was extended).
That left the state casting around for an alternative way to get extra oxygen into its gasoline blend while maintaining the smog-control benefits of the previous blend, and quick. They settled on ethanol, the only scaleable oxygenate available.
“This actually was a major shift in a lot of different things. The phase out was something extremely rapid. It required [the oil industry] to use the only other oxygenate alternative, which was ethanol,” says Rahul Iyer, a founder of the biofuels infrastructure startup Primafuel.
By Ariel Schwartz •
August 12, 2008
Maybe you’ve heard about the proposed high-speed train in California. Well, Sweden is beating the West Coast to the punch with their Green Train.
The Green Train, or Gröna Tåget, will cut energy use on rail lines by 30 percent through lowered operational costs and journey times. Top speeds reached 183 MPH on a test run.
Best of all, the Green Train can operate on the current rail infrastructure. That means there’s no need to lay down new tracks.
Energy saving measures on the train include a permanent magnet motor to increase propulsion chain efficiency and a system that saves up to 15 percent of traction energy by assisting drivers with speed and traction force information.
By Nick Chambers •
July 31, 2008
Okay. Let me get this one out of the way: gas hasn’t been all bad. In fact, gas has allowed us to accomplish some pretty amazing things. To be clear, when I say “gas,” I’m using the term as an easy way to loosely refer to all liquid fuel products made from buried and fossilized hydrocarbon deposits.
Ooooh… I can hear the flamers’ keys clicking away furiously already. But, before you type that horribly thought out gunslinging response, hear me out.
