The high cost of gas has pushed retail gas purchases down 2 to 3 percent. What are people doing instead? Taking public transportation!

The first quarter report from the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) found that use of public transportation is skyrocketing in tandem with gas prices. Last year 10.3 billion trips were taken on U.S. public transportation — the highest in 50 years. Ridership on streetcars, trolleys, commuter rails, subways, and buses are all up. Even Amtrak ridership is soaring.

This shift presents an historic opportunity.

It was hard to get us Americans out of our cars when gas was cheap, but now we’re trying public transportation in record numbers. And once people try it, odds are they’ll prefer it, which is great news for the environment.

Good public transportation is more pleasant than a private car (you can’t read while you’re driving), and far cheaper. A calculator on the APTA Web site shows how much you can save by leaving your car parked at home.

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Had enough of the “big rigs” on the highway?  Well, Congress is looking at new weight and size limits, and Teamster President James Hoffa says “no” to bigger trucks.

In a House subcomittee hearing July 9, Hoffa is quoted as saying:

“Bigger trucks are more dangerous trucks.  Lifting truck weight and size limits would turn big rigs into time bombs.”

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In order to cut fuel consumption and CO2 emissions in the delivery of new automobiles, Honda has launched a 400-car fleet of new Auto-Max railcars to carry its products from factory to city.  Currently, Honda transports 82 percent of its Honda and Acura cars by rail, more than another other automaker.

The new, multi-level rail cars hold up to 22 vehicles, both cars and trucks, to reduce unused space.  Honda says conventional rail cars hold only 10 trucks.

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Imagine a high-speed rail line that could get you from San Francisco to LA in 2 hours and 40 minutes.

That dream appears to be coming true, thanks to work by the California High-Speed Rail Authority. After getting a green light by State environmental impact assessors, they’ve begun implementation of an 800-mile bullet-train system that will connect Sacramento, the San Francisco Bay Area, the Central Valley, Los Angeles, the Inland Empire, Orange County and San Diego. Trains traveling at 220 mph on the systems are forecast to carry up to 100 million passengers per year by 2030.

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So who are the world’s most railway friendly countries, and what can we learn from them about implementing practical rail services that people will actually want to use?

Data provided by The International Union of Railways shows Japan as the world leader among major economies in rail kilometres per inhabitant, followed by Europe lead by the Swiss. The United Kingdom comes, unsurprisingly, near the bottom, with the USA coming last - US citizens traveling one thirteenth the distance of the Japanese by rail.

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In modern times, trade between North and South has seen an increasing volume of trucks making the long, slow journey through narrow valleys, high passes, and long tunnels, many of which twist and spiral their way through the rugged mountain terrain. At the beginning of school holidays, tailbacks at the entrance to the 15 mile Gotthard road tunnel can reach 30 kilometres as droves of Northern Europeans migrate South for the food, wine and sunshine of Italy.

Concerned by the consequent increase in pollution (amplified as the narrow valleys trap particulate emissions from cars and trucks, which threatens the balance of delicate alpine eco-systems), the Swiss voted in 1994 to limit trans-alpine freight transport to 650,000 trucks per year. Achieving this will involve a massive engineering project, with 2,000 people working on the new Gotthard Base Tunnel, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

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What’s riding the rails in your hometown? A few hobos maybe, but also potentially deadly chemicals rumble through America’s communities daily. My hometown paper, The Galesburg Register-Mail, printed a series of articles on the dangers nearly every train brings to a community. And in Galesburg, IL, this is particularly important: approximately 1,000 cars travel through the city daily on two major railroads that cross town, the Burlington Northern and the Santa Fe, now known as BNSF, since the two merged.

How dangerous are some of those cars? Well, they carry some nasty stuff:

• Anhydrous Ammonia: This colorless gas may be fatal if inhaled, ingested or absorbed through the skin. It could explode if exposed to heat, or burn, but it doesn’t ignite readily.
• Chlorine: It, too, can be fatal if inhaled or absorbed through the skin. If a spill occurs during the daytime, people within at 1.5 mile radius must be evacuated; at night, more that 4.5 miles need to be evacuated.
• Diesel Fuel: Yep, it’s dangerous too: explosive when vapors are mixed with air, and it can burn eyes and skin.
• Hydrochloric Acid: If a container is heated or contaminated with water, an explosion could occur. Inhalation of vapors can kill, cause burns or severe injury.
• Methanol: Nasty stuff that’s flammable and explosive. Again, inhalation, ingestion or absorption by the skin can be fatal.
• Sodium Chlorate: Same thing: possibly fatal if inhaled or ingested. It can accelerate burning if involved with a fire, or it can explode.
• Sodium Hydroxide: It’s explosive but will not flame. The usual warnings about inhalation, ingestion or being absorbed by the skin.
• Sulfuric Acid: It, too, is explosive, and will burn (but not ignite). It can inflict severe burns on the skin, and is deadly to inhale or ingest.
• Uranium: The article doesn’t cover uranium, but it too is being carried by railroads around the world in various forms, from the newly mined to spent rods. Always dangerous, I just wanted to add it to the mix.

Any of these chemicals could, if spilled during a derailment, spread a fatal cloud over a community. The chance of that happening, according to the article, is about the same as winning the lottery. A spokesman for BNSF railway, Steve Forsberg, is quoted as saying that "less than three-tenths of 1 percent of all rail shipments are materials that could be turned into a toxic cloud."

Do railroads have to carry these materials? Yes, they are required by federal law to move them by the federal common carrier obligation. Would they rather not? Yes, the article says: it’s a "bet the business" public service. But then, the rails are safer than transportation by truck, where the accident rate is many times more common.

Research is underway to make tank cars more reliable in case of an accident, such as staying upright and intact in case of derailment. But don’t expect any progress soon as research has been delayed until the first of the year.

The solution, of course, is to "go green" by producing safer chemicals, but that appears a long way off. Possibly the most dangerous chemicals are chlorine, which is still used to disinfect water, and anhydrous ammonia, a fertilizer base.

Accidents have occurred and will continue to do so. One of the scarier happened a short time ago when a tank car filled with chlorine rolled 20 miles through Las Vegas, past hotels and resorts on the Strip until it was safely stopped. I recall a tank car explosion in Kingman, AZ, back in the 70s that resulted in fatalities. According to Patricia Abbatte, executive director of Citizens for Rail Safety, "The doomsday scenario is that one tank car of chlorine could kill up to 100,000 people in 30 minutes."

Until something better comes along, your friendly railroad will whistle it’s way through your community, past schools and homes carrying a deadly cargo.