I've been nervous as hell and I won't feel free until inaugeration day, if then, assuming those nasty bastards have been stripped of the reins of my country.
But I feel relaxed enough tonight to return to my policy beat for a quickie. That beat is energy.
(I have a large diary - so large that it will require several parts that I am saving for the "responsible governing" phase we should embark upon soon: It's called "Death, Faith, Eternity, and the Amtrak Subsidy" but it's been a mess, as I've been a mess.)
This is a short diary, that will attract little attention, and I'm writing it just to relax, just to exhale...
For a long time I have been talking up railroads as an important energy conservation device, specifically electrified railroads, like the ones in France.
But there is another form of highly effienct transport available, and that is water, where in fact, losses to friction are extraordinary low.
There's an interesting article in the rag today that will get missed because of the exciting stuff:
Hints of Comeback for Nation’s First Superhighway
Quoth the article:
Completed in 1825, rerouted in parts and rebuilt twice since then, the Erie Canal flows 338 miles across New York State, between Waterford in the east and Tonawanda in the west. It carved out a trail for immigrants who settled the Midwest, and it cemented the position of New York City, which connects with the canal via the Hudson River, as the nation’s richest port. In 1855, at the canal’s height as a thoroughfare for goods and people, 33,241 shipments passed through the lock at Frankfort, 54 miles east of Syracuse, according to Craig Williams, history curator at the New York State Museum in Albany.
Though diminished in the late 1800s by competition from railroads, commercial shipping along the canal grew until the early 1950s, when interstate highways and the new St. Lawrence Seaway lured away most of the cargo and relegated the canal to a scenic backwater piloted by pleasure boats.
The canal still remains the most fuel-efficient way to ship goods between the East Coast and the upper Midwest. One gallon of diesel pulls one ton of cargo 59 miles by truck, 202 miles by train and 514 miles by canal barge, Ms. Mantello said. A single barge can carry 3,000 tons, enough to replace 100 trucks.
I was in fact surprised to learn that the canal had been dying. It always seemed to me to be the first great American engineering feat, and I just assumed it was still viable.
It is, apparently, but marginally so.
Still, we do need to look at the things that worked well in the past in the post-petroleum world. This was a good 'un.
Viva la Canal!