Obama's Stimulus Projects Won't Amount to Major Infrastructure Overhaul

If the Oil wise guys like Boone Pickens and Matthew Simmons are right about gasoline & Diesel rationing near & mid-term, we shall certainly need to get to work on railway rehab and connectivity. Countries looking for investment with solid collateral gravitas shall help pay for US Railway Rehab. The developed countries all have an interest in USA economic viability, all the more if renewed American prosperity does not mean drawing down the oil supply.

Christopher C. Swan writes in "ELECTRIC WATER" of ways and means of emphasizing local energy generation, linked to an electric propelled freight & passenger railway matrix. Dubbed "Retail Railway", the methodology employed can be compared to US Interurban Electric Rail lines that flourished until after WWII. Chicago Aurora & Elgin, and Chicago, South Shore & South Bend are two examples easy for Mssrs. Emmanuel & Goolsbee to show & tell. A famous western system, the Hydropowered Pacific Electric Railway, was probably the world class example of day passenger, night victuals & freight rail service to city center stations and produce terminals. Just add renewable power.

Mr. LaHood's visits to bus manufacturing sites is a beginning of involvement to demonstrate the Federal interest in alternative transport. Please, Mr. LaHood, begin your education in rail mode. Peaking Oil is upon us, masked in the present downturn. We must begin deliberate rehab of railway lines and local warehousing, container handling and refigerated facilities. If it were possible to elevate the discussion between the President and the former V.P, the topic of choice should be the Peaking Oil phenomenon, not elements of interrogation.

Richard Cheney is among the most knowledgeable men in America on oil supply, and we are witnesses to a tragic waste of leadership talent, hung up as both sides are on this waterboarding claptrap. If I may make a prediction, it will probably be a lady from Alaska who comes into view as a savvy energy & infrastructure proponent. Girls have the answers, the boys enjoy fighting...

Over fifty years of transport employment has given this writer some background, as an eyewitness of America's transition from energy independence, to a sad position of motor fuel vulnerability. As we entered the freeway age circa 1956, America was a lending, not a borrowing nation. "Progress" mistakenly ripped up the rail branchlines as the ubgraded roads went into the small towns. "Just In Time" distribution methodology and punitive inventory taxes gave birth to fleets of trucks making daily trips to stock shelves. Old timers like me remember weekly loads, goods kept in large back rooms in markets and drugstores. Rail served warehousing meant fewer trucks were needed.

President Obama needs railway savvy people in his cabinet meetings. Mr. Biden, please get hold of the US Rail Map Atlas volumes from spv.co.uk and do your stuff! Interested parties, please see ASPO Articles 374 & 1037

Gunnar Henrioulle of CA 3:09PM May 23, 2009