Comments on: Solar Rail?

By: Affiliate Profits

Affiliate Profits — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:31:28 +0000

Never really looked at the information like that before. Thanks!

By: Ted Lahti

Ted Lahti — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:51:17 +0000

We are building a solar powered passenger rail vehicle, Tell me what you think.. Ted Lahti tedlahti@gmail.com.. see business plan below

By: D. Quiz

D. Quiz — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:26:20 +0000

The (r)evolution to solar powered trains is not only right, it is inevitable. The technology is already here when you combine maglev technology (which eliminates weight and power ratio problems), with perpetual motion. The result is a conveyor beltway system which loads anything and everything onto moving solar podlines – It looks like a train, but it is not because there is no waiting, no luggage, no tickets, no turnstyles, etc. Check it out at http://www.solatrek.com. It is an amazing answer to THE energy and transporatation problems that must be answered now.

By: KoS

KoS — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:50:34 +0000

Couple food for thought.

Maybe if we didn’t have this push for rails-to-trails. There may be enough infrastructure left so as to not have to recreate the wheel, so to speak, in many areas.

And the comment about freight and railroads. It won’t work unless businesses changes back to the old mode of doing business. Meaning before the just in time business model. How many businesses are willing to go back to the old days?

KoS

By: Matt Ball

Matt Ball — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:46:44 +0000

A timeline of at least 10 years seems reasonable for such a large-scale project. I’d agree that the execution of the idea may be a long way off on the national scale, unless the price of oil keeps going up considerably. If the California high-speed rail project (http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/)makes the ballot and gets passed, then perhaps we’ll see more awareness and competition between regions for this time line to accelerate.

Here in Denver where I live, we passed the 12-year FasTracks (www.rtd-fasracks.com) initiative for 122 miles of light rail and commuter rail for the Colorado front range. The project is funded through a sales tax increase of .04 cents on the dollar. The total cost of this project is more than $6 billion, and I’m still about six years away from getting a local station.

By: Paul Ramsey

Paul Ramsey — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:30:23 +0000

Right, all we need is the political will to spend billions of dollars on an infrastructure that will be vigorously opposed by lots of highly wealthy actors in the current economy.

There’s the physical feasibility (no problem), the economic feasibility (perhaps), and the political feasibility (no freaking way).

If President Obama doesn’t take it on in the next two years, prepare for another 10 year wait.

By: Matt Ball

Matt Ball — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:05:24 +0000

Paul, it looks like you may have skipped the article (http://www.uas.coop/node/1263), and went straight to the website. Classifying Christopher Swan as a hippie may be accurate, but he doesn’t advocate a painless, cost-free solution. There’s close accounting in the feature regarding the $600 Billion value of the north american freight industry, and the fact that rail freight is much more economical and reliable than trucks on highways. Any revamping of the rail system will have to rely heavily on freight revenue. There’s also Swan’s strong evidence of rail revival in many cities already. I don’t think we’re as far away from a solution as the tone of your e-mail implies.

By: Paul Ramsey

Paul Ramsey — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:51:39 +0000

Blah, blah, blah. How many content-free rail proposals have we seen over the past 20 years? I would love to see a revitalized North American passenger rail network, but it’s going to take more than a hippy with a web site to get one. It’s a frigging moon shot. The railroads were originally built with federal dollars, in the form of land grants, billions and billions of dollars worth. Well, the federal government doesn’t have free land, anymore, the frontier is closed, so rebuilding rail infrastructure is going to take cold hard cash in the billions. Perhaps President Obama and the new Democratic congress will do it, but I doubt it. The easiest way to get hands on the required billions is to take the money out of the federal highways slush fund, but the motoring public won’t stand for *that*. The auto lobby even begrudges the paltry dollars allocated for transit improvements in the current funding equations.