california regrets ...

A ten mile stretch of an ironically named 'freeway' is to close - sadly not permanently - this weekend in Los Angeles. So? Why don't all those sad car drivers simply switch to the magnificent, world-leading, state of the art modern transport system that is the Pacific Electric Railway? With its fast big cars linking LA with its suburbs and other towns in southern California we should all be jealous of far thinking LA's preparation for the future ...

We wish - this magnificent system CLOSED by the 1960s, DELIBERATLY purchased and run down by a dinosaur combination of car and oil companies.

It's payback time commies! Okay, LA is gradually, slowly, reintroducing trams, but the current system is a tiny shadow of what it was and will be again.

So why is this 'freeway' being closed? So they can make 1 billion dollars worth of 'improvements' including widening a bridge. Why?? Who's going to be using it in ten or twenty years time? California surely should be investing for the FUTURE, not the past? They are even planning $4 helicopter trips to avoid the mess, though there are FREE journeys on mass transit. California is the crazy state that still thinks it's the 1960s, that there's still oil in USA oil wells and that the world's their oyster.

Not so long ago California planned to convert its entire road system and accompanying infrastructure to take hydrogen fuelled cars - no doubt until some bright spark explained to them that hydrogen wasn't a fuel but just an energy carrier, and one that required MORE energy than existing internal combustion engines. This is of course the state that has suffered from energy blackouts due to lack of generating capacity - how exactly were they going to generate even MORE electricity to fuel their hydrogen cars?

California really needs to start taking the future SERIOUSLY!

the great unwinding ....

An interesting comment from an RAC spokesman at the end of this short AOL piece!

Temperatures rose to 27.8C (82F) today - the hottest day of the year so far, Met Office weather forecasters said.

London and other parts of south east England, Cambridgeshire, East Anglia and the Midlands have seen the highest temperatures, while Northern Ireland and western parts of Scotland have missed out on the sunshine.

A Met Office spokesman said: "I think it's squeaked it as the hottest day of the year, although we can't validate it yet.

"It may even have risen a couple of points higher than the 27.8C recorded at the London Weather Centre."

But the heat does not appear to have sent Britons flocking to the coast, according to motoring organisation the RAC.

"The roads have been comparatively quiet," said an RAC spokesman. "People are really thinking about whether their journeys are necessary and trying to economise on fuel while prices are so high." source

how roads will die

We all know that cars are an endangered species and that the road network will fall apart as we enter the final phases of Peak Oil, but how will it actually proceed?

The first signs will be uncertain petrol supplies, government inaction and a slow falling-off of the number of cars and lorries on the roads. The media will start to stir everyone up with dark conspiracy theories, but there will be no conspiracy behind this, just simple supply and demand

economics. Already some of the stronger nations are tying oil-producing nations into long-term contract agreements, or simply invading them, keeping the wholesale price of oil around $60 a barrel.

Suddenly the airwaves and press will be full of 'how to manage without your car' articles and transport policy will swing away from roads and towards all forms of rail. Petrol rationing will be introduced, probably within 5 to 10 years. The very last new driving licenses will be issued around 2025.

There are plenty of stories doing the rounds about replacements for petrol, but study them closely you'll see they are flawed. Biofuel is a joke - it would never be economic even at ten times the price of petrol and land use would compete with food growing etc. Hydrogen is unworkable. Fuel cells would be very expensive, electric cars would increase energy demands so much the climate would go out of control ... cheap oil was a once in a billion years windfall and we've wasted it on frivolity.

The roads are the key - as demand falls away and 99% of us have to find other ways to get around the roads themselves will collapse. No local authority will prioritise road maintenance as climate breaks down and economies change completely. Roads will become no go areas for everything other than Land Rovers, horses and walkers. If roads survive at all it will be as multi-use leisure facilities at the fringes of towns and villages. Some may find new uses as longer distance cycle ways and bridleways, some may be lucky enough to be reborn as railways.

Because of course rail is the key to keeping some sort of regional transport system. There will have to be a HUGE expansion of the heavy and light rail network if we're going to retain any sort of wider economy in the UK (or more likely independent nations within the UK).

We have about 30 years to make the change so that there is not too much civil unrest. Peak Oil will soon become far more of a 'demon' than climate change because, of course, Peak Oil is a far greater threat over the short to medium term. You've been warned!