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A Desire Named Streetcars: Alan Drake interview
Krys Boyd, think, KERA-FM (Dallas, Texas)
How should North Texas cities meet the public transportation needs of the near and distant future? We'll spend this hour with engineer Alan Drake and Jay Kline, interim vice president of planning and development at DART. They both participated in last Friday's SMU Environmental Science and Greater Dallas Planning Council symposium  "Electrification of Transportation: Meeting Air Quality Standards, the Petroleum Challenge, and Public Transit Needs in the Metroplex."

EB contributor Jeffrey J. Brown writes:
A Desire Named Streetcars: Alan Drake to be Interviewed on “Think” at KERA.org at Noon Central Time

Alan Drake, an expert on past, present and future electrified rail transportation solutions, and Jay Kline, a Vice President with Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART), will be interviewed at noon central time on Monday, October 27th, on the “Think” program, hosted by Krys Boyd on KERA 90.1 FM. One can listen online by going to www.kera.org, and clicking on “listen live.”

Mr. Drake and Mr. Kline and several other panelists participated in a symposium on Electrification of Transportation on Friday organized by Bonnie Jacobs with the SMU Environmental Science Department.

As Jim Kunstler noted some time ago, “Suburbia represents the biggest misallocation of resources in the history of the world,” and we have a front row seat to the ongoing auto, housing and finance meltdown that Jim has long warned us was coming.

Unfortunately, because of what Jim has referred to as the “Psychology of Prior Investment,” massive amounts of capital are being spent trying, in effect, bail out the dying auto-centric suburban way of life.—based on the assumption that we can maintain an infinite rate of increase in our consumption of a finite fossil resource base, which is the implicit assumption behind the “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less (for transportation)” mantra.

Many panelists at the Dallas symposium argued for a different solution—“Rail Now, Rail Here, Pay Less.” Alan asks a very simple, but powerful question, "How did we arrange for transportation in years past, with little or no oil input, and why can’t we do it again?"

A previous article by Alan Drake:

Electrification of transportation as a response to peaking of world oil production
http://www.energybulletin.net/14492.html
(27 October 2008)
The URL for this show is http://www.kera.org/think . The interview with Alan Drake will be rebroadcast later this week. See original for schedule. -BA

Biofuel flying will take off in three years, says Boeing
Dan Milmo, Guardian
Biofuel-powered aircraft could be carrying millions of passengers around the world within three years, according to Boeing.

Darrin Morgan, an environmental expert at the US jet manufacturer, said the group was expecting official approval of biofuel use in the near future.

"The certification will happen much sooner than anybody thought," he said. "We are thinking that within three to five years we are going to see approval for commercial use of biofuels - and possibly sooner."

Morgan added that aircraft will not require modification to operate on a blend of biofuel and kerosene. However, harvesting enough plant material to meet the industry's needs is the biggest barrier to mass use of biofuels, according to Boeing. Fuelling the world's 13,000 commercial planes with soya bean-based fuel, for example, would require setting aside the equivalent of the entire land mass of Europe for soya bean production.
(27 October 2008)

Opening The Power Box: The Race To Store In-Vehicle Electricity Lightly
Julian Darley, Post Carbon Institute
Despite the economic crash, we still need better batteries for EVs to usurp the ICE.

With the economy now dominating the headlines both generally and in the US presidential campaign, it is worth pointing out that the business, science, and policy worlds are still thinking hard about energy.

Aimed at reducing both oil dependency and GHG emissions, both the Obama and McCain teams have plans for clean cars, as the New York Times outlines.

Both candidates are in favor of plug-in hybrid cars, and the Times points out that the key to improving the battery-only range of hybrids is, astonishingly enough, the batteries.

Lithium ion, (Li-Ion) batteries are emerging as the most likely way of producing cars that can store electricity directly, whether in all electric vehicles (often called EVs) or in hybrids (some combination of internal combustion engine and electric motor).

... Cheap and well controlled li-ion batteries in partnership with ultra-capacitors and renewable electricity can and will make a huge impact on our many transport dilemmas. Will we find the money and will to get there fast enough?
(27 October 2008)