Transit Planners on KERA, 10/27/08

[RobertB]

I only caught the tail end of today's Think on KERA 90.1 (http://www.kera.org/think):
Topic
Electrification of Transportation: Meeting Air Quality Standards and Public Transit Needs in the Metroplex

Guest
Alan Drake & Jay Kline

Description
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."

I'll get the podcast from iTunes and find out some of the topics. One thing that came up near the end: "trolley freight", using passenger rail for freight during off hours, which we know about on this board but was a new concept to DART's planning VP (oops). From his other comments, I would suggest that Mr. Kline should add dallasmetropolis.com to his daily bookmarks. He might learn somethin'. :)

[mjblazin]

Doesn't electrification of transportation simply transfer the pollution to wherever the power plant is burning coal to supply the power?

[AeroD]

Doesn't electrification of transportation simply transfer the pollution to wherever the power plant is burning coal to supply the power?

Not really.

At least in the ERCOT area, about 70 percent of electricity generation comes from natural gas, 20 percent from coal, 6 percent nuclear, and 4 percent wind. Wind generation will only increase in ERCOT.

[electricron]

Not really.

At least in the ERCOT area, about 70 percent of electricity generation comes from natural gas, 20 percent from coal, 6 percent nuclear, and 4 percent wind. Wind generation will only increase in ERCOT.

Those numbers you quote are correct for generating capacity, but since natural gas plants cycle on and off all day and night, not for electric power generated. Coal and nuclear power plants supply a significant higher percentage of the electric power generated since they are generating power all day and all night.
Last year, the share for nuclear power increased to 18%, coal increased to 36.5%, wind remained around 4%, and natural gas decreased to 41.5%. That's a good because natural gas is a much more expensive fuel, therefore your electric power bills are much lower.
All the natural gas plants owned by TXU (Luminant) are "peakers", meaning they are only on line during the day, and go off line at night. Luminant's coal and nuclear plants are "base loaders", running all day and all night. ;)

So one can consider 22% of the electricity Dart uses comes from resources that don't pollute our air. 78% comes from sources that pollute our air.

[mjblazin]

My comment was from observation by Consol's, number one coal producer, CEO, that 50% of electrical generation nationwide results from burning coal.

[AeroD]

My comment was from observation by Consol's, number one coal producer, CEO, that 50% of electrical generation nationwide results from burning coal.

That is nice, but national statistics really don't apply here. The KERA bit was about the electrification of transportation in North Texas, which is in ERCOT.

[tamtagon]

One thing that came up near the end: "trolley freight", using passenger rail for freight during off hours, which we know about on this board but was a new concept to DART's planning VP (oops).

It's about time DART figured that one out.

[RobertB]

It's a very good point, that electric trains (and cars, for that matter) merely transfer the pollution from your tailpipe to someone else's smokestack. But there's a difference. Upgrading 100,000 tailpipes to emit fewer pollutants, at $1,000 a piece, is a $100,000,000 project with 100,000 individual stakeholders, none of whom can reliably be counted on to make the change. Compare that with spending $100 million on a wind farm, or on scrubbers for a coal plant, or on a couple of rods of uranium. You get a lot more bang for the buck by electrifying your transportation infrastructure.

(An important caveat, though: centralized electric generation is not automatically a Good Thing, as these folks (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2006-04-12-off-the-grid_x.htm) will attest. But there's a big difference between your house, which probably (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3235261/Walking-house-can-escape-floods-or-unruly-neighbours.html) doesn't get around much, and a car/truck/train.)

[electricron]

It's a very good point, that electric trains (and cars, for that matter) merely transfer the pollution from your tailpipe to someone else's smokestack. But there's a difference. Upgrading 100,000 tailpipes to emit fewer pollutants, at $1,000 a piece, is a $100,000,000 project with 100,000 individual stakeholders, none of whom can reliably be counted on to make the change. Compare that with spending $100 million on a wind farm, or on scrubbers for a coal plant, or on a couple of rods of uranium. You get a lot more bang for the buck by electrifying your transportation infrastructure.

(An important caveat, though: centralized electric generation is not automatically a Good Thing, as these folks (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2006-04-12-off-the-grid_x.htm) will attest. But there's a big difference between your house, which probably (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3235261/Walking-house-can-escape-floods-or-unruly-neighbours.html) doesn't get around much, and a car/truck/train.)

I agree, electric powered Dart trains are still much more efficient than gasoline powered cars and trucks. From a state wide perspective, there's far less pollution using electric powered trains. Just like it's cheaper and more efficient to use an electric power cars and trucks, and far more cheaper and more efficient to use a electric power bus or train.

While the pollution is transfered from cities to rural towns, there's far less total pollution created.

[mjblazin]

I'd expect the DART electrical power needs are fairly constant regardless of passengers since the cars empty running on a schedule are likely 90% of cars full weight. The worst case would be run DART and no tail pipes get reduced. If everyone rode DART then the higher efficency would clearly reduce the total. Somewhere in-between is a break even. I hope that break even is within striking distance of DART utilization.

Electric cars are different since it's a one for one swap and the non-used vehicle does not add to the burden.