Advanced tech without electricity/internal combustion?

Weird Harold wrote:

Zakharra wrote: Electric motors aren't efficient for providing power for vehicles, especially at the tech level Safehold is at and will be for awhile. Even now, I think the electric cars are only used for personal transportation, not for hauling heavy loads (trucks and such).

Most mass-transit at the turn of the 20th century was electric (via catenary wires) and nearly 100% of modern rail motive power (for the last 50 years) is Electric whether catenary, third rail, or on-board generation. (Except for China which still operates mainline steam locomotives, last I knew.)

Even long haul (18 wheelers) trucks are slowly being replaced by Diesel-Electric hybrids.

But the point you're missing is that Safehold doesn't have multiple millions of marks invested in multiple millions of internal combustion engines designed for fossil fuels. They can avoid the cost of replacing (or converting) that sort of installed base by skipping over a reliance on fossil fuels (by extending steam power until electric power can take over.)

I was talking about electric cars, not trains. Also the mass transit we have now, has benefited from the century long or more research and usage and technological development that can give us the more efficient electric engines. On the long haul rigs you mentioned, they still need the diesel engines for the power to move the truck. There's no battery set that could move a long haul, or a short haul rig for very long or efficiently. It's the same reason why the trains that cross the country are still diesel powered. They might be diesel electrics, but the diesel engine runs all the time.

It will be a long time before batteries could be made effective enough to take over steam. They have to be able to hold a charge, recharge fast and have the horsepower (something I'm not certain that can be done without computers regulating everything to make it efficient). Besides, what do you think is going to be firing the boilers of the steam engines you want so much? Oil based fuel.

Weird Harold wrote:

Zakharra wrote: But they can't eliminate them entirely because people want and need them. Not having to depend upon public transportation is a plus for a lot of people. Especially if you need to go somewhere now or have a lot of stuff to get.

No dispute that Americans want them, but only in very rare cases do they absolutely "need" them. Many other nationalities get along just fine without the kind of gas-hogs that many Americans want.

Most other nations aren't as spread out as the US is, but even Canada has a lot of cars and doesn't rely on mass transit for the people not living in the cities. Canadians aren't as car crazy as we are, but they still have and use a lot of cars. Mass transit simply isn't feasible for most of their provinces. They are too big and the populations too spread out.

Weird Harold wrote:

Zakharra wrote: Safehold is a long ways from having credit cards and such. Your point doesn't take away from mine, for many people, ownership (or at least possession of) a vehicle would be a necessity to thrive.

No, Safehold doesn't have credit cards, but they don't have computers or electricity or personal vehicles right now either. The question is how Safehold will progress -- will they follow the American post-war model (where "what is good for General Motors is good for the USA," guided progress) or will the follow any of several european.

Europe is a fairly closed in place. Everything is close together with large populations. There are many states in the US larger than most European countries and they have only a fraction of the population. When you have 100 million or more people stuffed into an area the size of Idaho or Washington, mass transit can work. Here we don't have that mass packing of people into a tiny area. I highly doubt that much of Safehold is that heavily populated. The land area of the nation of Siddermark was stated, I believe, as being as large as North America. That's huge. But even if it's only the size of the US, that is still a huge area to fill with only a 150 million or so people. Private transportation powered by IC engines would help the more low population areas and such.

I fail see how an IC engine is more polluting than a coal,oil fired steamship/barge/train or car/truck.

Weird Harold wrote:

Zakharra wrote:Why not? Why should people have[//i] to depend upon mass transit? The idea I responded to was that high density cities are good because they are a more efficient use of the land and suburban areas are bad because they are an inefficient use of the land.

In a city, mass transit makes far more sense than personal vehicles: more people can be moved more safely with less pollution. If personal, private vehicles are desired, the electric grid can power them without poisoning the air; which doesn't address the congestion and safety comparison to mass-transit.

An electric grid powered by a coal/nat gas fired electric power plant. No matter what, fossil fuels are still going to be burned and used as fuel. Whether to fire a power plant, a steam engine or a car/truck/tractor, it's still going to be used, and that means pollution.

Weird Harold wrote:

Zakharra wrote:The state I live in has a population of just over 1.6 million people (Idaho) Except in Boise, the park-and-ride centers, "piggy-back" commuter trains, etc, you mention won't work because people live spread out. 1.6 million people spread out across the entire state.

Idaho (nor any other state) currently doesn't have an efficient rail system to support intercity park-and-ride or piggy-back commuters. If it did, nobody would live more than 50 miles or so from a rail depot; where you can leave or load your personal vehicle and travel in safety and comfort to Boise, Spokane, or Seattle where you can unload your personal vehicle or rent something equivalent if you're dead set on being too self-centered to use mass-transit.

If I have to drive 10-20-30 miles or more to get to a train depot to take mass transit to shop in town, I might as well just drive into town and do my shopping directly. It's easier, faster and a lot more convenient for all concerned. Not to mention in Idaho, there wouldn't be enough cities or towns large enough to support the park-and-ride or piggyback commuters. Most of the population is outside of the cities and need to drive in, and if they drive in, why would they park and ride something else? That isn't efficient or effective and would just make the trips longer for the commuter.

It's easier to drive To Spokane than take a buss or a train, not to mention I could stock up on something or buy something like say.. a washing machine. You can't carry those on public transportation. Private transportation also allows me to move through the city at my own pace, especially if I'm looking for something. With cars and trucks, a trip to Spokane is about an hour away. Not that far. If I would be going to Boise or Seattle, I'd fly and then rent a vehicle there. In which case I would -still- be driving in the city and not using the public transportation.

It seems like you are ignoring the very real convenience that having a private automobile has for the country dweller. With a car/truck, we're not tied to a public transportation system that might or might not be suitable for our needs (if you miss the buss in the countryside, you're screwed) and we can haul as much or little as we want when and where we want. You can't really do that with mass transit. Not to mention you can get some good yard sales just driving around. And it's hard to haul animals (alive or in parts after picking up from the butcher) on the bus or train, or to haul a lot of kids.

Weird Harold wrote:

Zakharra wrote:Or you just want to 'eliminate or at least discourage [i]long-distance personal transport' Why limit or discourage long distance travel?

Because trains and other long-distance mass-transit are "greener" and cheaper (for society) than maintaining the highway network required to make timely inter-city personal transport possible.

So because it is greener and cheaper for society, you would be willing to restrict where and when people can go. Got it.

Weird Harold wrote:

TN4994 wrote:Harold; unlike Germany, public transport in Rural US is almost non-existent. Why would I drive 150 miles and swap to public transit.

Safehold isn't the Rural US.

Driving 50 miles or less to a rail depot and switching to public transport saves society the cost of maintaining two transportation networks; Heavy Rail is necessary to move bulk goods and raw materials. Medium and light rail should feed into the Heavy Rail system from rural areas.

Subsidizing passenger service instead of building freeways would be cheaper in the long run.

No it doesn't. The government still has to maintain the roadways as well as the public rails. The cities themselves have to have roadways to allow people and vehicles to move around (and yes they do need to allow trucks and such to move to deliver goods to businesses. Otherwise it's a lot harder for those businesses, especially the bigger stores, to get the goods they need to sell.) Personal/private transportation in the countryside lets people decide for themselves when, where, and how they want to travel. They aren't restricted to a schedule of public transportation.

And if you get the efficient electric cars you want, you still run into the problem of road maintenance. So unless you're forbidding the people to use the roads period, you will always have that problem until floating cars are invented and roads aren't needed. So unless you're outright forbidding private ownership of vehicles and restricting them only to government bureaucracies and such (fire, police, emergency services, military), you're still going to have to maintain the roads and you will seem like a complete hypocrite in the process.

Graydon wrote:

Zakharra wrote:The idea I responded to was that high density cities are good because they are a more efficient use of the land and suburban areas are bad because they are an inefficient use of the land. In his eyes at least.

Not inefficient; destructive. I mean, as a means of storing people overnight between their time at their jobs, it's inefficient, and that's about the only thing you can do with a suburb, but that's much less of a complaint than the destructive part.

Very sparse settlement -- that less than 1 house per 10 acres -- doesn't have much ecological effect. Dense settlement obliterates what was there, but doesn't use very much land area per person. Suburbs tend to obliterate what was there -- cut down all the trees, drain the wetlands, replace all the native plants with Lawn(tm), etc -- and use a lot of land area. Then they turn into a resource sink for transportation, roads, sewer, etc; one could almost imagine they'd been thought up as a way to make sure the right people got the majority of the public spending while making serious real estate profits and selling lots of cars, with a sideline in housewares and lawn care and other aspects of competitive property presentation. (That being pretty much exactly what happened, post-WWII.)

/shrugs People don't want to live packed in like sardines or in small high priced apartments and such. They want space to spread out a bit and having a lawn and a backyard larger than a person is tall. There's nothing wrong with that.

Graydon wrote:

Zakharra wrote:That means you have to pack people into the cities, which empties the countryside.

Well, no. It means you should do one or the other. Given a lot of existing development, that probably means trying to put actual town centres and suchlike into suburbs.

Suburbs are the change between the city and the countryside. People live there because its relatively close to their work, but isn't in the city. Unless you're going to restrict where people can live, suburbs aren't going away anytime soon.

Graydon wrote:

Zakharra wrote:I've already stated I would hate living in a city. I much prefer the countryside and having a personal vehicle allows me to live in the country and still have a decent life. I'm not dependent on others for transportation

You are totally dependent on others; there's an entire petrochemical industry, and an entire automotive industry, which these days hauls in the chip fabs and VSLI ICs, too, absolutely required to provide you with that personal vehicle and the energy to run it. That involves millions and millions of other people; it's just kinda indirect. (This goes for everyone; the human trick is ganging up on problems. Trying to have an industrial civilization all by your own self is much too challenging for anybody.)

The same thing can be said for any type of transportation. On public transportation, you're dependent on the government to provide said transportation, on the companies that make it and maintain it and provide spare parts for the vehicles/trains/whatever, providing electricity/fuel to run it, drivers and maintenance crews and such (and then you get into public sector unions....). That too involves millions of people.

Graydon wrote:

Zakharra wrote:The state I live in has a population of just over 1.6 million people (Idaho) Except in Boise, the park-and-ride centers, "piggy-back" commuter trains, etc, you mention won't work because people live spread out. 1.6 million people spread out across the entire state. Unless you force people to live much closer to the cities, personal transportation is a necessity. Or you just want to 'eliminate or at least discourage long-distance personal transport' Why limit or discourage long distance travel?

It's not so much long distance personal travel as peak oil hit in about 2005, plus the carbon load in the atmosphere. The real or replacement cost of gas has never been reflected in the pump price. So personal long distance travel, and the setup where a sixty mile commute can seem entirely reasonable, is presently improperly priced. Shifting to a setup where it's properly priced with the current infrastructure doesn't actually help, because the price goes way up and the problems remain. Shifting to a better infrastructure might help.

/shrugs I always thought it was the speculators and OPEC that kept screwing up the price, greedy bastards, but then again if the government controlled oil/gas/diesel prices, the cost would likely be even higher.

Just out of curiosity, what is the replacement price do you think for fuel?

Weird Harold wrote:

TN4994 wrote:...
In the US, if a line doesn't produce major profit revenue, the private company closes it.

The Charisian Empire can build and maintain public transit and lease rail use to private companies.

The US originally subsidized rail construction and still subsidizes Amtrak. There is still a fixation on profitability that has gutted passenger rail service in the US. What cuts into rail profits the most is air travel, but the freeway system hurt passenger rail nearly as much.

you say that like its a bad thing.

Weird Harold wrote:

TN4994 wrote:...
In the US, if a line doesn't produce major profit revenue, the private company closes it.

The Charisian Empire can build and maintain public transit and lease rail use to private companies.

The US originally subsidized rail construction and still subsidizes Amtrak. There is still a fixation on profitability that has gutted passenger rail service in the US. What cuts into rail profits the most is air travel, but the freeway system hurt passenger rail nearly as much.

I am well aware of the subsides and land grants. Also the creation of AmTrak.
Passenger and freight were and still are intertwined for economic profit on railroads. The freeways led to an advanced interstate trucking industry which has cut into railroad freight business. The Interstate Bus and Rural Bus systems cut into passenger service initially.
It's kind of weird that originally you could catch a rural bus to a passenger train station.
I would recommend that anyone interested research AmTrack history, and Greyhound Bus Lines.

Now something about St. Johns, AZ.
There is 1 airport 54 miles from St. Johns, with shuttle service to Phoenix, AZ and Albuquerque, NM.
There are a total of 0 bus terminals and a total of 0 train stations within 150 miles of the city center. Other than the Yellow School Buses, there is no public transportation. Not even taxi service.
There is no public transport out of St.Johns. (Other than ambulance.)

The average travel time to work in St. Johns is 21% less than the Arizona average and 23.5% less than the National average. The number of people who carpool to work in St. Johns is 21.4% greater than the Arizona average and 43.3% greater than the National average. The number of people who work from home in St. Johns is 65.3% greater than the Arizona average and 110.3% greater than the National average.
There is no home postal delivery.
Everyone must have a PO Box, and we have to show a picture ID and proof of residency once a year to maintain the box.
This is a rural American town.

Wow. That is a small town. It's half the size of Sandpoint. Here though we do have mail delivery, a local bus system (the STOP bus) and taxis, but the nearest greyhound type of bus stop is 45 miles away and I don't know if there is train service here or not. If there is, it is at night when the passenger trains pass through and that being just once a night.

Zakharra wrote:...I don't know if there is train service here or not. If there is, it is at night when the passenger trains pass through and that being just once a night.

There probably isn't any passenger rail service in Sand Point but that lack doesn't mean there never has been, or shouldn't be on Safehold.

You're arguing that passenger rail and mass-transit isn't viable because it doesn't exist. I'm arguing that if it did exist it would be viable because the simple fact of its existence would indicate a different mindset than the standard American "Me First" attitude.

You're also arguing that because it won't work in the panhandle of Idaho, it can't work on Safehold -- which doesn't have a tradition of personal vehicle and an installed base of several million ICEs and a globe spanning petro-chemical industry.

You're arguing that "government" has to maintain inter-city highways, yet there is no trans-siberian highway, only a trans-siberian railroad. Very similar to the US transcontinental railroad of the 1860's. Local government needs to maintain local roads, but there is no real need to maintain inter-city roads where there is adequate rail service. The US didn't bother with inter-city highways until the 1950s.

Zakharra wrote:Wow. That is a small town. It's half the size of Sandpoint. Here though we do have mail delivery, a local bus system (the STOP bus) and taxis, but the nearest greyhound type of bus stop is 45 miles away and I don't know if there is train service here or not. If there is, it is at night when the passenger trains pass through and that being just once a night.

Hold it! You have tracks?
The spur here was torn up during WWII, presumably for scrap. That and no cattle yards since 1932. Great depression hit hard.
I just searched.
Sandpoint, Idaho is a station stop for the Amtrak 'Empire Builder' and the only stop the Builder (and Amtrak) makes in Idaho. The station, parking lot, platforms and track are owned by BNSF Railway.
You can board in Sandpoint.

Weird Harold wrote:

Zakharra wrote:...I don't know if there is train service here or not. If there is, it is at night when the passenger trains pass through and that being just once a night.

There probably isn't any passenger rail service in Sand Point but that lack doesn't mean there never has been, or shouldn't be on Safehold.

You're arguing that passenger rail and mass-transit isn't viable because it doesn't exist. I'm arguing that if it did exist it would be viable because the simple fact of its existence would indicate a different mindset than the standard American "Me First" attitude.

You're also arguing that because it won't work in the panhandle of Idaho, it can't work on Safehold -- which doesn't have a tradition of personal vehicle and an installed base of several million ICEs and a globe spanning petro-chemical industry.

You're arguing that "government" has to maintain inter-city highways, yet there is no trans-siberian highway, only a trans-siberian railroad. Very similar to the US transcontinental railroad of the 1860's. Local government needs to maintain local roads, but there is no real need to maintain inter-city roads where there is adequate rail service. The US didn't bother with inter-city highways until the 1950s.

Whoa, there guy... Roads between towns and cities predate the automobile, going all the way back to stagecoaches. Ralroads have never been so widespread as to be practical for everybody. In fact in this country you'll notice that most of the trunk lines are moving east to west. North to south not so much.

What came in with the fifties was the freeway system.

Don

For the record, Viborg SD has 845 people. Without being dogmatic about the next statement, "small town" in the USA is about 1500 or less.

Don

n7axw wrote:
Whoa, there guy... Roads between towns and cities predate the automobile, going all the way back to stagecoaches. Ralroads have never been so widespread as to be practical for everybody. In fact in this country you'll notice that most of the trunk lines are moving east to west. North to south not so much.

What came in with the fifties was the freeway system.

Don

And buses pre-date the internal combustion engine by a good century. They started up in England as oversize coaches with running round the capitol (all of them privately owned) and post coaches (post-chaise) running to major ports.
Private companies will build rail systems if they see money in it, however the subsidies involved in building and maintaining roads render competition with road freight difficult. Prior to this the roads were really rough going, even in developed areas, and serious money had to be spent to build the highway system we have now in most developed countries - several orders of magnitude more expensive than putting in railway lines with the same capacity.
The road freight subsidy started with the need for military transport before the second world war, the first world war was largely fought by rail, the second by rail and road and the cold war by road transport.
As for delivering goods to large shops, a lot of large cities like London and Chicago had underground narrow gauge freight railways for this purpose (as the roads were just too crowded with people and horses for efficient transport).

n7axw wrote:What came in with the fifties was the freeway system.

Don

You do know why Ike pushed through the Interstate Highway funding?

Whether there were any transcontinental highways before WWII is seriously debatable; The Lincoln Highway, for example was a "transcontinental highway" in name only.

I'm old enough to remember the state of inter-city highways before freeways, although not old enough to remember when they simply didn't exist in places; when "you can't get there from here" was more than a joke.

Safehold at least has a true road network and an extensive canal system, as a starting point. I'm not sure they're up to "Around the World in Eighty Days" just yet, but Steamships and Railroads will soon make that possible.