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.