Peak Oil & Mass Transit in California

Southbay Train

Researchers at the UK Energy Research Center have recently completed a study indicating that Peak Oil – the point of highest production of oil worldwide, after which oil production will decline sharply – will be reached by the year 2030 at the very latest. On the alarmist side the report’s chief author Steve Sorrell warns that we could already be in or have passed the period of peak oil production.

Given that two thirds of the petroleum used in the United States goes towards transportation and that most transportation in this country involves single occupancy vehicles; this decline in production poses an obvious threat to the utility of our infrastructure. Without available fuel for automobiles, the current highway system makes little sense.

Of course, in some places steps are already being taken to increase capacity for efficient mass transit systems. For instance, the state of California put in its bid for $4.75 billion dollars of the 8 billion dollars in federal stimulus money earmarked for high speed rail transportation projects. While this is over half of the available funding and it might seem unfair for one state to receive so much of it.   It is worth noting that the projects are estimated to cost over $10 billion dollars. The balance of the money will come from state, local and private financing.

The projects themselves include a high speed rail from Los Angeles to Anaheim (twenty four miles by current highway routes), a leg from San Francisco to Los Angeles and a section from San Francisco to San Jose, amongst others. Travel time from LA to San Francisco would be reduced to two and a half hours (half the time it takes rail from Washington DC to New York) if all goes as planned.

Overall, estimates are of an additional 600,000 construction related jobs lasting from eight to eleven years, 450,000 permanent transportation related jobs, over 40 billion dollars spent and a top train speed of 220 mph. This is coupled with an environmental savings of up to twelve billion pounds of greenhouse gases annually and 12.7 million barrels of oil if ridership goals are met.

Those are the official figures, in any case. The Reason Foundation, Citizens Against Government Waste and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association commissioned a report that arrives at substantially different figures at each step of the way, estimating a three hour and forty minute trip between San Francisco and Los Angeles just as one example.

Whether the State of California or the Reason Foundation’s estimates are more accurate, the plan seems to be moving ahead and construction should be underway before 2012.