From a BlueSky post by David Roberts
Most Americans really have no clue how far the US is being left behind.
These charts don't even show how China now dominates in EVs, high-speed rail, and urban mass transit.
And the Trump and the Republican Party want to reverse any progress the US has made!
From John Fugelsang
The U.S. Passenger Rail Network 1962 vs. 2005:
The journey
Morocco’s most famous train, the musically celebrated Marrakesh Express has been overtaken by the high-speed Al Boraq. Its 323-kilometre sprint from Casablanca’s Casa Voyageurs station to the Tanger Ville terminus at Tangier takes two hours and 10 minutes. The first TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse) service in Africa, this is a joint venture between the Moroccan national rail operator ONCF and its French equivalent, SNCF. My train departs exactly on time at 8am, stopping only for seven minutes each at Rabat and Kenitra, arriving one minute early at Tangier.The class
First class. The Al Boraq has two first-class cars and five second-class carriages, all are double-deck. The first class seating configuration is 2-1, with some seats facing rearwards. There is ample aisle width and legroom. The few announcements made are in Arabic and French, but not English. Clean, compact washrooms.Boarding
The Al Boraq Lounge on the concourse level of Casablanca’s Casa Voyageurs station is for first class passengers, and offers free Wi-Fi, bathrooms, seating, tea, coffee and bottled water. We relax here until 15 minutes before being summoned (Mesdames et messieurs ...) to board. With our QR-coded tickets scanned, we descend one level to the restricted platform where the eight-car train awaits.The seat
My reserved window seat, 116 in Car Two upper level, is in a quadruple cluster where two forward-facing and two rearward-facing seats oppose each other, well-distanced, across a wall-mounted table in the middle. The well-padded, red-upholstered seats recline marginally. Each has an armrest, footrest, waste-bin, shade blind and Type-C, two-prong power-point. There are no USB ports nor onboard Wi-Fi, however the phone connection works, allowing hotspot internet usage. Seating is allocated, but local commuters with a rail pass may occupy a vacant seat until it is required by a passenger with reservation.
Baggage
The two luggage racks are located at the front and middle of the car, with overhead storage for smaller items. The limited capacity is adequate because most passengers are local intercity travellers and Rabat commuters with light carry-on luggage, rather than large suitcases.Food + drink
A spacious buffet car in the middle of the train has staff service and vending machines. Dining counters face towards large, panoramic windows and an ever-changing landscape. There’s an English language menu for hot snacks, sandwiches and beverages, but no alcohol. Coffee costs the equivalent of $3.50 and croissants $1.50.Carbon emissions
When travelling this route on the diesel-electric Al Boraq, a passenger’s carbon emission footprint is just one kilogram, compared with 128 kilograms by plane.
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| The station in Tangier – Gare Tanger Ville.Getty |
One more thing
“I suppose you’ve had high-speed trains like this for years in Australia?” It’s the question I’m hoping that doesn’t come from the Moroccan businesswoman beside me with whom I’ve been chatting. She spares me the angst. Like most rail projects, the Al Boraq line which launched in 2018, ran well over-time and over-budget.
Tickets may be booked through Sydney-based Morocco specialists, By Prior Arrangement Travel. See bypriorarrangement.comThe verdict
An excellent service with international-standard facilities and operation. Daylight travel is recommended to best see the varied Moroccan coastal and agricultural landscape.The price
First class seats from €49 ($A80.77)Our rating out of five
★★★★½
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| HS2: the new high-speed rail line in the UK to connect London to Birmingham and ultimately Scotland |
Tucked away in volume three of the technical data for Britain’s £53bn high speed rail project is a table that shows 20m tonnes of concrete will have to be poured to build the requisite 105 miles of track, culverts, bridges and tunnels. It is enough, it has been calculated, to pave over the entire city of Manchester.
A more modest 3 million tonnes of concrete will be needed to construct the Hinckley B nuclear power station in Somerset, and the proposed new runway at Heathrow will require one million tonnes.
Cement, the key component of concrete and one of the most widely used manmade materials, is now the cornerstone of global construction. It has shaped the modern environment, but its production has a massive footprint that neither the industry nor governments have been willing to address.
Because of the heat needed to decompose rock and the natural chemical processes involved in making cement, every tonne made releases one tonne of C02, the main greenhouse warming gas.
Including the new Crossrail line through London, the building of Britain’s four largest current construction projects will, if completed, together emit more than 10m tonnes of CO2 – roughly the same amount as a city the size of Birmingham, or what 19 million Malawians emit in a year.
Nearly 6% of all UK greenhouse gas emissions, and up to 8% of the world’s, are now sourced from cement production. If it were a country, the cement industry would be the third largest in the world, its emissions behind only China and the US.
So great is its carbon footprint that unless it is transformed and made to adopt cleaner practices, the industry could, on its own, jeopardise the whole 2015 Paris agreement which aims to hold worldwide temperatures to a 2C increase. To bring it into line, the UN says its annual emissions need to fall about 16% in the next 10 years, and by far more in the future.
While some of the biggest cement companies have reduced the carbon intensity of their products by investing in more fuel-efficient kilns, most improvements gained have been overshadowed by the massive increase in global cement and concrete production. Population increases, the urban explosion in Asia and Africa, the need to build dams, roads and houses, as well as increases in personal wealth have stoked demand.
Annual cement production has quadrupled from nearly one billion to over 4 billion tonnes a year in 30 years. In the next decade it is expected to increase a further 500m tonnes a year. Unless there is a dramatic change, cement emissions are expected to continue to rise beyond 2050.
Industry leaders are now embarrassed, aware that they are in danger of being financially penalised and tarred as climate laggards who refuse to change in the face of the climate emergency. They well know that not only is it quite possible to build most structures safely without cement, but their own research has shown that green, cement-like products using recycled byproducts which are just as strong can be made from other industries, such as steel slag, fly ash from coal-fired facilities or some types of clay. Instead they trust that nascent technologies like carbon capture and storage which could allow emissions to be buried will come on stream, and that more efficient plant will reduce cement emissions by as much as 20-25%.
This is wishful-thinking. The great bulk of the industry is inherently conservative, ignorant of the alternatives to cement and reluctant to adopt change. Conventional, or Portland, cement is trusted to be safe and strong and developers continue to specify it because it is cheap and the alternatives are not well-known. Without major demonstration projects showing what is possible, and the education of architects and planners, progress will be incremental and possibly too late.
