"No Tav": Turin-Lyon train line

Certainly lots of environmental issues are more significant than the high-speed rail line between Turin, in Italy, and Lyon, in France.  But an article on the project in today's Corriere della sera caught my eye.  I have a personal interest in the line having once followed the route on a train from Milan to Paris.  I'd paid for a ticket on a high-speed train, but in fact very little of it was high-speed until after we passed through the mountains and got into France.

For years, the French and Italian rail companies, backed by political authorities, have wanted to modernize the rail connection between the two cities.  The most dramatic engineering feature of the line is a planned 57 km long tunnel from the Susa Valley in Italy to the Maurienne Valley in France.  (Several famous Tour de France climbs, like the Col du Télégraphe, the Col du Croix de Fer, and the Col de la Madeleine, rise out of the Maurienne Valley.)

Environmentalists in both countries oppose the line out of concern, among others, for its impact on a fragile alpine ecology.  Questions have also been raised, especially in France, about its costs.  Lately, in Italy, elements of the "No Tav" ("Treno alta velocità") opposition has become violent.  The article in Corriere della Sera reported what is counted as the 15th incident of sabotage against the line.  Yesterday, while workers were off for lunch, someone entered a worksite at Bussoleno in the Susa  Valley and set fire to a piece of heavy equipment.  Bussoleno is about 50 km west of Turin.

This kind of violence is never acceptable opposition. It's dangerous and extortionist and those found responsible deserve serious judicial sanction, never mind their motives.  Still, I'm not sure yet where I stand on the matter of the line itself.  Will it, in fact, cause environmental harm?  I've visited the Maurienne Valley and it is not an isolated alpine environment, at least down along the highway running along the Arc River.  And that highway, as I rode my bike next to it, seemed to be carrying quite a bit of truck traffic.  Wouldn't that freight travel with a lot less pollution on a train?

Decongestion medicine

By some measures the Washington D.C. metropolitan area has the worst traffic congestion in the U.S.  And it's probably not going to get better any time soon.  But one project, already fairly advanced in its planning, could certainly help.

This the Purple Line light-rail project intended to run through suburban Maryland from Bethesda to New Carrollton across the northern portion of the metropolitan area.  The line would give riders an east-west commuting alternative to driving the Beltway or the Inter-County Connector, as well as giving them links to the Washington Metro subway system.

Federal funds have been earmarked for the project.  But before they can become available, the State of Maryland needs to come up with its own source of funding.  This is why Maryland governor Martin O'Malley's recent announcement of a funding proposal is so important.  On Monday of this week he said he would submit legislation to raise $3.4 billion over five years from a 2 percent wholesale tax on gasoline.  Besides the Purple Line, the funds would go to development of the Baltimore Red Line, another light-rail line, and the Corridor Cities Transitway, a possible mix of light-rail and dedicated bus lanes to serve in the outer suburban areas developing north of Washington D.C. along the I-270 highway.
 
It's reported that the governor's proposal will be co-sponsored by the heads of the state Senate and House of Delegates.  But it's also expected that Republicans will do all they can to defeat it.

Sustainability in the District of Columbia

The government of the District of Columbia, the place where I live, wants to move the city toward "sustainability."  Last week, it released the "Sustainable DC Plan," which it says "lays out a path forward to make the District the healthiest, greenest, most livable city in the nation over the next 20 years."  That's an excellent objective, but ambitious to say the least.

This ambition drew praised from David Alpert in his Greater, Greater DC blog, a site I've only recently discovered and enjoy reading.  But I'm not so sure the City's Plan merits quite so much praise.  As they say, the longest journey begins with the first steps, and it's not clear  that the Plan includes any specific commitment to taking them.

For example, in the transportation area, by 2032, the City Plan wants three-quarters of all trips to be by public transit, bicycle or walking.  Currently, based on commuting data, those account for about 54 percent of trips.  In other words, in the next two decades the City needs to find ways to reduce trips by car from about 46 percent at present to 25 percent.  That seems a real challenge.  Yet, as Alpert notes, most of the measures the Plan describes are thing the City is already planning -- streetcars, more bike lanes, and more performance parking (charging more in more desirable locales).

Similarly, the Plan hopes to see 250,000 more people living in the District in 20 years.  But it doesn't appear to say anything about where they'll live or whether new housing will have any relationship to transit systems.

I suppose it's useful to put the idea of sustainability out there.  (Of course, as the Plan notes, this is about "greenness" and "livability," not autarky.)  Among other things, it gives smart growth advocates something to push towards.  But if it's going to be more than a campaign document for the mayor's possible reelection effort, it's going to need a lot of pushing to translate targets into projects.

Panamax ports and hurricanes

We're now talking about what to do to protect U.S. coasts from the next Hurricane Sandy.  At the same time, all along the East Coast and the Gulf, port cities are, or will soon be, investing millions of dollars to dredge harbors and enlarge cargo handling capacity.  All of this is to get ready to handle so-called Panamax ships after the Panama Canal enlargement is completed in about two years.

Norfolk, Virginia, is one of the East Coast ports said ahead of the other and already prepared to handle the new generation of super-sized ships.  But what do we make of the fact that Norfolk has also been identified as one of the five cities most vulnerable to hurricane damage.  How will one of the new 14-story high cargo-handling cranes stand up (literally) in a Sandy-sized hurricane?

I'm not necessarily against large transportation infrastructure projects.  I always like to read about new rail and mass transit projects, for example.  But here, is seems, is a case of immense public and private investment in places that may face serious environmental risks.  New York, Norfolk, Miami, New Orleans, and others ports are exposed to ocean storms that are predicted to be even more serious as sea levels rise and storm surges push farther inland.  There might be some attention to local environmental impacts -- the effect of dredging on local habitats, for example.  But so far I haven't seen evidence that changed weather conditions are part of the planning for these bigger ports.