Excuse the lengthy preamble, public transportation is in fact a very multifaceted, multi disciplinary enterprise. The concern with sustainability is currently shifting from sustainability of money- fares, grants, subsidies, etc.; -to energy sources and choices of cleaner over dirtier. The military doctrine of earlier wars bears on transit in an important way: sustainability now must take account of energy efficiencies more than ever before, in order to use the least fuel to get there with the mostest!

This writer has a life history of railway mode study and finds many observations of the USA transportation experience of the 1941 war years to be valuable in sustainability discussion three score & 6 years later. Now, the USA is not facing a fuel squeeze to export fuel overseas plus keep ourselves going, we are coming up short at the get-go, forget about having something to send to distant shores. We must save transportation fuel as a matter of course simply to prevent collapse of our allied nations like Japan, the EU Nations, Mexico & Canada. Try to understand- this cannot be an everyone for themselves game anymore, whether it be our private guzzler, or at a national level. Mexico approaches inability to export, and Canada cannot & will not be the USA fall guy for oil & gas indefinitely. Deal with it.

Most signicantly, we are in a diminishing returns scenario, competing with a possible adversary for oil supply(China), and depending upon other possibly adversarial regimes for other portions of our supply. This new Post 911DAY operating theatre makes application of renewable energy sources to public transportation more than just politically correct.

Some authorities, ex-CIA Director James R. Woolsey, and Representative Roscoe Bartlett (R-MA) for two- have gone on record, with great substantiation, stating the likelyhood that we will eventually see agricultural demands on diesel fuel impacting the transportation sector. This sends waves thru the trucking industry, obviously. Bear with us here- freight load on the railways grows accordingly, and this means now is the appointed time to surely & with due haste vastly expand the capacity & reach of the railway network & local warehousing rail/delivery truck interface.

Watch the great Panama- Canada freeway morph into a railway project as as the ramifications of Peaking Oil sinks in with the NAFTA transportation planning establishment. There must be an awakening of our entire community of transit planning and executive level personnel to the gravity of this new & exceedingly dangerous situation we find ourselves confronting. To quote another leader from the 1940’s emergency, “There is something extraordinary afoot here”, thus saith Winston Churchill.

Elsewhere suggestions of railway re-emphasis can be found; the pure ability of railway- “Second Dimension Surface Transport Logistics Platform” -to perform on any known fuel source, this certainly makes railway corridor, dead or alive, candidate for renewable energy links. Thus, an important part of the transportation sustainability list in any locale. In USA cities & towns where the railway has shrunk to one or two -or none- mainlines without direct passenger & or freight interface it falls on transit responsibles to begin inquiry as to what it will take to reconnect to rail at their respective locations.

Minimum rail connection, freight & passenger. “The minimum required effort to achieve the minimum acceptable result.” But not a minimum level as national policy. We are not going to be able to be shy about declaring to the Federal Government the need to stop playing political games with Oil Interregnum transportation policy. Every single APTA member, public & private enterprise listed member organization, must cram, over the next few months, on this Peaking Oil homework assignment. Get your computer whiz children to help you- they will, and then they will encourage you to speak up to the governing boards- local- State & Federal. Lookout Washington!!