Reply #16: And do NOT forget the other end....

[happyslug]

Food goes into the horse and "Waste Products" come out the other end. These "Waste products" were a major way disease spread in cities before the Car, and why most cities quickly embraced the truck. I just do NOT see the horse coming back in urban areas, the waste product is to much for such a confined area. In the early 20th century, as the truck took over the role of heavy transport, you had three competing means of transport, first was the horse. As late as WWII horses were used in various parts of this country for urban transport. Milk deliveries are the best known, with the horses replaced just before WWII, and then reinstated for the duration, then ten replaced again post WWII (with the milkman disappearing as refrigeration and suburban stores took over how people obtained Milk). Most such horses, just before the switch to trucks, ended up wearing diapers for their waste products, to keep such waste products off the streets (Through some cities did NOT demand the use the such diapers, the waste products picked up by people who wanted to use it on their gardens and by professional street cleaners who manually sweep the streets in the days before the giant machines most cities use today came into use).

The main problem with the horse is its waste product and how to keep it off the streets. Some horses providing such waste products is tolerable, but to many horses it becomes intolerable. I suspect horses will be used in a high oil era, but only for heavy items that can NOT be hauled otherwise, diapers will be required. Trucks will be their biggest competitors for this niche. Trucks will have two advantages, their waste product ends up in the air not the street itself, and you do NOT have to "feed" the truck on the days it is NOT being used.

As to rural areas, the problems of the horse become manageable. The horse's waste product is spread over a much larger area with a much smaller population. Thus the problem of being a source where disease can linger disappear (The horse's waste problem in urban areas is do to the fact you have a high population in a small area AND the horses tend to be right on the street NOT a good bit back like most rural homes tend to be). Thus I see the horse dominating the Rural delivery system, even if slower then a truck do to the horse NOT needing oil for a long trip (Trucks will stay competitive with the horse as long as oil is "Cheap" but sooner or later that will end, and the horse, despite its slow speed, will take over).

The second means of Transportation will be bicycle. Small loads can be done by bicycle in both urban and rural areas. Speed will be less then a car or truck, but if the price of oil is to high, bicycle wins out. If oil stays "Cheap" i.e. below the cost of paying someone to bike to a location, then car and truck transportation will beat out bicycles transport.

Notice, the key point seems to be the cost of oil. When the cost of oil per gallon approximates the cost per hour of the wages, that is when they seems to be a switch to using horses and people instead of oil. Right now we are just below that figure, and looks like we will be below that figure for some time, but once oil hits that number I foresee both the horse and bicycle come back as a major form of transport. If you look at the reverse, when horses and bikes were replaced by trucks and cars, the same number seems to apply. the lower the price of oil, the quicker the switch to horses and bicycle. The higher the price of oil, the slower was the switch. Europe always had a high price of oil so even in the post-WWII period horses were used even in urban transport. As European wages increased and the price of oil held its own, this slowly reversed, i.e. horses started to disappear off European Urban Streets in the 1950s (Through horses as urban transport stayed important in Europe long after horses disappeared off US Streets, but that was do to the much lower cost of oil in the US then in Europe).

The third method of non-automotive transport during the 20th century was electric Railways (Trolleys or Streetcars). Most such electric rail systems had a fright division till about WWII (Pittsburgh Railway, the streetcar operator in the City of Pittsburgh had a fright division till 1940, Penn Railway, which ran the Streetcar lines in Westmoreland county PA, ran such fright operations till it stop rail transportation in 1954 just to name two). In earlier periods, where you had more rural electric lines, such lines were used to haul freight to steam locomotive rail lines. The electric lines were much cheaper to build and maintain then a regular rail line, and as such could be built in areas where no regular rail line could make a profit. The classic case of this was Hershey PA rail line, which hauled milk to the Hersey plant prior to the late 1920s. The farmers would haul their milk products, by horse, to the trolley stop, the trolley operator would load the milk and deliver it to the Hershey plant. In the late 1920s Hershey started to sent out trucks to the farms to get the milk directly, but that was tied in with the fall of the price of oil that occurred from 1900 till 1970, more than any real dissatisfaction with the rail line bringing in the milk. With the trucks the farmers no longer had to haul the milk to the trolley stop AND Hershey could contract with farmers no where near a trolley stop for milk.

As late as the 1960s the US Post Office had a policy of hauling its mail via local trolley and bus lines whenever possible, as a form of subsidy to them. When the Postal Service was formed in the early 1970s to replace the Post Office, replacing these with regular truck shipments was one of the ways the Postal Service promised to improve service and reduce costs (The take over of most urban mass transit in the 1960s was also part of this plan, for most cities did NOT want that subsidy to disappear but the Post Office was committed to it by the early 1960s, which lead to Congress coming up with money to take over various mass transit system throughout the US). The Postal Service ended what was left of such subsidies and the local mass transit systems were left on their own, without this last form of fright.

I go into the history of freight delivery on streetcar lines to show how this third system can and will work. In urban areas I can see electric railways taking small fright loads to a stop near the final destination and then having a bicyclist (or even a person on foot or hauling a dolly) take it from that stop to the final destination. In rural areas I see horse drawn wagons doing the same (Through Bicyclist may do some of the smaller trips in rural areas).

Now when I mention Rural areas, I mean the rural east, roughly east of the Great Plains. As you go west into the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains the distances between urban centers are much greater then East of the Great Plains And on the West Coast. This was the last area settled in the US, even the West Coast was settled before the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains do to the distances involved. In the Great Plains and Rockies I foresee the car and truck holding on long after both are replaced in the rest of the country, just do to the distances involved. The alternative would be to look inward and make only a few trips, but those trips being large in purchasing and selling (i.e. hauling what you want to sell the days or weeks it take you to get it to the nearest railhead by wagon and then buying what you need for the whole year on that trip, in the rest of the Country this can be done on a monthly basis even in the most isolated parts of the rest of the Country, but in the Great Plains and Rockies once a season or once a year trips will become the norm). The closer one is to a rail head the more often one will go, but as you move away from the rail head the distances become to large quickly in the Rockies and Great Plains.

Now, you notice I mention rail occasionally in the above. Steel Wheels on Steel rail is still the most energy efficient means of transportation. It as do to this efficiency that the Streetcars stayed competitive with buses till the 1950s (where oil started to reach its lowest price ever in real constant dollars). Heavy rail, diesel locomotive rail is still more efficient from an energy point of view then are rubber tire vehicles. Furthermore it is possible to convert the rail lines to electric drive relatively quickly (The Rail lines were already doing that around 1900, but then the Diesel came in and as the price of oil drop, diesel became the option of choice instead of electric since you did NOT have to install electric power source for the diesels, even if the diesels were NOT as efficient as the electric drives). Given the various options we have for electric power generation, wind, hydro (A recent plan has been to install electric generators on the Mississippi river, generators that are propelled by the current of the river and do NOT need a dam to be built), solar as while as Nuclear power, electric power will stay with us. Batteries will be part of the solution, but for every FOUR watts of power you put into a battery you only get one out, points out the inherent greater efficacy of a direct electric power source. Theoretically you could install electric lines over the interstate system, but if you do that the trucks capable of using that power source will have the same restriction as to movement as a train (without the train's greater energy efficiency do to its steel wheels on Steel rail). I can see the interstate highway system being converted to some sort of electric power source, but once you do that why stop, go to putting rail on the system and use it as a alternative rail system to the existing rail system (Which may be done in areas where rail service is weak or a rail lines with less stops is needed). Rail will be a factor in out future transportation needs, and this is important for transportation will be the economic function that will be most affected by peak oil.

One last comment, flat boats. Flat boats were used from the opening up of the Ohio in the late 1700s till about the 1920s. Even today, Flat boats have the right of way on all major rivers by federal law. Plat boats were just rafts, often with a cabin built on them, that were floated downstream by the current of the river. They had no engines, thus why they had the right of way, they could NOT move out of someone's else's way even if they had to. Flat boats disappeared in the early 20th Century first do to the fact most of them had been built of timber and then used on a one way trip to New Orleans, where the Timber was sold along with any other product the flat boar was hauling. With the drop in the price of coal in the early 20th Century, followed by the drop in the price of oil, flat boats dropped out of style (Especially as the timber most were made from was cut down around 1900 in the Eastern Half of the Country, where the Flat Boat was most popular). I foresee the Flat boat coming back, but only as it become unprofitable to haul timber out of rural areas by truck (i.e. when oil, on a per gallon basis reaches 3-4 times what a person earns per hour). At such prices, hauling the wood by river with a crew to keep it near the shore makes economic sense, Until that time, the lower crew requirements of having a tug that can use its engine to keep itself on its side of the river makes economic sense. Why have a crew of 20 (Which you will need to keep a large flat boat on its side of the river) when you can operate a tug with a crew of three and use the tug's engine to push the vessel on its side of the River.

Just some comments on traditional means of transport that oil has made "obsolete" and will come back as oil disappears.