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There is always a chance of storms in the
Mediterranean Sea. Then
pollution,
melting ice caps,
hurricanes,
earthquakes,
tornados,
volcanoes,
blizzards,
floods,
tsunamis.
We focus on "green" waste management and even
garbage trucks.
Find out more about Weather around the World |
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CONTENTS
(1) Global warming!. (2) Lets introduce commuters, passenger trains, urban issues, and cultural issues. (3) Lets introduce Mass transit alternatives. (4) What is the impact on our ecology? (5) Window on Europe and the "Green Prince" Now some of the railroad-related projects that will help the environment (6) What is a Chicago Bypass??? A Chicago Bypass is all about getting railroad freight around Chicago instead of going through Chicago (with the resulting delays and pollution). (7) We have a great section on the Lackawanna Cutoff . |
WHAT'S IN IT FOR US?
We sell temporary portable housing.. JWH Rapid Response Temporary Housing offers a superb temporary housing product. Our buildings become residential accommodation, offices and much more. The market for our shelters include: military training camps; recreational camping facilities; disaster-related (weather, etc); homeless persons; single mothers; ex-offenders; work forces (a la Job Corps); outdoor entertainment events. Some other uses for our shelters are: office complexes; dormitory complexes with internal laundromat, kitchen and dining room areas; hospitals, medical centres and clinics; warehouses, stores and workshops; factories and industrial buildings; garages; gymnasiums. Some of the services we provide are: transportation to your site; site preparation for your portable shelter; assembly of your portable shelter; subsequent enhancements or moving of your portable shelter. We have the ability to vary the styles of our shelters. For instance we can build single or double floor units. Our building can have ensuite or shared bathrooms. Several units can be "clustered" ("horseshoe" arrangement for example). Our units are ideally suited for installation of solar panels. Our units provide comfortable residential or office accomodations. The units can be fitted with lavatory and/or washing facilities.Efficient thermal insulation is ensured (through our unique construction techniques) and complemented by internal wood-laminated paneling and PVC windows.The units are assembled to meet local electrical specifiations with wiring concealed using internal paneling. Unit size or function can be increased or changed, according to your future needs, by simply adding units.Number and placement of doors and windows an be varied by simply replacing individual panels. Additional accessories, such as furniture, air conditioning unit or electric heaters can be supplied on request. |
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"The Greening of America" By Charles A. Reich This is the Revolution: This land is your land, this land is my land, from California to the New York Island - WOODY GUTHRIE America is dealing death, not only to people in other lands, but to its own people. So say the most thoughtful and passionate of our youth, from California to Connecticut. This realization is not limited to the new generation. Talk to a retired school teacher in Mendocino, a judge in Washington, D.C., a housewife in Belmont, Massachusetts, a dude rancher in the Washington Cascades. We think of ourselves as an incredibly rich country, but we are beginning to realize that we are also a desperately poor country -- poor in most of the things that throughout the history of mankind have been cherished as riches. Thursday, December 15, 2005 6:51:42 PM by RWR8189 THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, Charles Reich's book The Greening of America arrived like a tidal wave in the already roiled waters of American public debate. Published as a 25,000-word essay in the September 26, 1970, New Yorker, it elicited from the magazine's 463,000 readers more mail than any single article before it ever had. The issue quickly sold out, while copies of the much longer book were scarce, though it eventually went through over 20 printings. The New York Times alone published about a dozen articles on the subject, two of them by Reich himself, a few more commenting on the cultural changes heralded by The Greening of America, and several others taking issue with the book. Widely panned by reviewers, it nonetheless found some well-known boosters. Critic Dwight Macdonald compared it to prominent bestsellers like David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd and Paul Goodman's Growing Up Absurd. Nicholas von Hoffman of the Washington Post put in a good word for Reich's take on modern society. Where the book really struck a chord was with readers. The paperback edition gave over three pages to blurbs from people like Mrs. Frederick Anderson of Pipersville, Pennsylvania: "Thank you for such a remarkably perceptive and brilliant explanation of the United States my husband and I are trying to understand and feel so frustrated about most of the time." Even Reich's critics conceded it an "extraordinary literary and political event." Reich, a previously little-known faculty member at Yale Law School, became famous--too much so for his taste. "Being a celebrity," he later wrote, "meant having my days and nights filled with unceasing demands, questions, attacks, interruptions." He soon retreated from New Haven to San Francisco, where he has lived ever since. Within a few years, the "new consciousness" that his book exalts had, even Reich conceded, "gone into hiding." Reich published a couple more books, a memoir in 1976 that was mostly ignored and marked the end of his status as a commentator of note, and the other, almost twenty years later, a monotone screed against the modern state that caused no stir at all. Greening remains a classic example of the big-think book that captures the popular imagination, though its message--that a new era in human history was upon us--like its author, soon faded into obscurity, to be remembered rarely and then mostly to be ridiculed. But among the overheated, overreaching, radical books of the late '60s and early '70s, The Greening of America stands out, not only for its sweeping ambition and meteoric popularity, but also for its winning, energetic style. Greening distilled much of the radical literature that preceded it, from Karl Marx to the beatniks and the alienated New York intellectuals, with a naive joy and earnestness all its own. The book's argument rests on three separate types of consciousness. "Consciousness I" applies to the world-view of rural farmers and small businesspeople that arose and was dominant in nineteenth century America. "Consciousness II" represents a viewpoint of "an organizational society", featuring meritocracy and improvement through various large institutions; it dominated the New Deal, World War II and 1950s generations. "Consciousness III" represents the worldview of the 1960s counterculture, focusing on personal freedom, egalitarianism, and recreational drugs. The book mixed sociological analysis with panegyrics to rock music, cannabis, and blue jeans, arguing that these fashions embodied a fundamental shift in world view. |
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Now, lets introduce
commuters, passenger trains, urban issues, and cultural issues.
Commuter trains run throughout the Chicago area. Interestingly they don't run on the EJ&E tracks because they basically follow the routes of the former passener railroads. Most railroad passengers today are commuters. Chicago has the greatest concentration of passenger carrying lines after the metropolitan New York area. Over the years, it was probably the most varied as far as equipment was concerned. Before the RTA (Regional Transit Authority) consolidation, movements were diesel-powered, electric-powered and included interurbans. The RTA is a coordinating agency for commuter rail. It provides subsidies to Burlington Northern, Northwestern, Illinois Central and N&W (ex-Wabash). The Chicago, South Shore & South Bend is operated jointly with the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District. The NICTD acquired ownership of that line from the Chessie System. An RTA subsidiary, the Northern Illinois Railroad Corporation operates commuter trains over former Milwaukee and Rock Island lines. Some of the rolling stock and stations are owned by local transit districts. A real story for this era is how General Motors, Ford and Chrysler reshaped American ground transportation to serve their corporate wants instead of social needs. As a result of their monopolistic structure, the Big Three automakers acted in a way detrimental to public interest. GM had control of auto, truck, bus and locomotive production. We are seeing a collapse of a society based on the automobile. We have consumed too much oil, polluted the atmosphere, and turned our cities into highways and parking lots. We see a government bias in favor of highways, failure to produce transport vehicles consistent with energy/environmental restraints, and a consumer dependence on the auto. GM had the power and economic incentive to suppress rail and bus transportation: one bus can eliminate 35 automobiles; one rail transit vehicle can supplant 50 passenger cars; one train can displace 1000 cars or a fleet of 150 cargo-laden trucks. GM had a role in the destruction of more than 100 electric surface rail systems in 45 cities including New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, Oakland, Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. In southern California, GM and other highway interests acquired local transit companies and replaced them with busses. The noisy, foul-smelling busses turned people away from mass transit and therefore sold millions of automobiles. General Motors received a criminal conviction for its part in monopolizing street transportation. In spite of this, GM continued to acquire and dieselize electric transit properties into 1955. 40,000 streetcars were in service in 1936 when National City Lines was organized by GM. By 1955, only 5,000 remained. While substituting buses for electric street railways helped GM stockholders, it deprived the riding public of a pollution free and energy efficient mode of transportation. Substitution of buses for streetcar lines contributed indirectly to the abandonment of electric railway freight service. Merchants used to rely on this service to deliver goods and interchange with railroads. For instance, Pacific Electric was once the third largest freight railroad in California. It just proved uneconomical to maintain city track for freight-only. General Motors even benefited from this demise. They also sold trucks! They even used to have an interest in Associated Transport and Consolidated Freightways. GM used its leverage as the largest freight shipper to coerce railroads to scrap their equipment, including pollution-free electrics, in favor of less durable, less efficient GM diesels. New Haven Railroad showed a profit during 50 years of electrification but started heavy losses after it dieselized its operations. General Motors diversification into bus transportation: (1) shifted passengers from rail to bus and eventually into automobiles; and (2) shifted freight from rail to truck. An additional factor was GM's integration into locomotive production. In 1930, they acquired Winton Engine and Electro-Motive. Unfortunately, GM could make 25 to 30 times more gross revenue selling cars and trucks than it could diesel locomotives. In 1956 the government sued General Motors for monopolization of the bus industry and requested divestiture of its bus production facilities. The case was a failure for the government because GM had combined bus and truck production within the same facilities. A few years later the Justice Department started and then abandoned an antitrust case against GM Locomotive. Many of the anti-competitive forces of the automobile industry could be diffused by a remedy suggested several years ago by Bradford C. Snell of the International Conference on Appropriate Transportation. First, deconcentration of the motor vehicle industry would reduce the automakers ability to pass on the cost of their anti-rail lobbying to consumers. Second, reorganization of GM's bus and rail divisions into independent corporations would enable them to operate free from the conflict of interest they currently have. Finally, the facilitation of entry by a number of new bus and rail enterprises would provide competitive capability to build a modern passenger and freight transport system. It has been the policy of Congress in the past to maintain competition by prohibiting common control of competing modes of transport. The Air Mail Act of 1934 forced GM to sell its interests in several airlines. GM also had interests in several aircraft manufacturers. At that time, GM chairman Sloan implied to Congress that his company had entered the aviation industry to protect its interests in the promotion of automobiles. At one time there were more than 150 competing manufacturers of bus and rail vehicles. The technological development of these vehicles stopped in the 1930's. In Europe and Japan, where there is a limited amount of common auto/rail/bus ownership, there are much more balanced transportation systems. GM owned Hertz from 1925 to 1953. Because it was perceived to lessen sales of cars, GM limited its growth. Its success after disposition by GM shows what could happen to bus and rail operations. General Motors got into bus production in 1925 by acquiring Yellow Coach. In 1926 they assisted in the formation of the Greyhound Corporation. 1932 saw GM going into the business of converting interurban electric railways as well as electric streetcar systems to bus operations. Due to the high cost of operation and slow speed on congested streets, buses ultimately contributed to the collapse of hundreds of transit systems. Several railroads converted substantial portions of their commuter rail service with buses: Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines (Pennsylvania RR); Central Greyhound Lines (New York Central); Pacific Greyhound Lines (Southern Pacific); New England Greyhound Lines (New York, New Haven & Hartford); Northland Greyhound Lines (Great Northern); and Southwestern Greyhound Lines (St. Louis Southwestern Railroad). The railroads were eventually forced out of ownership by the government. By 1950, Greyhound carried half as many intercity passengers as the railroads. Until 1948, General Motors was the largest stockholder in Greyhound. General Motors used various devices to convert street car lines to bus. At first, United Cities Motor Transit was directly owned by GM and would buy electric street car companies, convert them to GM motorbus operation, and then resell them. After being censured by the American Transit Association, GM went "undercover" with other organizations, primarily National City Lines, Inc. Other participants in National City Lines were Greyhound, Standard Oil of California and Firestone Tire. By reselling properties after conversion, they were assured that capital was continually reinvested in the motorization of additional systems. The biggest GM "triumph" was California's Pacific Electric. Within a 75-mile radius of Los Angeles, it carried 80 million people annually. In 1949, GM, Greyhound, Standard Oil and Firestone were found guilty of criminally conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses. General Motors was fined $5,000! The GM treasurer who masterminded the destruction of Pacific Electric was fined $1! |
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www.frog.cc is a pro-environment site. They also offer free content to webmasters, plus an Eco-Tip Box. |
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GLOBAL WARMING!
EPA's Climate Change Site offers comprehensive information on the issue of climate change in a way that is accessible and meaningful to all parts of society – communities, individuals, business, states and localities, and governments. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Global Warming Frequently Asked Questions Global Warming - from the Wiki Read about the global warming and climate crisis debate, with information about warming's causes and its effects on life on Earth. Wikipedia's user-written overviews are great ... The Global Warming International Center disseminates information on global warming science and policy, serving governmental and non-governmental organizations, and industries in more than 120 countries. Global Warming - Union of Concerned Scientists Find facts and features about the global warming phenomenon from the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit group. Includes information about changing local conditions. CAN HOME PAGE Global network of NGOs working to promote government and individual action to ... a process to ensure that the global community is able to meet the challenge ... StopGlobalWarming.org Features a Virtual March on Washington to raise awareness locally and highlight real solutions. Global warming kids site Lots on the science and impacts of global warming or climate change, and on actions ... Students can learn about things that cause air pollution and what they can do to ... The global warming page of the Sierra Club is a portal to information about ... It starts with an overview on global warming and energy and has links to timely subjects. |
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FRANCE: NICE WILL OPEN TRAMWAY LINE 2 in YEAR 2016!
In a surprise move, Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi changed his mind about running Line 2 up the Promenade des Anglais and instead went with a plan that provides an 8.6 kilometer "tram/metro" with 3.6 kilometers below ground. It will cost €'450,000,000 and carry 110,000 - 140,000 daily passengers. It will run between Gare de Riquier and new? Gare Multimodal Saint-Augustin. Boulevard Rene Cassin / Avenue Californie at the Champion/Carrefour food market has a tramway in its future. Fifty-three years after the closure of the Tramway de Nice et du Littoral, the Tramway de Nice began to serve its Northern and Eastern sections. 2007 saw the completion of Line 1 serving the North-South needs of the city. Line 2 now addresses the East-West needs. This WebSite will be updated continuously until completion of Line 2 in Year 2016. |
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JWH Rapid Response Temporary Housing On site containers become residential accommodation, offices and much more! Services we provide are: Transportation to your site. Site preparation for your portable shelter. Assembly of your portable shelter. Subsequent enhancements or moving of your portable shelter. |
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How many gallons of foreign oil does it take to fill this thing? Trains can be powered by electricity generated by home-grown coal. Believe it or not, they are all over the Chicago suburbs. |
Politicians and their asphalt-lobby friends think "Busways" are the answer! Not really! Get serious about mass transit. This is what many people think mass transit still looks like. See the pictures below of the new tram system in Nice, France for a state-of-the-art mass transit system. |
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Harvard Professor John R. Stilgoe states that: ‘Train travel will supplant highway and air travel in the next few decades.
Furthermore,
electric railroads
will increasingly be used to distribute freight items as well as mail and express packages.’
According to Stilgoe the three prime factors driving railroad development are population growth, rising gas prices, and advanced technology. “In the 1930s it was possible to order a fridge in the morning and have it delivered by train later the same day,” says Stilgoe. “Americans forgot about this, but we’re starting to put it back together.” Stilgoe slso wrote an excellent yet overlooked book on railroads and the built environment shaped by them called Metropolitan Corridor:Railroads and the American Scene that I highly recommend. Whats most interesting is that the book is 6 months old and already much has changed in that brief time to further move us toward a new era of the train and seemingly away from our old era of the highway and sprawl, particularly with respect to the financial crisis, foreclosure mess, high gas prices, politics of "change" and global warming awareness. |
Garbage Trucks, the environment needs them!!! See more on old vehicles. |
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Railroads On The Rebound |
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Over the last 50+ years, railroads have changed a lot. Now they are about to change again.
It is all about a combination of economic factors and climate factors. Since 1950 , railroads have consolidated. Freight moved from a "box car mentality" to a "unit train,mentality". Passenger went from a robust business to a "caretaker" arrangement called AMTRAK. This happened as everybody could drive for free on the Interstate Highway System or fly on an airline system where the government subsidized both airlines and airports. In the meantime, railroad express and railroad post offices went "down the tubes". The old Post Office Department and the Railway Express Agency could not adjust to the new way. UPS and Fex Ex could. |
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Carbon Calculator
What's the most environmentally-friendly way to transport goods? The answer is freight rail. The EPA estimates that every ton-mile of freight that moves by rail instead of by highway reduces greenhouse emissions by two-thirds. But what does that really mean? Our easy-to-use carbon calculator will estimate the amount of carbon dioxide that can be prevented from entering our environment just by using freight rail instead of trucks. We'll even tell you how many seedlings you'd need to plant to have the same effect. |
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What is the impact on our ecology?
In a nutsell freight railroads are more efficient and more "green-friendly" than over the highway trucks or air freight. Likewise passenger railroads are more efficient and more "green-friendly" than automobiles, airplanes or even busses. The EJ&E and most other North Amerian railroads use diesel-electric locomotives. More fuel efficient and less emissions come from electrified railroads. This practice is utilized more in Europe. |
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Save on home heating oil. |
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| We have 100 months to save our climate. When the clock stops ticking, we could be beyond our climate's tipping point, the point of no return. |
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Vacation French Riviera
Tourist Information and Reservations (French Riviera, Nice, Cannes, Monaco, St Tropez, Menton).
We have hotels, airline flights, rental cars, trains and ferries.
We are a great place to go for golf holidays and golf equipment. See us for Nice Corsica ferries
The Global Highway The Global Highway: Interchange to Everywhere. A portal to the World. The Global Highway leads everywhere! Follow it to wherever you might want to go. Everything, but everything about electronic commerce and EDI in our ToolBox. Help with your business information technology projects. Experienced technical experts. Web Site design, search engine optimization and electronic commerce consulting. Rapid response temporary shelters / portable housing. Don't forget to see our OMINOUS WEATHER WebSite Other WebSites you might enjoy are Mound Bayou, Mississippi Movement, basketball, hand tools, and Penney Vanderbilt. |
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The blue-collar suburb of Downey on the edge of Los Angeles once helped send men to space. After the collapse of its aerospace industry, its ambitions are now more down-to-earth but still looking toward the future.
The City Council on Wednesday unanimously approved an agreement aimed at luring Tesla Motors' electric car manufacturing plant to the former site of a NASA plant that helped develop the Apollo program and the space shuttle fleet. The city is pinning hopes that the car factory could bring $21 million in city revenues over 15 years, create about 1,200 jobs and help revitalize its reputation as Southern California's high-tech hub. In September, the council took out a half-page advertisement in the Los Angeles Times featuring a photo of the members wearing "Downey (hearts) Tesla" T-shirts and holding a banner that read: "Downey Welcomes Tesla Motors. Apollo to Tesla ... the legacy continues." Downey, a city of 115,000, was once a vibrant center of high tech manufacturing jobs where aerospace engineers designed and built parts for America's space program. At its height, there were some 30,000 employees at the complex, but when the plant closed in 1999, the complex fell into disrepair. The city bought 160 acres of land from NASA and has been trying to redevelop it. A hospital, park, shopping center and memorial dedicated to the shuttle Columbia now occupy half of the complex. The other half became a film production facility used in the making of "Ironman," "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" and at least one of the "Spiderman" films. If Tesla comes to Downey, it would mark the return of auto manufacturing to Southern California for the first time since General Motors Co. closed its Van Nuys Plant in 1992. |
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| Find out more about vacations in Nice, France | Find out more about vacations in Mexico City | Find out more about vacations in Philadelphia | Find out more about vacations in Saint-Tropez | Find out more about vacations in Montreal and the Laurentian Mountains |
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Find
weather around the World
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Temperature and forecasts for hundreds of cities.
See adverse weather conditions. Upcoming storms, snow, tornados, hurricanes. Check out our special weather forecasts for the French Riviera!!! Visit our Travel Reservations and Information Center and see our CRUISE section. Make Hotel Reservations as well as rental cars. Book a ferry from Nice to Corsica. Rent Vacation Homes. |
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