Four Reasons For Light Rail Now, Optic Fiber and Anderson Economic Development

Time has come today for commuter rail. I am sure that you have heard that before - if not about time. Anderson's success depends on commuter rail and fiber optics.

Everyone knows about gas prices. My wife commutes to Noblesville. When gas hit $3.75 a gallon, I heard about it for an hour after she got home from work. It keeps cropping up in her conversation ever since. How many others from Madison County and Anderson (and Henry and Delaware Counties, too) are seeing a loss in their commuting? There is one reason to get a fire lit under the light rail/commuter train.

Here is another reason for Anderson to get cracking: 2 Indiana horse-racing facilities get ready to add slot machines:

"The flying-saucer-style lighting is ready to illuminate the new casino's bar, and soon 2,000 slot machines will be installed as part of a $100 million expansion at Hoosier Park horse track in Anderson."

***

The Anderson casino is scheduled to open in early June. The renovation of the grandstand and clubhouse is further along. Only finishing touches, such as signs, remain to be added.

"We're in good shape, we really are," said Jim Brown, general manager of gaming for Hoosier Park. "If anything, we're ahead of schedule."

Meanwhile, Indiana Downs' Indiana Live Casino will open in stages. A temporary, 60,000-square-foot pavilion is scheduled to open in mid-May, followed by a permanent 233,000-square-foot facility in December or early 2009.

The Indianapolis Star published that before the gas price spike but we all knew gasoline was expensive. How is Hoosier Park going to compete with the Shelbyville track when both are competing for gasoline and food dollars? This is the second point favoring light rail: any route to or through Anderson must take Hoosier Park into consideration.

We probably should not expect gasoline prices to go down - especially with news like OPEC President Sees $200 Oil Possible:

ALGIERS (Reuters) - OPEC President Chakib Khelil, Algeria's energy minister does not rule out oil prices reaching $200 a barrel, even though supply is adequate, because the market is being driven by the dollar's slide, government newspaper El Moudjahid reported on Monday.

"Questioned about a possible rise which would go to $200, the minister did not rule out this eventuality, explaining that this rise is from now on indexed to the fall in the dollar or to the rise in the dollar," El Moudhajid reported the minister as saying in brief remarks to journalists.

Indy's Painfully Objective Political Analysis makes a good point about how cheap gas got us in a bind with the post Jill Long-Thompson is No Cereal Killer:

In a prior entry, I stated that until Americans realize gas is going to STAY at $4 per gallon, they have no incentive to (a) stay in the cities where they work (thereby avoiding insane suburban sprawl) or (b) buy fuel efficient vehicles. Congress has no incentive to mandate such vehicles or create a national energy policy. Remember how we said we needed an energy policy under Jimmy Carter? As soon as gas dipped under a dollar a gallon, we reverted to our merry consuming ways. Now it's time to pay the piper.

Mass transit ought to be part of our energy policy - an energy policy that might lead to less entanglements in the Middle East. That is the third reason for moving on light rail.

Let us not forget that our food policy has now become our food policy and our food policy is also our energy policy. The stories keep piling up about what is happening with the interplay between energy and food. The New York Times reports on the high prices for rice in California:

Some Asian retailers, including 99 Ranch Market, a chain with 23 stores in California, have also started to set limits on the number of bags customers can buy.

For now, anyway, the high prices give no hint of abating. At 99 Ranch, signs next to product displays — in Chinese and English — bear an image of a box meant to show customers how much they saved by shopping there. In the case of rice, the box is empty.

The prices are particularly bad news for people like Bodin Sawasdikul, an owner of Rod Ded, a Thai restaurant in the city’s SoMa district. He said he had all he could do to keep afloat, given the cost of rice and other foods.

The Washington Post tries to answer the question of whether ethanol is hurting food prices or not with Siphoning Off Corn to Fuel Our Cars.

Reading Recession Diet Just One Way to Tighten Belt is a reminder that all of us are interconnected with everything throughout the economy:

Burt Flickinger, a longtime retail consultant, said the last time he saw such significant changes in consumer buying patterns was the late 1970s, when runaway inflation prompted Americans to “switch from red meat to pork to poultry to pasta — then to peanut butter and jelly.”

“It hasn’t gotten to human food mixed with pet food yet,” he said, “but it is certainly headed in that direction.”

Let's put it this way: if our resident pay more in gas to work in Hamilton and Marin Counties, what are they going to buy from our local businesses? Clipping, Scrimping, Saving has me thinking the answer is "very little":

"Tracy and her partner also stopped buying the cereals they like in favor of whatever was on sale; stopped picking up convenient single-size packs of juice, water or crackers; and, in order to save gas, stopped going to multiple stores. 'I find the whole thing a huge hassle, but I've reached a tipping point,' said Tracy, a government human resources specialist who is pregnant with her second child. 'Clearly, I'm not unable to feed my family. But I just can't feed my family the way I'd like to feed them.'"

Better expect other forces raising the costs of fuel or I may not be correctly reading Environmental Cost of Shipping Groceries Around the World from The New York Times:

But the movable feast comes at a cost: pollution — especially carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas — from transporting the food.

Under longstanding trade agreements, fuel for international freight carried by sea and air is not taxed. Now, many economists, environmental advocates and politicians say it is time to make shippers and shoppers pay for the pollution, through taxes or other measures.
***
Europe is poised to change that. This year the European Commission in Brussels announced that all freight-carrying flights into and out of the European Union would be included in the trading bloc’s emissions-trading program by 2012, meaning permits will have to be purchased for the pollution they generate.

There is your fourth reason for light rail: improving our (Indiana's) not so good air.

What about fiber optics? The energy problems exist in other countries and I think It’s time to relocalise our lives

It means more adjustment than merely declining the offer of yet another oil-derived plastic bag. Affluent middle classes in urban areas have to get over their hang-ups and use public transport, not just during the dispute, but thereafter.

Unless we want an ever more monstrous chunk of our budgets to be gobbled up in spiralling fuel bills, then it's time to think about selling the second, even your only car.

If we can't walk, bus or train it to work, then employers must start developing schemes that liberate us from environmentally-ruinous commutes, and allow more people to work from home, exploiting all the benefits of email and telephone conferencing.

Putting in optic cable would help tele-commuting. Where is it? Think about people and businesses moving to Anderson or staying in Anderson because we have the infrastructure for high speed internet connections. Anderson businesses could have employees elsewhere, anywhere and Anderson residents could work for a company located anywhere in the world.

Summing up:

1. we need to speed up the study for commuter rail in Central Indiana and that with a route that takes advantage of and gives an advantage to Hoosier Park; and
2. we need to speed up getting copper wire replaced with fiber optic.