Transportation Library News

Containerized Living

Containerized shipping has been with us now for roughly half a century. Its history is well-documented in books such as Marc Levinsons's The Box: How The Shipping Container Made TheWorld Smaller and The World Economy Bigger (http://nucat.library.northwestern.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=4407690) and Arthur Donovan and Joseph Bonney's The Box That Changed The World (http://nucat.library.northwestern.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=4573722). It truly revolutionized shipping, enabling globalized trade on a scale that would otherwise have been impossible to sustain. Over time, though, individual containers fall out of use, due to factors such as wear or changes in standards. An inescapable side effect of containerized shipping, thus is the existence of large numbers of disused containers. We're now seeing a new revolution derived from these containers—housing.
There have been various initiatives using containers as housing for poor people in various parts of the world. See, for example, the October 4, 2008 story from the Voice of America News on their use in Ciudad Juarez (http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/archive/2008-10/2008-10-04-voa2.cfm). Moving beyond the simply utilitarian, the New York Times published an article titled "The Shipping Container as Building Block" (Sunday, February 1, 2009, Business Section, p.10, online at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/business/01newreal.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=shipping%20container%20as%20building%20block&st=cse#), discussing the results of a design competition challenging architects to develop "housing so cool that everybody would want to live in it." The first-place design is one that closely resembles the Habitat structure featured at Expo '67 in Montreal (http://www.habitat67.com/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_67). An earlier article, "Last Stop for Long-Haul Containers" (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D07EFD6153CF934A25754C0A9659C8B63&scp=2&sq=shipping%20container%20as%20building%20block&st=cse#
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/technology/17sun.html?scp=4&sq=shipping%20container%20as%20building%20block&st=cse) appeared in the Home and Garden section (Thursday, July 17, 2003).
As can be seen in this video, turning shipping containers into living space provides an elegant solution to the issue of what to do with retired containers which would otherwise litter the landscape for years to come:
Finally, we have clearinghouses for shipping container housing (http://www.shipping-container-housing.com/ and http://firmitas.org/), and Bob Vila on shipping containers: http://video.bobvila.com/m/21320565/converting-steel-shipping-containers-to-housing.htm.
Is there a shipping container in your future?

The Transportation Library's Digitalization Project

The Transportation Library of Northwestern University, http://www.library.northwestern.edu/transportation, in conjunction with the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) http://www.carli.illinois.edu, has been involved in a digitalization project spanning 2008 and most of 2009. This project has resulted in the digitalization of 289 reports, periodicals and monographs produced by or for the Chicago Transit Authority or the Regional Transit Authority. Researchers interested in transportation in Chicago and the surrounding region will be able to access these electronic materials through the Northwestern University Library's catalog NUat, http//nucat.library.northwestern.edu/

Late by Design

The Operations Room, a blog written by two professors at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, has a recent entry with this title about a New York Times article on the intentional lateness of commuter trains in New York City. According to the article, the trains depart New York City terminals one minute late, but arrive on time at all other stops.
The blog entry notes:

" Beyond the sheer anecdotal value of this fact, there are a few interesting issues here: First, This one-minute is basically the safety buffer the trains' system carries to improve service in its largest market. In order to reduce the number of people that are late to their trains, the conductors wait another minute and recover this minute later by driving faster (I guess). Second, we usually associate operations with improving efficiency, but this is a good example, I think, of intentional inefficiency, targeted at improving service."
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Take a Look at a Book

The Transportation Library has acquired Iowa's Railroads: An Album by H. Roger Grant and Don L. Hofsommer. Here is an description of the book from the publisher's Web site:

At one point in time, no place in Iowa was more than a few miles from an active line of rail track. In this splendid companion volume to Steel Trails of Hawkeyeland (IUP, 2005), H. Roger Grant and Don L. Hofsommer explore the pivotal role that railroads played in the urban development of the state as well as the symbiotic relationship Iowa and its rails shared. With more than 400 black-and-white photographs, a solid inventory of depots and locations, and new information that is sure to impress even the most well-versed railfan, this detailed history of the state's railroads-including the Chicago & North Western, Cedar Rapids & Iowa City, and the Iowa Northern-will be an essential reference for railroad fans and historians, artists, and model railroad builders.

Early Japanese Name Plate Designs

In 1912, the Japanese Government Railways (JGR) began express services between Tokyo and southern Japan. As new trains were added and popularity grew, the need for a coherent identity and image arose. JGR held a contest for the best names and designs in 1929 and thus the Japanese Express Trains insignias were born. True forms of art, which reflect the changing culture and technology of their creators, these designs can be found in the September 2009 (No.53) issue of Japan Railway & Transport Review: http://nucat.library.northwestern.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=2686978

Take a Look at a Book

The Transportation Library has acquired Impossible Engineering:
Technology and Territoriality on the Canal du Midi by Chandra Mukerji.
Here is an description of the book from the publisher's Web site:

The Canal du Midi, which threads through southwestern France and links the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, was an astonishing feat of seventeenth-century engineering--in fact, it was technically impossible according to the standards of its day. Impossible Engineering takes an insightful and entertaining look at the mystery of its success as well as the canal's surprising political significance. The waterway was a marvel that connected modern state power to human control of nature just as surely as it linked the ocean to the sea.

The Canal du Midi is typically characterized as the achievement of Pierre-Paul Riquet, a tax farmer and entrepreneur for the canal. Yet Chandra Mukerji argues that it was a product of collective intelligence, depending on peasant women and artisans--unrecognized heirs to Roman traditions of engineering--who came to labor on the waterway in collaboration with military and academic supervisors. Ironically, while Louis XIV and his treasury minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert used propaganda to present France as a new Rome, the Canal du Midi was being constructed with unrecognized classical methods. Still, the result was politically potent. As Mukerji shows, the project took land and power from local nobles, using water itself as a silent agent of the state to disrupt traditions of local life that had served regional elites.

Impossible Engineering opens a surprising window into the world of seventeenth-century France and illuminates a singular work of engineering undertaken to empower the state through technical conquest of nature.

Take Another Look at a Book

The Transportation Library has acquired Brezhnev's Folly: The Building of BAM and Late Soviet Socialism by Christopher J. Ward. Here is an description of the book from the publisher's Web site:

Heralded by Soviet propaganda as the "Path to the Future," the Baikal-Amur Mainline Railway (BAM) represented the hopes and dreams of Brezhnev and the Communist Party elite of the late Soviet era. Begun in 1974, and spanning approximately 2,000 miles after twenty-nine years of halting construction, the BAM project was intended to showcase the national unity, determination, skill, technology, and industrial might that Soviet socialism claimed to embody. More pragmatically, the Soviet leadership envisioned the BAM railway as a trade route to the Pacific, where markets for Soviet timber and petroleum would open up, and as an engine for the development of Siberia.
Despite these aspirations and the massive commitment of economic resources on its behalf, BAM proved to be a boondoggle-a symbol of late communism's dysfunctionality-and a cruel joke to many ordinary Soviet citizens. In reality, BAM was woefully bereft of quality materials and construction, and victimized by poor planning and an inferior workforce. Today, the railway is fully complete, but remains a symbol of the profligate spending and inefficiency that characterized the Brezhnev years. In Brezhnev's Folly, Christopher J. Ward provides a groundbreaking social history of the BAM railway project. He examines the recruitment of hundreds of thousands of workers from the diverse republics of the USSR and other socialist countries, and his extensive archival research and interviews with numerous project workers provide an inside look at the daily life of the BAM workforce. We see firsthand the disorganization, empty promises, dire living and working conditions, environmental damage, and acts of crime, segregation, and discrimination that constituted daily life during the project's construction. Thus, perhaps, we also see the final irony of BAM:
that the most lasting legacy of this misguided effort to build Soviet socialism is to shed historical light on the profound ills afflicting a society in terminal decline.

CTA: Budget crisis is back - Agency once dodged 'doomsday,' but $300 million gap may force fare increases and service cuts, causing some commuters to ask if its wasteful ways are gone

Chicago Tribune (IL) - Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Author: Jon Hilkevitch and Kristen Mack, Tribune reporters

Exchanging backslaps and high-fives, transit officials and politicians congratulated themselves last year for ending a string of annual CTA budget crises by passing small tax increases aimed at providing stable funding for years to come.

Those predictions, offered amid early signs of the recession, could hardly have been more off the mark in the wake of Monday's announcement that the CTA faces its worst budget crunch in recent years.

Fares climbing to as high as $3 a ride, waits of up to a half-hour to board crowded buses and trains, and more than 1,100 CTA employee layoffs will be needed to help dig out of a projected $300 million hole in the $1.3 billion budget for 2010, officials said.

The hardships confronting commuters will start Feb. 7 unless increases in public subsidies or major concessions by CTA unions develop in the next month or so, officials said.

The dire warnings set the stage for yet another transit "doomsday." But riders have faced such threats before without seeing massive cuts or huge fare increases implemented.

Many commuters also said they remain skeptical of assertions by CTA executives that the agency has cut wasteful spending.

Ashley Aponte, 20, wondered whether a $3 train ride, which is 75 cents more than the current rail fare, was the CTA's way of persuading people to buy more cars, which, ironically, would boost local sales tax revenue to the transit agency.

"At that rate, you might as well pay for gas," said Aponte, who lives on the South Side.

CTA President Richard Rodriguez acknowledged Monday that the way things are going, "we are discouraging people from riding our system." But Rodriguez noted it costs the CTA an average of $7 to provide each ride.

And even though CTA officials last week identified $122 million in internal cuts in next year's budget, that still leaves a $178 million deficit.

A chunk of that deficit could be made up by repealing the free rides program that former Gov. Rod Blagojevich offered to senior citizens last year. Free rides were later expanded to include low-income disabled people, disabled military veterans and active military personnel in uniform.

The free rides will cost the CTA $30 million this year, and they are expected to double next year, Rodriguez said.

But Rodriguez and new CTA board Chairman Terry Peterson said they have no plans to ask Gov. Pat Quinn or the General Assembly to return to a reduced-fare system for riders who now receive free rides.

That leaves other passengers to shoulder more than $83 million in fare increases.

Under the proposed new budget, the regular bus fare would increase 25 cents, to $2.50. Express bus and all rail fares would jump to $3 from $2.25 now. Most unlimited-ride passes also are slated to get more expensive, including the 30-day pass, rising to $110 from $86.

Transfers would remain 25 cents. But riders who use the CTA smart fare cards, the Chicago Card or the Chicago Card Plus, who now pay a discounted $2 bus fares, would pay the full $2.50 fare.

Some 110 of the CTA's 150 bus routes would provide less frequent service under the belt-tightening plan, and riders could expect average waiting times to at least double.

"Customers may be less likely to have a seat," Rodriguez said.

Hours of operation would be reduced on 41 bus routes, generally in the early morning and late night. Each would lose 25 minutes to about three hours of service a day, with a few routes even more.

Express bus service would no longer be available on nine routes: X3, X4, X9, X20, X49, X54, X55, X80 and 53AL.

Rodriguez blamed the budget crisis on a projected 30 percent decline in anticipated tax revenue next year. The CTA depends on sales taxes and Chicago's real estate transfer tax to provide about half of its operating revenue.

The Regional Transportation Authority originally estimated that the CTA would receive about $710 million in public funding next year, but it was later reduced to $497 million because of the weak economy.

Peterson, who has been the CTA board's president less than a week, told the Tribune editorial board Monday that he and Rodriguez will make the rounds in Springfield on Thursday to "tell the story how we got" in financial trouble again.

But he appeared to back off from earlier statements last week that he would seek more tax revenue for the CTA. Instead, Peterson said he would focus on "legislative relief and some union concessions."

From state lawmakers, he said, the CTA needs more flexibility to transfer money designated for building projects and buying new buses and trains to shore up the operating budget.

The CTA shifted $128 million from its capital budget to the operating budget this year, and it plans to transfer $90 million next year, said Karen Walker, the agency's chief financial officer.

Rodriguez and Peterson expressed optimism that the CTA's unions, which have negotiated annual salary increases of 3.5 percent a year over the next two years built into their contracts, would agree to concessions during upcoming talks.

Nonunion CTA employees will be required to take up to 18 unpaid days in 2010, on top of a 4-year-old wage freeze, resulting in a net loss in salary of 10 percent, Rodriguez said.

A 10 percent pay reduction for union employees would save the CTA about $77 million a year, he said.

Labor costs account for 66 percent of the operating budget, records show. The average salary of a CTA nonunion employee this year is $72,080, compared with $74,242 for union workers.

"Union employees have been relatively untouched by layoffs (in recent years)," Rodriguez said. "We are asking the unions to step up and be a part of the solution."

But union contracts are not up for renewal until 2011, and union leaders said they have already sacrificed by paying more toward their pensions and health care costs.

Robert Kelly, Local 308 president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents CTA rail workers, said the union is not willing to consider furloughs, unpaid holidays or wage freezes. The ATU's Local 241, which represents bus operators, agrees.

"It's at the point where we have to stand our ground," Kelly said.

But Kelly left the door open to concessions, if only a crack.

"I'm not looking to give any concessions unless there is a long-term plan," he said. "We are not going to do this again next year."

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COMMUTERS REACT

"I guess I would be forced to pay. But I wouldn't like it."

-- Katrice Freeman, 19, who lives on the West Side and attends Malcolm X College. She rides the Green and Red Lines and uses buses many times a week.

"I understand the economy is tough on everyone, but CTA isn't going broke."

-- Reginald Hughes, 46, who works at a downtown McDonald's restaurant and also rides the CTA to clubs on weekends where he performs as an R&B singer.

"I ride at least once or twice a week. I could see the increase being a big problem if you're barely making ends meet already and using it a lot."

-- Sarah Wilson, 24, Gold Coast

"It seems like a lot. I use the 'L' to go shopping downtown, but if it's $3 I'll be a lot less likely to. When a round trip is $6, for big groups a cab would probably be cheaper."

-- Joanne Chang, 28, Old Town

"$2.25 or $3, that's not a lot of money for transportation -- it's nothing. People shouldn't complain. I'm from California, and it's a lot more expensive there."

-- Darnell Jones, 48, Beverly neighborhood

"It's been going up every year. I think the reason I don't have a car is because gas was so expensive, but now taking the train or bus is like buying gasoline."

-- Robert Daniels, 19, West Side

"If that's what they are charging, you have to pay. You're kind of beholden to them. They can't keep raising fares, though. At some point, it has to be on them to manage the money they bring in."

-- Shannon Sullivan, 31, who lives on the South Side and works downtown