A Tale of Two Passes and a Century of the Ridge Route (13 Jun 15 by gins)

A few years back, in the post ‘Broadband: Lifeblood, not Luxury,’ I wrote about the roles the Lincoln Highway and the Donner Pass played in connecting California to the rest of the nation.  Indians, traders, covered wagons, the railroad, the highway, not to mention cables and fibers all wound their way from east to west.   But there is another in California with an equally storied history, this time connecting the north and the south.

Separating the two parts of the state are the Tehachapi and San Emigdio Mountains, bisected by the Tejon Pass, and the role this pass plays today is possibly more important than the Donner.  Heading south from Bakersfield, the terrain rises thousands of feet before dropping into the San Fernando Valley.  Oil and gas pipelines, power lines, the California Aqueduct, fiber cables, and of course roads all traverse the pass.  It is the roads that are the most interesting, an open history book spanning the last century of the automobile.  The Lincoln Highway, then US 40, and now I-80 all lay claim to the Donner Pass.  In the same way, the Pacific Highway, US 99, and I-5 have all shared the Tejon at various times. 

The most interesting is the ‘Old’ Ridge Route, the first planned and paved link crossing the pass, completed a hundred years ago.  At the time it was considered an engineering marvel, but it was soon obsolete due to faster and better-designed cars.  Unfortunately, today it is no longer possible to follow it in its entirety due to washouts and abandonment, and we had to turn back after a few miles due to slides, even with an SUV.  No other cars were to be seen.  Another road built at about the same time, the Old Santa Cruz Highway, which was the first paved route across the Santa Cruz Mountains, suffers the same curves and narrow pavement.  And speaking of pavement, an interesting note - the Pacific Highway was once the longest paved auto road in the world.  This was probably a real improvement over the much older Siskiyou Trail, whose path it followed from Oregon to California.

History aside, one mode of transportation notably absent from the Tejon Pass is rail, due to the steepness of the terrain.  Here the two passes differ.   In ‘The Ties That Bind’ I wrote about high-speed rail.   Assuming all goes as planned, the train will in eventually link San Francisco with Los Angeles, but after Bakersfield the line will run east to Palmdale before heading into the LA Basin.   A tunnel, though technically feasible, just doesn’t make financial sense – we’re not the Swiss!

Make Room! Make Room! (2 Jun 15 by gins)

A recent Washington Post article entitled 'The amazing, surprising, Africa-driven demographic future of Earth, in 9 charts" (whew!) had me thinking about the implications of some of the conclusions and potential scenarios.  At a high-level, it concludes that the Earth must support over 10B people by the end of the century, of which greater than 4B will be in Africa alone.  7B of the world's population will be in developing or least developed countries, most developed countries with the exception of the United States will age and in fact see a population decline, and we still need to traverse a near-term bubble in the dependency ratio in Africa.  Surprisingly, Nigeria alone will host close to a billion by 2100, with China declining to about 1.2B.  But those 1B in Nigeria will be in a less diverse and environmentally rich space less than 1/10 that of China or just over 2x that of California.  So draw a comparison - imagine 500M people here!  And you think the commute on 85 or the I-10 is bad today.

The above projections in fact match those of another UN study that outlines just how much the world will change of the next decades due to urbanization.

What came to mind were two books that had an impact on me.   The first, Make Room! Make Room!, first published in 1966 and better known by the film adaption, Soylent Green, painted a picture of overcrowded cities and environmental ruin.   Timing - 2022, just 7 years from today.  A more impactful follow-up is The Population Bomb, published 47 years ago, predicting mass starvation and effectively throwing in the towel.   At least it helped catalyze the environmental movement.   Fast forward to Elysium, 2013, painting the same dismal picture but at least providing the 'haves' with a way out.   This is one scenario, probably top-of-mind for most looking from the outside in.

But there is another, and this is where are article left off, if we plan for and innovate to lift these 4B people into the middle class.   It goes without saying that political stability is a must, but there is a bit of a Catch-22 in what comes first - empowerment or stability.   One first step is knowledge, and the combination of cellphone coverage (and data, though not tied to a smartphone) and satellite TV (even if a single downlink is shared by a community)  is a major step.  Broadband is on the horizon, and access to big-data is already making an impact in planning based on the more recent availability of Africa-based fiber landings.

With continual declines in solar panel pricing (figure below), community-driven power becomes viable, a catalyst for lighting (and education), health, clean water, and agriculture.   I believe much of this will be at the grass-roots level, and with some international aid, growing foreign investment (from China, the Middle East, and elsewhere) the total energy mix by 2100 will be very different from what was predicted only a decade ago.   A chart by China Research, below, captures this best.   At the same time, we're in a new age of mechanical innovation focused on power efficiency, low-cost, and low-maintenance.  Basically, any electricity generated, water captured, or crops harvested are utilized that much more efficiently.

So yes, I'm optimistic that the 'African Century' won't only lead to 3B new heads to cover and minds and mouths to feed, but it will also provide us with the means to accomplish this.